You may not know it but it’s pretty simple to update your blog using your phone. Give it a shot.

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So the hitch fell off of Mom’s car halfway to my new post, in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas. If you know anything about Arkansas, everything is disconnected, and nothing is where it’s supposed to be.

So I ended up staying the night in the car with my gear in front of a shop that was supposed to be open in the morning… but it turns out that the place isn’t going to be open for a week!

Wow…

So anyway, one of my bestest friends and surrogate sister drove almost a hundred miles to come pick up my stupid trailer with all of my military crap and hauled it to her house where we could maybe find a hitch.

Before we could even make it there, one of her tires blew, in the middle of a bridge, on the interstate with 70mph+ traffic. Insane right? Well, we made it to my Sis’ house, and it turns out, we’ve gotta drive back the wrong way to Memphis to get the temporary hitch from Uhaul!

Lovely time we’re having. Anyway, I should be back in action in the next week or two, pending more b.s. from temporary housing etc. We’ll see.

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I will be posting some random jargon, findings, etc here from time to time. Henceforth this blog will be my personal blog, and all things for public or social benefit will be posted on bixit.net, and gaming reviews and such on fragleague.com (it’s not linked because it’s not up).

There’s quite a bit going on in my world. For one, I’m moving! For two, I’m sick. For three, shortly after arriving at my new unit, I’ll be going right into some school or another. Probably Air Assault, or some such. After that, my anniversary, birthday, and probably a deployment soon too.

I may reenlist, but I want to change my job. I’m pretty tired of Artillery. Not sure what my options will be though, since I don’t report till June, and my window for reenlistment opens in July. It’s going to be pretty fishy.

Anyway, give me a shout out if you live in KY, TN, or near Fort Campbell.

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I am jumping around like a jumping bean. So much going on! Well I started PCS clearing yesterday, already about 1/4th of the way done with that. Got an appointment tomorrow at EENT to get my ooglers checked out and make sure I don’t need new coke bottles. We’ve got a ton to get done before we actually clear housing (finish moving out), and we can’t even really get started until the movers come pick up our stuff.

We’re working up a redesign of Alasdair Rutherford’s Portfolio, which I’m actually starting on today. Hopefully I get it done within a week or two (before I’ve got to move) so he doesn’t end up waiting till the end of June for results. It’s a rather simple design, so it should be pretty easy to produce.

I just renewed two of my domain names, and it’s almost time to renew my unlimited hosting account at Site5. Since I can’t find a host that’s has a better reputation or review, then I’m going to keep my account with them.

We recently launched Bixit.net, a resource blog for all of the free, useful, and productivity enhancing sites and tools we find out there. We’ve already got a bit of activity on there, so check it out.

I’m addicted to video games again, unfortunately. Luckily, I was able to pull myself away long enough to blog a bit and get some nourishment. You can turn a boy into a man, but you can’t make a man not behave like a boy.

There’s lots more going on in my world; but I can’t blog about everything. TTFN <3

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Really, I mean, wow. This insane individual is ripping people off by taking $100.00 from them to give them something they could do by themselves, for a fraction of the price.

Not to mention, this guy is using Wordpress, and probably other free Open Source Software (some of which has strict non-profit licenses) which by the way is FREE. So why in the heck is this “get up” doing this? Probably the same reason why phishers and social engineers do what they do. Making easy money off of people who simply aren’t familiar with these things. Anyone can run a blog, but the average joe on the street couldn’t tell you how to set up one. But it might take half an hour, and they’ve got enough know-how to install Wordpress. This is just pathetic.

For those of you who didn’t know, I offer free (for life) hosting to any artist, non-profit organization, church, artgroup, and probably any other group or individual who exhibits a growing desire to attain skill and knowledge and improve their skills as a designer, composer, and/or artist, or group.

I will even set up your blog/forum/etc for you, and help you figure out a design. I request a mere text link in return, but it isn’t required.

If you question this offer, please refer to any of the people under the ihost category on the right sidebar. Also, please visit The Luminarium’s community for even more references.

If you challenge my knowledge, my integrity, my quality of person, or other of my traits, you will meet a very large, very high, very solid brick wall.

You offer a good, decent, affordable, valid, user-friendly, and helpful service, I’ll support it, promote it, and maybe even use it myself. You offer me crap, bs wrapped in tp with ribbon in it, you’ll get a flaming bag of crap on your porch. Just a friendly warning.

And NO I did not include the link to this @$$#*!3s website because I don’t want to make anyone else suffer. You get the general idea ( and the URL) from the screenshot above.

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We just launched bixit.net which we intend to use as a sort of network hub for all of the free, useful, time-saving things we find out there. Much thanks to An1ken for helping me out.

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At this point, you’re probably going “WTF where’s my software reviews?!” Well, my answer is this, I’m baked. Not in the “puff puff pass” sense, but more in the sense of sitting in the sun for hours on end.

Sunlight is healthy; but too much can cause a number of bad side effects. Worst to least: skin cancer, boils, sun blisters, sun burn, dermal sensitivity. Well, I’m between sun burn, and blisters. Not to mention it can also have a draining effect on you. I’m exhausted.

Anyway, I promised several software reviews, but they can’t be finished as soon as I promised. I have other things to worry about now, so when they get done, they’ll get done.

For now, please visit some of my friends. You can find them under the “iHost” menu on the right.

They are very talented and deserve attention.

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I’m going to start doing this, to help introduce some of the tools I use that could help speed up progress and make your work day a bit easier.

My two HP laptops side by side, one with dual-screen.

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Ok, so everyone has their own preference on instant messaging, email, blogging, so forth and so on. Well, here’s a useful tip! Instead of having 8 different apps/windows open, use one! There’s a few options you’ve got here, so I’ll touch on the more popular ones, and let you decide.

Definitely a smart choice, supporting most of the common protocols. Here’s a list!

• AIM
• Bonjour
• Gadu-Gadu
• Google Talk
• Groupwise
• ICQ
• IRC
• MSN
• MySpaceIM
• QQ
• SILC
• SIMPLE
• Sametime
• XMPP
• Yahoo!
• Zephyr

There’s even added support via plugins. To name a few:

xfire, facebook IM, twitter, encryption, spam protection, snarl support, and customized buddy notification sounds.  There’s quite a few more.

Visit: Pidgin

Digsby

Digsby is the “uber” messenger. It does what Pidgin does, and tends to use a tad more memory (RAM) when it does, but the experience is very gratifying. It integrates the traditional buddy icons, allows for voice/cam chat, file transfers, all of the normal stuff, and also supports Facebook IM, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pop3 email and webmail like Yahoo and MSN. Not convinced? Here’s a screenshot!

Your “Current Status” box can be moved anywhere within the Digsby window, as well as all of the other major componants. Just grab and drag! It also comes with the option for taskbar icons so you can see your message count and access the various windows right from there.

These two are probably the top two multi-protocol messengers out there, but there’s a few others. To name a few:

• Miranda (A little like Pidgin)
  
• Tokbox (Video Messenger plus MSN Yahoo etc)
• Trillian (The old client fails, bad. There’s hope. Trillian Astra)

There’s a few more out there. If you know of one that I didn’t mention that you think deserves a second look, let me know!

My choice? Digsby owns when it comes to checking my webmail and updating social networks. <3

Digsby Icon/Logo created by Michael Knight and is protected under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Michael Knight is not affiliated with Digsby, it’s creators, or its affiliates. Asoldier.net nor David Bixler are affiliated in any way with Michael Knight except for the use of the Digsby Icon intended for use with the Object Dock application.

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I got another call from that super guy at Suddenlink with all of the useful information. He enlightened me on some of the finer points of what’s going on. As far as the CMTS (Cable Modem Termination Service) they have it, it just isn’t installed yet. They’re still waiting on some of the pieces of that puzzle to come together. On the flip-side of that, they did a little restructuring of their current facilities, and managed to provide some of us with a much more stable connection. Thanks Suddenlink!

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it should be to get noticed by some of the “higher-ups” that make things like this happen. Fortunately there are people who care about their customers. However, it is ultimately up to customers to take their stand on quality deficiencies regarding services they’re paying for. If you pay for it, you should get it. Sometimes, you’ve got to fight for it though.

In a perfect world, this wouldn’t be necessary. This isn’t that world, yet.

According to a correspondent from Suddenlink, they’ve been reading my blog, and what I have to say about the whole mess. Honestly, I was flattered to know that they actually took the time to do that.

There are some things Suddenlink is doing right, and saving its customers tons of money by doing:

I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that my Internet and Cable combined only costs around $100.00 / month. I could probably scale it down to $80.00 /month if I wanted, but I like my current plan. Phone service (landline) in my area runs about $60.00 / month (long distance not included).

Combining these services? Golden. That’s another 30 bucks, plus “TV Caller-ID?” Wow.

There’s still a few thing’s that are sort-of vague when it comes to the Suddenlink website though. For one, it’s fairly easy to configure a javascript to display “Open” or “Closed” text or image according to the local time (Taking for-granted you specify the intended time-zone) in-reference to the sales/billing department. When you call the 877 number for service questions, the only thing available after business hours is Tech Support. Save us the frustration, let us know you’re closed!

There’s a few things about the Suddenlink website itself that I hate. One is this My Suddenlink setup. This looks like Excite.com’s attempt that harshly failed. This isn’t what we want! We can get that type of thing from at least a dozen other very popular websites. Scrap that project Suddenlink! Instead, open a Social Media center. Allow the Suddenlink users to build the community on their own. Why? Let’s consider:

• Facebook < User driven

• Twitter < User driven

• Myspace < User Driven

• Linked In < User/ Business Driven

• DevianArt < User Driven.

Simple version? You can’t give us something we can already get from a zillion other sites. We want open-book, easy-to-use user-driven communities where OUR voice is the one that counts. If you REALLY want to provide a personal portal for Suddenlink users, then that’s what you should do, from a customer’s point of view.

Now, I won’t shoot you down for having the online billing account setup… that’s priceless. But, it’s lacking some relevant information that tech support personnel and customers both need when fixing issues. As mentioned in earlier posts on this blog:

1. List of modems + modem related issues
2. Age of current modem
3. Uptime statistics
4. AVG Down/Up bandwidth (Sort by 9am-5pm)x(5pm-9am)x(weekends)
5. Running count of support calls+ recurring issues
6. List of support calls+notes+ticket# (Ticket numbers allow tech support and customers to easily return to the issue to review steps that fixed it before, or ensure those steps were already applied so other steps can be taken to restore the connection.

I’m going to talk about that for a second. Does it seem silly to have an online list of connection-related issues? Yes! The customer can go to a friend’s home, internet cafe, or library, print out the steps that fixed the the problem before, and fix it themselves, and save (potentially) hours of frustration waiting in line for tech support via phone, and troubleshooting (without guidance) their modem and/or router.

Also, since many (MANY) of us have the high-speed internet + cable TV bundle, wouldn’t it be really easy to drop a box in the Channel Guide for Internet Status? For Instance:

If you look at your own channel guide, it becomes pretty obvious what I’m talking about. This would save people minutes, potentially, hours of frustration, tech support calls, and maybe even a few bucks for Suddenlink.

Clear as day, Internet down for (insert zip code) and for brevity put “in some areas” so people know that it’s not just them, and that they should wait till the “light” turns green before trying other solutions. Honestly, I can’t believe that it’s not being done already!

A green/red/yellow LED image would suffice for “internet status” with a short explanation following.

Easy to do? No? Well we’ll settle for something close!

There’s much more that Suddenlink, like every other company, can improve on. I’m sure that Suddenlink’s power-wielding members will do everything they can to continue improving their service, like they have been doing constantly, since they took over Cebridge’s old network.

I will be moving to Fort Campbell soon, but I intend on writing a final review of my experiences with Suddenlink staff. If you have any questions about Suddenlink you can ask http://twitter.com/suddenlinkhelp

-David

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