BeerPad is a nice little application for the iPhone that is designed for beer enthusiasts to keep track of their beer adventures. You can add beers that you try into the application and it keeps all sorts of information in its database for you.

Features include:

– Assign parameters to each beer from predefined lists. These include Style, Brewery, Region, and Pairings. Each of these lists are editable so that you can add items to them if they don’t exist.
– Assign a photo to the beer. Choose from the camera roll, or take a new one. I am not a fan of the iPhone camera, so I search google images to find either the label or a good pic of the beer online, then save it to my phone and use that one. I discovered that once you assign the photo in BeerPad, you can remove it from your camera roll and it stays in BeerPad.
– Assign a rating for the beer on a scale of 5 stars.
– Several other free form parameters can be assigned. i.e., color, aroma, finish, etc.

Back to my alergy to some beers… if I drink a beer that I am allergic to, my throat swells up. Now, it’s not my airway but rather my esophagus. Regardless, it’s not comfortable and quite irritating. By the way, I’m also allergic to macadamia nuts, which I discovered before the beer allergy. My tactic on new beers is to take a few sips, then wait a good 5 – 10 minutes for a reaction. If there is one, I slide the beer over to a friend to finish. If there is no reaction, score one for me because I have a new beer that I know I can drink without worry.

Here’s where BeerPad comes in to help me. For the past year+ I’ve been adding beers to BeerPad; ones that I know are OK and also an new ones that I try. I use the rating system to track the bad beers. Well, they’re not necessarily bad, just bad for me to drink. I assign a single star to the beers that give me an allergic reaction. Any other beer that goes down without a ruckus gets 2 or more stars.

When I first figured out this allergy, about 8 or so years ago, I had to rely on written notes to remember which beers I could drink. The iPhone in general has improved my quality of life by keeping me more connected. But with apps like BeerPad, it makes it all the more helpful to me. Are there smart phone apps or tools that you use in ways that were not necessarily intended but help you?

What could be running all the time that would cause a drain on the juice? Well, I have my work email account configured to sync mail, contacts, and calendar via ActiveSync. This was the only culprit I could think of that would run all of the time… at least when I had the push feature enabled. I did a few days worth of testing and here’s how it went.

• Day 1: Charged the phone overnight and left push and fetch off (as I normally do to avoid being awoken by new emails). At 6am, I turned both push and fetch on. I typically set fetch at every 15 minutes, so I left it as such. 
  • Results: After 2 hours, the battery was down to 50%. This was 2 hours of very mininal use, pretty much sitting on my desk for all but maybe 10 minutes of use. No phone calls, no internet use, no texting, etc.
• Day 2: Charged the phone overnight and left push and fetch turned off. At 6am, I turned only fetch (15 minutes) on.
  • Results: After 2 hours, the battery was down to 90%. Again… no phone calls, no internet use, no texting, etc.

McCain’s is shown first and then Obama’s.

I used the Mapaset tool with a set from my flickr stream of photos I took on a work trip to Greece. I think it sweet! Flickr does not have anything like this that I know of. You can use the left/right arrows to scroll through the thumbnails in the set. Click on a thumbnail, and it shows you the location on the map above, as well as some details of the photo, and also provides a link to view the photo on flickr.

It’s a really great system and is great to work on as far as administration of the system. I’ve found a good amount of valuable tech support using the ShoreTel support on their site, but I’ve found some equally beneficial help on shoretelforums.com. I value the help that I find on both websites. However, I recently became frustrated when searching for the default username and password for a ShoreTel switch.

I had to telnet into this particular switch to check on most likely add some ip routes. I’d done it before but did not document the login credentials I had used previously. So, I went to the place that I had found it before: shoretelforums.com. I searched for “telnet” and the first result was a post that had a link to the ShoreTel.com support document with the credentials… only this time the link was broken.

After racking my brains for a few minutes, I remembered the password and my colleague recalled the username. I thought is was sort of strange that no one on the forums site had simply posted the credentials. So, I did just that… only to find that my post had been edited and the credentials removed. Here’s what it said:

{edit: this site is open to the public, and for security reasons, I’d rather not have this password openly available. Feel free to PM it to somebody, but not post it openly. Thanks, and hopefully no hard feelings }

Sorry, but I think that’s just plain lame. No, there’s no hard feelings… but I don’t understand the logic in keeping this sort of information ‘secret’ from the public.

I help maintain a network infrastructure with Cisco and HP core switches that I believe are much higher on the importance chain than a VoIP switch. I can go to the manufactures sites for either of these and easily find the default credentials for any of their products. What makes it so important to keep this information ‘secure’ from the public.

Well, since I can’t post the credentials on the shoretelforums.com site, I’m going to post them right here on my site!

**edit**
There is a good reason that the credentials are kept from public view. If you are not familiar with working within the VxWorks CLI, then you should be cautious when using it… perhaps not even take the risk, and just contact your support vendor. Be aware that you may cause irreparable damage to the device. If you’re unsure, you should contact your ShoreTel support vendor.

Default ShoreTel VxWorks login credentials:
Username: anonymous
Password: ShoreTel

Don’t forget to enable telnet to that device before wasting your time trying to log in:
for a phone: phonectl.exe -telneton TARGET_IP_ADDRESS
for a switch: ipbxctl -telneton TARGET_IP_ADDRESS

Now, we’ll just have the interweb search monkeys go an do their voodoo… and before you know it, when you google “shoretel telnet login” or “vxworks credentials”… let’s just see if this post gets a better ranking than the forums.

When it comes down to it, if this post helps just one poor soul quicker than going through the forums or the ShoreTel site, then I’ll be happy.

Here’s the AP article.

Windows 2003 Resource Kit has a screen saver that does just what he needed. Check out the Microsoft KB article that describes how to set it all up.

Go to START, then RUN. Enter this command: gpedit.msc
This opens the local system policy, and you’ll find the options you require under:
Local Computer Policy > User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Display

Then change the following four options to set a specific screensaver and lock it:

• Change the option “Screen Saver” to Enabled
• Change the option “Screen Saver Executable Name” to Enabled, and enter the file name of an .scr file (from the Windows directory) in the box labeled “Screen Saver executable name”. For example, to set the screen saver to the logon screen saver, enter “logon.scr”.
• Change the option “Password Protect the Screen Saver” to Enabled (to password protect the screen saver and lock it) or Disabled (to keep password protection from applying to the screen saver and lock it), as necessary.
• Change the option “Screen Saver Timeout” to Enabled, and enter the number of seconds in the box labeled “Seconds”. (10 minutes = 600 seconds)

This will lock changing the screen saver, and set the screen saver options and lock them from being changed.

Check it out at Webware…

After trying several modifications to my screen saver properties, I stumbled upon a Windows Update that was listed under the “Windows Ultimate Extras”. It’s listed as Microsoft – Other Hardware – HID Non-User Input Data Filter. After installing that update (no reboot required), the screen saver worked fine.

Check the KB article here.

Vista does not like the forward slash that Lightroom uses when importing using “by date” organization. You can simply double-click on the path within the “organize” box (with the check mark on it), you can modify it and replace it with a backslash. The import should work fine after that.

Cheers! Happy importing!

After some googling, I found this highly useful article out there which provided a link to the U3 site for a removal tool. Works like a normal USB flash drive now… the way it should.

My ie7.log file (in the %windir% folder, most commonly C:\Windows\) showed some error that goes a little like this: DoInstallation: CustomizeCall Failed: 0x3f5

I was lucky enough to find a Google Groups posting that provided some insight. This funky 0x3f5 error has to do with registry permissions.

The fix? Well, since I use XP Pro… I opened a command prompt and typed this in (actually, I really just pasted it from the groups post): secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb
/verbose /areas REGKEYS
… and then hit the enter key. About 10 minutes later it was done, and I tried the IE7 installation again.

If you’re a XP Home user… you can go here to read the fix you have to do.

I now am gazing at the majestic yellow ring, and browsing the web with tabs… about time they did this. For the record… I still prefer Firefox.

The Daily Show
Prison Break
House
Arrested Development
My Name Is Earl
The Office
Lost
ER
Scrubs
CSI
Pinks
Top Gear
The Amazing Race

Melanie’s shows (I swear I don’t watch them, really)
The OC
What Not To Wear

I don’t think we could do it without a DVR.