HOEI

Father’s Day and my birthday are approaching. My wife has asked what I would like to receive as a gift on these days. I have been reading more in recent years and believe I am a great candidate for an iPad or Kindle as an electronic book reading device. I travel fairly frequently with my day job and like to read while on airplanes, trains, or in terminals. I often finish a book while on travel and am ready to begin reading a new book before completing my trip. I hesitate buying another book because I don’t want to add to my tight luggage load. I like the idea of being able to order a book on the fly without having to find my book of choice in the the local book store and waiting several days to get a snail mail delivery from Amazon just does not suit my schedule in most cases. So which device should I choose? The industry leaders appear to be the iPad from Apple and the Kindle from Amazon.

The iPad is the newest on the scene with a higher price, but the iPad has way more to offer than simply electronic book reading.  My chief concern about the iPad actually has to do with all the other features.  I am already carrying a laptop when I travel and that will not change.  So I have access to email, web browsing and a plethora of applications to do whatever else I need to do.  Since I am looking primarily for an electronic book reading device I am concerned that all the other stuff on the iPad could be distracting from my desire to simply read books.  If I want to be distracted by email or my social media interactions then I will fire up my PDA or my laptop.

At this point you might have guessed that I giving the Kindle a nod.  The Kindle has access to more titles that I can already surf via Amazon.  Yes I know that people say you can read Amazon books on the iPad, but they don’t bother to explain how if you are not a Kindle owner already with the installed Kindle app on the iPad.  I am not interested in an experiment with the iPad and certainly don’t want to buy both devices.  My experience with my  Windows to Apple laptop (MacBook Pro) has been less than desirable in terms of capabilities I am used to on Windows. So my hopes for a good experience with the iPad are low.  I also don’t want to add another monthly broadband fee to an already more expensive device.  The Kindle comes with all the connectivity for free.

I will be adding the Kindle to my wish list right along with some titles that I plan to download shortly after I get a Kindle.  I am sure I will follow up with a review of the Kindle in a later post. In the meantime I will link you to a few helpful reviews that I have found.

Kindle on Amazon web site

iPad on Apple web site

PC World: Apple iPad’s iBooks vs Amazon’s Kindle

The Apple Blog

chron Computing

I was using the 123 Flash Chat service and paying for it with a PayPal preapproved payment.  I needed to cancel the service, but the chat service provider had no instructions on their web site explaining how to cancel service.  I contacted 123 Flash Chat several times via email and their online ticket system to request instructions for canceling the service.  I received no response other than the automated response generated by their help desk ticket system.  Then I thought that there must be a way to stop payment or block payments  via PayPal for a service that I no longer wanted to allow access to my PayPal account. Turns out I was right.  PayPal lists a link to “My Preapproved Accounts” under the “Financial Information” section of My Account/Profile.  This area of PayPal allowed a user to manage payments that they automatically send to merchants.  With this feature of PayPal I was able to cancel the automatic withdrawal that I been allowing for TopCMM Software to pay for the 123 Flash Chat service for nearly three years.  This a great feature and a money saver for PayPal users.

The new Toddlerhood Trainsition series has been completed by Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo.  The GFI leader site has been updated to accomadate this new series including video clips from each of the class sessions.  The new series is fast moving and packed with the same Biblical principles found in the Growing Kids God’s Way series.

The Gingerbread Train on Grill’n Time is by far the most popular attaction duirng the Christmas Holidays.  This blog is a place for our whole family to contribute to HOEI.com.

This post features the first HOEI.com blog.  Caden’s Page was created the day our son Caden was born (11/2/2004).   Caden’s Page was originally created to help inform family and friends aware of Caden’s medical condition.

Caden has endured numerous complications associated with a 22q11.2 chromosome deletion that was detected before his birth.  This disorder is also called DiGeorge Syndrome.

Some of the complications include:

Heart Defects

Swallowing -Tube Feeding

Sub mucus Cleft Palate

Scoliosis

Reflux

Immune Deficiencies

Here are a few tips on how to change your Network Interface card IP address setting from the command line. Why? Well, as a network security engineer there can be a number of reasons that require switching between network segments many time in a day. I might have to move my laptop off into a DMZ to verify connectivity after making Firewall changes. Most of these segments were not running a DHCP server and required that I manually set the IP, Default Gateway, subnet mask, and sometime the DNS settings.  So running a ipconfig release and renew was not going to do it.  Then I might have to switch back to a segment running DHCP.  I was often running from the command line anyway to execute ping and tracert. I also use SSH from the Windows command line to access routers, switches, and firewalls so it just made sense to switch IP settings from the commandline.  Here is how I do it:

1. Create folder a in My Documents called “ip”
2. Inside of that folder create as many batch files as required to meet your needs

Example Batch (.bat) file used to switch from static IP back to DHCP.

netsh interface ip set address name=”Local Area Connection” static 192.168.10.200 255.255.255.0 192.168.10.2 1
netsh interface ip set dns “Local Area Connection” static 192.168.16.102 primary

Note: this file only contains two lines (each beginning with “netsh interface”)

Each of your Ethernet adapters will be listed as “Ether adapter [some name]:” The portion between the [brackets] is what you enter between the “quotes” after name=.

Below is an example of how to set a static IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, and DNS.

netsh interface ip set address name=”Local Area Connection” static 192.168.10.200 255.255.255.0 192.168.10.2 1
netsh interface ip set dns “Local Area Connection” static 192.168.10.102 primary

I create as many of these as needed and name the bat files something that makes sense to me for the job I am on. My bat files might be named;

• DHCP.bat
• homewireless.bat
• siteFWinside.bat
• siteFWoutside.bat
• siteDMZ1.bat
• siteDMZ2.bat

If you put your ip folder in your path then you can execute the bat files from any directory on the command line.  You can also put bat files on your desktop and create keyboard shortcuts as well. I put a copy of my DHCP.bat on my desktop and assign it a Ctrl+Alt+D keyword shortcut.