2005-10-12 06:21:00

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2005-10-12 06:21:00
PC-BSD

Being a strong advocate of FreeBSD and hearing some good about PC-BSD I decided to give it a shot since I needed to install FreeBSD on my notebook anyway.

The install process is GUI! I don’t like GUI installs designed for right-handed mice.

…anyway, it never asked for my drive geometry which FreeBSD always does (and I always have to fix it). PC-BSD booted fine, usb-mouse and scrolling were setup for me. I had to manually edit the XF86Config file to use my ATI card and had to set the resolution to 1280×800. Hardware acceleration did not work (as usual for ATI’s in BSD). Not as good as Ubuntu as far as setup but better than a lot of other Linux distros.

To my dismay when I tried booting into Windows something choked the bootloader. I tried rebooting and now all it said was bad boot sector. I tried to reinstall Grub, and use fixmbr but both failed to write. A quick fdisk seems to show the problem:

Partitions Goofed

I wanted to reinstall anyway. Next come licensing issues. Here I accidently used the wrong XP CD (what’s the difference between Corp and Pro anyway) so I had to start all over:
XP bad key

…and iTunes apparantly will only let me do this 3 more times. iTunes auth

…and the ACER-branded XP CD decided that I wanted one large partition …parted fixed that easy enough.

Partitioning
All in all, the reinstall wasn’t too bad. But I would hold off on trying PC-BSD again until the next release. It does look like it has some potential.

2005-10-05 05:44:00

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2005-10-05 05:44:00

“Password may contain only letters (a-z) and numbers (0-9).”

…is what appeared on the website of a well known company rejecting my account creation because my password contained special characters. Needless to say I decided not to trust them with my credit card number and bought the merchandise elsewhere. Come on?! A ‘little’ security?

2005-09-07 13:42:00

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2005-09-07 13:42:00
Democrats put their special interests ahead of public will…

“History will record that you betrayed your constituents and their moral and ethical values.” Republican Assemblyman Jay La Suer.

“I say you are betraying the people of California,” said Assemblyman Jay La Suer, R-La Mesa (San Diego County). “You are not leading. You have gone astray.” 

Same-Sex Marriage Approved In California … For Now

2005-08-27 15:19:00

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2005-08-27 15:19:00
Vanishing Sock Pattern

Name: One of a pair of socks vanishes 
Problem: If a pair of matching socks are washed, one will vanish. 
Context: Usually occurs after placing socks in washing machine or dryer. If two pairs of socks are washed, 2 socks will vanish in such a way that you will have two half-pairs, or two socks that do not match. 
Forces: Unknown forces cause mismatched socks. Two matching socks vanishing is never observed because it is not noticeable. 
Solution: Purchase all identical socks of the exact same brand, color, and part number. 
Resulting Context: Someone will give you socks of a different color. Problem repeats. 
Rationale: The design is based on a vanishing cloth occurance.

Comments [6]

2005-07-30 18:06:00

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2005-07-30 18:06:00
Bait and Switch or Standard Cell Phone Company Practice?

After careful thought my family decides it is worth the $9.99/month/phone to add 3 extra phones to my plan. Killer gives me three of his old Verizon phones and I call up Verizon Wireless but the cost is actually $19/month/phone. I just don’t get cell phone business practice. Do they think they’re going to get business and loyalty with this kind of practice?

I’m not asking for something that they aren’t advertising to me..in the mail..every week.

Comments [8]

2005-07-29 16:39:00

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2005-07-29 16:39:00
It’s SysAdmin Appreciation Day

From: Jon Clede

Happy Sysadmin day!

w00t!

-Jon-

From: Emmanuel Mwangi

Happy SysAdmin Apprecation Day

To the Greatest SysAdmin Evar!

Even if I don't update my website.

-E.Mwangi

sniff, thanks guys. I have the best customers in the world.

Comments [2]