Six Flags Magic Mountain and Knott’s Berry Farm

Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure

Various Beach photos

Carowinds

While I’m stuck at work however, or at local airports not willing to provide free wireless I’ve really been wanting to leverage my unlimited data plan and tether my BlackBerry to my laptop and leverage the modem function.

This ability is built into all BlackBerries and as far as I know any provider can offer the service.  In nearly every case, they will hide the ability from you; either by claiming it to “not be supported” as in my case, or by offering it via a upgraded data plan.

As with anything, Google is your friend here.  After a hour or two searching while wrapping up lose ends before leaving town Friday, I found plenty of resources on how to use your BlackBerry as a modem for your PC or Mac.

BlackBerryForums.com has a great quide and FAQ here.  This will probably be the last step for anyone trying to accomplish this.  They list a lot of carrier specific information to get you up and running depending on who your provider is.  Unfortunatly for CellularSouth, the information isn’t as well known.  I did a bit more searching and found some conflicting information, but I eventually found a combination that works.

How to tether your BlackBerry to a Mac:

• Pair your BlackBerry to your laptop using the Bluetooth Preferences (System Preferences > Bluetooth) Click Add (+) and select Mobile Phone.  Make sure your BlackBerry is Discoverable.  Enable all options related to Dial-up Networking.
• Under System Preferences > Network, select Bluetooth and enter your carrier specific Number, Username and Password.
  • CellularSouth Example:
    • Telephone Number: #777
    • Account Name: Your SIP User ID (Dial ##000000 on your BlackBerry and look at the A-Key Section) This will be a 10-digit phone number @cs3g.com.  This might be your phone number, but in my case it wasn’t
    • Password: Your Phone’s ESN in Hexidecimal format.  Select Menu > Options > Status on your BlackBerry.  Your ESN Hex is the last line.  Enter this as your password in all UPPERCASE.

• While still in the Bluetooth portion of the Network settings, select Advanced.  Set these options:
  • Vendor: Generic
  • Model: Dial Up Device
  • Dial Mode: Ignore Dial tone when dialing
    Leave all other options set to default and click ok, then Apply.
• From the Network screen you should be able to click Connect and establish a connection via your BlackBerry!

If this is too much trouble for you, or you are uable to find carrier specific information for connecting, there are applications that install on the BlackBerry and on your laptop for achieving the same functionality. You will have to pay dearly for them though.

MobiShark - http://mobishark.com/ $49.97 – Windows Only

iMobiMac – http://imobimac.com/ $69.95 – MobiShark for OS X.  I believe this is from the same creators of MobiShark.  Why they charge so much more for the OS X version, I’m not sure.

TetherBerry – http://www.tetherberry.com $59.99 – Windows only, USB only.

I’ve been running for two days with no problems at all.  My connection via laptop seems to be much better than the phone browser as well.  Note:  I make no claims to how this will effect your Terms of Service with your provider.  You will be pulling a lot more data tethering your BlackBerry to a laptop than if you were using the device alone.  Use at your own risk.  Don’t hold me responsible if you lose your data plan or get stuck with a large bill.

I’m really not sure what we are getting ourselves into with this system.  Its going to be a beast!

This morning I headed to the airport en route to LAX. After a short 4 hour flight I made it to LA. First stop was naturally for the best food Califronia has to offer.  I’ve read people cheesing over In-N-Out for years and even the dude supports a 2×4.  I ordered a double double and to show my leet knowledge of the “secret” menu some Animal Style fries that my intestines still haven’t forgiven me for.

Not sure where this fits on the nutritional pyramid.

In-N-Out has kind of a cult following. There are fan sites, people exposing all of the secret menu items, and pondering the reason John 3:16 is on the bottom of the cups. Even the airport location I ate at has a video on Facebook.

The burger was tasty, but it wasn’t anything amazing. It was fairly greasy, and similar to what a fresh Sonic burger might taste like if they existed. The animal fries were interesting, but I wish I had gone with ketchup instead. I’ve heard I have to try a Tommy burger out here as well, so we’ll see how they stack up.

After In-N-Out I headed west to Venice beach. Venice was a strange place. It was cool in the sense that there isn’t anywhere else that’s really like it. For me it’s like New Orleans. I appreciate its uniqueness, but wouldn’t rush back to visit. It provided a great afternoon of people watching and entertainment though.

I found some parking just past the canal neighborhoods and headed north up the beach. It was mostly cloudy and about 65, but that didn’t stop a lot of people from getting in the water.

All of the pics from Venice can be found here. There was a group of street performers going several stunts and telling jokes for the crowd. They were pretty entertaining, even if shameless in their cash grab.

I was starting to kick myself a little bit because in the past few weeks I started to get some tentative plans to hit the St. Louis and Washington D.C. parks. But earlier this week I was even more frustrated that I didn’t have my pass in hand because I received approval on Wednesday for a set of training courses over the next two weeks in Southern California; very close to Magic Mountain

Way to push your product at the right time SF!

So here I am with plans to hit 3 Six Flags properties on the year I
decline to get a pass. I am due to fly out in two days so its much too late to order it and have one mailed. However, this afternoon I got a letter from Six Flags themselves. To my surprise, SF through some cosmic wizardry anticipated my need and decided to mail me a season pass anyway that I could activate online should I be so inclined. The photo from 2006 should really go though

2006 Mike ...wow

Great timing, ready to go!

Awesome job Six Flags! I was considering skipping Magic Mountain because I’ve never been a fan of doing parks alone and it will be a bit out of the way, but now I think I have to get up there and get the credits.

IT: Its a head banging good time

For some reason WordPress was having problems accessing the database. I did a quick check of my Webhost’s cPanel, and the database itself using MySQL and everything checked out. I confirmed other databases I had hosted still worked fine, which put the problem back on the WordPress installation and Database. The wp_config.php file was exactly the same as it was when I last touched it a few short months ago.

Exhausting all of my stellar trouble shooting skills, I turned to the Google Machine. After 10 minutes of trying various search terms, I came across another WordPress user who had this problem a few days ago.  It seems WordPress randomly gets tired of using the same database login and decides to just stop working until you give it a new friend to play with.  Five minutes later I have a shiny new database user created and a updated wp_config.php file uploaded.

…I bet you can guess where that got me since you are reading this post.  So now I have two perfectly good database user IDs, only one works for every database other than WordPress.  I’m reminded how much I hate technology and full of self-loathing that I have made it my career.  I encounter way too many issues that are resolved without determining a root-cause.

It seems someone has hacked thier update feed.  I’m getting texts from people that can get to the site that the updates range from STEVE JOBS HAS DIED to STEVE JOBS IS GAY.

Expedition Everest from my Animal Kingdom 2008 Album

After a lot of experimentation with different CMS tools and Gallery software, I have finally decided to try WordPress with Gallery 2 Integration; using the WPG2 plugin to tie the two applications together.  For now, I have settled on the Mandingo theme for WordPress and the pre-packaged, minimalist Siriux theme for Gallery.  They have been tweaked a little bit to look a little cleaner, and will likely get modified more in the future.

I’m still working on getting my images re-sized, commented, and uploaded.  Hopefully I will be able to set aside some time to work on that over the Christmas slow season at work.