We needed some key tags since we’ve had to cut a few locks… here’s the template in case you need a few tags too.

Adobe Fireworks PNG:
White text works best. I recommend thermal lamination to preserve your tags.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This morning I got a surprise, even on Sunday I haven’t been getting speeds like this. So my official conclusion is, either they managed to fix their CMTS or they got their new one installed. And since they were overloading their old one, that leaves one real option; unless they went into people’s homes and snatched their modems.

Mind you, this is a Baton Rouge server>

They’re not known for their speed and fidelity.

Also, the world reknown broadband measuring service has got a new look! As you can see from the image above, and the snapshot below:

Click image above or click here to visit Speedtest.net

I have three laptops and a desktop, and even though I don’t really need all three to get things done, it certainly helps to distribute the load between the machines. If something bad does happen, not all is lost, because not all of my work is on any one machine. It also helps by providing more workspace.

So, how do I turn multiple machines into seamless usable workspace? Easy! Stardock Multiplicity allows you to use one computer’s peripherals including mouse, keyboard, printer, sound system, and more. You can even move files from pc to pc simply by copying, dragging the cursor to the other computer’s screen seamlessly, and pasting!

There are a couple of conflicts here and there, but you can usually solve them by pressing ALT+TAB. Other than that, it works like a charm! Learn more about it here.