http://www.szczerba.net Tech stuff, on the job and at home Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:24:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A man in Topeka , Kansas decided to write a book about Churches around the country. He started by flying to San Francisco and started working east from there. Going to a very large church, he began taking photographs and making notes. He spotted a golden telephone on the vestibule wall ... http://www.szczerba.net/2007-11-15/10000-per-minute-phone/ I finally got around to fixing the Vertigo theme to include a random quote in the sidebar. While I was at it I opened up the layout a bit, making it easier to read code snippets and such in the main text. The newspaper-style narrow column layout is great for ... http://www.szczerba.net/2007-09-21/quotes-are-back/ I've been struggling for a while trying to get udev to maintain device names for vmxnet devices when running in a virtual machine. Well, I finally figured it out. The 75-persistent-net-generator.rules script in Gentoo was making rules that looked like: SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="00:0c:29:0b:02:d2", NAME="eth0" These seemed to be silently ignored. After an emerge ... http://www.szczerba.net/2007-09-16/vmware-network-devices-and-udev/ My desktop PC's power supply blew up (literally) a few days ago. The family was unwilling to wait for the RMA process, so this gave a good excuse to upgrade (which, of course, I've been itching to do anyway). Of course, the new machine came with Vista, which actually runs fairly ... http://www.szczerba.net/2007-09-08/moving-to-vista/ Cool video by my boss and his daughter. Making an Earth Sandwich during his recent trip to China. http://www.szczerba.net/2007-05-09/earth-sandwich/ New look, new purpose.... Susan wasn't really updating the old site, and I was reluctant to geek it out too much given it was supposed to be for the whole family. Well, she took off the family site, so now it's mine!!! So, new (sucky, but best I could do on ... http://www.szczerba.net/2007-01-13/site-update/ So I decided it was time to upgrade to a big, fast SATA hard drive. I found a good deal at CompUSA on a 500 GB Western Digital SATA-2 drive to replace my aging 160 GB ATA-100. I've been through this process many, many times since I got my first ... http://www.szczerba.net/2007-01-12/hard-drive-hell/ There is coverage of the BomBot in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:   V.W.H. Campbell Jr., Post-Gazette A BomBot closes in on a mock improvised explosive device during a demonstration yesterday in Fairmont, W.Va. Click photo for larger image. Zipping over the pavement on saucer-sized black wheels, the remote-controlled truck at first glance appears ... http://www.szczerba.net/2006-04-21/bombot-in-the-press/ If you are looking for a great web host, 1&1 is an excellent choice. Service and support is excellent, and you can't get even cut-rate service much cheaper. Packages start from $2.99/month, including domain registration. Use the link above or click the banner in the sidebar to let them know you ... http://www.szczerba.net/2006-04-02/great-webhosting/ I just came across this story on Defense Industry Daily about the Bombot. This robot was the primary design target for the GC-205, one of the projects I've been working on at Nomadio for the past year or so. When I get some pictures of these things in-theatre I'll post them here. http://www.szczerba.net/2006-03-07/bombot-ready-to-go/