Chuck's Rants & Such

2003-05-17T19:24:00.000-05:00

new blog place In all it's goodness, I finally moved my blog over to my own server... now to fix the archived stuff. linkie here

2003-05-15T20:02:00.000-05:00

stupid people I've had two interesting sets of calls in the last few days. Scenario 1: customer buys an iMac from us, i believe a 1Ghz 17", which ships with Mac OS 10.2.3 installed. He calls us the next day, stating that he has bought some touch panel product that will only work with 10.2.1, no higher. We ask if he has called the developer/manufacturer of said product. He has, and they tell him in no uncertain terms that it will not work with any system higher than 10.2.1. So, we recommend that he call Apple customer relations, and see what they say about the matter. Nobody I work with knows if a 1Ghz iMac will even boot or run 10.2.1 without trouble. Personally, i doubt it. He calls back a few hours later. The gal he talked to at Apple apparently told him that 99% of the machines are shipping with 10.2, and you internet update them higher (this is bull, all of the current machines are shipping with 10.2.3 preinstalled, and the retail box of X is also 10.2.3), and to come in and trade us his 10.2.3 CDs for 10.2 CDs! We don't have a 10.2 retail CD around (we sold them all), don't have a product 10.2 install CD around, and we still don't think his iMac would work properly with a system lower than what it shipped with. I told him to call Apple back and try to get another c.r. rep. Sounds to me as if the first rep was just reading a script, and had no idea what she was talking about. If it were me, I would be returning the touch panel to the manufacturer. Absolutely no developer should make a product that will work with one version of the system, and not a minor revision of the system higher. That's ludicrous. Scenario 2: Customer calls with a very strange network sluggishness problem. He has NEVER bought a product from us, currently owns at least an Xserve, a G4 server, 3 or 4 G4 towers, and a few iMacs, but always expects us to drop everything to help him. Granted, he has always paid us for our service time and onsites to his location, but still acts like we have to help him right now. He's called Apple, and they told him to call Apple enterprise help. He calls Apple enterprise help, and they have an answering machine that says "leave a message, we'll call back later". Nice. After talking to him for a bit, it sounds like his main switch is going out. He'll randomly not get an IP from the DHCP server, and then a reboot will change that. Ping times across the network are fast, some file transfers are fast, everything else is slow. I recommended that he switch his main switch out with his smaller spare (non-gigabit), and see if that fixes it. We haven't heard back from him since then, so I'm hoping that really was the issue.

2003-05-13T00:08:00.000-05:00

gaming and more Got a hair cut today, which took almost an hour by itself. My hair grows too damn long for how short I like it. My PC has decided it's not shutting off anymore. If I tell it to shut down, it restarts, just like it used to. I think it's the hacked unofficial driver for my logitech usb quickcam vc, as logitech does not actually support that camera in windows 2000 (or NT, or XP). I'll do some testing tomorrow to be sure, but that is the last thing I installed. I just spent the last few hours playing Ghost Recon online with some of the guys that were at the LAN party. Me, ben, jacob (at the end), dan, dusty, and dusty's brother were all playing. No lag at all, it was quite fun. We actually got to where we could kill shit on the elite setting without dying too much.

2003-05-12T00:54:00.000-05:00

it boots I spent a few hours trying to get my PC to dual boot Win2k and Linux again. I had to end up using my Win2k CD to repair... err, rewrite the MBR with its own record. Considering I can boot linux with my linux boot floppy, I may leave it like this until I get brave again. No need to reinstall Windows again.

2003-05-11T19:53:00.000-05:00

PC & LAN After reinstalling everything on my PC Friday evening, I decided to install RedHat 8 onto it. It wasn't such a good idea. I told it to use the GRUB boot loader, but on reboot, it gives me "GRUB read error", and stops. So, I reinstall redhat, and tell it to use LILO, reboot, and "LI". That's it, nothing else. So, now I'm hoping that either Norton for PC, or a repair install of Windows 2000 can fix it, or I am going to be royally pissed. The LAN party was good and fun last night. Watching the new Aliens vs. Predator players start in on a round of coop against the aliens was very funny. I told them it was fast, insane, and non-stop, and that the aliens won't stop coming at you even if you blow their legs off. It was a good laugh, but then they got good at it, and we had a good alien killing spree. We also played Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament, and Ghost Recon. I've posted some pictures here.

2003-05-11T01:48:00.000-05:00

yeah

2003-05-10T01:57:00.000-05:00

ginsu It slices, it dices, it blogs, it surfs the web, it emails, it can telnet to mldonkey, and it can irc (if only i could figure out how to change ping setttings), it's my Newton! Pictures of the Newton surfing to freefall, and the default apache page are available here.

2003-05-10T01:13:00.000-05:00

Newton
this is my first blog from my newton.

2003-05-09T22:43:00.000-05:00

Microsoft Security Update 811493 for Windows 2000 appears to be the culprit. I just installed all of the updates except for that one in about an hour. I noticed that the last two times the updates stalled, including after a clean nuke and install of windows, this update was the one the updater was on. Leave it out of the set of updates, and everything runs smoothly. I'm tempted to try it now that all of the other updates are done, but I don't think I will. It resolves some issue where a person could take control of a computer remotely, but they have to be able to log in locally (have a local account) to do so. As my box is behind a big fat router and firewall, and it has no services running, I'm not to worried about it.

2003-05-09T21:18:00.000-05:00

stupid pc I have no idea what my PC's problem is, other than the fact that it runs Windows. When I got up this morning, the updates were stopped at the very end of the install process, with none of them actually finished. The computer was responsive, but the install refused to finish. I tried doing just one update when I got home, but even it was taking it's time to install, longer than it should be. So, I nuked the PC again, reinstalled Win2k, installed all of the drivers for the components in the tower (ATA card, ethernet, sound, agp, video card), and am now running the online updates. Hopefully, they don't crawl.

2003-05-09T15:57:00.000-05:00

Apple Store I applied for a genius bar position at an Apple Retail Store in Seattle, that isn't open yet. As usual, I'm being impatient and worried as to whether they will call me or not, as I want this job. Also, I filled out the online resume/application, and looking back at it, I don't know if I like my goal on it.

2003-05-09T02:57:00.000-05:00

Sleep is for the Weak I just spent the last who knows how long nuking (quick) and reinstalling all of my custom stuff onto my Newton, using a 6500 that I had to nuke and reinstall, all using only a mouse, as I apparently sold my ADB keyboard some time ago. I've also spent the evening trying to reinstall Windows 2000 on my PC, as it was acting really strangely (wouldn't shut down or sleep, just restart, and i checked the settings), so I decided that it needed a good nuke and pave. Wipe and install went fine, but now the internet windows update is not behaving. Either it won't finish downloading, or it stops installing, or whatever. I hope I can get it past THIS set of updates, and then move to the next tomorrow. I found a telnet client for my Newton, and I'm hoping that I can use my PCMCIA to compactflash adapter without using the shareware ATA support driver. Actually, if it comes to that, I just won't use it, as the driver is nearly $50. I can't find an SSH client for it, and I still need to download the blogging app. Email works fine (always did), and I have yet to try web again. Now that I've gotten rid of what should have been the source of the thing crashing, maybe web will work properly. Ping and traceroute utilities would be nice, too. I do have the newton development kit, so I could probably write those myself, if I so desired, but they're really not THAT important to me to learn a new language and network stack stuff. If anyone knows where to find any of this stuff, let me know. You can contact me through freefall, via the link to the left.

2003-05-09T00:22:00.000-05:00

I just realized another reason why the Newton rules. You can load software, drivers, whatever, and it doesn't care. It does not need to restart or reboot. You can suspend drivers on the fly, and bring them back up on the fly. Very cool.

2003-05-08T23:33:00.000-05:00

2000 power I believe the Newton is the pinnacle of technology. Only now are PDAs and PocketPCs starting to reach the raw power that the Newton 2x00 series had. To "nuke" a newton, you hard reset it, and it goes back to factory, plus OS upgrades, clean. No installs, no cables, just hard reset it. That is so cool.

2003-05-08T20:20:00.000-05:00

ouch So, we're at work, at the end of the day, chatting about a possessed G4 tower, and waiting for a new customer's iMac G4 17" to get done with its RAM test as we upgraded the RAM. All of a sudden, we all hear a nice big crash. Turn around, and Mr. iMac has fallen off of the counter, hit the ground, and broken the halo around the screen off. Immediately, we're thinking that at the least there will be a broken LCD on the thing. Apparently, these things are made pretty damn tough. It never stopped running the hardware test, still passes the test, and boots normally. We haven't done any extensive testing yet, obviously, and we still need to replace the screen bezels. Of course, we grabbed a different new 17" for the customer (he had just paid for the one), upgraded the RAM like the first one, and gave it to him. He had never taken the first one home, so it was no big deal for him. I've got pictures posted here.

2003-05-08T13:40:00.000-05:00

perfection This strip at little-gamers is just plain perfection. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And this strip is just plain funny. I think it illustrates what all techs want to do sometimes.

2003-05-05T16:05:00.000-05:00

they can all burn So, I took my car to the salvage yard today, the ones that said they'd give me $100 for it if I brought it in myself, with a clean title. I should've written down the name of the guy I talked to, because apparently, even though they keep logs of what they tell people, he wrote down Celica GT-S. I did not, and have not EVER, called my car a GT-S, It's a GT, and always has been. So, the fuckers were trying to tell me that they don't buy GTs, because they're not worth anything, and they only buy the GT-S because of the rear suspension. Anyways, I was TOLD $100, and I intended to get something out of them. When the guy told me they don't buy the GT models, what went through my head was fine, take the damn car, for free, and i'll light a rag in the gas tank on my way out. I was pissed. Well, when all was said and done, they gave me $50. Better than nothing, I guess.

2003-05-04T18:22:00.000-05:00

do not pass go. . . For the hell of it (no pun intended), i just took a test to determine which level of hell you would be in based on Dante's Inferno. I found it through a friend. Needless to say... I'm pretty much screwed. Many and varied sinners suffer eternally in the multi-leveled Malebolge, an ampitheatre-shapped pit of despair Wholly of stone and of an iron colour: Those guilty of fraudulence and malice; the seducers and pimps, who are whipped by horned demons; the hypocrites, who struggle to walk in lead-lined cloaks; the barraters, who are ducked in boiling pitch by demons known as the Malebranche. The simonists, wedged into stone holes, and whose feet are licked by flames, kick and writhe desperately. The magicians, diviners, fortune tellers, and panderers are all here, as are the thieves. Some wallow in human excrement. Serpents writhe and wrap around men, sometimes fusing into each other. Bodies are torn apart. When you arrive, you will want to put your hands over your ears because of the lamentations of the sinners here, who are afflicted with scabs like leprosy, and lay sick on the ground, furiously scratching their skin off with their nails. Indeed, justice divine doth smite them with its hammer. The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Eigth Level of Hell - the Malebolge!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Moderate
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test

2003-05-03T20:54:00.000-05:00

spam Anyone who thinks that not ever putting your email address on a web site, and being extremely careful about who you give it to, to stop spam, is kidding themselves. Some of the spam bots don't know who or what you are, and could care less. I watched one in our logs one day (as it got rejected every message), it went something like this:

0000000000@ourdomain.com
0000000001@ourdomain.com
0000000002@ourdomain.com
. . .
000000000a@ourdomain.com
. . .
000000000z@ourdomain.com
0000000010@ourdomain.com

And so on, you get the idea. It was basically a dumb bot, and had no care who was and wasn't a real user. Come to think of it, it actually started with 0@ourdomain.com, and then added characters as it went, so as to catch short user names. Something really needs to be done.

2003-05-03T02:31:00.000-05:00

another case If I DO end up totally screwing up my existing case, or just get tired of all the cables, I will probably end up with this case, or the one with a 450W PSU in it here for the extra $10. I'd love to find a place to get the one step up black dragon case, with the 5 5.25", 3 ext 3.5, and 5 int 3.5 bays.

2003-05-03T02:03:00.000-05:00

project part hunting Now that I have a completely black case, I still want to window it, finish out the fans (two more front 80s, and the rear 60), somehow incorporate blue lighting (i like blue), and switch all of the normal green and red lights to blue and white. Because the inside is a rat's nest of cables, I think I will probably invest in some of this cable wrap. I like temperature controlled fans, so I don't have to worry about them myself, so I will probably make the rest of the fans temperature controlled. I would really like to have a temperature monitor though, hardware based, so I'm looking at this temp bay. It seems simple and effective, and doesn't give me anything I don't need (as I would just leave the fan controlling stuff off of it). My only problem with it, is that I cannot yet find a picture of the black one on, and I do not want a RED display. Since I'm making my case black, blue, and white, red would be just bad. I think I want just a basic rounded edge rectangular window to put next to the side fan. I'm also not quite sure how I want to make it light up blue inside, as I can't find a temp controlled blue 60mm case fan. For that matter, I can't find a blue lit 60mm case fan AT ALL. There are a ton of 80mm fans out there, so I may just replace the standard side fan with one of the quad light ones. Before I do any of this extra stuff, though, except for maybe the cable wrap, I plan on getting a better PSU for the whole rig. As it stands, there is only a 350W PSU in there, that I don't trust very much. A buddy showed me a few inexpensive but not too cheap 400W and more PSUs, so once I find them again, I'll keep my eye on them until I have the money to truly finish out this project. Yes, I have big plans for this thing, because I can tinker with it, and I enjoy it. As long as I don't fubar the machine inside of the case, if I fuck up the case, I'll just grab a cheap one and let it keep playing games until I feel like tackling another one for looks.

2003-05-02T19:55:00.000-05:00

ipoding Today was actually a pretty busy day, especially compared to our normal 0 customers lately. I sold a few iPods, and talked to some people about iBooks and PowerMacs. Good day indeed.

2003-05-01T21:16:00.000-05:00

and it arrives I got my black faced floppy drive today. It's nearly as silent as my sony one was, so that part ended up not being an issue at all. The case looks a lot better now without that beige blemish on the front of it, and since I was inside the box anyways, I went ahead and installed my two extra hard drives to use for linux and probably beos. Unfortunately, my new camera sucks in even slight low light conditions (though it does great outside during the day, where i will be least likely to use it), so i had to brighten the photos here a bit.

2003-05-01T01:50:00.000-05:00

somewhere This almost fits my mood...

watching me wanting me
i can feel you pull me down
fearing you loving you
i won't let you pull me down

2003-04-30T23:12:00.000-05:00

drive I took a little drive tonight, a little two hour drive, just because i got that feeling that i needed to. Needless to say, you can see part of my little escape through the eyes of a cheap 1.3 megapixel camera here. Enjoy.

2003-04-29T22:01:00.000-05:00

lots of stuff Well, I found out that my damn car's title had a lein on it, so I had to take it to the bank to get a lein release on it so I could get my registration and tags done. It was easy, but a general nuisance. I also found out that neither Toyota nor the parts place that I've been talking to will sell JUST the driver's side seat belt. They sell both shoulder straps, with retractors, as one unit. Toyota wants ~$180, the other place wants ~$140. No thanks. I called a few salvage yards to get rid of my Celica, and in the process found a place that has at least six 1990 tercel hatchbacks, and they'll let me take the part I need for about $30. I also found a place that will give me $100 for my Celica. So, my old car is paying for the taxes and seat belt on my new car, not a bad trade off, I'd say. Apple announced their music store yesterday. It's pretty cool, and I've already bought one song. They have some DRM built into the songs you buy, but if you really are following fair use, and not trying to distribute your music, you'll probably never hit the DRM walls. I just wish Apple would offer 192Kbit AAC files instead of 128Kbit. I also bought a neat little 1.3 megapixel camera that also takes videos until the memory is full, and is expandable with compact flash cards. It was a cheap little gadget, but it works pretty well for the money. It also works with iPhoto, Image Capture, and it's media shows up as a mass storage device, so I can get at the videos and stills that way, too. I'll probably use it to take pics of my black PC once the new floppy and stuff is installed into it. About the only downside is that it has no flash or light, and no way to add one. I almost wonder if there's any way to make my flylight work with it. I'll ask Geek-Mo about it tomorrow. Actually, the most annoying feature is that it beeps and tones for everything you do, with no way to turn it off. I think I'm going to remove the speaker, or at least unplug it from the board, as it has a little LED that shows you when it does stuff, too.

2003-04-28T00:09:00.000-05:00

black case cont. Well, I took the lazy route. I discovered that my dremel has a mind of its own, so making a faceplate out of the 3.5" bezel for my floppy won't work. I don't feel like trying to dye it black, so I just ordered a black faced samsung drive. I doubt it will be as quiet as my sony is now, but hell, I use it VERY rarely, and it isn't that big of a deal to me, as I'm sure my fans are louder.

2003-04-27T20:29:00.000-05:00

Japanese I had forgotten how much I liked Japanese food. We went to Osaka tonight, which is right around the corner from the apartment, but we had never been there before. Pretty good, they're a little more expensive than Little Tokyo, but the food is a little better, too. As usual, they cooked and did tricks in front of us. I could personally care less about that part, even though it is fun, I'm really there for the food. I've also realized that the only time I enjoy eating vegetables is when I'm eating Japanese. Anyways, Mr. Tummy is happy.

2003-04-27T18:03:00.000-05:00

Final Fantasy X I just beat it, and think that the final battles were too easy, though that may have had something to do with me having half of my characters' ultimate weapons, and all of the aeons. Though, I didn't die at all, so I used my original three fighters (Auron, Yuna, Tidus) through both the next to the last and last boss fights. I also had someone equipped with no encounters, so not getting into fights on the way to the bosses probably helped. The ending itself was pretty good, and expected, except that sitting through the credits for the part right before the "the end" was worthless. That part wasn't near as good as the one in VIII was. I still have yet to beat IX, and then Xenosaga Episode I.

2003-04-27T18:00:00.000-05:00

seatbelts After tearing apart my car's center console to get at the seatbelts, I now know more about how they work, but also discovered that I cannot switch the passenger and driver's side shoulder belts and have them work at all. I also am neither skilled enough nor have the tools available to me to take the retracting mechanisms apart, so I could not just switch the belts themselves, or change them to work on the opposite sides. So, I've emailed a few places requesting the price of the driver's side belt with retractor.

2003-04-26T17:37:00.000-05:00

I came in this morning, to hear "email doesn't work" again. Apparently, /usr/sbin is not in the $PATH for whatever user runs cron jobs, so even though the log files got created this time, they were owned by root. Mail server couldn't write to files, and it got cranky. I ended up using the absolute path for chown in the script to make it work, and tested it using a noon cron job. It now works, I know it works, and it damn well better not break again.

2003-04-25T19:48:00.000-05:00

server. . . bad I spent all day trying to figure out the HTML email mailing list problem. It seems to be a combination of the listserv app and receiving with entourage that makes them look funny. I'm pretty much stumped. On the plus side, I got the auto delete folder setup on the server.

2003-04-25T00:13:00.000-05:00

A buddy of mine sent this to me, and I found it true enough that I had to post it: "If you are computer illiterate and I fix your computer, please don't ask me what was wrong or how I fixed it. Just take the gift of my genius and go back to your Solitaire and Instant Messenger and be happy. You can't use or comprehend the information, nor do you really want it. You're being polite and that's irritating."

2003-04-24T23:53:00.000-05:00

H T M L I told my boss that HTML email through our mailing list proram should work just fine, as I never made a setting to mess it up. Of course, it DOESN'T work, because of what I told him. I think I've tried very combination of settings in relation to content filtering, and I cannot figure out what is going on. No matter what, it either strips out all HTML and says nothing about it, or it strips everything but font color and size changes, and tells you about it. I'm stumped. Damn thing.

2003-04-24T21:53:00.000-05:00

car radio My brother and I removed the radio from my new car, and installed my Kenwood CD player in its place. Start to finish was just at an hour, a far cry from our 6 hour hell install into his subaru a few years ago. Granted, we ran all new wires that time, and I just used the speakers already in place for now, but still. I'll figure out how to install my good speakers in the car later, including probably cutting holes for the 4x6s, as I'm 99% sure there are only two speaker spots in the car right now. So, I now have a CD player, radio, and clock in that car.

2003-04-24T21:48:00.000-05:00

productive day I actually got a lot done today. I found out that the DNS setup at work was completely fucked up, so I spent a good hour fixing that. One problem was a damn carriage return in the middle of a line where it shouldn't be. I was messing up all kinds of stuff. I hacked the shit out of the mailing list program so it doesn't say "to send email to the list..." anywhere anymore, as we wanted an announcements only list. I also finally finished implementing the netinfo groups to mail aliases script. I still need to write a cron job to nuke everything in a folder called "DELETE ME" on the backup drives every night.

2003-04-23T21:49:00.000-05:00

I gutted my stereo out of my Celica this evening. It was fun. I had forgotten how rewarding it was to take apart something that has pissed you off. The stereo is MINE, and it is going into my new car, not to some stupid salvage yard.

2003-04-22T22:48:00.000-05:00

car I bought the Tercel. It drives nicely, as I said before. I forgot that the driver's side shoulder strap is shredded, but I'll just swap that with the passenger one (they're the same), and order a new belt for the right side later, as I don't forsee me having anyone with me in it. I'm going to want a speaker box of some sort for rear speakers, too, as this thing only has fronts. Boo on that. It's all good, though. All in all, I like it.

2003-04-21T23:27:00.000-05:00

my wish i need an Xserve RAID maxed out in space, set to level 5, an OC3 to my house, and a Presidential pardon for all past and future computer crimes.

2003-04-21T22:03:00.000-05:00

transportation I went and test drove a 1990 Toyota Tercel hatchback tonight. I looked at it earlier today, to check fluids and belts and such. All in all, seems like a damn good car, especially at $1000. It makes an odd buzzing noise (speaker type) about a quarter of the time you turn right, but other than that, appears to be in good mechanical and electrical shape. Started right up, steers nicely, brakes fast, clutches and shifts smoothly. If they guy doesn't sell it tonight to the person who called him yesterday on it (I called him today), then I'll call him up in the morning and tell him that it's a done deal.

2003-04-20T21:27:00.000-05:00

400Mb/sec I just got my two 120GB drives into my firewire hard drive box. So far, so good. It plays videos just fine, and downloading to one of them doesn't seem to hurt overall performance any. Firewire rules.

2003-04-20T20:06:00.000-05:00

carnage I promised pics of postal 2, and here they are.

2003-04-20T18:04:00.000-05:00

cleaning sucks I'm spending today cleaning up and organizing all of my random and not so random computer stuff. I have boxes upon boxes of parts, drives, memory, fans, tools, and so forth. A good chunk of it will end up on ebay (like my 450Mhz G4 and heatsink, once I am comfortable with the 800 being perminant), but the rest I want to keep around. I think I have most of my tools and dremel stuff organized into a nice blue bag now, and I'll probably toss my small CD case with diagnostic CDs in there too. I pretty much don't know where to store the stuff I want to keep, as I feel like the boxes in the closet are piling up. Oh well, they will probably go there. Out of sight, out of mind. Speaking of CDs, I need to find a much better way to store my CDs. I currently have 5 different hard cases with various CDs in them. I think I'm probably going to pick up another ~260CD booklet style case, move all the CDs into it, and toss all the hard plastic stuff.

2003-04-19T21:54:00.000-05:00

postal 2 Is pure evil. It is different from the original postal in that it is 1st person instead of overhead, and it tries to have a lame plot in the way of to do lists for every day (level). Beyond that, it is still the same "kill everything that moves" game. You can beat people to death with a shovel, piss on them until they throw up, stun gun them, or douse them in gas and light them on fire. The main character can use cats as silencers, or train dogs to attack anyone who attacks you. You have the choice to play the game as violently as possible, or as passively as possible, killing only those who attack you first. This is a great game to check your brain before starting, and not think about what you are doing. Just play. In game screenshots are forthcoming.

2003-04-19T18:58:00.000-05:00

damn logs My sorry ass forgot to edit the log rotation script for the mail server, so once again, Saturday morning, the mail server freaked out because there was no main log or reject log files to write to. After I got the mail server running AGAIN, I edited the scripts to touch the log files and make them owned by the mail server user.

2003-04-19T14:56:00.000-05:00

hello? This is a test of the freeware program BlogWorks. If it works, I will probably be doing my posts from this instead of the infernal web interface.

2003-04-17T22:48:00.000-05:00

spoke too soon Damnit. The 10.2.5 server update broke, of all things, DNS! Apple removed DNS from server settings, renamed "named" to "named.old", and didn't install a new "named", and turned off the startup item! Needless to say, I switched named.old back to name, reenabled the startup item by hand, started named, and DNS is happy again. Of all things to break...

2003-04-17T22:33:00.000-05:00

NetInstall I fought the Xserve pretty much all day. I wanted to set up netinstall, it didn't want to. I got it to work after I got some help from some nix ninjas towards the end of the day. Needless to say, Apple's documentation on it sucks. Activating netboot on the server after the initial setup apparently does not start up NFS and portmap, both which are needed for netboot and netinstall to work. A simple reboot would have fixed it, as the startup scripts check for netboot being on, and start up NFS and portmap as needed, but the admin guide says jack shit about needing to reboot. Now that it's workign, netinstall is awesome. You boot up off of a netinstall disk image as if you were netbooting, but it presents you with an installer screen similar to what you would get when booted off of the Mac OS X install CD. It will install whatever packages you have placed into the netinstall disk image. Very cool technology. I decided to go ahead and risk upgrading to 10.2.5, as well. Seems to have gone w/o any serious trouble.

2003-04-16T00:35:00.000-05:00

kick ass drive box I received my dual hard drive firewire enclosure today. I know exactly what I want in it, but I have two small problems. I don't know where I'm going to place it, as I'm a little out of room on my desk, and I don't know how I'm going to power it, as my surge protector is out of outlets.

2003-04-15T23:21:00.000-05:00

I took the first two pictures of my black PC. You can look at them here. The case looks much better in person, and you can't see any beige on the 5.25" bezels. The flash seems to bring it out. I do notice that the top two bezels stick out more on the left than all the rest, and I'm not sure why. Granted, for a $20 (plus $10 shipping) case that includes a fan, it's pretty good. Obviously, I still need to stealth the floppy.

2003-04-14T21:29:00.000-05:00

black is good I just finished stealthing the optical drives on my PC. You can't tell that they're even there, unless you count a little blemish on the top of one of the bezels. I tried to cut a bezel for the floppy drive, with less than little success. I first scored the wrong side for the eject button, and then when I scored the correct size, my dremel got a mind of it's own, and made a hole a bit too big for the button. Needless to say, it looked like crap, so I tossed it. My floppy is a Sony one, and silent enough that I have to look at the light to make sure it's working, so I don't want to replace it with a black faced one that might be noisier. The sony black one is $15 at the lowest that I can find it, usually plus shipping, so I think I'll try vinyl dye on my existing one first. I'm also going to change the green power light to white, the red hard disk light to blue, and the floppy light to blue. Might have to do the zip drive too, now that I think about it. The optical drive ones are covered, so they don't matter.

2003-04-13T22:32:00.000-05:00

it's alive! I got my black case, and my round ATA cables, and my new heatsink/fan for my PC. Put everything together, swapped the HS/fan, and it works just great. I need to throw some games at it and check the CPU and case temps to make sure it runs cooler than it did. I have yet to stealth my drives, as I didn't feel like using my dremel with an already pounding headache. The floppy drive is going to be the worst, I believe. I'll post pictures when I have it all finished.

2003-04-13T22:28:00.000-05:00

one step forward two steps back I walk into work Saturday morning, and get told "email doesn't work". DAMN. I take a good long look at the panic log for the mail server (after switching it BACK to Apple mail server temporarily), and realize that the log rotation script that came with the mail server program doesn't recreate the log files after rotating them (it renames errorlog and rejectlog to errorlog.01 and rejectlog.01, but doesn't create errorlog and rejectlog again), and the mail server program does not create the log files, it just freaks out and won't do anything without the log files there. So, I touched the log files, switched from AMS back to exim, and modified the log rotation script to touch the log files when it rotates them.

2003-04-11T21:09:00.000-05:00

I got the Xserve to behave. I wrote a spiffy shell script that rips the groups and associated users information out of the netinfo database and makes the appropriate changes to the /etc/aliases file so that exim will recognize netinfo groups in a way now. There's a guy who's apparently written some stuff to make exim properly work with netinfo groups, and he's sending me the fixes, but until then, I have a crontab set up that runs my script once an hour, which is good enough for where I work for the groups setup changes.

2003-04-10T22:39:00.000-05:00

the force is strong with this one So, I used some cardboard tube justice on the gueina pig server, which worked well. The Xserve is much stronger than the iMac... I went to implement the mail server changes on the Xserve, and everything worked great, except for my boss' email. After watching the logs, I realized that the mail server thought he had a home folder, and was looking for it, breaking him being able to receive any email. I got that fixed fairly quickly, and went to lunch. When I returned, I had two people come to me complaining that they couldn't send email to specific addresses. These addresses, are are actually groups in netinfo, that redirect to a bunch of people. Exim has support for netinfo users, but NOT groups! So, I had to quickly switch back to Apple Mail Server, and I'm still looking for a way to make Exim recognize netinfo groups. As it stand, the leading solution is to create a cron script to run every hour that will pull the groups and contained users from netinfo, and append the /etc/aliases file with the changes, if there are any. Not the most elegant solution, but it would work, and allow anyone working with the server to still create and modify groups via Workgroup Manager. On a good note, I got FileMaker Server starting on boot, and the DNS files changed so that Server Status will actually report the status properly.

2003-04-10T01:21:00.000-05:00

殺す Why in hell do people think that just because they find shit online for a certain price, means that I'll sell it to them at that price, even when it's under our fucking cost?! I know in more than a few cases, their online finds are without a warranty, and they're gonna be sorry if it breaks. I'd love to say sometimes "fine, go buy it online, but don't come crying to me when your shit breaks and you have to buy another one". We need a tesla coil in the ceiling outside with a big red button under the counter for these people. Bastards.

2003-04-08T21:40:00.000-05:00

Well, after recalculating the percentages for the new processor, I found out that I actually got about a 50% performance gain overall. Still, I'm very happy with the card, and the general system responsiveness is very very nice. I've posted detailed results of my benchmarking here for your viewing pleasure.

2003-04-08T19:36:00.000-05:00

800Mhz Goodness I got to work this morning, and my 800Mhz upgrade was waiting for me. I had it installed in less than 20 minutes, and have been pleased since. I noticed that the voltage was set to 1.65v (instead of the 1.85v in some of the xlr8yourmac posts), so I emailed the manufacturer of the processor, to make sure this would cause me no problems. I had my reply in about 15 minutes. They said that it would be fine at 800Mhz, and that if I did decide to change the voltage settings (voiding my warranty), that their internal tests have shown no improvement over 1.75v. After running the same set of tests I did on my 450 (I'll post a link to them once I have the page up), I found that I'm getting around a 75% speed increase across the board. Renderings, software activities, compiling, and framerates. I am one happy camper. I have not overclocked the processor, as I am chicken, and the 800Mhz is making me happy. Granted, it has only been one day, and I haven't even gotten into my nightly work routine, but if my tests and preliminary thoughts hold true, this should tide me over for a while. On another note, I drilled a 50mm hole in the back of my desk in the spot where the G4 sits, so that hot air can escape out of the area.

2003-04-07T21:12:00.000-05:00

clarification For those of you that don't understand the comments about me beating the server with a cardboard tube (HEATHENS!), check out this link.

2003-04-07T20:00:00.000-05:00

shopping fun
I just spent a LOT of money. But, thanks to me selling my two SCSI hard drives for almost $500, I was able to afford it. List, with links of the goodies, is as follows.
G4 800Mhz Processor Upgrade - I love the blue board.
DREMEL General Purpose Set - just a well rounded set of stuff I was needing to get.
DREMEL Multipurpose Bit - wood and plastic (can we say case faces?)
Tungsten Carbide Cutter - metal, lots of metal
Heavy-Duty Cut-Off Wheels - more metal, larger cuts
A small DeWalt folding case to hold all of my dremel bits, plus a few other random things.
This Black ATX Case - To replace my ugly beige one.
Dual Drive Firewire Enclosure - This case rules. Firewire box that handles two 3.5" drives, and drives larger than 132GB
Dynatron Heatsink with Fan - Since I'll be gutting my PC, I figured I could get a better HS/Fan.
Xenosaga Strategy Guide - To get 100% of the game the second time through.
Radio Shack 61 Piece Tool Kit - My small CompUSA one was getting a little old and useless.
And, enough round ATA cables to handle the drives in my PC, to avoid cable shiznit.

2003-04-03T09:36:00.000-06:00

. . . and the mail server was laid to burnination! After I recompiled mailman with the flags --with-mail-gid=mailman and setup the exim configuration file, mailman would send out subscription and reminder emails and such, but it still would not receive mail to the list. After much laying of the cardboard tube on the server, it whimpered itself into submission... wait... not that. Actually, I found out that the permissions of the contents of the mailman home directory were all jacked up. After a "%sudo chown -R mailman:mailman ~mailman/*", everything started working great. Mailman sends mail, mailman receives mail, exim sends and receives mail for users in the NetInfo database. It's all good. Now, I just need to implement this on the Xserve.

2003-03-29T22:57:00.000-06:00

133t 50phtw4r3 5ki115 I dunno if it is a breach of my dotMac agreement (I don't think so, as I didn't see any notices saying that I couldn't do it), but I wrote a few really spiffy shell scripts that download the Jaguar tutorial movies from dotMac (as they're unsavable and uncacheable), rename them to the topics copy & pasted from the dotMac site, and rename the folders they're in to the sections copy & pasted from the dotMac site. Needless to say, it was pretty cool, and there is no way in hell you could do this stuff in Mac OS 9.

2003-03-29T22:54:00.000-06:00

DOH! I compiled mailman --with-mail-gid=-2 (negative 2, or user "nobody"), instead of --with-mail-gid=mailman. Someone on the list just pointed this out to me, and it is probably the cause of my permissions problems. I'll find out for sure on Tuesday, unless I get crazy and decide to do some remote compiling over the net, which I doubt.

2003-03-29T22:51:00.000-06:00

mail server vs. me, round 3 I installed mailman today, got it playing mostly nice with exim, and what does it do? It sends fine, it generates the web pages fine, but it either won't receive mail sent to the list (returns user not found), or it won't send mail (throwing all kinds of nasty permissions errors). The last two depend on how I start the listserv daemon up. I've emailed the mac os x server admins list with some really detailed info to see if anyone there can help. mail server : 2, me : 1

2003-03-28T21:19:00.000-06:00

mail server vs. me, round 2 I tackled the mail server again today. I got exim running nicely, once I figured out how to use wildcards in the configuration file. It plays well with apple mail server, loads at startup, smtp authentication works, and sending mail from within our network without smtp auth works too. mail server : 1, me : 1 Now, time to tackle that mailing list add on.

2003-03-28T21:14:00.000-06:00

fsck this game! Literally. I dropped my machine into single user mode the other night to run fsck, as it was acting kinda funny. Well, after it ran, what did it say?

***** file system modified *****
******** REBOOT NOW ********

I have never before had a computer so forcibly tell me to reboot. Nedless to say, I did what it wanted. Afterwards, once my dock loaded, my hard drive churned crazy-like for about 3 minutes. I only have one or two items in my login items, and they're all pretty small; not the kind of things to cause disk churning like I was getting. So, I decided I needed to defrag. Pulled out my copy of Disk Warrior, booted off the CD, ran PlusOptimizer, and waited... and waited... and waited... and waited. Six hours later, it was done, informed me that it wouldn't move a few files because it didn't know what they were and it was safer that way, and I had my machine back. Needless to say, it boots quicker, and runs a lot smoother now.

2003-03-16T20:47:00.000-06:00

x e n o s a g a This game is chock full of cinema sequences and story line. I am enjoying it quite a bit, and will probably burn a lot of time playing it this week. So far, I'm only about four hours into the game, and I'm having trouble grasping how all the characters are linked, but I'm sure it will show itself in time.

2003-03-16T20:45:00.000-06:00

beat to the punch Mldonkey 2.04 for Mac is out. It works great, and included information on an ed2k link handler that is available for download. I went and checked out the source for the handler. Turns out I was on the right track to getting my ed2k handler working without opening a browser window. So, I'm glad that I was right, but irriated that it has been done by someone else. On the plus side, it runs in the background and works. On the minus side, I don't get to make my version shareware now, as you can get a working free one. Live and learn.

2003-03-15T14:36:00.000-06:00

/me is happy monkey_{rip off of m++, so what} I just found the coolest freeware app called MP3 Sushi today. It streams MP3s from a folder, downsamples them, supports rendevous, and doesn't require you to download anything else to work. In other happy news, I threw a LAN party last night. Myself, two coworkers, and my boss' nephew played many evil games of Starcraft and Quake 3 Arena until 3:30 in the morning. The little map with the brown dust fog rules, and is now by far one of my favorite maps. I also bought Xenosaga for my PS2. I have yet to really play it, because I bought it yesterday, and the LAN party was more important, but I wholly intend to give it a good run-through this week. All in all, it has been a few good days.

2003-03-14T12:32:00.000-06:00

Kenshin Video v1.1 - MPEG4 format 22MB Kenshin Video v1.1 - AVI format 65MB - this one is low quality for some reason. AVI is not what I'm used to, and would highly recommend the MP4 version. People keep telling me that the audio skips. I believe this is because I used an MP3 file as the original for the audio track before exporting it. I may or may not fix this, probably not, as it really doesn't bother me that much, and I've seen and heard much worse in anime music videos before.

2003-03-14T00:17:00.000-06:00

take 2 and cut Well, I changed the ending to my Kenshin video to what I had originally wanted. I don't know if it is really better, but I like it more now. I've decided that I'm not going to change the middle, because the clips I wanted to add in don't fit the rest of the video. When I get a new G4 (or by then, probably the G5), I'll completely redo the video to encompass more of the series. Hell, I may just put it to a different song at that point, who knows. I've also created an avi (not divx) formatted file of the 1.1 version of the video so that my windows using friends (do those three words go together for me?) can see it without installing quicktime or any other standards compliant mpeg4 video player. I'll post the link to the page for the videos tomorrow. I was going to do a video to the series "X", also, but the ending to that series pissed me off more than the revenge arc of Kenshin never being animated did, so I think I won't even touch it.

2003-03-13T21:12:00.000-06:00

Kenshin + Evanescence I spent eight hours yesterday putting together a Rurouni Kenshin music video to the song "Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence. The song is just over four minutes long, after all of the cutting, splicing, cussing, watching, moving, and such, it took my computer 45 minutes to render and export the bastard. I'd say it turned out pretty damn good, except I'm redoing the ending right now, plus a few clips in the middle, because I think I can just make it better. Needless to say, I need a faster G4. My poor 450 (with hella storage and RAM) just isn't cutting it anymore. When it takes 12 times as long to render animation as the video is long, something is seriously wrong. If anyone wants to donate to the "get Chuck a new G4" fund, then feel free to punch the donate button on the freefall web site, and well, donate. If you want to check out the video, here it is. Be forewarned, it's a 22MB MPEG4 video file.

2003-03-13T21:06:00.000-06:00

Mail Server Evilness Yeah, so, um... I spent three days trying to find a mail server that would meet the following requirements: must run under Mac OS X Server 10.2.4, must support SMTP authentication without any weird compilation or installing a bunch of rogue components (POP before SMTP is not an acceptable solution), and must play nicely with mailman. Well, I thought I had it with exim, until it just decided to stop sending or receiving mail. WTF is up with that? It did it twice in a row to me, too. So, I've given up, for now. . .

2003-02-24T23:27:00.000-06:00

Woo Hoo! Apple posted Mac OS X Server 10.2.4, and it fixes the drive unmounting when locked problem! /me is a happy camper. In other news, I think I'm going to switch our server to sendmail from apple mail server so that we can use mailman. I'm sure I'll be ranting about that come the end of the week.

2003-02-20T09:11:00.000-06:00

Bugs bugs everywhere! So, I released 1.1.2 of XHintsChat, only to be told that the registration assistant still doesn't work correctly. It registers your nickname (a good thing), but does not ever show the last pane of the assistant. It never ends...

2003-02-20T09:09:00.000-06:00

Microsoft buys VirtualPC from Connectix This, is just plain bad. Microsoft can't write a decent app for Mac OS X, why does anyone think they will do any better with an emulator? Office 2000 runs faster and better inside of Virtual PC on X than Office v.X does natively. Every web browser for X is faster than Internet Explorer. VPC is going to die. Either killed, or a slow, painful death. Even if Microsoft is able to write a better VPC than Connectix, and make Windows run faster in it, they will surely disable or cripple the capability to run non-Microsoft, or even non-current Microsoft OSes in VPC. Tis a sad day indeed.

2003-02-19T23:12:00.000-06:00

Squash a bug here, and one pops up. Squash a bug there, and three pop up. Coding is so much fun. Anyways, XHintsChat 1.1.2 is out (1.1.1 and 1.1.2 were released about four hours apart from each other). Now it's time to start adding new features! Not fun, especially since I'll be tackling stuff in cocoa that I've never used before. Not tonight... mebbe tomorrow. Maybe next week. I don't know.

2003-02-18T00:57:00.000-06:00

Well, I switched my blogger theme. I don't know if I like it or not. I like it better than the green one, but the colors seem off. Also, my archives are broken. I wonder if I turn them off and then back on if all my posts will archive properly. Probably not.

2003-01-25T21:51:00.000-06:00

Finally, someone is doing something So, here's a nifty article about a group of technology companies finally opposing the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). news.com linkie All I say say is "hell yeah".

2003-01-25T21:49:00.000-06:00

As the song says, Windows [98] Sucks I spent 4 HOURS last night (early this morning) trying to install Windows 98 on my PC. Now, I have Windows 2000 installed, and figured I'd just put 98 on a different drive. Well, after beating on the damn thing for a while, I do some research on the internet, and find out that Windows 98 will not install onto or boot off of any drive that is not the master drive on the primary ata/ide controller! (Without some screwy jiggery-pokery) What in hell is up with that? If I remember correctly, you could move your system files from one floppy to another, to an external drive, and back on a Mac 128k and boot off of any of them at any given time. Apple had it right at system 1.0. Why, after Win 1.0, Win 3.1, Win 95, Win 95r2, and Win 98 can Win 98se not do what Apple did 14 years earlier? Oh well, once again, I am reminded why I use a mac.

2003-01-19T14:22:00.000-06:00

The RIAA can kiss my A$$, take 2 (and Microsoft along with them) I just read that Microsoft has proposed a new copy protection scheme for audio CDs so PCs can't read the audio portion of a disc, only an overlaid data portion. Therefore effectively making it "impossible" to rip or burn an audio CD. Yahoo News Link. This is bullshit. I bought that Three Doors Down album that I tried to download. It is not copy protected. I made a CD-R copy for my car, made MP3s of it for my computer (where I usually listen to music), and the filed the original safely back in its jewel case with the rest of my CDs. Why do I do this? Because I had over 300 CDs stolen out of my car a few years ago, and replacing them was difficult. Some were impossible. In fact, I think all copy protection schemes for audio CDs are bullshit. If the RIAA would sell music over the internet in a good digital format for a decent price, or quit ripping everyone off on CD prices, things might actually get better for them. I'm sure that someone will eventually hack it, and then the music industry will start looking for new ways again, but this game of cat and mouse is getting annoying.

2003-01-18T22:08:00.000-06:00

LG Combo Drive Shiznit . . . A year or so ago, I found out that the LG GCC-4120b combo drive works in a Mac in 9 and X, with iTunes and Disk Burner, and toast, without any hacks. So, I bought it. Had it in my G3, then moved it to my G4 when I bought that. Well, recently, I've noticed that sometimes, when I burn CDs, that portable type CD-ROMs (tray load iMac CD, iBook CD, Xserve), and the slot load CD-RW iMacs won't read them. Those machines spit some of my CDs right back out at me. I've also had the odd error trying to read burned CDs later. This has been driving me crazy, because nothing is wrong with my system, and the burner used to work beautifully. Nothing has changed, or so I thought. I did some research this week for a coworker about the Pioneer A05 and iDVD. Basically, it works, if you do a firmware update to the drive in a PC first. Well, I don't know why, but a light went off in my head. I checked LG's site, and they have a 2.02 firmware update for my combo drive that fixes "a reliability issue with burning newer media". I realized then that I started noticing this problem about a year ago. Which is when I started using media rated higher than 12x, or, in other words, "newer media". I have a PC, no problem. I'll drop the drive in, run the update, and be good to go. Of course, its a PC, so it can't work that well. First off, this software only runs in DOS, and not Windows 2000, which is what my PC runs. Also, the LG drive has to be master on the secondary IDE bus and cannot have something else on the bus. So, I make a floppy with the updater, connect only my floppy, DVD-ROM, and combo drive. I boot off of a Windows 98 CD, boot into DOS, access the floppy, and run the update. I wait, and wait, and wait, and it finally tells me that the drive is wrong for this update! I have the 2.00 firmware on it now (which the updater recognizes), but thinks I have the wrong drive. So, I do some searching on google (LG's site is of no help at this point). There is a 2.01 update, a 2.02 update, and a 2.01 OEM update. Now, keep in mind, that as I'm trying different updates, my Mac has no floppy drive, so I have to boot the PC off the hard drive to put stuff on the disk. Also, only one update will fit on the floppy at a time. To boot the machine on CD to try the update, I have to disconnect the hard drive and connect its IDE plug to my DVD-ROM. To switch updates, I have to reconnect the HD, and reboot normally. So, I try the 2.01 update, thinking maybe I need the intermediate update first to make the 2.02 update work. Wrong. It tells me that it is the wrong drive, too. So, I finally try the OEM update, and it works. the 2.01 OEM update fixes the same issues as the retail 2.02 update. But, I bought a RETAIL packaged drive, NOT an OEM one. Well, the drive is now updated, back in my G4, and happily chugging along, but this little experience reminds me of why I own and use a Mac, and why I hate PCs.

2003-01-09T00:10:00.000-06:00

So, the MacWorld keynote was yesterday. All I can say is "freakin awesome". The new iApps (iLife), 17" PowerBook, 12" PowerBook (smaller than a duo!), Keynote, FinalCut Express... WOW. I have got to get me a 12" PowerBook. I'm shooting for March 11.

2003-01-02T23:49:00.000-06:00

AppleScript Studio is pissing me off. I'm trying to make an application to handle someone clicking on an "ed2k://" link. Simple, right? I would think so. I can't seem to make anything that doesn't have a creator code a helper for a URL (so shell scripts are out of the question). I can make AppleScript droplets using the "on open location" handler, and that works, except for the fact that ALL AppleScript droplets have the same creator code, and the computer picks any of them to use when clicking the link. Changing the creator code of the droplet renders it useless. So, I went about creating an AppleScript Studio app. Setting a creator code for the application did nothing (in the target settings), but setting a "URL Types" and building it makes it hook into Mac OS X's launch services. So, I think I'm on my way. I click the link and the app launches. Great. Except that I can't figure out how to handle the URL! The "on open location" apparently doens't do it when using AppleScript Studio, neither does "on open". I did some testing, and when I click an ed2k link, the script drops into "on idle". So, I have no clue how to handle URL passes in AppleScript Studio. Google'ing it isn't doing me any good, either. I can't find documentation on this anywhere. Anyways, if anyone knows how I can make this damn thing work, please email me at ed2k@freefallsoftware.com.

2003-01-02T23:41:00.000-06:00

Well, it looks like the blogging bot works, but it doesn't publish, so I still have to come here to publish. On the plus side, Chimera 0.6 loads this FAST, so I may not care anymore.

2002-12-16T13:40:00.000-06:00

Finally, my Christmas shopping is done. Jolynn is going to LOVE her present. I can't wait to give it to her. :)

2002-12-15T23:40:00.000-06:00

Well, this is a test of the AIM blogging bot, hope it works...

2002-12-15T23:37:00.000-06:00

So, this is a test of the blogbot blogger aim bot thing. I hope it works the way its supposed to.

2002-09-23T14:31:00.000-05:00

The RIAA can kiss my A$$. Why do I say this? I heard the new Three Doors Down song on the radio the other day, and decided that I'd like to have it. Check around a few places, and find that the album isn't out yet, just the new song. So, I fire up Acquisition (a Mac OS X client for the gnutella networks), and look for "three doors down". I get quite a few hits, and there is a set of ones, in order, numbered, that I haven't seen before, and the names have "new" in them. I figure that this is the new album. I don't know what the title of the new song is, so I grab them all to be safe. Well, I listen to one, and all I hear is the chorus for the song I want, played 4 times. So, I go to the next one... same thing. Every single file is the same thing. I've heard about the RIAA flooding the P2P networks with this shit, but didn't realize it was like that. That is bull shit. I downloaded the "Better Life" album a few years ago, two weeks later, I liked it so much that I bought it. If I hadn't liked it, I would have deleted it. I don't like bad music on my computer. It just wastes space. I don't think the RIAA realizes that all they are doing is pushing the P2P world further underground. They are doing nothing, except making it [P2P] lower its exposure to the world. That, and getting everyone pissed at them [RIAA]. I will go ahead and buy the new Three Doors Down album when it is released, because I like their stuff, but it would be nice to be able to enjoy their new music until it comes out.

2002-09-10T21:33:00.000-05:00

No booting into 9 after January 2003 So this is one of the things the Apple announced today. No hardware released on or after jan of 2003 will boot directly into 9. Classic will still be supported, though. So, of course, there are all of the people who are now whining that this app or that app won't work in Mac OS X yet. You know what? Apple isn't holding a gun to your head and making you upgrade. And hell, if you have to upgrade, do it within the next four months, while you have the 9 safety net! Apple is doing this (probably) to force developers to get their butts in gear. Did you whine when the G3s were released, wouldn't run System 7, and your stuff broke? I'll bet you did. Was it for the better? Absolutely. When 9 came out, how many different programs did it break? Quite a few, until things got updated. So, say some company releases their product for X, finally, and all of the plug-ins and things get released too, but you're too broke to buy it all at once. Then make money with the professional software and equipment you have now, and save up for the day that you can upgrade everything at once! Novel concept, saving money... Why does X browsing suck so bad??? I had to launch classic internet exploder to type this up. Why? Because none of the web browsers that I have for Mac OS X load the blogger page with any speed what-so-ever. Why, with our kick ass UNIX core and advanced networking (network file transfers in X laugh at 9), are all of the X native browsers so SLOW? Before you start emailing me with different programs, I've tried everything I can get my hands on except for Netscape 7. Chimera (which I usually use, and love), exploder, omniweb, mozilla; I've used them all. I'm sorry, but Chimera's rendering speed compared to exploder in classic is sad, and I consider it one of the faster X browsers. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?. OK, I'm done... really...

2002-08-11T21:27:00.000-05:00

Rumor has it that IBM has or is working on a new power4 derived PowerPC processor. 64-bit (current procs are 32-bit), a vector unit with over 160 vector instructions (sound like AltiVec/Velocity Engine?), 8 way superscaler (capable of 8 instructions per cycle, G4 can do 4 per cycle), and since it's power4 derived, if I remember correctly, means it is hardware backwards compatable with the G3 instruction set. I want this to be the G5. I want this to be in whatever new tower Apple decides to release. I want the pentium on a snail, toasting bunny speed that we got to brag about back when the G3s were first released. Come'on Apple, kick motorola to the curb and give us some POWER.

2002-08-08T11:40:00.000-05:00

Hrm. Halo 2 for Xbox, and Halo for Mac/PC in early 2003? I'm hoping, but not holding my breath. Guess we'll see. Hope it runs on my G4... Microsoft unveils Halo 2 for Xbox August 8 - 10:00 EDT Microsoft today announced Halo 2, the sequel to its most successful Xbox game to date. The game is not expected to be ported to the Mac or PC, however, and there is no mention of such in the announcement. Microsoft announced in July that it will be delivering Mac and PC versions of Halo in early 2003, making good on a promise that it would not discontinue those versions of the game following its acquisition of Bungie, the game's developer.

2002-08-02T21:56:00.000-05:00

Almost forgot the one good part of the day. I got all of those FileMaker Pro databases converted. What a pain, but it works now.

2002-08-02T21:20:00.000-05:00

Never move an Xserve while it is running! There has got to be a little gremlin in those things that mess stuff up if you move them while running. The RAID went buggy, and I spent all day rebuilding it. It doesn't help that I can't seem to get our Xserve to boot from CD anymore. I'm sure it's something that I'm doing wrong, but it's damn annoying. Speaking of Xserves, they're wonderful, except for one really big nasty problem. You can lock them, if you do, you can't use a keyboard, pull out the drives, open it up, nothing. I love that. Except, you can unlatch the drives, which makes them prepare for being hot-swapped. Very cool feature, unless you're using a RAID. If you do this on a RAIDed drive, your RAID is toast. If it's the boot drive you happen to have RAIDed (another cool feature), then you have to boot from CD, and use Disc Utility to rebuild the RAID. If the Xserve is locked, then unlatching the drive (which you cannot remove, due to the lock) should not make the drive unmount for removal! In case you don't know, to unlatch a drive, you push on the front of it, and *click*, out comes the handle. That is the only major oversight that I've seen on Apple's part. I hope they can fix this with a firmware update. "If Xserve is locked, unlatching a drive does nada." I wish. Our solution for now is to use the large, white plastic piece that ships on the front of the Xserve for protection. Set it back in place, and nobody can touch the front of the thing. So far, temperature hasn't been an issue, I'm watching it as I type this. Hasn't moved from 44 degrees yet. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

2002-08-01T23:08:00.000-05:00

HALO. Boy, do I want HALO. I want it so bad, I can taste it. I almost want it more than I want 10.2. I'm an old-time Bungie fan. I bought Marathon 2. Then I bought Marathon Infinity just because I wanted Forge and Anvil (the level editors). I had been doing Doom II mapping with Hellmaker at the time, and wanted something more. Then I bought the Marathon Trilogy Box Set, because it looked cool, and I loved Bungie as a company. Then, they showed us HALO at MacWorld. I thought my coworkers were gonna kill me for being so giddy. HALO was so anticipated by every Bungie nut, it was amazing. We got more and more tidbits and information, and then, something horrible happened. Bungie sold out to Microsoft. Devastation. I was pissed off. I even sent Bungie a pretty nasty, though well thought-out, letter about the whole ordeal. Then, we hear that the computer version of HALO just became "maybe", even though it was over 80% done. HALO is now the launch title for Microsoft's Xbox. Finally, around the time that the Xbox shipped, Bungie announces that the Mac & Windows verison is in development again. Well... that was two years ago. We have yet to see any results, or hear anything more. I got to play HALO on my dad's Xbox in March this year. Thanks to that, I'm drooling in anticipation. Can't wait. This game flat-out kicks ass. The Xbox controls left a bad taste in my mouth, though. Need a mouse and keyboard for it, or a smaller Xbox controller (yes, I know there is one). But, I refuse to buy an Xbox. Why? Because I want a PS2. Final Fantasy X, GTA3, Half-Life, Red Faction, Metal Gear Solid 2. So, I wonder why it's been 2 years since the re-announcement of HALO for computers, and we've not seen nor heard a thing. Wonder if it got axed. Two years is a long time to complete a game, considering the Xbox version took less than that, and the computer version was 80% finished before that. I know that they had to re-write it, but how long does that really take? Heard that Alex Seropian, co-founder of Bungie, resigned a few weeks ago. Wonder if that has anything to do with it. Were you really free to make your own decisions withing the Bungie gaming department of Microsoft like they said you would be, Alex? Or were you pinched like everyone else they deal with? All I can say is, I hope that HALO is still being worked on.

2002-08-01T21:11:00.000-05:00

FileMaker... why in hell isn't there a drag n' drop update/convert application for FileMaker databases? I have about 100 FileMaker 3 databases that need to be converted to 6. It asks on each one "rename old file" and "what is the new file's name", and then tries to open it. I don't want to open the files, I just want to update them so we can use them with the new server! I'd applescript the process, but FileMaker Pro's applescript support leaves something to be desired. And trying to do it remotely? Forget that. Guess I'll just hurry through the process in the morning. Stupid programs...