New hangout

We spent some time at our usual spot Saturday afternoon, but then moved on to The Tavern On Main and had great service, somewhat spotty internet, but they really take care of you, plus they have some pretty cool Halloween pictures on line.

I think that if I can't find a job, I might want to play with some neat flying toys, or maybe if I do as well. These helicopters and Xhell look neat, they are driving distance from here, would be a neat place to work.

HDTV internet for apartments

It seems that the problem I have might be some itch that others want to scratch too. What if I could watch HDTV on my laptop wireless anywhere in the house or on the computer, what if I can record it all to the computer and watch it anywhere any time. I am thinking that perhaps with the on the air HDTV, some kind of tuner could be setup in a shared server PC, and then the building has the ethernet, and WiFi distribute that to the computers in the building. The idea is that this on the air stuff, many don't have the right TVs yet, so put a tuner card in and now the computers can get the signal. Might even be worth putting some kind of cable head end in for the old TVs in the building, who knows if that pays off, but this is something I need, and I think others might as well. I know that Cable TV provides this, however they are expensive. It could be widely deployed, so might be worth looking into. So this could be big, the only thing is getting an internet pipe to a building and an areal antenna to catch the HDTV.

Off to the Black Friday shopping soon, ...

Primate staffing

Primate Staffing is a cool page that explores the idea of hiring monkeys to do your IT work. We are all trying to save money, seems topical.

Speaking of which you could burn off that gut, powering the Christmas tree. A pedal powered tree, great idea.

Remote Desktop Connection

For the Mac, the best software I found from MS.

Ghost 2003 restore

On Friday I spent 3 frustrating hours trying to restore a Ghost 2003 backup DVD of Windows 2000. Wish I had brought and installed Ubuntu 8.10. The problem was that the CD I was given, the one that boots, wasn't readable, on any machine. I have been trying to restore this for a long time, as I consider the target machine unfixable, it has lots of software problems, maybe hardware as well and when it was created, David thankfully imaged it and now it is time to use that. I also learned that Norton System Works 2002, which we had available only produces bootable floppies, target machine has no floppy drive, grrr.... OK so can I boot an OS like say Win2000 first? No Ghost will only run under DOS, well maybe Win98, no, it can't see the CD drive that ghost is on, but wait, I could copy Ghost to the HD first and then run it from a booted Win98, err, the NTFS file system isn't readable. I was so frustrated with 3 hours of different ideas that I finally gave up and came home. I need better tools in my bag, maybe carry a floppy drive next time, I have lots in toss out machines here that I can install, the would save the day, the other idea a bootable DOS CD.

Last night I went to a SFVLUG meeting, almost fell asleep, they turned the lights out and gave a presentation about a light weight Window manager, configurable in Haskell like I really need another, good for old computers I guess, didn't clutter the screen. I may try it on some old system. Perhaps DSL would be a good one to put on an old system. After the presentation

Ron and Brian entered a really cool talk about cars, new cars, seems like AFS Trinity has a really awsome car, 150 miles/gal sounds impossible, and maybe it isn't real, but something about using electricity seems much cheaper. But here is the cool part, they didn't let them put up a banner that said it does 150miles/gal, so is it that they can't prove it? So they have the demo outside the LA Convetion center, accross the street from the car show, neat an underground car show :) OK so the car isn't really ready to buy today, you have to wait 3 years for them to develop and produce it, right now they really only think they can make this, have a demo model that does something, maybe it didn't fit the standard, but this sounds like it could be very cool.

I also did some wireless hacking today, mostly trying to get a 802.11g Wireless LAN ALFA Network card to work on a Mac, it has a driver I downloaded from, geez, can't really remember so I put it in AWUS036S76C1300683. Anyhow you can ask me if you clueless and download it to your Mac, it did work, a bit strange how it interfaces, but whatever, it works.

66

This isn't my car, but I do hear lots of jet noise, but it has been some years so I guess I am not bothered by it anymore. I hope someday I can move away from this industrial area, would rather be somewhere more rural, quiet healthier then between all this industry. This is a nice town, but it is noisy, it is convenient, I am close to everything, really don't even have to leave town for anything, but there is more of a world out there to explore, I think that there are some places I would like to work that could offer more then this town.

Free M$?

Hmm, this Mad Money Machine Podcast 136 at the about 30 minutes into it talks about a way to search for an item on www.live.com then click to ebay, buy it now and you should get 25% back from Microsoft. Sounds too good to be true, but what is the catch the podcast asks. Terms and conditions from the eBay site.

Sleepy today, need to put my resume in better shape, currently have LinkedIn with new things and a resume with old. I want to apply at Google, FaceBook, Equinix, ...

ZipCar sounds pretty cool, just rent by the hour. They only have 2 locations USC and UCLA around here, so not for me.

name number and email

gets you lots of info about you, it is interesting how fast a professional PI can get all kinds of info on you.

Work

I got a 4 hour gig yesterday buying keyboards, and setting up some things. I still have to figure out why the Win2000 servers Cals expire in 90 days, seems they have some guys that go out every 90 days and bill them $100 for the service of erasing some file, but geez, I would just as soon move the shop to LTSP, rather then Windows, but hey they are set in their ways, although they do have a RedHat server, which I guess should be replaced with CentOS these days, it is probably very old. Anyhow it was interesting to go back to an old client, now if I would only get that GN interview, that is a cool job.

Meanwhile can't get the D-Link DWL-810+ wireless gateway to work with the linksys :( In googling I found an book that talks about SoCalFreeNet.

I finally upgrade the firmware to 2.1 and manage to get a response from the linksys, wow, that is over WiFi, so next dhclient gets me an IP address, yay, why won't the Polycom connect? Never found out, it finally did work, the ping gives me 442 packets transmitted, 426 received, +12 duplicates, 3% packet loss, time 441013ms so not as good as the NS2.

Cancled cable TV

and here I read that unhappy people watch more TV. Cool, I must be happy then. I have been watching Miro, uTube and Flickr, some people are really out there, like Casey, she has her whole life in pictures. , wow. On the other hand big corporations are asking for handouts, GM wants 25 billion. It is amazing, seems like the time for the big guys to disappear, smaller more efficient companies will buy the assets and life goes on. I am not writing my congress man. The people will find jobs in these smaller companies. I think that we should all cancel our cableTV, move to our own neighborhood internet like SoCalWiFi is suggesting we do, might not be as reliable, but it would be our own.

Tried to find Eric Welsh on Google, going to be interviewed, but they guy is invisible.

GPS

I was looking into upgrading my Thales Magellan RoadMate 700 again and found that it still costs $79.99 to upgrade it. It really does suck to be the first to buy into a technology, this thing was $1,199 plus tax from Fry's in its day and now is rather cheap on Amazon for $220 used, but even so, the TomTom is so much better and free maps. Perhaps it would be worth listing mine for sale, after all, I have a much better TomTom available to me as well.

Old box

So today I gave away the 19" monitor to a neighbor, so trying to get a computer to go with it. Meanwhile don't have one, other then this server, which has some cool old stuff of mine on it.

And so I am playing with a very old thing again.

LISA

I had a great time at LISA and learned new stuff. We sure sat at the right table for a good discussion about security of credit cards and liability.

I went to the Google BOF and got a Rubik's cube, unfortunatly the faces don't have colors, but icons from Google, so it occurred to me that a program might calculate the shortest solution to the Rubik's cube, of course when I google it I find that someone did it. I also found a LEGO robot and a FisherTechnic robot that solve the cube, interesting.

carpool to San Diego

Been job hunting, seems that times are tough, however I did book an interview over the phone for Monday at 1:30 yay, then if that works I can come in to GorillaNation and do one in person, so I am still twice removed from working.

Had an interesting call with Howard who has been telling people how to how to save voice mail forever. But the great part is that I am getting linked from his site someday :) Maybe I can finally collect on my adwords, it has taken so long, I have even closed the account it connects too, for lack of funds.

But anyhow, times are tough, but life is good. Going to San Diego today with Dan Kegel of Google, neato, I think I might enjoy that ride down.

brainstorm

I thought last night would have been a pitch session, but I guess the pitch was lost and ended up a lesson in how to find a good thing to do. I wish I had recored it, as it was really good stuff, and I would no doubt book Ranjit to talk at UUASC or LiLAX on a talk about how to start a company.

You have to find a problem to solve first, something that is broken or you need always makes a good one as at least you have your first user, but mostly you have to decide where you are going to work, what space, then you have to learn the technology to fix the problem, but be sure there is an itch you are scratching you can't change behavior of your usage base to use your product if it isn't something anyone needs. The next thing is how can you get the technology to do this. Usually technology is easier to solve then the fundamental need for something.

So this was mostly a lesson on how to start something that can get funded. There is money out there, I remember being in Germany, where there was also money for people to start businesses. Ycombinator is a possible source of funds once you got a good idea, you have pitched it and you can start coding. I think next time I should take notes as I hear this, rather then trying to remember all of it next day.


View Larger Map

But for my next problem is how to attend LISA when my buddy in San Diego isn't there anymore, then there is also a BarCamp over the weekend.

Next

So Friday I got full use of my time again, I think I will be selling some of it as money is always useful. Does anyone out there need a seasoned IT guy that works on Linux, Windows or Mac? Web backend

I have a Creative SZ1943 P/N: 245-91943-03-29 USB DECT cordless Skype phone, which works great in Windows XP and I would like to use in Linux and on the Mac, but alas on the MacBook Pro the dmesg shows that no driver is there. Guess I may have to find a Windows user to take it, or use Windows because I want a cordless phone. If you came here with the same problem, do leave a comment, hopefully a positive one, like I found the driver here.

USBF: 80704.316 [0x462ca00] The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in. It will keep retrying. (Port 2 of hub @ location: 0x1a000000)
USBF: 80706.990 [0x462ca00] The IOUSBFamily was not able to enumerate a device.

ahhhh

awoken again, seems like this will be a nightly thing, tonight I got away long enough to watch a cool video about a solar powered nework in Africa, cool and I didn't know that iJustine was into the big league promoting a TV show now on the internet, neat. Interesting video, maybe I should do another, the one I did has gotten me business for my Asterisk consulting, not money, only work so far, but some cool stuff lots of leads, one of which I have to follow tomorrow. The pic is from Halloween.

Wow, we can learn our routing for the internet and freeways from ants. It is about communication, but read it, interesting how we can learn for a species that outnumbers us on earth.

Lazy day

Got to work on my resume, but alas, it is the first day in a while that I could relax, nice. No TV, listened to the radio, and followed some great videos on YouTube. The one above was the best I saw today, very interesting what school must be like these days with technology, come to think of it, I didn't have any of it when I was in school.