I decided to give the ‘Watch Instantly’ feature a try on my iPad, and it did work suprisingly well, though I don’t want to watch all movies from my iPad. I’d have to say that if you plan to watch Netflix from a Netflix enabled device such as a blueray player, dvd player, xbox 360, iPad or some other device that does not require Microsoft Silverlight, then this service may be ok. However I would try a different movie sevice if you plan to watch on your PC or Mac.

You’ll know if you have the K40 Relay problem by the following symptoms:

• Your car is not running great, the throttle is not responsive
• When you turn the car off, you smell the faint smell of gasoline
• Your check engine light is on
• The error codes causing your check engine light are the following: P1235, P1236, P1420, P1525 (you need a code reader to determine this)

The bad news is that if you are to take your car to the shop to have this fixed, the part alone is several hundred dollars plus the labor for them to repair it and you’ve got yourself one expensive problem. The good news though, is that this problem is relatively easy to fix if you know how to use use solder and a soldering iron.

I have successfully repaired this on my own 1999 Mercedes SLK230, and it took me under an hour to do. It’s really not that complicated. The tools you need are:

• Phillips Screw Driver
• Small flat head screw driver
• Soldering Iron
• Solder
• Your hands and a little patience

Fortunately for you, I have step by step directions on how to repair the Mercedes SLK230 Relay problem in my photo gallery. Give it a visit and you can save yourself several hundreds dollars by doing it yourself!

I run a dual boot system, so I also have Mandriva Linux on my laptop, which I use as my main operating system. I do not have this problem when I’m booted into Linux, so I knew the problem had to be Windows XP related.

Of course, this revelation also worried me, because I began to think I had some how got a virus, spyware, keylogger or some other nasty thing installed on my computer.

For weeks I ran all kinds of programs to ensure I did not have malware on my computer, everything from AVG antivirus, to Adaware, Spybot Search & Destroy, and all other recommendations I could find on the internet. Ever scan came back clean, and I was not infected with anything.

What could be causing my keystrokes to be randomly ignored? I started to think I might have a process or service running that was buggy. So I slowly and painfully disabled every non essential service, and started uninstalling all software. I even went as far as to start killing processes in the task manager that showed CPU usage as I was typing in notepad hoping I could catch a program that was trying to intercept my keystrokes.

Nothing worked, no matter what I deleted, uninstalled, or what process I killed the problem remained.

Tonight, out of pure frustration and one step away from wiping my Windows install and reinstalling it all, I did one last Google search. This time I search specifically for this problem on HP Pavilion zd8000 laptops. Low and Behold, I found a forum with other Pavilion zd8000 users having the same problem!

As it turns out, the faulty battery in my laptop, which died and quit holding a charge well over a year ago was the cause of the problem. The forum was filled with people saying to just pull the battery out and run the laptop off the a/c adapter only. That wouldn’t be a problem since my battery has been dead for so long I’ve been running only on the a/c adapter anyway.

After doing removing the battery, my keystrokes are back and working as normal! I figure it must be some Windows XP service that is trying to monitor the battery that is causing the keystroke hiccup (that doesn’t really make sense, but this is Windows we are dealing with, so go figure), but as of yet I haven’t found a way to solve the problem without removing the battery.

As long as the battery is out of the laptop though, I am typing like a champ!

I am pleased with the popularity of the plugin, and realize I owe it to all those who have asked politely for me to support it and getting it working with the latest version of wordpress.

This weekend I plan to set aside some time to get it working again. Please bear with me for just another day or two, and I’ll get something working for everyone again.

This is something I fought for a while until I discovered a very simple solution, K3b. K3b is a KDE based DVD and CD burning application, but it also has the ability to Rip DVD’s to AVI. You can select which titles you want to rip or encode and let K3b do its job. When it’s done you’ll have a nice little AVI to do what ever you want with.

I use this method strictly for making backups of my personal DVD’s so the originals don’t get lost or scratched up. Remember, sharing copyrighted DVD’s with others is illegal

Your Linux distribution probably comes with K3b, but if not you can get it at: http://k3b.plainblack.com/

This first version is very much beta. It’s only been tested on Wordprss 2.7, though I think it will work on all versions starting with Version 2.3.

This plugin hasn’t been tested to heavily, so please notify me if you encounter any problems, and I’ll continue to work to get this to a stable version of 1.0.

Go download it now!

What you have is a subwoofer with a passive connection. What your stereo expects you to have is a powered subwoofer that has either a built in amplifier, or a subwoofer that is connected to an amplifier.

First off, you are probably wondering if you can connect the subwoofer to the RCA output with some kind of adapter. The answer is yes, BUT the volume that comes out of the sub is so low that it is barely audible, if at all. You won’t damage anything, you just won’t be able to hear any sound from the sub and it will be useless.

The reason for this is that the RCA subwoofer connection of the back of your stereo is meant for an a subwoofer that has an amplifier either built in to it, or a subwoofer that is connected to an amplifier. Either the subwoofer with the amplifier built into it connects directly to that RCA port (the subwoofer it’s self will have a connection for an RCA cable), or an amplifier connects between the subwoofer and the stereo through that RCA port.

But don’t worry, all hope is not lost, you have two options.

OPTION A) What you could do is go to your local Radio Shack or Walmart and buy a cheap amplifier for your subwoofer. If you have money for something expensive, then I suggest just buying a whole new subwoofer that has an amp built in.

OPTION B) The other option, and the one I tend to use in these situations is to connect the subwoofer to either the left or right speaker output, just like you did for your other right and left speakers using normal stereo wire. Now you are probably wondering, if the right and left speaker are already connected to the right and left speaker connections on the stereo then how can i connect the subwoofer to one of these?

Well if your stereo is a good enough quality one that it has an RCA port for a powered subwoofer, then chances are it actually has at least 2 connections for the right speaker and the left speaker. One group of connections will be for an entire surround sound system. You will see the front left, front right, back left, back right, center, subwoofer, and possibly a few other connections.

There very well may be another two connections that are just plain old left and right stereo speaker connections, as you would see on any old stereo. You can connect your subwoofer to either the left or right one of these. You may have to play with your stereo settings to turn on those speaker output though.

This will work decently well, it will not sound as good as if you just went ahead and bought a powered subwoofer like your home stereo expects you to have. The subwoofer is built to only output low tones, thus when you connect to the right or left speaker connection, your subwoofer will only output the low tones from that connection and give you some bass, not great bass, but it should still enhance your movie watching experience.

I hope this helps!

Lately I have been eating out a lot, and when we go out it’s alway to eat some kind of cultural food such as Pho, Italian, Mexican, Thai, etc …

Now I realize that most American food is influenced by other cultures and that most ethnic resturants in America have been ‘americanized’ and usually does not bear a close resembelance to the original origin of the food. However, I’d imagine in the eyes of those not from America those food are not American enough. So if someone from another country want to eat true American food, what would it be?

Here’s my thoughts (excluding fast food resturants which are available over seas anyway):
BBQ Ribs
Any kind of BBQ (pork, beef, chicken, etc)
All kinds of BBQ sandwhiches
Mash Potatoes and Gravy
Coleslaw
Potatoes salad
A true home grilled hamburger and/or hot dog
Buffalow Wings
Philly Cheesesteak sandwich
‘Tex Mex’ (I know this influenced by Mexican food, but really is sort of a unique american food)
Grits
Deep Fried Turkey
S’mores w/Hershey’s chocolate bar, marshmellow, and grahm cracker (please correct me if this is not uniquely american)
Corn on the cob
Sweet Potatoes
Meatloaf (This I learned is uniquely American from some famous international chef on TV who claimed he had never tried it before)

I’m sure there is a lot more that I have not listed and I will continue to add to this list as they come to mind.