That’s right…this is for my own reference.

To Place the headset into pairing mode.

Press and hold the volume up (+) button and call control button (the big one on the side) at the same time until the light on the headset starts flashing an alternating red-blue.

Awesome!

Ok, I really need to remember this one:

First: Sign is as the root user, or someone with root access

#  visudo

Under “Allow root to run any commands anywhere” add:

{username} ALL=ALL

This will give them sudo access to all commands.

Try not to crash your entire system.

Wow, another year has just rocketed by without asking me if I wanted to take a breather — I’m sure this year will be no different.   It’s time to reflect and renew a few of the yearly goals that it seems I never get accomplished…

2010 Goals:

• Get Scuba Certified
• Get a new Tattoo
• Become functional speaking Mandarin  (I did at least start this)
• Go camping

Nothing like setting lofty goals…and reaching them!!!

2011 Goals:

• Get a new Tattoo
• Become functional speaking Mandarin
• Become a consistent V5 rock monkey (bouldering)
• Trad-climb at least one route
• Travel outside the country
• Take an acting class
• Take a trip with friends / family

Yeah, that’s right…

I saw this on the KPCC blog recently…

Quite a bit, according to a Pew Research study. Almost 80 percent know that the federal budget is bigger than it was in the 1990s, and two-thirds realize that the U.S. brings in more foreign goods than it sells overseas. But after that things get iffy. Only 16 percent are aware that more than half of the loans made to banks under TARP have been paid back (an identical percentage says that none has been paid back). Of course if they don’t know that, they can’t possibly judge whether the bailout program has been effective (something you’d never figure out by the political rantings against TARP). What’s really distressing (though not surprising) is the lack of economic knowledge among 18-29-year-olds. On the TARP question, 7 percent answered.

Thanks NPR!

I’m just playing around with the Google URL shortener, that just so happens to also create you a nice QR image as well.  Lots of interesting ideas are flowing…

I ran across an interesting little story involving a few ladies and the Portland Trail Blazers at a recent game in Dallas.

From insidehoops.com

With the NBA’s All-Star Weekend headed to Dallas on Feb.12-14, let’s hope the Mavericks and the NBA have a better handle on security than they did Saturday when the Trail Blazers were in town.

During a timeout with 41 seconds left in regulation, two women walked onto the court and into the Trail Blazers huddle. One woman wrapped her arms around the waist of Blazers guard Rudy Fernandez from behind. Fernandez, who was not in the game but focused on the plays being diagrammed by coach Nate McMillan, was stunned.

“I was surprised,’’ Fernandez said. “I was listening to the coach on the bench and behind me, she touches me and says, ‘Rudy, I love you. Nice to meet you. Good game.’’ …

The women were ushered away from the huddle, and amazingly allowed to return to their court-side seats under the basket and watch the remainder of the game, which went to overtime.

If that was two guys, they’d have been dragged from the scene, beaten by security, and thrown in the drink but because it was a couple of good looking ladies they got away with a serious security infringement with zero consequences.

The woman involved in this incident NEED to be treated the same as men (minus the beating please) for the simple fact that if they are not, it becomes a serious security hazard because of the following:

I don’t find it far-fetched that at some point in the near future these organizations are going to employ the services of some good looking woman to carry out their deeds.

In the age of extreme makeover shows — how hard would it really be to dump a comparatively insignificant amount of money into making some ordinary female religious extremist into a complete bombshell and then have her carry out some evil deed?  Really, who is going to seriously question a woman like that?

I will not be surprised that if in the near future a horrific act of some kind is going to be committed by a beautiful young woman who, because of her looks, will have slipped through security with little to no resistance.  I just have that feeling that it’s only a matter of time before this little social loophole come back to haunt us.

I’m doing a bit of experimentation with small sites revolving around a single keyword or keyword pairing.  My first experiment is a small site dedicated to information about microphones for kick drums.  I can’t say I’ve done much of this in the past and there seems to be some upside to the strategy.

For those of you out there with some interest or particular knowledge about kick drum microphones, please drop me a line.  I’d love to have a few guess bloggers to help fill in the site.

A significant amount of my life has been centered around playing and making music along with the joy of owning my own recording studio.  It’s amazing how many options there are available to the recording enthusiast these days, unfortunately the side effect of having so many options is of course finding help or suggestions when you hit a road block — so away to the Internet we go…

…first stop, message boards and forums. If you are like me and have regularly turned to message boards for answers to questions you have, maybe you would agree with something I realized some time back that

searching through message boards and forums is not very enjoyable!

All too many times my searches would end in frustration as I’ve often found it extremely difficult and clunky to navigate these sites.  The search functionality is usually rudimentary, the layout almost always cramped and over-loaded with information, and there no good way to decipher the good authors from the bad.  Let’s face it, most of this underlying software was great when it was first developed well over a decade ago, but I think we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard today.

So, I’ve decided to do something about out it…and I have.  I’ve launched a new recording community powered by software that I’ve developed from scratch that I  hope will address many of the issues I described above.

How to separate the good from the bad.

Why should you trust some random post by someone you don’t know that may or may-not have any clue about what they are talking about?  On recording Questions, users gain experience points whenever they contribute to the site in a positive fashion, and therefore over time earn trust within the community.  Best of all this trust comes from other community members — we let your peers judge you on the quality of your content.  As members gain experience, they are afforded greater freedom and abilities throughout the site — a reward for being an active and engaged member.

Determining quality -

The simple voting system on RecordingQuestions.com determines how information is organized and ranked. The more votes an answer has, the closer it appears to the top of the page. The best answers (as voted on by you, the community) always appear at the top of the page where they may be easily found.

Keeping people engaged in the site over time

It’s fun to get stuff, and what better way to keep members involved than to provide some type of incentive system. Members will collect different awards based on achievements they accomplish throughout the site.  This can be as simple as casting your first vote or as rare as posting something marked as a favorite by 100 other people.  It’s surprisingly addicting to look forward to that next award while you contribute to the community.

For those of you interested in learning a bit more about the site, please feel free to stop by the frequently asked questions page where we go into much more detail about how many of these systems work.

Be sure to follow the evolution of the new system on the Official Recording Questions Blog where I plan to post updates from time to time.

My trusty friend Google reader brought an interesting article to my attention this past Friday.  This really is nothing more than fun-time water cooler ammunition — so take it for what it is. Below is an excerpt from the full story.

Wikipedia has taken a rather dramatic step to end four year dispute over the Scientology page and more than 430 related articles. The entire IP range of the Church of Scientology as well as the accounts of several contributors are now banned from editing the content in an effort to reduce a “persistent point-of-view pushing and extensive feuding over sources on multiple articles.”

It seems that more than a couple church members were unable to restrain their Thetan love for Xenu while editing the Scientology Wikipedia page.  As far as I can tell this wholesale banning of an entire IP range is a first for Wikipedia itself.

Here is a quick except about the event posted directly on the Scientology Wikipedia page.

The Arbitration Committee of the Wikipedia internet encyclopedia decided in May 2009 to restrict access to its site from Church of Scientology IP addresses, to prevent self-serving edits by Scientologists. A “host of anti-Scientologist editors” were topic-banned as well. The committee concluded that both sides had “gamed policy” and resorted to “battlefield tactics”, with articles on living persons being the “worst casualties”.