A technology and personal blog.
tonyscha
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Homepage: http://akschaefer.com/about/anthony/
Posts by tonyscha
Blackjack
Apr 23rd
So tonight Kayla and I went out for dinner. We went to Jiamen for dinner, Kayla was not a huge fan, I thought it was good but not my style. We are the more traditional American Chinese type. After getting done eating it was to late to go to a movie, so we decided to go to riverside and do some gambling, I insisted I have to play blackjack. I seem to have beginners luck, and tonight was that case. Since it was my first time playing blackjack at a casino, I wasnt sure what to do, but I sat down, got some chips and started playing like a pro ( just kidding). However since we had to be back to pick up the kids, we headed out early, I only played about 30 minutes. All in all it was a lot of fun, the best part was I went home with 25 dollars more then I started!
Kayla’s new car
Apr 11th
I know Kayla is excited that she got a new car and she post on facebook, but not on here 
So I will post about her new car. She got an 2006.5 Kia Optima. She was sad to say goodbye to the bonnie, but the Kia got a new nickname quickly its called Kee Kee the Kia.
Tomato Bandwidth Monitor with Windows 7
Apr 11th
I use tomato on one of my routers at home. Its a hacked firmware for select linksys routers. So far it has treated me really well. I have my bandwidth monitor enabled, which keeps track of downloads/uploads in gigabytes. You can backup the logs. That is where I am running into issues.
When saving through cifs on Windows 7 (I am assuming Windows Vista is very similar), I had to do several special things to get it to work properly.
1) First issue I had, is mounting the cifs, you need to use the IP of the machine not the hostname. Since it does require the IP, I made my desktop machine ip static.
2) Now you have to share a directory to be able to save the files too. I have mine saved to a dropbox folder as an extra backup. When mounting the cifs you need a user account on the machine and it must have a password. Make sure that user has access to the shared folder. To share a folder you can just right click go to properties->sharing
3) Another issue I had was, the folder had to be in the root of the filesystem for it to work. I am unsure why, but just from looking on google about cifs and tomato that was a suggestion. Since I wanted my logs saved in a different location this didn’t work for me. So I found out if you make a simlink in the root of your harddrive to the directory where it will be saved it will work.
I created a simlik with the command below (With windows 7 you have to run the command as an administrator, right click on command prompt and so a run as).
C:\mklink /D C:\tomato “C:\Users\tonyscha\My Dropbox\tomato”
Now my tomato bandwidth logs are saved hourly!
Enjoy
Happy Easter
Apr 3rd
Happy Easter. I may not believe in Easter or Zombie Jesus, but I thought I would share the holiday spirit.
Today has been crazy, got some eggs dyed, tomorrow will be the neighborhood Easter egg hunt. Schools been keeping me super busy. And I feel like I have been Mechanic Tony on the weekends. Been trying to watch TV shows in my mean time. Stargate Universe starts up again, YAY!!!! Kayla and I started watching Arrested Development, its an extremely funny show.
Time back to the real world.
Hawaiian Skillet Chicken
Mar 18th
I found this recipe about a month ago, it turned out to be really good, so I thought I would post it.
Serves: 4 Preparation Time: 10 minutes Cooking Time: 10 minutes
- Ingredients
-
- 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1 1/2 pounds)
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1/2 cup flour
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (canola, corn, peanut)
- HAWAIIAN SAUCE
- 1 (8 ounce) can pineapple chunks, with juice
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 3 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/4 teaspoon paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 tablespoon flour
- Instructions
-
- Remove tenderloin from chicken breast to allow it to cook evenly. Salt and pepper all of the chicken. Place flour on a plate and coat the chicken (including the tenderloins) on both sides with flour, pressing to make sure it adheres. Shake off excess flour.
- In a large, heavy skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Once the oil is hot, add the chicken pieces to the skillet, without crowding the pan, work in batches and add more oil if necessary. Sauté chicken for 4 minutes, without moving, it will become nicely brown. Adjust the heat, up or down if needed. Turn the cutlets and continue to sauté for an additional 2 to 3 minutes until chicken is evenly browned and cooked throughout, (tenderloin pieces take less time, 2 minutes per side) Transfer the chicken to a plate and remove the skillet from the heat.
- SAUCE: Add the pineapple with the juice, brown sugar, soy sauce, ginger, cloves, paprika and salt. Return the skillet to medium heat and stir for a minute. Add the tablespoon of flour and continue to heat the sauce, stirring to collect any remaining juices and brown bits from pan, and allowing it to thicken slightly (about 2 minutes). Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve with white rice.
original recipe from @ http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/dinner-entrees/quick-meals/hawaiian-skillet-chicken-685154/
Old – Aluminum Case Mod
Mar 14th
Here was my other case mod I did back in the day. This was from 2005 I believe. I will add my comments I originally had 
The place i bought the case from
http://dealsonic.com/skmssialatxm.html <—- Dead Link
The manufacture website http://www.skyhawkusa.com <—– Dead Link
This is the case after i took it apart, and kind of put it back together so i
could get a picture
This is the only plastic pieces on this case are the two on the left, and they are covered up.
I wanted to mount an 120 mm fan like I ordered, this will have to change, maybe a 92mm fan because 120mm will not fit.
I am going to mount a 120 mm fan on the front though. This will require a lot of cutting and gluing of some sort, more to come on this when i get around to it.
The front piece are even aluminum
And at last, the slide out motherboard tray.
I am going to put a blow hole on the top.
This is a picture of the back were i am going to make the fan part of the case.
Going to cut the inside part, and leave the outside lip.
This is how the fan will sit in the back
Drawing is fun… The front of the case needs some cutting to make a 120 mm fan fit. I dont have to cut the front plastic piece because the fan will be on the back side, but to get maximum air flow i will cut it.
Just showing how the front fan will be, but it will be on the back side.
BLURRRRRRRRY opps, well i see pets in pictures so I took a picture of my fish, and my new XP-90 that has an Panasonic Pofolio fan.
and at last the cheap filter and grill guard for the top blowhole.
ANOTHER UPDATE Dremel time !! Here is my front mounted fan after i cut the front
The fan on the back was tough to fit, i need to cut the frame as i said before. Here you can see it sitting in the frame on the left side.
I cut the 3.5inch frame that holds the Hard Drives and the Floppy. I needed the room so the fan could blow some air. I was going to some how remount it but I decided that it doesn’t need it.
Here i jimmy rigged a power supply and hooked up the fans to kind of see what it will look like after it all set to go
This left to do
1) Cut blow hole on top of case, i was practicing with Dremel on the insides first.
2) Get some money and order the rest of the computer components HEHE 
Here is a picture of all three of the fans mounted
The top one with its grill guard, i wasnt sure how it would look, but doesn’t look to bad.
Here is how i marked it off on the inside of the top of the case…. if that make any sense. Pretty much looked at different sizes of power supplies and looked at the depths on them, i didnt look to hard, but the biggest i seen was 180mm. So i made the fan 180mm from the back of the case, then just centered it from side to side. I checked with an extra cd-rom and i wont be able to put it on the top bay but thats ok, i was thinking about putting a fan controller there.
This picture you can see i mounted a fan on the bottom of the case to blow air up.
Old Flame Computer Case
Mar 14th
I was digging through some old photos, and ran across these photos. This was around 2005.
My new Desktop
Mar 11th
I built a new computer over the last week or so. I was looking for something to replace an old used desktop I bought for $20 dollars about 2 years ago. It specs are
Gateway, Intel P4 2.2ghz, 1 Gig of mem, 120 Gb HD, Stock Power Supply with Dead Fan, 120 MM fan keep the PS cool and a x800 ATI video card. The computer was getting very sluggish but severed its purpose.
I was in the market for a $500 dollar Desktop / Minor gaming PC. After a little research, I came up with the following setup.
Motherboard – BIOSTAR A785G3 ~$60
OCZ Platinum 2GB DDR3 1333 ~$50 ( after rebate)
AMD Athlon II X3 435 Rana 2.9GHz ~$75
WD 1TB ~$75 (bought it from dell)
Antec Case/ 500Watt PS ~$100 ( on sale)
DVD-Rom ~$20
ATI Radeon HD 4850 ~$110
Windows 7 from School MSDNAA = Free!!
Total ~$490
It was fun to go ahead and build another computer, been a while since I had the chance. If I wanted to make this a more dedicated gaming pc, I could of bought a smaller hard drive and cheaper case / power supply, and spent a little more money on the graphics card. The CPU does well for the price point. It was hard to decide on where to save and where to spend more money with this kind of price range.
Boxee Review Part 2
Feb 20th
Its been over a year since I wrote a review about Boxee here is the link. I originally only wanted to use boxee for Hulu, and kind of gave it up over the summer since I started using the Hulu Desktop App. However I signed up for Netflix and MediaPortal has a plugin, but its not the best interface, so I thought I would try boxee out again. They just released a new beta several days ago, Perfect! I am very surprised on how much it have evolved over a year.
At this current time, I would save boxee is the best media center app I have ever used, even if it doesn’t included a TV backend ( unfortunately that isn’t boxees goal). Overall it does a great job playing media back, but I would say the apps really stick out here and they are the deal breaker. I am going to post screenshots and talk about them throughout this post.
Homescreen
My Photos
My Music
My Movies – Sorry I did have any
TV Show Library ( Online from ABC,NBC,HULU,SyFY, etc.)
My TV Shows will show any files TV shows you have locally or ones you have queued up to watch.
File Browser
My Apps – There are some very handy apps here.
My App Library – I recognized what most of the first 20-30 apps where, once you started looking at the full list there are alot of hand crafted ones toward the bottom.
Netflix has a great interface and it works great too.
Pandora – at your remote fingertips.
Last.fm – List to your favorite music
Youtube – Search for that funny video or just browse.
Twixiee – Twitter for Boxee
Clicker – Clicker is an odd application. I am not sure if 100% understand it, but it seemed like an extension to the TV show Library. There was more TV shows available on Clicker that were not available on TV shows Library, I recommend checking it out!
Quick Menu – when you back out several times will come to the quick menu, a few settings on top, the main row, and your shortcut row.
The feed page, from your social boxee feed.
Settings – Typical Settings page
Credits – Give credit where credit is due, and boxee gets the credits here!
Well when you finally put down your remote and are done with Boxee here is the exit box. You can exit, logout, or suspend the PC.
Overall boxee has greatly improved from a year ago. Its a high sophisticated media player that works well at the 10 foot interface. This makes me interested in the Boxee Box. I will continue using boxee for netflix for the time being, and who knows, I might be able to write another review in another year.
Boxee is available for Windows (7,Vista,XP) Mac, Ubuntu, and AppleTV. I am testing boxee on Vista and XP. There is also a ipod touch/iphone Boxee Remote.
Photo Gallery
