Archive for the 'Education' Category

Review: Magic Jack Feedback Revisited – Updated

Published on September 15, 2009 in Education, Research, Shopping and Technology. 2 Comments Tags: , .

IMPORTANT UPDATE: The High and Mighty Oz  Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal loves Magic Jack.

It kills him to admit it, but admit it he does…

To my surprise, it worked pretty much as advertised. It has a few drawbacks, and extra fees for added services, such as vanity phone numbers. But I found magicJack easy to set up and easy to use, and it yielded decent, if not pristine, call quality. I even tested customer support—a source of complaints online—and found it friendly, fast and responsive.

magicjack
It’s been quite a while ago since I first installed Magic Jack. I use Magic Jack for a couple things: when the other phone line is busy, or when I need to make a long distance call to Bangalore to ask Boompa to help me undisunfigure my .dll or some other silly tech support issue.

The first Magic Jack review got hundreds of comments – running about 50/50 good/bad. I never had a bad experience with Magic Jack.

Here’s a site that describes all the features.

I’ve been through some harrowing times with my computer. I got the Antivirus 2009 trojan virus on my computer and it took me about 36 hours (including all the downloading and restarting) to remove it.

Aside: Use Malwarebytes if you get this virus.

I have installed and uninstalled dozens of applications. My point is that every time I booted the computer, Magic Jack came back and worked like a charm.

St. Todd DeCubbville (my BATV installer) purchased one recently from Radio Shack because of the ease of returning it to the store after the trial period.

He never returned it. He is about to go without a landline entirely.
As soon as he gets Google Voice set up and distributed to everyone, he will depend solely on Magic Jack and Sprint for his phone service.

He’s convinced too.
Magic Jack is still rock solid. And I would tell you differently.

This site offers a second opinion on the Magic Jack and it’s future.

A Review of Going Like Sixty by Daily Writing Tips

Published on September 10, 2009 in Blogging, Education and Writing. 0 Comments Tags: .

Daily Writing Tips offered this review of my blog.

Double Dutch, babble ,balderdash, baloney, bilge, blather, bull, bunk, drivel, eyewash, gibberish, gobbledygook, guff, hogwash, jargon, mumbo jumbo, piffle, poppycock, prattle, tripe, and twaddle.

slo-mo-raspberries

Conan Interprets Sarah Palin: Shatner Delivers

Published on July 28, 2009 in Baby Boomer, Blogging, Education, Entertainment and Politics. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Sarah Palin is a poet.
She don’t know it,
her feet don’t show it.
But they sure are Longfellows.

(How old IS that ditty?)

Here is William Shatner delivering Sarah Palin’s speech in poetic mode as dictated by Conan.

…soaring through nature’s finest show.
Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun.
And then the extremes. In the winter time it’s the frozen road
that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty,
the cold though, doesn’t it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs?
And then in the summertime such extreme
summertime
about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter
than just some months ago, than just some months from now,
with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and reminding us that here,
Mother Nature wins. It is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life
teeming along the road that is north to the future.

Blaming Canada Led Me to Write Poorly, Badly, Ungoodly.

Published on July 1, 2009 in Blogging, Education and Technology. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

This writer dude is giving me tech support advice. Isn’t that kind of like a painter giving me cooking tips?

Not really. There is a story. Always a story, isn’t there?

I read this post about blaming Canada. (Happy Canada Day!) Since I know a couple people in Canada via blogs and somebody tweeted they are vacationing in Canada, and another blogger is on her way home from Quebec City, I thought I would read why I should blame Canada.

In other  words, it was a helluva headline.

It was written by a writer dude from Men With Pens (which I always read as Men With Penis.)

James Chartrand is an unrepentant Canuck who survives exclusively on maple syrup, poutine, and beer. He is unfailingly polite and helps entrepreneurs and freelancers earn a decent living online at Men with Pens (dot CA, of course).

I ended up at Men with Pens and saw this:
cleartype

Dump Dump (the Law and Order dramatic music interlude)

Digression: Here is a great video of dog howling to the Law and Order theme song.

Back on topic: It was not the content that caught my eye.

It was the raggedy-ass font display that caught my eye.  As I am wont to do, I found the “contact” button and sent them a note saying their site looked like shit. Actually  I said it much nicer, but that was what I was really thinking.

Info from Men With Pens wrote back:

Thanks for that – have you tried turning on ClearType if you’re on a PC?

Huh?

ClearType? I have never heard of ClearType. I’ve heard of TrueType, but never ClearType.

So I responded:

I know nothing of ClearType.  …
I probably won’t bother with ClearType since I know nothing, and will be reading in RSS.
Observation: your designers made a site that requires a system tweak? ahem.

Info said:

Actually, no, Mark. Microsoft makes our site require a system tweak. View the site in Apple and it’s smooth and slick. This is a fault with Microsoft – not our site.

I instantly took a liking to Info.

He called me Mark, said view the site “in Apple” and blamed Microsoft. Those who read me regularly can all chime in with me…

Bill Gates is a Prick

and I told Info that.

He “heheh’d” and said:

Hm. Just had a look myself. Smooth as a whistle, and I’m running  the latest Firefox on a Win XP PC. So… I’d say you need to turn on your ClearType, yes.

I responded…
I need one of those start>control panel>thingy>dealy>ClearType>options>activate> Restart emails.
Just sayin’…
Thanks for being so kind. I’m REALLY joking now. I will Bing it to see how to do get ClearType started. It would be good for me.

Yes, I wrote to Info at Men With Pens, a professional writer’s blog with thousands of regular readers, and actually wrote “how to do get ClearType.”

I haven’t heard back from Info, so I’m thinking that he is a techie and the only thing he writes is code.

Whew, that could have been really embarrassing.

Note: there inevitably will be a typo or error in grammar in this post. It’s there on purpose.

Gale Storm: Insert Punny Weather Forecaster Name Here

Published on June 29, 2009 in Baby Boomer, Education, Entertainment and Technology. 14 Comments Tags: , .


I’m sure there is a weather forecaster with the name Gale Storm. But since Gale Storm died, (real name Josephine Owaissa Cottle)  it lead to an exchange with my daughter about unlikely weather forecaster names.

We covered a few, outside of Gale Storm, and I know you must have a favorite, who might be an actual person, but just in case, I’ll get you started:

  • Lee Ward
  • Alberta Clipper
  • Hugh C. Rain
  • Dusty Rhodes (don’t we all know one of these guys?)
  • Al Timiter
  • Cap Twister
  • Eddy Stream
  • Hi Winds (and his partner Gail Force)
  • Cy Clone
  • Crystal Snow
  • Dawn Sunrise
  • Zenith Snow
  • I. Wall
  • Jet Stream
  • Misty Morning
  • Trace A. Mounts
  • Sue Nami
  • Jet Wave
  • Sonny Day

Please take over and leave your Punny Weather Forecaster Name in the comments.