Degens Blog

Yea Mafia wars is one of my life “time sinks” (we’ll discuss this topic later)…after a lot of playing I have compiled a list of all of the currently available job mastery items for New York, Cuba, Moscow, and Bangkok. I have to admit though the end ones in Moscow and Bangkok I found on the web…I’m not quite through mastering those cities…

City/Lvl	Image	Attack	Defense	Special
New York / Street Thug		NA	NA	+4% Dmg dealt in fights
New York / Associate		NA	NA	-7% Dmg received in fights
New York / Soldier		NA	NA	Health Regen timer reduced by 30 seconds
New York / Enforcer		NA	NA	-5% Cost of Properties
New York / Hitman		NA	NA	Stamina Timer reduced by 30 seconds
New York / Capo		NA	NA	-5% Property Repair Cost
New York / Consigliere		NA	NA	Energy Regen Timer reduced by 30 seconds
New York / Underboss		NA	NA	+5% Experience from jobs
New York / Boss		NA	NA	2x Energy Points per regen period
Cuba / El Soldado		40	30	NA
Cuba / El Capitan		38	35	NA
Cuba / El Jefe		54	24	NA
Cuba / El Patron		46	34	NA
Cuba / El Padrino		42	56	NA
Cuba / El Cacique		40	30	NA
Moscow / Baklany		36	52	NA
Moscow / Boets		50	38	NA
Moscow / Brigadir		48	30	NA
Moscow / Avtoritety		18	48	NA
Moscow / Vor		28	65	NA
Moscow / Pakhan		54	22	NA
Bangkok / Brawler		65	42	NA
Bangkok / Criminal		58	74	NA
Bangkok / Pirate		88	51	NA
Bangkok / Commandant		96	69	NA
Bangkok / Oyabun		72	111	NA
Bangkok / Dragon Head		70	112	NA

I recently had to reinstall my copy of Xcelsius Engage 2008 onto a new computer. By doing this I lost all of my custom color themes. There is an extremely easy way to transfer the themes to the new computer.

First, go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Business Objects\Xcelsius\assets\themes\custom on the old computer (remove (x86) if your are running a 32bit machine) Copy all xml files from this directory to the same directory on your new computer. Start up your new Xcelsius install and voila all of your color themes are back!!!

Instead of buying pre-built machines and spending twice what is necessary, we built our own Core i7 rigs. Here is a picture of the 5 newest additons to the Autimis family. Meet 40 cores (20 physical, 20 hyper threads) of computing madness!!!
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If you are having problems signing up via the form here
http://www.bcbstx.com/provider/ec/ndas.htm

You are not alone….their form has been broken for awhile now. The correct place to go to sign up for NEBO/NDAS is via the ecare website at:
http://www.ecare.com/signup.html

Send an email to their info address and they will reply with an enrollment packet. This is well worth the minimal monthly cost as you can check all the BCBSTX claim status you want…no more waiting on the phone! Please reply here if you have found an easier or cheaper way to check Blue Cross claim status.

So this post is not exactly relevant to the rest of the content on my blog…yet you still managed to find your way here. Everyone has to eat and my wife and I love to eat SUSHI!
We use the below ingredients for our Sushi vinegar sauce.
Rice Vinegar x 2 Tbsp
Sugar x 2 Tbsp
1/4 lemon’s juice
Salt x 1 tsp

Procedure:
Cook 2 cups of short grain sushi rice.

To make your Sushi vinegar: Mix rice vinegar, sugar, 1/4 of a lemon’s juice, and salt into a sauce pan. Heat only until the sugar and salt dissolves completely. Let your rice cool a bit after it is done cooking. Then slowly pour your sushi vinegar over the rice and fold it in gently. Do this until the rice is a shiny.

Use a sushi rolling mat to tightly roll your rice, seaweed, and other ingredients together. VERY IMPORTANT (unless you want mutant pieces of sushi that look like they were pulled apart by hand) clean your knife in between cutting rolls and do not worry about drying the knife completely. A little moisture on it makes it all the easier to cut beautiful pieces of sushi.

That’s it…good luck. Making your own sushi is a great experience and it sure does beat paying $6-$15 per roll

Well…I was bored and debating whether or not to host exchange for my new company or begin to purchase equipment to do it in house. So I decided to start crunching numbers and research via google. What I found was that many sources for this information is extremely bias or simply obsolete. I put together a quick flash calculator to help you crunch your own numbers and see which model works better for you. Remember, this is simply to determine if the monetary side of the equation works for you…there are MANY other issues to consider before jumping into either pool.

For example, Healthcare ogranizations must follow HIPAA rules which will put a large damper on the hosted exchange side of the equation. Bottom line, use this tool at your own risk, let me know if you find mathmatical errors in my formulas, and do your OWN research

Here is the tool:
InHouseVsHostedCalculator

I just started using an HTC Touch Pro as my mobile work environment and I have to say I love it! The full keyboard is fantastic…I can type full emails with ease. Windows mobile blows away the iphone any day (especially for those that use their phone for work and not just screwing around). The one issue that until today I had not been able to fix is that all of my Outlook sub folders were not syncing. I found a blog post that solved the problem here:

http://www.geardiary.com/2008/08/19/how-to-synchronize-multiple-mail-folders-in-windows-mobile-61/

To summarize his post:

On windows mobile outlook, go to Inbox –> Menu –> Tools –> Manage Folders –> Check each folder you want to sync.

I have to say….when i’m wrong… I’m usually really wrong. My last post about Xobni covering up Outlook’s auto suggest was incorrect. I mistakenly saw only the advertisement Xobni puts into the auto suggest area instead of my contact suggestions.

Now, if you have not tried Xobni plus…it is a must. There is a free 14 day trial, use it. The auto suggest feature alone in Xobni plus is phenomenal. It not only returns the usual outlook suggestions but it returns all relevant emails from its index…this means ANYWHERE an email address is found….
Think of this example; You are talking to a new client (as I do often) and receive an email from them. You have not emailed them in outlook as of yet and as such the auto suggest feature is useless… In comes Xobni plus…now Xobni has indexed your emails and by simply typing the first few letters of your new clients name their email address is now suggested (one click…email….awesome)

Thanks Matt for responding to my blog and making me feel like people actually read this stuff

First off, Xobni is an amazing outlook addon.  If you do not know what it is you should check out its features here: www.xobni.com

Just recently Xobni decided to release a pro version for a fee.  In this new version they have built in a more advanced auto suggest feature than outlook currently provides.  The problem is that in the free version now it constantly covers up Outlook’s auto suggest with a message telling you to upgrade to Xobni pro…very annoying and a shady tactic to get sales if you ask me…

Luckily there is a very easy way to shut off the auto suggest in the free version.

Click on the Gear as shown in the pic below:

Then select Options

Then remove the check next to Auto Suggest and click OK

After some serious digging a friend of mine found the connection details needed to connect your TomTom Go 720 to a blackbery phone.  In this case it is to a blackberry 8100 perl.

Step 1 Set up the data plan connection (no you do not need to have the tethering option active on your Cincinnati Bell plan)

The Tom Tom will automatically ask you to set up a data connection after you select Tom Tom services from your menu.

Select United States as your country (not sure if this works elsewhere)

Select Other as your provider and confirm that you want to set up the data connection manually

Access Point name is: wap.gocbw.com

Username is: cbw

Leave password blank

The TomTom will ask how you want to get an IP, click Automatic

It will then ask how you want to obtain DNS, click Automatic

It will provide a default dial number of *99#, leave this alone just click OK

It will then ask for a login script (this part is a pain, make sure you type accurately) the script =

+cgdcont=1,”IP”,”wap.gocbw.com”

To get to the symbols on the TomTom click on the numbers and then the symbols.  The login script is case sensitive.

Thats it! Enjoy.