Here I am performing uncle duties on vacation with my adorable but sick 3month old niece.

It’s hard work if you can get it

As I mentioned in my last post, on my trip to Miami, I took a nasty spill out in the rain and hurt my shoulder. The pain still is pretty major, enough to wake me up out of a sleep, and so I decided it might be time to head to the doctor’s and get it checked out.

Saturday morning I went up to the docs and told him what happened, I also mentioned that my left shoulder has been bothering me for quite some time and that the pain comes and goes. After his exam he informed me that apparently BOTH of my shoulders are potentially fucked up. His preliminary diagnosis for my left shoulder (the one that’s been bothering me for a while) is Impingement Syndrome where the bone in my shoulder seems to be irritating my tendons. Best case scenario is some Physical Therapy, worst case is a rotator cuff tear and surgery. My right shoulder he told me is at best a bruise which could heal in two to four weeks (I hope!) or at worse another rotator cuff tear.

I have to wait two weeks to see if my right shoulder gets any better. In two weeks I’ll either be having one or two x-rays, a visit to the orthopedic surgeon and a plan for what to do with my shoulders. Until then, no heavy lifting and lots of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and if it’s real bad… a little Valium.

I feel really jinxed as of late. There is a possibility that I won’t be traveling for work much longer and ever since that happened I’ve had some crazy bad luck with traveling. I’ve had three trips since that happened and all three trips have had some kinda of weird bad luck.

First I headed to Miami, the first of three trips scheduled over two months. Everything was going well until I got on the plane, taxied out to the runway and then sat for three hours until we could take off. I sat next to two teenagers who got very antsy and argued pretty much not stop until we landed. However, the rest of the trip went well so I didn’t think much about it.

My next trip sent me to Boston via Pittsburgh. I got on the first flight to Pittsburgh and as I was in Zone 6… by the time I got on the flight attendant informed me that there was no room for my suitcase. I would have to check it. I asked if I’d get it back in Pittsburgh but they said they’d check it through to Boston. I had a bad feeling but they would not take no for an answer. After the short flight to Pittsburgh, we had a 3 hour delay in our flight due to weather between Pittsburgh and Boston. When I finally arrived in Boston, my bag was no where to be found. After waiting in line for over an hour I was informed that my bag was waiting for me in Pittsburgh.

US Airways promised me they’d get me my bag later before the morning. I got back to my room and realized that all I had was the clothes on my back. A tee shirt, jeans and sneakers. If I didn’t get my bag by the time I woke, this is what I would be wearing to the customer site. Of course I did not get my bag and I did go to the site in my dirty clothes… I called US Airways so many times that day that they asked me to stop calling. When I finished the day, they still did not know where my bag was so I headed to the local mall to pick up some supplies. I bought some clothes and some toiletries and headed back to the hotel. I ironed everything and went to bed. Around 2AM, the front desk called to tell me my bag arrived. I was relieved. It was not really too bad only a day with lost luggage but the odd part is in four years of traveling… it’s the first and only time I’ve ever lost my luggage.

Last week I went back for my second trip to Miami and arrived just in time for a hurricane. Luckily it stayed a tropical storm and passed Miami. So not such bad luck… however… as I was walking to dinner the night of the tropical storm, I made a bad decision to wear flip flops out to dinner so as to not get my shoes wet and as I tried to walk into the restaurant, I slipped and fell flat on my ass. I put my arm out to break my fall and since then my shoulder has been killing me, not to mention I had to go thru dinner with a soaking wet ass.

Maybe I’m looking to much into things… but boy I feel jinxed.

Okay… XP on the Aspire One has been a many week trial and error process. I’ve installed XP about 6 times already on the One and I’ve finally gotten it down pat. But not without some missteps.

After the nLite disaster I went with just a normal full XP install. This worked well but things were hella slow. I decided perhaps it’d be a good idea to move my Program Files to a much quicker SD Card. This sounds easy and it would have been if I were not at the helm. Firstly, I could not move Program Files to a removable drive so I had to find a way to make the one think that my 8GB SD card was an internal disk drive. Pinoyboy was helpful with this and pointed me to how to do it on the eeePC and it worked perfectly on the One. Next I copied the files over and began to edit the registry. I did a find on C:\Program and three hours later I had gotten thru all the changes, only to realize that I should have searched for C:\Pro as there are entries for C:\PROGRA~1\. I spent another hour doing the rest of the changes and then reboot and viola program files on the D: drive.

Things seemed to have pepped up and I went on to my next idea. Dual booting the original Linux OS with Windows. I headed back over to the AspireOneUser Forums to ask and that’s when i noticed the thread on how to speed up XP on the One. There were hints like turning off indexing, page files, caching etc. I found a few good ideas but there was one suggestion that I didn’t even believe, they suggested that FAT32 formatting was preferred over NTFS. This didn’t seem right to me but I decided to give it a try. Well they were right! The OS installed in a third of the time. It booted faster and took less time to get into the OS. Software installed faster and everything was peppier. Also this time I thought… isn’t their some sort of Find and Replace for the registry? Sure enough there was and I made my four hours worth of changes in less than 30 seconds! Everything seemed to be working great now but I was having quite a few Blue Screens and I could not sort out why. I decided to try to install the OS one last time and not move the Program Files. I am thinking maybe there is intermittent read lags or something form the SD card.

I tried to install the OS via the USB jump drive again and for some reason I just could NOT get it to work, so in frustration I took a DVD drive out of my old Gateway PC and hooked it up to one of my external hard drive enclosures. I think this was the best idea. XP installed quickly and cleanly and it seems pretty solid. Hopefully my woes are behind me.

Okay so a few days have passed and the RAM came from Crucial. I put it in and tested this time before the final assembly and it worked like a charm. Up and running I could go back to installing apps and getting it setup. I installed a few more apps and was reminded of how slow the SSD is. After installing Pidgin and Firefox and a few other apps I decided to test out the EVDO Modem. I could not get the modem to work no matter what I did. It would start to install the drivers (which takes forever!!!) and then tells me it won’t work. I did some looking into the drivers the modem said it was using and found that Modem.sys would not install, and that’s when I realized… I took modem support out of my XP install using nLite. I know what you’re thinking… but I thought to myself “this thing doesn’t have a modem” and it doesn’t built in but the EVDO is a modem. Sad. I’m off to reinstall XP again.

I’m loving my Aspire One. I really enjoy the OS and it’s small and fast and exactly what I wanted, that was until I decided it was so wonderful that I wanted to start using my Sprint USB727 EVDO modem. Not only could I not get the instructions to work with this version of Linux, Sprint was clear on the limitations that exist with using the “generic” driver, namely the 500kpbs speed. With this I decided to give Windows XP on the Aspire One a try.

When I decided to install XP I hadn’t looked hard enough to find the Acer Aspire One User Forum, which I should have. And even when I found it… I should have read more and tried less but that’s not always my normal plan of action so I had a lot of missteps. The first big issue with installing XP on the One is that there is no CD/DVD drive. This is not an issue unique to the One, anyone installing XP on a netbook (i.e., EEE PC) deals with this, so I debated do I buy an external DVD? do I try to hobble one together with an old DVD drive? or do I follow the “install via jump drive” instructions? Wanting this to be as geeky an experience as possible… I went with the install via jump drive option. It was not TOO difficult tho there was lots of issue and problems. Not only did I pull the USB Jump Drive too soon which rendered the One unable to boot to XP without that in it, I also did used nLite to try to make a very small install of XP. This was not such a good plan as I took out too many components. More on that later.

Installing XP took forever. Seriously almost four hours. EACH TIME! It was painful. Once XP was installed, installing updates took forever, apps… forever… everything forever. It was really slow. On my way in to work I decided to install the Sprint SmartView software (for my EVDO) Modem. It usually takes about 3 minutes to install on my work machine, but it took almost 40 minutes to install on the One. A quick call to Pinoyboy revealed that the SSDs in these machines aren’t very fast and that things like indexing and the page file don’t help. I decided to turn off the page file and get some more RAM. The One has 512MB inside and can support up to 1.5 GB of RAM. Off to Best Buy (I got quite a few birthday gift cards) to get some RAM. I scored a 1GB PNY SO-DIMM and headed home to start the install process. It did not go so well.

Installing RAM in the One is really tough. The expansion slot is not only not accessible externally, it’s damn near impossible to get to it internally. I began by taking the bottom case off. My normal computer screw driver’s tip was too pointed and I had some serious problems trying to get the screws off. I ran off to Lowe’s and got a new set and got the screws off. Next came getting the keyboard off. This was really hard as there are three tabs you have to push back and they really have to go back far, so far I broke one. Once the keyboard was off, another seven or eight screws and then you have to pry the top case off. Now that you’re One is completely in pieces you have to start unscrewing the mother board. It was really a lot of work and a lot of frustration but finally I got the mother board out and installed the RAM. I reassembled the whole One and when I pressed the power button… nothing. No power. Nothing. I know I should have NOT put it back together before I checked and now I had to dismantle it again. I was sure I had borked something but after another hour I determined it was the RAM. I did what I should have and ordered RAM from Crucial. The One is in a pile of parts now until I get the RAM.

Ever since I started traveling again for work, one piece of kit I’ve always carried with me is an iPod battery backup. My weapon of choice has been the Tekkeon MyPower. This was a nice battery that I like because it fit on the bottom and back of the iPod and made it easy to continue to handle the iPod. It also lets you have tons of extra power and it charges via Firewire or USB when plugged into your Mac. It also will charge the iPod while charging itself and you can even sync your iPod so its a portable dock. This battery backup lasted me for almost 4 years now and several iPods and my iPhone.

As I noted before my biggest complaint with my iPhone 3G is the fact that Apple changed the way the iPhone 3G charges the unit. Originally the iPod was both charged and synced over Firewire. Over the years Apple slowly depricated the syncing via Firewire in favor of syncing over USB, they also began to allow charging over USB and finally with the iPhone 3G, they stopped allowing charging via Firewire. This rendered my in car iPod connector, my iHome and the MyPower unable to charge my iPhone. An iPhone that I seem to use a lot more, which has yielded me a much smaller window between rechargings so I was desperate to find a battery backup.

I did find one and one I liked. I was searching the internet and found a list of recommended battery backups including the Kennsington one, but they also listed the Richard Solo Battery Backup. I liked the product, I liked the price and the form factor. They would not claim how long the battery would last using the Richard Solo because the goal of the product is to give you a full recharge of your iPhone/iPod from the battery. This is brilliant and takes only one hour to take your iPhone from 20% Battery (the first warning) to full.

My hubby was nice enough to get me a Richard Solo for my birthday and I was stoked. I followed the instructions and charged the unit up over night. The next morning I noticed the “100%” LED never lit up. I checked the manual and they suggested charging for 48 hours before using it. I did that and again no “100%” LED so I wondered if I had a defective unit. I emailed their customer support email on a Sunday morning at about 9am EST and by 12pm EST I received an email back from someone claiming to be the president of the company himself apologizing and telling me to that they would send me a new unit on Monday morning and that there was no need for me to return my unit just to put it in for recycling. The email copied another person who within two more hours had contacted me for my address and true to their word a few days later there was a replacement and it works perfectly. I am head over heels with this product. When I get on a plane, I use my iPhone and watch the battery drain without worry. About an hour before the flight is over, I plug in my Richard Solo and when I land… fully charged iPhone. Brilliant.

Oh I’m so excited, today we headed to my folks to have dinner with my family for my birthday. I was very much looking forward to it especially because my niece and nephew were going to be there! When we arrived at my folks the kids were sleeping so we ran over to Circuit City. I had done some leg work on the internet and found out that sadly the Aspire One was not available at Best Buy as I had previously read, but it was available and in stock at the Circuit City near my folks.

Buying the PC was an experience. I had to tell the salesperson what I was looking for and convince him that he actually had them in stock. It took more than 30 minutes to buy it but once we got back to my folks and I unpacked it, it was all worth while.

I love the machine. It’s shiny and blue (yes more high gloss fetish!) and so small and lightweight. Setting it up took almost no time at all and the Linux install is snappy and very clearly laid out. I am thinking of installing Windows on it tho as I can’t seem to get my 3G Modem to run on it in Linux.

I’m sure there will be more posts on the Aspire One

After the Spa we headed to Atlantic City to check in at the [Water Club]. The Water Club is a new hotel at the Borgata and I was so looking forward to just being away for a few days with my hubby. It is beautiful and very trendy. As we walked in from the Valet, we were greeted with champagne (you’re at our hotel… CHAMPAGNE!). The hotel has 5 pools and our room was a corner room with windows on two walls and a great view of Atlantic City and the bay.

Once we checked in we got ready for dinner and headed off to the Old Homestead restaurant. The food was great and I got plastered. It was a wonderful meal. We wondered around the casino after dinner and eventually headed back up to the room where my hubby surprised me with a few more gifts. I got a copy of one of my favorite movies Defending Your Life, a book by one of my favorite authors E. Lynn Harris, a Richard Solo Battery Backup and an IOU for an Aspire One netbook! What a birthday!

Wednesday, we slept in and got up just in time to hit the buffet for breakfast and then headed to the pool for most of the day. It was wonderful, just lounging, reading and having a few drinks by the pool! We went to Noodles of the World for dinner and have a wonderful romantic drink at the Sunroom Bar after. It was a fantastic vacation! And I still had three days left before I headed back to work!

Tuesday was my birthday, 35 if you wanna know and the plan was to head to Atlantic City and stay for two nights in the Water Club at the Borgata [link]. This was the plan and when I woke on Tuesday morning the husband gave me an order to be ready to leave the house by 10:30 AM. I followed orders and got up and hustled to get in the shower and packed for our short vacation. He came in just as I was shaving my beard and said in a very nervous tone… “no no don’t shave!”. I had no idea why but on your birthday and Christmas, you don’t ask questions, you just follow orders! We were packed and in the car and heading (at least I thought) to Atlantic City by 10:30 AM as requested, but on the way there the hubby pulled off on an unexpected exit. I asked what was up and was told that this was one of my birthday surprises, an afternoon at the spa!

We pulled up at the AME Spa and I was informed that I’d be receiving a Men’s Facial, a Stress Relief Massage and a Pedicure. I was very excited as I’ve never been to a Spa or even had a massage. The facial was very nice ad relaxing except for the extrusion which hurt quite a bit! After the hour long facial it was off for the massage which was wonderful and relaxing, i wish it could have gone on a lot longer! Surprisingly the pedicure was my favorite part of the day. My feet were not in bad shape and they didn’t need much work but the massaging of my feet and calves was just soooooo relaxing and enjoyable.

The spa day was a wonderful welcome surprise from my sweetie and I’m so grateful!