New domain, new projects.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 06/27/07 at 10:06:12 am

I recently picked up http://markuslangenfeld.com, a new domain name which for now will forward to this website. I’ve been slowly merging my online identity to Markus Langenfeld rather than Mark, I’m doing this because of the uniqueness of the spelling in my name, and honestly I don’t know why I go by Mark so often when Markus is so original.

With the new domain I have created a new semi-primary email for myself, m.langenfeld@markuslangenfeld.com. That’s right, I might as well get it out there so the spam bots can pick it up you know, because I love reading email advertisements.

I’ve also been tinkering with a number of new layouts, not only for this website but for 2 other websites that I will be re-designing in the near future. I think I’ll actually take my time in plan out something really nice that hopefully will last more than a few weeks. Doubtful.

Other than that, business as usual. Move along, nothing to see here.

Live Green, Go Yellow.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 06/23/07 at 03:06:49 pm

When I bought the new van I didn’t get a manual or anything with it, and the dealer that sold it to me didn’t mention or perhaps didn’t know that the van was an FMV. I really just discovered it by chance, the other day I was filling my gas tank when I happen to read the sticker on the inside of the gas door, it stated “Ethanol (E85) or Unleaded Fuel Only” and then it goes on about how the van is capable of running Ethanol based fuels.

I’ve never owned a flexible fuel vehicle before so it’s exciting to be able to already have something that can support a product that will not only support our economy but the environment. We only have one fuel station in Pine County that sells E85 and it just so happens to be next to my work which is convenient since I already fuel up there quite often.

After discovering this I’m wondering how many people are driving around out there with a vehicle that can accommodate an alternate fuel source, and not even know it.

New Photo Series – Duluth, Minnesota

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 06/18/07 at 04:06:35 am

Yesterday I made a trip up to Duluth with my family, essentially just to cruise around and take a few pictures, have lunch etc. The Duluth / Lake Superior area is really like being in another part of the country. I say this because the environment there is just completely different. The weird part however is that road trip there was less then an hour long. Duluth isn’t that far away.

At my house it was 90F, sunny, and humid. In Duluth it was foggy, dark, 53F. Maybe not the best weather for picture taking, but it was a nice experience. Like a little vacation from the hot summer weather we’re having here in central Minn. Once we got home it was the same as when we left, so the overall climate really does differ there.

Anyways, I did take a few photos while I was there. Unfortunately I didn’t get many pictures of the huge ships and barges or the nice little skyline that Duluth has to offer. But I got a start on what I hope to be a nice photoset soon.

These photos can be found at my gallery on Flickr in the brand new Duluth, MN Photoset.


The Time Has Come

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 06/17/07 at 08:06:02 pm

I’ve been talking about getting a new ride for a long time now. I’ve mentioned that I wanted to get either a new Chevy Impala or another mini van. My Chevy Lumina, the car I was driving was on its last leg so over the past couple weeks I’ve been really looking into getting a new vehicle.

Last week I found a great deal on a 2003 Dodge Grand Caravan Sport, the price was right within my budget and it looked beautiful in the pictures. I called up the dealership, gave some information and was pre-approved for financing on the new van. I set up an appointment and I loved what I saw so I bought it.

I’m really glad I picked it up. The Caravan is well equipped with CD/HD radio, dual sliding doors, quad bucket seats, and rear climate control. The model I bought has the 3.3L V6 and it runs and rides perfect. It’s really in good shape.

I haven’t really financed anything this expensive before so it’s definitely a new experience. It feels like a step up in life, another goal accomplished. I know I’ll enjoy the space and features the van will offer so I should be overall content with it for the next few years.

Quote. Buy. Print!

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 06/09/07 at 08:06:28 pm

Those 3 words have definitely become very popular over the last couple years. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m referring to the ever-expanding insurance company; Esurance. Esurance was actually recently named one of the fastest growing insurance companies in the United States and I can see why.

This week I decided to shop around for better auto insurance rates, I have gotten quotes from Esurance before but I guess I never really look into comparing it to what I was currently paying or what other companies cost for the same amount of coverage.


A friend of mine recently switched to them and he was raving about their prices and ease of use, so I had to take another look. “Quote. Buy. Print.” It really is that easy, I went onto the website, and I was able to fully customize my coverage and get a quote from both Esurance along with other leading insurance providers. The price was right so I went ahead and purchased a policy and I was able to print temporary proof of insurance instantly. My permanent insurance cards along with detailed paperwork were available the next day.

Esurance really likes that print-your-own style too. If you actually want Esurance to mail out a copy of the insurance documentation it costs $25.00. So a trip to Wal-Mart to pick up some card stock and self-sealing laminate and I was able to print out my cards and professionalize them in just a few minutes.

Since I’m on the topic of insurance, Esurance also just started offering health insurance. I have awesome coverage through my work with Medica, however it comes with a price. I pay around $180.00 a month for my medical coverage, hardly a discounted rate. So I may be looking into health insurance quotes from Esurance too.

You would think I’m getting paid for this post, but I’m actually duly impressed with the reduced-hassle experience and online based goodness that Esurance has to offer.

The power of Task Management.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 06/07/07 at 02:06:26 pm

I recently switched back to using outlook for work related email and more recently an overall time and contact management solution. Outlook 2007 really is a great application, everything is easy to find and use and unlike the other Office 2007 applications it’s easy to cut out any un-wanted fluff in the program’s interface. The only detail that has been keeping me from using Outlook for task management before is that I just bought a Palm Tungsten T2 and I needed to figure out a way to get it syncing with Outlook rather they the poorly designed Palm Desktop software. (No offense Palm, but it really does suck. I mean, you can’t even search…WTF)

This week I made it a little project to get the Palm syncing by both the USB cradle and Bluetooth to my notebook where I’m using Outlook for work. I actually got it going fairly easy using the Palm Outlook Conduits which they mention comes with some Palm PDAs. What they don’t mention is that the Conduits also come with the latest version of the Palm Desktop software which is available for download. Free.

I did however run into a small problem due to the fact that I’m running Windows Vista with Outlook 2007. Luckily Palm has released an update to address the Conduit’s incompatibility with Office 2007, the only issue was that the update could only be applied if the Conduits are installed, and the Conduits didn’t want to install because I wasn’t running a compatible version of Office. A quick Google search found me a workaround to this quandary.

Task Management has become ever-more important to me. I’m constantly feeling like I simply don’t have time to do all the things I’d like. I figure that if I can optimize the use of my time and squeeze every ounce of productivity out of the time I have that I may end up with the extra time I need. Another ‘Life’ project I want to start is better money management. I’m making more money now, and I’m starting to not think about the amount of money I’m spending on everything. ‘Willy Nilly’ as my mother says, I have a budget in place but I’m not following it as closely as I should. Lack of money isn’t the issue, I used to budget due to lack of funds, if I didn’t properly budget everything I would be broke, now I want to budget to control my spending, so extra funds could go into something more productive such as savings towards something I really want or need.

I think the first step to stricter budgeting habits would be to start keeping track of what I’m spending. As in balance some sort of ledger or record and just keep track of everything. I need to get a system in place soon, my overall bills and expenses will be going up and if I start spending money the way I am now, it could cause problems.

I’ve been looking into a project started by Darek Punsalan of 5ThirtyOne called ‘Mint’, which is an online financial management tool. The Blog goes into the various features and goals behind the project. It looks like it could be a great way to manage funds and spending habits in real-time, online.

Anyway, we will see what happens. I’ll save that for another time.

Hardware Review: Emerson LC320EM8 32’’ LCD TV

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 06/02/07 at 03:06:17 pm

I mentioned in the last post that I had received a new toy over my birthday weekend. I’ve been looking at getting a nice LCD TV for a while and my family knew this, so I received the Emerson LC320EM8 as a gift :)

I wanted to take some time to play around with it and decide if I really like it and everything. When it comes to an LCD TV, it seems like there are just tons of brands running around out there, so it makes it difficult to determine what’s good and what to stay away from. I had a bad experience with an Emerson VCR once, so I was interested in seeing how good the quality would be with their TV’s.


Also, I’ve seen that Emerson normally sticks to smaller CRTs and entry level products; it was surprising that they have such a large LCD on the market.

The overall craftsmanship and quality of the TV is good, the buttons which are located on the top of the LCD have a good feel to them. Everything feels good and sturdy on the TV, I didn’t find that anything really feels cheap or like it’s going to break off which is nice. This being my first LCD TV and LCD screen of this size, it was important that the TV felt durable, I don’t want it to fall apart if I decide to move it or whatever. The LCD is also surprisingly light; the shipping weight is only 36 pounds so I’d say the TV itself is around 25-30Lbs, a big change from a 70Lbs CRT.

My only gripe in terms of quality is that the plastic under the screen itself is a little flexible, and for some reason the glossy plastic at the very bottom appears to be chipped at the top. I played around with the display version at the store and it’s the same, so it has to be a manufacture thing. The chipped look on the glossy portion is almost in a pattern, just sort of a weird looking pattern but it’s hardly noticeable.

The LCD has solid specs, maybe not the best on the market but when compared to TVs with similar price or even slightly more expensive, the specs are impressive. The LC320EM8 has a Contrast Ratio of 1000:1, they say that 1,500:1 is optimal, but a lot of entry level LCD’s I’ve seen have 700:1… The numbers really don’t matter anyways, the blacks look great and the colors are very vibrant, not washed out at all. The TV is good and bright with a rating of 420 (cd/m2) which appears to be the market standard. Lastly it supports a resolution of 1366 x 768 which is sort of weird, again it’s the same as many other LCD’s of the same size. I did some research and basically in terms of HDTV resolution conversion, it can technically support 1080i but its native resolution is 720p. We have a 1080p LCD at my work and unfortunately broadcast content currently maxes out at 1080i. I’ve done some comparing in the past with 1080i and 720P and the difference is nearly unnoticeable IMO. So I was perfectly happy with the 720p support.

When it comes to inputs, the TV sports dual Component and Composite, S-Video and HDMI. The HDMI input was important to me for future proofing purposes, unfortunately the LC320EM8 doesn’t have DVI or VGA inputs so I may look into a DVI to HDMI adapter so I can look into using the LCD with a PC.

I wanted to briefly get into the software this TV has in terms of the on-screen display and such. I was really impressed with the simplicity of the options, there isn’t much for audio features but there are a handful of video modes and all of the basic settings you would expect. The OSD in terms of design, like how it looks on the screen is the best I have seen on a TV hands down. It really looks neat, even the volume bar is nice looking with the little icon and everything, very cool.


The TV offers a number of video modes to help size the picture to its 16:9 aspect ratio. One of the options is simply called ‘wide’ which makes the picture look good in terms of how objects and such on the screen are sized, but when things move towards the edge I notice that the ‘wide’ mode has a weird fisheye effect. Otherwise there are other options which essentially stretch the image, or a standard 4:3 option which obvisily will fail to use the screens entire real-estate.

I haven’t had a chance to use the TV’s HD ability; I simply haven’t had time to run new RG6 coax from a new cable jack. I later on found out that like the cable company I work with, they modulate in QAM, and this TV only has an ATSC digital tuner, so I may have to look into getting an over the air antenna for broadcast content, or an HD box from my cable provider. However I did hook up my SD DVD player to one of the component inputs and even at standard definition, the picture looks fantastic.

There you have it, I think I went into everything I wanted to about this TV. Overall I’m very impressed with the quality and features the TV has to offer, especially for its < $500 price tag.

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