This is really how I feel at work sometimes, it is not a new Dilbert animation but it gets the point across. I am trying to get a project complete, or something else done and all I have are bosses over my shoulder telling me what to do instead of the current project. Then question me why the project on hand is not complete and what I have been doing instead.

Okay, so this morning I decided that I will go ahead and read through some of the new happenings over at MP3Car.com and such, see what people are talking about and some new ideas. Yet after going through the articles on the front page, there are no new ideas just a large compilation of articles on commercial products and features and how to connect your iPhone / iPOD to your vehicle or even to your custom carputer.

Honestly, what is the point of connecting your iPhone or iPOD to your carputer if you want to play music? Did you spend time and money creating a unique system for your vehicle and didn’t think of a way to play music from it? Could you not find a way to connect OBDII to your carputer, and instead need your iPhone to do it for you? Simple maps and GPS on your iPhone instead of your carputer?

Really, what the fuck people? If you wanted all that, don’t even install a custom computer in your car, just use your iPOD / iPhone in your car with the cables to connect to the head unit. I am not angry about using your iPhone instead of a full fledged computer system, yes it’s smaller and easier and quicker to install. But why would you install the computer and then use the iPhone to fill in the gaps you never figured out or put enough time and thought into to make the computer do the work instead of more and more devices.

Some articles on the front page are even talking about the death of the carputer and migration to the iPhone. Fuck. That. Some people do not want your fucking shitty iPhone. I hate phones, I hate them with a passion. I would never get an iPhone, to use as a phone or a ‘replacement’ for my carputer when my carputer is completely free, open source, I can configure it to do anything, work anywhere, and not need special programs or unlocking hacks and such. I want a reasonable sized LCD touch screen monitor that I don’t -need- to look at while driving to know where to press to change music and play lists. I want one device to do everything in a simple manor without going from screen to screen. I want an -integrated- computer in the vehicle to make a complete feeling!

So I was asked to visit the CEOs house today to work on a small network problem and get her printer up and running and such. After all this was done, she brings me her son’s laptop with a Verizon USB Cellular Modem and asks if I can install it for her. I have no real problem doing this so I load up the laptop and it has the software already installed! Alright, so I execute the software and it asks me to plug in the device, I do so and then it asks for a driver.

…What? Alright the software was installed, but there is no driver? Fine. I visit Google, type in Verizon UM175 Driver and all I get are shitty websites trying to get me to buy something, fill out my email, put in a credit card number to download the driver. Hm, no.

Well I come to find out that you can only get this driver directly from Verizon’s Website. Fine. I visit, search for UM175 and it comes up. I click to download and it asks my Operating System, USB or PCMCIA, and then it asks for the Cell Phone number of the card. Why? I just need the fucking driver. So I have to call up the corporate office and speak to our telecommunications guy, I give him the serial and he looks everything up and gives me the phone number, which was nowhere to be found on the USB modem itself.

So I put in the number and the driver downloads and that’s really all, it works fine. My point is, why is it so difficult to get a driver for this device? Phone number to download? Why, do you need to make sure it’s your card to get this generic driver? Odd since even Pantech’s website does not have the driver. Anyway, just to piss anyone off at Verizon or Pantech I have the driver available to anyone here, hopefully you will find this site before you dig around and have to call for help.

I can no longer handle the file bandwidth load these two drivers require, but from visitors comments, I have tested and the phone number 000-000-0000 does work to download the drivers. You can find them all on the VZAccess Manager website: http://vzam.net.

  Pantech UM175 USB Wireless Card Driver (15.5 MiB, 6,428 hits)
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This is my simple component for Joomla! that will take an XBEL XML file uploaded from Firefox Bookmark Sync. and display it as a component in Joomla!.

  XBEL Bookmarking Component (2.8 KiB, 340 Downloads)

This is a small module that will display an image you specify at a specific time. That is, you configure it from the back end, to show a specific image for a specific time, and when the time changes, the image will also change.

  mod_timeimages.zip (1.5 KiB, 395 Downloads)

This is a simple Who is Online module for Joomla! It is currently setup to timeout (remove from the counted users total) after 5 minutes. It will count guests, and members.

  Joomla! Who is Online Module (1.2 KiB, 432 Downloads)

This is a small module I have created to show the top 10 authors for Joomla! Content as a module on your Joomla! site. Just install, and it will list the top 10.

  Joomla! Top Authors Module (886 bytes, 341 Downloads)

This is a very simple module that will display the text you define per day. Example: You can configure it to say; Hey It’s Monday on Mondays, and something different for each day of the week.

  Joomla! Text-Per-Day Module (951 bytes, 282 Downloads)