Technology

Forts, Ads, and Really Awesome Cow Orkers

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Have I mentioned how awesome the folks at Linux Journal are to work with? Well, they are. Last Friday that created an ad, and put it live on the www.linuxjournal.com website. This is not to be confused with the ad I created, oh no, this is much better. Much.

I don’t want to post a screenshot, because the ad is still running through this Thursday. It’s so much better to see it in its native environment. If you go to www.linuxjournal.com, and hit refresh a few times, you should see it. You absolutely can’t miss it.

If you can’t seem to get it to appear, after Thursday I’ll post a screenshot — but really it’s hilarious. I hope you get to see it. 🙂

No Pants Wednesday

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No, I don't own these pants. But I would totally wear them if I did. :)There are some things I do that are almost too absurd to share with the public. Thankfully, this isn’t one of them. Plus, I “shared” with the public more than I ever intended to anyway…

This morning, due to insomnia problems, I was getting ready for work after my family had already left for school. As I was going through my groggy morning routine I got a call on my cellphone telling me every computer in our school district was frozen. I correctly assumed they didn’t mean the temperature had drastically dropped and rather they were all unresponsive.

My first response after hanging up was to blame the dog.

“Tux! Why are the new switches failing me!?!?!”

Submissive little creature that he is, Tux decided it was time to roll over and let me rub his tummy. I did so, but then scooped him up and put him in his dog crate. (See, Tux thinks alone time is best spent pooping and peeing on carpets, but that’s another story altogether)

I quickly found a pair of mismatched socks from the sock basket, my norm, and put them on. I sat on the couch and tied up my Converse All-Stars. Then as I sprinted through the dining room, I grabbed my tattered jean jacket from the back of the chair where I hung it last night.

Thankfully it’s still early spring here in Michigan. You see, in my haste and confusion I had forgotten to put on pants. The crisp April air on my ghostly white legs quickly pointed out the error. It’s quite possible the neighbor lady died of shock.

Rest assured I did go back inside and put on some pants. Which is good, because I also didn’t have my keys, so I would have been a pantsless maniac pounding on the outside of a school building. I’m pretty sure you go to jail for stuff like that…

WD2500JS-40NGB2

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The other eye is crying. :(This hard drive contains over 16,000 photos of my kids growing up. No, I don’t have a backup. Yes, I thought I did. (An untested backup is no backup at all)

I’m 99% sure the PCB failed. The mechanics inside the drive I believe are fine. The problem is, I need to find the exact same model number (WD2500JS-40NGB2) in order to test that theory out.

It will cost over $1,000 to get the drive recovered. I only need to borrow the PCB (circuit board) from a similar drive in order to get the data from it. I would REALLY appreciate it if anyone reading this would tweet, dent, shout, ask their neighbor, etc, etc, if anyone has this specific model of Western Digital 250GB SATA hard drive that I might borrow.

I know it’s a longshot, but who knows. 🙂

How I Broke Into Our Van (with Video)

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There have been some questions about my Houdini act, so I’ll set the record straight…

1) I am not the one that locked the keys in the car. I think that’s important to note. So, noted. 🙂

2) Our van is a 2007 Caravan, and doesn’t lend itself to jamming a coat hanger anywhere. Well, not with any actual hopes of doing anything useful.

3) I used the piece of plastic (a cheap cutting board) to jam in between the door and the car. The baffles that prohibit stuff getting jammed in there are pretty easily (read: hour of jamming and wedging) fooled by a piece of stiff yet flexible plastic.

4) Once I had the plastic half in and half out, I poked a hole in the plastic and set a snare with the string.

5) Using physics to both bend the plastic so it would properly lasso the lock mechanism, and gravity to aid in the targeting system, I looped a slip knot around the lock and snugged it up.

6) I shimmied the string up the plastic sheet and then tugged to unlock the door.

7) The theft deterrent system immediately honked my victory to the neighborhood. 🙂

For those of you that are visual learners, here’s a reenactment of the whole thing:

Listen To My Dulcet Tones, and Win Stuff

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You know those videos I do all the time, teaching folks how to do stuff with Linux? Well, humor me and pretend you do. Anyway, this week Linux Journal is giving stuff away. And not a limited amount of stuff either. Everyone that plays can win. You can play. You can win. Watch this video for details, and if you don’t want to win, then you don’t have to play. See how easy I make it for you?

That thing over my shoulder is a speaker to our surround sound system. No, not that. That one is a clock, I meant the other shoulder.
Just click the thumbnail to go to the video contest page


Go now! Tell all your friends! Have your dog blog about it! Tweet it! Dent it! Tell your neighbors with smoke signals. (Be careful with that last one though, fire is dangerous, and this blog isn’t insured)

The Student Has Become The Master

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Today I put this together:

Some of you may have seen my tweet about it earlier. The part that was really interesting for me is that a former student was chatting with me over IM while I was assembling it, walking me through some of the things that have changed since I last built a white box machine. (Several years)

He also chatted with me on Wednesday, because along with being uncertain about how to put the things together, I also wasn’t sure what kids are buying these days. 🙂 I was struck by the notion that memory is once again meant to be bought in pairs. It made me chuckle a bit, because I remember buying 30 pin memory in sets of 2 or sets of 4 because you had to. It was also the era that CPU fans weren’t heard of, and we had to worry about IRQ and memory address settings on our ISA cards. But I digress.

It was a fun time, and great to see a student and friend doing so well.

Oh, and for those of you wondering what the computer is for — I’m trying to see if off-the-shelf hardware might work to replace some of our Mac hardware that has fallen out of warranty. If the EFI-X chip I bought works well, we might be able to save some money. If it doesn’t work well, well at least I’ll have an interesting triple boot machine. And that’s pretty cool.

I’m Flippin’ Baby…

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That’s right folks, there’s no hope now. You’ll be seeing much more of me. (I mean, not like more of me, but more often.)

I'm not wearing pants in this photo. It's true. :)

Sadly, my truck is off the road for the winter, so actual TruckCam will have to wait. I’ll try to fill the void with something. Yay for video!!!

Tech Tip: Using the Screen Command

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Over at Linux Journal, we’re doing new “Linux in a Minute” videos. Ideally, they’ll give you a tiny tidbit of helpful information in about a minute. We started last week, but we’re going full force this week. Click through to enjoy!

I'm a goofy looking dude. I'm OK with that, but still, it's true. :)

(PS: Please leave any comments over on the Linux Journal site)