X-Geek

Extreme geekiness

There are 700 posts filed in X-Geek (this is page 64 of 70).

The Last Run of the Norfolk and Western 611

When the kids see me at the computer, they like to ask to see a train video. Today I decided to find a video of a steam train. That’s when I found clips from the last steam run Norfolk Southern ever made: the Norfolk and Western 611 excursion train making its last run to its final resting place in Roanoke, Virginia in 1994. I wish I had known about it then.

Take a look at these clips on YouTube. Hear that steam whistle? Haunting, isn’t it? I can imagine what it must have been like in the 1950’s, lying awake on a rainy night and hearing that lonely whistle sounding across the dark landscape. That whistle has soul. No diesel’s air horn will ever sound like that.

The 611 was well-prepared for its retirement by its Norfolk Southern crews. It is now on display at the Virginia Museum of Transportation. Just last month it was rolled out of the roundhouse, still looking ready to go.

I’ve got to visit the 611 the next time I’m in Roanoke!

AT&T DSL for $10/month!

BoingBoing pointed out the secret deal where one can get DSL service from AT&T for $10/month.

BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow says AT&T is evil and doesn’t deserve your business. I say that’s precisely the reason everyone should sign up. At $10/month, AT&T must surely lose money on every line. Therefore, sign up as many of your friends and family as you can!

The Consumerist: AT&T’s Secret $10 DSL
Bellsouth: Bellsouth FastAccess DSL Term Agreement Plans Available

Pulling Cable

Spent the afternoon and evening yesterday pulling cable under the house. I was surprised to see only one dead mouse under there. It had long ago stopped smelling, so I ignored it in favor of getting my wiring job done.

I pulled four ethernet drops and two coaxial drops to split between the den and the playroom. When I goofed up and didn’t properly locate the spot where they would go, I enlisted Kelly to help me run additional cable. Had I not made that mistake I could have shaved two hours off my job. D’oh! There is truth in the old adage: measure twice, cut once!

At lunch I will put connectors on the garage ends and then the jacks will go live. Hooray!

Themin’

So, this default theme leaves something to be desired, eh. Y’all got any suggestions for a new MT.Net theme?

Linux Training

During my SE work, one thing I ran into a lot is the need for Linux training. I’ve visited a lot of companies that have no staff trained in Linux. I’ve also heard that the main reason certain companies don’t use Linux is the lack of trained staff. Some people seem downright afraid of it, which is really unfounded as I consider Linux to be as easy to use as Windows, once you learn the subtle differences at least.

I know Linux well and I’ve got plenty of training experience. I love to conduct training: its one of the highlights of my day job. I’ve been wondering if a business offering Linux training for newbies might be self-sustaining. It’s certainly worth exploring.

bplog to WordPress SQL Script

Okay, calling it a script is a bit of a stretch. Just one SQL statement, really. 🙂

Bplog is a bare-bones blog app. There are only three tables in its database, so migrating it was relatively simple.

I used the following INSERT statement to move values from one to the other. The nested REPLACE statements are ugly, yes. If I was more enterprising, I’d trade them for multiple UPDATE … REPLACE statements at the bottom of a SQL script. I just went with what I could get working the quickest.
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OpenVPN bliss

Since I’ve been on the road this week, I set up OpenVPN on my Ubuntu laptop to ease the process of connecting to home. Boy, why didn’t I do this sooner? It’s so nice to easily access all of my home machines without adding more SSH tunnels. The OpenVPN-protected connections are quicker to connect than the SSH tunnels, too.

Geeky stuff like this makes me feel like a Linux stud. Yeah, boyeeee!

Happy Summer Solstice!

Today is the northern solstice (or summer solstice in the northern hemisphere), the farthest point of the sun’s journey across the sky. We now start the slow decline of daylight hours until the winter solstice.

I think I’ll have two beers this evening, in honor of the longest day of the year!

How To Create Groups in OS X?

A question for all your OS X/UNIX geeks:

I had to create a new group on Kelly’s Mac so that she could write to an NFS share. After poking around NetInfo, I created a group I thought would work but the group didn’t show up on Kelly’s group list. Finally, I duplicated an existing group and changed the values accordingly. That seemed to work.

How does one add users to a group using NetInfo? I can’t figure out how to get the user list to show multiple entries.