Toolbars

I don't really use any of the toolbars/desktop utilities that are out right now, I usually just google everything from the main page and all my popups are blocked thanks to Firefox. Now with everyone fighting for a place on your desktop and web browser with a search bar I may just have to try them out to see if any are of any use.

Microsoft
MSN Toolbar - I'm definitely not a windows guy but I'll still try this out to what it offers.
Microsoft Desktop - Oh wait.... that's built in, Let's see how it compares :)

Yahoo
Yahoo Toolbar - I think I've used this one before but I'll install it again
Yahoo Desktop - "Requires Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP 3+" .... yea, ok

Google
Google Toolbar - Just Google it
Google Desktop - Haven't tried this but I'll give it a shot

Network Administrator/Developer

That boy is in there!!!! :D

Network Administrator....... We'll see.....

Well I had an interview today that I can honestly say was pretty damn good, the job itself should be one great learning experience. Everything I could as for technically in a job is in this one, I was supposed to have a 2nd interview next week but the called me and asked me to come back tomorrow. So I hope all goes well :D If I get this job I'll definitely have more tech to talk about.

On the technology front I just started working with a guy on an EDI module for perl. Pretty much you'll be able to translate your documents from EDI to XML. That in itself may not seem like a big deal but it can become one when you start incorporating that functionality into open source translating software. Now there are some open source EDI translators out there that I would like to try out, with BIE being number one on my list and probably followed by OBOE or MEC Eagle.

Do it myself

With the recent layoffs on my job it kind of shook things into perspective for me. I was trying to leave my job for "better" opportunities working for an IT Staffing company as a consultant. The problem with that being that what I work on and how much I get paid for doing it is pretty much limited to the stuff that the recruiter finds. Seeing as the recruiter is being flaky already I've decided not to take my chances. I personally know that my skill level far exceeds my previous jobs or even my current job, I know that and alot of other people know that too. So why not just do it myself, I think it is something that should have been done and taken seriously awhile ago. There are so many things that are happening right now that are telling me that is the smart way to go.
Of course with all the ideas I have running around in my head things have to become more focused. Computer and Network consulting will definitely be the main focus, I'm trying to study constantly to get as many certifications under my belt. Along with that the real estate ventures will become a bigger player now because that's gonna be my retirement right there and how things are gonna get done in my life in the future. There are so many things that are going to branch off from both of those that I can't wait to see.

A New Year

Since I was questioned on the lack of content on my page :) I figured I should at least write something about what's going on with me and some techy stuff if I can think of anything.
I've resumed my CCNA studying pretty hard now and I hope to be 100% ready for the INTRO exam at least by Feb. 1st. There is a definite need for me to get all my skills in order because the helpdesk scene is not really my thing anymore. Don't get me wrong though because it sure pays the bills but I'm just not feeling it like I did when I first started. I hooked up with Robert Half so hopefully they'll locate some good stuff for me.
Still got some other projects going on the side, so we'll see what comes of those as well.

On the P2P front I haven't really been downloading anything lately but if I was I don't think Exeem is something I would be using. It was pretty much being touted as the new version of Suprnova.org pretty much with better everything wrapped into a nice gui package. It really seams as if they're just trying to make a buck with the inclusion of some known spyware into their app. I'll be getting back into the download mood again but I think I'll find another way to get my fix.

Vivitar Vivicam 3746

My girlfriend has a Vivitar Vivicam 3746 digital camera that I wasn't sure would work under Linux. I found out that it was a fairly simple process.

load the modules: modprobe modprobe usb-storage and modprobe sd_mod
mount the camera: mkdir /mnt/camera and mount -t msdos /dev/sda1 /mnt/camera

And that was pretty much it, I use Redhat 8 so I also created an icon and stuck it on the panel. So when she uses it she can just plug up the camera and hit an icon so she can access the pictures.

Something odd I just noticed is that her camera has the words in different places than the ones in the pictures that I have found. hmmm

Free Credit Reports (For Real)

Most people need to see to believe so let's get that out the way first. HERE

Well it seems under a new law we will be allowed 1 credit report from each of the 3 credit bureaus every year. It started Dec. 1st in the western states and the rollout across the country will begin on various dates. I check my credit report fairly regularly so this is great news.

Find out what your dog really thinks of you

Snatch up a dog translator and find out, it seems like something pretty cool to have but unfortunately my dog doesn't seem to want to bark.

Coming Along Nicely

Of course me being the person that I am I have various sites spread across multiple domains with many many different email addresses to my name. They all reflect a specific idea I had in my head at one time or another. Now I've finally managed to actually begin to develop something with a few of those ideas.
I've been interested in real estate investing for a few years now, but I've been reading so much books, acquiring so much information, and doing so much "stuff" that I haven't really really got started doing anything. I created The Creative Birddog in hopes of creating a community of people wanting to learn the ropes of birddogging and investing like The Creative Investor. Since I wanted to start with a community from the start I kind of got stalled in the development of it all.
I think I'm gonna go with a simpler idea for it all, I'm not experienced enough to create a community behind my knowledge of birddogging and real estate. I will say though that I have enough experience to share what I know, see , and will possibly deal with when doing it. If it can grow into a community from that then that's good and I would have the resources in the background to be able to expand. Here is a demo of what is to come DEMO SITE

'Brainwave' cap controls computer

I don't even know what to say about this, I've read the stories about the brain controlling the robotic arm but I guess I didn't really expect to see something like this right now. For the simple fact that it is just a cap that you can put on your head without any special implants or surgery is amazing. I think this has surpassed the feelings I had when I saw the story about Human Pacman. :)

Rasterize some images

I've always found those rasterized images pretty cool but I never got past the pretty cool feeling to actually find a way to do them myself. Well I stumbled upon The Rasterbator over at The Sect of Homokaasu and I'm very eager to try it out when I get home. The images that people have used to create their works look pretty good. I even know who I'm gonna rasterize first. :D

New Look

Well I'm trying to customize things a little bit, I figured I would learn a little bit of CSS and change things up. Everything is not totally valid CSS yet but I'm getting there, I looked at a lot of different things people have done with CSS and I was pretty impressed. I would definitely recommend CSS Zen Garden for ideas on what you can do.

Office Humor

Newspaper Cubicle This is what having too much time at work can lead to. This is what happened to a co-worker that happened to be off on the wrong day.

Excel password breaker

One of the things I can't stand at work is working on a spreadsheet that has a bunch of macros, gadgets, and all these functions but it seems to break and you can't fix it because it is password protected. Yea its probably there for good reason as to not have everyone messing around with how the sheet works. It becomes a pain to me when it prevents your team members from adding useful features that could possibly be useful, that just seems like someone ensuring job security to me. I guess I'm more of an open source person, I like to share the scripts I build with the team so they could add to them and make them better.... but that's a whole other story.

Anyhow, this is a macro for a password breaker in excel and there's nothing to pay for. Just cut and paste in to the macro editor and save. Voila!!! Then you can run the macro on any sheet you want to open.

35% of internet traffic from Bittorrent

I know I use bittorrent alot myself, I never knew that it could account for so much traffic though. Of course with so much traffic it is only a matter of time before lawsuits will start flying for users of this as well. Read the article over at the Wired.

Blast from the past....

This is something I wrote almost two years ago when I was first introduced to knoppix and I've pretty much still enjoyed ever since. I've now incorporated a few other live distros under my belt based off knoppix with WHoppix being the one that currently has my attention. But there's so much packed on to each one you use its kind of amazing that it is just running off a CD.

Subject: Knoppix reviewed
Sent: 01/09/03 12:50 PM EST
By: tj1037

If you have ever heard of Knoppix you know that it is getting great reviews from everyone. You can use it as a demo to introduce others to Linux , or use it help you rescue those broken windows boxes.

What is knoppix?
Before I get into why decided to download knoppix, I guess I can give some insight into what it is. This is the definition from the knoppix site:
KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it.

Getting & Installing Knoppix
There are a few different ways to get a hold of this distribution. The most obviouse of course for those with broadband would be to download it. Those who have dial-up and do not want to wait a couple days for it to download can purchase a copy from a list on the knoppix site. I downloaded my copy within about 2 hours, I burnt the .iso to CD and I was ready to go. Of course there`s really no installation ivolved seeing as the whole thing is on CD. So you only have to make sure you pop in the CD and restart the computer.

What do I do now?
After you restart your computer, you`re presented with a boot prompt. I read the help fle and found that knoppix lang=us would put me onto the english desktop, I also found that if you just leave it alone and let it do its thang you`ll get the same results. After that it goes through its configurations, autodetecting and autoconfiguring your devices on your machine. It bookts up into the KDE 3.0 desktop environment by default but if you read the cheatsheet you can figure out how to get Gnome or a different window manager if you like.

Need something to do
After booting into KDE, I was greeted by a very clean desktop. I was amazed by the great amount of software that came with knoppix, especially programs like The Gimp, OpenOffice, Bluefish HTML Editor, Ethereal...and a bunch of others. Everything runs at a decent speed but even better when you configure a swap partition on your hard drive. That`s right, did I mention it auto mounts your hard drive partitions, it even does NTFS. Your hard drive partitions however are configured as read-only by default, but a quick right click can change all of that...changing it from read-only to read and write. although it mounts ntfs so you can read, you`re not going to be able to write anything to it. I wanted to see if I could browse the internet. I have a network using DHCP so after checking everything in /etc/resolv.conf, I was ready to surf. There are a few plugins that you need to download to make sure you`re able to reach all your favorite sites.

Conclusion
Applications load up a little slower than usual, but thats to be expected for one its on a CD and two its compressed pretty well. I had a hard time printing, only because I selected the wrong driver. Other than that everything was great, an abundance of software, easy setup & configuration makes this a definite one to try. Best of all it does not interfere with your current system setup so when you`re done ..logout..take out the CD...reboot...and you`re back to your original setup. I have such a high opinion of it that I`m giving away CD`s to people I know. If you need a copy leave me a not or drop me an email and I`ll put one in the mail for you. So give it a try you`ll like it.


This review was brought to you by TJ on his new Knoppix CD using Mozilla

We Do Not Send Spam

I had a two hour long meeting today discussing the fact that we do not send spam and the new tool we have to filter spam out of customer accounts. So I can no longer tell a customer if they have spam in their account because technically I don't know. "Mrs. Johnson, I'm sorry to say that I really don't know what kind of messages you have in that account. I don't know what you would consider unsolicited or solicited email. For all I know you may be passing out viagra samples as christmas stocking stuffers."
Yea, I know that's extreme but I needed something to think about while sitting there while my brain started to numb. So if someone mentions the word spam then all kinds of red flags and lights will go off..... seriously, there's a red light that reacts to the word spam if said on the phone...... well ok, not seriously but it was a long meeting so I put that into my thoughts as well.

Got this from mikedup.net

Grab the nearest book.
Open the book to page 23.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal......along with these instructions.

:::

"Expectation is another powerful mental process that you can harness." from Using HTML 4, XML, and Java 1.2

How to never miss another episode of your fav show with BitTorrent and RSS

I think I can definitely say that I am a big fan of bittorrent, I hardly watch TV due to the fact that I don't have cable or satellite. (Probably due to the fact that I get everything from Suprnova) Anyways I use Azureus as my bittorrent client of choice and in while I was doing my daily searches today I came across a little article on how to get bittorrent to automatically download your shows from tvtorrents using RSS.

I haven't tried this yet since I'm still at work, but I will give it a try when I get home though. Also who says you have to use just tvtorrents, i bet you can find some suprnova rss feeds to throw in there.

The how-to:

1. You will need to use Azureus. It’s a pretty good BT client and I’d recommend using it anyway. It is a Java application and works on most platforms.
2. You will also need the RSS Import plugin for Azureus. Installing it is a matter of dragging the unzipped folder into the plugins folder in your Azureus directory and restarting Azureus.
3. In Azureus, go into the preferences and expand the plugins tab. Choose RSS Importer.
4. Check the Activate RSS Importer Plugin box.
5. Enter http://www.tvtorrents.net/rss.php as the RSS Channel to import. You can also enter http://www.btefnet.com/backend.php, each some shows that the other doesn’t.
6. In the next text box, Filter …, enter a regular expression that matches the name of torrent of the the show you want to download. A quick guide to the kinds of regular expressions that are expected here is provided on the RSS Import page. For The West Wing, for example, I put in west.wing.*hdtv — which means download any file that include the letters west, followed by any single character, followed by the letters wing, followed by any number of characters, followed by the letters hdtv, to make sure I get the HDTV version and not the VCD version. For multiple shows, separate them with a semi-colon, so west.wing.*hdtv;enterprise.*hdtv would download The West Wing and Enterprise.
7. Under Recheck channels… I would recommend putting in 60, so as not to bombard the TV Torrents server with more requests than necessary.
8. And you’re set. Don’t worry about the other options. Now you just have to wait for the next episode to air. You should have it in your downloads folder the next day.

The original howto is over at pealco.net

It always seems that while I'm at work that either me or the guy that works nights with me finds odd things on the net. Yesterdays installment of Matrix Ping Pong was courtesty of him, today as I looked through the list of weird flash movies I found Odd Todd . He has a bunch of funny cartoons to watch and what better way to kill time sitting at your desk at work. The one from the list that had me crying was "Seeing Jesus H. Christ". Here's another one about a worm I guess.

In case you were wondering I had to go to that specific list directory because the main page is blocked by our filtering software.