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I recently upgraded to a
Blackberry 8700g.
Email, cellphone, web
access, and PDA all-in-one.
I love Canon digicams.
I had an S330, then an S230,
now an SD400. They're solidly
made, they take great pictures,
and they're ultra-portable.
I've gone back to the dark
side. I once again have an iPod.
This time it's a 60gb iPod Photo.
The Dell Latitude D620
is my current work laptop.
It's a cleanly designed
Centrino Duo machine with
amazing battery
life and a nice screen.
My home laptop is a
15" Apple MacBook Pro
dual-booting both Mac OS X
and Windows XP. Hooray for
Boot Camp!
I recently upgraded to a 20"
Dell 2001fp LCD. It has great
image quality, and convenient
USB ports on the side.
My current PC is
a P4 system based on an Intel
D915GAG motherboard in an Antec
Sonata II case. 200gb Seagate
SATA hard drive, nVidia GeForce
6600GT video card, SB Live 5.1,
and NEC DVD-RW drive.
Just like with digicams,
I like Canon inkjet printers. My
i860 is quiet, fast, and produces
first-class color prints.
Not much to say here.
If you're an aviation enthusiast
and you have a fast PC,
go buy FS2004 now.
If you get hooked on
flight sims like I did, you'll want
a good flight controller. The
CH Products Flight Sim Yoke USB
is probably the best all-around
flight controller out there.
It ain't cheap, though....
My Current Reading List
Eastward to Tartary:
Travels in the Balkans,
the Middle East, and
the Caucasus
by Robert D. Kaplan
Falling Off the Map
by Pico Iyer
Great Bridge: The Epic
Story of the Building of
the Brooklyn Bridge
by David McCullough
The Polish Way: A Thousand
Year History of the Poles and
Their Culture
by Adam Zamoyski
Best of Europe 2006
by Rick Steves
2008
October (2 entries)August (1 entry)
June (1 entry)
May (2 entries)
February (2 entries)
2007
July (1 entry)June (7 entries)
April (5 entries)
February (4 entries)
January (11 entries)
2006
December (5 entries)November (3 entries)
October (10 entries)
September (6 entries)
August (4 entries)
July (7 entries)
June (5 entries)
May (7 entries)
April (15 entries)
March (9 entries)
February (7 entries)
January (15 entries)
2005
December (4 entries)November (6 entries)
October (15 entries)
September (4 entries)
August (9 entries)
July (18 entries)
June (10 entries)
May (12 entries)
April (19 entries)
March (18 entries)
February (10 entries)
January (20 entries)
2004
December (9 entries)November (21 entries)
October (9 entries)
September (15 entries)
August (7 entries)
July (7 entries)
June (8 entries)
May (10 entries)
April (5 entries)
March (12 entries)
February (18 entries)
January (9 entries)
| 06/29/2004 21:50 |
| Tonight, I give thanks for the Torx T-10 screwdriver.
|
| 06/27/2004 20:04 |
| I'm installing the OS on a new Dell PowerEdge 1750 server for the radiation oncologists that share our new building with us; it's going to function as their domain controller. Nice looking machine, very slim -- it's 1U. Unfortunately, it roars like a banshee. I found this while Googling: "The PE 1750 has 7 fan units each consisting of 2 independent powered fans for a total of 14 fans. They are capable of running at 10,000 rpm and each generates 57.7db of noise. When the server is under a load the fans will rev up to the 10,000 rpm limit and will drive you out of the room. If you do decide to purchase one, Dell has released a Firmware update that will slow the fans down and reduce the noise level some what, however, it will still be loud." And it will be gracing my server room. Nice.
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| 06/25/2004 22:22 |
| Wow... Ten days since my last entry... Shows you how much I've been working, and how little free time I've had lately. Anyway, we're getting closer to opening at our new building. I've been connecting PCs to the network, finishing up cabling in the server room, and working on all the little pieces of network configuration. When I first started connecting patch cords in the server racks, I was using cords that were clearly too long. There were big bundles of slack hanging out of the front of the rack, dangling from the switch ports. I went back tonight and replaced about 60 five foot cables with three footers, and it made a huge difference. It doesn't quite look as good as pictures you see in magazines, with cables all zip tied every three inches, and everything custom made, but it looks darn good. |
| 06/15/2004 19:27 |
| I just read that KFC (the brand formerly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken) has signed a deal with NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr, to put their logo on his car, and his mug on their chicken buckets. What's even better is that they're calling it a "Limited Edition Dale Earnhardt Jr. Collectible Bucket." If you or anyone you know sees fit to wash out and save a chicken bucket, to add it to any sort of memorabilia collection, please remove yourself from the gene pool immediately.
|
| 06/13/2004 13:08 |
| Okay, actually, I do have stuff to write about. I've always got some computer-related project I'm working on at home, and right now is no different. There are actually two projects, so we'll examine them one at a time. 1) The "I Want Gigabit Ethernet Project" -- Pretty much exactly what that says. I spend a lot of time moving files back and forth from my desktop PC to my little server, and I've decided that it would be much better to have gigabit networking. I'll just get a Linksys or Netgear 8-port gigabit switch, and use those ports instead of the switch ports on my Linksys router. Apparently the Linksys has a noisy fan, so I'll investigate the Netgear. My desktop PC already has a gigabit NIC, so I'll just need to add one to the server. Easy. 2) The "I Want a Real Server Project" -- My current server is a Shuttle SK41G with a pair of 120gb drives in RAID1 configuration. I'm using an el cheapo Silicon Image RAID card, where the processing is actually done by a device driver rather than any actual processing power on the card. I want RAID5, with something like 3 x 250gb drives, or 4 x 200gb drives. Obviously all that storage won't fit into a Shuttle SFF box anymore, but I can live with that.
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| 06/13/2004 12:54 |
| Boy, I haven't been doing a very good job of keeping my journal updated lately, have I? Between working too much, and laying around with a bad cold, I haven't found much time to put anything cool here. How about a nice diagram of your sinuses?
|
| 06/06/2004 11:21 |
| Is there any better late afternoon refreshment than a Slurpee? After a hard day of resetting people's passwords, spending $ online, and deleting spam, it's nice to zip over the the local 7-Eleven and purchase 28 oz. of refreshing goodness. I really enjoy pretty much any flavor except the Coca-Cola flavor. (I mean, seriously.) Cherry, Mountain Dew LiveWire, Twizzlers Strawberry, and Blue Raspberry are probably my favorites. Since I've been shuttling back and forth from our office to the construction site of our new building, I'm presented with many opportunities to procure Slurpees. What's especially weird is that I had never had a Slurpee until about 2 months' ago, and now I'm a regular.
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| 06/06/2004 10:22 |
| So, I'm thinking about adding satellite radio to the TSX. I'm not certain, but I think I prefer the XM channel lineup to that of Sirius. The high school kids at Best Buy and Circuit City were both pushing Sirius, but I just haven't decided. That's the minor part. The tougher part is the actual installation. I don't want anything FM modulated, but I want to be able to remove the receiver and take it in the house for home listening. The perfect example of what I want is here: XM Roady TSX Install The Soundgate adapter is a $99 part you have to order. Once you have one, it's plug and play to get it installed. That storage bin literally just pulls out, and then you can get at the connectors on the underside of the radio/Nav unit. The only potentially dicey parts are the antenna and power. I need to confirm, but I think that Soundgate adapter supplies power. For the antenna, apparently you can just poke the wire under console moldings and door moldings to get around back to the back seat/trunk area, then either run up onto the back package tray, or go through into the trunk and mount it on the edge of the trunk lid. The real issue is whether it's smart to trust Best Buy/Circuit City/Car Toys to do something like this...
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