dannyman.toldme.com


Technology

Peanut butter Mochi

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/07/19/peanut-butter-mochi/

Yayoi came home from Japantown today. She was excited. “You must try this new product,” she explained.

It was a flat, pink, gelatinous food substance. Mochi! Mochi is basically a a bland, dry, rice-based(?) wrapper for snacks, like “mochi ice” which is a lump of ice cream wrapped in mochi. (Think of it as a flexible cracker for snacks.) (more…)

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Technology

Quizzes are Dumb

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/06/23/quizzes-are-dumb/

I never do them.

But, somehow, I was oddly attracted to these. (Thanks, Keith!)

You are Windows XP.  Under your bright and cheerful exterior is a strong and stable personality.  You have a tendency to do more than what is asked or even desired.
Which OS are You?

You are .inf You are informative.  When you are gone you make life very difficult for others.
Which File Extension are You?

Damn.

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Letters to The Man, Technology

Evolve!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/06/20/evolve/

(more…)

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About Me, Technology

Typing Names

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/06/09/typing-names/

As recently observed at work:

(16:19:06) taras: for centuries, my clan has insisted on only naming their children with names that can be typed exclusively with the left hand, b/c we knew that one day we might be working with a left-hand-typing-only system administrator

For those who have never seen me type, let me tell you that the above is an apt description of yours truly.

(16:35:04) sara: dman: note that ‘sara’ can also be typed only w/ your left hand
(16:35:22) ***sara sucks up to the sysadmin

It’s good to be root.

2 Comments


Technical, Technology, Testimonials

Cisco Doesn’t Sell Routers

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/05/10/cisco-sucks-zebra-rules/

So . . . this is an old rant.

I was working on a project to multi-home our upstream Internet connectivity. When I started, I was inheriting something where the telco providing us with the new circuit would also give us a router, and configure it, and take care of all the BGP configuration, and we wouldn’t have to renumber. (more…)

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Technical, Technology

Email to AT&T Mobile Devices

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/05/02/email-att-mobile/

Last week, some of my users stopped receiving e-mail on their cell phones.

We had the aliases set up for:
<ten digits>@mobile.att.net

mobile.att.net no longer exists.

So, after some research, I got an answer from USENET:
<ten digits>@mmode.com

This is also accepting messages:
<ten digits>@mobile.mycingular.com
(But they do not seem to be delivered. Except to one user who recently switched phones.)

A very smart person reports that if your mobile is GSM you might want:
<ten digits>@cingularme.com

Update–July, 2007: For John and Bertrand, who is on Cingular’s “Pay as You Go” plan:
<ten digits>@txt.att.net

I did this to my aliases file:
:%s/mobile.att.net/mmode.com/

(I only bother to blog about this because simply typing my problem in to Google got me nada.)

14 Comments


Technical, Technology, Testimonials

Graffiti-Covered Train

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/21/graffiti-train/

IMG_3369
[Flickr]
A graffiti covered train, in Lyon.

I have been uploading a lot of photos via Flickr lately. I purchased a “pro” account for $42/year (now $25/year) in part because they have a “blogging” interface with which one can post photographs to one’s blog.

They’ll also retain my original image files, and promise to get around to a “bulk download” facility so I can use them as a “disaster recovery” mechanism as well. On top of that, the site has nice features and is definitely zippy.

Anyway, I like this photograph. It is a train, covered in beautiful graffiti, in France. I like all that stuff. And I like that Flickr will store the image for me and provide an interface for re-posting it here.

I will be uploading many more photos over the next few months. All images taken in 2005 are online, and I’m making my way through the 2002 “World Tour” in alphabetical order right now. Flickr only allows me to upload 1GB/month, (actually, they just changed it to 2GB,) even with a Pro account. This is fine, because I have so many photos, I ought to take my time sorting through them.

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Sundry, Technology

Flickr Schwag

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/19/flickr-schwag/

Color-Enhanced Mount Diablo
[Flickr]
A color-enhanced view of Mount Diablo from the foothills above Walnut Creek. The rain has made things green and a quick trip to the GIMP only emphasizes this.

So, I recently bit the bullet and bought a Pro account on Flickr. They’ll store my images for me in high-resolution, with a pretty nifty, pretty zippy interface to manage them. The community-building features have been a pleasant ego surprise — one photo I uploaded from when I was flying in to London on September 11, 2002 was found by a guy who could see his house in the photograph. (more…)

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Technology, Testimonials

gnucash?

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/04/15/gnucash/

Said I: “Personally, managing pictures is one of the three things I do with my Windows computer. (The other two are games and Quicken.)”

Asked another: Quicken? Have you looked into gnucash?

I replied: (more…)

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Technical, Technology

Chabot Mirrors … and Flickr

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/03/28/chabot-mirrors-and-flickr/



Danny and Yayoi in the Mirror
Originally uploaded by dannyman.

In honor of Joe’s Birthday, we visited the Chabot Space Center in Oakland on Saturday. It is a pretty nice place, for a planetarium. They have some large telescopes set up out back, and it is really more of an observatory that has sprouted a planetarium to entertain kids and other members of the public. Yayoi wants to go back some night and peer through one of the telescopes . . .

Anyway, being an observatory, they are naturally intrested in mirrors, and have an exhibit on this topic. As you can see, we had a bit of fun with our reflections in one of the demonstrations. Another thing that was totally interesting is this video camera they have set up with a variable delay between the top of the screen and the bottom of the screen. Some sort of illustration about how images get distorted when you have to deal with how slow parts of the image may get to you. (more…)

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Good Reads, Technology

Microsoft Security Efforts

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/03/18/microsoft-security-efforts/

I have been surfing a lot this morning, trying to track down some technical, hence professional blogs that I can look at from work. That way, when I feel the urge to “slack off” by surfing the web, I can turn my slacking in to learning. I will try and summarize some of the publications I have found, but for now, I need to recommend Richard Bejtlich’s excellent review of current Microsoft security efforts. Even for Unixy people like me, it is useful to know what Microsoft is thinking, and this is a great summary of what Microsoft is thinking. (more…)

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Technology, Testimonials

T-Mobile Makes Good

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/03/14/tmobile-makes-good/

Last week, there were serious troubles with the Sidekick data service. It was mostly down for about two days, and seriously flaky for two more. That really sucked.

At the end of the outage, T-Mobile sent everyone an e-mail noting that there would be a $20 credit due to the troubles. Basically, a refund for one month of Sidekick data service. They’ve also promised more free goodies in the downloads section for their loyal customers.

I feel better. And I think T-Mobile deserves some credit for trying to do well by their customers. Sh!t does happen, especially with bleeding-edge technology. It makes a difference when a company is pretty good with answering the phone, as T-Mobile has always done for me, and when they take proactive steps to apologise when things break fantastically, as they did last week.

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Technology, Testimonials

Hooray for Rojo

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/03/11/hooray-for-rojo/

Two years ago I started work and eventually gave up on toldme.com. The main reason is that it was a little too ambitious for my project management and database skills, not to mention my interest level relative to free time. (Getting a paying job can really destroy your ability to work on personal development projects.) (more…)

5 Comments


Good Reads, Technology

Jilted by Google

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/03/09/jilted-by-google/

Back in late 2001, after I lost my job with Tellme, I looked for work at, among other places, Google. I had long been impressed with Google, which by all accounts offers a great working environment. And like me, they were also in Mountain View. I submitted my resumé and a recruiter contacted me and said they had a Junior position available, and the salary would be about 2/3 what I had been making at Tellme, where I had worked as an underpaid technical lead. I explained that I was more interested in and better qualified for some of the more senior job postings they had open on their web site. “Well, this is the position we have available,” was the ultimatum offered by the recruiter. I politely declined.

Two months later and it was very clear to me that the job market was terrible, and that if Google was willing to talk to me about a junior position, that was far better than the stresses of being broke and idle. I contacted the recruiter and she set up a phone screen, which was followed by an on-site interview. (more…)

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Excerpts, Technology

Like Programming a VCR

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/03/04/like-programming-a-vcr/

I am trying to install some software that isn’t working. So, I’m trading messages with the company’s technical support, who suggested I add an argument to a wrapper script, which I tried, but nada, so they clarified:

Hmmm, when you add the -nosetjmp make sure you go through custom install using ___setup and select 2 for run setup utilites then select 2 again Perform ___ configuration then select each step except number 3…this will override your changes that you made to the script. Once that is all done you can add -nosetjmp to the ___v9.cfg file and let’s see what happens.

All this while walking back and forth to the machine room to swap through a series of three CDROMs. Ah, the glorious work of being a SysAdmin!

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