I have a Verizon Wireless PC card – PC5740 (courtesy of my girlfriend’s work). It’s the best thing ever. If you have the money to spare, do yourself a favor and get one. I use it every time I travel. I can surf the internet while I’m in traffic – jealous much?

Anyway, since I got my new laptop I hadn’t had a chance to used it. So I installed the program and slid in the card.

And I got the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH.

Nothing I did worked and everything they had about the issue on Google was over 2 years old.

I looked to see if I needed to install any Windows Updates and yes, I did. Vista Service Pack 1 was there staring at me in the face.

I installed it, put the card back in and now I’m ready to go mobile.

I downloaded Quicktime and watched the Mama Mia trailer… uh, I mean, watched the trailer for the Angelina Jolie movie Wanted.

A little while later, I noticed that whenever I clicked onto a web page, it took a while to load. I was going nuts cause there was no reason for it.  I searched Google, disabled my firewall, plugged my connection directly into the router, and did a hundred other fixes. Nothing I did worked.

Since I have the worst memory ever, I finally remembered: I installed Quicktime.

I love Quicktime and in all the years I’ve used it, I have never ever had any sort of problem with it. But regardless, I was getting more and more frustrated and went to System Restore.

It deleted Quicktime and what do you know? I was back up and running like nothing was ever wrong.

Has anyone ever had that problem with Quicktime?

Well, this past weekend it arrived.

My old laptop was a Dell Latitude D820. The new one is a Latitude D830 and from what I can tell, all the hardware are the newer versions of what I had previously had.  The screen is tons brighter and I am loving it.

Thanks Dell!

What’s a guy to do?

I used the small amount of brain cells I have left and created a fix-it solution.

Ingredients:
String, Large 2″ Binder Clip, closed window blinds so no one sees what you’re doing.
1. Tie the string to the upper right hook (the one that hooks into the laptop) and then wrap it around the right hook.

2. Take the binder clip and hook it onto the laptop. Put the string through the first silver holder and then tie it onto the bottom sliver holder. Make sure its taught and that the screen is at the angle you want it to be.

3. You’re done! And most likely embarrassed.

I wish that was my only problem.

This morning, I opened up the lid and heard a crack, looked down and saw a bunch of little pieces on the ground. I let go of the lid and it fell flat to the ground.

The hinges broke – on both sides.

I have no idea how this happened but it kind of made sense since every time I opened it for the past week or so, I kept hearing a crackling noise.

I called Dell and told them what happened. Luckily, my warranty is still good and since I bought this through my old work, I have Gold Technical support.
They wanted me to send my laptop to them which I was cool with. I figured since I was sending it in, I might as well get something else fixed on it. I told them that it’s been getting increasingly hot. So hot sometimes that I have to turn it off.

They guy was like, “Is it dangerous? Has it caused any damage to any property? Has it hurt anyone? Did it melt anything?” No, no and no. But I still told him that it was really hot and uncomfortable to hold when it gets that hot.

That changed everything. It was now classified as a “safety hazard” and they would send me out a new one immediately.

“New what?” I asked.

“New Laptop”

I love Dell.

Well, today, I put it down and the screen fell flat backwards. So I had no choice but to finally fix it.

It’s pretty easy and if I knew how easy it was, I wouldn’t have waited.

I’m working on a Dell Latitude D820 but this should be pretty universal.

If you look at the screen casing, you’ll see some rubber stoppers (I don’t know what they are called) but I have 6 all around the outer edge. Peel those off (you won’t hurt them) and you’ll see a screw. Most likely they will be loose. Take a phillips head and tighten them down.

I also have 2 flat black sticky things (again, no idea what they are called). Take your fingernail or a really small knife and peel those off. You’ll see another set of screws that need to be tightened.

Put the stoppers and sticky things (I’m very technical on this site!) back and your screen should be as good as new.

Anyway, I love Howard Stern and I’ve tried and tried to listen to Sirius Radio on the phone since day 1 but finally figured out it just wouldn’t work.

Then last week, I got an idea: What if I used my phone’s blue tooth and pair it with my PDA.

The first thing I did was to see if I could get Sirius to run on my PDA. I tried it and of course it didn’t work. My friend told me about Select Radio a couple weeks back. I installed that onto the PDA and it worked like a charm. I totally recommend it. Not only can you get Sirius, you can get XM and literally thousands of radio stations.

So, with that taken care of, I now tried to link up my phone and PDA. I knew it could be done because… well, why couldn’t it? Someone in the world had to have figured out how to do it.

Well, I was right.

After many different Google searches, I was led to Mark Venture’s Verizon Phone Info Page. I did all the configurations and gave it a try.

It connected to my phone and they started to talk. Every time it would connect though, it was always asking for the username and password. In the config, it tells you what they are but for some reason it didn’t accept it.

I tried it so many times without it working, I wanted to throw my PDA off my balcony (not my phone because it did nothing wrong. the PDA is the bastard step child in this senario).

Then, somehow I found the answer – on lgvoyager.com’s wiki page (Go all the way down to the Dial-Up Networking portion). All you have to do is go inside the Voyager and hack some of its code.

This took me most of the day but all in all it was totally easy. And now I can listen to Howard yell at BaBa Booey anywhere I go.