The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

Tag: Tech

  • Transpalisades, RIP

    Jay and Katherine are finishing up their packing before moving into a new house, and Jay just called to let me know that he powered down his end of the link.   So as of noon today, the Transpalisades network is no more. 

    It turned out to be a great network and a fun learning experience, now I need to decide if I want to get on the roof to take the antenna down, replace it with an XM antenna, or what. 

    One big downside to it being gone is that Comcast is my only network connection to the outside world.  Before, when it had issues I could simply reroute my internet traffic over to his house and through his internet connection.  Yesterday when I my connection dropped I had no recourse, and it sucked.

  • Supercomputers vs. Humans

    Yesterday, an 800-core supercomputer beat a human player in the game of Go.  First Chess, now Go.

    How about some CandyLand or Chutes and Ladders next?

  • Random Updates

    Here are a few very disconnected thoughts…

    Central Illinois is finally receiving its dose of summer heat and misery with high humidity and temperatures in the high nineties.  Just in time for the State Fair too…

    Fruit Punch seems to be the most popular Gatorade, although I suspect Ana may have voted more than once…

    Here’s the grin David gave Ana last week when she walked into the room after work…

    What a great smile to come home to…

    David has been doing a pseudo-crawl; we’ve dubbed it the Army Man Scoot.  He’s getting pretty good at it, and can slide across our family room in no time.  Taking advantage of this, I joined him on the floor tonight and had him chasing me around the room.  I’d duck around a corner, let out a growl and he’d “growl” back at me before screaming in laughter when I’d reappear and come after him.  It was a blast…

    Ana and David played some more piano tonight…

    Jay and Katherine are packing up their house in preparation for moving across town, so we’ve had to do some network reconfiguration.  I’ll no longer need the antenna on my roof, but I’m contemplating replacing it with an external XM Radio antenna…

    Speaking of XM, aren’t those things in geosynchronous orbit?  Then why do I have to keep adjusting my XM antenna?

    When David gets tired of scooting, this happens…

    That looks pretty good, I’m heading to bed…

  • Dell PowerEdge SC440

    Late last week I found a great deal on Dell.com for an entry-level PowerEdge Server, the SC440.  A couple years ago I bought an SC430 and it has been running great, so I know they’re good machines.  The machine I bought last week, which was delivered yesterday, is a 2Ghz dual core Intel w/ 2GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, and no Operating System.

    Last night I decided to get it out of the box and install Windows 2008.  Being curious, I decided to use the Dell Management Tools CD to install a few things pre-OS (a utility partition, etc).  So I put the disc in and rebooted.  Nothing but the standard “No Operating System…” message.  Tried a few more times, same results.

    I figured I’d forget it and just go on with a normal OS install and popped in the Windows 08 disc.  Same thing, the machine just didn’t want to boot from disc.  Being annoyed, I hopped online and chatted with Dell tech support.

    The answer?

    Get this… Dell actually sells these things with CDROM only by default – NO DVD DRIVE!  I couldn’t believe that a) they still sell CDROM-only and b) they still packaged a DVD with the server!

    I swapped the drive with a DVD drive I had laying around and went on my way.  Lesson learned, pay more attention to the little options on the order page.

  • Is SnapTune One Dead?

    Since last November, I have been using a piece of software called SnapTune One to use my RadioShark (live AM/FM as well as time-shifting and recording) in Windows Vista; it has worked very, very well.  One of the main features, that I don’t use at all, is the ability to sift through recorded radio and identify songs (names, artists, etc) for you to listen to later – and it works with internet radio stations too.

    A couple nights ago, on a whim, I thought I would check for updates to the software and found that their website is no longer functional (www.snaptune.com).  It has been a couple of days so I’m wondering if they’re still even around.  This post even hints at their demise.  Does anyone have any more information about them?

    I guess it’s time to head over to download.com to archive the most recent version of the software for my future use. 😦

    Edit: Here’s the software on download.com

  • A Little Help

    Every morning David takes a few minutes out of his busy schedule to sit down and help me at the computer.

  • HP Touchsmart PC

    Almost a year ago we purchased a Touchsmart PC by HP for our kitchen to run my recipe software, Chef.  It has been a great addition to the kitchen and is a perfect match for the software.

    HP recently revamped the machine with the latest model, and it looks pretty darn cool.  If you’re looking for a computer to put into your kitchen, definitely take a look at the Touchsmart – then give Chef a try!

  • Java Updates

    I swear there’s a new Java update every week, tonight I got so mad at the java icon yelling at me in the system tray on my server that I gave in and clicked it so it would go download the latest ultra-important POS updates that are Java.

    What am I greeted with?

    I’ve blogged about the JRE wanting to install Google Desktop before, but an entire Office Suite!?!  Give me a break!

  • You can file this under Oops.

    At work this morning we came across Adobe’s accidental moratorium on Trial Downloads:

    Wow, pretty drastic.  The FAQ reads:

    During the month of June 2008, certain product trials that are launched for the first time (regardless of when they were installed) will function for only one day instead of 30 days, due to an error in a line of code that counts down the remaining days in a trial

    We were wondering how quickly that guy got fired 🙂  My money is on it being an intern’s fault…

  • Chef 1.3.20

    I just released the latest version, 1.3.20, tonight.  A few new things include: recipe rating; cooking times; preparation times; better search capability; ingredient preparations; bug fixes; and more bug fixes.

    If you’re a user, go upgrade!  If you aren’t a user, give it a try!

    www.ejichef.com

    And now it’s midnight, time for bed.