Noah's Randomness

After about three weeks of waiting, my Nest thermostat finally arrived. Well, three of them to be exact. One is for my house and the other two are for my Dad (one for my parents’ house and one for his office). So, with Valerie’s help, I set out to unbox and install my new Nest thermostat!

Step 1: Open the FedEx Package containing my new Nest thermostat. Looks like the guys at Nest did a good job of making sure these little guys didn’t get damaged in transit. Can’t ever have too much brown paper!

Step 2: Open the Nest thermostat box and packaging. Opening the Nest box was like opening a Russian Doll. I kept finding more and more surprises inside. On top was the Nest thermostat itself, followed by the installation instructions/manuals, followed by the base, wall anchors and screws, as well as a Nest screwdriver, which contained four interchangeable driver heads, and finally a series of optional mounting plates

Step 3: Out with the old thermostat! As always, safety comes first, so we shut off the power to the heating and cooling system. Next, we unscrewed each wire from the old thermostat’s base one by one and used the labels/stickers provided in the Nest installation instructions to mark each wire. Then we unscrewed the old base and removed it, saving it (along with the old thermostat) for safe keeping if I ever needed to go back to it (not that I would, of course)!

Step 4: In with the new Nest thermostat! First, we tried to install the new anchors. However, we unfortunately didn’t realize that there was a crossbeam behind where we were installing, so we ended up with one anchor that went in just fine and the other that wouldn’t stay in (and ended up pulling apart the drywall and having the anchor spin freely and eventually just fall out of its hole). Darn. Oh well, instead we installed the Nest thermostat’s base by screwing it directly into the drywall without using the anchors (Note: Later I ended up purchasing some drywall filler/spackle and anchors, filled the hole that was created in the drywall and mounted the Nest properly using anchors).

Once that was done, I connected the wires back into their respective places on the Nest base using my labels from earlier as a guide.

Step 5: Now that the base is installed, all we have to do is connect the Nest thermostat to its base, turn the power back on, and we’re done! Well, not exactly. Nest ran through a series of updates and reboots for about 30 minutes before we were finally able to play with it.

Once it was set up and done, I configured it to connect to my wireless network and then added the thermostat to my nest.com account via my iPhone. Now all that’s left is to teach Nest a schedule so that it starts intelligently controlling my heating/cooling, making sure that my house is nice and comfortable when I am home, yet saving me money when I’m not home by reducing the amount of heating/cooling that is done for an empty house!

Ok, well not exactly done. As you can see there’s a good amount of bare drywall where the old thermostat used to be. So, we ended up painting it to match the rest of the wall. I’ll post pictures of the final product soon!

Not too bad. Overall the install was pretty quick and painless, minus a few bumps in the road. So far the Nest thermostat has been working just fine, and I can’t wait to see what it does for my electric bill!

Thanks, Nest!

For more information on the Nest Learning Thermostat, visit Nest’s website: http://www.nest.com

This XKCD comic is SO TRUE!

EDIT: Starbucks has released an official version of their Blackberry app that works with the Blackberry Torch. For more information, see the following links:

• http://blogs.starbucks.com/blogs/customer/archive/2010/09/02/starbucks-card-mobile-now-available-for-blackberry.aspx
• http://www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/mobile-apps/starbucks-card-mobile-bb

Original Post is below:

I recently purchased a BlackBerry Torch and have been trying to find similar applications for it that I had previously on my iPhone 3G. So, I was happy to find out that Starbucks had released a BlackBerry app for their Starbucks cards.

So, as the instructions on the Starbucks website state, I sent a text message with the word “GO” to 70845

I received a message back with the following response: “To download Starbucks Card Mobile go to http://mobilecard.starbucks.com/wap/home“

So, I go to the site, click the “Download Starbucks Card Mobile App” and get the following error: “We’re sorry, your mobile device is not supported at this time.

For the list of supported devices and more information on Starbucks Card Mobile, please go to http://www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/mobile-apps on your computer.”

No Starbucks Card Mobile app for the Torch? WHAT?!?! This can’t be. Starbucks, you create an app and don’t make it work with RIM’s latest and greatest BlackBerry? This can’t be!

So, enter google. A quick search and I come across this link for the .jad file. http://testcardmobile.starbucks.com/downloads/bb/5.0/release/MobileCard.jad

So, I click the link, download it to my phone, and run it. Guess what, IT WORKS!

Hope this helps anyone that’s looking for the Starbucks Card Mobile App for the Blackberry Torch!

Just yesterday I was comparing the new Android OS-based HTC Evo and iPhone 4G’s hardware specifications and features as my 2-year contract with AT&T is up. With the supposed announcement of the iPhone 4G at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, I wanted to determine my best course of action when purchasing a new phone (as it would most likely lock me into another 2-year contract).

As I was digging through a few news articles online, I found a few that mentioned AT&T had changed it’s pricing model for data plans. Wait WHAT?! For the past few years AT&T and Apple had touted the fact that you could pay $30 a month and have unlimited data on your iPhone (and subsequently iPad as well).

Today I found an article that pretty well sums up my feelings on the matter. Per Gizmodo: AT&T Just Killed Unlimited Wireless Data and Screwed Everybody in the Process

To recap AT&T’s new data plan structure: The $30 unlimited iPhone/iPad data plan is killed/gone (but existing subscribers will still be able to keep their existing unlimited plan/be grandfathered in). In its place, DataPlus w/200mb for $15/month, DataPro w/2gb for $25/month. This chart from Gizmodo’s article may make it easier to understand:

Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently the suspicious knockoff iPhone that was found in a bar in Redwood City, California, is the real deal. It is the ACTUAL iPhone 4G!

For more info, see Gizmodo’s post here: http://gizmodo.com/5520164/this-is-apples-next-iphone

Per Gizmodo, here’s whats new:

• Front-facing video chat camera
• Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
• Camera flash
• Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
• Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×460 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
• What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
• Split buttons for volume
• Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic
Read more, including the changes from the current iPhone 3G norm

I was playing around on Reddit today when I came across this and felt I, too, had to share it with the world.

As I stated on Facebook: “Oh… My… God… Watch this video and let it blow your mind. 4 chords are all you need to play every single pop song ever made…”

Axis Of Awesome – 4 Four Chord Song (with song titles)

Hurry up! Less than an hour left to enter PowerBookMedic’s iPad giveaway.

Details here: http://www.powerbookmedic.com/wordpress/2010/03/29/enter-the-ipad-giveaway

For quite some time I have had issues with my iPhone 3G’s battery life. This week it had gotten to the point that even with my Mophie Juice Pack Air that I would be getting the dreaded 20% battery warning around 7-8pm each night (after taking my iPhone off the charger around 8am). So I took it to the Apple Store to have them look at it. I also took it there due to having cracked plastic near my headphone jack. This was causing audio to drop out when listening to music on my iPhone via headphones.

The Genius I worked with hooked my iPhone up to one of their MacBooks and asked me to accept an agreement that “would send a bunch of 1s and 0s to Apple about my iPhone.” I was assured that no personal information would be transmitted. Yeah, OK (I don’t fully buy that)…

But that’s beside the point. The first thing the Genius said is that he saw a lot of unresponsive apps on my phone. The second thing he indicated was that an update to the new 3.1.3 version of the iPhone OS would possibly cure my battery life issues. I’ve heard that song and dance over and over again and wouldn’t believe it for a minute. They’ve said that about every single iPhone OS update but none have delivered any significant battery life improvement, IMHO.

Then came the surprise. As the Genius scrolled down in his “Behavior Scan” report of my iPhone, up came a section entitled “Third-Party Apps.” What did this show? An entry labeled “Cydia_”… Oh, crap. The next thing I know the Apple Genius turns to me and says “There’s your battery problem. You’re using third-party apps.” I replied by telling him that I had jailbroken my iPhone once a while back and that I indeed did see a slight decrease in battery life which then prompted me to go back to a stock version of the iPhone OS. He replied “Well when we see that, we typically won’t do anything for the customer. Jailbreaking voids the warranty and after that, Apple won’t honor it.” First thing that went through my mind was “Oh, crap…” especially since I had purchased AppleCare for my iPhone (as it has been beneficial on my other laptops, except for my latest one. I’ll tell that support nightmare some other time). Read the rest of this entry »

At approximately 1 AM on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 I was returning to the fire station from a scene of a medical assistance call. While driving on Bethel Lane, a deer jumped out in front of my car. I attempted to avoid it, but unfortunately was not able to do so.

The pictures below show the aftermath:

And here’s the car post repair work:

Thanks to the guys at Bloomington Autoplex for their great service and work on my car. It looks even better than ever! Even though there were delays (I was supposed to have my car back on Friday, December 11th but due to an issue with receiving a specific part, I did not get it back until Wednesday, December 16th).

On top of that, they took the time to go the extra mile and buff out some extra scratches that have occurred over the past few years on my driver’s door (and were unrelated to this accident). Thanks again and great job, Bloomington Autoplex!

So a while back, I said the site was back up. Unfortunately that hasn’t been the case for quite some time now. Due to my own error, the database that held all of the posts, content, etc for this site went “BOOM!”.

So, I was left to start this over from scratch. And here we are!