Archive for February, 2007

Adventures in Mass Transit

27Feb07

Monday morning I needed to get from my house to my car at Japtrix. In a car this journey takes about an hour but that’s a long way to bum a ride, and by now I must be wearing out my welcome with everyone I know that has been generous enough to give me a […]

The Inviolable Rule of Systems Administration

27Feb07

Excerpt from a work-related email that I just sent:
We’re talking about violating the “Never f*** with s*** on a Friday” rule on Tuesday? Has our clusterf*** quota not already been met this week?
I’m gonna catch some heck for that, I’m sure, but…
In the cult of Systems Administration, the first commandment is thou shalt not implement […]

You Don’t Know Bruce

27Feb07

Bruce Schneier once decrypted a box of AlphaBits.
For Bruce Schneier, SHA-1 is merely a compression algorithm.
When Bruce Schneier decrypts the Da Vinci Code, the ending doesn’t suck.
When God needs a new secure certificate, he uses Bruce Schneier as the signing authority.
There are no prime numbers, just numbers Bruce Schneier hasn’t bothered to factor yet.
More Bruce […]

Sometimes VMware does not, in fact, rule.

26Feb07

Upgrading VMware Workstation is a minor pain in the ass, in that it does a full uninstall and then a semi-fresh install. Most settings carry over, including the all-important license key, but this morning I discovered one group of settings that does not: the subnets assigned to the virtual networks.
When I got to work this […]

Windows Home Server Beta 2 Install

25Feb07

The installation of Windows Home Server Beta 2 in 279 screen shots. Overkill, or excruciatingly thorough?

Why yes, I do have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning.
And for the folks having trouble installing it under VMware Workstation: download the latest release (11/2006) and create a virtual IDE disk.

PayPal Security Token

23Feb07

My PayPal Security Token arrived a couple of days ago.

I’ve come to use PayPal far more often than I’d ever expected. I’m not big on credit, until recently I never had enough to cover anything more costly than a fine dinner for four, and I’ve become loathe to entrust my debit card details to online […]

Trainwrecks

23Feb07

Don’t waste your time and money with traditional Requirements Analysis meetings and documents. Any attempt to design systems to meet all needs will fail. Guaranteed. The needs will change and they won’t be properly understood in the first place anyway.
— Doug Kaye

Some Feed Pruning

23Feb07

I’ve started using an RSS reader again and I’ve come to the realization that the only way to prevent RSS overload is to be absolutely ruthless in managing my subscriptions. My rules at the moment are: no headlines-only feeds and any high-volume or summary feeds must be of consistent high value. Even with those guidelines […]




Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional

Advertisements

Plugging my Employer

 


Plugging my Employer

Advertisements

Flickr Photos