Archive: Uncategorized

Looks like I'm back. There are too many irons in the fire to say when I'll get this site looking like I want it, but for now it's up and running and who knows... .maybe will see some fresh activity i…

Hmmmm. I haven't posted here in ages. Lots going on. At one point I used this as a journal for tech stuff. Somewhere along the way I got sidetracked into a lot of other things. I'm wondering though i…

So, in the last year I've organized an LLC and my computer repair and support service as well as other technology services are now known as Diversified Tech Solutions. Among other things we are a Nap…

I'm putting this post up in case I lose the link to The Hunt For Gollum - fan made film - it looks to be about 45 minutes. I've been meaning to watch it for a while, I'm not usually into fan made fil…

Ever had to determine if a site was really down or if it was just you that couldn't reach it? If you have access to multiple computer networks you already have some ways to determine if it's a proble…

I've been using 1000BT switches here for a year or more now, but just today have I run across the need to make a crossover cable. Many 1000BT (*gigabit ethernet) devices support "auto-mdix" which bas…

Php list is a great mailing list manage package. But, from time to time you already have a list of users and want to import without requiring everyone to go through phplists web based signup process.…

I usually try to avoid talking about politics here really because I don't want this to be a political blog. I am going to make an exception right now to talk about a concept. I'm going to try to stay…

We're back up after a very strange outage. The 500 internal server error was because our .htaccess file was sideways. What I mean by sideways is that part of a line had been truncated which led to an…

Yesterday news broke of an out of cycle security patch for Windows. The bulletin is available from Microsoft. Apparently the vulnerability was in the Windows Server service (XP, 2003, 2000, 2008, Vis…

The telegraph brings us this survey which claims that 10:04 PM is the most creative time of day. To contrast that 4:33PM is the least creative time. It's not clear HOW exactly the survey was conducte…

How many online backup solutions ARE there now? Anyway I've seen another cross platform solution in JungleDisk. It's available for Windows/Mac and Linux and uses Amazon.com's storage as a backend. Th…

I've always had more than a passing interest in astronomy and physics... so when I found reference to this video series explaining how to visualize four spatial dimensions. Multiple spatial dimension…

Asheville NC Gas shortage, has some links and a gathering of prices and availabilities. It looks as though many stations in the Asheville area are out of gas.

Linux does quite well on this machine, but there is a problem with the built in ethernet (gigabit adapter). The hardware appears to be detected correctly, but the network card doesn't really work wit…

I guess the better way to put this is that this is an alternative way to download from megaupload. megaupload.com is a file storage site. If you pay them you can have unlimited downloads, but normall…

I've seen some high powered wireless cards from Senao, but... 500mw I think is the most powerful wireless radio I've seen. This Alfa USB adapter appears to require 2 (!) USB ports for full power, but…

Ugh.... you hate to see those exception OE messages. This particular one happened on an old Windows 98 machine. (Yes, I know, but they want to keep it in service if possible.) The full details are as…

As you know I've used wordpress as a platform for many of my sites. It makes updating and adding information so quick and easy (as well as great extensions available for it and good theme possibiliti…

Just thought I'd do a quick post - I've had kind of a poor track record in ordering USB thumb drives lately. I ordered one which I absolutely hate... it was about the size of one of those small piece…

This is one of the questions that I deal with at least weekly. Here's where I usually start answering... First you have to ask yourself what you want to do with a computer. If your goal is email and …

Last week we talked about creating strong passwords, but should we use different passwords for every site? It's best practice to do just that. Do they all have to be really hard passwords? Again idea…

The South Carolina Genealogy Site is the first of my other sites I'm farming out to another server, so at the moment while dns settles that is redirecting here. Sorry for the inconvenience if you're …

I know, you've seen the ads - make $6000 a week in your spare time!! Make money doing the things you do ANYWAY, like reading email, browsing the web. The last week or so as things have been slow (and…

As you can tell, it's been a little while since a post here. Partly due to health/partly due to being busy. I wanted to note a few upcoming posts are coming to round up a couple trains of thought tha…

I've got a home project to run more network cable here lately and found techtoolsupply to be an interesting resource for network and other cabling supplies. I don't recall who I ordered from last tim…

At least that's the theory.... someone has done a google sponsored search with a black background thinking they'll save 750 megawatt hours a year. Blackle.com is the site. Of course, I don't know if …

I guess anytime technology changes it takes a bit of getting used to.... this video was recommended to me by a customer.

So, one of the things I've been doing is drive imaging. I've got 3 systems that are to be identical (based on, of all things Freedos...) So, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to dust off cloning…

I don't know where to file this, but it was interesting to me.... this how-to walks you through a cheap way to make good closeup photos... Basically they have you construct a light tent from a card b…

As I've mentioned, there are a few older Mandrake (now Mandriva) systems that I maintain and one of the packages that I'm frequently rebuilding for those systems is clamantivirus. Well, 0.90 came out…

I've spent much of my time the last few years looking at windows support from the linux side of the fence. Certainly linux boot disks and the like are among the most useful utilities that I've used. …

Well... there was a news story a few days back about a pilot that had seen a strange orange light in the night sky near Chicago I think and claimed that the light was "not of this world". It was late…

I've stayed away from politics on this site, the main reason is I figure the surest way to offend visitors is politically, these days so many people seem so starkly divided into one political camp or…

As I've mentioned, in the last week, I've released a CD through lulu.com and I've also done a calendar, one of the frustrations I've had was the inability to do an ftpupload. My username and password…

I remember the question from long ago, we had just shared a printer across a windows network and.... wait for it.... "oh, well could I share my scanner too?" On windows the typical answer was NO, at …

It was an odd message that started this on the official google blog. I saw it and thought this doesn't make sense - it doesn't sound like an official statement and it claims it was translated from an…

Sorry, I'll have to wrap up for the evening. I got to the end of the internet.

I just noticed over the weekend that Project Gutenberg has updated their downloadable DVD/CD of free etexts. (Tracker at this link.) The last update of the dvd has been a few years (as far as I can t…

I saw this over the weekend and saw it as marginally more useful than traditional package tracking.... This is called packagemapping.com and is a mashup of package tracking and google maps. I don't k…

I've got a slew of articles open that I've been holding to post about. I've also got a few other things to post, so this may be a busy posting afternoon. There's quite a bit going on here, but things…

I'm quite frustrated this evening. Another long day of computer problems and tonight I come in to around the tenth call from a collection agency. The kicker in this case is that it's not for me, but …

I think at one point I've said that once taxes are put in place they tend NEVER to go away. Well, I must admit I'm wrong. 108 years ago in an effort to help finance the Spanish American War, long dis…

There is a new twist on the bot networks that have been the plague of computing in recent years. This one is called ClickBot. The story is from Incidents.org Many sites, (like this one) use adsense t…

Fines and prison time are among the penalties envisioned under a proposed house bill. The requirement would be that businesses with database holding information on more than 10,000 people (or federal…

This isn't necessarily tech related, but modern life related I guess. I can't count how many credit card offers we receive in the mail each month. I have visions of a few acres of forest land somewhe…

I mentioned this a while back, but I didn't go into much detail on a long term solution. Let me re-set the situation. Linux server running apache2. It's Mandrake (now Mandriva) (an older version.) Wh…

I normally don't follow updates for Oracle, as I don't have an installation running Oracle to support. Right now, I'm quite glad of that... The Security Fix is talking about the 82 patches they relea…

Since this is a simple tip I'm including it in the basics category. I ran across a pc with a Dell Multimedia Keyboard and they wanted to disable the hotkeys (sound mixer was always popping up because…

At this point, I needed to rename or delete some files that windows would not let me touch. I had this winlogon.exe running from a suspect directory c:\windows\inet20001 and windows wouldn't let me k…

OK, so, I'm busy killing off running processes and fire up MSConfig to try to keep them from coming back on the next boot. To launch msconfig go to start, run... type in msconfig and click ok. The st…

The first problem I ran into in cleaning up after my infested Windows XP image was this error message. One of the first things I do in cleaning an infested system is try to kill off running process t…

It's worth repeating a few things here. There is a nasty exploit in the way that WMF images are parsed in Windows. This means that WITHOUT user intervention a system can be remotely exploited and thr…

Sunbeltblog has a good post on a group that helps "take bad guys out". The Internet Crime Provention and Control Institute (Link expired). Basically, they will take submissions of complaints and assi…

The title says most all, it's reported that Microsoft will release a public beta of Internet Explorer 7 sometime in the first quarter of 2006. It's unclear if this will be titled Beta 2 (a closed bet…

Opera Software has released an update to the Opera web browser. The update addresses 2 security flaws. One flaw was related to the FlashPlayer plugin, the other was a code execution bug and affected …

I have no idea where to put this. It isn't exactly high tech.... Anyway, we live out in a rural (becoming suburban...) area which means good lighting is very useful. We have a good outdoor houselight…

It's worth warning that there will be a number of sham organizations and individuals looking to profit off the misery of others after the recent hurricane. The security fix has a posting on just that…

Really, the news over the last few days has been overwhelming. We've had some effects here in North Carolina with stations running out of gas rumours of all the stations closing at 6PM and prices cli…

It looks as though there are quite a few things that I have skimmed over the last two days and haven't posted on. I've been preoccupied with a couple of projects and frankly following news regarding …

We had a slight earthquake around here in the last half hour. It sounds like Buncombe and Madison Counties felt it. The summary from USGS which I'll include at the end seems to say it was 3.8 on the …

There's a primer in the independant on Novell pushing linux adoption. They also mention Novell trying to balance between opensource, freely downloadable content and providing business level support. …

This is a quick link to a downloadable cd of open source software for windows. There is a sizable list of programs. It appears as though some are not open source, but are free. If you have a fast eno…

This is going to be uncategorized because it's out of nowhere. You know, I've wondered many times "who actually bites" for the things advertised in junk mail. You know someone has to. About a year ag…

Open source denotes that the origins of a product are publicly accessible in part or in whole. See Open source (disambiguation) for related topics and other meanings. This article focuses on open sou…

Slashdot is running a thread asking for questions for an interview with the head of Microsoft's linux lab, Bill Hilf. The 10-12 highest moderated questions will be asked in the interview which will b…

Most people use Internet Explorer for windows and why not? It's preinstalled on every Windows PC. Well, there are a number of reasons to consider using another product. One is security. I'm not about…

I don't know how I ran across this link, but it's interesting and has a GREAT photo. The picture is supposedly of an Ice Lake on Mars Beautiful coloration, I'm not sure if it's false color or what. O…

I can't help but be a bit amused, but there is one (maybe 2?) business that's not. According to this article a small company called Vista sells business software and services. They're looking into th…