Digital Nostalgia
How Dell made North Carolina beg for business | The Register
Here’s an article showcasing our state representative’s fiscal discipline. I’m so proud to be from North Cakalacky, the only state where elected officials can’t pronounce the names of towns that end in “oro”. I guess Dell had to receive some incentive to build a plant in a place like “Greensbur”. It’s not exactly the technology center of the universe.
Yes, here come some cheapo, generic VisionMan 10 servers for Dillon Supply’s rack. $1600 for the pair with 1GB of RAM each and a Western Digital 250GB Hard Drive.
The BIOS could see the 250GB drive and it’s full capacity (of course Windoze 2K Server setup could not) but the RealTek PXE boot manager hated it. So I bypassed it and still kept getting the ‘ol “Hard Disk Fail: Drive Not Found” error when trying to boot straight to the drive.
In frustration I popped the 80GB drive in that came with the stupid thing back in. Formated it NTFS, loaded 2000 Server, SQL Server Enterprise, alot of of dependencies, hotfixes and anti-virus. Bang – server running. Now it’s time to add the 250GB drive which Windoze will see now that SP4 installed…. but noooooooo…
The freakin’ server’s only got enough power couplings coming off the 200W power supply for one hard drive! So why did they build the chasis for two??? And to make matters worse, the way the drives fit in the drive bay doesn’t allow for the IDE cable to reach both drives. I gotta find a cable with more distance between the female inputs. Splitting power and abnormal cable requirements – that’s what goin’ cheap gets you. Quite a pain for a couple of test servers.
Spark Fun Electronics – Rotary Cell Phone
Found on slashdot: This article explains how to turn an old rotary phone into a wireless cell if you are someone who knows all the acronyms. I’m building one of these for my desk at work as soon as I have time (which means maybe next year). How retro-cool is this? I can’t explain.
I haven’t had the chance to work on a PCB in a couple of years. Haven’t really had a reason to until now. And I’ve never touched a cell chip before… success is eminent.
Tonight I am stuck at Dillon Supply – blog at the ready. We got hit by a morning snow shower that lasted until 3 p.m. The two inches of accumulation wasn’ t really the problem but the freezing roads caused five and six hour traffic delays. Obviously I didn’t want Amy coming to try to get me in the Mustang so I waited… and waited… and waited… FOR WHAT? I ain’t going anywhere.
So a little while ago I’m roaming the halls in the dark and what do ya know, Larry Thomas the Raleigh branch manager is still here. Said he’s here for the duration. Next thing I know Ed Todd, the Accounts Receivables manager, shows up in the bathroom to brush his teeth. Said he made it two blocks in one hour so he turned around.
It doesn’t suck here. I have a 3MB Internet connection to myself, a vending machine and a toothbrush. Roll on…
But I’m missin’ my buddy Connor tonight. I love him more than I can squeez him. Amy too. A picture of Connor playing in the snow was on wral.com today in the January 19th snow photos.
Here’s how to really get a Mini Mac for absolutely nothing. Follow these instructions exactly and you will get zero spam and no charges on any credit card. It’s done by referring friends.
1. Go to the link below fill out some info (use a spam trap email account like hotmail etc. if it makes you more comfortable).
2. Next click “No” to all of the optional offers presented (unless you’re interested in the garbage).
3. Then when you come to the place where you must select one “required” offer choose the eFax.com offer which is free for 30 days. It is one of those deals where you have to cancel in 30 days or you’re charged.
If you cancel the eFax account within the 30 day trial period and you get 10 people to do the exact same thing I’ve detailed here you will get a Mini Mac for free. The $600 80GB one.
Here’s a reminder to myself: check out this video on how to take apart a Mac Mini to perform upgrades.
WRAL.com – News – Head Of Local Company Building Iraqi Government Remains Optimistic
This is an interesting headline. We’re now using taxpayers dollars to pay private American corporations to “build” foreign governments. So I guess the people of Iraq are not in charge of their future as the Bush administration claims. North Carolina’s own Research Triangle Institute is.
Note: Just over two years ago I was offered a Sys. Admin position at RTI. I turned it down for the position I held at Glaxo.
Tsunami – Banda Aceh Shore, Indonesia
This is an excellent site showing before and after aerial shots of places struck by the tsunamis. These images provide the best perspective of the destruction I’ve seen.
Connor was urging me to open the front door this morning so he could look outside. What do ya know? It’s snowing. And just three days ago it was 70 degrees here. Amy was dressed first so she got Connor together and took him outside for his first walk in the snowflakes. She couldn’t find our digital camera so she got his pic with the camera on her phone. I’m pretty impressed with the quality of the images we can download off the Audiovox 8910‘s.
Camera phones are a must have with kids. It makes it so easy to collect pics that our parents missed (or never got developed). Later this afternoon I’m going to burn our entire photo directory to CD and back up the mySQL database running this blog to an excel file or something I can import later if necessary.
Today Connor entered the world of full blown walkin! He made it from my office all the way down the hall to the living room where his toys are. That’s where I caught this pic just ten minutes ago. We don’t have a baby anymore. We have a toddler!
Now his plan is starting to become obvious…. mommy and daddy will never rest again.