Category Archives: sysadmin notes

There is one feature I actually really do like in Vista, and I wish other environments implemented it as well. Guess what it is? Oh, right… The title of the post sort of gave it away, didn’t it? Yes, I … Continue reading →

Have you noticed how all prominent operating systems seem to bloat with each release? Windows is probably the best example, but even Ubuntu had slowly gained weight and become more of a resource hog over the years. It’s sad really. … Continue reading →

Did they name Ubunu 9.10 Karmic on purpose, and then had it ruin the lives of the wicked people? My upgrade was an absolute train wreck. I spent my whole afternoon, and evening fixing it, and managed to accidentally delete … Continue reading →

My work laptop is a little bit on the heavy side. It works well as a desktop replacement which is how I use it these days. I hardly ever use it without an external monitor mouse and keyboard. I’m actually … Continue reading →

Here is a nifty trick I learned today: remotely renaming computers joined to a windows domain. Yes, yes – it seems trivial, but if you have ever considered doing it, you would quickly notice that there is no option for … Continue reading →

The other day, I found myself behind a fairly draconian firewall. There are really two philosophies when setting up a corporate network. One is to block everything inbound while allowing everything outbound. The other one is just to block everything … Continue reading →

I am a software developer by trade and a linux geek by calling so it is not surprising that my family assumes I am the person to call for technical support on their Windows box. Just the other day I … Continue reading →

The more I use Vista the uglier it gets. I swear, I can’t figure out what the hell were they were smoking at Microsoft when they decided this product was ready for production. I swear, Vista has been a bigger … Continue reading →

If you are a glutton for punishment and you enjoy pain, despair, hair pulling and cursing at tech support people try this for size: Brand spanking new Dell XPS 630i Vista Home Premium OEM 64 Bit nVidia nForce 10/100/1000 MBps … Continue reading →

As you may or may not have heard, I finally got myself a new computer. I’ve been tweeting about it for the past few days, but if you don’t follow me on Twitter or you are not my friend on … Continue reading →

I get a lot of requests from friends, family and friends of family for MS Windows support – most notably malware removal. You see, I’m a software developer and a Linux user and that somehow qualifies me for this type … Continue reading →

Here is a well known fact – windows crufts itself over time. When you do a fresh installation it runs like a dream. Then it deteriorates. Even if you take a good care of your machine – you keep it … Continue reading →

Lion share of my writing here gets done on the weekends. Some are better than others in terms of productivity. If I can knock out 4 articles during those 2 days it really takes a load off my mind. I … Continue reading →

My ancient Compaq Presario is gone. You know which one I’m talking about, right? It was the machine that used to run the Nethack server and then was turned into a very lightweight laptop running Hardy with Ratpoison. Well, it … Continue reading →

As you may know, I’m a big fan of virtualization. At work, whenever I need to use Windows only applications, I fire up Virtual Box which is running an instance of Windows XP. A virtual machine like that covers pretty … Continue reading →

I think it’s time to produce some linkable content up in here. I noticed that most of my posts lately have been esoteric rants, reviews of old games and movies and random stuff that has little significance to people other … Continue reading →

As you may recall, I’m a big fan of split keyboards. In general, I believe that if you are the type of person who spends most of their life in front of a computer, you ought to invest in high … Continue reading →

I was going through my Google Reader recently and I saw this post about workspaces and started thinking. Didn’t I do a post like that before? I mean, I probably had to, right? Out of all the topics out there, … Continue reading →

Ah the joys of IT work. They never end. Even if you want them too. Even if you pray that they stop, they chase and hunt you down and make you fix stuff. Today I solved the case of a … Continue reading →

I hardly ever use the touchpad on my laptop. At work, my morning routine is plugging in my external monitor, ethernet cable and the USB hub into the back of my machine. Yes, I could get a docking station but … Continue reading →

If you haven’t heard about Dropbox you have probably been living under a rock for the last month or two. It is the latest and the greatest file syncing project out there. I usually describe it to people as a … Continue reading →

I run into an interesting networking problem recently. My company is testing a hosted VoIP solution from Packet8. I don’t think I have ever mentioned our adventures with the PhonePeople™ as we call them around the office. This is probably … Continue reading →

This has been driving me nuts since I have upgraded to Firefox 3.0.1 on my laptop like a month ago. I’m still running Gutsy on that thing, and only the beta version (which crashes a lot) is in the repositories. … Continue reading →

Apparently there is something to be said about short blog posts. Allegedly I tend to get long winded sometimes and my posts can run a tad verbose sometimes. I usually tell people to STFU and go read Steve Yegge if … Continue reading →

I just figured out how to create an installation package in any of the popular formats (deb, rpm, etc..) in under 30 seconds. This method is probably not something you’d want to use for a serious project, but it is … Continue reading →