Step 1 – Uninstall / Remove everything and anything related to a non-Microsoft Bluetooth stack. Drivers, etc.
Step 2 – Browse to your Windows folder, then to the INF folder (ex: c:\Windows\inf) and delete all the files that start with the letters “TOS”.
Step 3 – Open the windows device manager (Start->Run, Type:”devmgmt.msc”, click OK )and identify which “USB Device” is the Bluetooth Adapter. If you have multiple devices that have yet to be installed you can install the Bluetooth switch. Double click the device and click the ‘Details’ Tab. In the drop down menu select “Hardware Ids” and make note of the Hardware ID lacking the “REV” (Write it down). In my case it was “USB\Vid_0c24&Pid_000e”.


Step 4 – Navigate back to the Windows INF folder and edit the bth.inf file in Notepad. Search for “[Toshiba.NT.5.1]” and create a new line below it. Using the Hardware ID that you just wrote down that identifies your Bluetooth device, create another entry like the existing ones. Mine looked like this. “Toshiba UGX=BthUSB, USB\Vid_0c24&Pid_000e”. Then save the file.

Where I have “Toshiba UGX” you can put any name you like. That is what Windows will label the device when it automatically installs the driver.
Step 5 – Delete the Bluetooth device from the device manager and reboot. Windows should detect your Panasonic Bluetooth adapter referencing it by whatever name you typed in before the Hardware ID, automatically install the necessary drivers & ultimately provide you with working Bluetooth support.

Maybe this is obvious to everyone but me. Either way, I was lost for an hour wondering why I couldn’t find drivers or a 3rd party bluetooth stack that supported the adapter inside my Panasonic TOUGHBOOK CF-51. Hopefully this helps. I ultimately figured it out when I stumbled across this page at Serialio.com.

Some Background:
For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted a real cabin in the woods on a lake. Thanks to my Dad, Grandma n’ Grandpa Houghtelin I grew up in Minnesota living next to nature (Up North) or camping every weekend. From as early in life as I can even remember we made the weekly trek to Sherwood Forest camp grounds just north of Milacs Lake. Peacefully enjoying life being surrounded by nature is quite thoroughly ingrained in me as the perfect getaway. Just the thought always brings a smile to my face. However, unlike my best friends ‘cross the lake I didn’t grow up in or ever really live in a cabin. In short, I don’t have many predefined ideas or experiences in reference to the iconic nature getaway dwelling. As a base, I know I want it to be all wood avoiding all synthetic materials & compounds. No drywall, plywood, synthetic materials, etc. I want a cabin made of natural materials, not glue. That’s where my opinion comes to a blank. I’ve got the wooded property on a fishing/swimming lake that offers true privacy surrounded by nature. All it needs is a small cabin. Something affordable but not cheap. Something that can be lived in or provide as an ideal vacation home. Working out the idea with a private saw mill just a few miles down the road from the property I’ve leaned toward a 24′ x 20′ cabin with 12′ walls, an 8′ x 8′ bathroom, vaulted ceiling to accommodate a bedroom/loft with railing overlooking the open floor plan. A simple setup built at the edge of a hill overlooking the water entirely wrapped by a deck.

That’s all I’m really solid on.

Stacy’s Suggestions
I’m skipping a ton of info but it’s really late so I’ll jump to Stacy’s wood suggestions and wrap this up.

• Build the Cabin Frame w/White Oak
• Red Oak for the walls, ceiling and main roof beam
• Brazilian Cherry on the floor
• Trim the interior with Walnut, Cherry or Cedar
• Set concrete pads to build on

I enjoy the look, feel and smell of every kind of hard wood that could be used in this operation but I’m not at all sure what role or design item any single wood type should play. Also, we could go with granite counter tops to avoid using a bunch of chemical sealant on wood counter tops which touches on another generic but important metric, Fancy or Rustic? Should all interior visible wood surfaces be sanded to a smooth (fancy?) or rough (rustric?).

That’s just a few of the decisions being sorted out. Short of my initial ideas of a cabin I’m still pretty undecided but I’ve saved up the funds and am able to let the construction begin just as soon as these details are ironed out. If nothing else we may just run with suggestions on initial structure and feel it out from there. We can start building in less than two weeks.

I’m beyond excited but it’s time to crash so I can keep up with the schedule I’ve set forth to ensure this project keeps moving forward at a good measurable pace. Any and all suggestions or comments are much appreciated. Grandpa Houghtelin drew up a rough draft of how he ( as an architect ) would go about organizing the structure of the whole building. I’ll be getting those via snail mail shortly. I can’t wait. All input is awesome input! Life is good.

What’s Good
I’ll start by saying, “I love working for myself”. I’ve been having a great time employing myself and I’m happy to say it’s working out very well. Finding work hasn’t proven to be difficult and although I need to work on my communication skills I seem to work quite well with a large number of people. I’ve realized that I tend to do my best work after midnight when the world seems to stop but most of my customers prefer I work during business hours. Crazy customers!

I really like working with a large pool of associates. I’ve made quite a few new business partners & friends through business networking. It’s easy to see that the larger the pool of clients I have the less effort goes in to finding work. I’ve done a pretty good job at not picking up work that doesn’t very precisely suit my skill set so I tend to impress most everyone I work with which is nothing short of pure awesome. It feels good to regularly feel accomplished. One of the things that really gets to me working for a single employer is that the work generally ends up becoming quite monotonous and after a while it just doesn’t feel good to get it done. On the same page the positive reinforcement received from a single employer ( if it even exists in the first place ) tends to fade with time as well ultimately creating an environment that doesn’t entice working at our very best.

Needs Work
I have learned that I am not nearly as good at “Business” as I thought I was. Just because I develop tons of software to help streamline business and make everyones life easier doesn’t seem to mean that I just innately have a grasp for it. I maintain appointments, tasks, and communicate with my customers well but I fall short when it comes to billing, logging time, keeping track of specific actions taken on specific tasks and documenting my overall practice as I complete tasks. Overall I build lists of tasks that need to be completed and knock them out pretty quick but, especially when it comes to coding and servicing computers, I work on so many tasks at once that I can rarely actually track the time and efforts given to a single task. Since I do my job well I’ve been able to get by with this shortcoming but I’m creating new habits in order to fill these gaps. I communicate with a lot of business owners which has provided to be useful. It may sound dumb and simple but here is one of the best tips I got:

I always carry two Steno Books with me to write on. I use one to log every expense whether it’s soda or a server I write it down. The other pad I use to keep a log of everything I AM doing. Since I’m already good at keeping track of tasks & appointments I just write what I completed on the work log. Regardless of whether or not it’s applicable I also note hours in the work log so it satisfies the need to keep a history or log of work as well as training me to keep better track of my time. Every day or two I go through the two Steno’s and review the data. The work log reminds me of things I overlooked and helps maintain my schedule of tasks and the finance log definitely points out where the money goes. It’s simple but effective. If nothing else, simply writing everything down in shorthand helps me remember it.

How has life changed?
Life has been crazy. Being self employed allows me a much more liberal schedule. I haven’t been on a fast track to becomming a millionaire but I have been enjoying myself a lot more. I rarely use an alarm now. I don’t repeat the same day over and over again anymore. As long as I can find a place to get my work done peacefully I don’t feel the pull to get home or the need to go to sleep. I definitely roll with the punches and keep a very flexible schedule. Unless I do have a scheduled task to resolve I am open to do just about anything at any time. I still spend a whole lot of time working, I just don’t have a problem with putting it down to entertain another worthy activity.

Travel… I have been testing the waters and am really looking in to traveling while working. I have a very mobile office and most of the work I do does not require me to be in any given ‘place’ or geographical location. This pairs well with the fact that my clients are spread across the U.S. and afar. Most of whom would be quite pleased to meet me personally. I’m becoming pretty confident that I can continue growing in business while traveling. I’m excited to see what the future brings.

Back to work!
That’s it for now. Time to get back to work.

How I use my iPhone

• Communicating – Email, SMS, and the occasional phone call. Works great for communicating.
• MP3 Player – I always liked the idea of using my phone as an mp3 player but before the iphone I never really did. Now I walk around with my Shure headphones wired up all the time. I love it. Between MP3s (music), Podcasts and Pandora I’m ingesting audio most all the time now. I even walk more places now to create an excuse to listen to a podcast or a few songs. ^_^
• Time Tracking & Billing – This is another use for smart phones I’ve wanted to but had never really fully utilized. Now I use “billings” and keep track of all my work hours very easily on the iPhone.
• Calendar / Schedule – Of course

I have yet to really mess with a lot of the apps out there. There are just too many and most of the time I’m too busy to do much more then review the latest top apps.

My T-Mobile Config

Settings -> General -> Network -> Cellular Data Network -> APN = epc.tmobile.com
that’s it and it works great.

The Apps I use

• Cydia – Free
  – Application Repository for jail broken iPhones
  Becuase the iTunes App store only offer -some- of the cool apps on the market.
• Billings – Free from iTunes
  - Time Tracking & Billing software.
  Unfortunately the desktop application this pairs with is only available on the mac but I really like how easy the app is to use on the iPhone. It takes a lot of the annoyance out of keeping track of my time.
• Pandora - Free from iTunes (Optional: Pandora One $36/year)
  - Streaming music to your iPhone.
  It works great on cell data networks at speeds as low as EVDO which works great for me. Or of course 802.11 wireless. I paid and subscribed to Pandora to remove the commercials and interruptions. C’mon, who doesn’t want to listen to -just- music they like?
• iPhoneModem – $9.99 from Cydia
  - Allows you to teather your iPhone to your Computer and use it as a modem.
  On the rare occasion my Alltell USB Aircard fails, this has already provided to be beneficial although I think it messed up my safari n’ chrome browsers by setting a proxy. Easy to overcome.
• Twitterrific – Free from iTunes
  - Twitter Client
  Yeah… I’m a sheep.
• Facebook – Free from iTunes
  - Mhm. I kill time here too.
• Flickr – Free from iTunes
  Photo sharing. I prefer to send all my pictures to Flickr rather than Facebook.
• Winterboard – Free from Cydia
  - Allows you to theme and customize the look and feel of your iPhone
  Who doesn’t like skins? I’m currently using Evil Green.
• Paypal – Free from iTunes
  - Yet another convenient portal for getting rid of money.
  I don’t really need or use this often, I just like having it. I can bet people $1 over stupid stuff and send/recieve funds instantly even if I don’t cary cash (which I rarely do) lol. Do I organize this under ‘game’ apps?
• GymBuddy – $2.99 from iTunes.
  - Easy to use Workout log.
  I like using this at the community center. I’ve never been too good at memorizing my routine or where I’m at with it. I don’t do max rep often since I work out in the morning.
• Google Mobile – Free from iTunes.
  – Voice search for localized results. Definitely a quick and easy way to find things.
  <3 teh goog.
• NetNewsWire – Free from iTunes.
  - Popular RSS Reader
  Since it syncs with my google reader account, it wins.
• Stanza – Free from iTunes.
  - Ebook reader. I don’t really use this often but it is nice having reading material when I get burnt out on audible information.
• BossPrefs – Free from Cydia
  - Extended preferences editor. I pretty much only use it to hide application icons for those I don’t use like stocks, voice recorder, etc. Works great.
• iBlacklist – Free / Pay from Cydia
  - Allows you to block or hide calls, SMS and MMS from whomever you like, or don’t like.
• Chess Free – Free from iTunes.
  - A simple, free Chess game.

What I like

• I like that it is snappy. I enjoyed the G1 Android when I had it but it simply wasn’t that fast. The screen didn’t slide like it temporarily glued to your finger
• It works & there is an app for everything. I enjoy the fact the apps don’t (or rarely) crash.
• I enjoy that I quickly found all the basic apps I like to use daily for entertainment and efficiency.
• I don’t feel like I’m going to break the phone. It feel sturdy. I did buy an inexpensive used one so I wouldn’t fear losing or breaking a $500 phone. I’m sick of burning hundreds of dollars becuase of a butterfingers move. I dropped the iPhone in the snow a bunch of times already, it’s a trooper.

What I don’t like

• Of course, not being an open system to develop on is a bit annoying.
• Having to jailbreak/crack the phone before use is a bit annoying but necessary.
• I know I have an older iPhone but it is much better off left plugged & charging as often as possible.
• There’s a small gliche with my iPhone I have yet to fix. I don’t want to meddle around with the internals too much until I figure out how to image the existing setup. I like it. ^_^
• Cellular Charges! This is just becuase both Zippy and I have 1,000 shared minutes, we both have unlimited text & multimedia messaging as well as unlimited data/internet. Our T-Mobile Family Plan costs us around $160/month. That’s not much for two phones with no real limitations but I’d appreciate a small reduction. The only thing our ‘Family Plan’ helps us with is shared minutes.

I bought a stock AK from a friend a while back and have lightly modded it. Now it’s nearly complete. I’ve added a Tapco Folding Stock and a Leapers Quad Rail and Handguard system to replace all the old wood. I also had it painted black on black. How about a murdered out AK? Good stuff. I think it looks a lot better having all the original wood parts replaced with black resin and metal.

If you follow the links to where I purchased the mods, I don’t have the verticle hand grip mounted on the guard rail. I don’t much care for that. I do however want to get a red dot sight to mount on the top rails. (not a laser, a legal to use for hunting holographic red dot) I’m not completely sure that I’ll be able to find a red dot sight that can be mounted so far away from my view point. I’ve got fifteen metal clips that hold 30 rounds each and one that holds 5. I’m not sure what else, if anything is really needed to make this .223 AK-47 any cooler or more useful. I like it.

Here’s the deal: You can obviously create a single page on a (dot)com and toss in a bunch of widgets, gadgets, bookmarking tools, a ton of text, and affiliate links to associated amazon (or other profitable) products focusing on key words within the context of your post you believe are at least generally focused to the topic you’re promoting (generally about a product you are directly selling) and then push a link to your (dot)com out to all the social bookmarking sites and your facebook, twitter, and wherever else you have 20,000 people you don’t know following you who will see it. Just as a precautionary step you can have all your 20 online friends with active blogs and healthy page ranks and traffic throw your new URL in their blogroll for a short period of time. Yeah, it works to generate traffic that way. Probably not for long since search engines are always being abused as soon as people figure out what “the Google” is looking for. But for now it works. I get it. Why in the heck does that mean you can completely ignore all the base line rules about creating VALID INTERNET CONTENT!

Please.. Someone tell me why it’s OK to create content that does not follow any kind of standard? I’m not even talking about the common reference to accessibility: physical handicaps which, by the way, if your blind I really feel for ya. Bitch at me if you want to but I catch up on all those long blog posts and some documentation on long drives by queuing it all up and letting it rip with a screen reader. The percentage of sites that are even mildly accessible in that manner is a very very very small percentage (yet this site isn’t even very easy to navigate with a screen reader either so I can’t complain much).

OK, everyone has stopped reading by now. I’m done complaining. I’m going to go back to coding and continue to complain to myself about how all the SEO tricks in the world are nothing more then short term tricks while creating clear, valid content that search engines can actually understand guarantees long term results.

Step 1: Create content that follows internet communication standards so all the other web services (including search engines) can accurately decipher your content.

So why do all these marketing services ignore step 1?

Internet Marketing Service Provider: www.quansite.com
Validating a random page created in quansite: w3c-validate:Tribalseduction.com

Now if I could just make one of those silly simple $1 apps that sells a million subscriptions so I could just keep coding as I am forever without having to concern myself with actually getting paid for it. I will be coding for the rest of my life regardless of whether it’s what I do to pay the bills.

There are TONS of pictures.
My Flickr
Crystal & Matt’s Flickr
Zippy’s Flickr

I love em all. After we ate lunch and wandered around Garden of the Gods for a while Matt decided to take us up to the summit of Pikes Peak! Crystal wasn’t a fan of the ride up, especially after it started sleeting/snowing/raining. I thought the ride up was great and with weather brewing the summit was crazy. ‘Snow’ flying everywhere, electricity brewing. If you lifted your hands up in the air static electricity would start to crackle on your own hair! I thought that was just a trip. It felt strange. Some of the girls could get their whole head of hair to start crackling with electricity. After an hour or so up at the top of Pikes Peak we idled our way back down in 1st gear like we were told to do.

We went back to Matt & Crystal’s house after Pikes Peak to sit around a nice little camp fire in their back yard. They still had some of the wood we left from our last snowboarding trip! Actually, they still had our Skis and Snowboards that we accidentally left behind last time as well. lol. We sat around a fire all Saturday night talking and catching up on sharing the good times over a few beers. It was a great time, as always.

Sunday morning we woke up, made another trip to Safeway and headed for the Royal Gorge Bridge! Again, if your scared of hieghts then a walk/drive across that thing probably isn’t going to put you in a good mindset. It’s the highest suspension bridge in the world. Zippy and I really enjoyed ourselves n’ spent quite a bit of time sitting on the back of Matt’s truck drinking a couple beers simply taking in the view. Most all of Colorado is really amazing to look at. Matt, Crystal and Liam sought out the petting zoo while Zippy and I enjoyed the sites. We initially drove across the old bridge n’ parked on the other side. Eventually all of us walked back over the bridge and snapped a bunch of pictures. Matt, Zippy and I ended up going back across the bridge yet again to get the truck. This time Zippy and I sat in the bed of the truck for a better view as Matt drove the truck across the bridge navigating pedestrians.

When we packed up and left there I was beat. 100% beat. My body hit the pause button and I immediately crashed out at some early hour while Zippy, Matt and Crystal sat up chuckling at me n’ trying to get me to wake up to the smell of beer. No such luck. I had too much fun and burnt too much energy. It was a great time. It was sad to leave Monday morning after breakfast.

Matt, it’s great that you made it back safe! Now fire up the grill!
Crystal, I think we need another excuse to immediately return to Chicago!
Liam, You’ll start remembering Zippy and I pretty soon!

Thank you guys! I can’t wait for next time and if we are lucky Chris will get stationed out there with ya! That’d be quite the calling!

Zippy, Morgan, Garf, Blayne, Paul & I camped at Harry S. Truman State Park in Warsaw, Missouri last weekend and the weather could not have been any better. We didn’t go swimming (mid 70’s during the day) but we made up for that by spending twice as much time in front of the fire. Immediately after arriving we setup camp and went biking. That area of Missouri is pretty hilly so the biking was a bit of a pain but you could really haul ass on the way back down.

I bet we got the best camp site in the entire grounds. It was actually a double site, we just got both at the very end of a nice little private loop with our own trail down to the lake.

The lake looked great as usual.

After biking for a while and breaking into the beers, Zippy was quick to wrap one of the picnic tables in cellophane effectively turning it into a “Tie Dye Workstation”.

She even Tie Dyed my Genius shirt. lol.

I’m confident everyone had a great time. I think everyone except Paul slept great too. (Note: Paul says sleeping in a Honda Element is not advised) When we all got up Sunday morning we hung out lazily as Zippy produced an awesome breakfast over the fire.

It wasn’t until 2:pm (which happens to be check out time) when we actually got motivated enough to break camp and head out. Paul brilliantly suggested we all take a trip to Warsaw for some good eats and a great view. Unfortunately the restaurant in Warsaw was closed so we took a bigger step and went down to Lake Ozark to eat at JB Hooks. Definitely a killer idea. JB Hooks has a patio with a 14 mile panoramic view of the Lake of the Ozark shorefront.

Our Trip:

View Larger Map

Blayne! I hope you enjoyed your short stay in Missouri. Remember: “You’re always welcome in Missouri State Parks” hehe. We’ll definitely make our way out to Oregon sooner or later.

We started out late Friday night and canoed until it got dark. We didn’t figure out how to sign up for one of the very few proper camp grounds so we ended up sleeping on some land owned by the Missouri Corpse of Engineers from 1:am to 6:am. We woke up and broke camp when the sun came up. As Garf said it, “A parade of fishermen came through”. There was a large bass competition that morning originating in Bucksaw.

Although we didn’t have any flowing water to help move us along, the whole trip was pretty leisurely. Only in a few spots where the water got really choppy did we put any real effort into paddling. We didn’t have to pack much in the way of food or drinks becuase there are Marinas all over the place. We stopped at Bucksaw Marina for breakfast, then Long Shoal for lunch. We paddled for about 7 hours the night before to get to our camp site. Then roughly 9 hours to get from Bucksaw (where we camped) to the Dam. We could have accomplished the whole trip in one day but it was nice taking it slow.

The weather was absolutely perfect. Highs of 77 with lows in the mid 50’s at night. Perfect for water and camping.

You can’t ignore the fact that this part of Truman only really exists becuase of flooding. There are trees everywhere. When the water is high and you don’t know the channels you can really destroy a boat out here.

Hwy 7

Leaving Long Shoal. The people here thought we were nuts for canoeing that distance. It doesn’t really seem like anyone does much canoeing/camping in Missouri. As odd as it sounds we couldn’t find a single person that had even heard of someone paddling from Sparrowfoot to the Dam.

We stopped a few times to let things dry out. The water was pretty choppy in spots. We also needed to stretch a lot.

We portaged the canoe across the dam. Our next mission is to start at the Dam where we left off and head on down the river. It should be a ton easier and quicker with the flowing water! This is where it came to an end.

– Insert Rant about Missouri –
Missouri really does not facilitate camping. Missouri conservation and corpse land is apparently only for hunters. Missouri has tons of conservation land and corpse land but you can’t camp on any of it for any reason. The only places you can camp are the commercial camp sites and there really aren’t as many of those around as you’d think.