Monthly Archive for August, 2003

Page 3 of 4

RPC/DCOM

Published on August 12, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

This nasty little bugger seems to be somewhat loose here… I say somewhat because people don’t seem to be infected by it, just getting it sent to them. Scary as hell, though – we should be protected.

Blogtool update: Screw a temporary implementation – I’m going whole-hog, write-the-damned-CMS-or-at-least-part-of-it. Hopefully virtual namespaces will be done tonight, then authentication tomorrow and templating Thursday. If I can get that far, blogging and discussions should be prototyped by Saturday.

Also seen on Slashdot

Published on August 11, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

This.

If it comes to that, I’ll do the Slim Pickens thing on the Nuke.

(but only if it’ll help)

California Recall

Published on August 11, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

I’ve been reading up on this Californial Recall thing, and it seems to work this way: if you want Gray Davis out, vote Yes, and select a candidate. If you want him to stay, you vote No.

So he could be voted out if he gets 49% of the votes “No”, even though that’s the larger (by far) portion of the electorate.

And this is democratic… how? 49% of the people want on thing, but they’re overridden by the 10% who misguidedly vote Arnie?

(Aside: I love his movies as much as / more than the next guy, but I don’t want a Hollywood guy in charge of anything politically. Hollywood’s idea of privacy and freedom of choice makes 1984 look like paradise.)

Upgradefest 2003

Published on August 11, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

This weekend saw the upgrading of much equipment with NFBME (Newer, Faster, Better, More Expensive) models. I recount the tale now, and post photos later.

Saturday

Wake up around noon of course, and Dad and I head out. First stop is the 1350 Matheson East collective (Active Electronics, Sayal Electronics, RTC Electronics and another whose name escapes me) to search for 12′ Computer power cables (CEE). No dice. Then, off to Logic to get a Seagate Barracuda V 120 GB hard drive. Only problem is, they don’t have that one, so we get a Maxtor instead ($20 more).

Follow that up with a trip to The Office Place / whatever they’re called now, to look for said power cords. Found a purple stapler for my 9 year old cousin’s birthday that day (she asked for office supplies), talked to a guy there about WiFi (badge said visitor, he was holding DLink products – gee, I wonder if I should’ve told him how many open networks we picked up sitting in their parking lot)

Get home, try to install the hard drive. BIOS hangs detecting it.

I’m going to say that once again, for effect: the BIOS hung.

Apparently, when ASUS broke the 32GB barrier on my motherboard with a BIOS update, they introduced a 64 GB barrier. Since the BIOS for this board hasn’t been updated in 3 years, the only recourse was to risk frying the board with a beta BIOS, or buy a PCI IDE card.

Evening in Cambridge at said cousin’s birthday, reconnect old hard drive on return, compute, sleep.

Sunday
Dad and I head into Toronto to pick up a PCI IDE card. Head over to Canada Computers and get:

  • Promise Ultra100 TX2 OEM version
  • SMC 7004VWBR router (refurb, $46)
  • Another IBM Model M keyboard. This one’s hard-wired, 1996 vintage. Keys aren’t as nice as my 1988 model, but still nice, and for $5 it doesn’t require as much clean-up or other word as the one I got for $3.

From there, headed over to Factory Direct, but they don’t sell notebook batteries (no one seems to).

Heading home, we need to stop at a RadioShack, since they seem to be the only ones with the aforementioned 12′ power cords. We stop at the one at Queensway and Kipling – they had 4 of the 6 needed. Scooped ‘em. Spaceballs playing on the TV, customers and staff alike taking moments to watch as the cameraman gets killed in the Schwartz fight at the end. Saw these kick-ass light up pens – scooped one of them, too.

From there, we go to Future Shop in Oakville. Try to find the hp Deskjet 3820 that was $150 a few months ago, but is now $70 after a $30 rebate. Oakville doesn’t have any, but Burlington does. So off to the Fairview St. store, get a printer, get a cartridge for Dad’s printer, and leave.

Canadian Tire next. Looking for Mag-Lite bulbs – drone tells us they’re in lighting (?). Lighting drone tells us they’re back at Batteries, where we were looking in the first place. Turns out Mag-Lite has changed their packaging a bit… check out, leave.

Time is now 4:40pm on Sunday, and we still need to hit a RadioShack to get 2 more cables. Make our way over to Hopedale, get in the mall at like 30 seconds to 5. Every store but RadioShack is closing – the guys there seem to be happy serving more customers (slow day?). Get their last 2 cables, and a switch for my cold cathode. Shopping at A&P, head home.

It takes 2 trips to get everything in the house. IDE card is the first to go in – computer now sees the hard drive and boots with it! Set up a program to copy all my stuff to the new drive, and go off to set up the wireless router.

It turns out that our existing network equipment was located under a big fat steel I beam in the basement – not conducive to proper antenna placement, shall we say. Router in sideways, one antenna on each side – hopefully good enough. (UPDATE: decent reception on the 1st floor, crappy-ass reception on the 2nd floor. Will have to play a bit.)

Hard drive upgrade goes off with only a single problem, really: XP re-mapped all my drives, and was trying to stick the swap file in places it wouldn’t fit. A few reboots later, all is well. Upgrade my sister’s machine with my old 40 gig, and get my really old 13 gig back.

Set up the printer – beautiful output – and checked email. So ends the day of upgrades.

The Coding of the Gods

Published on August 11, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

“Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb”

-Dark Helmet


Browsing Slashdot real quick, and in the discussions following the thread on Flavour vs. Flavor in the Linux kernel (it’s spelled with a “u”, yeh damn Yanks), there are possibly the 3 best comments on coding I’ve seen in the past few minutes.

This takes the cake:

while(homies.down)
{
    bustcap;
    punk(whitey);
    bustcap;
    bustcap;
}

T minus 8 hours until the IEEE Meeting of Doom, Peril, Death, and Live Organ Transplant begins in Dundas. In the intervening hours, I must do some work, have lunch, get the damnable Krispy Kremes, get to Dundas, and come up with a plausible excuse as to why I have no swimsuit – likely in that order.

And after that, Intermediate Blogtool #2 (pLog) gets implemented. New look, new address, no archives for a while after that change happens.

Change of Blogtool

Published on August 11, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

Given how much HTML b2 munched in that last posting there (hint: a lot), I think I’ll be moving to a new blogtool ASAP.

This was also determined by the fact that the second I tried to move my b2 install to picxpert.stealthbanana.com, it blew up in a truly ugly manner.

So no more b2 – it’s been a nice ride, but I think plog will serve my needs nicely from here on in (or, until UberCMS is ready). Mmmm… Smarty templates…

A quizzlet

Published on August 11, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

Many thanx to Brian B. for posting a linky to thisy

Previous Life Meme by
quill18
Username:

Zodiac Sign:
Favorite Colour:

Last Life:

Ninja
Attendants at Funeral: 87
Created with quill18‘s MemeGen!

A new recruit

Published on August 10, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

New(er) to the blogging scene (yeah, like I’m a member), it’s Lola!

New Hole in the Wall!

Published on August 8, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

Omigod! Canada Computers, the most stocked hole in the wall in existence, is opening a Mississauga location at Mavis and Eglinton!

Yet another computer store within a reasonable driving distance – tell me how that could possibly be anything other than good :)

How far to hell, or did we pass it already?

Published on August 7, 2003 in General. 0 Comments

“Your ideas are intriguing, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter”

-Homer J. Simpson


I was assigned a project weeks ago. I do not have a clear understanding of the objectives, and am clueless as to what the final product will be. Further, my boss is hard to contact as he is constantly in meetings.

How I hate reality. I am more than eager to return to the field of Academia / movie-watching in exactly 4 weeks, even though that eagerness will evaporate the moment my first prof cries, “Let’s begin”