@toddsingleton.net
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.
Gotta have one. I’ve always wanted to run OS-X v.10 Panther at home but never could afford a Powerbook or an expensive apple display for their desktops (which start at $999.00).
The technology gods have spoken and I see a Mac mini in my future. This Mac hooks to standard VGA and USB components. Right now it’s more important to me than a plasma TV, new laptop or anything else electronic.
Here’s what I’ll be installing if I can find time between interviewing four potential contractors tomorrow. This file server’s about a week overdue in the rack. It’s been built for days, I just haven’t had time to get it to the Inflow data center. It’s a pretty good file server including an HP Smart Array 6i internal controller with four 36GB drives configured at RAID 1+0. The memory is at 4GB with two 3.6GHz. Xeon Processors. Overkill? Hefty for file storage to say the least.
The MSA30 has seven 72GB drives configured RAID 5 for a usable capacity of 407GB which can be expanded by the Smart Array 642 controller. Since it’s a file server this controller’s only got 64MB of battery backed cache. For SQL etc. I would only use 256MB of cache on the card and RAID 1+0 regardless of the loss of usable disk space. After this is in I’ve got an SQL server and another Citrix box to get installed for a P21 Commerce Center test environment. It all needs to be done by Monday morning.