Ubuntu

So I Skype Eric, he is back from Japan and tells me about his travels, sounds like fun, we must go to China together next year, for the Olympics, probably more fun with more people.

I can't believe it, as I was trying to help Eric out on his computer, turns out he is talking about having too many things open on his desktop he mentions Evolution, I remember he installed Ubuntu, wow, he is running Ubuntu and liking it.

I closed my blinds this morning, it is cold in here 16ºC and I miss the hot sun light, but then it glares my screen so it is no good, I think about a thermal black thing to absorb it, but in looking on the internet, it is way to expensive for a 6'x9' for $68, no way, are this Aussie dollars, Yen? Address shows Summit NY, so I guess no.'

Ron wants a talk about these cool Lego like electronics at LiLAX, why he can't just contact the company himself instead of contacting us to start with, I don't get, talk to them first, then us.

Day after Christmas

I went to Fry's as is custom on Black Friday or Dec. 26. Not that many people, but then I was there an hour after opening. I looked around and found that the 42" Monitor that I had bought last year was still the same price, not on special that day. They had a really poor video feed on it, I guess they were trying to sell more expensive HDTVs by giving them much better feeds, this one looks really good at home, but not in the store. I settled on buying a 300 Gig Maxtor PATA drive for $44, 6 GB/$, and a 750 Gig External Maxtor with USB2.0 and FireWire400 for 149.99 + Tax, 5 GB/$, 2 awesome buys and no more of that out of disk space for me, I had not been able to do complete backups for people here, now that is a thing of the past. I then made a stop at the small Apple store, nothing special going on there, and and Best Buy, but they were both not doing any after Christmas sales, so left rather quickly.

It has been very cold here, yesterday I saw that the temprature had dropped to 58 indoors, good thing I had the heater lit. Not sure if this is the reason I have not been producing much these days. Just seems like a good time to hybernate.

Today I was looking over the Flickr for StartupWeekendLA, then got dragged into the the pictures that Marianne Masculino took, 1600+ wow, that is quite a large collection. Would be nice if JJ took pictures, I do want to take her to the next StartupCamp. I wonder if someday she will ask me to take down this link, she doesn't even really know me except for the StartUp Weekend LA. Anyhow nice collection. I better get mine up there too.

I am doing this on a borrowed latop, I got to say that by now it is easier for me to use Ubuntu then IE 6, on this Windows XP. ^T does nothing for me, no tabs. Oh well, ^N still does the new window, will have to do.

Last night I setup a Real VNC on a computer, but the ATT supplied DSL router is still thwarting me, either that or the computer was turned off overnight, I really don't know, although the guy claims the doesn't do that, foolish as this may be, burning power all night and giving black hats a computer to take over.

This little laptop is very nice, light weight, long battery life and it works great, I might have to create a user here, I have it on weekends sometimes. I feel a bit like I am traveling today, since I am typing this on a borrowed computer. I may be getting a year old HP, hope that the warrenty can remedy the 2 horizontal lines accross the screen. Today using the IE here, not spelling checking, lousy IE. But this is avery nice HP Compaq nc6400, light weight and functional. But I hear the DVD drive is broken. I hear sounds of waking in the next room, time to go back.

Nokia N95

So I still feel like this hardware isn't living up to all it does, the software is kind of lacking. But that can be fixed. It will never be as cool as an iPhone, they really got the software right, but meanwhile it is a very powerful phone does more then iPhone can right now, but it is slow, the camera on the iPhone is very zippy, can take pictures really fast, this one takes some time, I have to time them both someday. Meanwhile I got sent this really cool link to a N95 commercial.

Chevron Refinery

This morning I was in the living room watching the sky slowly light up when I saw a big plum of smoke, watching financial news trying to protect my investments in these hard times, I finally did decide to take a camera and walk out there to see what is going on. I figured that we would get car wash vouchers again as usually happens when the pollute the area, but I am also curious as to what is going on 2 blocks from home. So I did take lots of pictures of the refinery, big black plum of smoke up on the sky, started around 6:30am and by 8am when I am typing this the sky is clear again sun is bright and shining over the buildings, not a cloud in sight. At some point I guess I will find out what is going on.

I took a look at ElSegundo.NET, but no story, haven't figured out what happened. I guess I could call the company, but usually they will leave fliers in car windshields to let you know what happened.

I am watching Fox Business news and this guy there is powering his boat on human fat, wow, I had this idea as well, we are all so fat.

XP vs Ubuntu, backups

Some of you may remember that after a Tuesday update, Wednesday October 4th my computer stopped working and my bandwidth after that was very limited. I never figured out what went wrong, but still have that XP drive that won't let me type the password to login. I have often missed information on that drive, and perhaps now that I have a long Christmas weekend I will have time to come back and revisit this. Meanwhile I have retrieved some information from the drive, I also bought a great 250 Gig Seagate external USB drive from Best Buy for $99.99+Tax, saw another Western Digital 500 Gig at, of all places the Apple Store on 3rd St., Santa Monica, for $149.99, not bad, for something in that store, but more important, this is lots of storage for very little money. I even took a look at the 1 TeraByte, $300, maybe I can store everything I need without breaking the bank. This kind of limitless space would do wonders for my ability to store things twice, once on a system and again on the backup drive, because lets face it, we all don't want to spend time doing backups, but we really do need too. The other option that I have been using for backups is Google. I run my email through Google now and this makes email backup automatically, then I can upload some files to the documents section, and pictures and again a complete backup model, and to boot I have access from anywhere in the world I have internet access. It is funny as I am typing this Security Now #123 is talking about Jungle Disk, based on Amazon S3 15 cent per gigabyte storage. Free 30 dy trail, I might try it. So offsite backups at Google or Amazon are really easy now that we have all this connectivity and storage available.

I got to test that a blue tooth keyboard to the N95 sometime, the time I had one available I couldn't find the option on the menu, turns out under Office is where it lives, who knew, the stupid numberpad is really bad for typing. My aunt came back a week ago from Cape Horn, the weather was good so they crossed from the Atlantic to the Pacific on the bottom of the world and got some sort of certificate on the boat, flew back to Germany from Buenos Aires.

I have to sometime get someone to give a talk at LiLAX.net about firewalls again, I listen to Security Now and keep hearing about the Astaro, which is Linux based and sounds awsome, I also need to run Snort on my home machines to see if they are behaving and on visitors to check for bad behavior. I think that it even makes sense for ISPs to have some automated scripts send email to users of thier system, although it is a bit like big brother and users might not like this sort of thing, besides how quickly would the RIAA ask to use that system to figure out if someone is sharing music? but so much wasted bandwidth on the internet used for bad things could be saved.

N95 is the first gadget on Mahallo

I was so surprised to see it in first place on Mahalo, under the Gadgets section today, it isn't a well known phone, not the buzz of the iPhone or the cool Apple look, not a crack berry, it is a pretty capable phone, my N95. I see there was a firmware update on December 11, I surely missed this and T-mobile probably didn't push it as they don't have this phone as an option. So time for me to try the Nokia updater, but it claims I have the latest, strange. Yesterday I downloaded the gMail application to my phone. It is very slick, but only works with network access, no local email stored on the phone.

more interviews

I hate going to interviews, they are lots of work and usually end in disappointment, I guess I never liked dating either.
But I think that a job with real pay might give me more money then my consulting is right now, after all I am not doing that full time. On the down side, I will probably have much less time to learn, so it will hurt my abilities. Perhaps I might have to stop blogging, not that this makes me money, I guess I started putting ads on in August and as of now I am up to $21.39 in revenue. Not impressive, I can surely make more with anything else, but then this blog wasn't about making money, it was about sharing what I am doing in something other then email and about figuring out what all these things do and how they work, it has been a learning experience.

I am almost done cleaning up yet another Windows XP Home machine. It is a Christmas present for Victor, so I have to clean off all the personal files, put them on a really neat Seagate 250 Gig HD I just bought at Best Buy for $99.99, great deal I would say, the loyalty card they made me get kind of sucks, can't these retailers link the loyalty program to a credit card? I can't carry yet another thing, so I will have to enter my phone number each time. Anyways, for something that had expired virus sigs and no patches, not even SP1, wow, it actually was still functional. But I do need to do a reinstall on such a system. If I end up doing this for a living, would need to setup a monitoring firewall to see where all these Windows PCs communicate too. I got to figure that many are part of a bot net or supply services like SPAM or keyboard logging.

Got to run, hate the freeway, grrrr, probably won't take this 40 mile away job, unless I get lots of $$$.

car computer

I have someone on my street building a car computer, it is more of a nights and weekend thing, although he has a company now. I thought years ago when I first saw this that the software should be what he concentrates on, but he being a ME was more interested using mechanical HDs and making the thing resistant to shocks, all very nice, but as I predicted solid state HD have now come to the point where this isn't needed anymore. Today I found an website that shows the Samsung. Sometimes ads on websites are useful.

amzon rocks! or is it christmas?

I listed my DVD/VCR on Amazon on Thursday, it sold right away, so did the 20" TV/VCR from 2002, used, it is amazing, it actually works. So I listed David's CD Changer.

Wow

This has been a wild weekend. We thought of an idea, designed a product and implemented it. 2.5 days and we are live, elected a board for socialmixr.com, took a vacation and incorporated a company. In the picture the people that were still left on Sunday night, less then started, but still a pretty big group.

don't bug me till monday

I am up early catching up with all the events of the night, seems the group posted till almost 3 AM, wow, so off to the location, so little time... dev is working, some slept right here at the office. The Street Fire guys are really great to give us the use of these offices.

StartUpWeekendLA

Busy day, interview for PortBlue this morning, then a computer coaching this afternoon, followed by Startup Weekend LA, at streetfire.net about 70 people coming up with startup ideas and then implementing them in a weekend. They want to compress a year of a startup into a weekend for 5% of equity they get, you are part of the 50% the founders get, 45% goes to the future of the company, cool concept lots of energy, will be there all weekend. Judging from the webpage, they worked until 3AM, I got pulled out earlier. I am a bit late reading up on this the Google Group has been active, and I have to get up to speed. Things happend so fast, should have been on this all week, but alas too busy with the market and my own little tech things.

brokers

I have used several brokers for some time now. They give you different tools to trade with. Over the years I have gotten different results with the brokers I have used. Some like the defunct Datek encouraged you to do lots of trades by giving you up to the second updates, given the high trading fees when you trade lots, it was a loosing proposition, so that isn't a great strategy. I want to look into several brokers and the tools they give you, how the strategies work over time. I wonder if anyone out there could help with their own brokerage account.

Getting ready for a job interview, wish me luck.

upgrade or work

I need to upgrade my computer system if I am to do more stuff from this office, but that takes money, so maybe I should concentrate on getting a job. I have left upgrading my resume for last, perhaps that is what I should have worked on the MacBook Pro, after all I had no other information on it last weekend, but alas I decided to play with it and learn about Leopard, the first chance I had to use it outside the Apple store. As I said before, it is a really nice OS. But still what is the cost/benefit of getting an Apple, or should I simply get a motherboard with lots of RAM from Fry's and stick it in one of the many cases I have here. That would be a 10th of the price.

for later

Much of my blog is reading the eMails, blogs, CNBC, life and posting something that I should have read completely, but due to time restrictions I didn't. For instance this morning Bruce seems to have spotted our most popular speaker at UUASC in a LA Times article, can't say for sure if it is the guy, however I recognize Heathervescent. She has done a great job of spreading her brand and tech events in the area and according to the article she now has a calendar seems to be time to get Dan Kegel's lalugs out from under him, he doesn't update, but has the old Google creed, so it is the place many link and look at, too bad no one wants to update it with his rather convoluted svn update procedure, which often breaks and you only update the repository, it doesn't post.

This youtube reminds me of the stock market, it promises to be good for me, but keeps given me bitter returns. You do have to admire the tenacity the baby has. I got to say that this babies and lemons don't mix theme is funny.

slept like a baby

Been busy this eweekend. After a rather boring LiLAX meeting we went to the airport, picked up Eric and took him to Mike's Sandwich shop, where Howard was waiting from the LiLAX meeting. This was our after meeting. I still have to download the pictures off the N95, darn I had already put it back in the shipping box as I don't really have a use for it, the T-Mobile chip is back in the old Nokia 3650, took me forever to wade through the menus to find the name, T-Mobile doesn't stamp the model on the phone. So Charles goes his way, thanks for driving and we get the new MacBook Pro out of the suitcase and plug it in, startup and wow, it asks a few personal details and up we are with a .MAC account free for 90 days and everything. It is a very nice laptop, big screen, rounded edges, perfect in every detail, too bad the things are expensive, now I need to find an employer as I want toys. The next thing we hooked up was the Meraki, you go to the dashboard an put your address in the name of the network, you give it the order number of your unit and add it to the network, plug the ether in and now it is sharing your bandwidth wireless, all very nice. You can order more of them as repeaters you need 1 for every 10 connected they work out amongst themselves what the best routing is and it is all centrally controlled and monitored. Pretty cool I would say, except I already have an access point that I want to repeat, can't get it to work that way, not buying another Merak, for $49.99, probably getting some other solution as this one doesn't do that from what I can research. The only cool thing it did was that I could connect the client to it and it will give me internet off the Meraki network for this one over the wire.

So off to hacking the Meraki, you can in fact login into it from the ethernet port and browse to 10.128.128.128 and in the advanced screen you can join a SSID, just what I wanted, but they don't support it and write it is DEPRICATED, who cares, it works, life is good again.

MacBook Pro

So having gotten over our last LiLAX meeting in Carson at the university we went to the airport to pickup Eric who brought my sister's Mac, so I loaded my pictures on it and started playing with iPhoto and did some calls with iChat and Skype. It is a really nice notebook, big screen light and powerful. Software is just easy to use and intuitive. They are not cheap, but then I guess you get what you pay for.

twit 124

I got to say that I prefer TWIT to cable TV on a Saturday morning. I got up this morning and turned on TWC to surf channels while the computer was coming up, then at some point I realized that iTunes had new content, and started running TWIT and their talk about the OLPC and the competition it is getting from Wintel. Then it went on to DRM talk which led to a talk about DVD Jon. All good stuff, now if it was easier to move stuff from my iTunes to the N95.

Flight AA149 is late, arriving at 11:18 at gat 42b baggage 2 so I guess we will ditch Eric at the airport, he can fend for himself, he loves to stay at the AA club there and always complains about me picking him up to early.

Logitech

Today I installed a Logitech camera for someone, didn't work in Ubuntu 7.10, geez, looking at support I couldn't find the model number, then I notice the tag on the USB cable, it has a model number 861206-0000 search the forums, can't find it, somehow it is looking for 0000 search for 861206 it works, I find it is a QuickCam 8.4 driver. Download it install on XP it works, but why can't they make this easier to match the camera to the driver. Don't buy this camera for Linux, it won't work.

Apple Retail

Watching CNBC again I saw a story on Apple opening another retail store in NY, the second biggest they have. I thought that the story of Apple retail is really interesting, they started it because computer stores didn't want to carry their product because it wasn't selling well enough, so Ron Johnson headed the retail operation and turned Apple stores into this hip place to be which sucks you in and gets you to spend all kinds of time there. I know I have spent hours there, checking email, listening to talks in the back. Maya, PhotoShop, iMovie, iDVD, FinalCutPro, iPhone, iTunes, switch at 6, .... I have listened to many talks there, they are very interesting and it is a really nice environment. I get it, they sell more per square foot then Best Buy. It is a great place, I enjoy it and I have been doing very well owning the stock as well. There is also such a big market of PC users they can switch to Apple, what an opportunity.

contact

I have 3 out of my 4 contacts from my video talking with me about different subjects. A hosted PBX, NDA is being asked if I can refer to it, and a wake up call credit card component.

Fonality wins

I listened to Fonality on a webminar about their solution and I got to say that it impressed me more then MS did yesterday.

Notes

Some of the notes I took at the TechNetEvent I am trying out today http://labs.live.com/photosynth/ is a neat website that you upload your picture to, it finds the other pictures that match that one and locates it geographically. But alas my old G400 Graphics card isn't good enough and it only generates an email to MS telling them what I tried to run it on, says:

Build:
3860

Error:
Required texture caps not supported by D3D device

Description: Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead Max
DriverVersion: 5,12,1,1200

PresentationIntervals: 0x8000000f
RasterCaps: 0x100187
SrcBlendCaps: 0x1ff3
DestBlendCaps: 0xff
TextureCaps: 0x4147
TextureFilterCaps: 0x303033f
MaxTextureWidth: 2048
MaxTextureHeight: 2048

Wow another meeting tonight, however it is already fully booked according to http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032360759&culture=en-US:

*** Visual Studio 2008 Install Fest on 12/5 at MS in Irvine
Published On: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 12:43:16 GMT

When: December 5^th 5:30p – 9:30p

Where: Microsoft Irvine / 3 Park Plaza, Suite 1600 / Irvine, CA 92614

Registration URL:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032360759&culture=en-US

Registration Limit: 200 (first come…)

On site competition:

We will have a “Show Us Your Visual Studio” slot where you can get your members (and you can compete as well) to show in 5 minutes their favorite thing about VS 2008. The space is limited for this and we will have a site up for people to register for a slot soon.

We will also have a Guitar Hero completion as well!

Free product!

Everyone who comes will get a NFR copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional mailed to them after the event, at the event we will have evaluation copies of Visual Studio 2008 Professional. To upgrade from the Pro eval version to the Pro retail all users will have to do is enter a registration number. If they want to install a different version of Visual Studio 2008 line Team Suite they will have to uninstall the eval version.

Food and drinks will be served.

Many giveaways (XBox, Zune etc.)

Text on the registration site reads:

ATTENTION DEVELOPERS! Are you ready to be one of the first to get their hands on Visual Studio 2008? Join Microsoft and the Sothern California User Group community for a Visual Studio 2008 Install Fest and Community Party on December 5th, 2007 at the Microsoft Offices in Irvine! Visual Studio 2008 is HERE and this event is your opportunity to get your hands on the released version before anyone else! Every person that installs Visual Studio 2008 on their computer at the event will receive a FREE fully licensed copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional in the mail shortly after public release.

Don’t miss out a great evening of fun, food, the latest Xbox 360 games and your very own copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional!

We hope you will join us - space is limited so register today!

read more...

RSS feeds for SoCal Tech Events

free food from the devil

That is what the email said, it was an invite to a MS event in Irvine today, I signed up way back, but thought I was carpooling with Charles, who was nowhere to be called this morning so that didn't happen. So carpool to work with JJ and on the road at 9AM, 80 miles until Irvine, 10-20, grrr... what can you do, traffic is what it is. Registered at TechNetEvents and it was a pretty good event, although like most things from a company it was basically a way for them to promote Server 2008, active directory, Office Communications Server 2007, live.com and other talks I didn't attend as they had 3 tracks. It was at an Edwards 21 theater, instead of movies they projected PowerPoint from a projector down in the bottom. Interesting idea, theaters probably don't do much business during the day. Made some good contacts, gave out some cards and URLs, good networking event. However I am a big open source user right now, this is on Ubuntu as I type it. Ubuntu is getting to the sweet point for me, it works as easy as Windows and runs all I need. I have my laptop in it and my desktop is dual boot, but spending more and more time in Ubuntu. Like Leopard, it comes with more usable stuff out of the box.

I am not against using the best tool for the job though. I will run XP when I need to.

I went to LAJUG today topic JavaFX. Spoke with Matt outside about the stock, a 4:1 reverse split wasn't how I wanted to get value for my investment, SUNW or now JAVAD has been a trainwreck for me. I was too busy working in 2000 to sell it and since I moved and didn't have the net back then, or the sense to sell all, not paying attention cost me lots of money back then, not really Sun's fault, but ouch... Meanwhile most browsers support both Java and Flash so this could be a real compeditor to Flash, which is top dog now. FlashFX came out in May, seems interesting.

Today I deleted my 559 spam messages, about half through decided no need to keep going, Google did a good job filtering no false positives, only when I was in China did it baffle me why I couldn't get email from the person sitting in front of me, and some occasional dubious email that can't make it, but on the whole gMail is awesome as long as you don't need privacy or your mail to be deleted.

Just found out that there is another bar camp on the 14th, great, bring it on. At least this one is in Culver City not London.

heat

Got my heater lit, best gas guy yet. Gave him my this URL and he has computer problems, like everyone, big market I guess. It was rather cold last night but 3 blankets did solve the problem. I installed Miro and will play with it now.

UK, you called?

So my YouTube ad for Aserisk, Linux LAMP etc.... is working, people are calling me, not often mind you, but I have gotten 4 leads far, maybe one of them will pan out. I am starting to think that this idea Charles had of going to London for BarCamp isn't as crazy as I thought it was. However the regular BarCamp is over this one is more government focused.

Rosevelt HS

Saturday 6:30, my office phone rings, I can hear it speak out Charles' phone number, damn, he wasn't kidding, he did get up that early to pick me up to go to this HS in East LA. We take a long route and pickup Albert who cliams to not have slept since Thursday because of video games, great, Dallas can't be found, but what tenacity Charles shows in trying to get the guy out of his house, but to no avail, cellphone isn't answered, house phone we can hear it ring as I am at the front door knocking. The house is right next to a school at the end of a street. Nice quiet neighborhood, but piles and piles of old computer hardware pilled on the side, they have years of dust on them, could have been rained on, maybe that would be an idea, leave them in the rain and the dust takes care of itself, then tear them open and make the students get them to work as a challenge.

I have no idea after spending the day what they are trying to do. Ken could be trying to do something lnice for the community, but John finds it very strange that someone would do something without trying to get something out of it. Charles is looking for a money making venture for his company and this doesn't require much investment in money, I keep hearing about a grant and the area could obviously use education, like anywhere I guess. Anyhow I guess it is a classroom to teach open source. But does anyone really want to learn this? Or do they really want marketable skills like Windows and Office, which is what everyone is looking for. I guess that Ubuntu and Open Office is close enough to be transferable to real world experience, besides if you use Linux you are probably going to get MS interested in funding the classroom or even better Apple. China and the 3rd world has been very efective at getting things done this way, Windows can be bought for a buck if you make it clear to the company that this is what you are willing to pay and not a cent more. After all if you have a bunch of yahoos making something new it might compete, and that is a bad thing for a company that has 90% of the market and wants desperatly to keep it. Anyhow I have to keep on this project, it could be interesting, maybe I can replicate it at the SouthBay Adult School in Redondo Beach CA.

Got Twitered

Darn Charles twittered about this before I got a chance, we are on a 4 way conference call with Eric, Charles, Jack and me. This is in preparation for either podcasting or maybe getting remote participants to our LUG meetings.

Warren Buffet

I have been trying to invest for 15 years now. I don't claim to be any good at this, so don't ask me for advice, actually do ask me, but use me as a contrarian indicator if you must. I sometime do that myself. I like buying things that everyone hates, this is usually the time when a market bottoms. There have to be no bulls left, everyone who can sell has sold, some people can't sell a company because of various reasons, like they are long term investors, so they will wait a few years before the look at that particular stock again or they don't want to pay taxes on short term gains, or perhaps they know something the rest of the market is overlooking like the company is really going to do well in the future, something that is the most important thing.

So in the world of investing there is a company in Omaha NE that does really well since, gosh how how long, wiki says 1839 and the stock price is over 100k as of this writing, you can always buy a B share which is 1/30 th of an A share if this is too steep. I bought into them this year, great thing to own. It has done nothing but go up. Berkshire Hathaway is a keeper as far as I am concerned. It is even diversified, has several lines of bussiness in the verious companies that it has purchased over the years. I must go to Omaha NE some day and attend the shareholders meeting. This is a great story. Dream would be for me to move there and work for them, you listening Warren? I really want to bring you into the information age and who knows, I would love to talk stock with you someday, when I am worthy of talking to the Oracle of Omaha. So today I did some searching on the topic, the company is world famous and in a city of .4 million so it should be easy to find land and cheap housing in the area. Being a small town, I would imagine that the quality of life is better then El Segundo CA, not as much noise and perhaps not as worldly, but hey now that I am starting a family, who cares about that anymore? The big problem of course is how do you get someone like this to know you exist and you have skills? This one I will have to think about much longer. Mr Buffet, I would teach you how to blog for free. I bet you can make a pretty penny on advertising too, you are a brand that stands for excellence, more so then a Trump as far as I am concerned. I would sleep on a Warren any day.

Today Charles gave me a link to his very old blog, the one he had to remember his passwd too, lol... So I asked in the comments if he was stupid or something.

The Truman Show and the Matrix are moves that really change your view of the world. Like, is reality real?

Republica Dominicana el Culo del Mundo?

Yakko's World - The most amazing bloopers are here
I get this email from my sister with a PowerPoint file Dominicana-no-es-el-culo.OVIN.pps attached, yuck, I click on look at as HTML on gMail, no can't see, OK slide show works and it does seem to be a neat slide show about why the Dominican Republic isn't the ass hole of the world. In googling this I found an intersting new artist, Arianna Puello, never heard of her before, but she has music on her myspace, maybe even her own music.

2 more blogs, 3d printing

This morning I started yet another blog, I would be interested if anyone can pin it on me. I have some things to say that I don't want associated with me, I want my privacy, but then who knows if you can really have that in this world. It is nothing really bad, but sometimes I want to write more personal details into a post then I can in public. So if you know me, don't ask where it is, if you are a complete stranger, google it, let me know if you can find the blogs in private, please don't post that here. I used to read Tracy's blog many years ago. She was a photographer in Arlington VA and had some very revealing photos, I don't have pictures, if that is what you are thinking, I haven't yet stuped to bing a porn star, no. I was laying awake very early in bed and thinking some very private thoughts that I can't post here, don't want to share with the world. However if you do find it let me know privately. After all it might be possible to share too many details, maybe someone in time can figure it out. Maybe I need to spoof my IP address, or maybe I already did? I am not sure if that can be associated to my blog by anyone but the blog p

Jack called me to talk about the Kindle, it seems like he is excited about epaper, but I am still not going to buy something new at 399, it has to drop before I get interseted, I will be a library customer.

Gizmo4 has Video! I must test this, as it seems like a cool thing. My N95 has Video too, but can I get that call done, probably not, need to find another endpoint, guess I can test it against Gizmo on a computer.

reversal

Today is the second day stocks go up, this breaks a pattern, no end of the day reversal, no 1 up 1 down, wow, I had bought some C@30.1 and am now very happy about it, got to sell some BIDU, and kept some all is up, now have to decide if this is a new trend.

Windows Dell, SBUX

So I get a call from someone around 3PM saying that George, the barber told them I was good with computers, OK. "I was using msconfig and now don't have network access" Geez, that is a shame, yes you can come over and I will look at it, after suggesting that he undo the restore point. So I look at his msconfig, he has undone the restore point and seems pretty good about doing updates, maintenance, hmmm.... what tripped him up? Seems like the Norton Anti-virus ran out a year ago, 4 users on that system, all administrators, I suspect malware, but don't really see a smoking gun. Anyhow I end up typing the service tag into Dell's website and ask for the live assist. Rajiv_123456 comes on line and gets the Device Manager poplulated with devices again by running services.msi and turning Plug and Play to Automatic and starting it. Device Manager is populated again and I am on the net. I was running through a Linux machine and did a tcpdump -w/tmp/t to have the network traffic logged, I suspect that this machine is compromised, or at least I want to be paranoid. I see that there is lots of unnecessary traffic going on, I create a new user and log in as it, traffic is gone. However the Dell guy can't login remotely after trying about 6 times Rajiv says that we should reinstall Windows, and pasts a procedure to do so, something about backing up and then Cntl-F11 to reach a convenient reinstall menu. Oh well, at this point we have burned 6 hours in doing this plus the backup and Edgar leaves afriad his wife will kill him, it is 9PM, I offered to keep the laptop to do this for him, but he wanted to return again, probably won't see the guy again and this will be yet another zombie on the internet. Don't you love windows? Perhaps it is time to snort the t file, see what was going on.

So reading my email another message from Charles saying that I should join yet another mainling list, BarCamp has good stuff on it, but it is 5:26 AM now and I still haven't researched why I need to sell SBUX, ouch Cramer trashed the stock yesterday by reading a buy recommendation, which didn't sound that great and a sell recommendation that he endorsed. I guess I got a tax loss stock here. I have been ignoring my bad stocks for a long time, I hate selling in a really bad down market like November has been. But this one is a dog, can it redeem itself? Probably not, big companies are not able to grow, there is no more space for more Starbucks, who wants it, MacDonalds, DunkinDounuts, etc... cheaper, probably a big attraction now that the dollar is worthless.

RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINES competition

So this morning I wake up early again, seems to be a new thing, but then it gets dark before 5PM now, so might as well experience some of the dark in the morning as well. Yesterday we got 4 phone calls from Zhan in China, didn't answer any of them, not because we don't like him, mainly because we didn't feel like answering the phone, I guess I better route his calls to my business number, the only one I often answer. Not that I knew who was calling. Also heard my office phone read out a phone number I didn't recognize while I was in the bathroom, a quick google let me know that the number belonged to John, through some Green Party contact info on some webpage. I hope the Sunday call wasn't political, but I know the guy so whatever. Seems he again has a cellphone, had broken his old handset. So I left a message this morning. The things I do to save time now that I am blogging?

This morning I get an email from Charles asking of we should do the RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINES filming, I think this could be very fun if we can get into this. Even being on a team or a show with heather vescent could be a really neat thing. I saw a Half Life 2 engine (Cheating, I think, since the physics are 100% accurately repeatable!): http://youtube.com/watch?v=dNHj0gPtpJE that has lots of explostions, probably right up Heather's ally, she could make this for real, or something easier.

Jack recomended Miro to me on Sunday, haven't tried it yet, but probably worth looking at once I have a bigger Windows machine, seems it only supports that. My current XP Home is only 10 Gigs and I have to fix the old install, the one that doesn't login. Haven't used Joost in a while either, but it too was really neat, recommended for all of you that don't have cable TV, it is a great alternative.

up early

Today I woke up really early so turned on my Keen.com and an old episode of Bonanza on KTLA5. Shame I slept in on Black Friday, didn't get a single great deal, heard the Apple store had discounts. It is about time I upgrade my PC, still running on an AMD1700 with 512 Meg RAM. Dual booting XP and Ubuntu 7.10. As I have mentioned in the past, Ubuntu is really becoming usable, considering it is free, perhaps my next PC shouldn't have Windows on it, why spend the money, Ubuntu is a solution for most my needs, and I still have this machine with an XP license to run Quicken, TurboTax or any apps that might need Windows. Or perhaps it is time to load GNUCash on Ubuntu again, haven't tried that in a while.

It is a long weekend, come to think about it, we needed to plan some outing, time to play. Perhaps I will go play tennis or soccer this weekend. Missed my Wednesday game because of the dentist filling a tooth, didn't feel up to it after that.

I think we are getting close to the heating season, I never called the gas company this year to light the heater. We are close to the ocean and usually we only heat here for a few days a year, not a big deal.

Often on weekends I now listen to MacBreak Weekly, Mad Money Machine, RizWords(not every day), Security Now, this WEEK in TECH, FLOSS Weekly and the Apple Quarterly Earnings Call on iTunes. I don't actually have an iPod anymore, I returned the last unreliable Nano, it didn't always boot and I got tired of figuring out the iPod reboot procedure, sold my iPhone, and now sometimes move MP3s on the N95, but mostly I listen right on the computer, right now MacBreak is going on in the background as I type this. I often read and listen to something at the same time, I am often only scanning, not interested in everything they talk about. Today they mentioned GTD, which when I looked it up in Google pointed me to the Wiki articule, that Charles had pointed me to before. Something for me to reread. I also heard him Leo talking on TWIT about Toynbee, A Study of History, 1934-1961, was a synthesis of world history, something that seems interesting to me as well, but at 12 volumes, I better read the 2 volume short version, or maybe just that Wiki articule, after all who has the time.

PBX in a Flash

This comes from Charles at a time I am considering installing Asterisk for a client, although the guy has his own PBX supplier in the UK. But reading about PBX in a Flash gives me an alternative to TrixBox that according to the NerdVittles article seems very complete. Very similar to others it is CentOS based download as an ISO, burn, install, it wipes the HD clean, before installing.

I am looking through my browser history to find some worthwhile things I might have surfed in the past and find Apple iPhone and end up sharing my iPhone story.

On June 29 I went to the Apple store, not to stand in line, but to get help with xCode, and observe what Apple was doing with the launch, I wanted to learn more about development, but I knew that this iPhone was a really cool product. I do get kicked out of the store and sucked into the line, call a friend who hangs out with me. We move to the store and get in after waiting for hours and having the Islands people bring us food and Apple came by with water. What excitement, I buy a phone, I wasn't planning on owning, end up figuring out that geez, I am not nearly out enough to need a fancy cellphone, even one as cool as this one, I decide to take an offer from someone who desperately wanted it and sell it, get some profit for the trouble and keep on my extremely old LG330 on the 15/month contract. Last weekend I passed that one on to a friend who had no phone, he wanted to take over my contract, to his surprise Verizon took him on as a client. He doesn't have a job right now so even this small sum is a hard thing for him to pay, my hope is that if he is more reachable he can better find a job. Besides the ability to call out is also useful many times it can help save time. Anyhow 3 weeks ago we entered a contest and all won N95 phones, really cool, they are full featured, unlocked and open, 2 things the iPhone wasn't. But if the iPhone is ever unlocked and open, what a force it will be, the user interface and big screen are truely the best out there. This phone holds a very big promise. Great product. So I take someone to the store to see the iPhone, guess what Leopard is coming out and there again is a long line, leave for an hour and come back, line is longer, but I take a spot in it and we make it to the store, show him the phone, but alas, he had to pay extra to have it cracked and translated to his language. DRM and locking are so annoying, but keep up the good work Apple your products hold very much promise, too bad they are locked.

On Thursday's I often walk out to Main St. and the farmer's market, then go on the library. I usually read some news papers and magazines. I like the opportunity to be out of my office and in a bigger room with other people, not reading off of a 19" flat panel as I usually do, while listening to CNBC and talking on Skype, so much information. While leaving I usually look at the new book section and then go home, except for the time I found the Google Story and this time I saw "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" and I had heard about this book on NPR, so I had to check it out, even though I didn't have my library card w

Justin.tv used to be PG, now it is more like R rated, but Nekomimi_Lisa is getting dressed in the morning, maybe X during the night when presumibly she is undressing, I had not been watching for a long time, but sex sells, and this was quite predictable.

It just dawned on me that Google should have created MyFace instead of Open Social, after all if you could combine the 2 biggest sites, that would be huge, worth another 100 points on the stock.

Reading my junkmail bobo92 address I see "Greetings to you from China, my names are Seng Cheong working with Shanghai commercial bank and I have a very good business proposition for you..." I guess they moved from Nigeria to Shanghai. Wouldn't it be cool to create some scripts to answer all these emails? Automate the process of making them send you embarrassing pictures.

SIP

Had my SIP setup behind the NAT with STUN, today I changed it to DMZ then decided to try forwarding the SIP ports and RTP only, it works :) I am no longer dependent on a STUN server, I also setup Use NAT IP to the outside IP address. I bet if this address changes someday I will be unreachable as it will be sending out the wrong thing. Also since I made all these changes I can't just take this phone to another place without reconfiguring it. Oh well, tradeoffs, but I think that I am lowering bandwidth a little by not sending the keep alive. While at it did some dusting, washing and all the usual stuff you have to do to keep your home working. My YouTube ad gave me another partnership with someone who needs help with Asterisk. Mike seems to be very much into reliability. He is into buying the best equipment, using a reliable software provider, the best SIP phones. I on the other hand am into costs, happy to use GrandStream, no Asterisk server, instead rely on SIP providers that are free and give me good service.

marrige

In listening to TWIT I just realized that it is pretty easy to become a minister at the Universal Life Church. I wasn't really that happy with the judge who married us, perhaps I could have found one of those 20 million ministers.

surfing

In finding some old Newton commercials, I found one about Linux that is a nice spoof. Today I read that MySpace IM now calls Skype users, cool, I signed up for a MySpace account and as the dire warning said, I can never change it! Geez, will you let off, I can always register another free MySpace account.

Flckr

I got my first Flickr account today. I bet artistic pictures like these attract attention, I shall use it more. Could it be time to create a new business for sysadmins who want to telecomute, call it nakedsysadmins, and having seen some of them at meetings, it might be an incentive for employers to leave them telecomuting which makes everyone win, except for big oil. Time to upload the BarCampSD2 pictures I took.

I thought I wrote about freegans on a previous post, but I must have dreamed it up, since I can't find the references to it. Someone asked me about it in a chat, said it originated in California, yet I had never heard of them. They are low impact on the environment people that live on the fringes of the economy, the name is made from Free and Vegan.

input

I listened to lots of people talk over the weekend at BarCampSD, turned on the TV this morning and took in some CNBC, NBC, and surfed some other morning shows. Rizzn.com talks about Mashable, Blogative, PaperPost. I really ought to blog at the next BarCamp, but it would take time away from attending. Many intresting talks, wish I had blogged it in place. EmpowerThySelf is about finding what youre ingerested in and doing something to make it happen. There were lots of talks about hardware gizmos, software and web stuff. The people that atteneded were actually a pretty neat group, some slept at the place and some were still sleeping the second day, naptime was on the schedule after lunch.

San Diego

Had lunch with Uncle, he showed me his freshly cracked and translated iPhone, pretty cool, translated into Chinese, I bet Apple will soon open a store in Beijing before the Olympics.

So we drove down Friday and ate dinner at Crazy buffet, next to BarCampSD, stayed at the Motel 6 off 805, which is so close to the freeway someone ran over the sign, no doubt a spinout from turning right too soon. I got to figure out how to move pictures from the N95 to the Blog.

dirty laundry

Having lots of problems today, doing laundry, watching market go down, obviously I should have cashed out a week ago when I was on top of the world, a lunch and a trip to BarCampSD. Why the hell am I blogging? I guess to put it all out there for myself and whoever else gives a damn. Charles got flamed in the UUASC list this morning, it wasn't pretty, but I guess I can't complain about what they did. He might want to not ask so many questions at meetings, he really becomes a lighting rod there. I have piles of stuff here to get rid of, see previous post, John might pickup some of it, perhaps my working Verizon phone as he broke his. I did offer the thing to Dallas, but he didn't seem interested, so what the heck. Then there is that lunch with Uncle. I am still sore from Wednesdays soccer game, hadn't played since HS so it was a bit too much, plus it was pretty cool that night too, I wonder if that makes you even more sore?

Today I tried to update the N95 software for my phone. It really seems like the iPhone is better, I am sorry to say this, but the N95 takes too much time. It took time to get the Gizmo working, it takes time to evaluate the other carriers and I am not even sure why I would want this thing, my current Verizon phone does the job, it isn't cool, but it mostly works, crappy coverage at home, but then again, I can get my phone calls here with my GrandCentral number that rings my work phone over SIPphone/Gizmo and my home phone. One number to reach me everywhere. I might want to wait to do anything with my Verizon phone though after all Google partnered with them and this Android thing might turn out to be interesting. Should have a LiLAX talk on it, problem is where do we find a speaker? Anyhow download it Nov12, it is probably a great idea, give it time, might be on many cellphones. Who knows if it eventually works into a WiFi Network like Meraki or Fon. Peter claims Skype runs on iPhone, but my research only shows that it puts the voice on a normal billable call, it is a good thing, but not unlimited Skype to Skype calling.

Time to take the laundry out.

Another View of the World

This blog is now being aggregated by the folks over at SoCalLugs Planet. Check it out! :)

sell sell sell

It was a really bad day in the market, in some hours I will see what the damage was to my portfolio. While watching CNBC I got the idea of perhaps chanceling all comunications services, to save money, then I would have time to be more spiritual, like my brother suggested. So I got to the computer to report on this, get a Skype from Christopher, a mad chemist I met in Dublin, some years back. He shared the internet with me back then, had a week pass at EasyCafe and was leaving town, so I got it. Since I didn't have internet back then I really appreciated it. He does seem like a rather lonely guy, talks about his father at times.

"Hi Ralf, just read about the massive pile up in Fresno near Bakersfield. Sounds bad like that fire in the tunnel some weeks back. You seem safe in El Segundo!" he asks, but what the heck do I know about this, I only watch CNBC, SlashDot, WSJ and a little goldfish on my desk.

I still have piles of stuff to get rid of: N95, damn this thing is cool, but time consuming,

Twit

I think it is time I start a podcast. I talk with people about technology on Skype all the time, I just have to record it and get someone to make show notes. I was listening to Twit MacBreak, one of the many podcasts Leo LaPorte does. Good stuff. I can't wait until the show notes are written, I want to find that site with the googlefoo finding the webcams, sounds interesting.

Last night I was at LAJUG and won IntelliJ a IDE, maybe I will program again. I could use something easier then VIM. Maybe I should have grabbed a book, but I didn't feel all that interested in GlassFish or J2EE. I guess I should learn all of these things. Seems I can download and evaluate this product even before I get the email. They even have a license for open source for Free, comercial is 499, personal 249. Who knows if it is the best, but I haven't used Eclipse that much so don't know it that well, but from what I have used it, works great, written in Java so portable.

Misdirection

So now Uncle thinks I sent him to the bad part of town, I was driving and putting our home address in his GPS, then I suspected it was wrong, asked JJ to fix, she refused to touch technology she wasn't trained on (lazy) and he ended up driving 40 miles to the bad part of town, funny comedy of errors. I guess through cultural differences and my joking about him sending all his junk mail to me today when he called asking for our address has made him mad at me, I am told. This is what I have been spending my day with, it is so time consuming I ended hanging up the phone and putting a message on the answering machine saying that I can be reached at work. So I had to finally put that one to rest here, I didn't mean to put the wrong city in the GPS, I was driving the car while typing, mostly paying attention to driving, not to typing. I got a green light and the city was wrong, similar spelling had a similar street on it, but not where we live.

My brother calls me today, first time in a while, now that he is on Gizmo and he can use megabytes to reach me he is far more willing to make calls. I was rather faltered until I realized that he really mostly wants to talk with Eric and is afraid to use a credit card on the internet. Get some guts and pay off, his landline is 25 Euros, he seems to have no problem paying them. Its like everything web has to be free for people to use it.

BarCampLA4

Saturday I spent at BarCampLA4 which was a great meeting of minds in an unconfernece, people put up postits on a schedule and talk about topics they find interesting, similarly minded people listen and comment. It was a great event, or is going on for one more day.

Chad Vader

Chad Vader is a spoof on the Lord Vader character from Star Wars.

Soo many things, so little time

I guess the more interesting your life is the less time you have to blog. Tonight I am going to UUASC.org, there is a PHP meeting in Santa Monica at the same time, and BarCamplA this weekend, San Diego next....

Google Phone

This is a rumor that has been going around for a while, it is the reason I started to listen to RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech podcast. Now I see that GOOG is trading at an all time high, very close to 700 and CNBC is reporting that it is likely that they will anounce a phone in 2 weeks. This is huge, I guess my N95 will be obsolete even before I activate it. CNBC then mentions gPhone again a bit later in the broadcast this morning, very interesting.

MobileCampLA

Sunday I took Eric to MobileCampLA. We ended up on a table with Charles, Arif, RoBo, and Susie and came up with CarWatch on the HalfBaked.com competition and all got N95 or N800 phones a sa prize, sweet. Our product was a way for people of warning people of impending tickets and more, basically you pay strangers to watch your car for you.

I just found Heater Vecent's blog, more info there, we had a great time and very good prizes :)

OS X

Yesterday we went out for lunch in Monterey Park at the Golden City at Garfield and Garvey, got lots of strange dishes, I even tried the ducks feet. Then on the way back to the beach, decided to show them the iPhone, turns out that the Apple store wouldn't open for another hour, wouldn't you know it Leopard was being released, they closed the store for 2 hours, I am what the heck, there is enough to do on 3rd st. Line was 12 people long at 5PM, how hard can it be, we had dinner at Baja Fresh, tacos were good. Filled up several times on the drinks and back, now the line is 100 people long, I ask the guy at the store where the iPhone line is, get in Leopard line, OK, takes 20 min, but we are in, all 4 of us get t-shirts, and yes like Leo LaPorte was saying on one of his many TWIT podcasts, there was neck hair in the line.

I demo the iPhone, but still the biggest question is can it work in China, perhaps, in fact the last earnings, Apple said that they will open a store in Beijing. That is interesting, I hadn't thought about the implications of podcasting in China.

Blogging

Why do we blog, mostly for ourselves probably, we are trying to keep a record of things that are important to us and we might want to look up someday. Since it is easy to do it on the internet, hey we might as well make it open to the whole world and share it. This way if I am taking to someone about something I have written about, I can just send him to my blog, easy. Perhaps I will find someone who goggled to me and adds more value to what I wrote or corrects me. Maybe if I get good enough at this I can someday publish a book.

I own some shares in Google, it made sense that I try out some of the other tools, besides the excellent search, mail, video, ... adsense is something new for me to try, BlogSpot is definitly something new as well, although I have been doing this since spring, it is still very much something I am learning. Just the other day I tried the integration with Picasa2, easy way to put a picture in your blog and then write an article around it, and isn't that the way it works? We take a picture, upload it to the computer and then write all about it.

TomTom Go 720

Slightly too late picking up from the airport, ended up driving instead of on a bus, which would have been far easier. Hertz is a place that processes many buses of people from LAX and has no parking for cars, so you might as well get there on a bus.

I took the old GPS with me, but after a rather unimpressive lunch at WholeFood's Asian Express we went to Best Buy and then Fry's . Turns out that BestBuy has some pretty good pricing on GPSs and Fry's now has a 15% restocking fee, which makes it much less interesting to buy a GPS from them, but we did, we now have a TomTom Go 720 to play with $399 before taxes.

Much nicer then the $1200 old Magellan. It now has a battery, you can use it on its own. The 3D maps look sharp. Got to say that not updating the maps on the old one was probably the right idea, not that I wouldn't take them for free if offered, but another $99 for maps on that old unit is a bit of an insult. This is far worst then the iPhone price drop to screw the early adopter.

It seems that when I updated the software I lost many features were there originally. It seems strange. I might want to try installing the CD software again, after all it was feature rich, with the update, I don't see many things that were there before. I didn't get a chance to play with the original PC software, darn. One feature that I really need is moving addresses from the computer to the GPS. Seems like I should be able to cut and paste an address from an email to the TomTom.

Ev posted this article about Gizmo to UUASC, thought it was worth keeping the link.

Yesterday I was out in the smoke taking some pictures, went to George's Barbershop on 222 Richmond St. 310 640-0027 and business was really bad, even Second City Bistry across the street was empty. It was over 80F outside, a record temperature for this month. Must be all that fire out there.

I am trying uploading the pictures from Picasa2 today. It is a great little program, however it makes me use IE instead of FireFox, strange, since Google pretty much endorses FireFox, they put it in the Google Pack. IE6 breaks on the scripts, darn.

They are selling the old cosmetology chairs in the background on the right for $50.

Apple rulz

It is now my biggest holding, after blow out earnings it really shot up. I got Eric on GizmoProject again. I think that they currently have a better deal then Skype for free calls. Plus they integrate with my SIP phone, so of course I am partial to them.

I saw the moon come up today and it is very orange, must be all the smoke from the fire in the air.

Readme

I keep writing, and it is probably time that I get a larger audience. I get feedback from 2 people on this blog. I don't think anyone in my family even knows I write this or much less can Google me. If you are out there, big announcement in November.

So this morning everything here went haywire. The IP phone seemed to have lots of problems, Gizmo wouldn't work right, then later I heard that the internet had major problems.

MyComputerWorks 800 990-4629 infomercial on Ch. 19 TWC. They claim to give computers support for 19.95/month. Almost seems worth paying to get your parents of your back, not that it seems to make sense that they could offer this for so cheap. Indian workers? I have no reports of how well this works, would be interested in accounts, this is not an endorsement of any kind, just find it hard to believe they will give great service at that price

Free WiFi

I had a long talk with Fach this morning, he is running a small Linux based company in Santo Domingo. I met him only once in person back when I spoke at the local LUG http://www.codigolibre.org/??, can't seem to find it in Google, I think it was a YahooGroup back then. So much goes on these days. TWIT mentioned a good site: http://meraki.com still have to look deeper.

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

This is what we have all been clambering for and it seems like ATT will let Apple do it. In a note from Steve, I am guessing jobs on the Apple.com/hotnews section of their great website. I wonder if that has been pushing the stock up to new highs? They really do have a product people want and at a discount now will sell more units. I keep telling people it is a GOOG AAPL world and the market will probably buy into the stocks. Anyhow we should get an SDK in February, so start thinking of what you want to program for it.

Fall Cleaning

Still looking for something to do with the pile. I need to get the space back. So today I am going to do some eBay listings, time permitting. I want to get my score up, currently only at 2.

I was told that this was a personal blog and boring, I guess that is all true, I did start this as a personal blog and then put some technical stuff on it. Keep the comments coming.

Today Ubuntu is having a release party, they released 7.10, which I had upgraded 7.04 to recently. Now my system is XP dual booting with 7.04. I am at a point where I might not boot into XP anymore. Ubuntu has FireFox, where I spend most my time using Google Apps, Open Office for that occasional file I need to open or create, and I can run a LAMP stack, so I don't need to run a separate Linux server like I have been doing for a very long time. Now if WINE would only support the rest of apps, or I could not use them, they are not as crucial. In our area LiLAX had a Ubuntu meeting and today in Santa Monica Ilan called for another.

So I am booting into XP one day and Ubuntu the next, deciding what to settle on. Ubuntu is pretty strong right now.

Cold

So I call TimeWarner to complain about the crappy Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HDC box. I had decided not to use the HDMI cable this time around, because last time it gave us all sorts of trouble with the 8300HD. I am sick of these boxes and really would like to use my own equipment. I would rather have MythTV then these crap boxes, however I would have to pay for that, right now TWC is giving me the box for free for a year, so what the heck, I will let them replace the darn box and hopefully might get one that works a little better.

8300HDC
Needs 2 reboots per day
Flashes some message on many channels that the box isn't authorized, reboot Will sometimes clear this message
Very slow
Sometimes it doesn't display a channel or a recording at all
3x is the fastest speed that it will forward :(, however it doesn't have the very Annoying delay that 8300HD had when pressing forward repeatedly. I suspect this was by design, not to skip commercials.


8300HD
This box was no great thing either. However it was more usable then 8300HDC. It did have faster forwarding, somewhat more stable, but still lots of reboots. Seems like MythTV would be a great thing for CISCO's SciAtlanta. The software they currently have stucks. The box might be compatible, maybe it is time to hack it and put MythTV on it. Drivers could be a problem. Anyhow time to Google. Seems like CableCard is PCMCIA, that is great, so maybe I can take this thing out of the box and put it in a computer.

So reading the FCC warning on the cable box gave me a great idea. I could put an antennae on the RF out and do a wireless connection to a TV on channel 3. The message expressly prohibits doing this, but if it hadn't been on there, it would never have dawned on me. I can't imagne that it would bug the neighbors if ch3 was used for this, 2 and 4 have signal, but 3 is empty here :)

Today I decided to boot into Ubuntu 7.10, Gutsy Gibon and so far I love it. Last week my XP wouldn't let me login. I have reinstalled and got to say happy with the results so far.

My YouTube ad generated a call, so I decided to try one for Charles. Feel free to call me if you are interested in hiring either of us, dispite what you may think, the pennies of ad revenue on this page, don't pay for hardly anything, maybe laundry, if I don't mind doing it monthly. Now how to reach me? If I publish a PSTN number here I am afriad I would get all kinds of SPAM calls. So to make price 0 and let you call me if you like, lets try this: find a number at sipbroker.com under PSTN that works for you. Then dial the code for FreeWorldDialup and my number is 630551. You can also reach me in the UK under: 08449334887, however be advised I am in California, therefore PST, is my timezone, UTC/GMT -8 hours. So far Ubuntu has worked with all the websites I go to, the camera, I may be staying in it. In the past I always needed Windows to use some program, but I got to say that Linux is getting easier, Ubuntu is great.

Google Maps is awsome, I decided to review a local tire shop as they were very nice to my wife when she was had a flat. I got to say that these Web2.0 apps are working for me. Everything is very slow, and sometimes FireFox will blow up, especially in Windows, but hey what can you do?

iLO

From time to time Benton calls and I listen to his life. Mostly it is fights with big companies, he is a feisty guy. However lately he seems to have mellowed out and is now working at the same place for more then a year. Hami often asks about him, he was his roommate who he met in a plane to SD. He quickly moved out as the rent was too high.

So benton was talking to me about iLO bing the solution to my remote install problem. Truth is that as good as it sounds cheap hardware probably only has PXE boot right now. So I guess good call, but the bean counters will not do this.

Weekend

I guess I slept like a puppy this weekend, didn't get to blog. First we had our LiLAX meeting, not HA like Charles had announced on the website, but an install fest and Ubuntu release party. We had no speaker, however ended up talking about VoIP again. It turned out to be a productive day, however LiLAX is running dry. Then we went to a BBQ.

On Sunday I was listening to NPR and there was an interview with a Dominican American that got my attention. He wrote a book: Oscar Wao,

This morning Jacques calls me to talk about a talk by the President of Ubuntu at Google Tech Talks. I did in fact find it, but first listened to Larry Page. Great stuff is available on the net. I learned about Google Trends from there and saw that they now use the same graphs they have in Finance, they mark in time when the stories happen.

Today I got a job offer out of TX, I am to replace a guy out of Pakistan, but gosh, can't see how that is possible, maybe I have to leave the country to make the economics work.

Missing software

So now every time I want to do something I have to install software. Today I need to put some pictures on my blog, of course I remember that this SONY Cyber-shot DSC-M1 doesn't have drivers on the system, that has always sucks, maybe I can move the relevant data over, install the latest version of Picasa, iTunes, PDF reader,

dawn

I drove on my donut again, need to get around replacing tires one of these days. Time to get my receivables in order. Still working on setting up XP again, finally scanned the old drive with ClamWIN and CA(10/10/08). Decided to clean this afternoon. Time to get rid of stuff as well, maybe load drivers for the camera so i can show what I need to get rid of.
Still need to tweak my computer.

Busy, faster internet

So I got put back into a faster class of service. Latency hasn't improved. I can get ISOs faster now I guess, but honestly it does me little good. I hear that DSL has better latency, maybe I should test it or look for tests of it.

Now it was great I had 2 days of relatively little to do, today I didn't even get to have breakfast until now.

TimeWarner

So today I finally take an hour out of my day to talk to TimeWarner about my slow speed. Turns out that they moved me to the Basic service back on April 18th. They didn't bother telling me, I could have moved to ATT for 14.95/month a long time ago, saving money. I am not saying they would have been any better, but at least cheaper. Maybe at some point I need to figure out a way to have both. Anyhow my current connection is still substandard. Besides they are going to pave my street so it is really time I get out of here and do something somewhere else, maybe use that new WiFi at the library.

Wasted time

Still slow bandwidth. Spent Sunday at the office trying to hammer out a way to share revenue, not exactly happy with the result.

XP reinstalled with all open source apps

So I have been playing with my virgin copy of XP. No more malware, no apps or any data. It is a new beginning. So far installed most applications from the Ubuntu CD like FireFox, ThunderBird, and ClamWin. Ekiga. The idea that they have is they first get you used to the apps, then the next machine you buy comes with Ubuntu pre-installed. It seems like such a simple transition path. So far I have left the pre-installed Works, but I am sure soon I will install Office.

I really got to call those bozos that give me access to the internet, they are still slow.

New Beginnings

I finally broke down yesterday and did a factory reinstall to the original 80 Gig drive that came in the PC. I got to say that it works so much better, I can not only login, but it is fast now. I have so far installed FireFox and Skype. This really makes me want to do that new computer company that sells Ubuntu machines with first rate support again. Not that XP worked completely horridly, it did work for some years before I had to reinstall, but having to reinstall is a real pain. I also installed Ubuntu 7.04 on the 200Gig drive that has all the data. I think that once I switch the HD back to the big one I will be inclined to fix the login problem and then use Ubuntu for a while. My Laptop runs Dapper, and it is great, had no problems yet, but then again haven't tested it as long as I tested XP Home. FireFox has to be the program I use the most, I could get it done in IE, no problem, but there are some little details that make FireFox the better choice for me. I also like Skype better the the Messenger App that comes with XP. Probably not a real need, after all the Messenger does all of that. I also stuck the Ubuntu CD in and installed ThunderBird and CamWin. So I lasted 6 years without a factory restore, I did reinstall XP on top of the current install several times, but that didn't get rid of all the crap. For the record I guess I should mention the procedure:
1) Recovery CD option 4 Factory Restore
2) Windows XP SP2 CD, which I had ordered from MS a long time ago, but never used.
3) All patches
4) ClamWin
Meanwhile still trying to get Peter to answer my call. I wonder if all of his clients have such a hard time. They must be getting terrible service, unless I am the only one he doesn't pay attention too.

So Ron calls me to say that Vista is upgrading just like Linux distros, right away, no more Tuesdays where your Windows XP Home gets bricked, now it can happen any day :) So eEye and Nod32 are the Anti-virus and anti-spy ware that he had recommended but also Windows Defender is free for XP, ships on Vista.

Windows wows

So I am still offline on XP, can't check my email because I don't know the password, time to hack, if others can get my passwd, so should I be able to do this. I found out that it is stored in signons.txt � Saved passwords. Requires the "key3.db" file to work. http://kennethhunt.com/archives/001519.html
A little searching told me that ~/.mozilla/firefox/os3hmeay.default is the directory that holds this in Linux and /mnt/c/Documents\ and\ Settings/r.SHI/Application\ Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/pqgzrhs6.default/ in my XP. But the file is signons2.txt and key3.db there.

Alas, copied the files, no passwds, geez...

I then decided to copy /mnt/c/Documents\ and\ Settings/user/Application\Mozilla\Firefox to my directory in Linux and got all my settings, way call.

Now I am experimenting with downloading the latest firefox.

Venture capital

I was very impressed with Guy Kawasaki's talk.

Movies to see

Our cable company here gives us DHTV on channel 6, which is broadcast from a university. They are showing OlliONLINE discusing some Westerns:

Lone Ranger
Cisco Kid
Roy Rodgers
The Gunfighter
DHTV
highnoon
Shane
Bonanza
The Searchers
Gun Figher at the OK Corrall

So some other movie to see. Maybe I sould just list them under this topic from now on.
Warren Ashley Micheal Berlin