BaoFeng UV-5RA Quick Review

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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

Setup Your Own ActiveSync Server With Zimbra and Z-Push

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(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

Bank Comparison

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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

2003 Honda-CRV cost of ownership (June 21 2011 to June 1, 2012)

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(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

Odo on Material Wealth

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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

Installing CrashPlan on OpenIndiana

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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

Fat Head

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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