Monthly Archives ⇒ December 2008

Last day of the year…

· Brandon Hann

Here I am once again on the final day of another year! Anyway, nothing much is happening so far. I’m working as usual, but I do have the day off tomorrow which means I plan to get really drunk tonight! The plan is to have some people over to the house, so we’ll see how it all goes down.

Just a random thought…we always call our years out by saying “ninety-nine”, “two-thousand”, “oh-nine”, but what will we say for 2010? Will it be “oh-ten”, “two-thousand-ten”, “twenty-ten” or is there anyone out there that will just say “ten”?? Either way, we still have one more year to decide. I might do that last one just to irritate people; much like I say “bless you” when people cough. 😉

Anyway, I’m off to continue waiting for this computer to restore. Peace out and have a happy new year!

Replacing the iPhone enclosure

· Brandon Hann

I’m re-posting this tutorial I found online mainly for my information, but you might benefit from it as well. I’ve looked and looked for a way to turn my iPhone into a black one without having to have the lower model 3G version, so here it is. By the way, to purchase the casing, there’s two places I’ve found so far that appear to sell the same product and a lot cheaper than some overseas places I’ve seen. The first one I always hear about is CNN.cn. Everytime I’ve checked, they’ve been sold out, so I found this one as well: WeLoveMacs.com. Both sell them for $30-40.

Another quick note: the sim card caddy is mentioned to be painted black in the article down below, but if you want to get a black metal replacement for your new backing, I’ve only seen it sold on CNN.cn for $9.99.

——————————————————————

Matt McK took the time to write up this detailed step-by-step guide on how to replace the back casing of the iPhone with a black one. His tutorial follows…

Ever since the iPhone was originally announced I’ve always wished it was black.

When i picked one up the first weekend they were released I even thought about powdercoating my back to make it black. Luckily, CNN.cn came out with replacement silver and black metal housings to save me the trouble. Well, not entirely, as I’m sure many people have seen already in the earlier thread how the results look, but no where offers a “how-to “do it!

There are a handful of sites that show how to take the iPhone apart, but no one actually shows how to remove all the delicate pieces from the rear housing. I’ve swapped housings on a number of different phones, but have never run into one as complicated and delicate as the iPhone.

So everyone doesn’t ruin their new toy, I’ll try to walk you through the process here. I’m going to jump right into the housing assuming that you’ve already taken it off. If you don’t know how to do that, google search and read one of the half dozen sites that show you how. This is the end result:

Black iPhone -Not a 3G
Parts you will need:

– new housing
– super tiny philips screwdriver. (The one I found at Ace hardware didn’t even have a number on it. All I know is that ‘0’ was not small enough.)
– small flat head screwdriver
– adhesive remover
– super glue/adhesive
– pen/paper
– patience!

Once you get the back off you’ll be looking at this:

Inside the iPhone
Note the location of screws and where things are glued to. I would suggest labeling all the tiny screws so you know exactly where they go because they are NOT all the same size. I took a lot of pictures throughout the process so I could reference exactly where everything went when I was ready to put it all back together.

Inside the iPhone
Inside the iPhone
Inside the iPhone
Once you remove all the screws and electronic components you’ll be left with the metal skeleton of the original housing. Quite honestly, this is the hardest part about the swap.

iPhone enclosure parts
The skeleton is glued on by some crazy hard cement type glue. I couldn’t seem to find anything to take it off so I finally went to Home Depot and picked up the strongest adhesive remover I could fine. This one removes concrete and flooring so I thought it’d do the trick!
Adhesive remover
Next, pour the solvent on the skeleton ensuring you get it in all the cracks. Let it sit for about 20 -30 minutes. After it’s done its job and using the smallest flat blade screwdriver you have slowly pry away the skeleton. Be careful as these parts are extremely brittle. I cracked quite a few parts of it before i got this solvent and realized the ‘proper’ way to do it.

When you’re finished you’re left with this:
Removed parts
Actually, I think there are a few pieces missing from that pic, but you get the idea.

The housing will then be stripped bare with nothing left on it:

iPhone rear enclosure
As you can see, before I went the “super strong solvent” route, I tried prying the crap out of the parts which bent a number of points of my original housing. No turning back now!

Once everything is taken apart, cleaned, and dried, it’s time to put it back together. I referenced the photos I took earlier to ensure everything was put back in the proper place. I used superglue, but you could really use anything you wanted to hold everything in place. If you’ve gotten this far, you should realize how to put it back together.

New iPhone rear enclosure
Then it’s simply a matter of putting the housing back on the phone and… Voila! An all black iPhone. For the SIM card cover i sprayed SEM trim black paint so it matched the housing.

New black iPhone casing
New black iPhone casing
New black iPhone casing
In Hexproject’s thread he mentions it took him 3 hours and people balked at him thinking it should only take 30 minutes. Those people have no idea what they’re talking about. I spanned this out over two days before/after work and finals. I’m sure it took me close to 3 hours as well. Plus, I had to run back and forth a few times to get the right parts.

The end result is just what I was looking for! I did, however, mess up one part and that was the silent/ring switch. I must not have noted which position it was on when I took it all apart and now it’s stuck on vibrate! Frustrating, but I guess I’ll have to deal with it. I really don’t feel like taking the phone apart again. Anyone know if there’s anyway to turn on the ringer another way than that damn switch?!

Other than that, I hope the post was helpful. Comments are always welcome.

Just because it's Christmas Eve

· Brandon Hann

I was working today. 🙁 I had four jobs to go to and even though I started earlier than most days, I was still running behind. However, I wanted to share with you three things that happened today which were firsts for me and just a little off. It’s all the more ‘cool’ that it happened today.

1. I arrive at my first job and begin work. I set out to fix an issue with a client not able to get into any SSL sites. It took me much longer than expected and while I was working, this little kid came out of nowhere, ran straight over to me and gave me a big hug. After a few seconds, he ran away again. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but hey…it was my first Christmas hug.

2. I arrive at my second job and began working on a wireless network. Long story short, when I asked him what he wanted his WPA password to be, he said “password44”. What struck me about this was that it was the exact same password I’ve used for over 5 years! (Of course for the sake of security, the password was a different word, but it was the same as mine nonetheless!)

Johnny Carson confronts Don Rickles

· Brandon Hann

One of the funniest thing I ever saw from the old Tonight Show clips was when Bob Newhart guest hosted on December 13th, 1976. He had Don Rickles on as a guest and during one of his jokes, he was using Johnny’s cirgarette box as a stamp and when he slammed it on the desk, he broke the lid! Johnny comes back the next night and finds the broken box and decides to raid Don’s live taping of his tv show C.P.O. Sharkey! This clip just goes to show how Johnny Carson was bigger than anybody and he could do whatever he wanted.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZvjZcRkdaA

I just found a different site that has video of both nights in one clip, however, I’m leaving the one above because it shows a little bit more at the end. So if you want to see the night when the box was broken, watch the beginning of this video:

 

Homeless Memorial Day

· Brandon Hann

In case you were not aware, today is Homeless Memorial Day. At first I kind of laughed when I heard Tom Leykis talking about it a few days ago, but then I actually looked it up and sure enough, December 21st has been declared to be Homeless Memorial Day. According to the article, because this day is the first day of winter (and therefore the longest night of the year), we’re supposed to be honoring those that having ‘fallen’ in the name of homelessness. Now, call me a jerk if you want, but doesn’t honoring the death of any group of people rank up there with fallen soldiers, fallen victims from natural disasters, fallen victims from war and/or terrorist attacks? If so, do we really want to do that? In some crazy way, doesn’t it detract from and diminish the ‘honor’ from these other innocent victims?

I’m just playing the Devil’s advocate here simply because I’m not too sure how I feel about this. I mean, it’s not like we’re making a Federal holiday or erecting a stone memorial in Washington D.C. or anything.

Anyway, if you read the article, it talks about what this day means. At first glance, you might think we’re just having a day of rememberance (as if we could forget everytime we get off the freeway) for these unlucky souls walking the streets day in and day out, but it seems that it’s slightly more than that. It happens to be about remembering that a lot of homeless people die each year.

I guess it’s hard to relate because now that the economy has taken a dive, some of these people might just be out of a job and after losing all they had in a degrading stock market, this might be their only option. So now we have a mixed group of people; you have dirty crack heads that talk to themselves, starving families living in cars, drug dealers that blow all their profits on more drugs, newly homeless people due to the economy and crazy people that with more aid from the state would likely be in an asylum. That brings me to another point. Sometime in the 70’s, the governer of California (Reagan I think) thought that locking people up in crazy houses was not only costly, but possible in-humane. By the way, the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is an awesome film!

So we decided to let them all go out into the world and fend for themselves. This is likely the cause of a huge percentage of homeless people on the streets today. With that said, the question is what do we do about it (if anything) and who do you give your spare change to?

It’s easy for us to just keep our money and say if they weren’t so lazy, they could get a job, but maybe there’s other reasons why they can’t that you can’t see. I for one will admit that I don’t give out money to these people. The main reason is I hardly use cash anymore, but also because I, like most of us out there, feel that these people will just go out and buy drugs or alcohol with it. Is that really fair to say though?

Again, I’m not going one way or the other on this, but I posted this just to let you know what day it is today. Happy Bum day!

Here’s an article for further reading. [Link was removed because the source was no longer available.]

My first post from my iPhone

· Brandon Hann

I know, I know; who cares, right?! I do because I’m bored! I’m sitting here at work while SP3 installs on this XP machine and all I can do is wait. So I thought I’d give my phone a try with logging into my site. It’s not bad so far.

Anyway, since I’m here I might as well post some news. As of this morning, I’ve officially enrolled back into school and this time I’m going for what I want. It’s never a bad idea to go back to school. In the immortal words of Cheech Marin in Ghostbusters II, “Better late than never!”.

Alrighty, that’s all for now. This install is almost complete.

Rich Little doing Johnny Carson

· Brandon Hann

The year was 1970 and Dean Martin was hosting the New York Friars’ Club roast in a week-long special dedicated to the great Johnny Carson. In true Rich Little form, he comes out and does great impressions of Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Jack Benny, George Burns, Truman Capote and of course Johnny Carson. The best part of his impression for Johnny was that he mimicks his manurisms and nervous ticks. If you’ve watched Johnny during the years, you’ll get a kick out of this…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpcmjzI8CS4

How to import Outlook Express into Outlook

· Brandon Hann

This process is super simple if you’re installing Outlook on the same computer that has your Outlook Express on it. However, if you simply want to backup your Outlook Express data from an older computer and import it into Outlook on a new computer, it’s not as simple as it should be. The problem is that when you start an import process from Outlook, it looks directly on the pc for all your Outlook Express files. Since it won’t find them, there’s no way it can import them because for some reason, Outlook doesn’t give you the choice of manually importing store folders from Outlook Express.

The only workaround as far as I know is to import your mail into Windows Mail first and then use Outlook to import from Windows Mail.

If you click on the link above, it’ll tell you how to import mail into Windows Mail. Once you have this done, follow these steps:

1. Open the import/export wizard within Outlook:

Outlook 2007 Import Wizard

2. Click on the option to import from another program or file.

Outlook 2007 Import Wizard

3. Click on the option to import from Outlook Express or Windows Mail.

4. Wait for the import process to complete.

How to import Outlook Express mail into Windows Mail

· Brandon Hann

When you import your mail from Outlook Express to Windows Mail on a system where both programs are installed and configured is very simple in that all you have to do is open Windows Mail and use the import feature. Windows Mail will automatically locate and import all your Outlook Express mail and settings in one shot.

However, if you’re simply wishing to import your mail from a different source (like an external backup), you have to do a few things to get it to work properly.

First things first; you need to properly backup your Outlook Express mail. Now, if you had Outlook, this is as simple as exporting a .pst file with all your personal folders inside. With Outlook Express, the only export options are your address book (which you also might want to do) and exporting individual messages. To get everything (except addresses) you need to find the location of this data on your computer. The easiest way to do this is to open Outlook Express and follow these steps:

1. Click on Tools and then Options. Click on the Maintenance tab and then click Store Folder:
Outlook Express Store Folder location

2. Now that you know where the files are stored, open that file location and copy the entire contents of this folder to a source you’ll be using on the new computer to perform the import. You’ll see a series of .dbx files designating your different folders (Inbox, Outbox, etc.).
Outlook Express DBX files

3. Once you have all these files backed up, open Windows Mail on the new computer and following these steps.

Importing Mail into Windows Mail

1.

Open Windows Mail by clicking the Start button, clicking All Programs, and then clicking Windows Mail.
2.

Click the File menu, point to Import, and then click Messages.
3.

Click Microsoft Outlook Express 6, and then click Next.
4.

Make sure Import mail from an OE6 store directory is selected, and then click OK.
5.

Click Browse, find the Outlook Express folder you copied to this computer, and then click the folder once to select it. (Do not open the folder when you select it.)
6.

Click Select Folder, and then click Next.
7.

Click All folders to import all the folders, or click Selected folders and select which message folders you want to import, and then click Next.
8.

Click Finish.

I’ve had experience with the process being problematic in the past when you try and locate the store folders you backed up and when you click the right location, it places the path into the import field, but when you click Next, it tells you that it can’t find any Outlook Express data. If you now look at the path, you’ll see that Windows Mail has placed a second Outlook Express folder into it.

For example, if your data files are located in: X:/Backup/Outlook Express and you navigate to this location, Windows Mail might turn the path into: X:/Backup/Outlook Express/Outlook Express

I’m not sure how or why this happens, but its simple to fix. You just need to go to your backup location and create a second Outlook Express folder and place the data into it. This must be done with the import window still open. When you go back to it, just click Next and it’ll now find the right data!

All that’s left to do is wait for the import to finish and then you can import your contacts. Check out the guide to importing Outlook Express into Outlook if you need help there too.