Quickly Determine If Your Car's Charging System Is Working

This is the third time you've had to jump start your car in a week. Is the battery shot? Is it even holding a charge? Heck, is it even charging at all?

There are many factors that can affect your battery and the charge it holds. To get a grasp of the problem, first you want to narrow it down to just a few areas: battery, wiring and charging. Assuming you can start the car,  it's easy to quickly tell if your charging system is at least functioning on some level, which can help you rule that out.

In order to do this quick test, you will need an accurate method of measuring voltage. You can buy a cheap multimeter for $10 to $20. They are very handy to have, and versatile. But for this task, I personally use a little gadget that plugs into your car's cigarette lighter and tells you the voltage. They are more specialized, but run only about $4, making it a great investment in your vehicle's electrical health.

In a nutshell, if the voltage goes up when the engine starts, your car is charging. That's it. Obviously there are
other factors at play, but most of the time, if the voltage goes up, look elsewhere for your problem, like the battery itself, the wiring or maybe a parasitic drain. The readings below are for a Jeep which had a slow drain on the battery from an improperly wired stereo system.

Step 1 - Take Voltage Reading With The Engine Off

Your starting voltage ideally should be anywhere from 12.0 volts to 12.6 volts. Any accessories (lights, radio, etc.) will affect this reading and make it read a little lower. If you're sitting in the car, and there's no lights on and nothing obviously powered on, you should see a reading in the above range.

This reading is a little low, but still within range. 

Step 2 - Take Voltage Reading With The Engine On

You measured the voltage, and you started the car. Did the voltage go up? Then congratulations, you are charging. In general, you should be reading 14.0 to about 14.6 volts with the engine running. There are several factors that affect this number, but it's a good general range you should be looking for. If you see the reading in this range, then most likely you don't have a charging problem. I like to leave the engine running a few minutes to a) let the battery charge and b) make sure there are no fluctuations in the voltage.

This is a little low, but again, within range

Fun With DropBox

It started with the wife saying "hey, you should install DropBox." Why would I do that? I've been pushing files around on the Internet since the mid 1990s. There's all these great protocols: FTP, HTTP, NNTP and so forth.

However, after installing the software on my phone, tablet, laptop and desktoop, it turns out that "why use Dropbox?" has several good answers.

1. It's easy to use for non-technical people

Drag a file into one of your DropBox folders and it's immediately "pushed" out to everyone you share that folder with. They get an update telling them there's a new file there for them to look at. Any user familiar with basic computing concept like files will pick this up quickly. But of course, if you're such a Luddite that you don't even know what a file is, then DropBox won't be of much use to you.

2. It's easy to share files between different devices

Here's where I became a believer. There's lots of ways to move files around between all my devices. And most of my gadgets have some sort of removable media I can take out, copy files to and put back. If I need to move Gigabytes of data around, this is still the best method. But for a couple of files, or a family photo, it's a real drag.

For moving around those common, day to day files like a PDF document or family photo, DropBox makes it stupid simple. It can be a hassle to move files between different platforms like Windows and Android. For me, this takes all the pain out of moving files between my Windows laptop and Android phone, and I use it in this role daily. The device independence is my favorite part about the software.

3. It's Free

Some "free" software products claim to be free but just about the time it becomes indispensable, you find the catch, which usually involves you taking out your wallet. The best I can tell about DropBox, they want it to be so indispensable that you pay for more space.

They give you plenty of space to start with, and what they charge for space seems reasonable. But if you feed it the email addresses of your friends and family, they will give you more space as your friends join up. So, even though they charge for extra space, there's other ways of getting more for free. Personally, I think it's a pretty fair deal for free.

4. It Has Quests!

I'm a nerd. That's been established. One of the ways to get my attention (besides bacon or boobs) is to speak to me in the language of nerdy video games. So when I saw that DropBox offered "Quests" to get more space, it really got my attention, and I started completing them. This is really thinking outside the box.

Downsides?

As with any cloud service, there's more points of vulnerability to your privacy than if you were just exchanging files between friends and family directly. There's more risk to your files being intercepted by some third party. And there's definitely a risk that the company which holds your precious data could be hacked into or suffer a catastrophic failure, taking your important data with it. There's a lot that can go wrong.

Keeping all this in mind, most of the time the power and convenience of something like DropBox is going to be a fair compromise for the downsides. Basically, I just assume that anything I put in DropBox can be seen by the whole world, and if the company loses my files, well, I keep my own backups. So should you.

Windows Version

The Windows version consists of an icon on the Windows Tray portion of the task bar. It shows a little blue box, with a green check mark next to it if everything is in sync. When you click on the icon, the following window pops up.

Notice the little check mark that says "up to date" next to it, confirming that your files are synchronized. There's also a gear icon in the upper right hand corner for settings. Clicking on the settings icon gives you the following screen.

Notice that it tells me how much of my space is used. It would be nice to see this on the main screen and not buried in the settings, but it's still a nice feature.

When a new file comes in from another device, or someone in your share group, you see the following notification balloon show up on your taskbar.

What I did above was take a screen shot I want to use for this post on my Android tablet and moved it into my DropBox. A few seconds later, this notification popped up on my Windows laptop, which I'm writing this blog post on. DropBox is so awesome that I used to to help me write a post saying how awesome it is.

Android Version

Some popular applications make a half-assed attempt to provide for Android, as if Android support is an afterthought. That's not the case with DropBox. The Android version is every bit as good. It's fully integrated into the sharing mechanism of Android, meaning any tool bar that shows you icons for sharing your files will now show a little blue box icon.

The DropBox app itself is well thought out and very user friendly for Android. The main screen shows you the folders you have setup.

The settings are very user friendly as well. Maybe a little simplistic for my tastes, but this app is made for Grandma, too. All things considered, I like how they laid everything out.

Conclusions

Occasionally the non-nerds in my life tell me about a new product or technology that makes me think "why wasn't I using this?" and this is one of those products. I realize there are other ones out there like GoogleDrive (which keeps changing identities), Microsoft's SkyDrive and a few others. I plan on checking those out, but I don't see how the whole process could be much smoother or more streamlined than this.

Android Whip App From Big Bang Theory

I don't know if this is the exact app seen on the show, but it's called the "Big Bang Whip" and sounds just like the one we saw on that episode of Big Bang Theory. It's made by what appears to be a small shop, Studio 215. They don't seem to have a web site.

The great thing about this app is that there's no ads or nagware. It's free and all it does is make a whip sound. So far it's been great fun. It's a completely unproductive app which I highly recommend. I tried several other whip apps. Some had cool features like machine gun sounds, but they all had varying degrees of overbearing crap. This app is as minimalist as you can get. Just you and your whip.

Use is simple and intuitive: hold your phone like a whip and make a whipping motion.

Creating App Folders In Android

I had an Android tablet for quite a while before I got an Android phone. One of the first things I noticed with the phone was that the screen was so small, it hardly has any room for apps on its desktop. Luckily, it's easy to arrange your app icons into folders to give you more real estate to work with on your screen.

Step 1 - Drag 'N Drop

Android will automatically create a folder when you drag an app icon into another app icon. Simply touch and hold an icon to move it, and then just drag it to another icon you want this icon to be in the same folder with. Note that the target icon, i.e. the one your dragging an icon to, retains the icon for the outside of the folder.

For my example, I wanted to create a folder to hold all my online shopping apps like Amazon, NewEgg, etc. I use Amazon the most and I wanted to make it the icon for the folder, so I started dragging my icons into Amazon, one at a time.

Here's how I started

With one icon added

With two icons added

Now my  four icons are one icon!

Step 2 - Name Your Folder

Now that you've created your folder, tap the icon and you will see a little window pop up. You can tap towards the bottom and enter a name for your folder.

I typed in "Shopping" and now I have a Shopping folder to contain and organize all my shopping apps.

Step 3 - Treat Your Folder Just Like An App

Now that you combined all your app icons, you can move the folder around as you like. When you tap that folder, it will pop open the little folder window and let you select which app you want.

How To Take A Screen Shot With An Android Device

Not everyone knows this little trick for all Android devices with Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) or above. To take a screen shot, all you have to do is press the Volume Down button at the same time as the Power button, and you will hear a camera shutter sound and see an animation of your screen turning into what looks like a photo. The new screen shot is placed into your gallery, where you can do what you will with it, such as moving it to your DropBox.

It took a few tries to get the timing right on my phone and tablet. As one can imagine, all the first few attempts did was either power off my device or turn the volume down. Be warned, the timing has to be precise. But this is a good trick. No need to download an app!

How To Setup A Custom Domain For Your Google Blog

Most bloggers eventually come to the realization that they need a top level domain for their blog. It improves their search rankings and also looks more professional. Nobody wants to tell people to visit somerandomsubdomain.blogger.com. Having your own domain gives you other benefits, such as the ability to move your blog to a different host other than Google. If the day ever comes, your users will still know where to find you.

This post will guide you through creating your own domain through Google. While it's possible to point your Google blog at a domain purchased through any provider, using Google to register the domain gives you convenience and one key advantage.

Why buy the domain through Google? They partner their domain registrations through GoDaddy, so why not just use GoDaddy? The compelling reason is that you get Gmail free with your domain when you buy it through Google. You get a limited version of Google Apps which you would otherwise have to pay for. Going through Google, you get one free email address @ your new domain. You can also add aliases for the same account, which can be useful as well.

Step 1 - Choose Your Domain

Go into the basic settings screen of your Blogger account and you will see a link that says "add custom domain", as shown below.

Click the link and it will expand as shown below. Choose the name you want, and click the "Check Availability button.

Unless you were lucky to pick something nobody has ever thought of before, here is where you will spend quite a bit of time trying to choose a name you want, which also happens to be available. Keep trying until you see the screen below showing that it's available.

Step 2 - Purchase Your Domain

Once you are sure this is the domain you want, click the "Continue to registration" button, which will take you to step 2 of the registration process.

NOTE: It is very important that you give Google a good contact email for your domain as circled below. Without access to the email account you enter on the screen below, you will not be able to complete the registration process, and in a dramatic twist of irony, you won't be able to get technical support either, because that requires you complete the registration. And it will only go downhill from there. So, make double-dog sure you give it a good contact email. After you are done with the registration process, this will be the secondary contact for your domain.

When you are done filling out the information required for your domain, click the "I accept" button to move onto the payment screen. At this point you will need to create a Google wallet account if you haven't done that already.  Then you can complete step 3 of the registration process as shown below. Now place your order!

If everything went well, you are now the owner of your new domain. Well, at least for a year.

In the above example, I ended up choosing bigmanlittledog.com, because most people can't spell "chihuahua." The name you choose is a strategic choice. You obviously want something that's easy to remember and type, but the name you choose also affects your search rankings. For example, having "dog" in my domain name gives me a little ranking edge on searches that are dog related.

Step 3 - Activate Your Domain

Now that you own your domain, it may take a few minutes for Google's system to see your purchase. At that point, you will receive an email with a link in it to activate your new domain. Click the attached link, and it will start the activation process, as shown below.

Enter your contact information and click "continue with setup." I'm not really sure it matters what you choose for a password, because when you click the button, your activation will always fail, as shown below. If you Google the problem, you will find lots of people frustrated, and not much help from Google.

I'm also not sure if it matters what you put for the administrative contact email @ your new domain. At any rate, it's easy to change once you get into the control panel.

This is where most people get stuck. This took me quite a bit of time to figure out the first time around. The information is out there in bits and pieces, but I couldn't find a complete walk-through that went end to end through the entire process.

Heck, I'm not entirely sure you even needed to start the activation process, but I'm following the set of steps I know works. But what I do know is that if you "try again later" it won't matter. You'll try to you turn blue, and it will still give you the same error.

Step 4 - Access Domain Control Panel

Your registration email will also give you a link to access your Google apps control panel. I never use those links because I can just go to apps.google.com and type in my domain name, as shown below.

When you go to sign in, you will be disappointed to find out that neither the user name you chose, nor the password will work. Again, this is the incredibly frustrating part. You will want to click the "can't access your account?" link at the bottom

Once you click the button, you'll see the following password reset screen. Choose the "reset your administrator password" link.

As if to torment you, a captcha will appear for you to type to prove that you are an actual human being that likes to jump through hoops.

At this point Google will email you a link to reset your password. Clicking on the link in the email will lead you to the following screen, where you can type in a password that will actually be used to administrate your domain!

Ok, whew! Now you can sign onto the control panel. There's just one little problem, you don't know your real user name. You just reset the password, but the system is still using the default user name.


By default, Google creates your admin account with the name of "bloggeradmin". Once your domain registration is activated, you must go into the control panel and change the administrative contact @ your domain to the name of your choice. But for the first login, you will need to use this default user. The problem is, nowhere does Google tell you that your user name is "bloggeradmin" because I'm guessing they intended that to be temporary thing before you set the actual name you want on that screen that gets an error.

Ok, you did it! Now you can manage your new domain. It only gets easier from here, I promise. All you have to do here is click the "I accept" button. I believe at this point your domain is also live (assuming you clicked the "return to blogger" link from your purchase, which is probably in a different tab).  I like to continue the whole process of setting up the administrator account before I try the domain, which still isn't done, unless you want to be bloggeradmin@yourdomain, which I don't want in this case.

Step 5 - Setup Administrator Account

Now that you're in, you should see the control panel similar to below. Notice that it's still set to bloggeradmin@mydomain. 

At this point you want to click the the link for your user name. It would be tempting to select your user name and choose an action from the "more actions" button, but that doesn't work. Just click on your name, not the checkbox. This step can be a little confusing.

Click the "rename user" button as circled on the screen below.

Almost done! Now, I make the administrative contact on all my domains markwing@mydomain.com because I'm a guy that's easy to get in touch with. You can put whatever you want for your contact email, and create as many aliases (nicknames) as you want, too.

Once you rename your user, it will kick you back out to the login screen. Now you're at the point you should've been at about an hour ago when you followed the original link after purchasing your domain.

There's lots you can do in the control panel that I won't go into here, but at this point your domain should be functional. It can take an hour or so for your Gmail to activate, so don't panic if it doesn't work right away. The first thing I do is go into the new Gmail account, enable IMAP, and then add that account to my phone, tablet, etc. since I run multiple domains. There's a couple tricks to setting up your new domain for email clients like Android or Outlook, which I devote a separate post to.

At this point, I still have the tab open that says "purchase complete." There's a "return to Google apps" and when you click it, it takes you back to your basic settings screen. This is an important step, which if you forget, Google will somehow think you don't own your domain, and you'll have to jump through a few more hoops. I believe this step can be done even before you click the original registration link in the email it sends you. Either way, don't forget!

If all went well, you will be returned to the basic settings screen of your blog, which is where you started.

Notice I left the original @ blogspot.com address, which now shows as "redirect." I did this for a couple reasons. First, it really doesn't matter what your blogspot.com address is, because after you have a domain assigned to it, Google pretty much ignores the blogspot address for search rankings and so forth. Your domain is what your visitors will see as well. For most purposes, your blogspot address is dead to the world at this point.

Another reason I left it this way is, this blog is about 6 months old. It's possible that some folks might have links to content at the blogspot address, which would break if I changed it. Unfortunately those links do not help your search ranking, but it's nice not to screw the few people who linked to your blog out of that content. Those links, while hopefully minimal, will remain valid.  Some people have a form of OCD that will not allow them to accept that the blogspot address is different than the domain. In that case, you need to switch it before you purchase the domain, at the point you see the domain you want is available.

Note that it may take up to 24 hours for your domain to become available for people to type the address in and have your blog come up. In reality, it's usually less than an hour, but I have seen it take longer.

That's it! Google has made it a supreme hassle to register your domain this way. My theory is that they really don't like giving you that free Google apps account with Gmail, even though it's a limited account. They seem to think that jumping through all those hoops is a fair trade, and honestly, I think it is, which is why I wrote this article.

..and just like clockwork, my new domain comes up right about at the half hour mark. I forgot that the last post about 6 months ago was about my bossy girlfriend Zoey. 

Well, that's about it. I hope that this walk-through helps save a few people the many hours of frustration it took me to figure this stuff out the first time around. Heck, it's still confusing. It dawned on me that to do a complete walk-through, I needed to buy another domain. Enjoy!

How To Fix VMWare 9 Guest OS Freezes

This is a quick post to show a solution for the VMWare 9 guest OS freezing problems that plagued me for a couple months and was a real pain to figure out.

It all started when I upgraded to VMWare Workstation 9, and some of my guest machines would periodically freeze. About every thirty seconds, it would freeze up for about ten seconds on my Windows 7 x64 guest virtual machine and a couple other machines. It was an incredibly frustrating problem to solve, and hopefully this post will save others some of the aggravation that I went through.

Step 1 - Removed Unused Hardware

That's it. That's the only step! Go into the settings for the guest machine and you will see a screen that looks like this:

Now all you have to do is hi-light the hardware you don't absolutely need, like the floppy drive and the sound card, and click the Remove button.

Once I removed the hardware I didn't care about, the guest freezes went away! This probably works for other combinations of versions for VMWare and Windows. I was having the same problem with a Windows 8 guest, too.

Here's what the problem machine looks like now. All the freezes are gone.