My First BlackBerry

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Quick Review of the BlackBerry 7130e with the Sprint SERO Plan Usability Problem 1: Thumb wheel on wrong side Ben: I ordered a BlackBerry. I am left-handed. The thumb wheel is on the right.BlackBerry Support: Use the middle finger on your left hand.Ben: um….  Problem 2: It doesn’t work Before orderingBen: Are you sure? I don’t think the SERO … Read more

Macbook Pro

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My First Mac. So Aude was really happy to hear the news (although tomorrow the specs will be 2GB RAM).And so was Michael Johnson (aka Colloquial Collision), who donated $10: If your new MBP helps to improve your skill and trade as an Information Technology professional, then I’ve managed to double my return. I could … Read more

2006-07-21 06:55:00

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2006-07-21 06:55:00
Car Finances Update
I just realized I did that backwards. I come out behind by $52. My used car was not worth it. I would have been better off financing a brand new car. 

Comments [2]

2006-03-26 23:25:00

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2006-03-26 23:25:00

T-Hunt one..forgot camera. The worst post ever…
Our fist t-hunt team was off to a late start as we finish building the yagi 10 minutes after the hunt begins. Taking a few directional measuresments we quickly find that it’s coming from North of Norton, but the signal is weak…five hours later we found the transmitter after a lot of hints from the hiders. For our first T-Hunt we didn’t do too bad, I believe we came in fourth place. 

Sorry guys. Avid readers Vanessa and Jason pointed out this post makes no sense (and Jason was there). After reading it again I believe it is the worst post in the history of my blog. Therefore I am striking it forever.

Comments [2]

2006-02-28 05:23:00

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2006-02-28 05:23:00
Hey, now I can listen to Derrick flying his helicopter AND know which direction he is from my position!

Not wanting to spend money on one of these I started…

The Coat Hangar Directional Antenna Project

I bought an ICOM-W32A ham radio, ‘TheAnvil’ provided some BNC connectors, and the closet had a coat hangar.

steps:

  1. bend the triangle portion of coat hangar into shape of circle
  2. use gerber to cut coat-hangar hook off leaving a pointy end
  3. stick pointy end of coat hangar into bnc connector, secure with tape
  4. plug bnc connector into radio
  5. the signal is only picked up if it can travel through the loop (in theory, it sort of works from what i can tell).

current issues: the coat hangar is way too receptive–i get 9 bars on stations that give me 3 bars with the regular antenna–so at close range it’s useless. it needs some attenuators to weaken the signal at close range

2006-02-09 17:59:00

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2006-02-09 17:59:00
Automated Smileys get the Annoyance Award

Smileys used to be cool. You could be creative. You could give them eyebrows so they would like like this:
¦:-) or this |;-)

Now, thanks to the wonderful world of automation we get uggly yellow faced critters following horizontal lines:
¦😀 |😉
This caused me to use smileys without noses so that the parser wouldn’t pick them up:

|: ( they’re sad, they don’t have noses ¦; (

Comments [13]

2006-02-06 07:31:00

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2006-02-06 07:31:00
Why use FreeBSD

FreeBSD Daemon
FreeBSD Daemon
  1. Compiling everything from source
  2. Check entire system for vulnerabilities with one command: portaudit
  3. Upgrade all ports with one command: portupgrade -a
  4. You can still get a command prompt to respond with a CPU load of 4.00
  5. it doesn’t crash.
  6. Runaway processes auto reniced
  7. Zombie processes die
  8. Routing faster than consumer hardware routers
  9. 730 day uptime means you recently rebooted
  10. Jailed servers in 2 minutes
  11. GEOM encryption
  12. …and the list goes on…

Comments [21]