10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know:

I figured that many people would benefit from a thorough overview on how to protect your privacy on Facebook. Below is a step by step process for protecting your privacy.

A friend of mine posted this link on Twitter and it's important enough for me to want to share. Not everyone does facebook, but honestly I like it a ton better than myspace as it has tighter controls as to what get's seen and how. This really is a good write up on how to protect what you have up.

Anyone out there use ObjectDock with SysStats? I'd love to have some of the features it has, but their installation instructions are the absolute worse I've ever come across. Was trying to use this BlisterPack for SysStats package. I thought it was working fine but the icons were scrunched.  I thought I had followed the instructions, but when I restarted OD I got a bunch of missing DLL errors.

Help? Please??

Ok, finally got Semagic reinstalled.

With hope I can at least post a bit more reguarly. My twitter posts aren't going to LJ anyomre, I think because I changed my password. Not sure but tempted to just leave it off.

Thiis friday I'm going to try to make it up to Memphis for the funeral of synamontwist's mother. If anyone from this area wants to go with me, split gas and whatnot, lemme know.
For good news, looks like we'll be able to recover most/all the data from my hard drive. still not sure which files are affected, but apparently there are actual physical defects that are causing the problem. Keep your fingers crossed.

Friday I was killing time waiting for Quu to get off work. Went over to Apharetta and camped out in the Taco Mac till after lunch, then went back to his office until he got off. It was very productive as I was able to type up some more iPhone App reviews for my wordpress blog. Feel free to head on over there and take a look at them. I've pretty much decided to leave my LJ as social stuff, and my articles/reviews over on my wordpress blog.

That's about all I can think of for now.

Please please please see the updated version of the tutorial on my wordpress blog:

http://lethann.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/update-howto-make-your-own-custom-ringtones-for-iphone-20-3g/

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Replacing this with the better writeup I had over on my Wordpress blog.

Yesterday I purchased my new 16gig iphone and was very happy to wave goodbye to my old Treo 650 which had lived long beyond it’s mileage. It wasn’t until late last night when I was playing around with my custom settings that I found out I couldn’t add my own custom ringtones. My friend informed me that Apple had set it up that you had to pay double through the itunes store in order to get them which greatly upset me.

This morning I decided to do a bit of research. My friend linked me a nice program that did all the snipping and importing of the songs for you, but it was a paid program with only a small taste test of what you could do. This was not pleasing to me. I am a music and ringtone junky. I love to have my friends each have their own ringtone so I know who’s calling with out even looking.

Unable to find anywhere that explained a simple way to do your own ringtones without paying for it, I tried multiple ways to get the ringtone into itunes, all without success. Finally broke down and tried the paid software demo. My hunch paid off and I found out what I needed.

1) Pick out your Source – I’ve got a pretty extensive library, but I want to make sure that the song is loud enough to jar my attention when it’s ringing, as well as clear enough to make out.

2) Edit your clip – Most songs start out soft or have a blank second or so in the front. That is not good for a ringtone. Most of my ringtones are around 20 seconds long, but I think you can go longer. Since I’m a PC person, I just use the free Wavepad from NCH Software.

3) Save your clip in M4A format – Most audio editors should be able to do this, or you can use a file converter. Switch from NCH Software is perfect if you need to do bulk conversions. There are also multiple online file converters. A good list is over on MakeUseOf.

4) Change extension to M4R – I just open up the folder I saved my ringtones to and edit it straight in the OS. Don’t worry about any warnings you get about it being possibly unusable.

5) Drag the M4R into iTunes – M4R is a useable format for iTunes so all you have to do is drag it into iTunes and it will add it to the Ringtones library. I’ve read before that it’s a good idea to add only one ringtone at a time or you might get multiples of the same ringtone rather than all of your different ones.

6) Sync your iPhone – You can now choose the custom ringtone from your list. Your overall ringtone is in the Settings/Sounds menu. If you edit your contacts directly you can assign custom ringtones for each one.

Yes folks, it’s as simple as that. As far as I know this should work for both PC and MAC users. I don’t think there is a limit on how many or how large your ringtones can be, but I’m not exactly sure so be careful with your experiments. Remember that your phone rolls over to voicemail after a certain time period so it’s pointless to make anything longer than that. Typically shorter ones will loop, but I haven’t tried it out myself just yet.

Enjoy!

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UPDATE: After adding my other ringtones, the iphone itself is limited to carrying only 10 ringtones at once. Sad Leth. If someone finds out differently without jailbreaking their phone, please comment and let me know.

I have been going round and round with comcast business tech support for almost an hour now trying to get them to take possession of the company domain name. Registration and hosting of ONE domain name is included with the package that the company purchased. These people have no fucking clue what the difference is between "Domain Hosting" and "Web Hosting"!!!!!

Here is what is going on:

The company had their DSL and Webhosting all with a single local provider. Webhosting included physical space and domain registration. This local company is an SRSPlus partner and did their own domain registration. This local company also had so many problems and such horrid service that the Company has left them to get service with Comcast.

I've been working to get everything with Comcast setup. Their DSL is already hooked up and working perfectly. Now I'm working on moving the domain name, website, and email all moved over to Comcast. I finally get the domain names released from the former host and call into Comcast to transfer the domains and... well.. I can't. They don't DO domain transferrs.

I'm soo pissed off at them right now it's not funny. Going to have a meeting with the Office Manager (my mom) and our General Manager tomorrow. This is pissing me off.

Ok.. While mom has needed me less and less, I've actually been doing something akin to "consulting" work for the office. Howso?

Well, they don't have a single person inhouse who knows computers. General concessus is that my mom knows the most out of everyone. Mom's not computer illiterate, but she knows she has limits. So, here's what's going on:

For awhile now, the company has been using high speed DSL from a local provider now. They also have web-hosting, 2 domains, and their email through them. Ever since they started with this provider they have had nothing but trouble. So recently they switched over to comcast.

Yes, comcast. I groaned inwardly, but the problem is that they are almost the only option around here. Well, I think it was last week, they finally got everything transferred over and the comcast internet is working fine. Now there is the issue of the website.

when they canceled their previous DSL, they didn't realize that their website was on the same account so they got notified that it was going to be canceled. It was more of a wakeup call. I happened to be around when all this was going down, so the General Manager (read: boss) asked me if I'd be willing to help sort all this out. Y'all know me, I said yes. It's not so much that i'm regretting doing so, more like I never realized just how much work it was going to be. First off it was hard to find what they had included with their package, then hard to find what they NEEDED for their website. To say it was a mess is an understatement.

Things probably would have gone smoother had I been able to get to a computer with net access. The ethernet drop in the conference room is either a dead end, or their network is specific as to who can connect maybe via mac address. All I know is I plug it in and my computer still says there isn't a connection (yes, made sure the stuff was on, just wasn't getting anything off the cord), as in "nothing is plugged in" even though it is. There is a wireless in there, but it's passworded and no one around there even has a clue what the key is. *facepalm* They don't understand that all this stuff needs to be documented. Their network is done by a group that's hired in, but if the physical cables are any indication of how good they are, I'd have fired them the moment I looked at that mess. Medusa's hair is easier to detangle than that crap. *sighs*

So anyway, spent just about my entire afternoon dealing with that stuff. Got them started with transferring over to digital phones. Figured out what's going on with their web packages. Oh gods I'm so pissed off with that. I got told 15 different things before being directed to this one website where i had to create an admin account for our actual account and THAT is where we pick our webhosting packages. No other way to find out the prices for the packages.

Found out WHY comcast support is so crappy too. Calls go into a national switchboard, even though service and everything are regional.

Tomorrow I go in and hopefully can get everything all setup and done. *crosses fingers*

I don't know what it is, but, I think, after the last time firefox update I started having some major issues.

-Despite what i tell it to in the options, links that 'open in new window' do indeed open up in a window, not a tab like i tell it to (I even installed a tab preferences addon to give more options, neither works)

-Pages are not refreshing on load. I can't find the option that it used to have that told it to auto refresh the page on load, not pull from the cache.

Anyone else having these issues? Know where/how to fix them? What am I missing? I'm really frustrated because i had it all working before, and now suddenly I can't seem to find ANY of the options I had before or those options REFUSE to work. I'm sick of having to right click every link to have it open in a new tab. I HATE having a bizillion windows open when firefox does tabs so nicely. *sighs*

Gods today is a bad day.

Libra | DVD, Book, Audio CD, Game library organizer software:

My friend tatianamik shared this with me. It's a free software that keeps track of your library, very much like the delicious library software for mac. The awesome thing is that it uses your webcam, if you have one, to scan the barcodes. Even better, it's not just books. The different choices you have are: Books, DVDs, Music, Games. The only problem I've had has been with paperbacks, you need to scan the EAU barcode on the inside cover; the sandman hardbacks, it just wouldn't find the EAU, had to type in the ISBN manually; and a few foreign language books and movies we have.Rule of thumb is, if it's listed on Amazon, it should find it. Not only have I done all my xbox/ps2 games, but it even reads the barcodes on PC games. Haven't tried the board games but i'm sure those will work too. Doesn't have a barcode? Pull up amazon, do a search, and then use the inhouse amazon code to get the info in Libra. There has only been like two things I've had to manually type in entirely.You can tag things, add additional information (like where you actually keep it), and even have things 'checked out' if someone borrows something.

Ok, so tatianamik and internetbrain have arrived. I'm poking around things, and find out that both of them are on twitter. I watch a video Tanya posted about it and I find myself staring at the twitter sign up page and struggling for reasons not to sign up.

Anyone got some duct tape? Maybe if I tape my fingers I won't feel so compelled.

Free Video Chat and Video Conferencing from ooVoo:

Anyone who wants to make video calls using their webcam, this software rocks. Allows conferencing videocalls and everything. Anyone else who tries it feel free to ass me: Lethann

Home | Pidgin:

This is supposedly an Open Source IM client like Trillian. Anyone out there use it? Know of it? Have opinions?

13 Addons iTunes Users should Know About | MakeUseOf.com:

Following a link by tatianamik , i found my way to MakeUseOf.com and one of the first articles I find is about 13 useful iTunes Addons. I'm LOVING the fact that they have the iTunes Library Updater, though sadly it seems as if the author of the iLU might be discontinuing it. *sighs*

the DAEDALUS PROJECT: MMORPG Research, Cyberculture, MMORPG Psychology

If you've not heard of it, this is probably one of my favorite psychology surveys I've ever seen. Why? Because the guy who's doing this isn't making grand assumptions. He tells you the tendencies, points out that there are those who don't go with the generalities, and overall does very very good research. I highly suggest you fill out the surveys that apply to you (like right now there is one for kids and people with kids, so don't fill it out if you don't fit in), give him your email address and then whenever there is a new survey up (he emails you), go fill it out. Best part is to go and then read all the articles he's written about the information he's received from the surveys. My current favorite is "Our Virtual Bodies, Ourselves?" Really does seem to explain why there is such a rift between play styles of the horde and alliance in WoW.

On top of being insanely sick, I've had a bit of some computer problems. My CPU was being maxed out by a file (from windows) and had no way of stopping it. My guess is that the crappy McAfee software my laptop came with was finally strangling my poor lappy to death. Because McAfee is worse than Constrictor Vine (anyone who get's that refrence get's a cookie that's not be coughed on) the only way to be rid of it was a clean install.

So, now is sit, here with my new clean setup (minus mcafee) and am once again loving how my laptop performs. We got the esata card and cord and my external HD (named "Ashes to Ashes") works like a charm. There's some graphics lag, but well within tolerable range. Now that all the crap is gone, I even have an extra 10 gig that my recovery (read useless) partition was taking up. As well as the small amount that Dell's "Media Direct" ran off of. For the curious, Media Direct is kinda nifty, allows you to watch media, etc without actually loading up the OS. Something I don't need since my puter is all but a desktop for me.

That all being said.. I've downloaded the latest version of Trillian and have gotten it somewhat setup. If, for some odd reason you think i'm ignoring you, it's ilkely that my settings are all simply messed up and I need to get you back in the proper place on my IM. So, please feel free to toss me an IM so I can get the alerts for you setup. Found out that There were others that I hadn't gotten setup for in MONTHS after I got this new one. Please understand, Because i've got 4-5 different im logins, my "offline contacts" is so huge it's impossible to navigate. Combine that with the fact I usually rename people so half the names on my IM list I don't recognize (but don't have the heart to delete).

And with that, i'm giong to hit 'send' then go lay down. I feel like I've been hit by a mac truck a few times.

Of course, while I'm getting ready to send this, I realize that the nifty Firefox plugin i'm using to send it sucks for livejournal compatibility. Not tags, no icons, no nuthing. If you had wordpress or blogger I guess this would be ok. *sighs* time to go find Semagic again.

Yes, once again both quu and I are sick. Thankfully it's just a sore throat, blah thing. Started somewhat yesterday and today both of our voices are near gone. I woke up and could barely make a squeek. I've managed to be able to make those squeeks sound like words, but not much. It hurts too.

Other than that we're doing pretty ok. I feel totally exhausted even though I got plenty of sleep.

In other news, I have a brand new shiny 750 gb external hard drive. Why do I need such exuberance you ask? Well, my laptop only has about 100gigs  of space.. and I had run out. Consider that I have Office 2007 (Outlook, Word, Excel, Access, Infopath, OneNote, PowerPoint, Visio, Publisher), Visual Studio, and then my games: WoW, LOTRO (yes I started playing), Hellgate, HalfLife 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, Oblivion, Sim City Societies, Black and White 2, Overlord, and probably more that I'm not thinking of. It was getting to the point where I was having to uninstall games to install new ones. Not fun.

So anyway... this weekend it must have really hit home how my space issues are cause Pat bought me the new external HD. The thought was to install all my games on IT so that I don't have to clog up my main HD.Well, I've encountered a bit of a problem. For some reason my games are lagging, and I'm not talking just a minimal delay. It's visible skipping in the graphics and loading. Now, first off, my friend rhast figured out that by default it had the drive on a setting so that I could just unplug it and go. Something to do with cacheing or something. Anyway, got that changed over to a "performance" setting, now i have to do the whole "safely remove hardware" to unplug it, which i do anyway. It was fine for a while... but now it's lagging again. Right now defragging my main drive, hopping that might fix some of the issues.. but it worries me. Anyone got any other ideas? My ehd has ESATA connection, but my laptop doesn't have it by default so I'd have to go get an expansion card or something to make use of it. I'd rather NOT have to go that route. So.. ideas?

I can play Black & White 2!!

Damn this lappy is nice! Yes, Vista is on it. Yes, It runs a little slow at times because Vista is a huge ass memory hog. Yes, I think that Vista really has a bad rap because people are severly ADHD and impatient. If I up my ram and its still having issues, then I'll fuss. However the first service pack is coming out soon and promises to fix a lot of issues.

The only game i'm having problems with is still Tabula Rasa. However, I think that's because it's like Oblivion was when it came out, way too advanced for current home machines. That was one thing I had to applaud Blizzard for when WoW came out, you didn't have to have the top of the line cutting edge machine to have a pretty and fun game.

NWN gave me issues at first until I found out you just have to go into the properties and tell it to run in XP compatiblity mode on each of the EXE files.

Did I mention I can finally play Black and White 2?

Or mention that I can play Overlord on full settings, beautiful enough to make me cry?

<3z new lappy!!!

I still need to take pics and post them.

Worst part is having to import all of my music into itunes. Mostly my anal-ness in double and triple checking everying, and my impatientness when I couldn't sleep and canced the humoungous batch copy to play B&W.

Speaking of which....

OMG I LOVE ATLANTA BEING A TRANSPORTAION HUB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ground shipment in 1day or less. <3z ATL!


Post a pic later. right now installing all my programs and getting all the updates.

Legit Reviews - IDF - Hot Gaming Notebooks Get Air Conditioning - Embarco Brings Refrigeration To Gamings Notebooks:

Works on the XPS M1710 so I can't wait. It's not on the market yet so I don't even know who's gonna be selling it. Estimated price is around 150, but i doubt it stays at that.

The good:

Last weekend was a blast!! Saturday, Pat, River and I walked to downtown Kennesaw for the "Taste of Kennesaw" going on by the train station. Was small but SOO fun. Lots of other puppies there. River was SOOO well behaved. She got kinda scared when a train went by, but she never barked or anything. Just skittish and shaking. It was a GORGEOUS day too. Sunday we stayed home, but I spent the day making my famous "Meat Buns". Though sadly I can't find my normal bread recipe and had to try a new one. Tried out an Egg Bread recipe that actually turned out really well. The only part that was kinda so so was that we over boiled the gravy and it was STRONG. But the REALLY fun part was that while I was cooking dinner, Pat cleared the table off and we played games while the food was cooking. Home cooked food and games, sooo much fun.

The bad:

River is currently in with the vet. Nothing unexpected, but this is her first round of heartworm treatments. They are keeping her in for 3 days (we dropped her off monday morning). Though the only kinda bad part was that they had done some xrays monday and there was something in her lungs. Probably just a piece of heartworm, but they wanted to call us and let us know, finding out if she's been acting odd (coughing whatever) the past few days. Apparently what the heartworm treatments do is slowly kill off the worms which then break apart and flow into the lungs where they get re-absorbed into the body. So that's probably what showed up on the xray. I really like our vet. Some wouldn't bother telling us this stuff.  Haven't heard anything today so I guess things are all ok. I pick her up tomorrow.. hopefully. Scary part is that even once we get her home we're supposed to keep her calm for a month. You ALL know how spastic she get's when we come out. We've got the name of a specific sedative to ask for if they don't give us something (who knows, they might just give it to us anyway). I think they will get to know exactly what we mean when we show up to pick her up and she freaks out. Anyway, I'll keep ya'll updated. Just really miss her right now.

The UGLY:

My laptop is dying.

Some of you might already know about this from Quu's journal (or maybe I've already posted about this? Hell if I know!), but a couple months ago I started getting these one pixel wide vertical lines going down my screen. The count is now up to 5: 1 cyan, 2 yellow, 2 magenta. The 5th line showed up when I was having a very very shitty day up in Michigan. Anyone who knows Quu knows that one of the primary ways he shows his love and affection is by buying gifts. (No.. not buying your love, but 'spoiling' people.) After I refused to talk to him (or anyone else that day) he never did get to tell me.. but when I got home he kept saying "You've got a surprise coming on the 19th!" My first thought was that I had out of town friends coming up to stay for an extended weekend or something. But no one would spill the beans even though Pat was all but BURSTING at the seams to tell me (god that man can't keep a secret to save his life, but i love him for it!). So eventually we go out with folks, i think to a movie or something, and I come back and find a Dell receipt  displayed on my web browser. Yes.. Pat had already bought me my new laptop. Yes.. it's shiny and new.. and while it was supposed to be here by tomorrow, won't be here till NEXT Friday.

Ugly part is having not only to move over all my files, but having to dig up all my old passwords and clean them off this puter. Ooo.. and my email. ;_; Thankfully I've already got all my MP3s moved over to a file server (which my itunes points to), but damnit I'm gonna lose my ratings on everything. GAAAHHH... anyone know how to share the ratings on songs in itunes form one computer to another? It is the one thing I hate about getting a new computer.. moving all my flies over. Though technically this one still works so I can use both... But i want to clean most my stuff off so I can let pat use this when we go out.

While I might miss my old full keyboard, I think Pat is going to get me a docking station for it so I can hook up my keyboard and mouse to it. Would do better on my back than having to reach up to the laptop (don't have a proper desk chair at the moment)


An now for something totally random:

Tonight: SCA Fighter Practice - 7:30-dark at Bell's Ferry Park

After spending the past 3 hours in frustration.. I FINALLY got the new wireless router to work on my mom's cable. So now my laptop is actually USEFUL again. >_< My mom's computer only has 256mb of ram, and it's SOO slow that when I was trying to do the settings for the router the stupid thing would CHOKE. Through some weird twist of fate, I got it working long enough to setup the wireless, which then in turn let me do the connection wizard using my laptop. All that matters is that now it's working.

Anywho.. Tomorrow going down to visit my sister and the kids, dunno what we're going to do, but I'm looking forward to seeing them all.

I'm still coughing up a lung or two. Well.. it's like there is this constant tickle in the back of my throat. I'm not actually coughing up anything from my lungs. Annoying as hell.

Wee.. Pat just called to tell me he got dinner from Taco Bell. He was working till 11pm tonight. ;_; My poor baby.

Anyway.. got it all working, posting this... then heading to bed. we're waking up at 7am to get breakfast before heading to my sisters.

LATER PEEPS!