Why yes, that is my real name.
Personal
This is where I put things that pertain to me.
A Lack of Twitter
Jul 23rd
You might have noticed. You might have not cared. You might have been relieved. However you felt, my website has stopped publishing a digest of my weekly “tweets”. Little known fact: I’m still using Twitter.
For some odd reason, the plugin I use with Twitter has stopped working. I’ve tried reinstalling it, reconfiguring it with my Twitter creds, and it still won’t fly. So, I just uninstalled it and left it be. If you’re really interested in what I’m up to, go and follow me on Twitter (lurch89) or just come back here to check on what I’m doing (you STALKER!).
Straightening Up
Jul 10th
Being that this is my first weekend in a long time to get some stuff done around the house, I decided to finally move my server/home networking equipment to a new arrangement. About a month ago, I went down to the IKEA store in Minneapolis and picked up 3 of these LACK end tables. They were on sale for $8 each. They’re nothing really that special looking, and are constructed of particle board. The kicker? They are actually the exact width to mount 19″ network hardware in. I thought this would be great! Problem though: I don’t own any 19″ hardware. Dang. Well, I bought them anyway, and simply mounted all of my non-19″ rackmount equipment onto it. And by mount, I mean set..
Here is a list of the hardware that I have here. And yes, they are all named after scientists.
- Volta - This is the WRT54Gv2 running DD-WRT (of course). It is acting as my router for the network. I was using a smaller HP with pfSense, but that starting having major issues, so I dumped it for the ol’ hardware router. It is also my wifi access point.
- Coulomb - This is the large HP Compaq desktop that is acting as a server. It is running Debian 5.0 (Lenny) and serves file sharing, print sharing, VPN, and Teamspeak. Specs are a P4 @ 2.8GHz, 1GB DDR SDRAM, 2x 120GB IDE Hard Drives (7200RPM), Gigabit LAN.
- Marconi – This is the tall device in the back. It is a Cisco Network Media Hub (NMH410) with 1TB of network attached storage. I use this for all of my media storage at home. I plan on purchasing another 1TB drive to create redundancy.
- Trendnet TEG-S5g - It’s not in the picture, because it’s hiding underneath (as it’s supposed to). It’s a simple 5-port Gigabit switch that I got on sale at Newegg. Though I just noticed…I never got the gift card they said they mailed to me in May for the rebate. Crap.
I hope to eventually recable my desk and associated work area so that it looks like this. No wires showing, mounted power strips, and the like. I also want to create a spare set of cables, so that if I wanted to go to a LAN party, all I would need to do is disconnect the big components (monitor, PC, mouse, keyboard) and take them with, and I would have a fresh set of cables waiting for deployment.
Wadena Tornado Pics
Jun 29th
These are pictures from the June 17th tornado that struck Wadena, MN. You can find all of them here.
BlogPress
Apr 20th
I went ahead and bought another app. This one is called BlogPress, and allows me to post to my blog from the iPod touch.
– Post From My iPhone
Location:14th Ave N,Fargo,United States
Designed by Apple in Cupertino
Apr 17th
So I finally gave in and bought an iPod touch. This is the first Apple product I have ever purchased new. So far, I like it a lot. I’m finding that there is no shortage of applications, and that the ones I have downloaded aren’t too bad.
One of the big things to get used to is the predictive text input. Basically you can get really close to what you want to type and it will make a decision based on what you typed. I have yet to put my faith in it yet fully.
Well, I know that this is a rather short post, but hats because I wrote it out using the wordpress application. Lots of little errors that I don’t feel like going back to fix.
RIP Einstein (2003-2010)
Jan 14th
Einstein in his final days
Einstein, my first desktop PC turned home server in the corner, has passed on to the great /dev/null in the sky.
When I first bought him, back in 2003, he was but a refurbished Dell Dimension 2350, with a mere 128MB of RAM. It was the fruit of a summer working for my parents. He arrived while I was at work, and I begged to go home and set him up to play with the then fun new features of Windows XP. That Christmas, I got my first real video game, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, along with a 256MB memory upgrade. Einstein could be called a gaming machine. We had great fun playing with the new Windows Movie Maker 2.0, too.
Einstein soon outgrew his integrated video adapter. I had been browsing the local computer stores for a PCI graphics card, for Einstein only had PCI, no AGP. I found a nice GeForce FX 5200 at OfficeMax for a reasonable price. I added it, and suddenly I could run games at 1024×768! It seriously brought Einstein up to current standards for the time.
Original Dimension 2350
The next great improvement was a new 120GB IDE HD and a 512MB stick of RAM, making the two slots add to 768MB, around 2006. It vastly improved storage over the 30GB stock HD that came with him. Now I could have all my games installed at once without swapping back and forth between the big ones. And, everything was much zippier.
When I purchased Galileo in 2007, Einstein started to move to a server role. He didn’t play nice with the video card anymore, which I’ve now found to be defective. I installed Ubuntu Server edition, and Einstein had new life. It was my first home server experience. I installed VMWare Server and ran some virtual machines. I also installed TeamSpeak 2, and ran a voice chat server while in games.
In his last year, he has been my NAS/Print/Remote access server, as well as a TeamSpeak 2 and TS3 server that just sat in the corner and never bothered anyone. He had solid uptime, was quiet (comparatively), and never made a fuss about updates or errors. In his final days I was contemplating reinstalling the OS, but it was so rock solid that I didn’t see the urgency. He’s in a better place now.
I’ve already began working on ghostofeinstein, a virtual machine to take over the duties that Einstein has left behind.
A test, from Drivel
Jan 11th
Good Morning!
I’ve been setting up new and exciting things on my Linux laptop. All to get ready for another wonderful semester of learning. Well, not really. I’m mostly procrastinating on other things, like cleaning my kitchen. I’ve now set up Drivel, a product that allows you to post to a wordpress blog, such as this one, from Linux. It means that I don’t have to log in to the site every time I want to post. However, if you want pretty pictures, I have to go in and put them in after the fact. Mildly annoying, but worth not having to log in for a simple post.
So what do I have on tap for this semester? Why, many fun and exciting classes! I have Assembly programming, Random Processes, Technical Writing (yes, another English class) and Senior Design 1 (meaning I’m getting close to graduating). I hope they all go well. I spent nearly $340 on books, only 3 of them, and I’m hoping that it isn’t a rough semester.
Well, that’s all for now. Time to tackle the kitchen, I suppose.
Christmas Blizzard 2009
Dec 26th
Over a foot of snow, probably closer to 16".
Happy Holidays. We got a blizzard.
2009 Christmas Village
Dec 5th
The season of many holidays has begun. I just this morning put up my annual Christmas Village, this time in my apartment. It is pretty good this year, as I have a nice shelf to put it. I’ve taken a few pictures, and posted them up here for all to see. Enjoy!
Thanksgiving 2009
Nov 30th
A holiday classic: the Deep-Fried Turkey.
Ahh yes, the annual stuffing of the faces. My Thanksgiving this year was spent with far more people than ever before, and probably made it one of the best holidays that I can remember. At one meal (yes, there were two!) we had a wonderful brined and oven-roasted bird, a 12 lbs fresh one. It was delicious. Then, at meal #2, three different birds were served. One, as pictured here, was deep fried (I think my favorite), one was smoked (overnight) and the third was grilled (no parenthetical comment needed). All three were wonderful, and the food that went along with them was great.
So, now we’re officially in the Christmas season. The gift buying, the extreme deals on stuff (already seen a few this Cyber Monday), and more food. I hope to keep eating…and eating…and eating…
