Check out this Hi-Tech folding bike made in New Zealand, it is amazing.

Purchased the Perfect Faucet – This year we remodeled our kitchen and replaced the faucet with the Delta faucet from Lowes. The price, under $350, was very reasonable. The installation went well, but I cannot imagine anyone installing this faucet that does NOT have a solid grasp of mechanical aptitude.

* Battery Life – This all came after replacing 2 sets of batteries in less than 2 weeks. I have been involved in electronics for most of my life and was just mystified why the folks at Delta offered a battery solution without an Optional adapter. I think the battery adapter should have been included with the faucet and charged a few bucks more.  Marketers are always looking for ways to get extended sales and this is a no brainier to offer it as a must have accessory for $30-50. Everyone would buy it.

What you need to do - You are only going to replace the battery pack with a permanent low voltage wall unit. I did not want to wait around for Delta to figure it out, which could be months or never.  Dead batteries on a faucet at anytime is a real bummer.  BTW – Save the battery pack unless you have a power outage, then you can still have running water during the outage.

Quick Fix Solution – If you do not want to mess with wires and testing stuff, I found a universal adapter that will has the plug adapter that comes with it. Radio Shack did not have any adapters with the old style 9 volt plug, which is what they used for this faucet. Really…. it should have been USB.

You will have to order the adapter. When you get it, set it for 6-10 volt range. Start at 6 but i think that you will have to go to the next range to be sure. I spent a long time searching on the net for an adapter that will just plug-in and here it is Quick Fix Adapter, purchased it on Amazon, I could not get the direct link from amazon, and it is under $20 bucks. Perform a search on the following:

Name -Axis-Universal-Adapter

Model number – dp/B0018BMPS

Cost $7.87 + Shipping
Note that One side of the Delta Battery pack is marked as Positive or + .  Your adapter has a polarity changer switch which makes it nice. You can plug in the adapter and switch or polarity changer at the end of the cord.  It will work in one way  and not in the other.

Note: The Delta Faucet is protected from backwards wiring or incorrect polarity, so it will not hurt the faucet electronics for brief periods of being hooked up backwards.  I tested it to be certain.  Make sure you do not leave the adapter plugged into the faucet when it does not work, you could harm it. If it does not work in either position, you probably have to bump up the power selection to the next one. You may have to tap both the spout or the hot cold handle to get the faucet reset itself and start functioning properly.

Geek Speak - My fix was an easy one. I just found an old adapter 7.5 Volt 200ma adapter and wired it directly in. You will need a volt meter to determine the correct polarity of the adapter and connect it to the faucet system.  It is all low voltage coming out of the wires, and as long as your adapter is plugged safely in the wall, there is no potential for getting shocked. (The only time that could potentially happen if the under-cabinet springs a leak but that will happen with or without the adapter.)
DIY’ers – Video Instruction Here

So for you geeks that need to figure out why it does not work, read on. For the simple user

I looked around for the most universal adapter that most can get hold of and found one at Radio Shack.

The battery pack is a 6V battery pack (4 at 1.5 Volts C Cell batteries). I tested faucet module that the battery pack attaches to and found the following specs.

2-26-2010 UPADATE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT USE A 9 VOLT OR HIGHER TRANSFORMER, YOUR FAUCET WILL WORK IRRATICALLY…LIKE COMING ON BY ITSELF CHATTERING ON AND OFF.

The Delta Faucet runs on: 6-10 Volt DC
Draw: 10-50 milliamps

At rest not turned on the system draws 10ma (milliamps, a form of current drain or flow) (so there is a minute but continuous drain on your batteries, hence, lose the batteries).

When you turn on the water you draw between 20-30ma, and higher up to 50ma when you turn it on and off rapidly.

The smallest adapter that is made by Radio Shack is a 500-1,000ma one at selected voltages. Cut the adapter wire and strip the ends and connect it to the faucet system and your done.

Radio Shack Recommended Power Adapter

Video -

Here are some important tips the installation.

* Hose Installation - Make sure you insert the hose into the correct end of the spout. Also,  You must put the plastic guide piece in the end of the hose (it only fits on one end. The correct side is the opposite side with the free spinning ring on it). If you insert the free spinning ring into the either end of the spout, it will not come out and you have to call the factory. They will tell you that it is not covered under warranty and you should just return it to the place where you bought it.  It is really retarded.

* Spout Wire - If your looking for the wire hanging out of the copper threaded area of the spout, don’t worry, it is there and I found it pushed up inside as far as it can go. You have to carefully fish for it.

* Take your time * – I know, all you professional DIY’ers, this is not typical install. Plan, read the instructions, and read carefully. The install instructions are marginal, but ok if you have some experience.  The average plumber, paid by the hour will be challenged.  If your going hire a plumber or installer, make sure it is someone who has had experience in at least a few installations of this particular brand of faucet or you will pay for his learning time.

Delta Product Information for this Model

They do not make it easy to find the phone number for Delta on the instructions so here it is – 800 345-3358

A widget is a piece of code that you can embed in any page to perform various things.

This one is an event countdown for a maintenance service for YourHost.com.  You have to Join Widgetbox for $29.95/year or some other service. Widgetbox is hightly rated as a good choice.

Our kids, friends, and family members, are all experiencing the different ways people are virtually communicating with others. Most of us have NO time for personal phone conversations, so we text, blog, twitter, facebook, myspace eachother.

I ran accross a trailer that of a new movie with Drew Barrymore said about technology is priceless.

She said >> MySpace is the new booty call!” a friend advises Drew Barrymore in this preview for He’s Just Not That Into You, and later she at the end of the trailer laments:

“I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work, and so I called him at home, and he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It’s exhausting.”

Being in a relationship, I am honestly glad I don’t have to deal with said portals and can see this as merely comic relief, but I feel for Barrymore’s character and people who do get the tech runaround. Have any funny or cringe-worthy experiences with dating and tech?

Here is the video and she says this at the very end  says it at the end.

I have had a Palm device for the past 8 years and well….why. Sometimes I wonder why.  I have had 7 exchanges of the Palm 650-700P over the past 3+ years.  I have learned to keep it simple and it still fails.

There are some features that the Treo family has I cannot live without.  Everyone who I know that has a Palm Treo has some quirky thing or another happen to them.

This is the Short List -

• Random Freezing
• ConsistentFreezing
• Random Self-rebooting
• In the middle of a call Self Rebooting
• Sync issues
• Continous Self-Rebooting
• Consistently have to remove the battery as reset no longer helps
• Blue Tooth paring issues
• Auto Blue Tooth paring issues
• Blue Tooth horrible sound , seems only to Verizon Treo issue. Cutting out. I have tried every Blue Tooth to date.
• Best one – using a wired headphone, it the plug comes out at all, I lose my microphone. I lose the call, and have to physically reboot the phone by taking the battery out to reset it. (it is not a physical plug issue)
• Where is the 755P reset button?
• Random rebooting in the middle of a call when a 2nd call comes in.
• Random rebooting to the point an entire reset is required (I.E. no phone for a day or two or more, not to mention 3-5 hrs of your own time)

When I got the 755P, like a careful Treo user, I decided to install EVERYTHING from Scratch… yeah right. Thinking that would do something special.
I have a friend with the new smaller palm and he has been through 2 in the past 4 months.

So, on with my rant.  After pondering and looking hard, calling support, there is NO RESET BUTTON anymore!!!!!!!!!! Are you kidding? What where they thinking? Yeah I know, Palm does not think much about the user. It is quite obvious that they really design based on a small focus group if that at all.

So, my 700P had a reset button. I had to reset on a regular basis, and it became a pain with a skin on the phone. So… I cut or drilled a small hole in the case and the skin and from the back, I could push the Treo Stylus through the hole and reset. Saved lots of time and headaches… Now the 755P, they assume no more problems.

First week I had to reboot several times.

I have some specific items I need and Like the Treo for. One is the Outlook (Salesforce) and the wireless PC monitor sync. I NEVER use the sync cable. Touch screen in the middle of the call text to the person calling. If someone in the office adds a record in SF, It will automatically get synced with my phone within the hour.

I am slowly getting over it. I have had nothing with great Iphone reviews and well…. I hate AT&T so I gotta wait a few more months and Verizon might be able to carry it. I know that Verizon is getting close to the Iphone with the Google phone and the Dare and the Blackberry Storm, but still not there when it comes to virtual backups.

Salesforce, can be used online, but I need outlook sync so all my contacts show up in my phone.

Conclusion -

Palm does not appear to be really trying to compete with the IPhone-type design and style and they have proven by far to be the most buggy phone product on the market.

Can someone share with me what Palm is thinking? I am listening.

e

If your anything like me, you really liked the Coffee_Desk program by Roam2Rome, but there was a few things wrong, like errors at the bottom of the page and the theme would not list all your pages.

I looked all over for someone to help me with no luck. Today, when the Roam2Rome site was down all day, I gave up.

In my time of frustration I turned to our CTO, Matt Kotich, who over the years, has know blogs and coding as well and he can pretty much could fix anything and together we got the errors in the “Random Selections” area in the footer.php.

We also modifed the sidebar and added the missing pages listings. I hope you like the changes. All the documentation is in the _YourHost.com-Tweaks-Readme.txt file in the zip download below.

I have included the zip file for you to take and upload. I suggest you delete your old coffee desk folder so Word Press will not look for it and reupload the folder complete in the zip file.

Write me if you have any questions and I will do my best to help.

>> Coffee_Desk-2.0-YourHost.com-Tweak.zip

Enjoy!

My old laptop crashed two weeks ago. I had to shop for another one. I did not need much in a notebook and I was considering going with Vista. Microsoft has been hyping Vista talking smack about end of Life for XP. Well, now I am convinced that it is here to stay for a while.

I purchased an HP with Vista 64 bit, 4 gig ram, and all the bells and whistles, DV9728CL. Out of the box the screen driven audio volume control was not working right but I blew through that.

I spent one full day installing all my standard Vista approved programs. Within five or so days later, the computer started acting up, slow browsers, ITunes crash, Yahoo IM crash,…slown down. Multiple reboots were needed just to get it working. I know that Vista was not this bad but 64 bit adds insult to injury. Tech support identified that I needed new virtual drivers for the audio issues.

I called Hewlett Packard, HP and spoke to a very sharp two year Veteran who knew his stuff. (when your in technology, you know when they know stuff or not). He was in tech support guy and he asked if I loaded ITunes, and I said of course, doesn’t most of the world use ITunes? He told me that there has been a history of ITunes crashing Vista….since June of 2007. He said one way or another in the next 30 days to one year, the computer will suffer a catastrophic crash. You cannot just remove ITunes with an uninstall,,,you must restore the computer to factory settings.

Let me ask you…Is MicroSoft nuts? I am sure there were other programs that installed that contributed to the slow down and total incompability making the Operating System or Vista say “get the hell of my hard drive operating system!”, but I was not going to stick around and waste another week, month, year finding out I am hosed.

I cannot fathom that the Vista team was possibly thinking. They are so far away from making a User-friendly XP Transition-friendly software from XP to Vista.

I returned the HP Vista 64 bit and have ordered a Dell XP Window Pro unit.

Here is a list of some of the items that make the Mac commercials so right on.

1. Let me start with Vista compatible Office Word, that does not look feel, or even have any of the same names as its predicessor…. what the heck is up with that. It took me an hour to find the footer function and templates info and when I did it wanted to use its own rigid format itself . It would not let me do simple things like inserting just page 1 of x. It wanted me to use the entire footer, wiping out what I previously had. What a serious piece of crap…then lets move on to Excel..poor Excel users, it is like a completly new program that you have to refigure… Microsoft developers have their heads so far up their backside, …well how far up before you are not even there? That is how far. 
2. How can you look for Add remove Programs when they are now called uninstall
3. Networking is horrible, mapping limited
4. Terrible navigation even in Windows Classic View…why did thy use Classic, because Vista navigation sucks.
5. Windows explorer in XP is renamed
6. Versions in Vista are not correlated to XP at all. Vista Home, Premium, Ultimate…. Is Ultimate the equivalent to XP Professional? Why didn’t someone make a simple notation like Vista Home is like XP, and Premium is like what? and Ultimate is like XP Professional? Nobody thought this out at all, nobody in the Microsoft team. I just cannot understand it. I think we need a list of the team that was responsible for Vista and post them on the net so they will be an example of who not to put on your team as a great insightful team to transition a major software that has worldwide impact!!!
7. Did I mention that Vista Sucks?
8. ITunes, it is evil to have not given ITunes enough info to keep it from crashing in Vista or Vista 64 bit. I hear it is because MS has a media player called Zoom that is coming. If this is true, MS is more evil then every imagined!!!

I am sure you all can comment. Today was one of the most stressful days of the year. I really tried to bite the bullet and move up in versions and learn Vista, but NO WAY.

 There are some real quirky reasons why I am not ordering a Mac today, but I think in time I will get over them, and purchase a Mac for myself.

I have purchased Mac Notebooks for both my wife and my daughter 3 years ago and never regreted it. My daughter just purchased a new Mac and loves it.

 E

So,

Imagine getting a new laptop loaded with everything you wanted and you come to find the right-shift key is cut too short and then to add to it, the key next to it is an arrow up key. Typing sucks on it. So I went on the net to see that there were a many  pissed off and frustrated persons that did not like the defective layout.

I saw lots of comments that you could tweak the registry or the keyboard mapping layout but nobody stepped up to tell you how. Some said be careful messing with the registry. Well, after a few days of searching I found a registry tool that you can use to remap the Keyboard to have the up arrow key be a Right Shift key along with the original one. That makes the size of the key almost the same.

I have Vista Installed and the keyboard is called a 101/102 keyboard. The program I found gives you keyboard layout and it is freeware. Sometimes I am not big on freeware, but this one is great. It is called “Auto Hot key“.  It is a little tricky to use at first, but you can figure it out.

Install autohotkey and look in the right system tray and see the green Icon. This Icon has to be there whenever you want the key to work. You are not permanently modifying the registry. MAKE SURE YOU DO A FULL BACKUP OF YOUR REGISTRY before doing anything like this.

Steps – for the HP 9827 and most of the HP’s that have this similar issue

1. Install the program
2. Look over the keyboard ID’s in the help area
3. Look for the Green Autohotkey icon in the system tray
4. Right click the icon in the system tray and select edit
5. Type this at the end of the info in the end of the page that opens -  up::RShift
   You are basically telling the computer that the Up Arrow key = the Right Shift Key
6. Save the page
7. Test it

Your done, Enjoy

BTW – Links Page