*** Heads Up!*** Data tethering can be outrageously expensive (potentially $8/mb) if your plan does not include tethering. I take no responsibilities if you end up with crazy data charges. My data package includes tethering, and I’ve had NO extra charges using the methods outlined below. That being said, if you feel comfortable doing what you’re doing… carry on

After a whole lot of internet searching, and no success finding a step-by-step tutorial on how to properly setup Bluetooth tethering, I’ve manage to piece together the settings on how you can make this work. This tutorial is specifically written on how to setup Bluetooth tethering with TELUS BlackBerries, and even more specifically my Bold 9700, so keep in mind, your mileage may vary on this one… but I hope this helps get you in the right direction.

My laptop is an LG R200 (C2D T7250, 2GB RAM) with a fresh installation of Windows 7 x32 Enterprise. I’m using the generic built-in Bluetooth drivers that Microsoft supports provides with Windows 7 which proves to be all that’s required to make things work.

First step, is to pair your Bluetooth enabled PC to your BlackBerry. During the paring, Windows installs the ‘Standard Modem over Bluetooth Link’ drivers required for Bluetooth connection to your BlackBerry, and then to the internet.

In the Network & Sharing Center in the Control Panel, there is an option to ‘Setup a new connection or network’ which you select, and on the following screen you select the ‘Standard Modem over Bluetooth link’ as the modem you’d like to use. The following screen asks you to enter your ISP information. Enter the following:

Dial-up Phone  number: *99#
User name: leave blank
password: leave blank

Give the connection name something like ‘TELUS via Bluetooth’ or something, an  then click connect. It will attempt to dial the *99# number via your BlackBerry – but just cancel this attempt by hitting ‘Skip’. Hitting close on the following screen creates the connection and saves the connection under Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections (or by clicking the ‘Change Adapter Settings’ link in the side menu of the ‘Network and Sharing Center’)

*Update July 19th 2010*: confirmed that this setting also works with a CDMA BlackBerry 8530 as I helped a friend setup her phone for bluetooth tethering as well. No need for the next step if you’re configuring a CDMA (1XEV) BlackBerry, read on if you’re using an HSPA (3G) BlackBerry…

Next, from the Control Panel, select ‘Phone and Modem’ settings. Under the ‘Modems’ tab, select the ‘Standard Modem over Bluetooth Link’ and hit ‘Properties’.

Under the General Tab, hit the ‘Change Settings’ button. Select the ‘Advanced’ tab and add this line to the ‘Extra initialization commands’ box:

AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”sp.telus.com”

sp.telus.com is the APN Telus uses for internet connections. Once you’re done, hit OK.

I’ve modified the connection properties to skip the prompt for the phone number and prompt for username/password, so it connects as soon as you click the ‘Connect’ button.

But that’s it – you’re good to go. You know you’re connected when your BlackBerry says ‘Modem Mode Enabled’ like it does here:

Now, I should probably say… Tethering via Bluetooth is NOT as fast as tethering via a USB cable, nor does it help the ‘make my battery life on my BlackBerry longer’ department, but it’s mighty handy when you don’t want to mess around with wires.  From what I’ve read, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR  maxes out around 3mb/sec, so your results may be a little better than this, but for webbrowsing, email, (and creating posts like this) – I’m OK with it.

Things are slowly getting back to normal. We have a great deal of space here at the new place, but we still lack alot of things like shelving, which in order to be organized is a must. We’re planning a trip to Ikea for Sunday, that should hopefully solve the storage issue. Megan had a week off after our move, so while I was at work – she spent the days cleaning, painting and returning things to order. During this week, we had the help of our good friend Breha come up to assist Meg with the painting duties and man, she’s a keeper. That girl can PAINT!

The week also brought the arrival of a swanky new LG stainless french-door fridge. The old one was at least 20yrs+ and quite small, so it was our first purchase for the new place (besides paint and cleaning supplies). We’ve yet to purchase any new furniture.  My dad and I are currently in the process of mudding the drywall in the lower basement so I can do a re-location of my office space. The basement offers more room, a cooler environment (as we’re sans central AC at the moment) and well, those two things alone sold me. We managed to get a steal of a deal on a new TV, so our den/living-room is tricked out with a new 50″ plasma hanging on the wall serving up our TV/movie watching extravaganzas.

There’s lots to be done around the yard. We have a wee-bit of a dandelion problem, which the new Scott’s EcoSense Weed B Gone seems to be tackling well so far. We need some fence repairs and have grand plans to tear down our ‘deck’ and build something new this summer. Needless to say, lots to do. Anyone care to help?

I’m a huge fan of pre-authorized payments. I bill almost everything automatically to my credit card. I like not having to remember to pay my bills and only pay one bill at the end of the month. I usually don’t have any issues, but Bell Mobility has made me re-think my pre-authorized payment route on some of my services.

See, my cell contract was up with Bell in January. I put my cancellation notice in with them 30 days in advance and asked them the exact day I could port my number out without penalty. I documented the rep’s response, got her name and number, and on that fateful day in January – said ‘bye-bye’ to Bell Mobility. I was fully aware that I would be getting one final bill from Bell, which I did. However, one month after that – I was billed $200 for an ‘early-cancellation fee’.

Livid, to say the least, I called Bell back and was like “OK – what gives, I have confirmation from Christina emp# 6021736 that there is NO cancellation fee”. After 25 minutes of holding, the rep comes back and says ‘You’re right, that was an error, we’ll issue a you a cheque for the balance because your account has already been closed and we have already debited your credit card’. No $&*@, you debited my Visa $200+tax, and I want my money back.

It’s now been over 90 days, I’ve since placed two calls to Bell Mobility (each a month apart) saying ‘Where’s my money? I’ve been out this money now for 3 months… I’d kind of like it back, it’s not yours, why am I waiting so long for this?” Each time ‘oh sir, it’s coming it’ll be there in a couple weeks’.

I know it’s only $200, but it’s the principle. They took it, it was their fault, now I have to play the waiting game simply because I was a good customer who every month paid their bill without fail thanks to a pre-authorized credit card bill. Of course there’s no urgency now,  I’m not a customer, they can’t simply credit my account – and for whatever reason, can’t refund it directly to my card. It’s a joke.

If I wasn’t on pre-authorized billing, I would have called them to say ‘I’m not paying this bill, it’s wrong’ and they would have said ‘You’re right, ignore it – it’s been cancelled’. Why is this such a hassle?

To anyone thinking about cancelling any service you have, I HIGHLY recommend that before you cancel, you take pre-authorized billing off your account so that when the final bill comes – you can pay it however you like, you’re not at the mercy of the company who’s billing to have their systems straight.

Screw you Bell… Last time I recommend your services to anyone.

Well, Megan and I have taken to said activity, and I’m pleased to report it’s going quite well. We’re on week 3 of the ‘couch to 5k’ program that Megan found for her iPhone. The whole premise of the app is to gradually ease you into running 5k. It’s timed run/walk intervals (to start anyway) that last for about a half hour in total. For us non-athletic type, it’s a great introduction.

That being said, my knees are quite sore after running yesterday. I think I need to chat with my doctor to make sure I’m doing things right, the last thing I want to do is screw up my knees.

I decided to upgrade my Bold 9700′s OS the other day after an official update was issued for my phone by a UK provider. Considering it had been a while since I had done an upgrade, and the reviews were positive on this release, I decided to give it a go. When I got my 9700 back in December 2009, I was coming from an OS 5.0 BlackBerry Tour. I decided to give my new phone as fresh of a start as possible and did a selective restore of specific data (contacts, volume profiles, custom setting, etc…) and opted to re-download all my applications fresh to avoid any issues restoring from a backup file or using the device transfer wizard.

I use Google Sync to sync my contacts and calendar with my Gmail account, and have always had decent results – emphasis on the decent, because it hasn’t always been magical but I suppose that’s a whole other entry (why can Apple + iPhone + Google get it soooo right but RIM + Google = fail?). Anyway, for the OS upgrade I do a full backup and restore of everything exactly the way it was prior to the upgrade, but during the upgrade, for whatever reason (I think it’s the order in which things were re-installed), the ‘BlackBerry Messenger Group Calendar’ became set as the default calendar for my BlackBerry. Queue the headache… Why is this such a bad thing? Well, because then when Google Sync sync’s it’s default calendar (my Gmail calendar) it populates the Blackberry Messenger Group calendar by default. Extremely annoying and extremely frustrating. So now all my Calendar  updates are now visible to all my BBM Group buddies… Not what I wanted at all.

See, what happens is for every email address that you have on your BlackBerry (I have 3), there are service books on the device for mail and for calendar for each of the email address. Normally, I delete all but my primary Gmail calendar’s service books as the others are completely unnecessary. But for whatever reason, since BlackBerry messenger was upgraded to 5.0 and added in the feature of ‘Groups’, the BBM Group calendar can NOT  be deleted from your phone like the other calendars as there is no service book for it. I was only ever a part of one group that we used for communication between people at work, so while it was handy, it wasn’t entirely necessary. I notified everyone I was shutting down / deleting the group in an attempt to perhaps solve the issue… but – even after removing yourself from every BBM Group you were a part of, the Group Calendar still exists, and was still set as the default calendar.

With my Google Sync meltdown and hours of time down the tube, I said ‘screw this’ and decided to wipe my BlackBerry to rid myself of the headache. Needless to say, I’m back up and running now, but here’s how I prevented any recurrence of errors on the fresh install:

- During the OS reload / wipe I made sure that I unchecked  BBM from the list of applications to install to ensure it wasn’t on my phone by default
- Once the phone was back in action, I made sure that the BBM Groups calendar wasn’t still on the phone – and it isn’t.
- Restored my data
- Re-sent my service books & deleted the calendar service books for the email addresses I didn’t need

- Setup Google sync to sync with the email calendar I wanted
- Downloaded all my applications
- Downloaded BBM 5.0
- Swore to myself I’m never ever joining another BBM group until RIM fixes this issue.

Bring on May 3rd.

Needless to say, the outcome wasn’t exactly what we were hoping for, but in reality it was for the best as clearly it wasn’t meant to be. It’s really hard to describe the thought patterns that run through your head when you’re preparing an offer, but throughout the whole experience I wanted to feel comfortable about my offer to ensure that I was paying a fair, market price for the piece of property I was about to invest in. When we examined the listings in our area that had sold over the past 6 months, the average selling price was equal to 97% of the list price, indicating that there was some room for movement in the price of the house. Now, some houses sold for the asking price, some even slightly higher – but 97% was the average, and when our Agent sold us on this idea, he talked us up from going in with a “low-ball” offer only to have it countered and/or flat-out rejected. I felt like our offer was fair and equitable, but as it would turn out – a competing offer came in higher than ours, and they ruled us out.

So, the hunt continues for us Hunt’s. We’re confident that the right place will come along, it just seems like it can’t come soon enough.

To start, here’s what I’m working with:

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H Motherboard (first revision with the terrible stock Northbridge cooler)
AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition CPU (2.8GHZ 7.5MB Cache 95W 45NM)
4GB G.SKILL F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK (2x2GB) PC2-8500 RAM

Antec Sonata III Case w/ Antec Earthwatt 500W power supply.
120mm Tri-Cool Antec fan for exhaust+ a 120mm Noctua fan mounted behind the HDD cage to pull air across the HDD’s for cooling

First step was to fix the crazy heat issue I was having with the integrated 780G graphics on my Motherboard. The stock Gigabyte cooler was junk, and while I understand that the 780G chips are designed to run hot, when the chipset would frequently hit 100 degree temps (ie:  during HD playback) it would cause system instability, likely resulting in a shutdown/reboot. Initially, I was planning on using a Thermalright HR-05/IFX cooler (which I actually purchased), I applied Arctic Silver 5,  and spent a good half hour getting it properly installed. My biggest gripe (aside from the installation time) was that due to it’s size, it was WAY too easy to bump while in the case, when it was idling at 92 degrees, it had to go. At the same time I ordered my parts, I also ordered a Zalman ZM-NB47J for which I was planning on replacing the stock southbridge. This wasn’t entirely a necessary upgrade, but figured I would do it anyway when I had everything apart. I ended up using the ZM-NB47J + AS5 on my northbridge to cool my 780G graphics, and so far it’s working just the way it should. It *just barely* fit, but installation was a breeze and it’s snug and secure. Idle temps are are around 80, 92 under full load.

Now, to cool the CPU, I thought I might just stick with the stock AMD cooler until I saw it running at almost 60 degrees under full load. So, I picked up a Xigmatek HDT-S1283 for $35 @ NCIX after reading such positive reviews. When I went to install it, I was disappointed to find that the only way to mount it on the stock AM2/AM3 bracket was horizontally so that the 120mm fan that was supplied with the heatsync either pushed air towards the bottom, or top of the case – NOT out the back like I had envisioned it (as per my Arctic Cooling Freezer on my e8400 Desktop). Still wanting to make use of the cooler, I applied AS5 to the CPU using the ‘two line’ method illustrated here (not the typical AMD AS5 method I was used to) and so far, the results have been very positive. The Heatsync is MASSIVE (and just barely fits in the Sonata Case), and it does cover two of the RAM slots, but it keeps my CPU ~30 Idle. and ~40 under full load (Prime95/Hyper Pi).  I opted to mount the 120mm fan so that it pushed air down towards the bottom of my case, hoping that it would push a little air onto the northbridge (using the little spoiler) and also to catch the cross-flow between the Noctua and exhaust through the tri-cool.

So, here’s some pictures of the setup. Hope this helps someone in the future!

So a couple months ago I decided to pull the trigger and build myself a new desktop PC after my LG R200 laptop just was no longer cutting it in the realms of speed / capacity. It served it’s time well for my mobile days of traveling to/from school, but just couldn’t hack editing RAW images in Photoshop/Lightroom. Here’s what I ended up with:

Processor: Intel E8400 stock at 3GHz w/ Arctic Cooling Freezer PRO HSF
Motherboard: Gigabyte EP45-UD3p
RAM: 4GB G-Skill PC-8500 RAM
HDD: 1TB WD Black
Video: XFX Radeon 4850 w/1GB ram
OS: Windows 7 Beta

This is my first Intel build since, well… a PIII 733 waaaay back in the day. I’ve yet to OC, but that’s on tap for the future. I re-used my Antec case from my AMD X2 3800 build back in ’05 and picked up a 700 Watt Modular Power Supply from FS. One of the reasons I wanted to do a desktop (despite desktop PC’s being dead) was to take advantage of dual displays. I ended up getting a great deal on a couple Samsung Syncmaster 2343BW’s. These each have a 16×9 resolution that support 2048×1152 – that’s two 8.5×11 pieces of paper side by side. There’s tons of screen real-estate which is fantastic, even though one of them is already going back to Samsung for an exchange because of a faulty DVI display port.

So that’s my desktop, next on the docket – the Media Centre. I’m a huge fan of the HTPC (Home Theatre PC). This is our always-on, always-accessible PC that houses the majority of our media. It has our MP3′s (incl iTunes library), movies, TV, runs our torrents, stores our pictures etc. It’s evolved into much more than simply a “media streamer” which was it’s intended purpose when I picked up an Acer Aspire desktop PC with a dual core Athlon X2 3600+ a year 1/2 ago. It’s now been supped up with a:

Processor: AMD Phenom X3 720 Black Edition Processor @ 2.8GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-SH2 (w/ AMD 780G onboard video that handles HD content flawlessly)
RAM: 4GB G-Skill PC-8500
HDD: 2 x 250GB Seagate, 1 x 1TB Samsung and I need to replace a 500GB external that died on the weekend (moral of the story… BACK IT UP)
OS: Windows XP Pro (to be upgraded in the near future)
Display: Samsung Aquos 32″ 720P LCD TV

Megan uses this PC (that is also our TV in the living room) as her main computer. The next upgrade for this will be a new PC case… I think I’m going to pick up an Antec Sonata III (just did a desktop build for a client, and it’s a quality case).

I still have my LG R200 Laptop which I use on a frequent basis, though not as regularly as the other PC’s.

Another gadget that’s attached to our network to house even more media is our HP EX470 Windows Home Server. It’s currently stuffed with a 500 GB Seagate HDD and 2 x 1TB Western Digital Green hard drives at the present time and acts as even more storage for our HTPC to stream from.

Our ISP is Nexicom, unlimited ADSL+ traffic – highly recommended. It’s coming into a Linksys WRT54GL router with Tomato firmware on it (turns your $50 router into a $200+ router) and all our networked PC’s are running off a GBE Dlink switch.

So there you have it.

Second… It takes time, effort and energy to edit photo’s. I haven’t been too good at finding all three. But I promise, its coming….