October 3rd, 2006
I purchased a Treo 700p a few weeks ago as a replacement for my Sony T637 and my Palm T3. The T3 died and just never came back. I need to have a Palm device in order to share passwords with my co-workers (TealSafe is great for this). I didn’t want to be carrying two devices anymore, so I got the 700p.
The short review of the 700p:  It’s a palm. I get some hangs, some strange behavior, but it’s otherwise very nice. I can get Internet access form anywhere, and now that I’m taking the bus into work, that gives me a lot of time to catch up on my e-mail on my way in so I can plan my day (yay Chatteremail).
But now on to what I wanted to do in the first place – let my Fedora Core 5 laptop connect to the Internet via bluetooth to the Treo. There’s a lot of links out there that say “Oh yea, works fine.” Without actually giving directions or hints.
I just got it working. See what I did after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
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August 25th, 2006
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July 18th, 2006
Mentioning Jesus in your speech? That’s small government.
Doing what Jesus asks? That’s big government.
- Stephen Colbert
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May 22nd, 2006
Unlike other months, thsi time I was the one going with a lot of big ticket items and wanted to get some money for it. In addition, I had some items that were in my basement gathering dust (or water, depending on how high off the ground they were). Some of these items were things I got years ago from a former co-worker with the idea that I’m borrowing them and I’ll give them back to him at some future point. Read the rest of this entry »
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April 23rd, 2006
Went and saw this yesterday with Nelson. I’m working on short and sweet reviews for movies, and his was great: “I don’t feel like I got ripped off.”
As other reviews indicate, the protagonist (V) is a guy in a Guy Fawkes mask who blows up buildings. In the meantime, the police tries to track V down and find out not only his identity, but why he’s doing what he does. There’s a lot more to it than that, and it’s a warning to see what happens when a government no longer respects, trusts, or fears its citizens.
As for the movie itself, I noticed that there was very little special effects going on. There’s some action and stuff blowing up, but you get the sense that until near the end, there’s not much in the way of special effects.
It’s in few theaters now, but it’s definately worth renting or buying when it comes out on DVD.
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February 17th, 2006
When I have to drive into work, it’s about 25 miles each way, and a lot of it is highway, depending on the route I take. Now I’ve got my satellite radio set up as an FM broadcaster on 89.3FM, so I just tune my car radio to that and listen to the music.
At least once a week I’m noticing that the station suddenly gets fuzzy and I’m hearing something else over it. Look around the cars near me, and sure enough, there’s the telltale red or blue glow from the dashboard. That person also has a satellite radio and they’re broadcasting at 89.3FM.
What are the odds? Really? That two cars on a highway would both have satellite radio, would both have it on FM broadcast, and both are broadcasting on the same frequency – there’s at least 5-6 optimal ones for my trip, so that should cause the odds to drop rather quickly.
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February 17th, 2006
I went to my dentist the other day and got talking to the dental hygenist who was about to scrub my teeth clean with all sorts of pointy objects. Turns out she’s from Texas and moved to the Boston area about 6 months ago. So I try out my greatest Texas/Boston joke.
Read the rest of this entry »
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December 8th, 2005
“One foot on the Mars bars”
I’m trying to get this phrase into common use. And putting it on my blog will do wonders *roll eyes*. On the plus side, once I tell the story of how this came about, people understand it and think it’s pretty good.
Anyway, here’s the background.
My brother (Scott) and sister (Kathleen) were at CVS one day buying something (photos probably) when the person behind the counter started giving Kathleen grief. Scott (being a good older brother) responds by nearly jumping over the counter and giving said person a ‘beat-down’. For those of you not familiar with CVS, they have their candy/gum below the checkout counter in front of you. And the counters are about waist high, so you can see where this is leading.
Good uses:
“That stupid security guard was just giving me a hard time about where I was parking. I had one foot on the Mars bars, and would have pounced if he didn’t walk away. And it was rainy and cold out.”
“The manager just left us standing there while the register was broken and they tried to get it working again. We waited for 20 minutes! 5 minutes more, and I would have put my foot on the Mars bars and fixed the thing myself.”
“Don’t make me put one foot on the Mars bars!”
Bad uses:
I haven’t thought of any yet. I’ll think of something. Or put it in a comment.
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November 6th, 2005
I finished The Truth this morning and told my wife she could read it now. The first thing she said was “I didn’t hear you laughing.” To be honest, there isn’t much to laugh about.
Oh sure, there are jokes in there, but far fewer than his previous books Lies and Rugh Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot.
But really, how can you laugh about an administration that has screwed things up this badly? How can you laugh about a member of congress supporting an organization that tricks girls into moving to Saipan, working in sweatshops or as sex slaves, forces them to have abortions if they get pregnant, all so you can put a “made in the USA” sticker on it and sell it at Wal-Mart? How can you laugh about a prominent religious figure first saying that indian gaming is bad, then turn around and say it’s good?
I don’t have the chance to listen to Air America as much as I like (see my article about Sirius for why I don’t listen to much terrestrial radio anymore). This book condenses a lot of the problems we’ve seen and how Bush was able to beat Kerry in the 2004 election. A lot of these things that regular listeners of “The Al Franken Show” would already know, but you can get it in three hours of reading instead of three hours a day over a few months. And no commercials.
It also takes a step away from what we’ve normally seen in politics. The “Us vs. Them” mentality that drives a lot of the fringes on both sides. Neither side has the absolute truth, and anyone claiming otherwise is a liar. There are good Republicans along with bad Democrats. Included is a great excerpt from Sen. Barak Obama’s keynote address to the DNC in 2004. He’s right.
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October 15th, 2005
I went and bought a Sirius radio a few weeks ago. At the time I bought it, Brenda treated it the same way she treated the Tivo, somewhere along the lines of “you’re spending how much on this thing?”.
The following day, we took a trip to New Jersey to see relatives and see my niece’s baptism. Long trip from Boston to central NJ, and the Sirius radio was a champ the entire way. Julie was in the back sleep and I tuned it to the kids channel, which balanced Barney with Animaniacs and even some Schoolhouse Rock. Once she was sleep on her car seat, I was able to change the channel to BackSpin (classic Rap) or the 80s channel.
So here’s the deal with this thing. You buy the receiver ($79 for the Starmate) and wire it into your car. The receiver attaches itself to your windshield, an antenna runs out to your roof and is held there with a pretty string magnet. Power comes from the cigarette adapter. The reciever then picks up the signal and rebroadcasts it over FM to the channel of your choice. I gotta say, the FM rebroadcaster is far better than my Griffin iTrip and my Neuros – no static, volume is great.
There’s 120-or-so channels you can choose from that vary in genre from random batshit right wing talk radio to about every genre of music to traffic and weather for most big cities. Toss in some channels for kids, two comedy channels (one family friendly, one not so much), and various sports channels.
Reception is pretty good everywhere. Today was nice and cloudy and I was still getting a pretty strong signal. In the city, there’s a terrestrial broadcaster so there’s still a good signal when there’s tall buildings around. There’s a few areas in my neighborhood that has a lot of trees where the signal cuts out every now and then. Stopping under a bridge isn’t good either.
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August 29th, 2005
This book is a continuation of the American Empire novels, which is a continuation of The Great War novels, which goes back even further. Depending on how you count, this book is either the 7th or 8th in the series (How Few Remain can be considered the beginning of this series).
The year is about 1940. The Confederate States of America (CSA) successfully broke away from the US back in the 1860s and have had numerous wars with the US in the meantime. In a lot of ways, imagine that World War 1 took place with the US as the central theater instead of Europe. Same with this, only it’s now what we would consider World War 2. I don’t have a great history of World War 1 or 2, but you can see a lot of similarities. The CSA (Germany) had their economy destroyed as a result of the cease fire by their stronger opponents (the rest of Europe). A charismatic Jake Featherson (Adolf Hitler) tells the population that their ills are caused by the terms of the previous war and he’s not going to take it anymore.
The world Turtledove has created shows how small changes in history can have larger impacts later on. FDR makes an appearance as an assistance secretary of war, his chances of being US President ruined once word of his Polio was known. MacArthur and Patton are tank commanders facing off outside Richmond VA. Quebec is an independent state and the remainder of Canada has been occupied by US and Quebecois forces for some 30 years. Mormons in Utah have decided they wanted independence as well, even though their state is surrounded by the US. They have waged a guerrilla war with funding by the CSA.
As usual, Turtledove shows the world through the eyes of not one, not two, but close to 20 different people from all over the map. Since his story has gone on for almost 80 years, older generations die off of old age or war and the story picks up with their offspring. The scenes change rapidly between people, so it’s sometimes hard to (say) follow the explits of Sam Carsten rounding Cape Horn then immediately switch to Jefferson Pinkard running a ‘camp’ and wondering how to ‘reduce the population’ of its inmates.
If you’re interested in alternate history, I’d recommend one of Turtledove’s first books in the genre: Guns Of the South. It’s alternative history with a touch of sci-fi to it.
Posted in Books | 8 Comments »
August 22nd, 2005
Wow. I finally got this thing back up and running after Debian tried their darnedest to prevent me from doing it. First, they messed up wordpress on me (not sure if comments still work), then bosted MySQL when I wasn’t looking. Thanks guys.
Then again, all the e-mails from my blog friends (hello? anyone?) sent me piles of mail saying they can’t get in and they demand to know my thoughts at this time.
Well, what can I say. It’s been a while, and a lot has gone on. Not all of it bad. Built an island in the kitchen that has a kickass butcher block (thanks Nelson). My friend Rich went and moved off to NC. Went to two family reunions, my niece was born 9 weeks early but doing well, parties galore, and Boston has some way of having 90/90 weather (that’s 90 degrees and 90% humidity – least it feels that way). Visited Geo in CO and got pelted by hail at 12,000 ft.
I had an article printed in the August Linux Magazine and should be available online by December. Learn all you want to know about NFS tuning. I really liked working with them, so I’ll see if I can get back into writing and see how it goes.
Oh right. Finally purchased another Linksys router. This one works a lot better than the old one. Even found some remote device trying to use my connection, which ticked me off and I disabled access to that MAC. Hey, it was Sunday. They should have been in church or something.
Lots more where this came from, but I’ll get this up now and I promise to add more as I think of it. Honest.
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June 8th, 2005
New grill grates: $25
New grill burner: $35
Fill the propane tank: $10
New igniter: $15
New aim-n-flame (when igniter doesn’t work): $5
Total: $100 after tax
New grill cost: $199
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March 17th, 2005
I’ve had a nice SMC 802.11b access point/router for five years that’s worked pretty well. But it’s a first generation 802.11 device, hasn’t been updated by SMC for at least two years, and has a pretty short range. Now I can get a nice shiny Linksys 802.11g with a real good range, 54Mbps speed, and it even runs Linux (sweet!). Best of all, it can be had for $60 with a $10 rebate. The SMC was $250 when I paid for it (I said it was first generation).
Wandered over to Staples, picked it up, went home.
Then I found out they suck. At least the latest hardware rev, which is the only thing you can find in the stores.
Oh sure, it’s great if you’re just doing SSH or web browsing, but my SMC could do that nicely. What if I wanted to transfer a big file to my laptop? Here’s about what happened:
Me: Get that file!
Laptop: Ok!
Wireless card: Hey! Gimme that file! And make it quick!
Linksys base station: Ok! Here you….ack! (fall over dead)
It would be funnier with puppets. Wasn’t funny at the time.
The various forums I’ve found that talk about the problem indicates it might be a thermal problem. Given I have better things to do than wait for tech support to figure out the problem and I have a working, albeit slow, wireless access point now, I’ve returned it and got my money back. When I find the problem gets fixed, I’ll go buy it again. And then maybe the people in my neighborhood can suck some free bandwidth off my access point.
The ‘official’ thread tracking the problem:
http://www.linksysonline.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28
Posted in General, Linux | 1 Comment »
December 16th, 2004
Some things are better aged. Cheese, wine, scotch … Ever try a day-old wine? Blech! Even homebrew that’s being freshly bottled has a taste that makes you want to just dump it down the sink.
So now here’s Budweiser who has been blasting the airwaves with how you too can get “Day fresh beer”, meaning it was brewed in the previous 24 hours. Real brewed beer tastes pretty nasty the first day you made it. It’s flat, the yeast hasn’t had time to convert the sugars to alcohol, and it’s just a mouthfull of hops and malt. Not bad, but not what I’d want to bottle and give to friends.
Good things come to those who wait. Try a homebrew.
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