A quick one... I know, they're all quick... anyway... I upgraded the DVR. MythTV, based on Fedora 8 (MythDora) with a 120 GB hard drive suffices, but we really needed more room to add movies, so that watching a DVD doesn't involve opening the DVD storage area, fighting the kids, and hoping they don't break the DVD player, or scratch a disk...
I love LVM. Expanding the storage pool was pretty much seamless.
However, one thing I hate about using "old" RedHat distros... trading features for stability. In order to transfer some of these movies to the DVR box, I had to physically bring the machine up to the network. I just had a wireless b adapter in the DVR to get guide information. That's really too slow to transfer anything.
I also didn't have a router. I was using ClarkConnect as a Gateway, and hadn't even put a wireless card in the box to do an access point. I was using a DWL-900AP+ wireless B access point. The machine I was using was a Pentium 4 2.8 GHz HT that I really could have been doing something else with, so I decided to get a D-Link DIR-655 gigabit wireless-n router, and a couple of D-Link DWA-552 adapters. Supposedly the Atheros chipset in those PCI adapters works in Linux.
I installed the router, downgraded my server to an old 450 MHz box with a 20 GB hard drive, and recommissioned the server. Everything is good, until I realize that Fedora 8, as configured in Mythdora didn't just plug and play the wireless N card.
So, what am I going to do? I'll consider trying to patch up Mythdora 5, or hope that the next version follows Fedora 10 really quick, and that the upgrade is somewhat seamless.
My CC box is doing well as a stand-in for Windows Home Server... I don't know if this 450 MHz / 20 GB will suffice. I'll definitely need more space, but I'm really starting to think about trialling those discs I got, and moving back to Vista on the desktop... sigh, we'll see.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
TorrentFlux and ClarkConnect
After a little trial and error, I got TorrentFlux installed on my ClarkConnect box. Awesome. Now I don't have to worry about leaving my main PC running when I want to download a torrent... you know, like maybe Fedora or something?
I really, really wanted to try Amahi, but I like having ClarkConnect as a gateway, and I'm not confident enough in my linux admin skills to turn a fedora installation into a gateway by adding a second NIC, as suggested on the amahi-users list. I'm definitely not feeling the suggestion that I go buy a wireless router, just so that I can plug it in and disable dhcp and stuff.
However, the Personal Backup Appliance, and running on a "newer" code base are still options that appeal to me. I may yet give Amahi a try. There was a recent review on Linux.com, but the reviewer didn't even have broadband internet, so I'm somewhat skeptical that it told me anything that I didn't already know from reading it.
I still haven't given in to the urge to just wipe and try Windows Home Server (which also has no official gateway mode). So, I guess that's something. Since I have a "real" web server running now, it might be time to put up that picture gallery running out of my house. Maybe that will spell the end for my sensless attatchment to flickr as well.
Regarding that HDA-ized Personal Backup Appliance, I really do need to look into automating some kind of solution with ClarkConnect, or Amahi or something. I imagine that I'll get there eventually.
The other issue is wireless support. I wouldn't mind using a wirless adapter on the server to serve up my wireless network. The only wireless clients in my house are our Windows Moblie T-Mobile Shadow phones, and the 802.11b adapter in the MythTV DVR downstairs, grabbing guide information. However, I'm serving it up now with an old D-Link DWL-900AP+ 802.11b access point. I don't think there's any wireless N adapters that work in Linux, but if there are, I need to find them, and then I'll probably update the one in the DVR, add one to my ClarkConnect box, and sing their praises.
Time to start searching google, I guess.
I really, really wanted to try Amahi, but I like having ClarkConnect as a gateway, and I'm not confident enough in my linux admin skills to turn a fedora installation into a gateway by adding a second NIC, as suggested on the amahi-users list. I'm definitely not feeling the suggestion that I go buy a wireless router, just so that I can plug it in and disable dhcp and stuff.
However, the Personal Backup Appliance, and running on a "newer" code base are still options that appeal to me. I may yet give Amahi a try. There was a recent review on Linux.com, but the reviewer didn't even have broadband internet, so I'm somewhat skeptical that it told me anything that I didn't already know from reading it.
I still haven't given in to the urge to just wipe and try Windows Home Server (which also has no official gateway mode). So, I guess that's something. Since I have a "real" web server running now, it might be time to put up that picture gallery running out of my house. Maybe that will spell the end for my sensless attatchment to flickr as well.
Regarding that HDA-ized Personal Backup Appliance, I really do need to look into automating some kind of solution with ClarkConnect, or Amahi or something. I imagine that I'll get there eventually.
The other issue is wireless support. I wouldn't mind using a wirless adapter on the server to serve up my wireless network. The only wireless clients in my house are our Windows Moblie T-Mobile Shadow phones, and the 802.11b adapter in the MythTV DVR downstairs, grabbing guide information. However, I'm serving it up now with an old D-Link DWL-900AP+ 802.11b access point. I don't think there's any wireless N adapters that work in Linux, but if there are, I need to find them, and then I'll probably update the one in the DVR, add one to my ClarkConnect box, and sing their praises.
Time to start searching google, I guess.
I found out who's reading my blog!
Friday, I did an interview with a student from the Professional Writing program back at Purdue. Good experience for me, and hopefully for them. As it turns out, they read my blog, as part of their research on me. Yikes... I had to answer some difficult questions about it, but I made it through unscathed. However, I think I'll have to put a bit more into this now.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
A Night Out... minus kids
Whew, a long day today. After it, we went out to a Butler basketball game with a buddy of mine and his wife. Good time. Mom-in-law watched the kids. They don't have any, but his wife teaches 1st grade, so they might be ready for when they start their family. My kids are 2.5 and 1.5, so it can be a bit rough to enjoy time sitting down at a restaurant or social event.
Voting Early
I voted early today. After going to the gym, we took the kids and my mom-in-law to the Southport location and spent about 45 min total doing a pre-arranged absentee ballot. Not a bad alternative. If it is this way all across the nation, I wonder how it will affect the process of voting in the future. Maybe we'll vote online from the comfort of our homes. Heck, the IRS sure is willing to take my money over the Internet...
Friday, October 31, 2008
Rolling back to MythDora because of Charlie Brown
Vista Media Center has been great, except for some issues that don't bother others but me:
- It runs on Windows Vista
- I have to do an ugly hack to get guide information for subchannels.
More importantly, it doesn't give me the flexibility to do compression. I'm using a 120 GB drive, and OTA digital TV takes lots of space. BlueRay might be important down the line, but I'm watching on a SD television, I don't have a blue-ray drive, or any movie discs. The fact that I'm using a Media Center remote works out well too, but I think I can get by with it working. Oh, and ` GB of RAM was inadequate at times... watching that circle just go around and around got old. RAM is cheap, but I wasn't ready to get more RAM.
So, the straw that broke the camels back was my mom-in-laws request to record the "Great Pumpkin" episode of Charlie Brown. I accidentally recorded an hour of weather and news, because the guide information for the subchannel of ABC Broadcast Television was the same. (My fault, I should have checked... but I was busy... that's why I built a DVR...)
I hate to take some thing that is working well, and kill it, but hey... I wasn't a real Vista Fan anyway and I want to use this Schedules Direct subscription, and I wanted to run Linux, and Media Portal is still in their nearly-infinite 1.0 release candidate... blah blah.
I'm mostly concerned about getting an Internet connection to the TV. The supposedly-final straw that tipped me over to Vista was support for a wireless G card that I had. I'm going to stick a wireless b card in and see if that works after I install.
- It runs on Windows Vista
- I have to do an ugly hack to get guide information for subchannels.
More importantly, it doesn't give me the flexibility to do compression. I'm using a 120 GB drive, and OTA digital TV takes lots of space. BlueRay might be important down the line, but I'm watching on a SD television, I don't have a blue-ray drive, or any movie discs. The fact that I'm using a Media Center remote works out well too, but I think I can get by with it working. Oh, and ` GB of RAM was inadequate at times... watching that circle just go around and around got old. RAM is cheap, but I wasn't ready to get more RAM.
So, the straw that broke the camels back was my mom-in-laws request to record the "Great Pumpkin" episode of Charlie Brown. I accidentally recorded an hour of weather and news, because the guide information for the subchannel of ABC Broadcast Television was the same. (My fault, I should have checked... but I was busy... that's why I built a DVR...)
I hate to take some thing that is working well, and kill it, but hey... I wasn't a real Vista Fan anyway and I want to use this Schedules Direct subscription, and I wanted to run Linux, and Media Portal is still in their nearly-infinite 1.0 release candidate... blah blah.
I'm mostly concerned about getting an Internet connection to the TV. The supposedly-final straw that tipped me over to Vista was support for a wireless G card that I had. I'm going to stick a wireless b card in and see if that works after I install.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Twitter and Facebook
Facebook is cool, but I really hate the adverts. Again, I got some program that puts Twitter Updates on Facebook, and then some program that updates Twitter, so I don't have to be on Twitter or Facebook to make a status update. Sigh... that way, I can keep working! Right now, that program is TwitterBar. I don't actually have anyone "following" me on Twitter, so I'm not using an application like TwitterFox to keep up with my friends.
The real deal is that I'm just not into spending "time" on Facebook, and I feel bad, because there's lots of people who have made genuine attempts to keep up with me, and play games and stuff, and a I have a list of requests a mile long. They come to my e-mail box, and that's great, but I'm wondering if I should just block the applications. I'm thinking no, but I hate having this reminder of stuff that I've ignored, but not hit the button to "ignore". Bah, I think I'll just poke/hit/give a flower to/wave every single one of them, just to be nice.
Of course, everyone who's my friend on Facebook can read this, since I link my WordPress blog to Facebook too. I hadn't updated in a while, so I guess everyone who wants to know what is really up can find out. Yay!
The real deal is that I'm just not into spending "time" on Facebook, and I feel bad, because there's lots of people who have made genuine attempts to keep up with me, and play games and stuff, and a I have a list of requests a mile long. They come to my e-mail box, and that's great, but I'm wondering if I should just block the applications. I'm thinking no, but I hate having this reminder of stuff that I've ignored, but not hit the button to "ignore". Bah, I think I'll just poke/hit/give a flower to/wave every single one of them, just to be nice.
Of course, everyone who's my friend on Facebook can read this, since I link my WordPress blog to Facebook too. I hadn't updated in a while, so I guess everyone who wants to know what is really up can find out. Yay!
Twitter and Facebook
Facebook is cool, but I really hate the adverts. Again, I got some program that puts Twitter Updates on Facebook, and then some program that updates Twitter, so I don't have to be on Twitter or Facebook to make a status update. Sigh... that way, I can keep working! Right now, that program is TwitterBar. I don't actually have anyone "following" me on Twitter, so I'm not using an application like TwitterFox to keep up with my friends.
The real deal is that I'm just not into spending "time" on Facebook, and I feel bad, because there's lots of people who have made genuine attempts to keep up with me, and play games and stuff, and a I have a list of requests a mile long. They come to my e-mail box, and that's great, but I'm wondering if I should just block the applications. I'm thinking no, but I hate having this reminder of stuff that I've ignored, but not hit the button to "ignore". Bah, I think I'll just poke/hit/give a flower to/wave every single one of them, just to be nice.
Of course, everyone who's my friend on Facebook can read this, since I link my WordPress blog to Facebook too. I hadn't updated in a while, so I guess everyone who wants to know what is really up can find out. Yay!
The real deal is that I'm just not into spending "time" on Facebook, and I feel bad, because there's lots of people who have made genuine attempts to keep up with me, and play games and stuff, and a I have a list of requests a mile long. They come to my e-mail box, and that's great, but I'm wondering if I should just block the applications. I'm thinking no, but I hate having this reminder of stuff that I've ignored, but not hit the button to "ignore". Bah, I think I'll just poke/hit/give a flower to/wave every single one of them, just to be nice.
Of course, everyone who's my friend on Facebook can read this, since I link my WordPress blog to Facebook too. I hadn't updated in a while, so I guess everyone who wants to know what is really up can find out. Yay!
Saturday, October 18, 2008
I'm from Kokomo!
Random group on Facebook. One of my childhood playmates invited me.
Funnily enough, I was just telling a co-worker about the "Steer" and the "Stump".
Funnily enough, I was just telling a co-worker about the "Steer" and the "Stump".
Cleaning up
I deleted all my notes in Facebook. It was just a blog import, and I have that little WordPress application. I doubt anyone will miss it.
I formatted my drive an installed Fedora 9. Windows Vista is annoying, and I'm probably not going to keep playing Warhammer Online. Maybe I'll start up World of Warcraft again. That supposedly runs well in Linux. I don't know what I'll end up doing with my media player situation, but I backed up all my ripped mp3 files to my ClarkConnect box. Maybe I'll do some kind of transcode to ogg, or just move them to the Vista Media Center.
I didn't back up my photos... tragic. I think I got them all up on flickr (which I also recently linked to facebook). If not, I'll comb through my mom-in-law's digital archive again, and my saved flash cards, and download everything from Flickr. Then I'll delete the dupes and crappy photos. Then I'll actually organize them and post them up to Flickr in clean sets. I wonder how hard it is to delete your entire photostream?
I formatted my drive an installed Fedora 9. Windows Vista is annoying, and I'm probably not going to keep playing Warhammer Online. Maybe I'll start up World of Warcraft again. That supposedly runs well in Linux. I don't know what I'll end up doing with my media player situation, but I backed up all my ripped mp3 files to my ClarkConnect box. Maybe I'll do some kind of transcode to ogg, or just move them to the Vista Media Center.
I didn't back up my photos... tragic. I think I got them all up on flickr (which I also recently linked to facebook). If not, I'll comb through my mom-in-law's digital archive again, and my saved flash cards, and download everything from Flickr. Then I'll delete the dupes and crappy photos. Then I'll actually organize them and post them up to Flickr in clean sets. I wonder how hard it is to delete your entire photostream?
Friday, October 17, 2008
gimp-print-cups and a new gateway
Well, that gimp-print thing didn't work. I couldn't find a new printer in the admin tool. Oh well. maybe a reboot will fix it...
What's that? one of the newtwork cards stopped working? Grr... the only thing worse than defective hardware is hardware that works intermittently. Sometimes I really miss my Apple hardware.
Fortunatly the box that has two 10/100 connections hasn't been torn down... I take that, then set it up and re-copy my music to it, and my world of warcraft isntallation. I notice increased transfer speed. This box has a 2.8 GHz P4 a gig of DDR2 ram, and a 160 GB SATA hard drive. 10 MB/sec... Sigh, I'll take it.
Then I move on to trying the same failure of gimp-print, and an internet search leads me to try gimp-print-cups.
[root@gateway ~]# apt-get install gimp-print-cups
Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gimp-print-cups
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 removed and 53 not upgraded.
Need to get 24.5MB of archives.
After unpacking 30.8MB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 ftp://rh.apt.clarkconnect.com System/os gimp-print-cups 4.2.7-2 [24.5MB]
Fetched 24.5MB in 45s (543kB/s)
Committing changes...
Preparing... ##################################################
gimp-print-cups ##################################################
Done.
Holy Cow! That works, but there's a bunch of printers, none of which have any differentiation. They're all Epson R300 something-or-other-gimp-print. But, I picked the first one, and the test page printed... but the sheet of paper fed through crooked :(.
Anyway. Looks like I'm good to go, other than needing for ClarkConnect to be based on a newer release of RHEL.
What's that? one of the newtwork cards stopped working? Grr... the only thing worse than defective hardware is hardware that works intermittently. Sometimes I really miss my Apple hardware.
Fortunatly the box that has two 10/100 connections hasn't been torn down... I take that, then set it up and re-copy my music to it, and my world of warcraft isntallation. I notice increased transfer speed. This box has a 2.8 GHz P4 a gig of DDR2 ram, and a 160 GB SATA hard drive. 10 MB/sec... Sigh, I'll take it.
Then I move on to trying the same failure of gimp-print, and an internet search leads me to try gimp-print-cups.
[root@gateway ~]# apt-get install gimp-print-cups
Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gimp-print-cups
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 removed and 53 not upgraded.
Need to get 24.5MB of archives.
After unpacking 30.8MB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 ftp://rh.apt.clarkconnect.com System/os gimp-print-cups 4.2.7-2 [24.5MB]
Fetched 24.5MB in 45s (543kB/s)
Committing changes...
Preparing... ##################################################
gimp-print-cups ##################################################
Done.
Holy Cow! That works, but there's a bunch of printers, none of which have any differentiation. They're all Epson R300 something-or-other-gimp-print. But, I picked the first one, and the test page printed... but the sheet of paper fed through crooked :(.
Anyway. Looks like I'm good to go, other than needing for ClarkConnect to be based on a newer release of RHEL.
gimp-print FTW! seriously...
Check the timestamp between this post and the last one. I'm not completely dumb. That's good to know.
Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
E: Couldn't find package gutenprint
[root@gateway ~]# apt-get install gimp-print
Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gimp-print
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 removed and 52 not upgraded.
Need to get 2459kB of archives.
After unpacking 4306kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 ftp://rh.apt.clarkconnect.com System/os gimp-print 4.2.7-2 [2459kB]
Fetched 2459kB in 8s (277kB/s)
Committing changes...
Preparing... ##################################################
gimp-print ##################################################
Done.
Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
E: Couldn't find package gutenprint
[root@gateway ~]# apt-get install gimp-print
Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gimp-print
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 removed and 52 not upgraded.
Need to get 2459kB of archives.
After unpacking 4306kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 ftp://rh.apt.clarkconnect.com System/os gimp-print 4.2.7-2 [2459kB]
Fetched 2459kB in 8s (277kB/s)
Committing changes...
Preparing... ##################################################
gimp-print ##################################################
Done.
ClarkConnect, round 2
So, I fried a router... meh. I built a replacement. I also nabbed a gigabit switch for $20. Unfortunately, the hardware I tried to use for the router failed, and I had to use a "real machine" that only had 10/100 network bits in it.
I got the old hardware back up and running, and I also got some other parts together and ended up building a "home server" with ClarkConnect. Right now, it has two GigE cards (which is ridiculous, I know, since my incoming broadband is less than 10 Mbit) and a 30 GB laptop hard drive. Maybe some day, I'll grab that little chenbro case and 4 terabyte drives that everyone is using for their custom WHS installs.
The machine is running off of the motherboard from a Compaq machine that I got from the Weldy's 1.2 GHz Athlon and two sticks of 256 MB RAM. That combined with the laptop hard drive, and the gigabit nics being PCI probably contributed to the paltry backup speed of around 6.5 Megabytes per second. Oh well, I got my 11 GB of ripped CDs off of my comptuer, and I built a machine that can act as some sort of backup server.
Of course, I'll need to add space, that 30 GB laptop drive is full, because I added the installer for World of Warcraft and some patches to it as well. That'll be another adventure.
Also, I've never gotten the print server working on ClarkConnect. It is one of the few reasons I'm tempted to try out Amahi, just because I know Fedora better than RHEL, and that I know if I plug in my printer in Fedora, it will work. I posted a little help request on the ClarkConnect Forums:
http://www.clarkconnect.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=111094&an=0&page=0#Post111094
I'm guessing I just need to get gutenprint installed, but I don't really know how. Probably something easy like ssh-ing into the box and typing "apt-get install gutenprint". Maybe I should just try that. LOL. I really don't want to have to get out my usb print server. It is just one more thing that I need to plug into the wall.
I got the old hardware back up and running, and I also got some other parts together and ended up building a "home server" with ClarkConnect. Right now, it has two GigE cards (which is ridiculous, I know, since my incoming broadband is less than 10 Mbit) and a 30 GB laptop hard drive. Maybe some day, I'll grab that little chenbro case and 4 terabyte drives that everyone is using for their custom WHS installs.
The machine is running off of the motherboard from a Compaq machine that I got from the Weldy's 1.2 GHz Athlon and two sticks of 256 MB RAM. That combined with the laptop hard drive, and the gigabit nics being PCI probably contributed to the paltry backup speed of around 6.5 Megabytes per second. Oh well, I got my 11 GB of ripped CDs off of my comptuer, and I built a machine that can act as some sort of backup server.
Of course, I'll need to add space, that 30 GB laptop drive is full, because I added the installer for World of Warcraft and some patches to it as well. That'll be another adventure.
Also, I've never gotten the print server working on ClarkConnect. It is one of the few reasons I'm tempted to try out Amahi, just because I know Fedora better than RHEL, and that I know if I plug in my printer in Fedora, it will work. I posted a little help request on the ClarkConnect Forums:
http://www.clarkconnect.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=111094&an=0&page=0#Post111094
I'm guessing I just need to get gutenprint installed, but I don't really know how. Probably something easy like ssh-ing into the box and typing "apt-get install gutenprint". Maybe I should just try that. LOL. I really don't want to have to get out my usb print server. It is just one more thing that I need to plug into the wall.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Ripping CDs in Windows Media Player - Music Brainz?
Hmm... I ripped a *lot* of CDs this week. Windows Media Player did a great job. However, I've got a handful of CDs that didn't have track information available. Some discs simply could not be identified. Some errored out, some ripped but with "unknown" artist/album/track info.
I'm probably going to see if I can give Banshee a chance with Music Brainz on those discs. I doubt I'll re-rip my whole collection, but I suppose that's one step closer to freedom. Does anyone know how MusicBrains actually works?
I'm probably going to see if I can give Banshee a chance with Music Brainz on those discs. I doubt I'll re-rip my whole collection, but I suppose that's one step closer to freedom. Does anyone know how MusicBrains actually works?
I found my earpiece in the driveway...
I think I'm going to have to start using Twitter if I keep writing short posts... Isn't there some sort of Facebook/Twitter mashup? Oh, I'd like to use TwitterFox on my PortableApps version of FireFox too. I guess I had better get to it.
As i turns out, the missing rubber piece of my headphones was in the driveway... I found it when I pulled in from work this evening. Yay!
As i turns out, the missing rubber piece of my headphones was in the driveway... I found it when I pulled in from work this evening. Yay!
Motorola S9 Bluetooth Headphones Earbud Covers
Well, I really like my Moto S9 bluetooth headphones, but since I ordered them from some back-alley shop in California, I only got the set of earbud covers that came on them. I think that was worth a $60-70 savings, LOL.
Anyway, I used them at the gym, wore them to work, and in the middle of the day, when I took them off, I noticed they were gone. I cried. Then I searched the Internet to find a replacement. I didn't find any. Today, I looked a little more desperately, as it kind of hurt my ear to have them on without the bud cover. I found some but they cost, like, $10.
Sigh... I might just try some foam covers from other earbuds... Anyone know good alternatives? Hit me up.
Anyway, I used them at the gym, wore them to work, and in the middle of the day, when I took them off, I noticed they were gone. I cried. Then I searched the Internet to find a replacement. I didn't find any. Today, I looked a little more desperately, as it kind of hurt my ear to have them on without the bud cover. I found some but they cost, like, $10.
Sigh... I might just try some foam covers from other earbuds... Anyone know good alternatives? Hit me up.
36 World of Warcraft Accounts
Geez, I thought I had a problem when I wanted to decide whether to suspend my single account to try another game.
http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/gamer-juggles-over-30-warcraft-characters/1255554
Some guy has 36 accounts that he plays simultaneously. Maybe that's a good excuse for me to get that 30-inch monitor...
http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/gamer-juggles-over-30-warcraft-characters/1255554
Some guy has 36 accounts that he plays simultaneously. Maybe that's a good excuse for me to get that 30-inch monitor...
TuffMail and Horde
Just in case anyone wondered. Horde is better than Alliance in World of Warcraft. kthxbye.
Oh, and I was alerted to an article on OS News about an interview with the Lead Developer of Horde. I'm using TuffMail for my mail and I'm really happy with their implementation of Horde. I normally use a client, but I'm finding the AJAX interface to work great.
I could write lots about TuffMail, and I might... but I'm working on a few things at once right now. Maybe later, or maybe I'll just come back to this. I've got a piece of paper in my wallet that I used to do my pro/con evaluation. Sort of the "idea on a napkin" thing, except I never go to Starbucks. I'd like to make that piece of paper go away.
Then there's the Team Leader at my client site. He's a mac guy, but he doesn't know anything about Mac yet. So, he asks questions to the guy that sits next to me. I try to stay out of it. But, in recent weeks he's been trying out MobileMe.
I really, really wanted to chime in and say that there's no reason to pay for all that, just because you use a Mac. But those guys have money to waste, so I'll just let them. I don't so I just use less sexy alternatives.
So, here's what happened with my mail... I went to Purdue University, got IMAP, and need it for e-mail. POP is inadequate. I need server-side filters. I like to switch computers, and clients, and all sorts of good crazy super-sexy stuff to use my e-mail. Webmail is cool, but I prefer a desktop client.
When I left Purdue, I wanted IMAP, but I picked some free provider. They failed on something important that I won't mention here. I got hooked up with FastMail, and they were doing cool stuff.
Then FastMail slowed down on adding features that were important to me, and were promised for the future. It didn't bother me much, because nobody else had them. I tried others and kept coming back.
The straws that broke the camels back was the address book and the web interface. I didn't mind the web client interface at FastMail looking like something some developer hacked together to support features of their custom-built web service. I just used a client. The address book was similarly abysmal. But, I really used e-mail to receive, rather than send, and I could remember or look up the addresses that I needed.
I decided those things were important, and I switched to TuffMail. I'm happy. I can give up the features that FastMail had that are cool.
So, here we go, I'm just going to copy my notes somewhat. I might have to clean up this post later:
Exclusive FastMail positives: proxy servers, file space / picture gallery.
Exclusive TuffMail positives: web clients, managesieve
Negatives on FastMail: Enhanced Account required for all features, have to log in to manage server-side filters, address book
Negatives on TuffMail: No real a la carte options, just more of everything, no integrated file space,
Some stuff is kind of a wash, or doesn't really matter, like saving searches as virtual folders, plus-mail addressing, sub-domain addressing, labels and custom IMAP flags.
The thing that bothers me the most about FastMail is just that they spend effort to recreate something that works well already with their web interface, and then slowly develop extra features that don't matter to me, rather than the ones I want. People are screaming for a better web interface in the forums, and they could just run Horde, and that could run along side their custom interface.
TuffMail does simple things consistently. And, at the end of the day, e-mail is simple. We stack things on top of it, and combine things with it to make it more than e-mail, but they don't need to be part of the core e-mail service. More importantly, adding those things to the core service don't add value that I need to pay for. Twenty bucks a year isn't much, but it is less than forty. That's really why I switched. I wasn't willing to pay for extra stuff just to get the few features I wanted but never came.
Oh, and GMail has great IMAP... but I don't want my stuff to belong to google.
+ Proxy Servers:
Oh, and I was alerted to an article on OS News about an interview with the Lead Developer of Horde. I'm using TuffMail for my mail and I'm really happy with their implementation of Horde. I normally use a client, but I'm finding the AJAX interface to work great.
I could write lots about TuffMail, and I might... but I'm working on a few things at once right now. Maybe later, or maybe I'll just come back to this. I've got a piece of paper in my wallet that I used to do my pro/con evaluation. Sort of the "idea on a napkin" thing, except I never go to Starbucks. I'd like to make that piece of paper go away.
Then there's the Team Leader at my client site. He's a mac guy, but he doesn't know anything about Mac yet. So, he asks questions to the guy that sits next to me. I try to stay out of it. But, in recent weeks he's been trying out MobileMe.
I really, really wanted to chime in and say that there's no reason to pay for all that, just because you use a Mac. But those guys have money to waste, so I'll just let them. I don't so I just use less sexy alternatives.
So, here's what happened with my mail... I went to Purdue University, got IMAP, and need it for e-mail. POP is inadequate. I need server-side filters. I like to switch computers, and clients, and all sorts of good crazy super-sexy stuff to use my e-mail. Webmail is cool, but I prefer a desktop client.
When I left Purdue, I wanted IMAP, but I picked some free provider. They failed on something important that I won't mention here. I got hooked up with FastMail, and they were doing cool stuff.
Then FastMail slowed down on adding features that were important to me, and were promised for the future. It didn't bother me much, because nobody else had them. I tried others and kept coming back.
The straws that broke the camels back was the address book and the web interface. I didn't mind the web client interface at FastMail looking like something some developer hacked together to support features of their custom-built web service. I just used a client. The address book was similarly abysmal. But, I really used e-mail to receive, rather than send, and I could remember or look up the addresses that I needed.
I decided those things were important, and I switched to TuffMail. I'm happy. I can give up the features that FastMail had that are cool.
So, here we go, I'm just going to copy my notes somewhat. I might have to clean up this post later:
Exclusive FastMail positives: proxy servers, file space / picture gallery.
Exclusive TuffMail positives: web clients, managesieve
Negatives on FastMail: Enhanced Account required for all features, have to log in to manage server-side filters, address book
Negatives on TuffMail: No real a la carte options, just more of everything, no integrated file space,
Some stuff is kind of a wash, or doesn't really matter, like saving searches as virtual folders, plus-mail addressing, sub-domain addressing, labels and custom IMAP flags.
The thing that bothers me the most about FastMail is just that they spend effort to recreate something that works well already with their web interface, and then slowly develop extra features that don't matter to me, rather than the ones I want. People are screaming for a better web interface in the forums, and they could just run Horde, and that could run along side their custom interface.
TuffMail does simple things consistently. And, at the end of the day, e-mail is simple. We stack things on top of it, and combine things with it to make it more than e-mail, but they don't need to be part of the core e-mail service. More importantly, adding those things to the core service don't add value that I need to pay for. Twenty bucks a year isn't much, but it is less than forty. That's really why I switched. I wasn't willing to pay for extra stuff just to get the few features I wanted but never came.
Oh, and GMail has great IMAP... but I don't want my stuff to belong to google.
+ Proxy Servers:
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
New Apple Notebooks
Okay, so Tuesday came and went, and Apple launched new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. I feel good about selling my machine, but I don't think I'll be getting a new one any time soon. Gots no money for that.
I wonder if that's why everyone who inquired about buying my Airport Base Station and wireless cards has been slow about getting back to me. Who knows.
I do miss using OS X, and my bluetooth mouse is kind of just sitting around, but I'll rectify those issues soon. I kind of gave up on running OS X on PC hardware, if I wanted to cripple my machine, I could just run Linux on the desktop. Sigh.
At least the 17-inch MacBook Pro might be available more cheaply in the used category soon. I'm pretty sure that's where I'm going to aim with my next notebook.
Until then, I've got a 1 GHz Duron Compaq laptop with 512 MB of RAM. It works. I can't really ask for much more than that.
I wonder if that's why everyone who inquired about buying my Airport Base Station and wireless cards has been slow about getting back to me. Who knows.
I do miss using OS X, and my bluetooth mouse is kind of just sitting around, but I'll rectify those issues soon. I kind of gave up on running OS X on PC hardware, if I wanted to cripple my machine, I could just run Linux on the desktop. Sigh.
At least the 17-inch MacBook Pro might be available more cheaply in the used category soon. I'm pretty sure that's where I'm going to aim with my next notebook.
Until then, I've got a 1 GHz Duron Compaq laptop with 512 MB of RAM. It works. I can't really ask for much more than that.
Negative Political Stuff
Yesterday, in the mail, I got a letter from a relative, basically regurgitating negative stuff about Barack Obama that has circulated on the Internet. Mostly, it is stuff about Islam and world terrorism and such. Nothing positive about his opponent.
WWJD? Is it really worth the stamp? Honestly, you can send that to my e-mail box, so I can just delete it. No need to waste the paper. We do like the relative, so there isn't any hard feelings or anything. However, lots of people misunderstand free speech. It doesn't mean that you can say whatever you want. It means that the government can't prosecute you for speaking out against it. Sigh...
My wife challenged me to write a rebuttal letter of some sort. I did write up a little something a while back, when my mom-in-law asked my thoughts on Obama and being black, and government expereience and such. It was a pretty good discussion.
I'm really torn about how propaganda influences peoples vote though. The Electoral College does plenty to negate individual influence anyway, but lots of people are voting on complete misinformation. It makes me sad.
If I bother to refute the letter, I'll probably post it up on the "blog of doom" right here.
WWJD? Is it really worth the stamp? Honestly, you can send that to my e-mail box, so I can just delete it. No need to waste the paper. We do like the relative, so there isn't any hard feelings or anything. However, lots of people misunderstand free speech. It doesn't mean that you can say whatever you want. It means that the government can't prosecute you for speaking out against it. Sigh...
My wife challenged me to write a rebuttal letter of some sort. I did write up a little something a while back, when my mom-in-law asked my thoughts on Obama and being black, and government expereience and such. It was a pretty good discussion.
I'm really torn about how propaganda influences peoples vote though. The Electoral College does plenty to negate individual influence anyway, but lots of people are voting on complete misinformation. It makes me sad.
If I bother to refute the letter, I'll probably post it up on the "blog of doom" right here.
Working out is hard work.
Today, I upped repetitions and weights at the gym. I was doing 8 sets, basically to exhaustion. We do weights *before* cardio and 9 and 10 really hurt. Holly wasn't feeling well today, but she hung tough and we did do cardio on bikes. Not much time today, since we're on our usual late schedule in the AM.
I managed to get some music on my phone and use the bluetooth headsets the past couple of days... It almost makes the workout tolerable. I'll need to make a playlist of the hardest hitting songs I can think of, hoping that will at least drive me work harder.
I haven't really been keeping track of weights or time. I'd like to get a mobile program, but I'm finding that if I can remember the weights that I use on most machines, and I just do cardio until I run out of time before I have to head to work. If anyone has a suggestion for workout tracking, weight-loss, or food intake programs for Windows Moble. (or any other platform, I'm open to switching, or using multiple devices) hit me up.
I managed to get some music on my phone and use the bluetooth headsets the past couple of days... It almost makes the workout tolerable. I'll need to make a playlist of the hardest hitting songs I can think of, hoping that will at least drive me work harder.
I haven't really been keeping track of weights or time. I'd like to get a mobile program, but I'm finding that if I can remember the weights that I use on most machines, and I just do cardio until I run out of time before I have to head to work. If anyone has a suggestion for workout tracking, weight-loss, or food intake programs for Windows Moble. (or any other platform, I'm open to switching, or using multiple devices) hit me up.
Mobile WordPress
Just wanted to write a post to say how great Mobile Wordpres is... at least on my work computer... a spare browser window allows me to type my random thoughts with minimal disruption.
I think I'll just use that for my phone, rather than being concerned about not having an iphone, or using some "compatible" client. Generic interfaces FTW.
I think I'll just use that for my phone, rather than being concerned about not having an iphone, or using some "compatible" client. Generic interfaces FTW.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
GIMP Portable 2.6.1 has been released
GIMP Portable 2.6.1 has been released.
Now I can make LOLcats pictures at work, without installing software on my desktop computer. Excellent! Windows Paint was really killing me.
[caption id="attachment_182" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Julie offers her sippie cup to Keifer"]
[/caption]
Now I can make LOLcats pictures at work, without installing software on my desktop computer. Excellent! Windows Paint was really killing me.
[caption id="attachment_182" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Julie offers her sippie cup to Keifer"]
[/caption]
Facebook RSS Feeds
Okay, score one for the "open-platform" team. I just subscribed to some feeds from Facebook. So, if you're wondering why I never seem to care about your stuff, it is because I'm never *on* Facebook. I post from my blog, and I read my e-mail.
Now, I can see what everyone is doing, because i *do* read my RSS feeds.
Oh, and I hate ads, a lot.
Now, I can see what everyone is doing, because i *do* read my RSS feeds.
Oh, and I hate ads, a lot.
Baked Potato
I had baked potatoes for dinner. I had a long, hard day of lawn maintenance, swing-set adjusting, grocery shopping, and corralling our son into bed. I loaded up with chicken, broccoli, onions, butter, sour cream and barbecue sauce.
Awesome. Just needed to post that. I forgot how cheap and fulfilling those are.
Awesome. Just needed to post that. I forgot how cheap and fulfilling those are.
Windows Media Player as a CD Ripper
Windows Media Player 11 is a great CD ripper. I have a tower with 4 optical drives, and I'm just casually feeding it CDs, with the settings on "rip to mp3 and eject".
Why am I not doing it on Linux, with say, Banshee, and using ogg?
Sigh. My media center and phone are Windows-based. And the minimal configuration necessary is a big help. Banshee did a great job, except when it couldn't find album info. Which would be weird, because I'd end up just opening up Sound Juicer and it would find the album info. But I had a hard time getting them both into the same tagging and directory structure. And then there's the whole "downloading and installing patent-encumbered media formats" thing on Fedora. Some day, I'll just pick up that mp3 player that plays .ogg files and syncs with Banshee, and supports my bluetooth headset that I saw at the computer geeks disount outlet, but won't use because my phone is super-powerful.
Oh, and my CD collection is really dated, LOL. Secular music from the 90's. I spent all my paper-route money on CDs in middle-school / highschool. It has been fun going through it, but sheesh. I should just smash it all with a hammer or something.
Why am I not doing it on Linux, with say, Banshee, and using ogg?
Sigh. My media center and phone are Windows-based. And the minimal configuration necessary is a big help. Banshee did a great job, except when it couldn't find album info. Which would be weird, because I'd end up just opening up Sound Juicer and it would find the album info. But I had a hard time getting them both into the same tagging and directory structure. And then there's the whole "downloading and installing patent-encumbered media formats" thing on Fedora. Some day, I'll just pick up that mp3 player that plays .ogg files and syncs with Banshee, and supports my bluetooth headset that I saw at the computer geeks disount outlet, but won't use because my phone is super-powerful.
Oh, and my CD collection is really dated, LOL. Secular music from the 90's. I spent all my paper-route money on CDs in middle-school / highschool. It has been fun going through it, but sheesh. I should just smash it all with a hammer or something.
What I miss about Mac...
Okay, so, I sold my PowerBook. It was a bit long in the tooth, and I have some other things I could use the money for. Incidentally, I decommissioned my Airport Extreme which is a fabulous router, minus the proprietary configuration interface. Then, I fried the router I replaced it with... an old wired-only Linksys.
It is a bit funny, because I grabbed it out of a drawer, and grabbed the power adapter to my spare DSL modem, rather than the power adapter to the router. A few minutes later, while fishing wires from under the table, I hear a hiss, then a pop, and see smoke. Oh well, that router was crap anyway. Unfortunately, the death was a bit untimely. I don't have anything to replace it with. I guess with my airport, it always seemed obvious which power adapter went with what. Apple saves you from being dumb.
Windows Vista's default Aero interface is relatively ugly. I'm sure you can hack it into a more pleasing aesthetic, and then there's that whole "eye of the beholder" thing with beauty, but, meh... I think I actually like my usual Gnome desktop better. Actually, all I miss is the compiz bling that got copied from Mac OS X, namely expose and the dock... The dock recently got patented, so maybe I'll have to actually use a Mac to get it now. LOL.
It is a bit funny, because I grabbed it out of a drawer, and grabbed the power adapter to my spare DSL modem, rather than the power adapter to the router. A few minutes later, while fishing wires from under the table, I hear a hiss, then a pop, and see smoke. Oh well, that router was crap anyway. Unfortunately, the death was a bit untimely. I don't have anything to replace it with. I guess with my airport, it always seemed obvious which power adapter went with what. Apple saves you from being dumb.
Windows Vista's default Aero interface is relatively ugly. I'm sure you can hack it into a more pleasing aesthetic, and then there's that whole "eye of the beholder" thing with beauty, but, meh... I think I actually like my usual Gnome desktop better. Actually, all I miss is the compiz bling that got copied from Mac OS X, namely expose and the dock... The dock recently got patented, so maybe I'll have to actually use a Mac to get it now. LOL.
Friday, October 10, 2008
I sold my PowerBook
I sold my PowerBook G4. Get this. I met the guy in front of the Apple Store. Heh. So, the really funny part is... now that I am "mac-less" I don't want to use the Apple Airport Extreme. There's not much reason for me to feel this way, since I can still use it.
However, there is one fundamental flaw witht the device, which is otherwise great. I can't configure it with a web browser. I actually have to use a utility that comes with every Mac, and can be installed on Windows (thank goodness).
The device rocks, other than not having a gigabit hub built in. So, I'm torn. I love having a print server, and wireless access point, and router, and dhcp server in one device. But, I hate that I have to attach a hub to get more than one wired connection. This is fundamentally how I feel about apple devices, I love the simplicity, but I hate that I can't tinker. I guess I could just buy a gigabit hub and stop whining...
What if the revolution comes, and all my machines are running Linux? I can even use the print server in Linux, but I can't configure the router... and then there's that whole I-can't-turn-off-dhcp-without-some-hackish-trick thing. Yeah, it is silly...
I guess there's one thing keeping me on it for now. I have a Linksys wired router with a 10/100 switch built-in, but no wireless. I need wireless so that the Media Center box can access the Internet for scheduling info. I do have a wireless-B device that can be an access point or wireless adapter or bridge. It can even do DHCP as well. Hmm... I could just use that... Oh, and I have a couple of USB print servers that I could attatch too.
Clearly, the Aiport should stay, rather than hooking up three devices to replace it... or... I could just use ClarkConnect, get the print server and wireless working on it, and not be so anal. Or, I could just buy a wireless router, and then run Amahi on a spare box. Again... this is a silly choice. It works now, I shouldn't even be thinking about this.
All because I sold my PowerBook. Nice.
However, there is one fundamental flaw witht the device, which is otherwise great. I can't configure it with a web browser. I actually have to use a utility that comes with every Mac, and can be installed on Windows (thank goodness).
The device rocks, other than not having a gigabit hub built in. So, I'm torn. I love having a print server, and wireless access point, and router, and dhcp server in one device. But, I hate that I have to attach a hub to get more than one wired connection. This is fundamentally how I feel about apple devices, I love the simplicity, but I hate that I can't tinker. I guess I could just buy a gigabit hub and stop whining...
What if the revolution comes, and all my machines are running Linux? I can even use the print server in Linux, but I can't configure the router... and then there's that whole I-can't-turn-off-dhcp-without-some-hackish-trick thing. Yeah, it is silly...
I guess there's one thing keeping me on it for now. I have a Linksys wired router with a 10/100 switch built-in, but no wireless. I need wireless so that the Media Center box can access the Internet for scheduling info. I do have a wireless-B device that can be an access point or wireless adapter or bridge. It can even do DHCP as well. Hmm... I could just use that... Oh, and I have a couple of USB print servers that I could attatch too.
Clearly, the Aiport should stay, rather than hooking up three devices to replace it... or... I could just use ClarkConnect, get the print server and wireless working on it, and not be so anal. Or, I could just buy a wireless router, and then run Amahi on a spare box. Again... this is a silly choice. It works now, I shouldn't even be thinking about this.
All because I sold my PowerBook. Nice.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
T-Mobile Shadow Update
Today, at work, I'm going to work on making my T-Mobile Shadow experience better. In between tasks, and generally filling time as I can, while doing work, of course. So, it is going slow. (I'm starting this post at about 10:00 AM. I've been at it off and on for an hour, inbetween reading training material, reviewing trouble tickets, dodging funny pictures sent to me by my colleagues and such.
For those of you, like my Aunt Staci, who says that I make "boring" posts. This one will probably be boring. Fair warning and all that...
So, music... I've purchased a set of Motorola S9 stereo bluetooth headphones. They're great, and I was going to use them with my Apple PowerBook, but I need Leopard for stereo sound, rather than the simple headset/microphone profile. I'm selling my PowerBook anyway... not specifically for that reason, Mostly because I don't want to pay for the battery upgrade, memory upgrade, and Leopard upgrade, but I digress... The bluetooth headphones work great with the phone, and I'd like to use them when I work out in the mornings before work.
I loaded a few songs from my PowerBook onto the phone, using a memory card that we've bought. They were encoded in AAC (.m4a, like on iTunes/iPod/iPhone) and they worked fine in the Windows Media Player. I haven't ripped all of my CDs, but I wanted to make sure that if for some reason, I go nuts and use Apple as my primary system, that I could use my ripped tracks on the phone. Seems to be fine.
Incidentally, I'm probably going to stick with Windows Media Center and just deal with the OTA subchannel nonsense or maybe go with Media Portal or some other free replacement on our DVR box. It's working very well, and syncing playlists and such seems like it will be great with our phones. Sigh... I've given up freedom for convenience, so I guess I deserve neither. I'll learn my lesson and come crawling later, I'm sure.
I'm also going to try to get my phone updated, and I guess I need to call in to customer service and grab those spare extra capacity batteries that are supposed to be free, but couldn't be sent to customers subscribed for less than thirty days... Sigh.
I'm also going to try to install moBlog, and see if I can try to use my camera phone and post directly to my blog, making some of those life moments more publically available. Maybe then I can justify having this fancy toy, rather than simply saying my wife needs to keep a schedule with her, and I just got one too.
We'll see how it all goes. Good luck to me.
Okay... went to lunch, came back... lunch was just awful, food-wise. My PC is getting re-imaged at 1:30, and I've got training to finish up. moBlog just didn't work right for me. I couldn't get it to work, and I gave up. I do wonder why Wordpress.com has a mobile client for iPhone, and not for Windows Mobile, but there's no real guesswork. Announcing a client on iPhone is bigger news...
I did manage to get the T-Mobile update installed. Avril Lavigne and Dave Matthews Band now emenate from my phone... very nice indeed. There's some better text input stuff too.
I think it is just time to sit down this evening and rip discs on the big box... WMA or MP3?
For those of you, like my Aunt Staci, who says that I make "boring" posts. This one will probably be boring. Fair warning and all that...
So, music... I've purchased a set of Motorola S9 stereo bluetooth headphones. They're great, and I was going to use them with my Apple PowerBook, but I need Leopard for stereo sound, rather than the simple headset/microphone profile. I'm selling my PowerBook anyway... not specifically for that reason, Mostly because I don't want to pay for the battery upgrade, memory upgrade, and Leopard upgrade, but I digress... The bluetooth headphones work great with the phone, and I'd like to use them when I work out in the mornings before work.
I loaded a few songs from my PowerBook onto the phone, using a memory card that we've bought. They were encoded in AAC (.m4a, like on iTunes/iPod/iPhone) and they worked fine in the Windows Media Player. I haven't ripped all of my CDs, but I wanted to make sure that if for some reason, I go nuts and use Apple as my primary system, that I could use my ripped tracks on the phone. Seems to be fine.
Incidentally, I'm probably going to stick with Windows Media Center and just deal with the OTA subchannel nonsense or maybe go with Media Portal or some other free replacement on our DVR box. It's working very well, and syncing playlists and such seems like it will be great with our phones. Sigh... I've given up freedom for convenience, so I guess I deserve neither. I'll learn my lesson and come crawling later, I'm sure.
I'm also going to try to get my phone updated, and I guess I need to call in to customer service and grab those spare extra capacity batteries that are supposed to be free, but couldn't be sent to customers subscribed for less than thirty days... Sigh.
I'm also going to try to install moBlog, and see if I can try to use my camera phone and post directly to my blog, making some of those life moments more publically available. Maybe then I can justify having this fancy toy, rather than simply saying my wife needs to keep a schedule with her, and I just got one too.
We'll see how it all goes. Good luck to me.
Okay... went to lunch, came back... lunch was just awful, food-wise. My PC is getting re-imaged at 1:30, and I've got training to finish up. moBlog just didn't work right for me. I couldn't get it to work, and I gave up. I do wonder why Wordpress.com has a mobile client for iPhone, and not for Windows Mobile, but there's no real guesswork. Announcing a client on iPhone is bigger news...
I did manage to get the T-Mobile update installed. Avril Lavigne and Dave Matthews Band now emenate from my phone... very nice indeed. There's some better text input stuff too.
I think it is just time to sit down this evening and rip discs on the big box... WMA or MP3?
Monday, October 6, 2008
More time in the day, please... kthxbye.
Ugh... I've had a recent event that I won't discuss much further, but I basically didn't have time to do something that was necessary. Not a "sort of nice" thing, but something I really needed to do. I missed out.
Anwyay, my life will continue, so don't worry. This weekend was a little slower. Friday, we hit the grocery store, and I paid some bills and the baby-sitters. I also got a new "big" flat-panel monitor and sold a 19-inch CRT monitor to someone who needed it way more than me.
Saturday, I made sausage and eggs for the kids, and we kind of lazed about. Some laundry, which is a standard Saturday activity for me, and a little bit of tinkering. I've still got a stack of paperwork to go through that I intended to complete this weekend.
Sunday, we went to church at CHURCH52. A friend of mine from high-school is the Music Pastor there. My wife and I both grew up going to chruch, but we've really faded out on it. However, she, I and my mom have kind of been nagging each other to get back into it. I know our kids need it. LOL. We enjoyed it. I'd like to go back. I think my wife has a few issues with all the singing. I don't really have issues with it, but we definitely both grew up worshiping in a more "reserved" manner. Pray for me and my family as we come to terms with it all.
I didn't get around to actually installing Amahi, ClarkConnect, or Windows HomeServer. Maybe one night this week, but I honestly think it'll have to wait until the weekend. I did do a bit of research though, and in the back half of the weekend, I realized Amahi came out with new stuff based on Fedora 9. I'm really excited about what they're doing with it, but ClarkConnect has a proven track record with me, and a seemingly more "mature" web site.
Lunch time Monday progress report... that's what this feels like. Blogging is too hard again. I just don't do anything I want to blog about on a daily basis... I guess I can change what I do, or how I feel about it. That way, my Aunt Staci won't say my blog posts are "boring".
I guess I could get those pictures of my kids uploaded...
Anwyay, my life will continue, so don't worry. This weekend was a little slower. Friday, we hit the grocery store, and I paid some bills and the baby-sitters. I also got a new "big" flat-panel monitor and sold a 19-inch CRT monitor to someone who needed it way more than me.
Saturday, I made sausage and eggs for the kids, and we kind of lazed about. Some laundry, which is a standard Saturday activity for me, and a little bit of tinkering. I've still got a stack of paperwork to go through that I intended to complete this weekend.
Sunday, we went to church at CHURCH52. A friend of mine from high-school is the Music Pastor there. My wife and I both grew up going to chruch, but we've really faded out on it. However, she, I and my mom have kind of been nagging each other to get back into it. I know our kids need it. LOL. We enjoyed it. I'd like to go back. I think my wife has a few issues with all the singing. I don't really have issues with it, but we definitely both grew up worshiping in a more "reserved" manner. Pray for me and my family as we come to terms with it all.
I didn't get around to actually installing Amahi, ClarkConnect, or Windows HomeServer. Maybe one night this week, but I honestly think it'll have to wait until the weekend. I did do a bit of research though, and in the back half of the weekend, I realized Amahi came out with new stuff based on Fedora 9. I'm really excited about what they're doing with it, but ClarkConnect has a proven track record with me, and a seemingly more "mature" web site.
Lunch time Monday progress report... that's what this feels like. Blogging is too hard again. I just don't do anything I want to blog about on a daily basis... I guess I can change what I do, or how I feel about it. That way, my Aunt Staci won't say my blog posts are "boring".
I guess I could get those pictures of my kids uploaded...
Friday, October 3, 2008
Amahi
So, I made a post about my backup solution/dilemma and mentioned Time Capsule, ClarkConnect, and other various solutions. I got a comment about trying Amahi.
I was skeptical, since I had passed over it before. However, I decided to go ahead and try out the beta. I haven't installed it on hardware yet, but some of the stuff looks really cool. One thing I'm really excited about is the installation procedure. Basically, you configure it by going through an online wizard, then you just run it on top of a base installation of Fedora. Hmm.. it looks like someone took a novel approach to what I've been thinking about doing for a long time... "Fedora Home Server" so to speak.
ClarkConnect runs on top of RHEL and for some reason, that makes me feel better. However, setting up stuff that isn't in the web-admin interface requires more time and effort than I'm willing to put in. having stuff like a firefly media server, PXE boot, and maybe a torrent box or something would definitely put this solution over the top, if it has some ready-made modules. If I were running a business, CC would be an easy choice. But I'm at home, with a limited time budget, and CC does the job, and I've used it, but I might be ready to entertain something a bit easier and flexible, even if it is in beta.
Heck... maybe I could "contribute" and help with the documentation or something. I'll blog about how it goes.
I was skeptical, since I had passed over it before. However, I decided to go ahead and try out the beta. I haven't installed it on hardware yet, but some of the stuff looks really cool. One thing I'm really excited about is the installation procedure. Basically, you configure it by going through an online wizard, then you just run it on top of a base installation of Fedora. Hmm.. it looks like someone took a novel approach to what I've been thinking about doing for a long time... "Fedora Home Server" so to speak.
ClarkConnect runs on top of RHEL and for some reason, that makes me feel better. However, setting up stuff that isn't in the web-admin interface requires more time and effort than I'm willing to put in. having stuff like a firefly media server, PXE boot, and maybe a torrent box or something would definitely put this solution over the top, if it has some ready-made modules. If I were running a business, CC would be an easy choice. But I'm at home, with a limited time budget, and CC does the job, and I've used it, but I might be ready to entertain something a bit easier and flexible, even if it is in beta.
Heck... maybe I could "contribute" and help with the documentation or something. I'll blog about how it goes.
Evolution on Windows / openSUSE
Jeez, I go back to bed. Wake up, do stuff... show up at work and casually read some blogs... come across the planet SUSE feed, and see this:
Srinivasa Ragavan: Evolution 2.24 & Windows port
Just after I raved about how much I actually *like* Evolution. LOL. Nice. Maybe I'll give it a try. The weekend is coming. Oh, and openSUSE 11 did work on with my S3 unichrome setup. I used the KDE 4 live CD and installed, but then decided that KDE was pretty much equivalent to a face palm for me. However, if I don't solve my Fedora 9 issues, I might just roll over to GNOME on openSUSE.
Srinivasa Ragavan: Evolution 2.24 & Windows port
Just after I raved about how much I actually *like* Evolution. LOL. Nice. Maybe I'll give it a try. The weekend is coming. Oh, and openSUSE 11 did work on with my S3 unichrome setup. I used the KDE 4 live CD and installed, but then decided that KDE was pretty much equivalent to a face palm for me. However, if I don't solve my Fedora 9 issues, I might just roll over to GNOME on openSUSE.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Unichrome... Fedora... FAIL
Anyone remember this whole Fedora thing? It used to rock, because it was the leading edge stuff from RedHat. Now it just makes my eyes bleed. I get an old socket 478 P4 chip and grab a motherboard that has PCI express and DDR 2. Awesome.
Then I install Fedora 9 from optical media... the screen goes all wonky, and locks up.
Best I can figure, from rolling back to Fedora 8, and then searching with Google, is that the version of Xorg in Fedora 9, and almost all recent distros, has a crappy VESA driver that doesn't work on unichrome video chipsets Bleh. At least Fedora 8 worked...
So, now what do I do. I can use "linux vesa" to get Fedora 9 installed, but then X fails on restart. I can get to runlevel 3, but I tried changing "vesa" to "openchrome" and that didn't work. I read something about "unichrome" but honestly, I'm too angry that I wasted my time with this at all. I might as well go back to my Mac... sigh.
The thing is, and I really should blog about this later, I now *love* Evolution for mail. Why? because I can use LDAP with my TuffMail account. Read and Write. Address completion, web mail addressbook is the same as my desktop client, save addresses to my address book on my desktop client... blah bah mwah ahahah.
So, I'm really excited about using Linux again. Then this... Sigh. Is it really worth all this, just to stay away from being trapped by Apple?
I'm going back to sleep.
Then I install Fedora 9 from optical media... the screen goes all wonky, and locks up.
Best I can figure, from rolling back to Fedora 8, and then searching with Google, is that the version of Xorg in Fedora 9, and almost all recent distros, has a crappy VESA driver that doesn't work on unichrome video chipsets Bleh. At least Fedora 8 worked...
So, now what do I do. I can use "linux vesa" to get Fedora 9 installed, but then X fails on restart. I can get to runlevel 3, but I tried changing "vesa" to "openchrome" and that didn't work. I read something about "unichrome" but honestly, I'm too angry that I wasted my time with this at all. I might as well go back to my Mac... sigh.
The thing is, and I really should blog about this later, I now *love* Evolution for mail. Why? because I can use LDAP with my TuffMail account. Read and Write. Address completion, web mail addressbook is the same as my desktop client, save addresses to my address book on my desktop client... blah bah mwah ahahah.
So, I'm really excited about using Linux again. Then this... Sigh. Is it really worth all this, just to stay away from being trapped by Apple?
I'm going back to sleep.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Why I don't have an iPhone
I'm poor. That is all... LOL, just kidding.
I had a comment on a previous blog post, linked to my Facebook account, about a friend wanting an iPhone. I mentioned basically that Apple makes stuff I want, but then makes me angry, alternating about every month.
This whole developer NDA thing is crazy. I read over at OS News: Apple Removes NDA on iPhone Software.
They simply don't want negative press to affect the iPhone. The NDA was supposed to do that, but it backfired, so they got rid of it. The core issue is still there, they can kill your app for whatever reason they want. They just didn't want developers to talk about it.
Now they think smoothing over the hurt feelings will make the issue go away, or at least keep people who were paying attention from abandoning the platform. The pressure didn't come from developers grumbling. Apple has already made it obvious that they only want developers if there's something in it for them, and not at all if there is a possibility that they might outdo Apple.
So, Apple is greedy and ATT is greedy (data rates are out of control -- too much money). I realize companies do stuff to make money, but golly... alternatives start looking really good when you're being punished by someone that wants your money.
I had a comment on a previous blog post, linked to my Facebook account, about a friend wanting an iPhone. I mentioned basically that Apple makes stuff I want, but then makes me angry, alternating about every month.
This whole developer NDA thing is crazy. I read over at OS News: Apple Removes NDA on iPhone Software.
They simply don't want negative press to affect the iPhone. The NDA was supposed to do that, but it backfired, so they got rid of it. The core issue is still there, they can kill your app for whatever reason they want. They just didn't want developers to talk about it.
Now they think smoothing over the hurt feelings will make the issue go away, or at least keep people who were paying attention from abandoning the platform. The pressure didn't come from developers grumbling. Apple has already made it obvious that they only want developers if there's something in it for them, and not at all if there is a possibility that they might outdo Apple.
So, Apple is greedy and ATT is greedy (data rates are out of control -- too much money). I realize companies do stuff to make money, but golly... alternatives start looking really good when you're being punished by someone that wants your money.
Windows Home Server Trial
Okay, I hate using Windows, but I need it for games. That's about the upshot. It's worth $100, but I'd rather not pay for an OS, so I typically use Linux. However, Linux sucks at lots of stuff, and they want my time, for free, to make it better.
Uh...maybe not. My time has more value than donating it for free. Kthxbye. That's official. I've decided. My life is very busy now that I have children, and I hardly have time to even keep up with my usual computer habits.
Speaking of time and habits... here's something that should be part of that: backup. I have used ClarkConnect, and I like the idea of using Bacula with it. However, I want to look at Time Capsule and Windows Home Server as well.
I ordered the Trial of Windows Home Server. It arrived a week ago. I still haven't installed it. I'm begining to wonder if I should even bother. I won't want to spend the money, and I'm really only interested in backing up pictures, which I can store online, and my resume, which I can store online.
If I could just stick a wireless card in a WHS device, that might sway me. I like having an Airport Extreme right now, but it lacks some flexibility that I'd love to have. NDISwrapper on CC sounds awful. Time Machine sounds awesome, but upgrading to Leopard and stuff is expensive.
Uh...maybe not. My time has more value than donating it for free. Kthxbye. That's official. I've decided. My life is very busy now that I have children, and I hardly have time to even keep up with my usual computer habits.
Speaking of time and habits... here's something that should be part of that: backup. I have used ClarkConnect, and I like the idea of using Bacula with it. However, I want to look at Time Capsule and Windows Home Server as well.
I ordered the Trial of Windows Home Server. It arrived a week ago. I still haven't installed it. I'm begining to wonder if I should even bother. I won't want to spend the money, and I'm really only interested in backing up pictures, which I can store online, and my resume, which I can store online.
If I could just stick a wireless card in a WHS device, that might sway me. I like having an Airport Extreme right now, but it lacks some flexibility that I'd love to have. NDISwrapper on CC sounds awful. Time Machine sounds awesome, but upgrading to Leopard and stuff is expensive.
Holly's Weight Loss Journey
My wife, is about 6 months post-op from having weight loss surgery. She lost 100 pounds, meeting one of her major goals for the six month time frame.
You can read all about it here.
Short story, it has been a struggle for all of us. What we eat, what we keep in the house, what the kids ask for, and making time to do the things that are necessary to keep us on a healthy path so we can be there for our family.
I just wanted to give a public shout-out to my awesome wife for working so hard and meeting her goal. I may even respond to her request for being a friend on MySpace... you know, since she's hot... LOL!
You can read all about it here.
Short story, it has been a struggle for all of us. What we eat, what we keep in the house, what the kids ask for, and making time to do the things that are necessary to keep us on a healthy path so we can be there for our family.
I just wanted to give a public shout-out to my awesome wife for working so hard and meeting her goal. I may even respond to her request for being a friend on MySpace... you know, since she's hot... LOL!
Monday, September 29, 2008
MythTV Media Center
I finally put a box with MythTV installed next to my TV. It has been a long time coming, but I managed to cobble enough spare time and spare parts together to get something somewhat functioning. I ended up building the box in the spare room upstairs, while running a wired ethernet connection from the loft computer area, and hooking it up to VGA monitor.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a network connection downstairs with the TV working, and sound doesn't come out of the rear audio jack... so, I won't get guide updates, and I have a audio cable coming out of the front... but, it works... it officially works, and my son and I watched part of an episode of Zula Patrol and Marvin the Tap Dancing Horse. Zula Patrol even got commercial flagged, so I could skip with a button.
Here's the particulars:
AMD Athlon BE-2300 CPU
1 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS
120 GB SATA hard drive
2 Hauppauge HVR-120 tuners
DVD+/-RW drive
SilverStone LC03 ATX case
Stuff that I need to fix:
Right now, this sucks. I'm not opposed to getting windows back on the box, or even dropping the money on a "real" Tivo. It'd be worth it if I had it. For right now though, I'm going to try and ride this out. The seperate backend and multiple front-end functionality, not paying per machine Windows License fees, and more than two tuners and getting sub-channel guide info out weigs convenience right now.
But, hey, other than it being ugly, inconvenient, and loud, it works great! LOL.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a network connection downstairs with the TV working, and sound doesn't come out of the rear audio jack... so, I won't get guide updates, and I have a audio cable coming out of the front... but, it works... it officially works, and my son and I watched part of an episode of Zula Patrol and Marvin the Tap Dancing Horse. Zula Patrol even got commercial flagged, so I could skip with a button.
Here's the particulars:
AMD Athlon BE-2300 CPU
1 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS
120 GB SATA hard drive
2 Hauppauge HVR-120 tuners
DVD+/-RW drive
SilverStone LC03 ATX case
Stuff that I need to fix:
- I need to get a wired connection downstairs, or get a wireless adapter of sufficient speed hooked up to the box. The PCI 802.11G card wasn't detected, and the USB g adapter works, but the root user has to run the Wireless Assistant. Garbage... maybe MythDora will rebuild on Fedora 10 and get some better networking options.
- I need to set up sound to come out of the back. Probably just a setting on the sound. I did notice that the task bar applet said "front". Maybe I'll just stick that Audigy 2 ZS I have in. It is quite ugly at the moment.
- I need to fill the open 5.25 bay with something. When I got the case, there werent' face plates, but hey... it doesn't look too bad, especially since there's a door that covers up the drives when closed.
- Right now, I'm using an Apple Airport Extreme to serve printers, provide wireless, and run Internet to other comptuers. I'd really like to move some or all of that to ClarkConnect, and then get remote access working. Oh, and gigabit ethernet switch... I'll need that too. it might just be time to give up and go with the Apple Time Capsule.
- I'd love to get some more tuners in the box. Two is good, but if I ever connect another frontend-only box running on the HDTV upstairs, or run a frontend on my Linux Desktop machine, I'll want to watch some more stuff. I've got some ideas, but I'd like to see how my OTA situation works out with the set-top amplified rabbit ears. I've got a 4-way splitter attatched now.
- I really am not getting WISH-DT at all. Everything else I care about comes in fine, after positioning the antenna, but that whole UHF/VHF deal pisses me off. Could everyone in town go the same way, please?
- The machine is a bit loud. I have an 80mm fan in the front that just really needs to be replaced. Surprisingly, the two 60mm fans in the back work fine. I might have to replace the fan on the video card too. It could probably go heatsink only. XvMC doesn't work on Linux for 8-series NVIDIA cards anyway, maybe I'll just get a 6-series PCIe card with passive cooling.
- There's a bunch of buttons on my Windows Media Center remote that don't do anything. Programming them is going to be a real pain... Maybe the LIRC improvements in Fedora 10 will make this better. Then again, I imagine upgrading my machine to Fedora 10 instead of using MythDora would be very painful as well.
Right now, this sucks. I'm not opposed to getting windows back on the box, or even dropping the money on a "real" Tivo. It'd be worth it if I had it. For right now though, I'm going to try and ride this out. The seperate backend and multiple front-end functionality, not paying per machine Windows License fees, and more than two tuners and getting sub-channel guide info out weigs convenience right now.
But, hey, other than it being ugly, inconvenient, and loud, it works great! LOL.
Friday, September 26, 2008
FAIL
Geez, I'm failing at computers this week:
- I finally get a new computer at work. The old one was slow, and the support staff were even slower at getting me one that was up to the task for my new work. I manage to get it and start installing the software I need, and my machine won't take the install... Apparently my box needs to be "re-imaged. FAIL.
- I get around to the weekend, and start working on my media center... having missed the first two episodes of Smallville already. Previously, I suspsected that the box I had built with Windows Vista Media Center didn't start up because my daughter thought it would be cool to turn it on and off repeatedly. A bit of diagnostics and grumbling and attempted installations of MythDora and Mythbuntu reveal... my largest 250 GB drive isn't working. I hadn't really prepared a backup strategy. FAIL.
- I replaced it with a 160 GB drive in my "quad box" that I'm not even using. The machine was suspended not off. FAIL. (You should turn your computer off before removing hardware from the insdide.)
- I decided to give Mythbuntu a go ahead of Mythdora, since it has a LiveCD, and I won't need to do anything with a hard drive. But I test it out on a machine with VIA Unichrome graphics... the boot splash works fine, but when it's time to get down to business, the screens all wavy and I can barely make out the icons and text... Sigh. I put it back in the "real" media center box that has an nVidia 8400 GS in it... but the CD I burned it on is from a "flaky" stack of printable CDs. Boot just keeps choking on the media... FAIL
- So, I get Mythdora installed on the VIA Unichrome box... because I don't know if the DVD drive I had in my "main" media center is broken or not. And I can't seem to get it working. Channel Lineup is all FUBAR. I go back to the "quad box" to figure out what's up, and it turns out I have *no* lineups added to my SchedulesDirect account. The webpage kindly tells me that I probably want at least one, and I can only have 4. I've had the account for a month and didn't know. FAIL.
- I finally get around to trying to do my rebate for T-Mobile, since I got those Shadow phones. I needed to have mailed it in by August 31. FAIL.
- Oh, and Mythdora is based on Fedora 8. 10 is a week from beta, and there's no Live CD, so I go post a blog note while this thing is installing, on a machine that has no video output other than VGA. FAIL. At least I can use the monitors I have laying around as a TV.
- Oh, and I finally get around to cleaning up my file space on FastMail... I'm downloading stuff, zipping it up, and putting it on a flash drive. But, the only important thing... I delete it... "employment" folder... resumes, work history, etc... Sigh. I e-mail support for a backup... $25 for a restore per folder.... 7 days.... I want a file... Can't restore... I'm now a "guest" not enough space. FAIL. New resume and dropbox FTW. Then, the genius move... I formatted the flash drive that had the files that I did manage to download... to install World of Warcraft on my PowerBook. EPIC FAIL.
- Wonder what happened to my flash drive... here's my son. LOLCat style:
[caption id="attachment_146" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="All your flash drive are belong to me!"]
[/caption]
Monday, September 22, 2008
Even more Facebook, switching Mom from Mac, Warhammer Online
Wow, an action-packed weekend, and a quick start to what will probably be a super busy week...
I connected to a lot of old acquaintences on Facebook this past weekend. Awesome. I guess I'm officially out of hiding. I have quite a few responses that I need to get to, but it also probably means that I have many more readers of my blog. (The content of my blog gets syndicated on Facebook.) Thanks everyone!
My mom uses an older Mac that I had. I have a PowerBook G4, and if I ever come into some extra money, I might upgrade to a 17-inch MacBook Pro. I still keep my desktop PC for games, and I don't see that changing at the moment. Anyway, the reason I gave my mom the Mac was because the accessibility features were top notch, compared to Windows XP anyway. However, My mom might be able to benefit from having a PC and I wanted to investigate how screen magnification works in Vista. My mom's vision isn't great, and the zoom feature in Mac OS really helps her out. I'd like to upgrade her to Mac OS X Leopard so that I can do remote desktop assisance more easily. Options? If you're reading this, and you care, hit me up.
I hit the doctor's office for a 3-month checkin. Hemoglobin A1C is rock bottom 6.0 so, apparently, this working out and eating better has done a little somethin' something. Weight is down to 293 (officially) a little higher than what I've seen on the scale, but hey, it's about 45 pounds from what the doctor observed by browsing through my chart. We'll be cutting one of my meds down to half, and I'll have to watch my sugar when I exercise to make sure that I don't go hypoglycemic.
Oh, and my wife's sister had a little baby shower this weekend. We also finally got a few of the baby things that we were saving from our two kids over to Amy and Paul's house. They're getting the baby's room together, and I think we might have to spend some time helping them prepare their home for the arrival. We'll see.
We took the kids to a fire truck showing at the library branch this weekend. I took a few pictures, but I don't know how many of them turned out well. I'll try to put some up on my blog for everyone, but no promises. Scott pooped his diaper, so we cut the visit short. They had fun.
Since my kids were up in Fort Wayne Sunday Afternoon with Holly and her Dad, I got some personal time this weekend. After a long struggle and much internal debate, I decided to return the set-top antenna I purchased and empty the coin savings jar and pick up Warhammer Online. I only got a quick spin in, but I'd say I'd rather play that than World of Warcraft right now. I don't know if WotLK will change that, because I *still* haven't gotten any end-game content, so they're just adding more stuff I'll probably never see.
I connected to a lot of old acquaintences on Facebook this past weekend. Awesome. I guess I'm officially out of hiding. I have quite a few responses that I need to get to, but it also probably means that I have many more readers of my blog. (The content of my blog gets syndicated on Facebook.) Thanks everyone!
My mom uses an older Mac that I had. I have a PowerBook G4, and if I ever come into some extra money, I might upgrade to a 17-inch MacBook Pro. I still keep my desktop PC for games, and I don't see that changing at the moment. Anyway, the reason I gave my mom the Mac was because the accessibility features were top notch, compared to Windows XP anyway. However, My mom might be able to benefit from having a PC and I wanted to investigate how screen magnification works in Vista. My mom's vision isn't great, and the zoom feature in Mac OS really helps her out. I'd like to upgrade her to Mac OS X Leopard so that I can do remote desktop assisance more easily. Options? If you're reading this, and you care, hit me up.
I hit the doctor's office for a 3-month checkin. Hemoglobin A1C is rock bottom 6.0 so, apparently, this working out and eating better has done a little somethin' something. Weight is down to 293 (officially) a little higher than what I've seen on the scale, but hey, it's about 45 pounds from what the doctor observed by browsing through my chart. We'll be cutting one of my meds down to half, and I'll have to watch my sugar when I exercise to make sure that I don't go hypoglycemic.
Oh, and my wife's sister had a little baby shower this weekend. We also finally got a few of the baby things that we were saving from our two kids over to Amy and Paul's house. They're getting the baby's room together, and I think we might have to spend some time helping them prepare their home for the arrival. We'll see.
We took the kids to a fire truck showing at the library branch this weekend. I took a few pictures, but I don't know how many of them turned out well. I'll try to put some up on my blog for everyone, but no promises. Scott pooped his diaper, so we cut the visit short. They had fun.
Since my kids were up in Fort Wayne Sunday Afternoon with Holly and her Dad, I got some personal time this weekend. After a long struggle and much internal debate, I decided to return the set-top antenna I purchased and empty the coin savings jar and pick up Warhammer Online. I only got a quick spin in, but I'd say I'd rather play that than World of Warcraft right now. I don't know if WotLK will change that, because I *still* haven't gotten any end-game content, so they're just adding more stuff I'll probably never see.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Wow... Facebook.
Wow, I'm really, really missing out on Facebook. As slow as work has been the past couple of weeks, you'd think I'd catch up on it. However, I've showed *some* restraint. I just told one of my colleagues to change her profile because she got married, and I did it via my phone. Crud, I might have to get a new phone just to keep up with FaceBook... Nah...
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Dropbox FTW
Dropbox came out of closed status on Sept 11. Nice. Now after dropping FastMail, I can use online filestorage. They even have a Linux client. Too bad it isn't just straight WebDAV, but I guess the interface is super meaningful to many.
Superbly, they have RPMs for Fedora and Ubuntu and in 64-bit flavors... works for me.
Superbly, they have RPMs for Fedora and Ubuntu and in 64-bit flavors... works for me.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
RSS FAIL
Ugh... I hate using an RSS reader. The whole reason I use RSS is so that I can passively get content. I don't want to go to a website just to look at your content, or see if there is any.
Fine, I solve that problem by using some kind of RSS to e-mail gateway. Short of running my own, I've used the one on a mail service that doesn't come to mind at the moment. I used what is now SendMeRSS. I've used Google Reader.
I had settled on RSSFWD, but dammit, they've tanked or something. What's worse, I can't unsubscribe anything, because the management interface is borked. I'd *pay* to get a real RSS to e-mail service that isn't all cluttered up with advertisements (other than those in the feeds, obviously... though stripping those out would be cool too...). I'm back on Bloglines, and I'm actually thinking about going back to Google Reader.
So, I've got a filter in my mail that takes my RSS mail from RSSFWD and puts it in a folder. I'd love to delete that folder and rule, but I can't stop the onslaught of messages. I guess I could modify the rule to just delete the messages outright, but I really just want to wait and see what happens. I've been waiting a few weeks though, and the trend isn't encouraging.
Fine, I solve that problem by using some kind of RSS to e-mail gateway. Short of running my own, I've used the one on a mail service that doesn't come to mind at the moment. I used what is now SendMeRSS. I've used Google Reader.
I had settled on RSSFWD, but dammit, they've tanked or something. What's worse, I can't unsubscribe anything, because the management interface is borked. I'd *pay* to get a real RSS to e-mail service that isn't all cluttered up with advertisements (other than those in the feeds, obviously... though stripping those out would be cool too...). I'm back on Bloglines, and I'm actually thinking about going back to Google Reader.
So, I've got a filter in my mail that takes my RSS mail from RSSFWD and puts it in a folder. I'd love to delete that folder and rule, but I can't stop the onslaught of messages. I guess I could modify the rule to just delete the messages outright, but I really just want to wait and see what happens. I've been waiting a few weeks though, and the trend isn't encouraging.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Bluetooth Mouse
I left work a little early yesterday to go get a haircut, it went quick, so I stopped at Best Buy. After discovering that I needed stereo sound and that I'd have to hack my Tiger 10.4 installation to get A2DP support for my MotoROKR S9 headphones, I thought I'd browse around and see if I could save a trip up "north" to the Apple store on a future journey to upgrade to Leopard 10.5.
I ended up looking for a bluetooth mouse as well as other things... Time Vault, Airport Extreme, external hard drive enclosure with card reader, etc... and found them all. I also found a couple of sticks of DDR 2700 SODIMM for $55... a significant discount from the usual rapage that Best Buy provides on memory. I didn't have money for that, but I'd like to upgrade my PowerBook.
Anyway, I bought a Microsoft Notebook Mouse for Mac, since my old "notebook" mouse got destroyed by my kids. It is essentially the same as the Microsoft Notebook Mouse 5000, but packaged differently so that Mac users think it is special. I'd have normally just gotten which ever I saw first, but the one I saw was discounted for being open. Normally the mice are $50, but this one was $37-something, a weak discount, except that the last sale price was $39.99, so it was more like a $12 discount. I decided that had real value and that I'd go with that. It comes with a nice little pouch too.
Fortunately the AAA batteries hadn't been run down completely, since they were already in the mouse. I will need to download some software from Microsoft to get the "superior" functionality. Too bad I can't hook my laptop to the Internet at work. Also too bad I didn't pick up Leopard... Bah.
I ended up looking for a bluetooth mouse as well as other things... Time Vault, Airport Extreme, external hard drive enclosure with card reader, etc... and found them all. I also found a couple of sticks of DDR 2700 SODIMM for $55... a significant discount from the usual rapage that Best Buy provides on memory. I didn't have money for that, but I'd like to upgrade my PowerBook.
Anyway, I bought a Microsoft Notebook Mouse for Mac, since my old "notebook" mouse got destroyed by my kids. It is essentially the same as the Microsoft Notebook Mouse 5000, but packaged differently so that Mac users think it is special. I'd have normally just gotten which ever I saw first, but the one I saw was discounted for being open. Normally the mice are $50, but this one was $37-something, a weak discount, except that the last sale price was $39.99, so it was more like a $12 discount. I decided that had real value and that I'd go with that. It comes with a nice little pouch too.
Fortunately the AAA batteries hadn't been run down completely, since they were already in the mouse. I will need to download some software from Microsoft to get the "superior" functionality. Too bad I can't hook my laptop to the Internet at work. Also too bad I didn't pick up Leopard... Bah.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Bluetooth Headphones
So, I'm thinking of a way to blow a few dollars... I mean enhance my productivity at work. I also wanted to get headphones that don't make me look like a martian, and will make me able to listen to music at work and walk away from my desk without a big disconnection exercise. Monday, I picked up the browser and searched up the Motorola ROKR S9. Normally a $150 and up purchase, I find them for $37.
Sold... but $17 for shipping? Oh well... might as well bump it up to Next Day Air, and get a day of working out with them. Oh... I forgot my phone at *work*! So, I get home, open the box... the packaging looked like OEM knockoffs, but they seem to work okay. I was solo on Tuesday night, so I didn't get a chance to test them out with anything.
Wednesday morning, I throw them on my wife's head, and explain that there are no wires... but I get them all tangled in her hair... nice. I don't know if she understood that they'd work with her *phone* because she asked me about having a "burner" for getting music off of some CDs.
Anyway, I wore my set to the gym, not listening to anything but the music that was already playing, but getting a feel for comfort. They're great. I love them. I got to work, and hooked them up to my phone... after discovering how to choose between, being a crappy phone headset and stereo headphones, they worked great... on the sample songs that I had on the phone.
Next step, since I haven't ripped any tunes to put on my phone with Windows Media Player is to try using my PowerBook. I chose a headset profile, but they aren't supported. Short story... after several tries, I couldn't get them working. So, I turned to the Internet, and came across this article: Get a Bluetooth Headset Working with a PowerBook.
Goodness, I need a firmware update? Oh, and the update from Apple apparently doesn't actually install anything, it just puts the files on your system for you to run later. Sigh... I'd download the file, but I don't have my PowerBook hooked up to the Internet at work. I guess if I had a flash drive, I could move it from my work machine... jeez, this is hard.
And so ends a blog post at work, when I should actually be working... Thanks for listening.
Sold... but $17 for shipping? Oh well... might as well bump it up to Next Day Air, and get a day of working out with them. Oh... I forgot my phone at *work*! So, I get home, open the box... the packaging looked like OEM knockoffs, but they seem to work okay. I was solo on Tuesday night, so I didn't get a chance to test them out with anything.
Wednesday morning, I throw them on my wife's head, and explain that there are no wires... but I get them all tangled in her hair... nice. I don't know if she understood that they'd work with her *phone* because she asked me about having a "burner" for getting music off of some CDs.
Anyway, I wore my set to the gym, not listening to anything but the music that was already playing, but getting a feel for comfort. They're great. I love them. I got to work, and hooked them up to my phone... after discovering how to choose between, being a crappy phone headset and stereo headphones, they worked great... on the sample songs that I had on the phone.
Next step, since I haven't ripped any tunes to put on my phone with Windows Media Player is to try using my PowerBook. I chose a headset profile, but they aren't supported. Short story... after several tries, I couldn't get them working. So, I turned to the Internet, and came across this article: Get a Bluetooth Headset Working with a PowerBook.
Goodness, I need a firmware update? Oh, and the update from Apple apparently doesn't actually install anything, it just puts the files on your system for you to run later. Sigh... I'd download the file, but I don't have my PowerBook hooked up to the Internet at work. I guess if I had a flash drive, I could move it from my work machine... jeez, this is hard.
And so ends a blog post at work, when I should actually be working... Thanks for listening.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Moving my FastMail Photo Gallery to Flickr
I took some pictures on a weekend trip to Ohio to see my Mom. I had them stored on my file space on FastMail, but that account is expiring, and I wanted to move them to Flickr. The e-mail upload function works really well so far, let's see how it handles 50 pictures.
If this works out, I might have to just change back to FastMail... and move my domain name
back... and pay... Ugh... who knows. For now, this will work.
Heh, they all got returned... because the attatchment size limit at *Yahoo!* is 20 MB... Sigh.
Oh well, someone marked a picture of my sister-in-law as a favorite, according to the little Yahoo! Go applet on my phone. I don't know who it is, but I'll try to look up their Yahoo! ID when I get a chance. I did link Flickr to my Facebook account, so maybe it is someone I know.
If this works out, I might have to just change back to FastMail... and move my domain name
back... and pay... Ugh... who knows. For now, this will work.
Heh, they all got returned... because the attatchment size limit at *Yahoo!* is 20 MB... Sigh.
Oh well, someone marked a picture of my sister-in-law as a favorite, according to the little Yahoo! Go applet on my phone. I don't know who it is, but I'll try to look up their Yahoo! ID when I get a chance. I did link Flickr to my Facebook account, so maybe it is someone I know.
Jaunty Jackalope
WTF? Ubuntu's new code name for the next release is Jaunty Jackalope. I thought a Jackalope was when you carved a face into a cantaloupe, like, on Halloween. Oh well. These guys continue to push hard, but still replicate effort done by others already. Hopefully the pragmatic approach will at least get Linux out of that 1% domain into mainstream use.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Catching up... some more.
Facebook is awesome, if only a reminder that I need to blog more... I keep getting little reminders of my past with people that sign on. We're really social creatures...
Anyway, it's 4:00 AM, and Holly is going to go to the gym early, since she's got a full day, and needs to be up north by 8:00 AM. I'd really love to ditch, but I'm going to just wait for the 5:30 arrival of the baby sitter and then go catch up.
I'm using my PowerBook, and I really have to comment on the keyboard. It is very nice to type on, and the backlit keys are awesome. I recently moved the "computer table" back in to the "loft" area, from being in the spare bedroom. The kids were always going in there and wrecking stuff, so I figured I might as well leave it out in the open. I've had my traditional folding table back for a while, but I finally got around to setting that up. I'll probably just use the spare bedroom for sensitive hardware tinkering and storage. We'll see.
I pulled the Airport Extreme back out. Mine is the teardrop model with wireless G and a modem. Seems to be working fine. I was going to ditch my Mac stuff (again) and send the Powerbook and Airport base station to my Mom in Ohio. She has a PowerMac G4 400 MHz box that seems to work fine. However, I'm really wanting to give Leopard and Time Vault a go, so maybe I'll just stick this out and then keep the hardware as a machine for my wife/kids... again, we'll just have to see.
Man, I'm really writing a lot. I need to just do it more often instead of writing huge blog posts. It'd probably involve writing on lunch breaks at work... speaking of which. I've officially transitioned into an Application Support role at my current client. It's a good move for me, since I hated doing document control so much. But, I've got a meeting with someone about doing some "old" work today. Bleh. Supposedly it is just perodic metrics, but I have a feeling I won't be happy about it... real... positive... attitude.
Speaking of positive attitude, the Linux Haters Blog is really sucking these days. It used to have really insightful posts about things that suck in Linux, but really could be improved if someone got overthemselves and stepped up to the plate and fixed it. Now it's just random stuff that sucks, and not nearly frequently enough. Eh, well, I got my Mac back out, and I'm happy, LOL.
My 2.5 year-old son is ready for potty training. He identifies when he has gone, and he's used the potty once a while back to pee. I think I blogged about that, so I can't hide how lazy we've been as parents. Our M-W sitter keeps asking when we're going to start. This weekend, we bought a seat cover that attaches to the hinges and tried it out... didn't fit. Grr... after a modification and some finagling I got it on upstairs, and I think we'll be able to repeat the affair for a second round with the downstairs toilet. Yesterday, he watched me go, and I think he may be tallk enough to stand on the floor and use the standard toilet. That'd be nice. He'll still need a stool to wash his hands though.
Speaking of hand washing... (boy these cheesy transitions are getting... well... cheesy) I nearly washed my hands of Linux, twice. My media center got a wipe of MythDora and an install of Vista Media Center again, but before I could finish, Julie got a hold of the power button and power cycled the installation into oblivion. Nice. I don't know... I might just buy a freaking TiVo upgrade. Our series 1 won't get an upgrade to support the 2009 digital transition, and the "offer" of transferring our lifetime subscription for the standard price of $299 and a refurbished unit for $99 bucks is pretty easy to reject, but I'm missing shows now. It might just be time to bite the bullet and put the media center project on hiatus.
So, this linux abandonment thing. I had Vista installed, I wiped for Linux... then reinstalled Vista, then reinstalled Fedora again. Fedora installs are quick, since I have a Live USB key. The updates take a long time though, and I really should invest in a local repository that rsyncs to get the installs from a mirror and serves them up over PXE. I did get ClarkConnect up and running though (and then went back to the Airport, so that tells you something right there) and got a PXE boot and remote installation going. It was cool, but pointless, I like burning media, and I like doing installs off of flash media.
Well, that's all for now, more to write, but Holly says I need to vacuum up the cereal her son spilled on her watch before the sitter gets here. Scott is up. Life is grand. Happy Monday.
Anyway, it's 4:00 AM, and Holly is going to go to the gym early, since she's got a full day, and needs to be up north by 8:00 AM. I'd really love to ditch, but I'm going to just wait for the 5:30 arrival of the baby sitter and then go catch up.
I'm using my PowerBook, and I really have to comment on the keyboard. It is very nice to type on, and the backlit keys are awesome. I recently moved the "computer table" back in to the "loft" area, from being in the spare bedroom. The kids were always going in there and wrecking stuff, so I figured I might as well leave it out in the open. I've had my traditional folding table back for a while, but I finally got around to setting that up. I'll probably just use the spare bedroom for sensitive hardware tinkering and storage. We'll see.
I pulled the Airport Extreme back out. Mine is the teardrop model with wireless G and a modem. Seems to be working fine. I was going to ditch my Mac stuff (again) and send the Powerbook and Airport base station to my Mom in Ohio. She has a PowerMac G4 400 MHz box that seems to work fine. However, I'm really wanting to give Leopard and Time Vault a go, so maybe I'll just stick this out and then keep the hardware as a machine for my wife/kids... again, we'll just have to see.
Man, I'm really writing a lot. I need to just do it more often instead of writing huge blog posts. It'd probably involve writing on lunch breaks at work... speaking of which. I've officially transitioned into an Application Support role at my current client. It's a good move for me, since I hated doing document control so much. But, I've got a meeting with someone about doing some "old" work today. Bleh. Supposedly it is just perodic metrics, but I have a feeling I won't be happy about it... real... positive... attitude.
Speaking of positive attitude, the Linux Haters Blog is really sucking these days. It used to have really insightful posts about things that suck in Linux, but really could be improved if someone got overthemselves and stepped up to the plate and fixed it. Now it's just random stuff that sucks, and not nearly frequently enough. Eh, well, I got my Mac back out, and I'm happy, LOL.
My 2.5 year-old son is ready for potty training. He identifies when he has gone, and he's used the potty once a while back to pee. I think I blogged about that, so I can't hide how lazy we've been as parents. Our M-W sitter keeps asking when we're going to start. This weekend, we bought a seat cover that attaches to the hinges and tried it out... didn't fit. Grr... after a modification and some finagling I got it on upstairs, and I think we'll be able to repeat the affair for a second round with the downstairs toilet. Yesterday, he watched me go, and I think he may be tallk enough to stand on the floor and use the standard toilet. That'd be nice. He'll still need a stool to wash his hands though.
Speaking of hand washing... (boy these cheesy transitions are getting... well... cheesy) I nearly washed my hands of Linux, twice. My media center got a wipe of MythDora and an install of Vista Media Center again, but before I could finish, Julie got a hold of the power button and power cycled the installation into oblivion. Nice. I don't know... I might just buy a freaking TiVo upgrade. Our series 1 won't get an upgrade to support the 2009 digital transition, and the "offer" of transferring our lifetime subscription for the standard price of $299 and a refurbished unit for $99 bucks is pretty easy to reject, but I'm missing shows now. It might just be time to bite the bullet and put the media center project on hiatus.
So, this linux abandonment thing. I had Vista installed, I wiped for Linux... then reinstalled Vista, then reinstalled Fedora again. Fedora installs are quick, since I have a Live USB key. The updates take a long time though, and I really should invest in a local repository that rsyncs to get the installs from a mirror and serves them up over PXE. I did get ClarkConnect up and running though (and then went back to the Airport, so that tells you something right there) and got a PXE boot and remote installation going. It was cool, but pointless, I like burning media, and I like doing installs off of flash media.
Well, that's all for now, more to write, but Holly says I need to vacuum up the cereal her son spilled on her watch before the sitter gets here. Scott is up. Life is grand. Happy Monday.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Kiss... Daddy... Cheese
A quick one before I start work, since the training class I was supposed to go to got cancelled (and I bothered to check my messages before I headed over... good thing.)
Anyway, my son bit his tongue yesterday, eating shredded cheese. He asked me to kiss it to make it better. Nasty... He was eating shredded cheese, because he chewed up and spat out the cubed chese he had eaten earlier, but also refused earlier... Julie is a good eater, she ate them all up.
The gym sucked today... I could hardly lift the weights, I just wasn't focused... I was a bit short on time, trying to make sure I got out of there in time to get to this training session at work... only to find out it got cancelled. :( I did speed up the tredmill today though, it was fast enough that it actually recommended that I not use the hand grips to measure heartrate... Yikes, I might be running sooner than I thought.
I weighed myself today, and I actually gained 3 pounds... must be all that muscle I'm putting on... or the two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I shared with the kids on Tuesday, LOL.
I think I'm going to like the Shadow well enough... XT9 predictive text messaging is okay, for not having a full QWERTY layout. The phone doesn't make me look like a nerd, and I think I'll go ahead and get those bluetooth headphones for me and holly to work out with. That might push me over the edge to stick with Vista Media Center on this computer too.
Oh, speaking of which, I found colorcase.com through copious, extended google searching... They have an eBay store that has the Ahanix cases (302, 303, and D4). Then there's the Moneual Store, which basically has the Ahanix MCD303 with a stamp and iMon for $300... uh, no thanks. The colorcase eBay store might work out though. I'd love to get a D4 and a couple of 30x cases... but that really brings me back to the front-end/backend scenario with MythTV. I might just have to do MythTV, and have some sort of music synchronization scheme worked out with the phone, or get back on the freedom pony and get a Cowon iAudio 7 and go with .ogg files... I dunno at this point...
Anyway, my son bit his tongue yesterday, eating shredded cheese. He asked me to kiss it to make it better. Nasty... He was eating shredded cheese, because he chewed up and spat out the cubed chese he had eaten earlier, but also refused earlier... Julie is a good eater, she ate them all up.
The gym sucked today... I could hardly lift the weights, I just wasn't focused... I was a bit short on time, trying to make sure I got out of there in time to get to this training session at work... only to find out it got cancelled. :( I did speed up the tredmill today though, it was fast enough that it actually recommended that I not use the hand grips to measure heartrate... Yikes, I might be running sooner than I thought.
I weighed myself today, and I actually gained 3 pounds... must be all that muscle I'm putting on... or the two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I shared with the kids on Tuesday, LOL.
I think I'm going to like the Shadow well enough... XT9 predictive text messaging is okay, for not having a full QWERTY layout. The phone doesn't make me look like a nerd, and I think I'll go ahead and get those bluetooth headphones for me and holly to work out with. That might push me over the edge to stick with Vista Media Center on this computer too.
Oh, speaking of which, I found colorcase.com through copious, extended google searching... They have an eBay store that has the Ahanix cases (302, 303, and D4). Then there's the Moneual Store, which basically has the Ahanix MCD303 with a stamp and iMon for $300... uh, no thanks. The colorcase eBay store might work out though. I'd love to get a D4 and a couple of 30x cases... but that really brings me back to the front-end/backend scenario with MythTV. I might just have to do MythTV, and have some sort of music synchronization scheme worked out with the phone, or get back on the freedom pony and get a Cowon iAudio 7 and go with .ogg files... I dunno at this point...
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
E-mail - Switching to TuffMail from FastMail
The ebay spoof e-mails that try to get you to click on links so your password and personal information can be stolen are getting good. They even have the little link that tells you to go to eBay's special page for reporting fake messages.
Fortunately, my e-mail filter just directed that straight to the "Discard" folder. I probably wouldn't have ever seen if if I hadn't looked in there.
This month, I paid for a 1 year subscription to TuffMail, and don't plan on renewing my subscriptioin to FastMail. For those of you who just send me e-mail, nothing should change. I've been running my mail on TuffMail since last month. That's the beauty of owning your own domain name. I can change e-mail service providers whenever I want, and I don't have to send everyone a new address.
I decided it was time to do the same thing with my blog, so now I'll probably actually start advertising it as http://blog.mvpittman.com, rather than the direct LiveJournal or WordPress addresses I was using before... I guess that will require an e-mail to at least the 10 people that matter.
Back to the e-mail thing. The main reason I did the switch was cost redution. FastMail had lots of features, but I didn't need all of them. They were working on features I wanted, but they weren't fast enough in implementing them. No real problems with the service, but for what I need, TuffMail does the job fine and I'll end up spending less money... so maybe I can find that extra money to keep up my World of Warcraft subsription now...
Anyway, this calls for the obligatory comparison of features between services, to somehow justify that I've made the right choice. However, I wrote this blog post a month ago, and still haven't transferred my paper comparison list to any electronic format... maybe I'll make a post a bit later, when I have time. Or, maybe when I decide that e-mail just isn't important enough for me to pay for, and just go with a free service or one that comes with my AT&T Yahoo! DSL account, I'll post that.
Fortunately, my e-mail filter just directed that straight to the "Discard" folder. I probably wouldn't have ever seen if if I hadn't looked in there.
This month, I paid for a 1 year subscription to TuffMail, and don't plan on renewing my subscriptioin to FastMail. For those of you who just send me e-mail, nothing should change. I've been running my mail on TuffMail since last month. That's the beauty of owning your own domain name. I can change e-mail service providers whenever I want, and I don't have to send everyone a new address.
I decided it was time to do the same thing with my blog, so now I'll probably actually start advertising it as http://blog.mvpittman.com, rather than the direct LiveJournal or WordPress addresses I was using before... I guess that will require an e-mail to at least the 10 people that matter.
Back to the e-mail thing. The main reason I did the switch was cost redution. FastMail had lots of features, but I didn't need all of them. They were working on features I wanted, but they weren't fast enough in implementing them. No real problems with the service, but for what I need, TuffMail does the job fine and I'll end up spending less money... so maybe I can find that extra money to keep up my World of Warcraft subsription now...
Anyway, this calls for the obligatory comparison of features between services, to somehow justify that I've made the right choice. However, I wrote this blog post a month ago, and still haven't transferred my paper comparison list to any electronic format... maybe I'll make a post a bit later, when I have time. Or, maybe when I decide that e-mail just isn't important enough for me to pay for, and just go with a free service or one that comes with my AT&T Yahoo! DSL account, I'll post that.
More memory... yes!
Today, I traded computer hardware with a work colleague. I gave him an HDMI cable for two sticks of 512 MB DDR2 memory. I'm so happy. I'm *this* much closer to building another machine with my old processors.
I picked up a couple of AGP boards for my 2.0 GHz P4 and 2.30 GHz Celeron chips and stopped at a local store after a much needed haircut and grabbed two old P4 heatsink/fans out of the "heap". $10 each... ouch. Oh well. No shipping, no waiting. I've got a 256 and a 512 MB stick of RAM for both of those.
For this new memory, I'll pick up a new motherboard that has PCIe and takes DDR2. Interesting, since the socket 478 format is so old. I've had a couple of them before... but for some reason, I sold the "fast" 3.0 GHz chips and boards a while back. They might have made good front-end machines. Perhaps I'll try MythBuntu, since it has such marvelous support for *diskless* front-ends.
So, I assembled a box, and got it working with MythDora, but the wireless didn't work. I installed Vista, and had to find a special driver to get the wirless to work. I *still* haven't had a chance to try the "hack" to get sub-channel guide information, but I'm still torn on whether to futz around with Linux or just get it going. There's no time for playing around anymore... I need to sleep at night, and the season of new shows is starting.
I need some more "fashionable" cases. Half-height is okay, but I want that 17-inch width. So, something like the Antec Fusion, but not as tall, and not as expensive. Something like the Minuet 350 would work, but it isn't really 17-inches wide, so it might look funny. I'm so darned picky.
I really liked those Ahanix cases... too bad you can't really get them anymore. Sold out or discontinued at Directron.
I picked up a couple of AGP boards for my 2.0 GHz P4 and 2.30 GHz Celeron chips and stopped at a local store after a much needed haircut and grabbed two old P4 heatsink/fans out of the "heap". $10 each... ouch. Oh well. No shipping, no waiting. I've got a 256 and a 512 MB stick of RAM for both of those.
For this new memory, I'll pick up a new motherboard that has PCIe and takes DDR2. Interesting, since the socket 478 format is so old. I've had a couple of them before... but for some reason, I sold the "fast" 3.0 GHz chips and boards a while back. They might have made good front-end machines. Perhaps I'll try MythBuntu, since it has such marvelous support for *diskless* front-ends.
So, I assembled a box, and got it working with MythDora, but the wireless didn't work. I installed Vista, and had to find a special driver to get the wirless to work. I *still* haven't had a chance to try the "hack" to get sub-channel guide information, but I'm still torn on whether to futz around with Linux or just get it going. There's no time for playing around anymore... I need to sleep at night, and the season of new shows is starting.
I need some more "fashionable" cases. Half-height is okay, but I want that 17-inch width. So, something like the Antec Fusion, but not as tall, and not as expensive. Something like the Minuet 350 would work, but it isn't really 17-inches wide, so it might look funny. I'm so darned picky.
I really liked those Ahanix cases... too bad you can't really get them anymore. Sold out or discontinued at Directron.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Going to the gym... getting smaller.
Holly and I made an arrangement with the Monday to Wednesday babysitter to come in at 5:30 AM, so that we could hit the gym *before* the work day. Today was the first day of that. I made it to work, after a harrowing reminder of high-school post-gym-class-showers past and forgetting a belt and a hair brush.
I think that will work out. I weighed myself on the way out... and I'm an astonished at my 285-pound outcome. Geez, if I start working out more, I could probably lose more weight... and then get my fuel efficiency up in my car! And be healthy! And... yeah yeah yeah...
At the store, before work, I picked up a brush, some Crystal Light powder, and a couple of belts... just a bit smaller than the huge belts that needed extra holes because I've gotten smaller. A couple more inches, and it'll be new pants time. Yay!
I think that will work out. I weighed myself on the way out... and I'm an astonished at my 285-pound outcome. Geez, if I start working out more, I could probably lose more weight... and then get my fuel efficiency up in my car! And be healthy! And... yeah yeah yeah...
At the store, before work, I picked up a brush, some Crystal Light powder, and a couple of belts... just a bit smaller than the huge belts that needed extra holes because I've gotten smaller. A couple more inches, and it'll be new pants time. Yay!
Monday, August 18, 2008
After a weekend... the week starts.
Okay, so, this weekend, I helped my sister-in-law and brother-in-law with some painting. Good times. I might have to actually do the painting I'm supposed to do at my house now.
Phone is working with facebook. I just poked someone from my phone at work. I remember that bit about Facebook starting something bad... yeah, I think this is it.
I also worked on Paul's old computer. he had a Dell with a Socket 478 Celeron in it. the chip was dead, and the retention bracket for the heatsink was broken. I had some replacement parts, and fixed it. Awesome. I'll see if we can fix his desktop machine sometime before that baby comes. LOL.
My wife didn't get paid last week from her old job... last paycheck... clerical error... whatever... ugh. Good thing I didn't splurge on random crap this week...
I did get the "new" media center assembled and rewired some stuff with the TV to make the installation easier. The case fits in the cabinet, and all I have to do is install the software. I'm going to go with MythTV, probably using the MythDora distro. I got that downloaded, but didn't get around to trying it. I wanted to sleep last night, so maybe tonight... after the kids go to bed.
Phone is working with facebook. I just poked someone from my phone at work. I remember that bit about Facebook starting something bad... yeah, I think this is it.
I also worked on Paul's old computer. he had a Dell with a Socket 478 Celeron in it. the chip was dead, and the retention bracket for the heatsink was broken. I had some replacement parts, and fixed it. Awesome. I'll see if we can fix his desktop machine sometime before that baby comes. LOL.
My wife didn't get paid last week from her old job... last paycheck... clerical error... whatever... ugh. Good thing I didn't splurge on random crap this week...
I did get the "new" media center assembled and rewired some stuff with the TV to make the installation easier. The case fits in the cabinet, and all I have to do is install the software. I'm going to go with MythTV, probably using the MythDora distro. I got that downloaded, but didn't get around to trying it. I wanted to sleep last night, so maybe tonight... after the kids go to bed.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Facebook on a T-Mobile Shadow
I FAIL at Facebook. I mean, seriously, I never get on there... but I have this nifty phone that can get the Internet, so I figured I'd try. Friend Mobilizer is awful. I knew that, because I read about it before, but I tried it anyway. I really couldn't even get it to work.
I'm currently downloading Snap2Face, but it is going really slow. Not sure why, but I don't have a machine at work that I can download the application to and then sync... so I guess I'll wait it out.
Again, I don't really do anything on Facebook anyway, but I want to at least give this mobile Internet thing a try.
Oh, and um... I can't register my phone on the mobile version of Facebook, since I use T-Mobile. Ugh... Again... being cheap has bitten me in the bottom. Oh well.
Yahoo Go! works well though, I think my wife (who uses Yahoo! Mail) will really like it. I liked the Flickr Integration too.
I'm currently downloading Snap2Face, but it is going really slow. Not sure why, but I don't have a machine at work that I can download the application to and then sync... so I guess I'll wait it out.
Again, I don't really do anything on Facebook anyway, but I want to at least give this mobile Internet thing a try.
Oh, and um... I can't register my phone on the mobile version of Facebook, since I use T-Mobile. Ugh... Again... being cheap has bitten me in the bottom. Oh well.
Yahoo Go! works well though, I think my wife (who uses Yahoo! Mail) will really like it. I liked the Flickr Integration too.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Catching up...
Man, blogging is hard work. A few friend requests on Facebook went un-returned... sorry about that. I might catch up, I might not. I tried to put Julie down for bed, but she cried. I can't stand that, so I let her sit on my lap as I used the computer. She wanted to bang on the keyboard... I also can't stand that, so I put her on the ground... she turned off the power strip...
My dad and his wife came into town this past week, and we had a cook out... Grandma Deb already sent out pictures... I'm so bad. I really really need to get on this picture stuff.
At least I forwarded the pictures to my Mom. I need to call her, I was supposed to give her a call on Thursday, but my dad came into town, and I've been busy. You know how it is with two kids under two...
Work might get even better. I might have an opportunity to transition into more of an Application Support role, from the Document Control role I'm playing now. We'll see how that goes.
I'm still pretty stagnant on the whole media center/DVR/Linux thing. New seasons start up soon... I did get around to reading a plot synopsis for the last episode of Smallville that I missed, so I'm totally up to date now.
I have my new character on World of Warcraft up to 26. I'm enjoying it, and enjoying crafting and selling stuff a little more than I did the first time around... maybe I'll be able to afford a mount, LOL. This LCD is nice, but 1024x768 really cramps my style. I think I may just save up money... pay off my other bills, then get a MacBook Pro and a large LCD monitor. LOL. I can dream, can't I? I did find a bluetooth mouse for my PowerBook, but it is made my Microsoft... probably a no-go. At Staples it was on sale for $80 from a usual $100. Bleh.
Hold up... phone call... argh... another 1-800 call with no response. We must have gotten on some automated sales line or something. Might be time to do some more screening, or at least get that thing that lets you look and see who's calling on your computer screen, so I don't have to get up to be disgusted.
My dad and his wife came into town this past week, and we had a cook out... Grandma Deb already sent out pictures... I'm so bad. I really really need to get on this picture stuff.
At least I forwarded the pictures to my Mom. I need to call her, I was supposed to give her a call on Thursday, but my dad came into town, and I've been busy. You know how it is with two kids under two...
Work might get even better. I might have an opportunity to transition into more of an Application Support role, from the Document Control role I'm playing now. We'll see how that goes.
I'm still pretty stagnant on the whole media center/DVR/Linux thing. New seasons start up soon... I did get around to reading a plot synopsis for the last episode of Smallville that I missed, so I'm totally up to date now.
I have my new character on World of Warcraft up to 26. I'm enjoying it, and enjoying crafting and selling stuff a little more than I did the first time around... maybe I'll be able to afford a mount, LOL. This LCD is nice, but 1024x768 really cramps my style. I think I may just save up money... pay off my other bills, then get a MacBook Pro and a large LCD monitor. LOL. I can dream, can't I? I did find a bluetooth mouse for my PowerBook, but it is made my Microsoft... probably a no-go. At Staples it was on sale for $80 from a usual $100. Bleh.
Hold up... phone call... argh... another 1-800 call with no response. We must have gotten on some automated sales line or something. Might be time to do some more screening, or at least get that thing that lets you look and see who's calling on your computer screen, so I don't have to get up to be disgusted.
Monday, August 4, 2008
A quick post before I start work.
I did resubscribe to World of Warcraft. I started a new Hunter and got him up to level 21. My brother-in-law is trying to get his wife hooked on WoW, but I think he'll have a tough fight. She used to play Mult-User Dungeon text-based games, and it was bit much for her. Besides, they are going to have a baby in a few months... he's done, LOL
I finally got this trade performed with a guy, so now I have a 15-inch LCD, some extra processors... some laptop RAM, a wired Linksys router, and a wireless G PCI card. Nice. I also picked up an ATX media-center-ish case... an old Silverstone LC03 <http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/legacy_product.php?pno=lc03&area=usa>. Of course, I already put the two tuners and the processor in a very small case that can sit next to the TV. Media Center works, but I still need to figure out whether I'm going to go "all-in" on MythTV. I guess I had bettter hurry... summer is ending, and the Networks will be pumping out more crap that we need to record soon. Anyone got an extra AM2 processor?
I cleaned the carpets downstairs... my wife took the kids out. Yay! I took the kids out shopping on Saturday morning, and fed them steam-grilled goodness known as White Castle... my son says, "Chicken". I think to my self... it's not chicken, but hey... I guess there's a reason there's no kids meals at White Castle.
Okay, that's enough random stuff from the weekend. Maybe I'll turn some of that into a real blog post later. Thanks for listening.
I finally got this trade performed with a guy, so now I have a 15-inch LCD, some extra processors... some laptop RAM, a wired Linksys router, and a wireless G PCI card. Nice. I also picked up an ATX media-center-ish case... an old Silverstone LC03 <http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/legacy_product.php?pno=lc03&area=usa>. Of course, I already put the two tuners and the processor in a very small case that can sit next to the TV. Media Center works, but I still need to figure out whether I'm going to go "all-in" on MythTV. I guess I had bettter hurry... summer is ending, and the Networks will be pumping out more crap that we need to record soon. Anyone got an extra AM2 processor?
I cleaned the carpets downstairs... my wife took the kids out. Yay! I took the kids out shopping on Saturday morning, and fed them steam-grilled goodness known as White Castle... my son says, "Chicken". I think to my self... it's not chicken, but hey... I guess there's a reason there's no kids meals at White Castle.
Okay, that's enough random stuff from the weekend. Maybe I'll turn some of that into a real blog post later. Thanks for listening.
Friday, August 1, 2008
T-Mobile makes me want to Cry.
I see that my blog post was tracked back… nice. Anwyay, I called monday, and got hung up on. 
I called yesterday, and almost let the Rep transfer me to “accessories” but mentioned that I didn’t want to buy one, and that she should look in “Streamline”, as indicated in the comments at AllShadow.com. She found it, but said that since I needed to be a customer for 30 days in order to get the battery.
WTF? I might not keep this phone for the 20 days — since they bothered to send me the phone with the old battery, and I *just* got it. Grr… I am seriously thinking about getting my friend's iPhone and giving it a go with Ma Bell again...
I called yesterday, and almost let the Rep transfer me to “accessories” but mentioned that I didn’t want to buy one, and that she should look in “Streamline”, as indicated in the comments at AllShadow.com. She found it, but said that since I needed to be a customer for 30 days in order to get the battery.
WTF? I might not keep this phone for the 20 days — since they bothered to send me the phone with the old battery, and I *just* got it. Grr… I am seriously thinking about getting my friend's iPhone and giving it a go with Ma Bell again...
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
T-Mobile Shadow... Batteries... and back to imprisonment with a Windows Mobile smartphone and a contract...
My wife missed an important appointment the other day. Time for action. "You need a smartphone, I say" and suggest that I get her one. The Sidekick was too big and bulky, so I sold it on Craigslist.
I signed up for a 1-year contract with T-Mobile, since their rates are less killer, and used a special code I found on the Internet to get two T-Mobile Shadow phones on the cheap.
Of course, I just got through kicking the ball and chain of AT&T to the curb, but I really didn't want to pay $300 for another set of smartphones, so I signed up for a 1-year contract. I ported the numbers from our pre-paid phones to the new lines of service, and signed up for the slow EDGE-based Internet plan (to get the $50 rebate for each phone).
The phones have WiFi, so I might not need to keep the Internet service... however, the biggest reported problem with the phone seems to be battery life... but then there's this post on AllShadow.com: Get an Extended Battery from T-Mobile. I recieved the phones Friday, and didn't get the new batteries, so I guess I need to call customer service.
Then I have to figure out why I want to spend $30 each for a couple of car chargers at the corporate store. And get my wife a dedicated setup of Outlook to sync her phone with, and organize her address book, and all sorts of crap... Getting new phones is hard work!
I signed up for a 1-year contract with T-Mobile, since their rates are less killer, and used a special code I found on the Internet to get two T-Mobile Shadow phones on the cheap.
Of course, I just got through kicking the ball and chain of AT&T to the curb, but I really didn't want to pay $300 for another set of smartphones, so I signed up for a 1-year contract. I ported the numbers from our pre-paid phones to the new lines of service, and signed up for the slow EDGE-based Internet plan (to get the $50 rebate for each phone).
The phones have WiFi, so I might not need to keep the Internet service... however, the biggest reported problem with the phone seems to be battery life... but then there's this post on AllShadow.com: Get an Extended Battery from T-Mobile. I recieved the phones Friday, and didn't get the new batteries, so I guess I need to call customer service.
Then I have to figure out why I want to spend $30 each for a couple of car chargers at the corporate store. And get my wife a dedicated setup of Outlook to sync her phone with, and organize her address book, and all sorts of crap... Getting new phones is hard work!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
World of Warcraft 2.4.3 (Mounts at Level 30?)
I might have to go back and start playing World of Warcraft. The recent update supposedly lets you get mounts at level 30. My Mac is pretty weak for playing it though, but my PC is plenty powerful enough. The real question is, am I willing to give up 50 cents a day? It has to come from somewhere... sigh.
Monday, July 14, 2008
I hate computer docks. Anyone recommend a bluetooth mouse?
This morning, the dock I was using with my laptop computer at work just "died". All of a sudden, I was disconnected from the network and my external keyboard and mouse stopped working. WTF?
I have work to do, so i just plugged everything straight into the laptop, and soldiered on. Maybe that's why should just get wireless "everything". The dock failing was just a symptom of the "real" problem. connecting stuff to a computer is prone to failure, stuff breaking is bound to happen. This laptop does have bluetooth, maybe I should just get a bluetooth mouse, and headphones, and a phone that can connect with bluetooth.
Oh well... back to work.
At the end of the day, I left 30 minutes early, stopped at Starbucks, to get the iTunes data for the CDs I ripped on my PowerBook, only to find that they don't have Internet... I drive down the road to another, and discover that they have that damned hook-up with AT&T wifi. Fortunately, I have AT&T DSL, but it is becoming apparent that I won't be able to leave so cheaply if I need wireless internet and Flickr Pro... Oh well, it is still cheaper than Comcast Cable, right?
I have work to do, so i just plugged everything straight into the laptop, and soldiered on. Maybe that's why should just get wireless "everything". The dock failing was just a symptom of the "real" problem. connecting stuff to a computer is prone to failure, stuff breaking is bound to happen. This laptop does have bluetooth, maybe I should just get a bluetooth mouse, and headphones, and a phone that can connect with bluetooth.
Oh well... back to work.
At the end of the day, I left 30 minutes early, stopped at Starbucks, to get the iTunes data for the CDs I ripped on my PowerBook, only to find that they don't have Internet... I drive down the road to another, and discover that they have that damned hook-up with AT&T wifi. Fortunately, I have AT&T DSL, but it is becoming apparent that I won't be able to leave so cheaply if I need wireless internet and Flickr Pro... Oh well, it is still cheaper than Comcast Cable, right?
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Linux Haters Blog, Hackintosh
I read the linux haters blog. Seriously... I went and read every post. I've been a Linux fan for years, but not always a user. I had seriously hoped to move more toward being a user, but reading this made me rethink a lot.I had a recent frustration, which I have since resolved, but in the time that it took, I acquired an Apple PowerBook G4. I now remember every reason I used a Mac before. Stuff just works. Then I used it some more, and wanted to do some stuff, and remembered why I quit using Macs... Everything costs money.The question isn't really whether it is worth the money, but rather, whether I have it to spend. Linux has costs too, mostly time. I'm short on both money and time these days, so it can be hard to decide if I should let either dictate my OS of choice.I'm going to try building a hackintosh, Maybe then I can really evaluate whether I need that Mac Pro tower. Well, no... not really, I don't need it. But, I would like to experience some of the OS X goodness on some higher end hardware... and all my high-end hardware isn't Apple branded... so there. Worst case scenario, I lose some more time, and end up back on Linux, looking for marginal programs to do things that I could just pay money and get good applications for on Windows or OS X, right?
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Crud, Drivel sucks too?
I think I know why the Fedora People use LiveJournal. There's no client for WordPress in the distribution that sucks less thanthat sucks less than that goat-whatever-program I used to use... (logjam).
Drivel doesn't even support Titles natively, with it's Atom 1.0/Blogger support. I'm writing this post in Drivel, but I think it will be my last one. Sigh... maybe I really should just go back to LiveJournal.
Drivel doesn't even support Titles natively, with it's Atom 1.0/Blogger support. I'm writing this post in Drivel, but I think it will be my last one. Sigh... maybe I really should just go back to LiveJournal.
Ripping with Banshee, part 2 - FreeDB backup?
Okay, lots of the CDs I've tried don't have MusicBrainz entries... fine, I'll try them in SoundJuicer... oh, wait, it is doing some sort of fallback to FreeDB... well, why doesn't Banshee do that?
Oh, and the submission to MusicBrainz in SoundJuicer... that's too hard, I don't understand what to do. I don't really have anything to add, I just want my tags to show up. WTF?
Oh, and BloGTK... eh... it kind of sucks. I need something better.
And what the heck is with SoundJuicer just falling over? It is as if it just gets tired of being second to Banshee and quits in frustration. :(
Oh, and the submission to MusicBrainz in SoundJuicer... that's too hard, I don't understand what to do. I don't really have anything to add, I just want my tags to show up. WTF?
Oh, and BloGTK... eh... it kind of sucks. I need something better.
And what the heck is with SoundJuicer just falling over? It is as if it just gets tired of being second to Banshee and quits in frustration. :(
Ripping it up with Banshee
I had a really good session with Banshee last night. I've been trying to rip CDs for this eventual portable media player I think I'm going to get. However, I've had a hard time coming to terms with a few things.
I have a machine with 4 cores and 4 optical drives, and I want all of them to work at the same time, so I can rip more discs faster.
I don't want to be tied to Windows or OS X. Actually, I don't mind being tied to OSX, but I can't really afford the hardware to rip the CDs efficiently under OS X. I like the iPod Touch. Rearlly, what I want is a player that will play .ogg files so I can be "free".
Just those two restrictions alone have been enough to make the decision hard. What software do I use? What device am I going to get? What format to I rip to? Being a Freedom Fighter is hard... every device uses .mp3, but the files are bigger, and there's the whold patent issue. Ripping to .mp3 on Linux involves "evil sorcery" that's easy enough, but not really what I want to do if I can avoid it. I thought about ripping to AAC/.m4a and using an iPod Touch, and my recent acquisition of a PowerBook makes this very attractive, but then there's the whole vendor lock-in issue.
I think I'm going to settle with Linux, and just try to find an MTP device I can live with, and I probably won't get an iPod just because of cost. Ripping to .mp3 is probably what I'll end up doing, I'd like to use Vorbis/.ogg, but I'm having a hard time finding a device that I really want that does it.
With all that decided, I had previously done some research on software on Linux for ripping CDs. Banshee recently went 1.0 and it's awesome. I put in 4 CDs and if there's information available, it rips the tracks and ejects the disc. If not, it just sits and waits. Unfortunately, it sat and waited on 2 out of the 10 discs I tried last night.
Sound Juicer works splendidly also, and picked up the discs that didn't automatically get track information in Banshee. Some sort of MusicBrainz interface... strange... since Banshee supposedly has MusicBrainz too... I'd just use SoundJuicer, but it wants me to actually select a single optical drive for ripping... no good for me.
I tried a few other apps, but Banshee was so easy and simple, I think I"m going to stick with it. Now I just need to find an media player that I can use with it. The Computer Geeks Discount Outlet had some old iRiver H10 devices for sale... maybe I can snag one of those. The iPod Touch lingers in my mind, but there's some "clones" that might work for me.
I have a machine with 4 cores and 4 optical drives, and I want all of them to work at the same time, so I can rip more discs faster.
I don't want to be tied to Windows or OS X. Actually, I don't mind being tied to OSX, but I can't really afford the hardware to rip the CDs efficiently under OS X. I like the iPod Touch. Rearlly, what I want is a player that will play .ogg files so I can be "free".
Just those two restrictions alone have been enough to make the decision hard. What software do I use? What device am I going to get? What format to I rip to? Being a Freedom Fighter is hard... every device uses .mp3, but the files are bigger, and there's the whold patent issue. Ripping to .mp3 on Linux involves "evil sorcery" that's easy enough, but not really what I want to do if I can avoid it. I thought about ripping to AAC/.m4a and using an iPod Touch, and my recent acquisition of a PowerBook makes this very attractive, but then there's the whole vendor lock-in issue.
I think I'm going to settle with Linux, and just try to find an MTP device I can live with, and I probably won't get an iPod just because of cost. Ripping to .mp3 is probably what I'll end up doing, I'd like to use Vorbis/.ogg, but I'm having a hard time finding a device that I really want that does it.
With all that decided, I had previously done some research on software on Linux for ripping CDs. Banshee recently went 1.0 and it's awesome. I put in 4 CDs and if there's information available, it rips the tracks and ejects the disc. If not, it just sits and waits. Unfortunately, it sat and waited on 2 out of the 10 discs I tried last night.
Sound Juicer works splendidly also, and picked up the discs that didn't automatically get track information in Banshee. Some sort of MusicBrainz interface... strange... since Banshee supposedly has MusicBrainz too... I'd just use SoundJuicer, but it wants me to actually select a single optical drive for ripping... no good for me.
I tried a few other apps, but Banshee was so easy and simple, I think I"m going to stick with it. Now I just need to find an media player that I can use with it. The Computer Geeks Discount Outlet had some old iRiver H10 devices for sale... maybe I can snag one of those. The iPod Touch lingers in my mind, but there's some "clones" that might work for me.
Prescription Drugs
I take four different drugs for maintenance. I got some 90-day prescriptions and still haven't filled them. I'm out of some of the freebies that the doctor gave me, so I've really got to get on this. The way our health insurance works, you pay a different co-pay based on tiers. Nothing weird, other than I need to shave some cost somwhere. A few options come to mind, other than simply stopping taking them, or actually getting healthier so that I don't have to take them.
I saw at K-Mart has a list of generic medicnes that you can get 90-day scripts filled for $15.00. Plus we got a coupon in the mail for $20 bucks if we bring our scripts there.
I heard on the radio that Kroger has a list of generic medicines that they'll do 90-days for some obscenely low cost that I can't remember, probably $10 or something... I can't be bothered to go to Kroger though... not sure why. Probably because whe shop at Meijer, ususally.
Walgreens has a sign that I've seen that has $12.99 90-day scripts, and this morning, before work, I decided to stop in. We've had a pretty good relationship with Walgreens, but the $4.00 generic scripts at Wal-Mart pretty much had us going there as our first choice, and then filling the other drugs at a conventient time and place, which usually was Wal-Mart, with the rest of them, unless they were antibiotics for the kids, which are sometimes free at Meijer...
Anyway, the pharmacist was helpful and explained the program and checked... two of my drugs are on the list, one is avaialble generically, but not on the list, and the other isn't available generically. Furthermore, my insurance won't let me fill 90-day scripts at retail. I have to mail-order them. Typically when I mail order, I get three months for the cost of two... which is nice, but not cheaper than $12.99. The lowest monthly co-pay is $15.00, so for the cheapest mail-order drugs, I'm looking at $30 for a 90-day supply of one drug.
So, I also find out I have to participate in a Prescription Savings Club, which costs $20.00 annually, to get the $12.99 price. So, I've got to split my scripts, and come up with $20 extra... ugh... I hate "clubs" and "plans" and "memberships" I think that's why I don't shop Kroger... anyway... I signed up for it for my family, which is actually $35.00 and then took my two scripts that I have to fill via mail-order with me to work.
Oh... but I get coupons and discounts for buying Walgreens products that I wasn't going to buy in the first place, making that extra money I spent totally worth it... yeaah... okay. My insurance carrier online pharmacy rapes me, so I just settle for being beat up by Walgreens, whatever.
At work, I log on to the website, and get the order form. Then I figure I'll just call the doctor and have them call them in, as opposed to paying the stamp and waiting for them to be filled. My doctor's office was awesome. They just asked what the drugs were, and they'll fax them in. I gave them my number, in case they wanted to call me for questions, and that was pretty much it. I guess the pharmacy will bill me, we'll see.
So, maybe I saved enough money over three months to help with the cost of this gym membership we just got. Maybe not, but maybe if I get in shape, I won't be spending as much money on fixing what's wrong with my body with drugs.
I saw at K-Mart has a list of generic medicnes that you can get 90-day scripts filled for $15.00. Plus we got a coupon in the mail for $20 bucks if we bring our scripts there.
I heard on the radio that Kroger has a list of generic medicines that they'll do 90-days for some obscenely low cost that I can't remember, probably $10 or something... I can't be bothered to go to Kroger though... not sure why. Probably because whe shop at Meijer, ususally.
Walgreens has a sign that I've seen that has $12.99 90-day scripts, and this morning, before work, I decided to stop in. We've had a pretty good relationship with Walgreens, but the $4.00 generic scripts at Wal-Mart pretty much had us going there as our first choice, and then filling the other drugs at a conventient time and place, which usually was Wal-Mart, with the rest of them, unless they were antibiotics for the kids, which are sometimes free at Meijer...
Anyway, the pharmacist was helpful and explained the program and checked... two of my drugs are on the list, one is avaialble generically, but not on the list, and the other isn't available generically. Furthermore, my insurance won't let me fill 90-day scripts at retail. I have to mail-order them. Typically when I mail order, I get three months for the cost of two... which is nice, but not cheaper than $12.99. The lowest monthly co-pay is $15.00, so for the cheapest mail-order drugs, I'm looking at $30 for a 90-day supply of one drug.
So, I also find out I have to participate in a Prescription Savings Club, which costs $20.00 annually, to get the $12.99 price. So, I've got to split my scripts, and come up with $20 extra... ugh... I hate "clubs" and "plans" and "memberships" I think that's why I don't shop Kroger... anyway... I signed up for it for my family, which is actually $35.00 and then took my two scripts that I have to fill via mail-order with me to work.
Oh... but I get coupons and discounts for buying Walgreens products that I wasn't going to buy in the first place, making that extra money I spent totally worth it... yeaah... okay. My insurance carrier online pharmacy rapes me, so I just settle for being beat up by Walgreens, whatever.
At work, I log on to the website, and get the order form. Then I figure I'll just call the doctor and have them call them in, as opposed to paying the stamp and waiting for them to be filled. My doctor's office was awesome. They just asked what the drugs were, and they'll fax them in. I gave them my number, in case they wanted to call me for questions, and that was pretty much it. I guess the pharmacy will bill me, we'll see.
So, maybe I saved enough money over three months to help with the cost of this gym membership we just got. Maybe not, but maybe if I get in shape, I won't be spending as much money on fixing what's wrong with my body with drugs.
Monday, July 7, 2008
What's really wrong with Fedora 9?
I like Fedora, but there's always some crazy voodoo I have to learn or figure out, or learn from someone els who has figured it out already to get my stuff working.
Recently, with Fedora 9. I'm using two 8800 GS video cards in SLI on a dual opteron workstation board, and I can't get into the GUI when I install the kmod-nvidia driver. My issue seems to be described by this post:
http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=190393
Basically, I get the text login prompt, flashing like 30 times. I can log in, but I can't start X. Apparently, I need to read the log file to find out that I have two video cards, and that X can't start because it doesn't know which one to use. Then I need to specify one card.
That pretty much seems like a functionality regression to me, since it worked fine before. Then again, it worked fine *until* I installed the proprietary NVIDIA driver... Hmm...
So, is the evil closed-source driver at fault, or is the bad choice of Fedora to launch with the new X server at fault? I don't know. I guess I'll be happy if I can go home today (I read this on my lunch break at work) and get my box up and running with Linux again.
The real question is, "why should I have to use my google-fu to solve this problem?" It either needs to not happen, or there needs to be some kind of "safe mode" gui with a VESA driver so I can at least look at a FAQ distributed with the software, or get online to look up the solution to the problem. I'm lucky enough to have another computer to get on line and search for the answer, but lots of people aren't.
I didn't even try, I just switched to another Operating System, on a different machine. Maybe that's what's wrong with this whole Linux thing. It doesn't seem like there's any incentive to identify and solve "hard" problems. Just incrementally (though rapidly) improving with small easy problems until the hard ones become easy or go away. I suppose it is a different development model, but I think I'd actually pay for a Mac, just to get rid of these insane quirks.
Now to find a portable media player I can live with in Linux, and ditch this Mac, LOL.
Recently, with Fedora 9. I'm using two 8800 GS video cards in SLI on a dual opteron workstation board, and I can't get into the GUI when I install the kmod-nvidia driver. My issue seems to be described by this post:
http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=190393
Basically, I get the text login prompt, flashing like 30 times. I can log in, but I can't start X. Apparently, I need to read the log file to find out that I have two video cards, and that X can't start because it doesn't know which one to use. Then I need to specify one card.
That pretty much seems like a functionality regression to me, since it worked fine before. Then again, it worked fine *until* I installed the proprietary NVIDIA driver... Hmm...
So, is the evil closed-source driver at fault, or is the bad choice of Fedora to launch with the new X server at fault? I don't know. I guess I'll be happy if I can go home today (I read this on my lunch break at work) and get my box up and running with Linux again.
The real question is, "why should I have to use my google-fu to solve this problem?" It either needs to not happen, or there needs to be some kind of "safe mode" gui with a VESA driver so I can at least look at a FAQ distributed with the software, or get online to look up the solution to the problem. I'm lucky enough to have another computer to get on line and search for the answer, but lots of people aren't.
I didn't even try, I just switched to another Operating System, on a different machine. Maybe that's what's wrong with this whole Linux thing. It doesn't seem like there's any incentive to identify and solve "hard" problems. Just incrementally (though rapidly) improving with small easy problems until the hard ones become easy or go away. I suppose it is a different development model, but I think I'd actually pay for a Mac, just to get rid of these insane quirks.
Now to find a portable media player I can live with in Linux, and ditch this Mac, LOL.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
BloGTK, Fedora 9, Mac OS X and an iPod.
Hello. Posting from BloGTK on Fedora 9... How did I end up here... long story, but this is my blog, so I guess I have time:
I got a broken update on Fedora 9, and I kind of gave up. I tried openSUSE, and liked KDE 4, but still missed a few things being on Linux in general, I also read awful things about KDE 4 missing critical functionality...
So, I tried KDE 4 on Fedora, and then futzed around and killed my GUI with an update. I got tired of living on the bleeding edge and unstable distros and not having what I wanted, and went back to...
Mac OS X. A friend of mine had a 1.25 GHz G4 Powerbook he had long been wanting to get rid of. I couldn't justify the cost, but I did come into some hardware he wanted by way of trade, and was able to get the PowerBook from him. It has a gig of RAM and OS X 10.4 Tiger, and it was everything I remembered. I like OS X, and I'd like to upgrade the machine to Leopard and 2 GB. However, I'm really living on the low end of the Mac experience.
I've got too many other priorites to get that MacBook Pro or Mac Pro that I really want, and I've also got all my PC hardware and my Windows Gaming habits to think about. I have a quad-core box that runs Windows quite well. I think I may just have to live heterogenously for a while.
We started working out at a gym, so I've got to figure out how to come up with an extra $80.00 a month. And, I'd really like an iPod. I can rip my CDs for the Powerbook and take that to work, but I can't really carry the laptop from machine to machine at the gym. There's the iPod Touch, and then the whole iPhone dilemma... ugh... my buddy has an old PowerMac and an iPhone that I could get from him, but I don't really want an iPhone. I'm *not* going back to AT&T, and I'm content to keep my phone and media player seperate.
Ripping CDs on a G4 Powerbook is too slow. One drive, a single-core processor... I installed Windows, and iTunes on my big box with 4 cores and 4 drives, and put in 4 CDs... thinking, I'll just put the PowerBook in FireWire Target mode after I mow through these CDs, and plop the tunes on there from my big box. However, iTunes wants to rip one CD at a time, even though I've got the whole 4x4x4 setup going... grrr... Windows Media Player might do it, but I want to rip to AAC, not MP3 or WMA... or do I really want a Zune? Focus... focus... iTunes ecosystem... Mac experience... okay.
So, I whip out a Fedora 9 install, and go with Banshee, which has treated me well in my short series of experiements on ripping CDs. Why didn't I just go back to openSUSE, since the lead developer of Banshee works for Novell? I don't know. Why did I use Fedora 9, when I know I'll have to use the bad/ugly plugins from livna to do AAC? I don't know. Why didn't I just settle for .mp3 files? I really don't know. I know Banshee won't work with an iPod Touch, so perhaps I really just haven't thought this through.
Oh well, I did the $10 upgrade at the wordpress.com site, so now http://blog.mvpittman.com is official. I guess I should e-mail a few people and let them know what's up.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Back to WordPress
I'm not doing self-hosting for a blog... life is too short for that. However, I don't want to pay to be on a social networking site that has a blogging component, and that's really what LiveJournal was. I don't do any of the social networking on there.
WordPress offered me a blog for free, and I left it because all the cool Fedora people were using LiveJournal... should have known. Fedora is cool, the community is cool, but for me, LiveJournal wasn't the right fit. If I learned anything from observing that community, it is that open, solutions are good and people should be able to use whatever they want. I'll probably just pay the $10 to get mvpittman.com to point here, and move all my files and random junk here, and pay for an upgrade to get rid of ads...
Not sure why I didn't use TypePad/Movable Type... maybe I will. I don't think WordPress will try to trap me. The export/import functions are pretty good. I'm glad I wasn't on LJ more than a few months, since I can only export one month worth of posts at a time.
I'll have to e-mail people who weren't looking at my blog through a redirect like http://blog.mvpittman.com and make sure they know about my new headquarters for world domination... all three of them. I guess I had better get my domain name stuff in order too. I switched from FastMail to TuffMail on a trial, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up keeping TuffMail. It's cheaper for what I do and FastMail does lots of things well, but I only need them to do e-mail. I guess that's another blog post... I've been taking notes for that one.
WordPress offered me a blog for free, and I left it because all the cool Fedora people were using LiveJournal... should have known. Fedora is cool, the community is cool, but for me, LiveJournal wasn't the right fit. If I learned anything from observing that community, it is that open, solutions are good and people should be able to use whatever they want. I'll probably just pay the $10 to get mvpittman.com to point here, and move all my files and random junk here, and pay for an upgrade to get rid of ads...
Not sure why I didn't use TypePad/Movable Type... maybe I will. I don't think WordPress will try to trap me. The export/import functions are pretty good. I'm glad I wasn't on LJ more than a few months, since I can only export one month worth of posts at a time.
I'll have to e-mail people who weren't looking at my blog through a redirect like http://blog.mvpittman.com and make sure they know about my new headquarters for world domination... all three of them. I guess I had better get my domain name stuff in order too. I switched from FastMail to TuffMail on a trial, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up keeping TuffMail. It's cheaper for what I do and FastMail does lots of things well, but I only need them to do e-mail. I guess that's another blog post... I've been taking notes for that one.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Windows Vista, World of Warcraft? Back to Mac
I quit Fedora, LOL. I installed, updated, and a yum install kmod-nvidia brought me to a terminal after a reboot.
openSUSE had this ridiculousness with not having a flash plugin with Mozilla Firefox on 64-bit arch... and... well that's not openSUSE's fault.
I installed my ill-gotten copy of Vista, and will probably have to pony up for some legit copies for my Media Center and gaming addiciton... speaking of which, I logged in to my WoW account management page, and noticed my account expires... tonight. Canceled... I'm not re-upping for another six months... even though I pretty much re-installed Vista just to play.
I might be ready to go back to Mac. I'll never be able to justify that Mac Pro machine though, and ugh... I dunno. I think I'll just trade and sell some hardware and snag an old PowerBook from my buddy Triikan. Then it's the iPod... and then a Mac Pro anyway, probably... LOL.
openSUSE had this ridiculousness with not having a flash plugin with Mozilla Firefox on 64-bit arch... and... well that's not openSUSE's fault.
I installed my ill-gotten copy of Vista, and will probably have to pony up for some legit copies for my Media Center and gaming addiciton... speaking of which, I logged in to my WoW account management page, and noticed my account expires... tonight. Canceled... I'm not re-upping for another six months... even though I pretty much re-installed Vista just to play.
I might be ready to go back to Mac. I'll never be able to justify that Mac Pro machine though, and ugh... I dunno. I think I'll just trade and sell some hardware and snag an old PowerBook from my buddy Triikan. Then it's the iPod... and then a Mac Pro anyway, probably... LOL.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Back on Fedora
openSUSE was a pretty positive experience. during the past week, I installed from the KDE4 Live CD and DVD. I never used GNOME, and I think I could get along in KDE 4. However, I'm not really reading as many positive stories as I'd like about it.
I'm back on Fedora as I type this, having just installed from the DVD. That out of sync error on startup went a way when I switched from a crappy old eMachines CRT to an old crappy Hewlet Packard Pavilion M90 CRT. Go figure. I'm still running GNOME, and I'll probably keep doing that, unless something fabulous or catastrophic happens that requires me to switch desktops.
It is good to be back with a familiar desktop.
Oh, I did try Ubuntu a couple of times during this weekend too... not bad... I think I just don't want to be a lemming. Is *that* bad?
I'm back on Fedora as I type this, having just installed from the DVD. That out of sync error on startup went a way when I switched from a crappy old eMachines CRT to an old crappy Hewlet Packard Pavilion M90 CRT. Go figure. I'm still running GNOME, and I'll probably keep doing that, unless something fabulous or catastrophic happens that requires me to switch desktops.
It is good to be back with a familiar desktop.
Oh, I did try Ubuntu a couple of times during this weekend too... not bad... I think I just don't want to be a lemming. Is *that* bad?
Friday, June 27, 2008
Router Resurrected
The power supply in my Smoothwall router failed. Fortunately, I had a few extra ones laying around. I guess I should have figured it'd happen with a power supply that must have been at least 10 years old. The machine is a Pentium III 450 MHz with two 10 Mbit 3com cards. It works great as a firewall/router.
I just need some thing smaller, and quieter, and that my kids can't just walk up and turn off randomly.
I just need some thing smaller, and quieter, and that my kids can't just walk up and turn off randomly.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Catching up... Facebook is okay.
I've really got to get my addressbook in order. Since I've made this committment to staying in touch with relatives and friends, and then I got this T-Mobile Sidekick (and couldn't call my brother back because I lost his new number) and switched e-mail accounts and stuff, keeping up is hard.
Facebook has really turned out to be a boost to my self esteem. I keep getting notes from people who knew me from my "rockstar" days. It's a relative term... I pretty much went into hiding after college, and only a few people even knew what happened to me. Now all my friends from growing up are sending me little messages with the obligatory "hope all is well" statement. It is really okay.
The extra social stuff on Facebook is a bit of a distraction, but since I really just respond to the e-mail requests that I get, it isn't bad. I'm not going to complain too much about the invite I got.
Facebook has really turned out to be a boost to my self esteem. I keep getting notes from people who knew me from my "rockstar" days. It's a relative term... I pretty much went into hiding after college, and only a few people even knew what happened to me. Now all my friends from growing up are sending me little messages with the obligatory "hope all is well" statement. It is really okay.
The extra social stuff on Facebook is a bit of a distraction, but since I really just respond to the e-mail requests that I get, it isn't bad. I'm not going to complain too much about the invite I got.
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