Archive for the ‘Technical’ Category
Voicemail Greetings are so Obsolete… —
Does anyone really need instructions these days on leaving a voicemail? “Please leave a message after the tone. When you are done, hang up or dial # for more options. Press # to send a fax.” Seriously? Can I just have an option for a BEEP after the last ring finishes? Or, at the least, […]
The Future of Google Glass Style Devices —
I’d like to see Google Glass in a form factor that causes it to be nearly invisible. The big hit to Glass was that it was obvious what it was and what its capabilities were. Google didn’t impress me in the “obviously you’re being recorded, look at this thing on my head” department. All of […]
Somone hates me on Slashdot —
These days, it seems I can’t comment on any story without losing at least one modpoint. Doesn’t matter the contents, whether it’s a nice, watered-down, etc. comment, or what type of story I’m commenting on, almost instantly I go from 2 points to either 1 or 0. This has been happening for at least 2 […]
Cellphones at Concerts —
You know what would work well for artists that perform at concerts who are annoyed at everyone pointing their cell phones at them? If they (or the venue) professionally recorded each concert in high quality and distributed it to each paying concert-goer. Why have a thousand shitty videos with shitty audio flooding YouTube when you […]
So sick of M$ OS/Product Announcements —
“Windows 10 Cloud”…lol. C’mon Microsoft, really? I guess I’ve just been through enough of these types of project announcements from M$ that I’ve become ‘immune’ to them. At first I’d be interested. “Oh, something new. I wonder what it’s about.” It almost always ends up being some rehash of an old system that sucked. What […]
Happy $NEWYEAR —
Dec 31 15:59:59 hostname kernel: [784008.556025] Clock: inserting leap second 23:59:60 UTC
Digital Freedom Denied —
-= 1 =- I am 36 years old. I currently live in a small town in Northern California, but grew up in a semi-large city of just under two-hundred thousand people. I’m married and have two children. I own my own I.T. business where I support and maintain small business computer networks. I am a […]
Clock is ticking for magnetic tape archival —
Soon, these will all be unplayable, even for one-time digitizing efforts. So much history is kept on these, both of personal and public record. Music, interviews, documentation, even data such as programs and files for computers that utilized them as a primary media for loading and saving (Commodore comes to mind in particular). Here […]
RTFM —
Nerd? —
Is it bad that I think after a long day of Linux sysadmin projects, I feel that I need to ‘unwind’ by cutting the excess slack off of my primary Internet Ethernet cable and re-crimp a new RJ-45 end onto it (with sleeves! Woo!), so […]
I am a Laser —
I’ve had this idea brewing since 2011. It has manifested, evolved, shaped itself through my constant attention and dedication. I have a firm grip on my vision and its potential. I know, and have known for a very long time that my project is *huge*. I say this with as little bias as possible – […]
E-mail links via click-trackers —
I rarely click on links in advertising/marketing e-mails (which I’ve opted-in, mind you) that travel through click-trackers such as Constant Contact (though those are one of the more reputable ones). I guess I feel that when I hover the cursor over the link, the text in my browser’s bottom left corner should be going to […]
Sitting in a remote office —
Roadwarriors know what it means to be able to pack a bag. Being mobile is very important to me and my line of work – I’ve come to depend on certain devices, tools and methods to not only make myself comfortable and able to work but to simply stay sane. There are too many things […]
Periscope #2 —
So I’ve spent another day with Periscope being at the center of my ‘lazy’ attention span(s) throughout the day. A few observations: 1) I can tell that the fever will die down very quickly with its current feature set. The Periscope devs will really need to dig deep into what it means to livestream your […]
Periscope #1 —
I’ve been infatuated with Periscope for the past few days. I’ve hardly been on Facebook. I don’t even *care* about Facebook anymore. I do admit I didn’t care very much about it already, but Periscope has become a really good reason not to waste time on Facebook feeling part-way disconnected from my friends. Living through […]
Dead Beef Cafe —
Found this in /etc/network/interfaces on my BeagleBone Black..lol. # Example to keep MAC address between reboots hwaddress ether DE:AD:BE:EF:CA:FE /me wonders what this refers to, if anything interesting….hmmm…..
Business e-mail —
13 Years after I start my business, trying to give people a clue as to how to do the “right thing” on the Internet…and I still see everyone using generic e-mail domains for themselves. “my.office.name@gmail.com” …. *sigh* The world is doomed.
Another systemd rant —
Systemd seems to take control away from the console user. For instance, with Sysvinit, if I encountered a problem with a startup or shutdown script I could normally CTRL+C out of it and the system will continue on its merry way. Today, I shut my computer down to air-dust it. When I hooked it back […]
The Unofficial Smilie Face Glossary —
I was rooting around my old BBS installation tonight and, while looking through the file bases found a document. A digital artifact, if you will. Before they were popularized as “Emoticons” by hundreds of AOL junkies, and eventually replaced with emojis, way back in the beginning….they were “Smilies”. This document, “The Unofficial Smilie Face Glossary”, […]
systemd vs. *nix Culture —
I’ve been doing a lot of reading on systemd for the past few days. I honestly didn’t notice it creep into my own Debian Jesse system much until I went to reboot and it hung on stopping smbd – for some reason it felt necessary to wait almost 5 minutes (with a counter) for it […]
Transcripted Voicemail —
it’s-space(?) when I came-i-don’t-go(?) over there with and answer any dental vehicle but I don’t not able to plug in for myself of something that’s just i’d(?) contact the center-so(?) we’ll probably be over the-way(?) so I want to see if they see if they both they-face(?) single see if they really won’t know.”
Upgrading to Windows 8? —
Ignorance, Fear, Assumptions, Empathy and Data —
Working as an independent I.T. consultant puts me in a unique position. I work for many different businesses and individuals on a contract as well as non-contract basis. Each situation I encounter is different, but some share very common attributes (especially when it comes to data). When it comes to an apparent crisis, I […]
The Liberating Journey into an Anonymizing, Private VPN Service. —
I love it when people say, as if a mantra on privacy, “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” I’d like to think the mantra should be, “If you’ve got nothing to hide, they shouldn’t be spying on you.” All my communications are belong to ME. I signed up with […]
MS Outlook, HP printers are the bane of my existence —
If I never do PC tech support again, two things I would never miss would be dealing with Microsoft Outlook and HP consumer-based printers or all-in-one scan/print/fax devices. They both are absolute pieces of garbage. I mean, sure, they’re complex and they do a lot so you can’t expect them to be perfect…but it seems […]
Why is *everything* remotely managable these days? —
So I’m looking at this cool new encrypted USB drive and the specs are impressive – hardware-based AES-256 encryption, small form factor, large capacity, even a hardware read-only switch, and…from what I read thus far, no Windows/other drivers necessary to operate. Pretty cool. Something I’d be happy to use and know that everything on it […]
Why I still use a Palm Pilot (gasp!) —
Ok so I guess I’m a bit biased – I’ve been using Palms (and earlier PDAs) for a long time. I’m 34 now, and I started using PDAs when I was 16 (yeah, I’m a computer nerd). I’ve been able to keep the same memos, address book, and date book for a very, very long […]
tmux —
I used to (casually) use screen, but then desired something that would display multiple terminals simultaneously. I also wanted to be able to type and have it echo into all terminals (useful for updating multiple servers and other general sysadmin stuff). I remember a couple different people (likely including, but not limited to greenfly, ttkay […]