Non-Specific – Andrew the Hopeless Techie

Non-Specific

Linux, Windows and the ever-changing world of Operating Systems

Introduction

The term Operating System refers to the software used by a Hardware device to allow the user to interface with hardware and other software suites. Among these Operating Systems, often referred to as OS for short, many different varieties exist. Among these variations 4 Specific varieties are most popular, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, and Mac OS.

Among even these 4 primary OS variants they are even subvariants and other deviations based on the main OS. A perfect example of this is Linux which is a Variant itself from the UNIX OS which is not as popular as it was at the time Linux was created. From Linux, different variations or distributions as they are called in the Linux Community exist which either add specific functionality or features to Linux or are target at being more secure or as small as possible so they can be embedded in devices like computers in cars and the like.

The above statement is an overall simplification of what Linux is but going into depth would be an entire post all on its own and the purpose of the paragraph above is to give a brief understanding of Linux. If you would like more information on Linux specific to what it is or how it works differently then say Windows you can google this as a wealth of information to this topic exists.

Windows is probably what most people who use a computer are familiar with it holds the largest share of the OS market as of the time I am writing this post. Again the point here is not to go into the background of Windows plenty of information already exists to this point. One thing that is important to point out though, is that due to its large market share a majority of Games and software are coded for Windows (though MacOS has a version of most of the same key software). This fact is what keeps most businesses from switching to a free alternative such as Linux.

You may have noticed I did not mention MacOS in much Detail above and this is because there are mountains of information comparing Windows to Mac OS online and me adding to that pile seemed irrelevant.

This brings me to the point of this post (I know a long-winded build-up), how Linux and Windows (along with a few others I mentioned above) have changed from the point of view of a consumer and not so much a developer (because I am far from one) or IT professional.

For the sake of making it easier to type future references to the Operating System may simply be referred to as OS.

Notable Changes

Linux

Linux I would say has undergone the biggest change here given its roots and what it is now, everyone uses it weather you realize it or not, how you use it may differ from person to person.

Without going into the entire history lets just say Linux when it was conceived was not very friendly to anyone other than developers and required a health understanding of the command line. It has undergone significant improvements in this area and now the average user could if they so chose to sit down at a Linux desktop and never touch the command line.

Variations of Linux such as Ubuntu have made this even easier taking a lot of the complex tweaking out of sight of the end-user allowing a more “it just works” type of experience out of the box. As this makes Linux more accessible to more people manufacturers start to see the value in adding support for Linux and some even start coding drivers to make their hardware work on Linux which in turn makes Distributions like Ubuntu even better and more seamless.

As is typical in Linux there are multiple flavors of Ubuntu and even some Distributions that are spun off Ubuntu. This may seem at first glance that it is rather redundant and in some aspects Chaotic, well if it was done poorly this would be the case for sure. I only mention this because the Debian Based Distro I will be talking about here is PoP_OS which is based on Ubuntu but has some notable differences. For the use of talking about Red Hat-based systems, I will use either Fedora 32 or CentOS 8. As the name implies Fedora and CentOS 8 are based on Red Hat and Ubuntu on Debian.

Linux is a very powerful tool and the more time that goes by the better it gets, now most of my use cases are supported by Linux something that just 10 years ago was very shotty. Ubuntu has even reached out to Microsoft and has co-developed a feature allowing you to run a Ubuntu shell on Windows. While this feature right now is primarily useful to developers they are slowly starting to add more and more features to it making Windows have an almost entirely feature-rich Subsystem.

The new subsystem should not be confused with a full Linux kernel as it lacks some of the more advanced features of a full-fledged Linux system. This brings us to the section of Windows something of a controversial topic as of late, we will dip into that a bit below.

Windows

I will briefly touch on this as most everyone who has used a computer in the past 10 years has at some point come in contact with some version of Windows.

While generally Windows had taken a more traditional software approach and released a new full release every 2-4 years, it has lately moved to a more modern approach both with its ups and downs. While Linux on the other had remained ever changing the core way to acquire and use it has not changed much over the years.

When Windows first entered the scene there was a command-line OS called DOS (Disk Operating System), back in those days HDD (Hard Disk Drives) was not common and in fact often cost quite a bit for a, by today’s standards, laughable storage size. You need to remember that back in these days computer code was small and in fact, an entire OS could be booted from a 1.4mb Floppy Disk (or less in the beginning), so many PCs (Personal Computers) were shipped with either 2 3.5″ floppy drives or one 5.25″ and one 3.5″ drive. This allowed for one drive to be able to boot the OS and the other for loading programs like a Word Processor or early game.

Fast forward to Windows 95, this was the first version of Windows that did not rely on DOS being installed and loading Windows from the command line as all previous versions did. While Windows 3.1 for example had the option to load automatically at the start of the machine it still relied on DOS to boot. Windows 95 did not entirely get rid of DOS in fact due to the small nature of DOS it was a core part of Windows 95 and in fact, would not be until Windows NT which eventually merged with 98 and gave us the disaster that was Vista (the pre-cursor to Windows 7).

As times changed DOS was slowly stripped out of the Windows Kernel all together in place was a Terminal which emulated DOS commands so that core commands could be done as though it was DOS, for example, listing a directories contents with the “dir” command or listing all directories inside your current director with “dir /w”.

This change from DOS to the NT Kernel (as I have come to call it) was not without issues, several programs build for windows 95, 98, or ME were reliant on DOS and were not optimized for NT. It’s worth noting that the NT kernel had been around in workstation and enterprise versions of Windows for several years it was not until Windows Vista (as mentioned earlier) that this was migrated to the Core Windows suite.

If we fast forward another few years we get Windows 10 which attempts to make a familiar-looking OS with new elements, for example, it uses the Desktop feature similar to Windows 7 but adds dynamic tiles to the start menu it calls Live Tiles. It’s also worth noting this was a result of user complaints at the radical new direction they attempted to go with Windows 8 and later slightly improved with 8.1. The biggest change with Windows 10 (and there are a ton of small and drastic improvements not worth mentioning unless you’re a software enthusiast) is that for a long time it was offered as a Free upgrade to Windows 7.

This may seem like a goodwill gesture on the part of Microsoft, however, there was a very strategic reason why they made Windows 10 so easy to obtain, some of which I will touch on but given the drastic amounts of changed from Windows 8.1 to 10, I will only touch on the most jarring or noticeable changes.

First, there are three ways a company like Microsoft can make money off an OS. The traditional way which Microsoft did for all their previous versions, this method involves selling major versions as new Versions of any OS. For example, Windows 95, 98, ME, 7, and 8 are all considered new versions. This method gives the developer a boost in cash for each version it releases which allows for a jump start to the development of improvements and iterations of new versions.

Second, is the version that Linux and many other Open Source projects use, Corporate sponsorships or donations by the community. This type of model does not require the consumer to pay anything upfront instead they focus on donations and trying to get corporate sponsors or selling support packages to larger companies deploying their OS on a large number of computers.

Third, the method Microsoft uses on Windows 10 is to give the OS away free at the firs to the consumer. This is monetized by gathering data on the user that is used to advertise or sell to other companies in an effort to make money. This is a controversial method because your privacy as a consumer is often brought into question. While later in the release cycle they do sell the OS for around $120 a pop they still collect your information. It’s possible to disable some of this data collection but if you really want to disable most of it you need to be proficient in registry editing and tweaking, however, this is often reversed by updates released to fix/update features and bugs in the OS.

Closing Thoughts

So as you can see from y brief summary tons of things have changed in the OS market allowing us to get where we are. As Linux changes and closes the gap between Windows and itself the choice between which one you use comes down to small things like Gaming or very specific software needs.

While Linux is becoming closer in terms of Gaming to Windows there is still a lot of work in this area that needs to be done. Businesses can however use a lot of tools that are open source on Linux to do their everyday jobs and save 100s if not thousands on licensing fees. The future of OS improvement all around is exciting as these improvements whether perceived or not play greatly into what you see every time you boot up your machine.

Next time you start your computer whether it be Windows, Linux, or Mac OS takes a second to appreciate the amount of software and hardware engineering involved with getting to where we are now.

Disclaimer: I am not a developer of any software listed below opinions are my own and this article was written over several days (given my schedule) so I have done my best to make sure it is consistent any suggestions or spelling errors can be put on the forums quick comments can be made below in-depth discussion should be done on the forums by clicking the link in this disclaimer. I encourage you to do your own research and dive into either of these OS yourself you may be surprised by what you find. If you find any of my information to be in error please constructively mention it in the forums and I will do my best to address it.

My Life at a Glance–New CPU, Gaming, Windows troubles, Linux Troubles, android tablets and more!

Well it has been a while since I posted anything to my blog, and I thought I would rectify that by making one huge post updating everyone on most aspects of my life currently.

New Computer Hardware

Recently I upgraded my old AMD Athlon II x4 620 to a new AMD Phenom II x6 1090T Black Edition.

The upgrade was relatively painless (typical CPU upgrade) and I did not notice a huge improvement at first in performance, however once the computer ran for a while I noticed some changes in both speed and the Heat the CPU generated.

With my older Quad Core CPU idle CPU temps were somewhere around 38c which is relatively hot I have been told for an idle temp. With the newer six-core the idle temps dropped to around 28c that is a 10 degree difference!

While I primarily upgraded to solve an issue Windows was having with the CPU (mine in particular not necessarily the same for others with it ) where it would frequently spike the CPU usage up and then not fully release capacity as processes slowed. I had tried numerous times to re-install windows in numerous different storage configurations (RAID 0, Use a separate drive for all Data and one specifically for OS and Important programs, Installing a tweaked version where certain features were turned off mainly indexing and what not), while most of these worked one in particular kept causing me to scratch my head as tried to get Windows running on it (RAID 0). With out boring you by going into detail on what I tried I will just say it did not work and ended up causing a new fresh install of Windows 7 using the default installation (which ironically ended up having better throughput). The CPU proved to be a good trade off as it increased windows boot time as well as offered a 6mb L3 Cache where the Quad had no such L3 Cache.

I ran the windows performance scoring tool (just for the hell of it not a big believer in what it says other then to pinpoint what hardware is the current bottleneck) finding that now all areas rated 7.5 where the HDD was the remaining bottleneck coming in at a miserable 5.9. Now I know Windows may not be the best OS when it comes to efficient write commands, but that was a good indicator it was time for a faster drive or to make the plunge into a reasonable SSD.

The issue here is that even though I could move about 95% of all my data to a external HDD and use the SSD as the boot drive, programs would continue to load slowly unless they were installed on the SSD. All that and not to mention the sheer amount that SSD cost per GB, it just was not worth the price at present.

Gaming

This all lead me into my next issue which was stuttering (video wise not audio) in the game Dragon Age 2, I examined this further and found that DA2 seems to see the processor correctly but only sees one core as being available. I then spent about 2 hours talking to EA support via chat to try and correct this, even tried reducing the available Cores it had access to in the affinity setting for the game.

Long story short we were unable to pinpoint the exact issue, but narrowed it down to something to do with the CPU upgrade (seeing as it worked fine on the Quad). The tech was so down that he could not solve my issue that he proceeded to go into the back end for my EA account and enable a whole swarm of free content (not DLC, promotional items mostly) for Dragon Age: Origins and one or two for DA2!. I literally now have so much stuff that when I log into the Bioware User Entitlements area to see what I have access to I have to scroll 3 times, and that is on a 27” monitor at 1920×1080 resolution with the browser full screen!

Did I also mention that earlier this month I had an issue with the DLC authorizing for Dragon Age: Origins? Well EA gave me a $20 voucher for the EA store and so I used that on Dead space 2 which was already on sale for $31 (Digital download version) so I ended up after tax getting a $50 game for $12 dollars!

Linux

Now all of you reading this from the Fedora Planet are by now wondering “what does this have to do with Linux?”

The answer is that had nothing to do with it but the headache did make me want to leave windows and try to install Fedora again on one of my free HDD’s

This brings me to where I had the issue with Fedora, to be fair here I was using the latest build of Fedora 15 alpha so the issues are not at all the fault of Fedora just my own lapse in judgment.

Here is what happened, I tried at first to do a custom install (like I always do when installing multiple OS) but that just caused me a headache because apparently my boot order for my HDD was set differently in the Bios then the physical location they are in (where they are connected on the mother board). That being said I managed to axe the small system partition Windows 7 makes for some reason. I panicked and though If I could install Fedora I could at least boot from Grub into Windows right? Wrong!

Second time installing is where I made the big mistake of choosing use all space when I meant to hit remove all Linux partitions, well as you can imagine this went bad as it wiped now my entire windows drive. While I chalk this up to my own lack of focus, my friend claims it was a sign from the Fedora Gods that Linux did not want Windows anywhere on the system.

I ended up just wiping that re-installing windows (to many good games that do not work in Wine plus school work that requires Windows programs) and just throw Fedora in a VM. So far this has worked well though I miss my dual boot setup and being able to run Fedora natively. I might try it again but making sure to backup my windows install prior to doing so.

Android 3.0

While I myself have not had any hands on experience with Android, I want an Android 3 tablet badly!

I began looking into the options out there and found out that not only do a handful exist but they are all super expensive!!!

I did find one that would have a 399 model but the specs on it were less then acceptable to me. While I generally am not a power user when it comes to mobile devices I found that a 512mb 8gb nand ram drive device to be a little underwhelming! How much could you fit on 8gb now days even if on Android!?

The next model the one I am seriously considering is 499 and has 1gb of ram and a 16gb nand ram drive. This to me seems sufficient and would work nicely, provided I decide to get it. ASUS the manufacture of this tablet apparently has released everything but the device itself in the US as of the time I am writing this. Will  I have the funds to spare when they do release it is yet to be seen but lets hope it gets released soon.

Well that about covers it, that should get most people who care caught up with what has been going on with me (not a lot of people care I get it but a few readers I know who read this do Winking smile ).

Feel free to leave comments below

Computer issues resolved

Well alot of you might remember a post a while back about my computer issues, I have recently figured out what the issue was ! Let me recap the problem just for those not familar with it. I began having issues with my computer the video would frequently drop out and I would need to turn off and on the monitor to get the image back Well i immediately thought the monitor was bad so i got on the horn to Samsung. They ensured me that “Their monitor could not possibly be the cause of the issue” like a fool I bought it.

I then looked to the two low end cheap graphics cards i bought I called several tech support people was was assured that was not it. I asked a few friends and the Motherboard was point to as a possible but unlikely cause for the issue seeing as the cards were both solely bus powered. So a RMAing the board will go. The board was RMAed and still nothing!!! The issue was still there I then started RMAing the Graphics cards and with one on its ways to Powercolor to get swapped. I then decided to see if Samsung was accrate in their claim that their monitor could not be the cause.

Well they were wrong, the issue existed when i tried the monitor on a different computer. Was I annoyed? YES! I had decided before this I was going to upgrade the Graphics cards to more solid and powerful cards which i did. Now a replacement monitor is on the way. I decided to get this monitor http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=24-236-091&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&PurchaseMark=&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Page=4#scrollFullInfo

ASUS 27" LCD Monitor

ASUS 27" LCD Monitor

Some people may ask me what did I learn from this experience? I learned that Vendors will Lie like dogs to prevent their hardware being replaced

Installed a new Plugin – Need feedback

I installed a new plugin that promisses to make this blog easier on the eyes from a smart phone. I do not own one to test it so what I would like to know is if any of you can see this blog any differently then the Picture below on your smartphone.

scrnsht_20100929

If it does look different please let me know and the comments, better yet include a screen shot if you can.

Also I would welcome any feedback at all with regards to optimization for smart phones and other mobile devices.

ATI/AMD – Catalyst Driver with Fedora 13

I recently decided to test the new ATI drivers with Fedora 13 and for the most part them seem to work fairly well, however there are a few things that seem to be a bit of an annoyance.

For starters it seems that using this driver causes Firefox to have frequent black spots when scrolling down the page. This also seems to be in connection with how Metacity interacts with Catalyst, changing the window manager to Compiz for example reduces but not eliminates this issue.

This coupled with the fact that my monitor was acting up in an unrelated way was not a good mix. I think for now using the default drivers is probably best until Catalyst 10.8 is released to see if this fixes the issue.

In addition it seems that the 10.7 version of the driver slows my computer down significantly and with my computers specs this should not happen less i have a whole lot of stuff running. Out of fairness I am using Fedora 64bit so not sure if this issue is present or not on the 32bit version.

It should come as no surprise however ATI lately seems to be favoring Debian based Distributions over RPM based ones in terms of quality. Ubuntu always seems to get drivers from ATI that are sleek and work very well while Fedora and other RPM distributions that might utilize newer X.org versions tend to get left behind even when the drivers “work” for the Distro.

Now to clarify I am not bashing Ubuntu as I use that distribution as well, nor am I trashing AMD, I am merely stating that it seems AMD does not really actively work with other distros to make things as flawless.

Aside from the issue i mentioned above I have not really seen much in the way of disadvantages. The metacity issue however could be due to a numerous amount of factors so pinning the blame completely on ATI/AMD would not be fair.

The views here are expressed solely by myself and do not represent any other view point weather it be company or individual. If you do not agree with these opinions note they are solely expressive of my views.

Category5 – Talks about an open Source program the GIMP touching on basic image enhancement

The GIMP – Basic image enhancement

I am a regular viewer of Category5.tv and recently (last Tuesday) he went over some basic tips on how to edit images to make them look a little better. I thought this was particularly useful and given the tool he used GIMP which is open source i thought i might just briefly touch on it here as well as embed the video for you to watch.

Ok so normally I do not post about shows I watch on-line or otherwise but this particular show I found somewhat useful. To give a quick synopsis he shows you how to lighten pictures and crop it in a way that does not kill the image, In the words of Robbie however “Always make a backup! Never edit your master images”

Some other points he touches on in this episode are

  • Reinstall Linux with a just a  full backup of your home folder – He specifically mentions Ubuntu here since that is his distro but you could use his strategy for any distro Including Fedora with a few minor tweaks that are Distro specific.
  • How do you share iTunes music to Linux?

He covers these points with regards to GIMP

  • Adjusting the levels in a photograph using the GiMP.
  • Zooming in and out of images in the GiMP.
  • Removing blemishes from a photo using the GiMP.
  • Resizing an image in the GiMP.
  • Cropping an image in the GiMP.
  • Resizing a marquee in the GiMP.
  • Saving your image in the GiMP.
  • Preparing images to be shared by email or on a web site or blog.

Now as I said this is mostly a post to show others in the Fedora and other Linux community  that might read this, that editing of images can be done fairly easily and that videos such as the one below do exist to show you how. While there may be videos out there that dive more into the workings of GIMP this one stays pretty simple so anyone can use it to achieve what they want.

I should note that the video is embedded from his video host blip.tv and it has about a 30 second ad prior to the video starting, I have no control over this and as such I do not necessarily condone any of the content that the ad may demo as it changes over time. As it stands when i posted it the ad was about Windows 7, but by the time you watch it the ad could be different.

[bliptv ga4Fge_TEQI]

If you liked the video please make sure you check out Robbie””s site he put a lot of effort into this show. If not then thanks for taking the time to read this post. I will not be making a habit of posting about his show but this one seemed worthy of passing along via the fedora channels and the like.

Again he uses Ubuntu so pardon all the Ubuntu centric stuff most of what he mentions can just as easily be done via Fedora or even a different distro.

Host of the show: Robbie Ferguson

Show notes: http://www.category5.tv/show_notes/episode_148.php

Open Letter to Google

Dear Google,

I have enjoyed your many different services over the years, I have grown to depend on several apps you make to simplify my life. Picasa manages my pictures, Google Apps my email, and Adsense helps pay the bills. I wish I could say this all makes me happy, but honestly I feel a little cheated when I find that Picasa is not natively supported on Linux.

I can understand time is an issue, I understand encasing the windows version in a WINE instance is a easy fix, but i do not understand why a company with its own Linux OS (Android) can not take the time to make a implementation of their apps such as Picasa using native Libs and tools.

This might seem trivial coming from one person, but Google I am sure others feel the same way, Google do you really wish to fix issues pertained to a Windows version of Picasa running in Linux on a WINE instance? I ask you would the developmental process not be more streamlined if you had a native APP?

I have had issues in the past with software running in WINE, and I ask why when a company that is clearly interested in Linux could make a Linux native client?

Ok Google I know what your going to say, We just don”t have time today! Well I say, come on lets go and make the code avalible to the community today!

Thanks for your time, sorry to waste your dime, I really must stop this rhyme before i do not have time, to send this Letter.

Thanks,

Andrew Jamison – Google user and Linux Enthusiast

Cool little Command Line Trick

Ok so most of you might be a little beyond small little tricks like the one I am going to talk about here but, I found this incredibly useful and felt the need to share it.

Ok so first off  I need to site the source here this command is not my work it is the brain child of the folks at Lifehacker.com specifically written by one lowell[AT]lifehacker[DOT]com

That being said on to the meat of this blog post.

OK so when browsing the net looking for guides on how to navigate around the Linux CLI and over all tips and tricks in this area, I was listening to a podcast and this site was mentioned, so I checked it out.

The scenario: Have you ever wondered what you can do to make creating a directory and then entering the directory easier and less time consuming?

For most beginner to intermediate users of Linux CLI tricks and macros are not something that comes easy, however with this little bit of code you can easily make a directory and instantly enter that directory. This alone is cool but this command does one more thing I love coming from a Windows background, it allows you to use folder names with spaces without the need to encapsulate them inside (‘’)!

Now this may sound like a trivial bit of code but to someone like myself this was a huge time saver, this may not make a difference to the hardcore Linux CLI power user.

So lets look at some sample code

mkdir ~/test

cd ~/test

That is a example of doing a simple folder creation in your home folder and then entering the folder the old way.

mkdir ~/’foldername with some space’

cd ~/‘foldername with some space’

The above would be an example of how to make a directory with spaces in the name and then enter that directory. As you can see this requires a little bit of time even if you use the ~ to represent your home folder as I have done above.

The article Create and Change to a New Directory in One Command says that if you edit your ~/.bashrc file and add the following code

# mkdir, cd into it
mkcd () {
mkdir -p "$*"
cd "$*"
}

You can then simple combine the mkdir and cd commands using the following command

mkcd New Folder/New Subfolder

or

mkcd New Folder

The first line above will make one folder and a subsequent sub-folder under it and then cd into the furthest most folder.

The second option would be the equivalent to making a folder called “New Folder” and then entering it.

While the above commands are not entirely necessary it helps to stream line the process of creating a large number of folders and then entering the last folder made. Some useful things i could see this being used for is say creating a set of folders for a backup archive where instead of having to manually create a folder for each hierarchal level you can simple do it all in one swoop and be in the last directory.

This as mentioned is more a time saver for new users and is extremely easy to setup. It could prove useful to some advanced members as well and is useable on any Linux distro that honors the .bashrc file within a users home folder. I suppose if you knew what your doing you could place this code into a global configuration file to allow every user of the system to utilize this shortcut but seeing as that is beyond my skills I will leave that to the comments should someone want to add how to do it.

As always comments are welcome, any other quick commands similar to this you wish to share feel free to drop them in a comment, I am always willing to save time and it helps users like myself get more comfortable with how to manipulate the .bashrc file to help customized our Linux.

Backups – Off-site is important

Well I had a review on this book that I wrote when it was fresh in my mind (the review not the book) but due to some weird Database error it seems that all my posts with the exception of the Linux centric posts were deleted from the time I wrote the original review.

That being said I felt it important to try and recreate this book review. So like any good nerd I went back into my repository of Site backups to see if I could find the backup only to remember that server died! It occurred to me then and there that Off-site backups is the way to go and well that left me with this post which I would have done my best to re-create from my horribly bad memory, however i would rather wait till i can give a more substantial review

Now I have multiple backup systems in place including a manual backup from phpMyAdmin to my Dropbox account. I now have a copy of the DB stored on Dropbox.coms server my own file server, and Amazon S3 as well. Needless to say I shall not loose a DB again (unless all three servers crash simultaneously god forbid).

Since my DB tend to be rather small once compressed I will also copy them to a USB flash drive. Also I will have my new Android phone (with luck the Droid X) and can copy the files over to the Mini-SD card on it as well.

So lets see that is 2 copies on physical removable medium and 3 servers one of which is on site. I hope that fits the bill for Off-site backup!

On another note with reference to the error that seemed to eliminate most of my blog posts (must have happened some time ago) it convienantly left my categories and tags alone how quaint. My post reviewing Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.04 i  believe it was at the time, Gone! my review of WIndows 7, Gone!

All this and several others, seems more like an attack then an error but oh well it has been done now time for damage control.

Droid X and Possible New Job Prospect

Job Prospect

Those of you that know me personally or even on a chatting basis, know that I have had one heck of a year with all that has been going on. One among many other things in my life that are less then fortunate, is that I am currently unemployed.

Enter Monster.com, I updated my resume on Monster and did the normal daily grind of late which is find 4-8 jobs and apply for them. Out of the blue one day I get a call from a company looking for someone to represent Sharp Electronics for their Marketing company basically helping educate customers on Sharp HD technology, I passed the initial pre-screen and anxiously awaited the interview.

The following Monday I got a call from who would become my manager should I get the job, The interview seemed to go really well and I am confident that the Interviewer got a similar feel for my experience. Now I should mention I have had experience in this type of job before, I sold Cell Phones for the 3 major carriers (not going to list them here you know who they are) wit a company called Mosaic Sales Solutions, This job i interviewed for was very similar to the cell phone one minus cell phones add HD tvs.

At any rate the interview was last Monday and I followed up on Thursday with a phone call re-emphasising how interested I was in the job and what it entailed. Now comes the waiting game, I should know by the end of this week (hopefully) if i got the job or not.

This job should I land it will require me to get rid of my pre-paid phone and get a regular posting plan phone which will be needed to keep in touch with my boss since I am completely solo on this job should i get it.

This brings me to the Droid X part of the post.

Droid X

Given that I would need a regular Phone and not a pre-paid phone, I began to look into which phone I would get and the more I looked the more it occured to me that if I had a smartphone I could be far more productive in several areas with relation to this job. For one customer questions I could not answer could be easily answered using the phone to do a quick internet search and pull up the information. Second I could use this phone to track my sales and log required information for the daily report at the end of the night.

So knowing I would need a Smartphone I began to narrow down which phone I wanted, would work for what I wanted. I tending to prefer anything other then Windows mobile was left with Palm WebOS phones or Android Powered phones. Having done a little research i found Palm was recently acquired by HP and while i have no beefs with Hewlett Packard, I felt with the buyout things might be a little late to be updated/fixed. Android was my choice of OS, then I began narrowing down Verizon Android powered phones as a means to get the phone I really wanted. Talking to several people and researching bit I found that the upcoming Droid X to be my phone of choice. It was not till after I chose this that I realized just how cool this would be, I could download apps from the Android Market to allow me to use this phone for non-work stuff as well.

True with the above things I researched which apps I would install off the bat as soon as I had network access, Some that came to mind were Seesmic, Bank of America for Android, WordPress, shopsavvy and Blizzards Authenticator app. I am sure I will install many more but for starters these are apps i would consider must haves.

Also Android is obviously powered by Linux which to me is one the best things out there. I use Windows for some things i can not get to work under WINE but for the most part Linux is my OS of choice so a phone powered by Linux just seems to be a logical choice.

All that being said, I will most likely not get a phone should I not get this job (at least not at first) since another monthly bill with no job is not the smartest of moves.

If you know a good (useful, or fun) app for android post it in a comment.