Sure this might sound a little surly but hear me out

Cue rant in 3, 2 …..

As you all know the economy is a little tight and we thought that we could come over to craigslist to drum up some business

We are developers and designers who really live and work in Los Angeles not freekin’ New Delhi

We’re also English fluent and some of our guys are really named Jeff, Scooter & Dave not Punjab a.k.a. Jeff, Scooter or Dave

You then get these techno-tards who think LAMP is something you put on your nightstand and just because they have a computer they know stuff

They figure “Hey Nephew Joey spends A LOT of time on the computer let’s have him do our Corporate site”

Sure Joey is just lifting music and watching porn but he must be some kind of freekin’ expert because he spends SO much time online and yet no one has ever checked his browsing history

They offer him like 7 bucks an hour because “that’s more than he’s making now delivering newspapers plus he still lives at home”

Then all too soon they figure out little Joey is a little unreliable.

Between after school sports, popping zits and being locked away in the bathroom for “extended” periods of time he can’t get the job done

Sure Joey can’t get the job done because he doesn’t have any experience in programming, business, life or ANYTHING outside the comforts of mommies house

So, what do the Corporate techno-tards do who have a launch date next week and about 3 months worth of work to get done?

They come to craigslist with some really unhealthy and UNREALISTIC expectations

They figure they offered Joey 7 bucks an hour so they’ll offer a WHOLE BUCK more and want

1) A Resume

2) A Masters/Ph.D in Computer Science or similar with a minor in like sandscrit (look it up) to narrow down the field of candidates a little

3) Whatever done yesterday with little or no direction let alone an ACTUAL request for proposal

4) A creative flair like with EVERY freekin’ neuron in the right hemisphere firing

5) A programmers OCD to write code like a machine with every neuron in the left hemisphere firing at 150% of capacity

6) You to work on site because the trolls they hired in the past couldn’t be trusted to come back from lunch – EVER

7) You to be fluent in EVERY flippin’ computer language to include Fortran IV

50 WPM typing skills

9) You to accept a promise of payment sometime in the future when they “hit it big”

10) SEO experience so no matter what you type their site shows up number 1 on Google

11) Something about being a ninja

12) You to give a c**p more about their business then they do

13) You to be a self starter, friendly individual with multi-lingual capabilities being a plus

You then have to “compete” with EVERY freekin’ idiot from the 623, 435, 902, 817 and other area codes from gawd knows where

I think you get the picture…

He’s what I think I’ll do the next time one of these d-bags offers 8 bucks an hour

I just tell them it’s going to take 10 to 15 times longer to get the work done

Maybe I can tell the property management company for our office space

I’ll give them 5 cents a square foot triple net and see if they go for it

Plus the sad thing is there will be some dillweed from the 623 responding to this telling us they’ll “take the job”

AAAAHHHHHHH!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming

A new year, a new decade, a time to trim the spending.

We have had Time Warner Cable as our cable television, internet and phone for the past few years under the “all the best” plan. According to Time Warner the “all the best” plan is a cheaper alternative to have TV, Internet and Phone service, bundled though them as aposed to having three service providers.

We have 4 tvs two of which are HD, and two are SD we had 3 digital cable boxes and one tv on basic cable. For the internet we have a wireless router, and a gigabit wired LAN. The phone was

digitalphone using the cable network. All of this was costing us about $170 a month.

Now that would not be to horrible if it worked all the time, but there was always issues with our service. During the time we have had Time Warner Cable we have made probably over 10 service calls and had just as many techs out to our house to fix the same issue over and over, weak signal…

Our neighborhood was built in the 1940′s and its aging infrastructure is starting to show its age, the city is constantly working on improving services and ripping the road up replacing sewer, and street lighting. But you rarely see Time Warner Cable upgrading there hardware.

Our tv’s where constantly breaking up and showing blocky digital snow, the internet was slow and unreliable especially during peak hours (6 – 10am and 5 – 12 pm), the phone service was working fine but it would hard to mess that up.

The last few techs to come to help with the low signals said that the level from the pole was marginal but just good enough for them to not send a maintenance crew out to fix the issue.

So now that it is the new year we wanted to see what services we could give the axe and ways we could save some of our hard earned money.

I spent a few days researching and came up with a solution, cancel Time Warner Cable and get DSL for internet and Satellite TV, we will not have a home phone as we primarily use cell phones.

Here is the setup we just finished installing:

• DirecTV, two HD receivers, two SD receivers. $56 a month with 12 month promo and AAA discount
• DSL Extreme, 6/768 DSL month to month no contract for $37 a month
• Phones, for now we will not have a land line, but an alternative would cost $11 a month from VoicePulse Connect

So we have taken our bill from $170 a month to $93 a month that is a $77 a month savings, and we really arent sacraficing service quality.

DirecTV is 100% digital unlike Time Warner Cable that uses analog for all their standard channels, and we now have a tuner box on all the tv’s in the house. The picture quality on the DirecTV is so much more crisp and the blacks are not fuzzy like Time Warner Cable was.

DSL Extreme is a slower rated speed than Time Warner Cable but it is a dedicated ADSL line that will not slow down during peak hours, and from my line tests it provides a lower ping and better line quality. Even with the slower rated speed it appears faster then Time Warner Cable.

If we had chosen to sign up for phones it would have been $11 a month using a VOIP solution designed for businesses, I would have to run a PBX but i can get the sof

tware for free (trixbox) and i would have a lot more freedom than I ever would with Time Warner Cable.

To end this post I am happy to have finally cut the cable and try something new.

I shop on eBay about once a month and normally pay with PayPal in the last 6 years making and receiving thousands of transactions, using PayPal I have had a few small issues but nothing that could not be cleared up by a phone call. But my last experience with PayPal will change the way I look at that company, and may influence the ways I purchase online in the future.

On Dec 22 2009 I had purchased a 1.75″ shackles & spacer lift for my jeep cherokee, during checkout I wanted to use a new credit card. So like most people would do I clicked on alternate payment sources, and entered my cards information, and then hit save and submit. Little did I know that once I hit the submit button all hell would break lose…

To my knowledge the transaction worked as planned the next day my credit card showed a pending charge from PayPal, but it was for only $1. At this point I still thought it was working as I see a $1 charge all the time as merchants use that to authorize the card.

About four days later I get an email from my bank that I have been overdrawn and has over $100 in NSF fees, this is when I discovered PayPal made a big mistake.

I logged  into my PayPal account and reviewed the transaction and sure enough it says instant bank transfer, but then why would they be charging $1 to my credit card? I thought it was time to call PayPal and get to the bottom of this mess.

Calling PayPal was a challenge, it asks for a code that I did not have, but after screaming operator and pressing “0″ multiple times I got a person that was able to help me. After about 5 minutes on hold I was told that I had not selected the credit card as the payment source, I responded by asking if I had not selected it why is was $1 charged? Again I was put on hold and this time got a more real answer  from the representative  ”after adding a new credit card you must wait 1 to 5 minutes before using that payment method and you clicked submit order only 15 seconds after adding the card, so our system used the payment on file”, “our system must validate the card is not stolen and that it is valid”. As a web developer I have worked on and managed many online shopping and payment systems, one of the tasks is to make sure it verifies payment and “then” charges the payment, if it cant charge it the transaction will fail.

I then asked if they can see what payment method I selected and the response was “Our system does not keep that information”, a payment processing system the size of PayPal does not store the payment method the user selects!?

I find this a huge flaw in the PayPal system, one large enough that I will not be using PayPal in the near future.

But what to do about the NSF fees and the fact that they took the money out of the wrong account, I ask PayPal what they will do about it and they said “you will have to contact your banking institution” basically saying that they are not the ones that messed up and that I am out of luck.

Well little did they know I dealt with issues like this before and know that the bank will always side with the customer, I decided the way PayPal handled this required action. I called my bank and said this transaction was not authorized and that I would like to put a stop hold on all PayPal transactions.

This is where it gets tricky, if I had wanted to use my bank account for the purchase I legally would not be able to do what I did as it would be perjury. But because  I had wanted and tried to use the credit card this bank charge was technically unauthorized.

I tell the bank the story and after only 5 minutes on the phone I get a Stop Payment order, and they are doing an investigation for the ACH withdraw she says it will take ten days to complete and I will get the NSF fees back like nothing happened.

Ten days later I logged into my bank and the money was returned to me along with the fees, so now that I got my money back the seller is probably wondering where his money is. This seller is a company and takes credit cards so i give him a call and explain the story and then make the payment over the phone, and we both hang up on a good note.

But this leaves me wondering how safe PayPal really is, I easily got my money back from a bank transfer and put a permanent block on PayPal transactions. What is stopping people from buying using PayPal and then taking the money back and disappearing? I actually found the whole process faster and easier then doing a credit card dispute.

In my mind this is a major flaw in PayPal system and makes me wonder how safe my money is when I sell on eBay. What do you think about this PayPal issue?

One year ago at this time I was looking at a project Jeep to purchase, it was in poor condition to say the least and would not move under its own power.

I then spent a long few months rebuilding it and transforming it into an off road Jeep. Tomorrow December 20th is exactly one year after purchasing the Jeep and having it towed home. In this time I have done many unique things to it and have customized it in and out.

In the year I have put over 10,000 miles on the Jeep and taken it many places, I have never been let down or stranded by the Jeep and over all it is a reliable Jeep. I would feel comfortable taking it on a long road trip with no worries about being stranded, I also have all the tools and spare parts to fix most the issues I would encounter on the road.

Jeep Specs & Projects:

• Painted exterior
• Stripped interior and replaced with new carpet, Volvo seats, recovered headliner
• Applied peel-n-seal on entire floor pan
• Rebuilt Transmission and replaced torque converter
• Converted to open cooling system, CSF 3 row radiator, Three Electric Fans
• Custom HD SYE (Rubicon Express collar, cut down yolk) and Coast Driveline HD CV shaft
• Rubicon Express 3.5″ Super Ride lift, full packs plus extra stock leaf for weight capacity
• 31″ BFG AT tires, 15 x 8 American Racing soft 8
• Diy Front & Rear Bumpers
• Con Ferr roof rack & DIY Ladder
• Slide out storage drawers
• Rope racks
• CB with 4 ft FireStick
• DIY Rock Sliders
• Home Depot hood vents
• AC to OBA Conversion, 2.5 gallon VIAIR tank

I have since taken the Jeep on three off roading trips and all three times it has performed well above my expectations.

Google Apps poster

This week Google has launched a new advertising campaign using billboards in four cities, San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Chicago, each day the billboards will display a different message promoting Google Apps. I have been using many of Google’s products for the past few years, I also have helped many others setup and use Gmail as an alternative for traditional email hosting with great success.

Here is my five reasons to use Google Apps.

1. Google Apps, Free For 100 Users

If you are a small business and looking for ways to cut costs, Google Apps allows for up to 100 users on their free ad supported version. The biggest difference is the 25GB vs 7GB of email storage, as well as being able to force SSL on the premium account but not the standard account. You also get access to Google Docs, but with a shared account of 10GB, on the premium account you get 10GB plus 500MB of shared space per user.

2. Hosted E-Mail, Powered by Gmail.

Here at techimoto our email is powered by Gmail using Google Apps, we easily transfered our email DNS records and within a few hours we where reaping all the benefits of Gmail. One of the key features that drew us to use Gmail was the great spam filtering and the fact that you don’t need to delete anything, being able to go back and search for a receipt or other important message from many years back. Another requirement we had when evaluating our email setup was the ease of access, Gmail allows us to use IMAP and have our iPhones, Laptops, and Gmail.com in sync saving us time sorting and re-marking messages as read.

• Spam Filtering, after much research and testing it was concluded that the spam filtering built into Gmail was far better then other options available to us without a large budget.
• IMAP + Web-Mail, having all our systems and mobile devices using IMAP we are able to keep both our laptops and mobile phones in sync, in addition to that the Gmail web interface is also updated from IMAP changes.

3. Google Calendars

To keep track of my busy life I decided to use Google Calendar, I have my iPhone connected to their service using the exchange protocol allowing the phone to get updates when I modify my calendar. The best part of the exchange link is the fact that the phone will set off an alarm when I have an upcoming event. When I am at my laptop I will just simply login to my Google Apps domain and access my calendar via the web. I wanted I could configure iCal to download updates from the web.

4. Easy, Fast User Management

With Google Apps it could not get any easier to add and manage existing users, from the main Apps page you can add a new user with just 2 clicks and just 3 form fields. This is much faster then having to go login to my web hosting web admin panel and go at least 6 layers down, and then when you do get to the page you have at least 20 diferent options to chose from and if one is not just right the page wont work.

You can also make groups and group together Sales, Support, Web Dev and make it easy for emails to get to the right people and keep the clutter out of others.

5. Google Talk

Google Talk is a very simple and yet powerful chat system, alike MSN, Yahoo, it has a downloadable client (Windows Only, Mac users see iChat) and works the same as most other chats, but one very nice thing about it is the simplicity and ease of use. If you are on a public computer you can log into your Gmail and access the chat system from your email page, his allows you to be able to use it wether or not you have the client installed on your computer.

As for the Microsoft Office vs Google Docs debate, I still prefer a local editor and in my case that is iWork 08. But I do on occasion use the Google Docs when I reading an email that has an attachment and would like to save the time from downloading the file.

Now that I have been using Google Apps for the past few years I do feel that it has allowed me to worry more about the website and it’s content and spend more time writing my own scripts. In fact i rarely ever think “Is our email server working, did we get black listed, did someone relay spam or hijack a domain” all things that i used to think about on a daily basis. I do think that Google is heading the right direction with their service and do hope to see more great products come from them in the future.

Do you think that your business would use Google Apps? If not why?

The Car Allowance Rebate System is a US federal program that helps US citizens to purchase a new, more fuel efficient vehicle when trading in a less fuel efficient vehicle.

Thousands of Americans are rushing out and trading in their old cars to receive a $3500 or $4500 discount towards the purchase of select new cars. This may sound great at first but there are many hidden facts the majority of the population may not be aware of.

• The program is designed to get old cars up to 25 years old with under 18 MPG off the road and replace them with brand new cars that have a higher MPG rating.
• Depending on the age of the vehicle you will ether qualify for $3500 or $4500 off of the purchase price of the new car.
• The old car must have been owned, registered, and insured for the past year.
• The dealer is required to disable the old cars engine by draining the oil and replacing with a water and silica solution, permanently destroying the engine.
• The old car must the crushed and the engine and drivetrain cannot be sold for parts, this prevents the sale of the car in the United States and elsewhere as a vehicle.

Many of the cars being turned in as “Clunkers” to this program are still perfectly fine and are being turned in just so the owner can get a new car, but because the car is required to be destroyed hundreds maybe even thousands of cars are being destroyed. But is this really the best way to get people to buy new cars? Why go to the effort to destroy perfectly fine cars that may only be 4-5 years old.

Let’s say all the cars that went to the program that were newer then say 1998 were taken into a low income car program, helping get the “real clunkers” off the road.

It could work as follows:

• The total household income is less then a certain level.
• Each household would qualify for only one vehicle trade.
• The traded vehicle must need more then $500 in repairs to qualify.
• The car must be less then 35 years old, but mileage does not matter.
• The car must be owned for the last year but is not required to be registered or smogged.

This would help get the “real clunkers” and unsafe cars off the road and help clean up the roads. But why was this not the way the Cash for Clunkers program was designed? We can only guess that it has to do with the fact that the Government has recently bailed out both GM and Chrysler. By requiring people to purchase a new vehicle they are protecting there investments.

Another theory about why they don’t want to have a low income program is “Keep Them Stupid and Poor” consperacy that has been floating around the internet. I think the government has been brainwashing the population, there is so many stupid laws and programs right now and the majority of the population appears to be going along with it.

I see this first hand as I am an unemployed, student. Like many others I have been in search of a job for many months, but because of the current economy there has been very little interest. Another major issue is the cut to education budgets, just this summer I had a class I was attending get canceled after the first week was over because they were two people short of the twenty person quota. I feel that as an American I am not getting what I should, if I pay my taxes I should be able to use that money, and I feel it unfair to allow this program to only benefit the people capable of making monthly car payments. What about the rest of the population?

Charlie Miller, Independent Security Evaluators researcher, and Collin Mulliner, a Ph.D. student at the University of Berlin, demonstrated during a Black Hat presentation that hackers can break into an iPhone via the SMS protocol to launch a denial-of-service (DOS) attack or take control of a victim’s phone.

“Its lots of fun to kick friends off the network, but it’s even more fun to own their phone,” Miller said, who demonstrated the exploits on both the iPhone and Android.

Google has already patched the vulnerability that Miller identified in Android and Apple has been working on a patch for the iPhone OS. An O2 spokesperson told BBC News that a patch would be available via iTunes on Saturday, though Apple has not confirmed that information. Miller told Ars that Apple has asked him to help test a patch, though that test hasn’t yet happened. Miller did confirm that the problem affects iPhone OS up to 3.0, and he suspects it also affects current 3.1 betas. Other phone operating systems would also need patched to the fix the problem.

“We always recommend our customers update their iPhone with the latest software, and this is no different,” the O2 spokesperson told the BBC.

The Apple iPhone hack stems from the manner in which the iPhone handles the SMS protocol, according to Miller. The flaw, if exploited, could shut off the smartphone, deface text or reconfigure keys. The DoS hack floods a victim’s iPhone with hundreds of text messages that essentially allow the hacker to keep owners off the network.

“Basically what happens, you send a bad SMS, you can’t use your phone,” Miller said Thursday. “Literally the phone is working, you just can’t press any of the buttons.”

In this article i will talk about setting up a home network and centralizing the entire home telecommunications into one central location out of the way of normal life.

This article is based on my house and a few years ago I had spent 2 weeks completely rewiring all the telecommunications of the house and relocating it from outside the house to the utility room in our garage, this required installing over 1000 ft of Cat5e ethernet cable used for both Ethernet and Telephones and 500 ft of RG6 television cable. Each room received three Cat5e cables and two RG6 cables, this provided for 2 Ethernet, 2 Telephone and two Cable Television ports.

The reason I choose the utility closet to use for the telecommunications room was done after careful research and planning, the garage is on the lower level of the house and stays cool year round allowing the equipment to stay cool and not worry about overheating. The second reason for this was the ease of running wires to the attic, In this setup I have a 2.5“ bundle of wires running into the attic where it then is split to each room. Another advantage of having the networking equipment located out of the normal day to day area is the network becomes seamless and you don’t see networking cables and tv cables running all over the house, It gives the house a much nicer feel.

I will not be going much into the actual installation of the network, but more the hardware and the reason it is hooked up this particular way.

To start here is a breakdown of the network setup and the requirements:

• 2 Ethernet, 2 Telephone, 2 Cable TV ports / per room.
• Central location for Patch Panels, Splitters, Amplifiers, Switches, Modems, and File Servers.
• Provide Battery backup for VOIP Telephone (Voice Over IP) Service.
• Gigabit Wired & 802.11 b,g,n Wireless Networks.

The list of equipment currently installed (in order from Time Warner Cable -> Computers / Telephones):

1. 3 Way Splitter -5.5db
2. Port 1 Cable Modem, Port 2 Telephone VOIP ATA, and Port 3 +20db Multimedia Drop Amplifier
3. Amplifier to -> 8 Way Splitter to televisions
4. Telephone VOIP ATA -> Telephone 66 Block
5. Cable Modem -> Patch Panel
6. Patch Panel -> Belkin WiFi router (located in office)
7. Belkin Router -> Patch Panel
8. Patch Panel -> Netgear Prosafe Gigabit Switch
9. Switch -> Patch Panel (one switch port for each additional room)

In Part 2 I will talk about each component and its relationship to other components on the network, and why each one is important.

Life in America

Some of the appealing factors for this purchase were:

1. Laredo edition, this means the Jeep has power windows and locks.
2. NP242 transfer case, this transfer case provides 5 different modes of operation (2WD, 4WD Part Time, 4WD Full Time, Neutral, 4WD Low Part Time) this makes it ideal for highway and off highway use. 
3. The 87 – 90 use the same transmission, we already had one from an 88 Cherokee that we rebuilt. 
4. Body was in good shape with only a few minor dings, paint on the other-hand was in horrible shape. 
5. Dana 30 High Pinion front axle and Dana 35 rear with LSD, both geared at 3.73 gear ratio.
6. Factory Tow package prewired with class III hitch.

The criteria for the build was to create a reliable and comfortable daily driver (DD) that is also highly capable off highway in many different situations, this is not a rock crawler but more of a all terrain build. Because of that the Jeep must ride smooth on the highway yet still have enough flexibility to go over a wide range of terrain. The interior must have most the luxuries of modern vehicles yet still provide the ruggedness you would expect from an sport utility vehicle.

The photo to the right was taken on the first day we got the Jeep, right after the tow truck dropped it in the driveway.

The following series of articles will detail each step of the process building this Jeep from a Junker to a Off Road Machine, we will include many photos and detailed technical information that may help you on your own build. 

Here is the breakdown of the steps:

1. Purchase the Jeep, Transport home, and Register at DMV
2. Create plan for the Jeep, including what hardware to purchase, etc…
3. Rebuild transmission and get the Jeep drivable
4. Sand, Prime and Paint the body
5. Install Rubicon Express Lift kit
6. Install custom Slip Yoke Eliminator (SYE) and new driveshaft 
7. Rebuild the Roof Rack to make it more aerodynamic
8. Strip the interior, install Peel-n-Seal and replace the interior
9. Install the Electronics, Radio, CB radio, and GPS 
10. Drive It

Stay tuned as we will continually update the site with more Jeep Build articles, we will also update this page with links and other information for the series.