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  1. Accident Number 2 for 2005

    Yep. Accident number two for this year - I haven't even had the car for a year yet. This was right outside the Murata Business Center; I had barely left work. Should be totally the other guy's fault; he even got cited for it.

    While his Pacifica was fine, my car …

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  2. New Phone Number

    I've got a new phone number thanks to Teliax, Argo, Asterisk, and [Brady].

    [Brady] and I both have our new Teliax numbers setup to come inbound via Argo, then get sent to our home installations of Asterisk. This is in anticipation that Argo will have better uptimes than our home …

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  3. Job Update

    First couple weeks at Express Dynamics are over, and they've been a stressful couple of weeks - albiet quite productive. You might have noticed that we have a new website; I think it's much better than the one we had before - there's a ton more content and it explains what we …

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  4. New Job on the Horizon

    So, it looks like I'll be ending a 5 year run at CTI/PA.net. I'm going to be going to work at a new software development company, Express Dynamics.

    I think things went well today at CTI - I still have two weeks to document everything I've done there - and …

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  5. Rearranging the Living Room

    It's been quite the busy weekend. I'm not sure what all's going on in my life right now, but I know something that is getting done - rearranging my living room.

    The "what all's going on" part I can't really talk about right now - hopefully an update soon.

    On top of …

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  6. Weekend Trip to VA

    We're headed back to to Virginia again this weekend - this time to visit [Dennis] and Michele Little. It'll be nice to see them and their new place and will be a nice distraction from the normal rush of life.

    We were worried that we wouldn't be able to go down …

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  7. Birthday Party and New Washer/Dryer

    So Tiff and my weekend was pretty much taken up by both of these two things.

    Logan's 7th birthday party was on Saturday (his actual birthday is Thursday, so my parents and I drove down to Virginia for the day. It was nice to visit with them, I managed to …

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  8. Konqueror Web Shortcuts Problem with eBay

    Konqueror's Web Shortcuts are very nice; it's really handy just to be able to do "<alt-f2> gg: stuff n things <enter>" and have konqueror launch from the run menu searching google for stuff n things.

    So, I figured I'd add an eBay shortcut - makes sense, right? It's all good, except …

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  9. Kopete Socks Proxy Problems

    I've recently been trying out Kopete, and am very happy with its integration w/ KDE and KAddressBook. However, I've run into a snag.

    Actually, it might not really be Kopete's fault, but it is really annoying. The only way to configure socks support for Kopete is to configure it globally …

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  10. Tycho's Back

    We just got Tycho back tonight around 17:30. It's very good to have him home, and I think he's very happy to be home. He did have to get catheterized, which I know he probably didn't like (I know I wouldn't like it). We still have a couple weeks …

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  11. Tycho's in the Animal Hospital

    I caught Tycho yesterday going to the bathroom somewhere he shouldn't - plus it didn't look like it was going so well. Tiff decided when she got home that she needed to call the Vet, and they told her to bring him right in.

    Well, it looks like he's got a …

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  12. LED Bulb Replacement

    Retract what I said about the Silverstars - this is the way to go. Using LEDs to replace all the other marker/turning bulbs will be much cooler; and I will (theoretically) never have to change my bulbs again. I guess I'll have to just go buy some cheap 7440's for …

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  13. Killing Comment Spam

    While some other blog software has had comment moderation before, since I use a completely hand-written CMS, I needed to implement it myself. I've been having quite the problem with comment spam recently (as any of you with RSS readers has seen, I'm sure), but hopefully my solution will fix …

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  14. LAN Party and Beach Trip Over

    Wow; quite the lack of updates. The LAN Party was done on August 6th; pretty much with no hitches. You can check out all the pictures, as they've been up for awhile.

    Tiff, her parents, sister, sister's boyfriend, and I spent last week (13th - 20th) down at Myrtle Beach. Surprise …

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  15. Monitoring Sensors on Argo

    Seems that a little lm_sensors/net-snmp bug has bit me on the new Argo. Well, it might've been there before but I forgot about it. Anyway, according to Red Hat bug#150199, net-snmp is supposed to be pushed out with the next release with a fix; but that was 3 …

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  16. House Upgrade

    Looks like our house will finally be getting a paved driveway! I hadn't quite understood how big 1400sqft was until I saw this carved out of our yard and old driveway. Of course, this will preclude us from doing much else the rest of the year; or at least until …

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  17. Argo Upgrade Time Again

    Not sure if you noticed a bunch of websites on Argo being down last night, but they were for awhile. We installed new 80G hard drives in RAID1 configuration that should give us a good bit more reliability (not that we've had problems). They should also be a good deal …

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  18. Xen Problems with sata_nv

    Apparently Xen doesn't cooperate kindly with the sata_nv driver. I've only found a little evidence of this so far, but the fact that it was 8 months ago doesn't bode well for me. I had really hoped that Xen would have much better performance and be more stable than VMWare …

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  19. Pairing Down

    Every day I go to work, I grab several pieces of electronics to take with me: my cellphone, my PDA, my laptop, and my camera. Even when I go out somewhere, I typically have the cellphone, camera, and leave the pda in the car in case I need it. It'd …

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  20. Generic Update

    This past weekend we got a pretty good storm which washed out our driveway. So I spent about an hour raking the stones back in place. Good thing we're going to get our driveway paved this summer. We're probably going to have Fayetteville Contractors, Inc. do it as we haven't …

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  21. Raystown Trip #2 and Radio Update

    Took another trip to Raystown on Saturday. It was a really nice day of pretty much just hanging around. We tied up next to some family friends' boat and just lounged around for the day. There were a ton of boats up there, but from what I hear, not as …

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  22. An Action-Packed Four-Day Weekend

    We left Thursday morning for Lake Raystown Resort and just got back mid-afternoon today. We had four beautiful days; which made all our activities that much more enjoyable.

    Thursday was spent setting up camp and taking a quick ride around the lake. We did a little tubing, but I ended …

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  23. Motorola V551 on AT&T Wireless mini-review

    So far the phone seems very nice; it has a very bright, hi-res, and hi-color display. The phone is fairly configurable, if not initially obvious. For example, I found that the phonebook can be configured to what I expected (that is, have multiple entries per name); you just need to …

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  24. I Don't Like Cingular

    So, I kinda went and busted my cellphone. I think it happened when I got out of my car and I rolled out, pinning my cell against the door jam. I now have several cracks across my LCD rendering it useless.

    So my first instinct is to go to a …

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  25. Dell 27xx 2708 Monitoring

    Finally got around the login problems I was having trying to automate polling values. Unfortunately I just realized that they don't have transmitted bytes in the RMON page; how disappointing.

    Anyway, you can track the work-in-progess of my gathering script in NetMRG's SVN tree. It can login and download the …

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  26. The Docs Don't Lie

    Got the Dell PowerConnect 2708, and just like the docs say; no SNMP. It has RMON support built-in and viewable from the web interface, but you can't gather the statistics remotely via SNMP. I guess they're trying to justify how cheap it costs. I guess I'll have to whip up …

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  27. Thor Upgrade Time

    Which can only mean one thing: [Brady] is having his 2nd annual LANnic!

    Instead of the Hard Drive dept this year, it's going to be the rest of the guts to give Thor a (substantial) speed boost, and hopefully make the gigabit switch I bought from Dell worthwhile. The specs …

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  28. Long Memorial Weekend

    The unofficial start of summer went pretty nice, if busy.

    Saturday was spent yard-saling again. I managed to sell my motorcycle, but that was about it. We went to a cookout in the afternoon; after getting soaked carrying the stuff in from a surprise shower. Guess it really was summer …

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  29. Packaging and Hacking

    Although I'm not part of any cool group like RPMforge.net, I still do like to build packages. Unfortunately I've been a little lazy recently and have gotten behind in some that really should be done.

    I've been working trying to get a bunch of different Jabber-related packages together …

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  30. Bluetooth in Linux Works

    Yep, it really does work. Maybe not quite perfectly, but it's pretty nice that it works at all. Linux (in the past) has lagged behind new technologies, but it seems to be doing a good job at picking up new techs like this pretty quick.

    I'm using both the Microsoft …

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  31. Electronics Die; Deal With It

    Well, at least that's what I should tell myself, anyway.

    Over the past several days I've noticed some strange behavior in some of my electonics that I use daily (we'll be excluding my dvd::rip problems of several days ago as those seem mostly fixed).

    My cellphone has been acting …

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  32. Argo Upgrade Time

    It's that time of the year where Argo's OS gets updated. It has been running FC2 for some time now, and I figured it was as good a time as ever to switch to CentOS.

    For the most part everything went perfectly smooth. Some problems with RPMs of FC2 being …

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  33. Episode III

    Yep; I was one of the geeks that went to see the midnight showing - but I didn't stand in line all day to get tickets. [Kevin] and I ordered tickets at like 10:30p last night after Ben invited us to go along; since he was saving seats we figured …

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  34. DVD Backups

    I've been putting a good deal of time into ripping some Star Wars DVDs so I can watch them on my Xbox. Unfortunately, things don't want to cooperate. First I encoded everything into an OGM container using xvid4 and vorbis for the two english tracks (5.1 and directors commentary …

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  35. Work Happenings

    [Kevin] and I were hoping that after Patrick left work for PA Online last week that a raise wouldn't be far behind, and quite happliy we were correct. I had just thrown out a nice round figure of 15 percent, and they exceeded that a little bit to make it …

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  36. Current Mood - Aaaaahhhh [BOOM]

    I'm sure there are some people buisier than I, but this week has seemed to be extra stressful.

    I've been taking care of Tiff since her sugery (which went fine) since she has a bit more limited mobility than the last time. She seems to be doing much better now …

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  37. Blogging it Up

    Lots of news since the last blog; would make you think I'd blog more often, right?

    Tiff is having surgery on Thursday to have her lipoma on her back removed. She actually had to have this done before; almost two years ago, about a week before our wedding. It's going …

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  38. Productive Weekend

    I took Friday off to be with my Wife, so we did some driving around, I got some summer-clothes shopping done, and we visited w/ Paige, Ryan, Holly, and Brooke in the evening. I also got a nice suprise in that the FedEx guy dropped my PS and DVD-burner from …

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  39. Un-CoolMax

    Strangest thing just happened: both [Brady] and I had these CoolMax quiet Power Supplies that we had been very impressed with.. up until this past weekend.

    [Brady] emailed me Saturday night asking if I had a spare power supply as his in Oak had bit the dust. After I got …

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  40. David Donovan

    Earlier today, David Donovan lost his battle with Mesothelioma Cancer. Our thoughts and prays go out his family and friends who have stood with him through his two-year struggle.

    I've known David for as long as I've been dating Tiffany (almost 8 years). David could always be found with a …

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  41. Spring is Rejuvenating

    As Chris noted, Spring is very nice. I had the chance the other day to get out and cleanup the outside of our house a bit. Raking stones and tanbark out of the yard - lots of fun - at least it was nice and warm out. Patches enjoyed being able to …

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  42. The Rex is Back

    I was finally able to pickup my WRX yesterday. It looks very good so far, but I haven't had it in the sunlight yet to really checkout the paint job (more snow today :-P). It's a good thing insurance paid for it, though ;-).

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  43. Winter Is Not Fun

    I guess I'm just generally having a 'not fun' week. Shucks.

    Update 19:47

    Looks like I should be getting towed out of the retention pond within the hour. My dad and I went to make sure it was still drivable (it is), but I bumped into the trailer park …

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  44. Computers Are Not Fun

    Tiff and I went down to visit my Sister over President's Day weekend. It was nice to go down; we haven't been down to see her in Virginia for several months, so I was happy to go see her at her place (as opposed to her coming up here to …

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  45. xbox fun

    XBMC recently added EXIF parsing to their 'my pictures' section, so now your photos are all rotated correctly! Yeah!

    I also recently discovered DAAP and a couple projects for serving it up from linux: daapd and mt-daapd (look: RPMs!). daapd seems to be working well, but I'm not overly fond …

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  46. Much Better

    It was good to go see my Pap last night. He seems to be doing much better. He seems to have all his color back and was sitting up and talking with us very well (for having a breathing tube down his through, anyway). He instantly recognized each of my …

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  47. Papap Warner

    When Tiff and I went over to my parents' for supper last night I thought it was odd to see my aunt's car therel. When we got inside I thought it was even more strange that only my two neices were there. Then I found out that my Pap was …

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  48. Car has arrived!

    Yep, I did manage to get out to get my car yesterday. Dennis went with me; we left about 06:30 and managed to get there around 09:30. Pretty quick. Handed the sales guy papers and money, and we were on our way by 10:00. Pretty snappy. Oh …

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  49. Picking up the car tomorrow

    In light of the fact that we're going to get our first significant snow on Saturday and this little playoff game (football) going on this weekend, I decided Friday might be better to get the car than Saturday. [Dennis] is taking off (thanks!) to go down with me and drive …

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  50. Car Upgrade Accessories

    In the past, I've typically used fuse taps when I need to add accessories to my car. This relies, of course, on the availability of unused fuses and the correct type of fuse (switched or non-switched).

    Typically I run several extra compenents in my car; mostly not high-amperage items: Radar …

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  51. Car Upgrade 4.5

    1. Dad's '93 Ford Ranger (the 0.5)
    2. Sister's '87 Nissan Sentra
    3. '97 Ford Escort
    4. '98 Subaru Legacy GT

    And now; the 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX.

    I managed to get quite the deal out of this car; and it makes for quite the story.

    So, I found this car on eBay …

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  52. My Bi-Annual Mac update

    I occasionally dabble in Mac, although I've never been a big fan. Of course, Apple had their Keynote w/ Steve Jobs today (which was followed by Chris and Sam on IRC) which announced a couple interesting products.

    If you're an Apple user, you might actually be interested in the new …

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  53. Jogging

    Nope; not a New Years Resolution as that would doom it to failure.

    I've been gradually starting this 'work out' routine (which should be called 'work in' as I haven't left my house yet) for the past 3 weeks starting out with just lifting weights twice a week. Of course …

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  54. site updates

    I recently upgraded both [NetMRG]'s and my own CVS repositories into subversion repositories. Everything seemed to go pretty smoothly. I setup ssh access for developers, and have both the webdav stuff setup for anonymous checkouts and the new ViewCVS setup for tree browsing. The only thing I recommend is …

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  55. Xbox Live!

    Oh; that's probably ™. Crap.

    Anyway, the Xbox is up at my house running EvoX and XBMC; and it seems to play my anime very well so far; and they look great! I need to try some higher-quality stuff (I have an HD-version of The Punisher), but so far it's really …

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  56. xbox mods'r'us

    This whole 'Xbox as DVR' thing has been a real nightmare. I expected it to be fairly easy to pick up a 3 year old gaming console after Christmas, but that wasn't the case. After looking everywhere to find one, I finally ordered an Xbox from Walmart.com. It came …

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  57. Happy New Year 2005

    Tiff and I spend the night at Lindsay and Kelly-Jo's place. We had a great time; it was nice just having a smaller group get together and hang out.

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