Spam Pizza
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under General, Technology
So I’m letting my ISP email account go the entire year without deleting anything. I don’t use this account legit email anymore. I’m up to 1,270 messages year to date and probably 1,250 are unsolicited spam. The other 20 are still spam but they’re from websites that I have transacted with. I’m shooting for 1,800 by New Year’s.
This is with their spam filtering turned on max, btw.
Size does matter
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under General, Technology
I couldn’t take it anymore. I adjusted the WordPress theme I’m using to fit a 1024×768 window. The default 800×600 window size left the post column so narrow my posts all looked a lot longer than they really were, plus I just hated that the display wouldn’t adjust to take advantage of a larger monitor.
Yes, I know most people still design for the lowest common demoninator monitor size but I put it off as long as I could. I even looked for other 1024×768 themes but I never came across any as nice as the one I have now. I emailed the author hoping he might have (or create for me) a larger template. He responded by saying it couldn’t be adjusted easily because of the images. Of course to me that was a challenge I coudn’t refuse. It was actually fairly easily and the web guru Ladyann helped me with a few bits to put the crowning touches on it. I think it came out pretty good.
I say screw anyone still using a 15″ monitor; they probably have a 486 and 14.4 modem to go with it. GET WITH THE PROGRAM, PEOPLE!
No way? Way! Way cool too!
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under General, Technology
I found a very neat solution to negate having to reboot into Windows. It is possible to login into a VMware guest OS in full screen directly from the GDM login screen. I can now log into Gnome or Windows XP after I boot up Linux. After using Windows XP I shut down the VMware guest OS, close VMware and I’m right back at the GDM login screen in about 10 seconds or so. Here is a link to the howto.
Resisting the Evil Empire
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under General, Technology
Four weeks ago I reformatted my Windows XP installation by accident. I had been running Ubuntu Linux thru a vmware guest and thought it was okay if not a bit sluggish. Since I had most of my data files on another disk it wasn’t as big a loss as it initially sounds. When it was time to rebuild my computer I decided to go for it and install Ubuntu instead of Windows XP or Vista beta 2.
I have tried to get away from using Windows several times in the past and I’ve always gone back for one reason or another. Whether it was an inability to get my GDI printer working in FreeBSD, OpenOffice failing to properly render my MS Word resume, or experiencing random system instabilities that I was unable to decipher there was always something that I just couldn’t get done in *nix to force me back to Windows.
Let me state that I am neither anti-Microsoft nor an open source zealot ala Richard Stallman. The truth is I make my living, meeger as it may be, as a Windows Network Administrator. I simply want to ensure that Microsoft has enough viable competition to keep them honest. So far IBM, Novell and Apple have proven not up to the task. I do believe that, if left to their own devices, Micro$oft would happily charge us all $750 apiece for the latest & greatest versions of Windows and MS Office. At those prices we’d still only be permitted to install them on one computer. That’s money I put back in my pocket (translation – spend on something else).
I’ve installed Ubuntu Linux 6.06 on my main workstation, which has dual 1.8ghz Xeon processors, 1.5GB RAM, Radeon 8500 video, a 36GB SCSI disk for the OS and a 250GB IDE disk for storage. It’s now over five years old but still pretty responsive. I can see myself using this box for another two years or so.
Me want!
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under General, Technology
I am one well-dressed man today
I want one of these for myself now…a BlackBerry 8700. Since I don’t have a laptop this would come in handy when I’m traveling, not that I do that very often. The Treo 700 has additional capabilities like camera phone (already got one), music player (Ipod solves that) and movie viewer (okay, score one for Treo).
This one is the 8700c which only Cingular offers. I’d rather have the 8700g because it also lets you do Yahoo/AIM instant messaging, but cell coverage is very sketchy where I live so I’m not sure the carriers that offer it will work for me.
Getting attachment viewing working was a bear though. The included attachment viewer only works if you use the $1500 BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) which also requires an SQL server and there was no way I was installing all that noise for two BlackBerries. I ended up eating those words later with nothing to wash it down.
First I tried a 3rd party utility called Repligo. Essentially whenever you open an attachment it gets forwarded to the Repligo servers which then send it back as a picture which you can view easily. This was going to cost $99 per year for each person that used the device – potentially $500-600 in annually recurring costs.
Thankfully someone on Experts-Exchange mentioned there was a free Express version of BES 4.1. I was able to install that along with MS Desktop Engine (MSDE) on my spare machine in short order. I did have to increase the RAM since all these extra processes are real resource hogs. BES Express comes with one free license so we just have to purchase one extra for a one-time fee of $99 and we’re home free. Nothing like saving the boss a few pennies especially with my annual review coming in a few months.
I look damn good today.
GRRRR!
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under General, Technology
Every week I get spam from Panda Software about their latest and great antivirus protection. Finally I got tired of just deleting them so I click the link at the bottom to unsubscribe. Guess what? They send you to a page entirely in spanish! I can’t read that stuff.
I just changed the .es to .com and followed the instructions there….f*cking ass hats. With my luck there’s a separate database for the spanish spam victims.
alrighty then
Posted by Dubbayoo | Filed under General, Technology
not a good day so far.
- Update -
I’ve been using the BlackBerry for two days now so today I wanted to clear the data and set it up for someone else. I used the desktop utility to do that…no big deal. Unfortunately I left the Desktop Redirector running so Outlook was still sending mail to it. I saw this and thought the data clear just didn’t work. so I tried again. This time entering the wrong password 10 times on purpose which also wipes it out (in case it gets stolen). Then I reseated the battery and turned it back on….STOP, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200. The dang thing wouldn’t boot at all, just a white screen with error 503 on it. I call Cingular and the following conversation ensues:
Clueless Wonder Phone Rep #1 (CWPR): Can I have the # you’re calling about?
Me: 310-xxx-xxxx
CWPR: And the name on the account?
Me: :insert female boss’ name that is clearly not me no matter how white I sound.
CWPR: can I have the tax ID # on the account
Me: no clue whatsoever. I am the IT person for the company
CWPR: long pause…..okay, I don’t need that to help you. What’s the problem?
Me: I tried clearing the data on the BlackBerry to set it up for a new user. After reseating the battery it wouldn’t power back on.
CWPR: long pause again while CWPR undoubtedly reaches for the hidden button alerting security this negro stole the phone and just wants to put his info in it….Our computers are down so I can’t really..like….do anything. Did you try reseating the battery?
Me: Yes, but I will do it again….I do to the same result
CWPR: I believe you “kinda like sorta fried the SIM card maybe”. You’ll have to send it back so we can give you another one, which will take 3-5 days.
Me: You don’t sound very sure of yourself. Is there a way you contact the phone remotely and see if it’s really dead? (Call the damn number using them gizmos ya got over there, biatch)
CWPR: Without software we won’t be able to contact it. You’ll need to send it back.
Me: GRRRRRRRRRRRRR……..they don’t call me Dial_tone for nuttin.
So I have just killed our new $300 phone. Boss comes from lunch expecting a demo of the phone with her data in it. I explain the situation making it sound less critical than I think it is. A few minutes later I call back and get someone who sounds just like CWPR. Not talking to her again…wouldn’t be prudent…not at this juncture. I hang up and call back again.
This time I get Habib. He tells me to just reinstall the software via the USB cable. I didn’t try this before because I figured the software talked to the device at the application level and since the OS is gone that won’t work. Well I was wrong and it did work. In removing the data I removed everything, even the OS so reversing the process worked fine. She’s probably sitting at home surfing on it right now.
