General

Recompiling everything again after changing my use tags in Gentoo. I’ve decided to go with a GUI on this system, even though it’s a server. I figure being able to VNC into it might be useful, and I eventually want to play with MythTV on it. I’ve also installed Avahi, which is a zeroconf mDNS [...]

I took advantage of Tennessee’s tax free weekend and got a Dell Inspiron 530s desktop system with FreeDOS (and without a monitor) to replace my home server with one that is much more powerful, and hopefully more power-efficient. My current system is a Dell OptiPlex GX400, with a Pentium 4 1.4Ghz with 768MB ram and [...]

The iTunes Store now has DRM free songs! If you don’t know what DRM is, it’s what prevents you from using your legally purchased music on another device, like the Microsoft Zune can play the AAC format that music from iTunes comes in, but the Zune can’t play the music that’s been encrypted with Apple’s [...]

Somehow I’ve managed to get my work to provide me with a MacBook Pro. I’ll be chronicling my journey from using a Windows PC almost exclusively to using the Mac for my day-to-day computing. I have a G5 at my desk and I’ve been using Macs for years, so it’s going to be fun.
[tags]mac, windows, [...]

I’m still alive, but it’s a busy time for me right now between working full time and taking nine hours at night trying to finish my degree. After exams are over next week I’m planning on getting something up here of substance.
To at least make this tech related, I’d like to post a link to [...]

Much like someone else, I’m back on XP. Vista completely blew up on me last week, and it was the latest frustration in a string of problems I’ve had. I was using my laptop fine at home one morning, and when I packed up to go to work, I actually shut down rather than hibernated [...]

[tags]vista, media center, hdtv, pinnacle,[/tags]
This week I got a Pinnacle HD Pro Stick, a USB HDTV over-the-air tuner. It’s pretty nifty, even though Vista support is (of course) still beta. I installed the drivers that make it work with Vista’s Media Center from Pinnacle’s site, and went through the setup process (adding lineups and stuff). [...]

In dealing with the upcoming Daylight Savings Time changes, Java is one of the things that needs to be updated. Sun has released a tool that updates the Java instances installed on a system with the new DST information. The problem is that Java doesn’t ever uninstall itself when it upgrades, and some applications might [...]

I’ve been a bad admin and it’s caught up with me. I’m moving some home directories to a new server and I looked at one of the problem users I have and was floored. I don’t have quotas on the current server, and this user thinks that disk space is only referring to e-mail quotas. [...]

Figured out the symbol thing. WordPress is set up to add in emoticon icons, and also for words like “idea.” That’s turned off now.
In my previous attempt to do this blog I posted about searching in Vista. I didn’t realize how similar it was to OS X. I’d heard it was a lot like Spotlight, [...]