BrokenMonitor.NET

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Sweet merciful crap

Podrunner - 154bpm = 29mins/3.4miles

Amongst my junk e-mail today, I was impressed to see a reply to an e-mail I sent to a DJ. If you are board, check him out.

Hopefully his cool mixes will help me lose my belly like the one PBS commercial where the kids find someone’s gut on the beach. If you haven’t seen that commercial, you need to. Such a drastic change in topic only proves, once again, I have ADD. I’m pretty sure I have an OCD as well. I think I wash my hands almost 42 times a day. 42….hmmmm. Where do I know that number from? Zarking fardwarx!!

Thanks very much! Speedweeks is gonna be a blast — hope you enjoy it!

Take care,

–Steve Boyett
www.djsteveboy.com
Podcasts: “Groovelectric” / “Podrunner”
Podrunner & Groovelectric are entirely user-supported
and now have over 600,000 downloads a month.

More VM Fun

So, I needed another server to test a new anti-virus solution but didn’t have any hardware. But wait!! I have a P4 with 1Gb of memory. Through the power of CentOS 5 and logical volumes I also had 80Gb of hard drive space (even though I have 2 different 40Gb drives). Of course, please be advised, there is no redundancy with this config. It is a span. If one drive dies, so do you. Anyways, I had never had any issues with getting VMWare Server installed….until now. Perhaps I really should have picked all packages for the install as I was told (by the VMWare Perl install script) that it was unable to find a suitable kernel build. Sweet. So look here. Nope. How about here. Nope again. How about I download the kernerl header files so VMWare can build the correct vmmon. Sweet. How do I do that. Okay, up2date is gone. How about yum. Sweet. yum install linux-headers-$(uname -r). Oh, wait. It’s not linux-headers….it’s kernel-devel (thanks CentOS??). Hey, yum, please install kernel-headers-2.6.18-8.1.4.el5-i686. Cool. Installed. Okay, Perl script still complaining as 2.6.18-8.1.4.el5-i686 doesn’t match my current kernel. Hey kernel. What are you? uname -r = 2.6.18-8.1.14.el5-i686. What gives? Why won’t this work? Well, shite. Can you see it? It took me half a day to see it. Still don’t see it? Well, I should have just used yum install kernel-devel-$(uname -r) and I wouldn’t have done the typo myself. Needless to say, it is installed. And boy do I feel smarter now!!

P.S.
Of course, VMWare install still bawked about not having the word ‘linux’ in the path (/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-8.1.14.el5-i686/include) eventhough that is a valid path and is, in fact, THE path. So you have to create a short-cut (Winders), or an alias (Mac OSeX 10), or a symbolic link (*nix). That’s ln -sf /usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-8.1.14.el5-i686/include /usr/src/linux. Teats. Double Teats. Triple wipple nipple teats. I think I’m tired. (This can probably be confirmed by the number of typos in the entry).

Jumanji II

What do I love most about the movie Zathura? Is it the parts that make me jump despite the fact that I am:

• A man
• Twenty-seven
• Have 4 children
• Like Cherry Coke Zero
• Watching the movie for the 4th time

Or perhaps it is because you get drawn into the movie so much, you feel like you are actually running from the meteor shower, the lizards and your older brother. Whatever the cause may be, I find this ’sequel’ to Jumanji (not really a sequel, but it is another board game movie) a must-see no matter what your age.

Who doesn’t want to hear a young child tell a robot to, “Get me a juice box, beotch!!“? (Not sure where the question mark goes in that case.)

Seven Hundred Sixty Eight Kilobytes of Heaven

That’s right. After what seems like a century (but more like 12 months) of dial-up, $8.95 per month Interweb access, I have made the move. I’m serious. Really. I have ADSL. (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line). Embarq removed the tap on the line today (as DSL is on every line already, they just need to remove the filter) and it was live. Am I sad I chose the cheapest plan and speed? Heavens no!! When you are already paying ~$30/month for a POTS line, what’s an add’l $20/month for screaming Interwebs?? To answer your question, it is an add’l $20/month!!!

Now my family is just waiting for me to break down and get something more than our ‘Farmer Five’ (which means I only get the ‘free’ T.V. channels - a.k.a ‘over the air’ - a.k.a. ‘Farmer Five’). I used to have cable. And high speed Internet over cable. Then I said, “I don’t want to be one of those people that complains about not being able to pay his or her bills but has bills for services/items that are not NEEDED.” So I got rid of cable and high speed Interwebs.

Of course, if I didn’t have one of those new fan-dangled cellular phones from my employer, I wouldn’t have one at all. Of course, I’m still using 802.11b.

Of course I love technology. I’m just not the typical ‘have to have it’ consumer. Amen ( to ADSL, of course ).

Compaq TC 1000

A lady here at work was cleaning out her cube yesterday in order to prepare for her relocation to her home office. For whatever the reason may be (my charisma?? charm?? stylin’ goat-tee??) people still insist on asking me questions or asking me for help even though I have been here the least length of time. At any rate, she brings me a HP bag filled with a….Compaq TC 1000 Tablet PC!!! What is it? Well, it is a really, really small laptop with a remote pen (please do not say stylus as the pen is battery powered and the screen is not a touch screen), a detachable keyboard and a docking station (if you need the DVD drive). Pretty gay? I thought so until I found some more memory for it, cleaned off the useless junk to get a decent running Windows XP Tablet Edition SP2, 488Mb of memory with a 1Gz (okay 998Mhz) processor.

What is it good for? Whatever I think of. It has a 802.11b card, so I can use it at home to remote my other computers via my wireless router. I can use it at work (wired or wirelessly) to do that same, to take notes (didn’t forget it was a tablet, did you??), to dictate, browse the internet, and so on. And I almost forgot…..it just looks really cool.

Dear Adobe…

Hi Adobe. How are you doing today? Hope you are fine. I am NOT fine. I’ve been sitting here for about, oh, say 3 hours now. I’m trying to install Adobe CS3 Web Standard, and I’m really enjoying reading this little fancy Workflow Guide booklet. I’m reading this because I can’t do anything else… No Outlook, no FireFox, no IE… But hey, Notepad works!

Why does it take 1 hour to install “Shared Components”, only for the installer to finish, but tell me no items were installed aside from the Flash Video Converter?

Why do I have to run “cleanscript” over and over as you find new files each time you think you need to delete? Even though I’ve never had Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash installed? (Aside from the Flash Player plugin.)

Remove Adobe Acrobat 8? Why?

Why would I need to un-install Flash Player 9, then install Flash Player 8 in order for you to remove it and install Flash Player 9 over it?

Hecatomb is not happy with the $1,000 software purchase. (Good thing the job paid for it.)

OK Adobe, I’m really sorry I bit your head off there… I didn’t really mean it. It’s just been a long day and I’m going through a bit of a caffeine withdrawal, and I haven’t had lunch either. So I’m just a bit grumpy…

Alright, we’re all installed now… Looking good… Sorry again Adobe, I guess I just have to learn to be patient with you.

Activation?

You…

Exchange 2K7 - Last Call For Public Folders

How sweet it is. I haven’t been to many MS meetings in my life, however, I usually get a couple good info tips from them. Today I was at a local one sponsored by a consulting firm. The topic was Exchange 2007. I have to admit, most of the changes are either non-interesting, behind the scenes itmes (better, larger db mgmt and support, better disaster recovery through single copy cluster, etc) or do not apply to my organization, however, there were still some pretty cool ones worth mentioning:

• Integrated presence info (is user X even around for me to e-mail?)
• Built-in Unified Messaging (means no need for Unity if using Cisco VoIP)
• 5 server roles (for larger orgs to spread out workload (perimeter, mailbox, hub transport, client access, unified messaging)
• Way tittier Outlook Web Access (actually tells you your password has expired and must be changed, live access to GALs)
• Start and end times for Out of Office to automatically turn on (or off)
• Two Out of Office replies for internal and external (automatically selects the correct one)
• And on and on…

What’s not cool is people asking stupid questions that have nothing to do with the topic: “So the Edge server cannot be a DC?” “No, it cannot.” “But what if I want to make it a DC?” “Um…you can’t ma’am.” “So then I can’t use Edge server as a domain controller? That won’t work for my organization. Right now my Exchange Frontend is a DC.” “I understand that, however, that is not a best practice and therefore MS doesn’t allow it anymore.” “Oh. Okay.”

Or you could shut up and eat another bagle. The person made comments several times about not having any fiscal backing for Exchange 2007. So why are you here? Why did your company let you come to demo a product you’ll never purchase? Oh, that’s right. So you can ask stupid questions like this man: “So, if my user is in China and the VPN doesn’t work there, how can he save e-mails from OWA to his local desktop so when he doesn’t have access to OWA, he can still read those messages?”

The tip of the iceberg was someone from the consulting company saying, “How do you like your new job?” I said, “It’s going great and I’m having a good time.” To which his reply was, “I’m going to have to say you made a good choice with that move.” Slam. Ouch. Burn. Sting.

Oh, and as I mentioned in the title. While Public Folders are supported by 2K7, they won’t be anymore after that. That means (assuming MS keeps with its 10 year support plan) you have until 2017 to figure out what to do with your PFs!! (upside down question marks)Dios Mio!!

Anyone wanna donate to my cause?

So I’ve bounced between Vista Ultimate and XP Pro on my Asus A8js laptop for some time now. It starts out fine with Vista, but after about a month, the hard drive is just constantly being written to (more so than what should probably be happening) and brining the system to a crawl. Even after about 6 format/installs, it continues to do it; but of course not in XP. I’m not particularly sure of the cause, since my main PC with Vista Ultimate doesn’t seem to do that; but if it does, the 10k RPM drives are probably just writing fast enough that I don’t notice. My laptop however has a 5400 RPM drive, so I’m guessing thats why I DO notice it.

Anyone wanna buy me a 7200 RPM laptop drive?

Oh wait, no one reads this…

Yes, UAC, I want to play Purble Place

So, I’m not saying that VMWare Server on a PIII 1400mhz with 2Gb of memory is fast, but it does at least let me get to Purble Place to build cakes in the cake factory. Haven’t played Purble Place? 3D Chess? Fancy 3D-ish solitaire? Mennonite friendly ‘flower fields*’? Well then go buy Windows Vista!! Be careful, though. Most retailers have User Account Control turned on, so you may be asked up to 4 times if you really, really, really want to purchase that software. Besides, what if it really isn’t you trying to purchase Vista and it is a malicious process? Thanks UAC!!

*That’s right. Mine Sweeper is too deadly for some. Go under options and choose ‘Flower Fields’. Cheese and rice.