Got my $44 UV-5RA Chinese built ham radio. For the price I couldn’t pass it up just to see how good a ham radio this cheap could be. Update 2014-05-11 It has been a little over a year since I first wrote this and BaoFeng has released several versions of this radio, UV-5RE, UV-82, FB-F8+, UV-B5, GT3, … Read more
(Updated: June 8, 2013. I’ve updated this post to clarify based on some questions I’ve received). For the clueless, ActiveSync is the protocol that allows you to sync your Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks with your messaging provider. Your two options to have an ActiveSync server is through a cloud solution (e.g Gmail, Outook.com, etc.) … Read more
With all the big banks charging fees I’m amazed that people don’t switch over to cheaper online banks. Two great places to find banking services with low fees are credit unions and discount brokerages. Here’s a Comparison of Bank Features (Google Docs) I wrote up comparing Alliant CU, Ally, Fidelity, Schwab, and ING Direct. The … Read more
(bought used) Starting miles: 77810 Ending miles: 94106 Because we drive less and don’t get typical discounts of having two cars (e.g. multi-car discount on insurance) our cost per mile went up, but total costs are lower. This is largely because driving fewer miles causes fixed expenses (insurance) to weigh in more heavily against operating … Read more
I’ll never understand this obsession with accumulating material wealth. You spend your entire life plotting and scheming to acquire more and more possessions until your living areas are bursting with useless junk. Then you die. Your relatives sell everything and start the cycle all over again. — Odo, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1, … Read more
I just found out TomatoUSB can be used to manage internal DNS. On the Dnsmasq custom configuration add: local-ttl=1 address=/hostname/ipaddress That should have been in the documentation somewhere…
CrashPlan is a great way to backup your ZFS server, here’s a quick install recipe for OpenIndiana: Download the Solaris CrashPlan client from here: http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/download.html?os=SunOS Move the file to /var/spook/pkg then run…# sudo pkgadd (follow the prompts, do what’s obvious). Setup Crashplan service:# svccfg import /opt/sfw/crashplan/bin/crashplan.xml# svcadm enable crashplanObviously you’ll want to move the backupArchive … Read more
Some of it anyway… Source: http://www.internetpulse.net/Main.aspx?Metric=PL
Just finished watching Fat Head (watch for free below, via Hulu). A few takeaways: The food pyramids are based on a congressional committee, not scientific research. Eating according to the food pyramid (low fat, high grains) will kill you. Whole grain bread will cause your blood sugar to spike more than eating raw sugar. Eating a lot of grains will … Read more
One reason I don’t see addressed very often is your drive is too full… Hard drives have a head that is like a needle for records, or a laser for CDs. It has to position itself on a track then wait for the sector with the data you’re after to spin into position. The nature … Read more