Brenton’s Blog

Anyone who spent a great deal of money to purchase one of the first Bluetooth printers on the market (HP 995c Deskjet) has been very “urked” to find that HP will NOT make Windows Vista drivers for it. Well, for those of you who have found my blog post, you can rest easy because I’ve figured out how to get it all working!

Step 1: Create a New Printer

Hit the windows key and type in “printers.” Up will pop the printer device manager. Right-click on in the white-space and select “Add Pinter…” from the contextual menu. Choose “Add a Local Printer” from the alert dialog. Leave the “Use an existing port” option on “LPT1: (Printer Port)” and click “next”. Select “HP” from the list of manufacturers, and select “hp deskjet 990c” from the list of printers. It should add the new printer at this point.

Step 2: Add a New Bluetooth Device Port

Hit the windows key and type in “Bluetooth Devices.” Up will pop the Bluetooth Devices manager. Click the “Add…” button. Check the “My devices is setup and ready to be found.” checkbox and hit next (assuming that you have your printer plugged in). From the search results list, select your printer and click next. Click on “Use the passkey found in the documentation:” radio button and enter in the passkey for your printer. Windows Vista will now install the device and create a COM Port for it. Write down the COM Port number that Vista chose for your printer device (mine was COM5).

Step 3: Restart Your Computer

My COM Port didn’t show up for me to use until I restarted my computer.

Step 4: Point Your Printer To Your Bluetooth COM Port

Once again, hit the windows key and type in “printers.” Up will pop the printer device manager. Click on the “HP Deskjet 990c” printer, and then right-click and select “Properties” from the contextual menu. Select the “Ports” tab, and check the port that Vista gave to your printer (for me it was COM5). Thats it, you’re done!

Conclusion

The drivers work well with the printer, and I haven’t experienced any issues with it sending the data via Bluetooth Serial Port instead of a direct USB cable. This is nice since I wanted to leave my printer in another room of the house!

Hope this has worked well for all of you!

Recently, I was getting sick over the fact that I couldn’t find/get the software I wanted for my palm pilot. I was also angry over the fact that I had all these separate devices (laptop, cellphone, mp3 player, palm pilot) to carry around all the time. I wanted one solution. So, I found a Palm Treo 750 auction and bid on it. Far low enough that I thought I would be out-bid, but when that didn’t happen…presto, I have a new phone.

What I wanted in a new phone device, it must:

• allow me to check and manage my email easily
• work as a Bluetooth modem
• support the A2DP Bluetooth protocol for stereo high quality sound
• play and manage MP3, OGG, and other media files
• function as a task list and event calendar in an easy way
• support some of the software like splashdata that I’ve grown to love and use
• allow me to check on traffic conditions
• Manage my contacts
• Have a voice recorder
• Connect to a GPS device and chart position on nautical maps

The Palm Treo 750 is not a palm OS device. Instead, it runs Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6 (WM6). Having used one or two devices running WM5, I wasn’t sure how I would like it, not having liked those. After some head bashing and fumbling around, I’m starting to like the device a lot.

What You’ll Need To Like WM6

Lets face it, having used the Palm OS for years, WM6 is complete crap. Navigation is confusing at best, the IE browser is entirely unstable, and it’s inability to “close” an application easily eats up your resources and battery life faster than you can say, “WTF!” But, despite all it’s short comings, there is enough software out there (some free) that corrects these issues and makes the device quite nice to use.

Google Maps Mobile

A truly wonderful application. Easy to use, allows you to find things, check traffic, and get directions. Also, will plot your location using cell tower triangulation or with a GPS device. Granted, I’m sure Google is slurping up every ounce of data about you while you use this application, but as Sun MicroSystems CEO Scott McNealy once said, “Privacy is dead, deal with it.”

Opera Mobile

Stable, easy to use, and it renders reliably. You can’t ask for a better browser. This one will cost you $24, but it’s a small price to pay in order to never have to use that crappy annoying IE browser again!

Bookmark - PocketPcFreeware.mobi

A great source for free and non-free software, theme, or utilities for the Windows Mobile OS.

WkTASK

Navigation of WM6 sucks. Especially when you’re trying to get away with using just your thumb or forefinger instead of the stylus. MkTASK to the rescue! This application gives you “gesture” access to all your applications. It also replaces the upper right “OK” button with a “Close” button that terminates your applications rather than minimizing them. It also give you a taskbar, just like the regular windows OS, so you can switch between open programs with ease.

Pocket Podcasts

It’s not entirely robust, but it’s free, it works, and its easy to use. Subscribe and download all your feeds right to your phone.

Splash Wallet

I used these sets of applications with my Palm T|T for years and have grown to love them. While the WM6 versions aren’t as nice as the Palm versions, I still love and use them everyday.

MaginSS

An easy to use application for taking screenshots of your WM6 device. Just bind it to a hotkey so you can provide imagery to all your WM6 blogging woes.

This ends part one, in part two I’m going to review my recent Window Vista Home Theater PC.

I know the pictures are crappy, my phone doesn’t take the best quality photos. But, I thought I’d post them anyway. It’s springtime in Maryland and everything is in flower. Taking Twila for walks has become highly enjoyable for the eyeballs.

Not sure what type of tree this is, but they’re all over the place, huge, and completely flowered.

My wife tells me this is a Japanese Magnolia. I must have to have one of these some day! I also wonder if the flower peddles are editable. They’d look good in a salad.

It’s been a while, a long while, since I found someplace to “hang-out” with really good music. While my wife and I were living in Westchester, PA, it was easy. You went to Vincent’s. They always had AWEsome music, good drinks, and friendly staff.

Here in Annapolis, MD, it’s been a little hard. We’ve gone to some events, and places, but never found that same feel and quality of Vincent’s. Enter, 49 West.

We’ve been there before. They have some great lunch options, but we’ve never gone down for the music. Well, yesterday we went to see “Izzi Does It” play. They were great! They have a wonderfully classic sound, and a great group of individual performers.

It was sit down, and a tight venue, but felt more intimate than cramped. They had a menu of drinks, including 8+ types of specialty martinis.

If you haven’t checked 49 West out on a Saturday night, I highly recommend it.

Looks like Spitzer finally resigned. So congrats to David Paterson. He was the first African American Lt. Governor (of New York), and is now the first African American Governor. He’s also legally blind. How AWEsome is that! Big “props” to the physically impaired!

It’s been a while since the last of the flowers fell off my wife’s Orchid plant I bought her. Since that time, I watered it twice a week, and gave it lots and lots of sunlight. It sprouted two more leaves and two more flower branches. One of the new flower branches has five blossoms; the first of which opened this week.

Very pretty!

Blah!

This is the second, and hopefully final change of hosting services. After many issues with “up time” through Brinkster, I switched to Midphase. Midphase, was even worse! Not only did I have lots of “down time,” I also had to contend with my email server constantly on everyones blacklist due to abuse from other shared users on the same server.

A friend of mine, set me up with hosting at Myriad Network. So far, so AWEsome!

I had some issues importing my database, which is why my site has been down for a while. Hopefully, I got everything uploaded just fine, and am back in business.

I was on CNN.com this morning reading the news, and I came across an interview with the guy who does the Truth-o-Meter. I popped into that website to learn more. Just for fun, I thought it would be interesting to find out who the most honest candidates would be, based on the Truth-o-Meters ratings.

How I come up with my results. I gave:

• (-3) if it was a “pants on fire”
• (-2) if it was false
• (-1) if it was barely true
• (0) if it was half true
• (1) if it was mostly true
• (2) if it was true

I then added up their total and divided it by the number of Truth-o-Meter occurrences they had (So, -1 + 0 + 2 = 1. Then 1 / 3 = 33%). Here are my results.

• Ron Paul: 100% Honest
• Hillary Clinton: 75% Honest
• Mitt Romney: 35% Honest
• John McCain: 33% Honest
• Mike Huckabee & John Edwards: 0% Honest
• Barack Obama: -15% Honest
• Rudy Giuliani: -29% Honest

Some of these results are not surprising. Giuliani being a high negative I could have bet money on. Obama was a bit of a surprise to me though. But then again, Obama is a Coal Industry Tool.

Anyway, not something to base your vote on, but a fun factoid for your day.

I’ve gone to many restaurants in Annapolis, MD over the years. While they have all been “good,” I hadn’t been to one that was truly “great.” Enter Harry Browne’s stage left.

I went there yesterday for lunch, and I couldn’t have been more pleased. The “soup of the day.” a tomato and roasted red pepper bisque, was outstanding. My endive salad with sugared walnuts, goat cheese, caramelized onions, and Asian pears was excellent. For dessert, they ran out of apple crisp, but the chef made an Asian pear equivalent that had us scraping the bowl.

I highly recommend this establishment. The staff is friendly and professional, the decor is beautifully historic, and the food a pleasure.

Undoubtedly you’ve all heard about some racist newsletters that came out of a Ron Paul’s campaign back in the early 90’s. You always know when a candidate is doing well, when a nameless person digs up obscure BS to make them seem like a bad person.

I have to hand it to Ron Paul. He should write a book called, “How Washington Should Handle Bad Allegations.”

Watch his statement!

How Ron Paul turned this whole thing around:

1. He didn’t wait to make a statement. He confronted the allegations right away.
2. He didn’t deny anything.
3. He told the truth.
4. He THANKED the media for getting this issue into the open so he could clear it up. WOW!
5. He repudiated everything.
6. He backed his points up with facts about his candidacy.

In the end, he came out looking better than before the story broke! I can’t think of a better person to have in government, or as our president.