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As my list of technology passions or addictions if you will continues to grow so grows my interest in developing an app that I can call mine.  I am not a formally trained software person but have for years been able to make my way through reverse engineering what others have built in order to learn how certain things are done.

The beauty of pursuing building apps for the Android operating system is that Google encourages it and provides an wonderful

Image via CrunchBase

Now that I have put this out there for all the world to see I better start working a little harder on development.  I will share my progress along the way and will undoubted be quite giddy when I successfully make my first “hello world” app and it works.

Image by William Hook via Flickr

Sometime ago I purchased a first generation Apple TV as a media extender or as I have read on the net “the ultimate media extender”.  I was pleased with it.  Not really overwhelmed.  Things got a little better when I ran a jailbreak script on it.  It was still only about 90% to where I really wanted to be.  One of the major hang-ups for me was the constant updates and then having to re-run the jailbreak.  It was getting annoying.

After doing some research I decided to buy a Boxee Box.  I almost went with a Roku but after helping someone set-up one I decided that it was not the option I was looking for.  I downloaded the Boxee software to my laptop to try it out and see what I thought about it.  The GUI did take some getting used to but after a couple of months I think that I am relatively comfortable with it.

After a quick and quite easy set-up I was ready to go.  Get some apps up and running.  I need to have my MLB.TV and NHL Gamecenter.  That went smooth enough.  Next up, mapping it to my media server.  Again, not very difficult.  To my surprise after all the media folders were mapped it took a while to actually go back and navigate these folders.  I was a littled concerned.  Well, after some time I was able to navigate the folders.  Behold, it went out and got all the album and DVD cover data on it’s own.  That was one heck of nice feature that I was not aware of.

I am still working with a variety of apps beyond my sports related ones.  I have a list that I have been working on getting installed and will report the choices that I have settled on.  For my money this is the best set top box, media extender, or whatever you want to call it, is the best thing out there at this time.

I will admit that I was a late adopter to the iPod.  I had always stayed away from Apple products.  I always thought that one of the many MP3 player alternatives would fit my needs.  Well, three years ago I bit the bullet and bought a reconditioned iPod.  It lasted three years.  It did everything I asked of it.  It played music and video for not only myself but for the kids.  Then one day when syncing it to iTunes I started to get the dreaded Error -69.

So, after troubleshooting and looking into buy a replacement hard drive I decided to buy a new one.  Everything pointed to a failed hard drive.  I was able to find numerous sites that claimed to sell the iPod hard drive replacement kits.  Unfortunately, none of them had any in stock.  Or so they said.  Looking at the cost of this kit and the amount of time it would most likely take me to complete the task I decided on buying a new one.

This device has grown on me and I will admit that this skeptic

Image by zeuxis.pixelsurgery via Flickr

has be turned when it comes to the iPod.

Last week  closed the most recent chapter in my life.  After twelve years with the same company I decided to leave and head in a slightly different direction.  I will be going to the same building in the same town however, I will be a consultant representing the customer.  This will allow me to be more flexible at work and not have to deal with the physiological differences that led me to making this decision.

I am looking forward to this new chapter in my life beginning.

A few weeks ago I purchased an Archos 7o internet tablet.  I couldn’t have been happier.  I tweeted how excited I was.  Well, I am still very happy with it.  Even with one die hard apple fan who told me that my giddiness would fade.  It has not.

More postings about my experiences soon.

Image by Night-thing via Flickr

I was recently out a Las Vegas occupying my wife as she was attending a convention.  This gave me an opportunity to visit the Pinball Museum.  This is something I have wanted to do for some time.  Pinball is a game that I grew up enjoying it and getting the chance to see all the various machines and hopefully playing some of my favorites.

After locating the museum the next task was getting a cab and head out there.  While the number of machines did not disappoint me and getting to play so many of my childhood favorites.  I took numerous pictures and hope to share them with you soon.  (This will force me to install a photo gallery plug-in)  Once I am able to do this I can tell you that you will step back in time on some of them just as I did.  It was quite an experience.  The only real downside was that it was in an old industrial park type garage.  Not really what I expected however, it is the beautiful machines that make up the museum and not the building so much.

I have been meaning to post a couple of pictures I took a while back when I tried my hand at deep frying a turkey again.  I do not claim to be an expert on this subject but would like to share my experiences.  The first one that I deep fried a couple of years ago was a whole turkey that I injected with some cajun marinade. The second one that I deep fired was only a turkey breast that I injected with some butter / garlic marinade.  I then decided to put some dry rub on it as well.  I used a combination of cajun spices and season salt.  It may not be the prettiest looking food that one can make however, it sure is tasty.

Image via Wikipedia

I recently had a very painful lesson in dealing with a Windows 7 crash on my main desktop machine. At first I was quite upset about seeing the constant Blue Screen of Death (BSD). It initially appeared that it was both a virus and hardware failure at the same time. After many long hours and tons of moving of files to a back-up hard drive I was ready to jump in and “fix” my OS issue.

As usually the best laid plans will always have issues. In my case. Many issues. At first all tests that I ran pointed towards the RAM going bad. So, I purchase some new RAM. Still no success in starting up the OS. I then moved on to working with the hard drive with a Live CD of both Linux and Windows operating systems. Viola, I found a couple of pieces of spy-ware and a virus. This must be the cause I am thinking to myself.

It turns out that this was just the tip of the iceberg and it was not until after I did a clean install of the OS did things start working correctly. After getting my system was back up and running with only the essential software installed I found out that it may have been a Service Pack issue all along. Imagine that. That Windows would release something that is not fully tested.

This while experience was great. It forced me to learn and explore out of my comfort zone when dealing with software. It scars me that I am seeing a trend start to grow as there appears to be more software coming down the pike.

As I sit here working at home while the weather outside is horrible and the roads are even worse I realize that I have built my perfect home office. I have great bandwidth at the house so I can have my multiple computers running as well as my internet radio, which I can listen to while working. I also have my XM radio available to me. Of course, if that all fails my podcasts are a couple clocks away.

When I need a break in the action I turn my attention briefly to Twitter and see what is going on out there. Sometimes it is pretty interesting to see how things progress in this world from different perspectives. One, the new organizations and second, the average person like myself.

So, back to work I go as this PowerPoint slides and spreadsheets won’t make themselves.