Okay, that’s not exactly true: we got our internet service back at work around 3:30pm or so. But that still means we spent the better part of a day without. The problem, as it turned out, was a dead SAS unit. (I have no idea what “SAS” actually stands for; it’s basically like a cable… Continue reading Still no internet at work
Category: Computers
Sucks when there’s no internet
At work, that is. Our internet connection was down the entire day. And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it except wait for the tech from OneEighty Networks (née HighSpeed Communications née EmpireNet) to try to fix it. With no luck. The problem? Well, for starters we have OneEighty’s goofy LMDS “wireless broadband”… Continue reading Sucks when there’s no internet
20 questions
Okay, so I must be easily impressed. From this post on Boing Boing I found the 20Q.net site and began trying to stump the system. I can’t do it. No wonder; the guy that created the neural net (a type of artificial intelligence software) started it back in 1988, and it’s been “learning” ever since,… Continue reading 20 questions
Bend Bulletin article: Tech Town
The Bend Bulletin (our local newspaper) has an interesting article online today: Tech Town, a profile of the local computer/tech industry and how it’s pulling “young, technically savvy people” to the area. The conventional wisdom is that Bend is a great place to retire, but increasingly it is a great place for young, technically savvy… Continue reading Bend Bulletin article: Tech Town
Globe
Today at work my friend Kerry and I were talking about geography and globes, which was prompted by the Yahooligans Where in the World is? game (where you see if you know your world geography), and came up with what I think would be the perfect globe: an interactive one whose outer surface is a… Continue reading Globe
PHP on .NET
Jeff Sandquist has a pointer to a video interview with two programmers that are writing a PHP compiler for Microsoft’s .NET Framework. The name of their project is Phalanger. That’s cool, I guess, if you don’t mind working in .NET. I’ve been thinking for awhile that I wouldn’t mind a PHP compiler that would create… Continue reading PHP on .NET
Emachine freezing
Okay, this is fun. Our two-year old eMachine keeps periodically freezing up, typically at least once a day or more, and I was hoping someone might have some ideas as to what to do about it or what’s causing it. I can’t seem to ferret out the problem, but it often seems to freeze when… Continue reading Emachine freezing
PHP Suggest
Over on php.net, they announced a full implementation of a search field suggestion box: The function list suggestions we started to test a year ago seemed to be working better as some bugs were found and fixed, so it was time to make the result available on all php.net pages. Whenever you type something… Continue reading PHP Suggest
Crappy tech service
Don’t bother buying a Brother printer. I helped to set up a new one today and, get this, it didn’t come with any type of interface cable. No USB, no parallel cable, nothing. It even says so on the quickstart instructions. WTF? Is that stupid or what? Speaking of stupid, or perhaps just stubborn, AOL… Continue reading Crappy tech service
PHP code rant
This is a mini-rant on PHP that can be safely avoided by non geek types. This post over on PHP Everywhere caught my attention, vis-a-vis programming semantics and practice. Basically, inside a switch statement, someone placed the default block before the case blocks and was surprised when that default condition executed, and the “expected” case… Continue reading PHP code rant