I will take RAM for 2GB, Alex

I will take RAM for 2GB, Alex

Tonight I finally got around to upgrading my first gen MacBook Pro to 2GB of RAM. I have been wanting to complete the upgrade for some time but have been putting if off due to something or another. Finally, I was in Best Buy the other day and noticed that they got the Apple Store’ish [...]

I am a fan of tire pressure monitors

I am a fan of tire pressure monitors

This evening I experienced one of what I thought was a somewhat useless features in my 2008 Mercury Mariner known as a tire pressure monitor.
I was driving to Best Buy to pick up some RAM for my macbook pro when the low tire pressure light came on. I did not notice any change in how [...]

Patrick is 6 Months Old

Patrick is 6 Months Old

Wow, it is hard to believe that Patrick is already 6 months old. It seems like yesterday that we leaving the hospital and heading home together for the first time. Now, 6 months later Patrick, Amy and I have shared so many memories together. Here is a quick picture history of the past 6 months.

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Tip: Taking advantage of the Audiobooks feature in iTunes

Recently I ran in to a situation where I had an Audiobook that I wanted to listen to on my iPod. Somehow when I added it to my iTunes library it got added in the Music library instead of the Audiobooks library. Normally this would not bother me but after a day or so of getting random book chapters thrown in to my random shuffles I began to get annoyed. Finally, after a few minutes of googling, I found a solution that is both easy and fairly quick to perform from a website called Dagon Design.

Instructions

Add the files you want to convert to your library. Once they are there, select the file(s), right-click, and select “Convert Selection to AAC“. This will add the newly converted files to your library.

Once the conversion is complete, remove the original files from your library. They will no longer be needed for this process.

You can also remove the newly created files from your library, but when you are asked, be sure to select “Keep Files“, so they are not deleted off your hard drive.

The files are created under “My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music” (unless you told iTunes otherwise), so open up that folder.

You will notice that the new files have the .m4a extension. They must be renamed to .m4b.

Now that the files are renamed, you can add them to your iTunes library once again.

Right-click on the new file(s) in your library and select “Get Info“.

You can change the name of the file(s) on this screen. If you like, you can clear out the “artist” and “album” fields, so that they do not show up with the rest of your music on the iPod (when you are looking at albums or artists). They will still show up under “audiobooks” of course.

You can also change the genre of the files to “Audiobooks” using the iTunes tag editor, to make the files easier to find when looking through iTunes.

All you have to do now is add the files to your iPod. They should work just like any iTunes audiobook. They will show up under the “Audiobooks” menu on your iPod, your playback position will be remembered, and they will not get played during song shuffles.

I will take RAM for 2GB, Alex

Tonight I finally got around to upgrading my first gen MacBook Pro to 2GB of RAM. I have been wanting to complete the upgrade for some time but have been putting if off due to something or another. Finally, I was in Best Buy the other day and noticed that they got the Apple Store’ish thing going on. So after looking around I picked up a 2GB RAM module for $74.99 (I know, cheaper online but I am a sucker for instant gratification).

Excited to finally have the RAM, I went home and prepared for my upgrade. First stop was to take the screws out to get to the RAM slots. It was then that I was baptized in to the world of Apple laptop engineering. I found what had to be the world’s smallest screws. Turns out that they are #00 screws and you guessed it, I didn’t have a thing for em. So, with the night getting late, I succumbed to desire to upgrade my laptop and went to bed, suffice with the knowledge that I would stop at Lowes on the way home from work the next day.

When the next day came, I started geeking out during my lunch break and noticed that my core duo processor could not support more the 2GB max. Since I already had a 1GB module and the 2GB module would put me at 3GB and over the shitty 2GB limit I decided that I would have to drop the 2GB and pick up the 1GB module and forget about the gig of RAM that I theoretically just lost.

Of course, being a geek, I had to weigh my options. Do I pull out the 1GB module and put in the single 2GB module or do I add another 1GB module. Its the age old 2GBx1 or 1GBx2 question. Well the decision was not that hard to make. Given that I can not ever go over 2GB and a single 2GB module would leave me with an empty slot that could never be used, I went with the cheaper 1GB module. Plus, having a matched pair of 1GB modules allows me to take advantage of the dual channel performance boost that Apple states could increase performance by 8%.

Anyways, I finally get my screwdriver, my new 1GB RAM module and went home to complete the upgrade. After five minutes of work I booted back up to the glory of 2GB of RAM.

After about 30 minutes of usage, I must say that if anyone out there is still running their macbook pro at 1GB, STOP! Don’t put yourself through the misery of 1GB any longer. There really is a night and day difference in how well the system performs. I am stoked now. Not as stoked as having 3GB, but stoked all the same.

Cheers!

I am a fan of tire pressure monitors

This evening I experienced one of what I thought was a somewhat useless features in my 2008 Mercury Mariner known as a tire pressure monitor.

I was driving to Best Buy to pick up some RAM for my macbook pro when the low tire pressure light came on. I did not notice any change in how the vehicle operated so I continued on with my journey. When I reached Best Buy I did a once around the vehicle to see if anything looked wrong and nothing stood out. I went in and handled my transaction and came back out. Another look around and still nothing obvious. I then drove to Lowes to pick up my #000 phillips head screw driver that Apple loves to use on your laptops and yet again I took a look around and still I found no problem.

I started driving home and thought, what the heck, I will stop at the gas station and top off each tire just to be safe and hopefully the annoying warning will go off. I proceed to the Wawa around the corner from my house (they have free air) and began checking. Three tires down and I thought this was going to be a wild goose chase.

Finally, I reach the 4th tire, the rear drivers tire. I hooked up and saw that the tire pressure was only 20PSI! Holy cow, the tire pressure monitor really did work. I started to fill the tire with air looking for anything obvious that would have caused 24 pounds of air to escape. Nothing. Finally, after I get it back to around 40PSI it happened. I pulled the air hose away and air was gushing out still. It was a bad valve stem and it was freaking loud.

Quickly, I tossed the hose to the side (sorry Wawa time was of the essence) and quickly thought about where to go. PepBoys was my only conclusion and I proceeded to drive across town with air leaking. Somehow, for the first time in I think forever, I made it completely across town without having to stop at a single light (yes they were all green). I pulled in to PepBoys, showed them the issue, and an hour later and a $14.99 charge, I was fixed and good to go.

So, the moral of this long winded story is that if it wasn’t for my tire pressure monitoring system, I would have driven home and my wife would have found a flat tire when she went to take our son somewhere in the morning.

Patrick is 6 Months Old

Wow, it is hard to believe that Patrick is already 6 months old. It seems like yesterday that we leaving the hospital and heading home together for the first time. Now, 6 months later Patrick, Amy and I have shared so many memories together. Here is a quick picture history of the past 6 months.

 

Welcome

Thanks for stopping by. 

On this site I will share lots about me and my family. Hopefully I can get over my need to tinker and get down to just writing and posting pictures.

I was hoping to use Apple’s iWeb to do everything but a few shortcomings such as the large page sizes, issues with IE, and inability to add posts and content via a web interface became show stoppers almost immediately. It’s a shame because even with all the dumbed down aspects, its really is a nice app for the average run of the mill personal/family website. Maybe future releases and/or the creation of Apple’s MobileMe service will give me what I would like.

In the mean time, I am using my trusty blogging system Wordpress to power my site. The theme I am using is called Options and once I start posting more stuff you will really start to see how flexible this theme can be. 

I hope you enjoy.