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Freebird

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Everything posted by Freebird

  1. Freebird
    This week I find myself in yet another hotel with very substandard Internet service. As many of you know, I travel on a weekly basis and actually spend more nights in hotel rooms each than I do at home. Now I'm not all that picky and the company that I work for is fairly conservative when it comes to how much I should spend on hotel rooms so I stay in mid grade hotels and about 95% of the time, I stay at Comfort Inns. There are really only a handful of things that I expect. A very clean room, a coffee pot and decent Internet service. I keep pretty good records of which ones are pretty good and which or not and won't return to one that doesn't meet my few expectations. Now, ALL Comfort Inns have either wireless or hard wired internet service. Some have both. I find that about 40% of them actually work pretty darn good, maybe another 30% are acceptable and the remaining 30% make me want to Now HERE is my biggest complaint. If I am at a hotel that is having a problem with their Internet service. Most of the time, about 99% of the time, they give me a phone number for their service provider and want me to call them. That is my rub. It is NOT my problem...it is THEIR problem. I know that my computer is working properly. I have no desire to spend one to more hours on the telephone with THEIR service provider helping them troubleshoot THEIR problems. I have done it once or twice and it ALWAYS turns out to be a problem with either the provider or the hotel hardware. It has NEVER...not a single time, been an issue with my computer. So, why should I...a paying guest...be asked to call and spend my evenings helping to troubleshoot THEIR issues? You all know the routine...."have you tried restarting your computer"...OK...."let's go into your settings"...."do you how to run a command from a command line prompt"....yadayadayadayada.......................... "OK...the problem seems to be on our end...............".... YOU THINK? It happened again last night and sure enough, they wanted me to call the service provider. I said no thanks, I don't work for you. Please call them yourself and get the problems resolved. About 10 minutes later, the service provider actually called ME. He asked if I was using Wifi or the hardwired connection. I told him that I had tried both with the same results. I get an excellent Wifi signal and have no problem connecting. I also have no problem connecting via the hardwired connection. In both cases though, it works and then stops and then 3 or 4 minutes later...works again. I click on a link and it times out...I click again and it opens. "OK sir.......have you tried restarting your system". NO...I have NOT restarted my system and I'm NOT going to either. I'm also not going to open my settings.....I DON'T WORK FOR YOU or the HOTEL! You guys figure it out. GOODBYE. OK.....rant mode off............
  2. Freebird
    OK....first of all a warning for TX2STURGIS. Please stop reading NOW. This is already hard enough. After using the Iphone for a couple of weeks now and becoming more familiar with it. I have to publicly admit that I am kind of starting to l......uh....li.......I mean....lik.........heck...I just can't say it. OK.....it's not so bad. It pains me deeply to admit that I've actually downloaded a couple of apps and am having a bit of fun with it. I actually download the free version of AmpKit yesterday. I later stopped by a Guitar Center and picked up the IRig for connecting my guitar to the Iphone, plugged in a set of headphones and played for an hour or so last night. The built in effects in the AmpKit are pretty dang nice. I read some very mixed reviews for the IRig and apparently there are better interface choices out there but this one uses no batteries and actually worked pretty well. I may keep it or return it and try something else but I'm relatively happy with it. What pains me even MORE is to admit that I actually PURCHASED a couple of apps from the app store. Both guitar related and cheap but work well. That being said, I am STILL not happy with the fact that I have to buy and install any apps through the Istore. I will very likely jailbreak this thing just as soon as they come up with a jailbreak for the 4s. Primarily so that I can install PDAnet to use it for a hotspot. If that doesn't happen soon, I will still likely try a Droid for replacing the Blackberry on my other line primarily so that I can install PDAnet and also get 4G speed when available. I feel that surely the IPhone 5 will be 4G but I don't know when that will be available.
  3. Freebird
    As another year winds down, I just want to wish all my VentureRider friends and your families a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS. At my house, we could find some things to complain about I guess but I would rather focus on the many things that we have to be thankful for. We don't do the exterior decorating thing but I did get the tree up last weekend. Let's see some pictures of all your trees.
  4. Freebird
    When we lived in Dallas, we had a full blown state of the art security system. All doors and windows had sensors. There were glass breakage detectors. There were motion sensors...you name it. We armed the system before leaving on a vacation once and we weren't gone a day when we got a call from the police department. They had responded three times to an alarm at our house and the last time, heard a loud screeching sound from inside that was setting off the glass breakage detectors. Well, at the time we had a very large Umbrella Cockatoo that apparently did NOT like being left alone. She was screaming loud enough to set off the detectors. The police told me that if they made another trip to our house for a false alarm that they would have to start charging us. I told them to ignore all alarms until we returned. I don't think we ever set it again after that. Luckily the system was already installed before we bought the house so I wasn't out any money.
  5. Freebird
    Good idea. I copied it to the "Known problems and things to look for" area of the tech library.
  6. Freebird
    I can't believe that it has no bids. I'm really surprised.
  7. Freebird
    I agree with the battery powered ones. Some of the new LED models are plenty bright and draw low current so the batteries should last a long time.
  8. Freebird
    I had an electric smoker years ago and it worked very well. The heating element finally burned out. For whatever reason, I never did replace it and a couple of years ago finally bought a new combination unit. It has a gas grill on the left, a charcoal grill beside that and the smoker box on the side of the gas grill. I really do like it. The electric smoker was easier though.
  9. Freebird
    Yep, it worked this time Peggy and very cute pictures.
  10. Freebird
    Are you using Firefox? Firefox does not show the red x on my computer but IE does.
  11. Freebird
    To the best of my knowledge, you will not be able to use it without activating the phone. Jailbreaking allows you to use a phone on a different carrier than the one that the phone was purchased from and sometimes to install software that could normally not be installed but I don't think there is any solution to allow it to be used unactivated. I haven't researched this so maybe there is something that I am unaware of.
  12. Freebird
    Peggy, It's not showing for anybody else. Did you link it from somewhere or upload it as an attachment? Should work either way unless you linked it from a folder on your computer, email or somethig like that.
  13. Freebird
    Well, while it may not work 100%, it likely works to some extent. If they do it like the do the red light cameras in most places, they really won't care so much if it works 100% or not. Most of the red light cameras, at least the ones around here, are installed free of charge to the cities. If I remember correctly, it is an Australian company. They install the cameras free of charge and then the revenue from tickets is shared between the company and the city. So what it it is only 50% effective? The city is still making money with no or very little cost. Probably some administrative costs is all.
  14. Freebird
    It sure wouldn't surprise me to see it showing up elsewhere. Can you imagine the local revenue that it would generate say at all the various bike weeks?
  15. Freebird
    I think that your conclusions were well stated and honest. You clearly identified the shortcomings of how the survey was presented. Good job.
  16. Freebird
    Great news folks. I got a message from Rose last night that Dano will be going home on Friday. I know that he will be so much more comfortable at home. He still has a lot of hard work ahead of him before his recovery is complete but he is making great progress.
  17. Freebird
    Seats are the hardest thing I know of to recommend to another rider. I had the stock seat on my '99 and hated it. I then tried the pillow top off a later model and hated it. I then bought the Travelcade Road Sofa and hated it worse than any seat I have ever owned. I then found a used Corbin and have been pretty darn happy with it for many years now. They are not for everybody but it's the best seat FOR ME that I've ever owned on any bike. It does take a few thousand miles for it to break in for you though. One seat that I haven't tired because I really never liked the look of it that much but I have heard that it is very comfortable is the Russell Daylong. I would like to try one at some point.
  18. Freebird
    Different filters but similar idea to what was on the '89 that I had with the VMAX conversion. http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showpost.php?p=337024&postcount=40
  19. Freebird
    If you are talking about the tech libraries, they are read only. This, tech talk, is where you would ask your questions.
  20. Freebird
    Well, I will be completely honest. I DID download Karaoke Anywhere for the Iphone JUST in the interest of research to help our friend. It seems to be a pretty good app although I've never done Karaoke. From their website, it appears that it will be available for the Android very soon.
  21. Freebird
    Is Soundhound an actual Karaoke app? I haven't tried I thought it was more for searching for songs. What I mean by a true Karaoke app is that you don't sing along with the artist, it just plays the track with no voice added. If you do a Google search for Android Karaoke there will be a few come up. Unfortunately, most of them have pretty poor reviews. There is one for the Iphone called Karaoke Anywhere and it gets good reviews for the Iphone. It is not yet available for the Android but their website says "coming soon". http://www.karaokeanywhere.net/android/
  22. Freebird
    All of the suggestions are good but personally, I think I would trailer it home. YOu are correct in that the gas in the carbs has likely evaporated. Todays gas can leave some ugly stuff in the carbs though. I don't know where the bike is located but there is chance that the last gas had ethanol in it. The suggestions about Seafoam and other gas additives are good and may work but not if the jets are completely plugged. For the additives to work, there typically has to be some kind of flow through the jets. If there is flow, then they do a good job in cleaning up any varnish and etc. but if there is no flow, you will likely have to completely remove the carbs and tear them down. You may get lucky but I think you are taking a real risk.
  23. Freebird
    Now that is amazing to me. I had no idea that it had been that long. I've had a cell phone for probably 20 years but I just started texting, reluctantly, a couple of years ago.
  24. Freebird
    I replied to your duplicate post in the other thread. I'll leave it there. We don't need another thread debating how great Steve Jobs was or wasn't.
  25. Freebird
    and once again you try to give Steve Jobs credit for yet one more thing that he wasn't the first to implement. The first App store was actually created by a company named SalesForce about year before Apple first did it. A kill was put on this thread because people got tired of seeing it at the top. This will be my last reply to it also. The entire thread is just full of information that is incorrect and easily refuted but to be honest, I don't think that anybody on this forum really cares.
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