mashby

I have been wanting to video conference as long as I can remember. Maybe it was the video phones from the Bond movies, but I’ve always thought that video connections were cool. I dreamed of the day that I could pick up a phone and actually see the person I was talking to. When broadband Internet finally landed a few years back, I was hoping that my fantasies of being able to talk to friends via the web would finally be realized. Unfortunately, I never found a solution that worked well, but a friend of mine may have found the holy grail of web video.

I have tried just about every video software out there. Microsoft’s NetMeeting, CUSeeMe, Yahoo’s SuperWebCam and everything in between. Could I see video? Sure, but the experience wasn’t great and adding audio to the mix didn’t make things any better. For my web site, I opted for a simple snapshot program that uploads a photos once every minute. You can see it on the webcam page.

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This year has been the worst year for SPAM. I have been under a deluge of SPAM this year like you wouldn’t believe. I’m talking hundreds of e-mail a day pouring into my in boxes to the point that using my e-mail was next to impossible. You may be saying to yourself, “Just delete them, that’s what I do”, and believe me I tried. But when I’m getting 500 a day it’s just too much to handle. Even if you’re just deleting them, you still have to scan the title and address to see if it’s someone you know. When the Sobig virus hit this summer, I got so many virus e-mails and so many false positive replies from servers that I threw up my hands and said uncle! 😐

From everything I heard and read, SpamAssassin is the best server-side solution out there. Although it may be great, I haven’t yet figured out all there is to install and configure it. I’m working on it, but I’m just not there yet and I needed something NOW. I tried a couple of programs, including Ella for Microsoft Outlook, but none of them worked that well and most needed training. What I really wanted was SpamAssassin for the desktop and lucky for me I found it.

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Back on the 18th of this month, I wrote about what a sad shape my computers were in. One of the things I did on that day to try and rectify some of the problems was to wipe out my laptop and re-install Windows XP Professional. While reformating the drive, I split it into two partitions so that I could install the Red Hat 9 distribution of Linux on one partition and Windows on another. For the past few weeks, I’ve installed Red Hat, configured it some and been working on it when I can. There hasn’t been a lot of time to work on it with my deluge at work, but I’ve squeezed in a little time here and there. Here’s a little run down of my experience thus far.

The Install
The installation was pretty straightforward. I installed Windows XP on the first partition and after that was all said and done, I downloaded the latest build from the Red Hat ftp server for version 9. After the download, I then burned the ISO format files to three CDs. I installed the first CD, turned on the laptop and Red Hat began installing. The prompts were simple and straight forward and in no time, I had Red Hat 9 installed.

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A while back I wrote about how I was fighting an urge to switch to Mac OS X. At the end of the post I concluded that it would be best if I moved Holly to a mac first, since her needs were less than mine. She was using a salvage PC running Windows98 and complained of it crashing all the time, so it was time to do something.

Over the weekend, I rearranged the office to put the original Bondi Blue iMac in place of what she had. Once everything was plugged in, my first task was to get her e-mail up and running and her address book moved. The built-in Mail and Address book applications were a piece of cake to work with. Although somewhat basic, they really do everything that she needs. The one hurdle I ran into though was that I had zero options in terms of trying to import her information. She was running Outlook on the PC and I tried everything I could think of to move things over, but to no avail. Continue Reading

There is an old saying that cobblers children have no shoes. That holds true for just about any profession, including Information Technology. I have a lot of computers in my office, but they don’t all work properly, yet my client’s computers all work like a charm. This saying came to the forefront of my mind yesterday as I hacked my way through the computer disfunction in my office.

For starters, my wife needed to print something out and lo and behold something was screwed up on her machine and Office needed the CD in order to launch Word. I don’t know where my CD is at the moment, so she was screwed. While she was waiting for me to print what she needed, she made the comment that she often stays late at work because she hates using her computer at home. I can’t think of anything more awful for a computer geek to hear than that. Granted her PC was made from extra parts I had lying around and doesn’t even sport a cover. It’s just raw metal and wires, but still…

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At least once a year I go through a phase where I get sick of Windows and Microsoft and have the urge to move to another operating system. Thanks to Mike Rohde’s article entitled Happy Mac OS X User, I’ve thinking about switching again. Let’s face it, Apple makes some great looking gear and I haven’t met a geek yet that didn’t drool over some piece of Mac hardware. So I’ve entered that phase again of looking to make the switch, but I have to ask myself if it’s worth it. Am I mac enough? 😉

The first stop on this technology journey was to visit the Apple Web Site to see just how much the hardware was going to cost. Apple does have some low end machines that might help me ease into the Mac world, such as the eMac, but I like to think of myself as a power user. That makes the G5 my only option, which starts at $2000. These prices are not that far off from what you might find a Windows machine for, but I don’t usually buy off the rack. For the last 6 or so years, I’ve always custom built my PC. I buy the parts that I want from discount online retailers and assemble the machine myself. When I upgrade, I salvage the parts from the old machine and purchase upgrades as needed. This allows me to upgrade for about $500. So the idea of having to pay full pop for a machine is a bit of a change for me. Why not just build my own Mac then? Well, I can’t. Apple won’t let me.

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It’s only natural that once you become familiar with something, you tend to get comfortable. When your comfortable with something you expect it to act a certain way and you get a bit complacent. That’s how I would describe my attitude towards PhotoShop.