Mr Papa's World » Technology

My New Audi A6

Mr Papa — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 22:55:21 +0000

I recently decided it was time for a new car. I have been driving my current vehicle, a Mercedes E350 for 5 years now. I have put 120,000 miles on the car and it has been an absolutely wonderful car. Suzanne’s car is getting long in the tooth too and I really don’t want to have to replace two at once. And it would be nice if we could hang on to the Honda for the kids to
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Technology is Great – Until it Fails

Mr Papa — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 04:33:01 +0000

As a true techno nerd, I love technology and the way it simplifies and enhances life. However, when it fails, it can be trouble.

This morning, as I prepared to head off to work (last day before almost a 3 week vacation!), the tension cable and spring on our garaged door opener failed. Oh what timing! And when that happens, getting the garage door open is all but impossible – at least for one guy. The door weighs
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Feeling Like An Idiot

Mr Papa — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:44:52 +0000

As a pretty technical savvy guy, I am feeling like quite an idiot tonight. For the last year or two since we replaced our last HDTV with our current model, we have struggled with an issue on the TV that I have been unable to resolve. But, that’s not where the problem really lies.

This Samsung DLP TV has been a really good TV. I have set up a movie mode that is a series of settings optimized
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PowerPoint Info Overload

Suzanne — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:59:42 +0000

Yesterday was the deadline for the kids to complete their summer reports on Barcelona, Malaga, Madeira, the Canary Islands, St. Maarten and San Juan. Those are all the destinations we’ll be visiting on our upcoming Trans-Atlantic Cruise. Since the kids will be missing two weeks of school for the trip, I required them to complete an extensive research project on the history, culture, and attractions of each destination. They put together the reports in the
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When We Left The Earth

Mr Papa — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:47:55 +0000

For those of you that haven’t been watching the recent Discovery series “When We Left The Earth”, you don’t know what you have been missing. The series has been quite excellent and the high definition images quite stunning.

The series is a cooperative effort between the Discovery Channel and NASA. It chronicles the history of the NASA space program from its inception until current times. The show is very well done and includes tons of footage and interviews that
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Coming Soon – New Gallery Look

Mr Papa — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:53:34 +0000

Well not all that soon to be quite honest. Its going to take a lot of work to convert over all my albums and photos to a new appearance, but work will start soon. If you have been wondering about the lack of activity here at Mr Papa’s World its because of all the work on developing the new gallery appearance. That, plus the work on do on Simple:Press Forum plugin that I am part of
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Cruise Talk Central Getting Noticed Again

Mr Papa — Sat, 17 May 2008 08:00:08 +0000

I know I have said this before, but our Cruise Talk Central site continues to grow in popularity. You have probably heard in the new recently about the lady that went overboard on the NCL Dream Ship. Well, yesterday Suzanne wrote a blog article about the incident.

It has been a popular post in terms of number of people viewing it. In addition, if you searched on the CNN.com site for information
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Sleep Number Beds

Mr Papa — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:31:31 +0000

A while back I mentioned that we were going to be purchasing a new Select Comfort Sleep Number Bed. Our previous mattress had served us well, but was 14 years old. Suzanne and I believed that we also preferred different style mattresses. The Sleep Number Bed seemed like a perfect fit.

About four weeks ago, we went out and purchased our Sleep Number Bed. Suzanne also tricked me and we ended up walking out of the store
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Rosetta Stone

Mr Papa — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:42:43 +0000

Now that the next cruise is booked, its time to start getting ready for it. The trip originates in Barcelona, Spain and ends in San Juan, Puerto Rico – both are Spanish speaking areas.

This past Christmas, as a gift, I got Rosetta Stone German. I occasionally go to Germany on business and have worked a little bit on trying to pick up the language. Lately, trips have gotten down to maybe one a year, so its
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Move To New Server Complete

Mr Papa — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:54:53 +0000

Whew, I think the move to the new server is finally complete! I had some issues moving this time. My sites continue to gobble up bandwidth and I just keep running into issues with shared hosting, so I made the plunge on over to a Virtual Private Server (VPS). It took a bit more work and hand wringing to the get the configuration right than on the shared hosts.

Anyways, I think we are back live with Mr
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Skype

Mr Papa — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 03:09:36 +0000

I seem to be taking more and more plunges technology speaking. Or is that web based speaking? With my new found, reliable, high speed internet service, I am finding more and more things I can do on the net.

You can now get a hold of me on Skype. I have long been a user of Teamspeak for voice chat, but I have to admit, this Skype works pretty darn well. And it has video.
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Qwest DSL

Mr Papa — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:07:52 +0000

Qwest finally decided to turn on DSL out here in my neck of the woods. They had run fiber out for a central office several years ago but had resisted actually activating any kind of service. I guess they think Sonoita is backwoods and wouldn’t support turning on the service.

Anyways, I have used a wireless provider out here for the last year with mixed results. When it works, it works great. When it doesn’t, its very
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Back To Netflix

Mr Papa — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:09:38 +0000

Well, looks like its time for us to switch back to Netflix for our video rentals. We were one of the early/original subscribers to Netflix when they first began their novel approach to video rentals. Getting our movies by mail was a time saver and it was really convenient to be able to keep them as long as we wanted. The selection was great and turnaround time was only a day or two.

However, as Netflix became more
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Help Choosing A Hosting Plan

Mr Papa — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:51:54 +0000

One of the toughest decision for bloggers has always been where to host their blogs. Choosing a hosting company for your blogs has been one of trial and error or relying on the experiences of your friends. Well, we now have another tool in our arsenal for choosing a hosting company.

There is a new online service, www.webhostingchoice.com, that allows bloggers to review prospective hosting companies. The site has a host of tools that you can use
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I’ve Joined Payperpost

Mr Papa — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 00:14:41 +0000

I have been blogging here at Mr Papa’s world for over three years now (the last two years in its current WordPress format). Most of my posts have been related to what’s been happening in our family. A few posts have ventured out into politics or our favorite pastime cruise travel or other unrelated areas. One of the things that I have wanted to do for a while is review things and post my opinions on them.

Well,
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Connection Issues and Call of Duty 4

Mr Papa — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:22:59 +0000

For the last two or three weeks, we have been struggling with connection issues. Its one of those issues that you occasionally deal with living in rural America and having to use a wireless setup for your broadband connection.

The connection from my provider has been occasionally dropping for a minute or two, which isnt that big a deal. However, the connection has had a pretty large amount of latency, sometimes as high as 500 ms.
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Vacation Update

Mr Papa — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:09:42 +0000

Vacation continues to go nicely. I really needed some time off. The last part of the year at work was rough. I still haven’t decided if I am going to go back to work on the 2nd of January or delay until the 7th. I had been thinking the 2nd, but the kids are trying to get me to make it the 7th since they have that whole week off from school.

On Saturday, Suzanne and the
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Merry Christmas From DirecTV

Mr Papa — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:36:36 +0000

We got a nice little Christmas present from DirecTV last night. They have begun to broadcast our local TV stations in High Definition. This is a big deal for us because we don’t watch very many TV shows if they are in standard definition any more. It’s just not as enjoyable.

Living in the country, we actually get our local stations from Tucson, AZ, the largest city in our vicinity. Tucson is considered a small market for
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New Laptop

Mr Papa — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:09:14 +0000

Well, I finally broke down and bought a laptop computer. I have been wanting one for personal use for some time now, but could never justify the expenditure. I am not really sure that I did this time either, but never the less, I now have a laptop.

I envision using it on family trips and for easy computer access from various points around the house. Since we take a fair number of family trips, it will allow me
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Spam and More Spam

Mr Papa — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 02:05:07 +0000

Wow, the spammers never let up. After cleaning out my spam this evening, I was presented with the following message

Caught Spam

Akismet has caught 38,644 spam for you since you first installed it.

You have no spam currently in the queue. Must be your lucky day.

That’s almost 40,000 spam attacks stopped here at Mr Papa’s World. I have had the software running for a year or so now. These spammers try to leave
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