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Article posted on Aug 29

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 29, 2005, 4:25 pm

(fo0bar is gone for the day. In his place is fo0bar's evil twin, who makes angst-filled posts at a rapid rate. Regular fo0bar programming will return tomorrow. Thank you.)

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Article posted on Aug 29

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 29, 2005, 4:21 pm

My gigabit gear arrived today, including 3 Zonet ZEN3300E gigabit NICs. The package came with the card, a product sheet, and a FLOPPY DRIVER DISK. Who still uses floppy? For that matter, why bother giving driver disks at all?

"Need drivers? Just download them for god sakes."

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Article posted on Aug 29

I have a confession to make

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 29, 2005, 4:16 pm

IMHO, cheese and peanut butter together are just about as disgusting as you can get. Those little wrapped cheese-flavored-cracker sandwiches with peanut butter filling? Ick.

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Article posted on Aug 29

Random stuff

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 29, 2005, 12:04 am

Read the rest of this entry »

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Article posted on Aug 26

Warning: fanboy ad ahead

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 26, 2005, 11:16 pm

I have to admit it: I love eMachines. The name used to synonymous with "utter crap", but a couple years ago, they brought in a new CEO who said "OK, we make shit, let's change that". Since then, they've made decent computers using off-the-shelf components at prices that are much lower than anything you could get from another manufacturer (and sometimes, lower than it would cost to build yourself). Over the years, I have bought these boxes from eMachines (I'm too lazy to look up the model numbers):

* AthlonXP 2000+, 256MB, 80GB, DVD/CDRW - $500 in early 2003 - Currently my media center PC.
* Athlon64 3200+, 512MB, 160GB, DVD/CDRW - $1100 in late 2003 - This was the T6000, the first mass-marketed Athlon64 desktop system, and cost MUCH less than it would have taken to build your own. They probably took a decent loss on each one just for the "we did it first" factor. It also had a kickass video card for that time, a Radeon 9600 pro. My parents have this one now.
* Athlon64 3400+, 1GB, 200GB, DVD+-RW/DL/CDRW - $600 in June 2005 - This one has an onboard Radeon XPress 200, which is quite bland, but at least has an available PCI express slot. What was odd was that it came with WinXP Media Center Edition, even though it didn't come with a TV card or remote.
* Athlon64 3200+, 512MB, 160GB, DVD+-RW/DL/CDRW - $500 this month - Purchased by work, same motherboard, just with slightly lower specs across the board.

My biggest gripe so far is that their web site SUCKS. Their info pages only list the last 2 or 3 models (even though more are available on the store shelves), they don't even mention that they sell laptops (which I've heard are good), and the support site doesn't have drivers available (which is annoying, but at least all the components are standard, so you can find drivers on the manufacturer's web sites).

Another odd thing is that the computer does not come with a restore disc. Instead, when you first boot the computer, it makes you burn the restore image onto 1 DVD or 4 CDs (which are provided). This makes sense, however, when you consider eMachines comes out with new models faster than some people change underwear, and it would cost a lot more to press CDs every time a new model came out than to just give blank media to the consumer and have them do it for you.

I've never had a problem with this before, but when I did it on the latest machine at work before I wiped it to put XP Pro on it (we have a windows domain, which you can't associate an XP Home machine to), I noticed that the burned DVD appeared blank. Of course I noticed this after the machine (and restore partition) was wiped. No problem, I could get the drivers from the various websites, but my boss thought this would be a good opportunity to see how their tech support is.

I called up the support number, went through a couple menus, and ended up in the general purpose support queue (oh boy, time to wait an hour). I was suprised to hear "Thank you for holding, My name is Bob, ID 12345. I notice you have been on hold 25 seconds. How can I help you?" Wow.

I explained my situation, which he understood, and he told me that can ship replacement recovery media to me. Normally it's a $20 charge (which really I would accept, since I should have checked the media before I wiped the drive 10 minutes after I bought it), but since it sounded like the software somehow screwed up, he would ship it out for free. It took him about 5 minutes to fill out the various paperwork, during which time we discussed the intricacies of bulk RAM pricing. A knowledgeable tech support guy, wow. And at the end, I was about to ask him for his name again (since I never get around to writing it down during support calls), when he said "OK, we're just about done. Your case number is 11111, and once again, my name is Bob, ID 12345."

Dell, you could learn a lesson from these guys, Mr. I-need-you-to-run-some-stupid-diagnostic-utility-to-confirm-that-your-IBM-Deathstar-75GXP-is-actually-dead.

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Article posted on Aug 25

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 25, 2005, 3:02 pm

Oh newegg, why must your SSL site suck so much? I can browse around the site just fine, but whenever I add to cart or checkout or whatnot, there is a good chance I get a timeout waiting for a return.

It's probably load related, since it doesn't seem as bad at night.

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Article posted on Aug 24

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 24, 2005, 12:09 am

While us normal people look for porn on the intarnut, logic finds british sex ed flash animations. I think with this one find, she pretty much trumps everything in my secret extensive URL collection.

<fo0bar> that movie is... umm...
<logic> fucking awesome?
<fo0bar> ... sure

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Article posted on Aug 19

I have emo on my TV!

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 19, 2005, 11:13 pm

I got xscreensaver enabled on my freevo box, with the ljlatest script feeding it into phosphor. The results are amusing, but depressing at the same time.

Also of interest is the cannibalized laptop on top of the speaker system. The motherboard kept frying video cards (these lines of dell laptops have video cards as a separate daughterboard), so I removed the monitor and keyboard (both of which will work on my current laptop if needed), and put it to work as a router. It's quiet (which is nice for the living room, as the only cable modem outlet in the apartment is in the living room) and gets the job done.

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Article posted on Aug 11

The incredible edible qmail toaster

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 11, 2005, 10:12 pm

qmail
magic-smtpd
qmail-scanner
clamav
spamassassin
vpopmail
qmailadmin
vqadmin
bincimap
squirrelmail

Ugh. And much of this crap isn't available in the debian tree. At least they're easy to install, if time consuming.

And to anticipate replies to this post, I'll just say "ha ha <any package I mentioned above>"

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Article posted on Aug 9

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 9, 2005, 3:38 pm

I want.

Sadly, it seems that they are not being sold yet. Hell, Supermicro's (upcoming) line of AMD products aren't even linked to on their main page.

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