Personal on Bloodforge Blog

Bloodforge has a new home

Fri, 08 Sep 2017 00:00:36 +0000

Bloodforge.com is now powered by Blogifier.

Blogifier is a .NET Core 2.0 project. Because my previous webhost didn’t support .NET Core, I switched over to using Digital Ocean. I wanted to move to Azure, but since I didn’t way to pay more than $5 per month, that wasn’t really an option.

This is also the first time in a very long time that my website is running on Linux. So far, so good.

Awesome Java vs .NET video

Thu, 07 Apr 2016 00:00:21 +0000

I love .NET, but this video is really funny and well done.

Detailed Geothermal Analysis in Cincinnati, Ohio

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 00:00:01 +0000

The following numbers are all in kWh, and for my single-family house that is about 2,000 square feet, plus basement. All heating is electric. My electric bills usually come in around the 17th to 20th of the month. In the data below, an October value is actually the usage from the second half of September to the first half of October.

The data is current as of 5/24/2017. I’ll try to update this monthly.

Arronco Geothermal Installation in Cincinnati Part 2

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 00:00:44 +0000

This is a follow-up article to my initial article about my geothermal installation.

For the past couple days, Arronco was finishing up their geothermal installation in my house. The first day was spent on removing my existing unit as well as setting up the Byrant geothermal unit (GT-PB). The second day was spent on finishing up the GT-PB install, hooking up the tubes that run outside to the unit, attaching my water heater to the geothermal unit, and finally setting up my thermostat.

My Arronco Geothermal Installation in Cincinnati

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 00:00:22 +0000

It was time for me to replace my heat pump, and I got a few bids from local companies. I ended up setting on a geothermal system from Arronco.

They came out yesterday to drill the wells where the tubes will go. The first thing to show up was the tubing, delivered by a local delivery company.

After that the Arronco geothermal truck showed up.

Horrible Experience with Square Enix and Digital River – Review

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 00:00:31 +0000

It could have been worse, in that my order could not have arrived. It did arrive, although almost 1 month late and after I spent hours of my time on the phone with Digital River customer support (and many email threads).

Feb 10th, 2014

I pre-ordered Final Fantasy 13-3 Lightning Returns from the Square Enix online store, which is powered by Digital River. I had already heard of how bad Digital River can be due to their complete screw-up of the Ni No Kuni Collectors Edition. However, since that had happened about 1 year prior, I thought that they may have already fixed their problems.

Samsung Focus Phone Battery Charging Bug (WP7)

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:29 +0000

The Samsung Focus appears to have a bug where if the battery is completely dead (as in, once its dead for a day, leave it in there for another week until it is completely discharged), the phone cannot charge the battery.

I have been able to charge the battery by taking it out of the Focus and putting it in other Galaxy-class phones, which do not have this bug. Once the battery was charged up a bit, I was then able to power up the Focus and finish charging the battery.

WP7 voice to text seems to be down

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:58 +0000

For the past few days, I haven’t been able to use the voice to text feature when searching on my Samsung Focus. It seems like Microsoft knows about the issue, but I hope this gets resolved soon.

There is a thread about it already on Microsoft Answers.

Using QR codes as signatures and avatars

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:00:02 +0000

Just created my new sig using Google’s QR code API ( http://createqrcode.appspot.com/ ). It creates the codes with error correction (there are some settings that you can use to modify this), so its possible to actually delete a part of it and enter your own image/text in the middle of the QR code.

I had to play around a little with my name in the middle. If it is not aligned properly on the QR code or if it covers the wrong area, the code won’t be recognized.

Create Custom Ringtones in Windows Phone 7

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The first thing you’ll need to create a custom ringtone in WP7 is an MP3 file. This file must be 40 seconds or shorter (and 1MB or smaller in size). If your MP3 is too large, you can use a program like Audacity to crop it.

After you have your MP3 file the correct size, you’ll need to open Zune and make sure that the MP3 is listed in your music collection. Find it in the collection, right click on the MP3, and click on “Edit”. This should bring up a window with the MP3 properties. The only real important thing here is that the genre of the song must be changed to Ringtone. See the image below.

New option for fantasy football draft software

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:00:09 +0000

There’s some pretty cool new software for fantasy football this year. It is designed for fantasy football draft parties (for up to 20 teams) to select their players via either a snake draft, or an auction draft.

The draft software is called Prime Time Draft, and it was developed by folks at where I work. It is designed for Windows, and it really shines when you hook it up to a big TV.

Switched hosting providers from DiscountASP.net to Arvixe

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:00:26 +0000

I wanted to start using SQL Server. I was using DiscoutASP.NET, and was paying $10/mo. If I wanted to add on SQL Server, it would have cost an additional $10 per month, brining the total to $240 per year, which was a bit more than I wanted to pay for hosting on a personal blog.

I searched around and found a host named Arvixe. The price was absolutely excellent. The basic hosting package costs $5/mo, and it comes with 6 websites and 6 SQL Server databases. They also claim unlimited bandwidth and storage, although I’m not sure what it means. I am pretty sure that its not really unlimited, although I doubt they’ll complain about my little blog. The final price for Arvixe (I also got a static IP) was $96 for 2 years (that’s with a 20% off coupon, which can be found pretty easily using Google), with an additional $48 for a static IP for 2 years. Not bad, and way cheaper than what I was paying before.

Finallly!

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:00:50 +0000

Finally got Rank 1 in a diamond league (random 2v2) in Starcraft II.

I realize rankings don’t mean much, but its still cool to get there.

Logitech Harmony 1000 Class Action Lawsuit Settlement – H1000

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:00:05 +0000

Logitech has started to send out the replacement remotes (890) as part of their settlement in the class action (Arthur Fulford v. Logitech Inc. Class Action Settlement).

Mine came in the mail yesterday on April 15th. It was a refurbished model, but everything seems good. It has already replaced the H1000 in my living room.

Something is seriously wrong with our airlines

Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Today I was reminded exactly of why I hate flying. A couple months ago, I purchased a ticket to fly to Krakow, Poland. I live in Cincinnati, and it is not possible to have a direct flight into Poland. The best you can do from CVG is a one-stop flight. I really wanted as few stops as possible, so I paid $1360 for a ticket with only one stop ( Chicago ). I could have saved myself $600 on the ticket and bought a multi-stop ticket for around $700, but I just wanted the trip to be as quick as possible.

nJoy Electronic Cigarette Review (Part 2)

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:22 +0000

It has been 6 days since my nJoy Electronic Cigarette Review (Part 1). My biggest complaint in that review was the price of the refill cartiges. Thanks to some help from very kind people at the e-cigarette-forum.com, I found out that e-liquid (smoke juice, whatever you want to call it) is actually available for purchase. A couple sites that offer it, such as ePuffer and e-cig; however, both were out of stock (after researching this some more, I found out that e-cig.com has temporarily suspended shipping due to the Olympics and tightened security for sending liquids – they’re based in China). Well, fortunately, we have eBay, and I was able to purchase my very first bottle of the liquid.

nJoy Electronic Cigarette Review (Part 1)

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:49 +0000

A week or so ago I ordered the nJoy electronic cigarette. I’ve tried to quit smoking before, and although I had no problems stopping (apart from the 1-2 day nicotine withdrawal), I’ve always felt like starting up again because the thing I was really addicted to doing was the action of smoking. Well, over lunch one day I heard someone talking about electronic cigarettes, so I decided to look it up. The fact that these seem to be relatively harmless (no tobacco, tar, carcinogens, etc.) was very appealing, and I could fulfill my desire to actually inhale something. In the past, I’ve tried nicotine patches (I actually got poisoned from one), but as I pointed out before, the thing I miss most when I stop smoking is the actual action of smoking, not the nicotine itself, so, needless to say, the patch didn’t work.

And Bloodforge is up again…

Sun, 04 May 2008 00:00:20 +0000

Well, after a few years of doing absolutely nothing with this site, I’ve decided to bring it up again. Not sure what I’m going to use it for yet, but I think I’ll be posting some annoying bugs I’m running into along with other information that probably no one in the world really cares about. But its fun.

Also, amazingly, a few days after I activated this domain again, I’ve noticed some people already visited this site… at first I thought it was some random stuff, but these visits were from South Bend, Granger, etc… strange, but neat at the same time.