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I am a Christian, tattoo loving, paranormal believing, pierced up, supernatural watching, vampire diaries adoring, soccer coaching, animal helping, Earth saving, twimom to 4 living a crazy life I love. I am definitely Not Everyones Mama.

Archive for February 15th, 2010

Current Giveaways

Posted by Heather Manning On February - 15 - 2010

Here’s a list of the current giveaways here on The 24/7 Mom:

Kool Kids Legs

Motorola Endeavor HX1

Sentimental Silver Tiny Tag

Chocolate Pro & other candy making goodies from Wilton

Prepublication signed bound copy of Vampire Vacation

Countess Of Scandal

Family Facts On-The-Go Organizer

How To Never Look Fat Again

Corked – ends tonight!

Ryn Shoes

Watch for some more coming up in these next 2 weeks from Mama Runs With Scissors, Slanket, Stonyfield, and others for the double birthday bonanza that starts tomorrow. (Both of my sons have their birthdays on Feb 23, Christiano will turn 1, Jordan will turn 11.)

To stay updated, sign up for my email updates, you’ll find it in the sidebar on the right.

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**CLOSED** Motorola Endeavor HX1 Review & Giveaway

Posted by Heather Manning On February - 15 - 2010

Congratulations to Paul Haddock!  Thank you to everyone who entered!  Paul, I will send you an email.  Please respond within 48 hours with your information.  Thanks!

HX1_Gray_r3qtr

I AM REOPENING THIS BECAUSE SOMEHOW I POSTED 2 DATES FOR THE ENDING TIME.  IT WILL NOW CLOSE on 3/13 @ 11:59 PM CST.  I’M SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION!

I had the awesome opportunity to review the Motorola Endeavor HX1.

So what has been my experience with Bluetooths personally?  None.  I hated them.  Know why?  Because Pato is always buying cheap ones and I hate talking to him on the phone when he was using one.  The echo along with the fact that he had to yell for me to hear him was incredibly annoying.  Pato is not very technologically inclined, he cares nothing for computers, but he is always trying new things for his phone.

Do you know how hard it was to keep his hands off of the Motorola Endeavor HX1 when it showed up on my doorstep?

Because of his misuse of them I have refused to use a hands free set of any kind, which isn’t cool in situations where, well, I hate to admit that I have done it, but in situations where I might be operating a 3500 lb home away from home during soccer season on wheels AKA my Kia Rondo.

Until I saw the Motorola Endeavor HX1.  Now, why might this bluetooth headset excite me when others failed?

It has stealth mode.  Do you know what stealth mode is? Let’s use my children as an example. Let’s say I get an important phone call from the doctor’s office.  At that exact moment in time Murphy’s law dictates that all 4 of my childen will either need me, start whining, start fighting, start crying, and/or a combination of all of the above.  The most repeated phrase on any phone call with the doctor’s office or any business for that matter?  I’m sorry.  I can’t hear you.  95% of my phone calls are made on the porch, where in Iowa, in February, it tends to be quite cold.  While I’m on the porch, my children are attempting to open the door and tell on each other and the baby is standing there pounding on the door yelling at me to come in.

Stealth mode is a button that I can push on the headset that will cause all the background noise to disappear, at least for the person on the other end of the phone call, doesn’t really get rid of it for me.  I really don’t think that I can blame Motorola for that at all.

It also has CrystalTalk Technology, which when you aren’t in extreme noise situations, IE: Monster truck rally, tractor pull, around my children, it will cancel out that noise.  CrystalTalk is on from the moment you turn it on, no button to push. It would be perfect for when you’re in the car with the radio (at a normal level) or walking on a windy day.

So, I put it to the test.  Turned it on, hooked it up to my Blackberry which was just about as easy as could be.  My phone found the Motorola Endeavor HX1 within seconds.  Put the earpiece in, listened to the voice prompts, and called Pato, who couldn’t hear a word I was saying.  Hung up, read the instructions closer.  Oh that’s what those little black things are for.  They aren’t replacement parts.  It came with different ear pieces to attach to it so you get the best fit for your ear. Silly me.

I tested each one and found the one that felt most comfortable in my ear.  Called Pato back, bingo! He heard me clear as day.  For once I asked the kids to up the noise level and they complied.  I pushed the stealth mode button and asked Pato if he could hear me now.  I felt like a commercial, can you hear me now?  Can you hear me now? He could hear me, but he said I sounded a little farther away, a little tinny.  Which, can be explained by the fact that Stealth Mode actually

uses bone conduction to tap your vocal vibrations and seamlessly convert them to speech so the listener hears what you are trying to say.

(For us civilian type people, bone conduction is something that the military uses, now at our fingers in the Motorola Endeavor HX1.)

He said it was still preferable to hearing all 4 of our kids yelling to talk to him because they wanted him to bring home tacos after work as soon as they realized who I was talking to.

On my end, the calls were perfectly clear, like I was talking to him with my phone to my ear.

Then I repeated the test over the next week or so with family members and friends.  The results were the same, with CrystalTalk technology, everyone could hear me clear as day and in my car by myself or outside they could never hear background noise.  With stealth mode they said that I sounded father away, but couldn’t hear the kids in the background.  And plus, most people now call me and say, can you hear me?  Can you hear me Heather?  Smart alecs.

I’ve been using this a lot over the past 2 weeks and I love it!  Pato’s been trying to sneak it out of my purse.  I love the fact that I can push the button on the top and immediately it connects to my voice dialing feature and I can say, call P-ay-to (the only way my phone recognizes P-ah-to) or call mom. It’ll call them without me needing to do anything else.  Yes, this excited me. No, I never used my voice dialing feature much.

I haven’t had to charge it again yet after charging it 2 weeks ago overnight.  I usually use it in the car and when I know I’m going to make a long phone call. (I don’t know if my ear canal is too small but after wearing it for an hour or so, I have to take it out and give my ear a rest, but remember I’m not used to using a bluetooth.) Other than that I turn it off and keep it in a pocket in my purse so I don’t forget to use it in the car.  Safety first!  It’s rated with 7 hours talked time and 10 days standby time.

Motorola Endeavor HX1 is available at Sprint for $129.99 but I also found the Motorola Endeavor HX1 on Amazon for $102.95 right now.

This gets a

thumbsup

for keeping us safe while I’m driving us to and fro and for helping me have important conversation without having to hear, I’m sorry I can’t hear you.

Now some exciting news!  Motorola has offered to give one of the Motorola Endeavor HX1 to one of my blog readers!

MAIN ENTRY:

Go to Motorola and tell me what feature appeals to you most on the Motorola Endeavor HX1.

MAKE SURE YOU DO THE MAIN ENTRY BEFORE ANY OF THE EXTRA ENTRIES! THANKS!

EXTRA ENTRIES:

  • - Become a fan of Motorola on Facebook
  • - Subscribe to my blog via email or reader
  • - Follow @Motomobile on Twitter
  • - Follow me on Twitter (either @HeatherM74 or @GiveawayChick – you’ll get all the giveaways from other bloggers that I enter on @GiveawayChick, either one is fine.)
  • - Tweet this giveaway (1X/day)

Win a Motorola Endeavor HX1 from @Motomobile and #HeatherM74! http://bit.ly/aw5gZ8 Best Bluetooth headset! Ends 3/13  #Giveaway * US

  • - Follow me via Google Friend connect
  • - add my button to your blog (the 24/7 mom one on the right side)
  • - comment on one of my other posts
  • - blog about this giveaway with a link back to this post.
  • - Digg, StumbleUpon, or any other social networking bookmark this giveaway.  (Not the site, the post.) There are links after each post.

Please leave a separate comment for each entry.

- Check out this post for 3 extra entries on all of my giveaways through April 1!

Giveaway ends on EXTENDED! 3/13/10 at 11:59 PM CST. Only US entries. Winners will be chosen by random number generator. Winners will be emailed and must respond within 48 hours or an alternate winner will be chosen.

disclaimer

Thank you to Motorola for sending me the Motorola Endeavor HX1.

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Project 365 Day 45 and 46

Posted by Heather Manning On February - 15 - 2010

I thought I’d post yesterday and today’s since I didn’t get a chance to post it yesterday.

Project365-2010-45

Just playing around with selective coloring here, trying to disguise the valentine’s day mess on in my living room.  Nano took off with someone’s chocolate.  We’re still not sure whose it was because everyone claims it was theirs. :)

And today’s –

Project365-2010-46

I know I have 2 other kids, but by the time they get home it’s chaos until supper then chaos until bedtime.  I need to get my camera out more when they are home. :)  

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Who else cried?

Posted by Heather Manning On February - 15 - 2010

Popularity: 1% [?]

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Not Happening Again

Posted by Heather Manning On February - 15 - 2010

Jordan asked me last night if he could do something on my computer because whatever it was he wanted to do, he was unable to do on his computer.  I assumed it was for the same reason that Webkinz doesn’t work.  Something with the adobe flash plug in isn’t compatible.

I said yes, went off to do something than after a bit heard mom!  mom!  mom!

I come back out here and see my anti-virus program going crazy.  He’d shut the browser.  AVG is popping up over and over again about a trojan.  He was looking for a game that he wanted to play, clicked on a link, and it went nuts.

That should be a reminder that I need to put parental controls on my own desktop.  I’ve got them on Jordan’s and on my laptop because that is where Kat plays, but not on my own because I know I’m not going to go look up porn and obviously there is a reason I don’t let anyone touch my work computer.  No more being generous I’ll tell you that now.

I tried to start malwarebytes which gets rid of everything. This virus deleted it.  (It installed Internet security something or other that was also giving me tons of warnings.) I went and redownloaded malwarebytes, and while that was downloading I opened up Spybot. That froze up.  Just running Adaware. It wouldn’t open.  I installed malwarebytes and it needed to restart my computer to finish the installation.  Restarted, get a window about a worm installed on my computer, and it is recommended to completely scan the system.  At this point, I didn’t know if these were coming from my computer or from the worm/trojan.  Windows explorer wouldn’t start.  So I’m sitting there just looking at Bella and Edward on my desktop with no folders, no icons, everything gone.  I tried to restart in safe mode.  Everything came up in safe mode, but I was still got errors.  Tried to run malwarebytes again.  It deleted it as soon as I restarted.  I was crying at this point.  I haven’t backed up my computer in 2 months, all the pictures I took in January and February, my newest scrap pages, all I could think was I’m going to have reformat and I’m going to lose it all.  In safe mode I tried to turn on my external hard drive to back up my pictures at least.  All of a sudden my recycle bin is full with like 10,000 items.  It was everything off my EHD, well, I’m not sure if it came from my EHD or if it came from my computer I just glanced at the files and then hit restore for all of them.

Though, speaking of restore, let’s do a system restore.  Tried that.  Nope, it said that the administrator had disabled that option.  WTH?  I am the administrator

I’m starting to promise God anything and everything if he would just fix my computer.

Tried starting MSCONFIG to see what was starting up.  That would shut down in regular mode, in safe mode I could start it up but every time I deselected these extra things that were starting up on my computer, they’d recheck themselves when I restarted.  I was flipping out.  Tried to get to the task manager by CTRL + ALT + Delete.  That wasn’t even an option showing anymore.

The final time I hit F8 when I rebooted I decided to try repair computer instead of safe mode.  Bingo.  I had the option of system restore there.  I was able to restore to Feb 13.   Everything was back.  All of my much loved folders.  All my pretty little icons.  There was my beloved From Drive K folder with all of my pictures and scrapbook pages in it.  Yeah, I should rename my folder to something else.  I just named it that when I moved everything from my partitioned hard drive in my old computer to this one, because they were all on, you guessed, drive K.

I just about fell off my chair in relief.  Jordan heard me yell I FIXED IT! from the shower with the water running.

Needless to say, no one will be touching my computer again.

And now I have a whole spreadsheet of things I can and cannot do re: my promises to God if it got fixed.  I really need to think more before I promise things to someone who can strike me down with lightening.

Guess what I did immediately after I got it back up and running again?  Backed up my pictures to my EHD.

Here’s your handy dandy tip of the day:  Back up more than 1 every 2 months

That’s what I was freaking over.  I have all my disks to reinstall my programs if I had to reformat, I might have to reup some of my CDs to my computer which would be a total PITA if I wanted them on there for my iPod again, all of my digital stuff is saved on Amazon, I can redownload everything I’ve bought there, but I didn’t have the important stuff backed up.

There really is not excuse, I have 1 – 500 GB EHD and 2 – 250 GB EHDs, you know, back up and then back up your back up.

After all that I decided that it was time to defrag.  I use defraggler because the defrag in my system tools freezes half way through every time. I started it at 2 AM and then went to bed.  At 7 this morning it was only 70% done.  It was just finally finished at 9 AM.  My computer had better run better after that long of a defrag.

So, class, let’s recap Heather’s favorite programs, all of them free, none which helped me out with this problem, but I still will use them because they are the best I have found for what I need (plus a few others):

 

malwarebytes

Spybot

Adaware

defraggler

AVG Antivirus

CCleaner

Clean Up!

(I’m not sure which works better between the cleaning programs, so I alternate.)

Those are the ones I use at least on a weekly basis if not more often.

While I’m linking to free awesome programs, I’ve had a few emails lately asking me how I do my digital scrapbooking.  Introducing new mom’s all over to this fantabulous way of preserving your memories.  I use the program Paint Shop Pro (I actually use X1, but they just released X3, I am trying to decide if it’s worth the cost of upgrading or is it like X2, a few bells and whistles added, nothing I really need?) A lot of scrappers use photoshop products – including elements. But, if you’re brand new to scrapping, don’t have a photo program and don’t want to put out a lot of money until you know if you like it or not, Gimp is a program that is free, similar to Photoshop and those who use it love it.

I personally have been using PSP since version 7 and I can make it do just about anything that Photoshop can do, some in less steps, some in more, it’s way lower priced than PS.  I have photoshop elements 5 installed on my computer that I got with my Wacom tablet, and I’ve downloaded the free trial of Photoshop CS2 (they are past 2 now. :) ) but when I open it, I look at it, close it, and open up my PSP.  I might just have a mind block because I have used PSP for so long, but I just don’t get it. 

rmtotd-544

That’s linked to the pic. 

I think I’m going to take a picture of what I’d be laying in if I got myself in that position and twitpic it to Ricky Martin.  It’d be my toes turning blue in snow.  I want to be on a beach.

I’m going to go play with Nano a bit!  Have a great day!

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