When you say it with authority, maybe you’ll be believed

The saying goes “When you can’t do, teach.”  Well maybe it needs to be updated with “When you’re incompetent, represent.”  Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen uses her “knowledge” that the earth is 6000 years old to explain why her state should welcome uranium waste.  Her logic is that since the earth has been here for 6000 years and “hasn’t been done away with” there is nothing to fear.  Pretty ironic that scientists use uranium decay to date the earth to well over 6000 years, but that’s not important when you have a nice book to tell you what is really true.

BMW E46 display/mute install for a V1

A few weeks ago I installed the wiring for my concealed display for my Valentine 1 radar detector. I positioned it near the drivers side A pillar, not because I thought it was the best spot but because it was the best spot for it while still being able to easily reach the mute button. Due to my frequent city driving and the amount of automatic door openers around my area, it was a necessity to be able to mute it easily.  After a few weeks of this, I found it less then ideal but didn’t think I had another option.

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Another funny video

To follow up on the first video from “thewebsiteisdown.com” (found here on the left) they have released a second video (found here on the right).  While nothing can match the original video, this is still quite funny if you’ve ever had to support users in a corporate environment.
Check out the videos, but don’t let your users hear you….they might get upset.

Disk Cloning

linux,dhcp,ping,ghost,nfs,tftp,pxe,disk cloning,open source

I have 23 Dell Desktops, and about 8 laptops.  I needed a solution to wipe and reload the systems as quick as possible.  I did some testing and the best free cloning software I found was PING.  PING is modeled after Norton Ghost and will allow you to put the images onto a network file server or a local partition.

Once I had PING down, I moved onto the network system . Since PING is capable of booting the computers through PXE, I wouldn’t need to burn any CDs or DVDs.  It even allows you to script the image creation or restoration.  Since the image creation was a one shot deal for me I just did it manually.

So in the end,  I ended up having a linux server with TFTP and DHCP for the PXE and NFS for image storage.  It took the Dell D800 image 4 minutes to restore from boot to shutdown.  A heck of a lot better then the 1.5 hours it took me to put on XP and all the drivers.