My husband told me the other night that he is disappointed that he does not have as many shows to watch as he used to. I have to agree. When we were looking at direct tv DEALS, we decided that we would commit to watching a show together at least one night per week. Now we rarely sit in front of the TV at the same time and when we do, I usually end up falling asleep, so my husband usually just watches a rerun of a show he used to be into. There are a few shows that we both like and we have put them on our DVR, but once we watch them, we have nothing to watch until they come on again the following week. It is particularly frustrating right now because all of the shows that we do watch will not air any new episodes until January. I am glad we have some movie channels so at least we can be entertained by those. Maybe my husband and I need to find a new hobby together besides watching TV.

What is it about weddings that makes women so crazy? It’s like I saw in some movie a while back, I don’t think that planning your wedding should be the time you let your significant other know you’re crazy! My fiancé is the best woman I’ve ever met but just the mere mention of wedding planning turns her into a monster and I just can’t wait for the day to come and go so we can get back to normal. I went to tvbydirect.com a while back to get us satellite for all the games and I’ve barely gotten to use it because she’s always watching one of her wedding shows! I know it shouldn’t be that big of a deal but to me I just feel like there’s something taking away from the specialness of planning when one or the other of your acts like the world’s going to end if the flowers aren’t perfect (and obviously I’m not talking about myself.) I know she’s going to go back to normal soon but I can’t wait!

Have you seen this video? The first time I saw this, I already said to myself that this video is going to be viral. As of now, it has about 8 million views. It’s really a great concept and applaud whoever their advertising agency is for doing a great job.

I showed that video to my son who loves angry birds and he absolutely love the video. He was asking if he can play that live angry birds too. Guess what, if it was just near our place, my wife will be racing out to be the first one to play. She’s an angry birds addict.

I was doing a research on what advertising agency they used. I know there’s Publicis Groupe agency but I think they handled AT&T. What I know is that T-mobile is wholly owned by German telecoms giant called Deutsche Telecom. It could be Adbrands.

Another good marketing gimmick done by their advertising agency is this flash mob. Check it out.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This flash mob was done last year if I recall it correctly and it won TV ad of the year at the British Television Advertising Awards. So whatever advertising agency they used, hat’s off to you.

Guest post written by Erica Lewis

I guess that when you get to college, you want to hurry up and bond with the people that you’ll be living with. Well, I didn’t know my roommate or any of our suitemates going into it, but they’ve ended up being really cool. It also didn’t hurt that I made a cake the second day after we moved in. I love to do stuff like that and I think that they loved it. But I’m also pretty sure that they aren’t just using me for my cooking and baking skills.

One of my favorite timewasters on the internet is actually looking up new recipes to try. Well I was doing that a few nights ago when I ran across the site http://INTERNET.CLEAR.com. After I looked through it some, I decided to tell my parents because they could really use a new home internet service.

I’ve found a couple of really great recipes, some from Paula Deen, that I can’t wait to make. But if I’m going to share with my suitemates I’m of course going to ask them to pitch in for it.

Some of the benefits I can see is that it is easier to remember, and it’s a nice link to add to your website or your business card. I think people would appreciate more if you give them an easy to remember link that your full google plus profile link with all those numbers in the URL. Moreover, it’s easy to type in a mobile phone or an ipad.

It’s a no brainer for me. I’ve tried it out and I used “makerdude” as my name since I love making stuff and messing around with electronics and microcontrollers lately. The process is easy, I just copy and paste my google plus ID which is something like this

https://plus.google.com/116760300085648020773/posts

So I just selected the number portion, pasted it in plugs.name, and then type in my new alias “makerdude” and hit ok. Now instead of using the above long messy looking link, I can just hand out my new google plus shortened link (http://plusg.name/makerdude)

Now that’s cool. If you have a google plus, get your vanity name now otherwise other people might beat you to it.

Just like in the semiconductor facility, you’ll typically find people inside a mobile manufacturing facility all dressed up in a lab coat similar to mens medical uniforms like the one pictured below.

Unfortunately I can’t find a suitable photo and all I found on the net is this guy working on a hard disk, but you get the point. And for all you guys who think they’re avoiding some rare disease, nope, that’s not the reason for it. They’re not protecting the humans, they’re actually protecting the devices they’re manufacturing.

People can carry minute particles and contaminants. A single hair can ruin a batch of devices. Even as simple as human skin cells can be a contaminant.

A big part of the manufacturing process is done by a machine called pick and place like this photo below. What it does is it grabs some electronics components from a reel and carefully place them at the exact spot where it will be soldered. If it were people doing this, it would be very costly as it will involve a lot of manhours and people with tweezers to manually place those components on a board.

As much as mobile manufacturer like to use robots to do everything, there are some tasks that needs the dexterity of a human. Often time, towards the end of the process, you will see a bunch of factory workers all dressed up in scrubs like the ones available at http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/. Things such as final inspection and testing like powering up the unit, see if it works, probably insert a sim card (I’m not sure if that’s part of their Quality Assurance process though), all those things that might be too hard or too complex for a robot, those are just delegated to the factory workers.

Mobile phones are an important necessity in the modern society. In fact, even people with low level income have cell phones nowadays. Although not the latest models, but still, the technology has been embraced by all walks of life.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Our family loves to play angry birds. My wife has an Ipad and she got angry birds rio, the angry birds seasons, and the original angry birds. I sometimes also play on my google chrome browser. Angry birds has a browser version so that’s kinda cool.

I was able to find that video in youtube and we showed that video to our 7 year old son and he said it was so cool, he wanted to play that Angry birds live. He too loves to play Angry birds. In fact we have one of those Angry birds stuff toys.

I should applaud T-Mobile for that concept. It’s going viral right now and it’s got like 5million hits already. Awesome response for a mobile phone commercial.

Anyway, gotta go. I still need to do some research on “home security showlow” in google.

After a couple of years, my digital camera batteries seem to die down on me. Before it takes a while before I need to recharge it but now it seems like after 1 use, all the “juice” are gone. Even my spare battery which I bought roughly at the same time as the camera died down.

So I’m now looking for a nice new replacement battery for my Nikon D40 digital camera. I think I’ll be buying 2 so I have a spare. I like having spare batteries.

Now while at it, I might be buying some of those new Low Self Discharge battery for my flash. If you’re like me who isn’t really a photography fanatic and only use their cameras on special occasions and probably once a month, you’ll notice the self-discharge effects of these normal NiMH rechargeable batteries. So I think I’ll also try those as well.

Now going back to the battery for the Nikon body. I’ve always wanted to buy those battery grips. And I believe those battery grips can also hold AA batteries so it’s good for emergency power. Just buy a bunch of rechargeable AAs.

Which do you think is better? Two digital camera batteries or one of those battery grips?

If only he has one of these spy watches, then he might be able to catch a glimpse of the thief.     Sigh.  Suddenly, it seems like its not safe anymore.  Time to buy my wife a pepper spray.

I wonder if there’s a cellphone with GPS capability wherein you can automatically track it via google maps or even, automatically enable the speaker and eaves drop on those pesky theives.    I know there are products like that for cars.  I wonder if  somebody thought about putting the same functionality on phones.

These original ink cartridges are very costly.    I remember reading an aritcle before that these printer manufacturers doesn’t make money in selling printers but rather in the consumables.  So I’m set to finding a good discount ink website where I can purchase these much needed cartridges.

I came across one site which sells discount printer ink and I found a remanufactured  HP 56 color ink cartridge selling for just under $10.  The original ones costs like $25 so I think that’s a good deal for me.    After comparing a couple more sites,  I just decided to go with the discounted ink option and see how it goes.

Fast forward a few days, and I was able to print my lovely cellphone photos of my kids and the quality isn’t bad at all.    So far I’m happy with my decision to use discounted/remanufactured ink cartriges.