Adventure Phoenix

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I have heard this question alot over the past few months. What is Twitter ALL about? Its crazy how simple Twitter is to use and what it does yet so many people still are so confused.  My own parents still tell me that they do not get it.

Honestly to me Twitter is simple.  Its pure human thought put in 140 characters or less posted for your friends or the entire world to see.  Sound crazy to think that Twitter is the pulse of the human race.  What is even more remarkable with the recent death of Michael Jackson, it was wild to see the buzz on twitter build from a few dozen twitter people who were at the hospital to millions within a few hours.

I mean seriously, where else could you find out whats happening in the world in real time other than Twitter.  In no time in previous history have any normal person can find out whats happening in any city or world as fast as it is happening today.

Something to think about, the average newspaper in the U.S. contains more information & news than anyone read in a lifetime during the 1500s.  Think about that! We are in serious overload of information and yet we have adapted.

The trick to Twitter is to learn how to filter thru all of the information to find out what applies to you! I will be posting more information on how you can use Twitter and become more efficient using it on a daily basis.

tr.im your URLs

Have you ever wondered what are all of these services emerging out there such as bit.ly or tr.im or tinyurl.com.  More and more appear each and every day but what do they really do?  Well for those of you who use Twitter or other social networks where they limit the size of your text.  Short URL services are just about the only way to go.

On Twitter you are limited to 140 characters.  And if you want to pass along those crazy long URLs from websites such as facebook, which the URL strings can extend up to 300 characters sometimes.  You will need to find a service such as tr.im.

I have tried many services over the years starting off with TinyURL.com which is a very well known service.  My only problem with TinyURL is the length of the url strings.  Since you are limited to 140 characters in Twitter, real estate is very precious to me.

Tr.im provides the shortest URL strings i’ve found to date and they even have a free online tracking tool where you can see how many times someone has clicked on your link.  This is great to tracking the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns on Google, Twitter, or Facebook.

Now I know there are dozens of other companies out there but one thing is for sure, to me, I like simple, free services so at this time, I am endorsing tr.im for its elegances and simplicity.

Check it out today!

Over the past several years I have been following alot of open-source options to replace my linksys or dlink router’s factory firmware.  I soon discovered dd-wrt as my best option and installed v21.  I loved the simplicity of how their web-based admin works plus all the features they offer.

More recently I began to have serious problems with connecting to the internet.  It started soon after I added a 7th home workstation to my home network.  Yea I know, 7 computers is alot for a house but if you know anything about me, I’m a computer junkie.  I have specific computers preforming tasks, running my security system, tvs, etc…  My house is almost completely computer driven.  But thats another topic for another day.

After adding my new computer I soon discovered that pages like Facebook, NewEgg.com, etc… would time out on every third or fourth click.  I called Comcast thinking it was something with their system.  But they ran speed test & line quality checks to verify everything was running smoothly.  I even plugged my laptop directly into Comcast and did a speed test for my self and I downloaded well into the 28mb/s and uploaded well into the 7mb/s.  After a few days of playing around with settings across my network, I soon discovered a little setting in my firewall/router called ‘Maximum Ports’ which set a max amount of TCP/IP connections into and out of my network.  It was set to 512 but next to that was a small text that said default setting 4096.  I thought to my self for a second and said oh well lets try changing it back to its default.

Instantly my internet speed across all machines returned to normal.  After monitoring my router for a few minutes I noticed my active IP connections hovered around 800 sessions.  Thus this simple setting was my bottleneck.

Apparently when I upgraded from the first version of DD-WRT, the original default setting was 512 but now they upgraded that to 4096.  Regardless my wife & I are happy campers now with super fast internet.

What you can learn from this is that sometimes you just gotta try something totally unexpected and you might be surprised that the result actually works.

Best!

I know alot of you are not into technology as much as I am but I HAD to share this with everyone out there using any form of chatting software such as Google Talk, Yahoo, MSN Messenger, among many others.

During my years, I have been a major fan of Trillin.cc as a powerful chat software supporting many different chat environments however recently I was introduced to Digsby.com which offers an amazing, simple, powerful and streamlined interface. I current have my facebook, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, and Google Talk integrated into a single client.

Couple that with multiple customizable skins, chat logging, among many other powerful features. The developers are VERY responsive and willing to take everyone’s ideas into consideration with future releases.

As of right now, they only offer a Windows application but they are planning on Mac & Linux solutions very soon as well!

Openness to Technology!

I know there are alot of artist out there that are cringing to my drawing but hey – i’m a computer nerd, not a artist! In either case it does show you my idea. As I have discussed in previous blogs called Defining a new future…I am going to buy some land within the next 15 months, build a small structure (as shown to the right) within the next 24 months, and sell my house and build/pay cash as I build the primary house within 36 months.

The structure shown right is a 2 car garage with a second story of about 2200 sq ft of a loft style apartment. This structure is estimated to be around $65-70k to build primarily due to the simply structure and no walls except for the exterior.

After I finish my house in 3 years, I will turn this building into an office in the future but for now it will become my studio apartment for my wife and I to live in.

I want to do this 3 stage process so I can earn and pay cash for each stage without borrowing any debt. Withing 3 years I can offically say I will be 100% debt free and as Dave Ramsey says “Live like no one else.”

Recently, my wife and I have made this a very major priority and our goals are set pretty hard in stone.

Now I am sharing this with you so that “WE” can be kept accountable to our goals. One thing I have learned is that having written goals is great however if people don’t hold you accountable, whats the point. Plus when you have friends and family sharing in your journey, you get serious encouragement from the people that surround you daily keeping you moving foward.

So, now you know apart of our 3 year goals of radically changing our lives. How many of YOU are willing to step up and be different. Have NO debt and change the way your family lives in the future.

For those of you keeping track, our current debt is down to $32,281 and dropping fast! We will be selling our car within the next 30 days and applying the earnings from the vehicle to the outstanding debt. I hope to have dropped our debt by another $11k. So stay tuned to our journey of living like NO one else so later we can live like no one else!

With absolute respect,