Dave’s blog

I’m a big iTunes / ITMS fan, but I just have to say that I really wish the My Ratings thing differentiated between “not rated” and “i hate this song”. 1 star is too much sometimes.

The other day I ordered a bluetooth headset - a Plantronics Voyager 510. I plan on using it with Skype, and theoretically if I ever get a new phone, with that. My initial experience was confounded by the crappy MS bluetooth driver, which doesn’t actually support the ‘headset’ service. Quite fantastically, you […]

I’m totally impressed with Apple. After calling them on Friday (when I was on hold for approximately 5 minutes, total), I had my box to send my laptop to them by Monday. I called DHL Monday and had them pick it up later in the day, Apple received it Tuesday, fix it, and […]

Lately I’ve been playing around with the Spread Toolkit, and I gotta say, its cool and fun.
I got started on this because at my day job, we use spread to collect the error log from our web cluster onto the machine we regularly log into to do our dev work. This gives you a […]

Today one of GeekISP mail servers was listed in the SpamCop blacklist for hitting a spam trap. I learned quickly that for all SpamCop has done for good, it can be a huge problem as well.
For those not familiar with SpamCop, they are an anti-spam web service dating to around 1998. They offer […]

I recently became aware of an interesting fact about RAID controllers - specifically the ones that come with the option for battery backup units.
This probably comes as no shock to the reader familiar with high end RAID components, but it was to me. Anyway, it turns out that without a battery backup unit on […]

Yesterday I spent a ridiculously long time working on upgrading the network at my parents’ house. Something like 6.5 hours - insane! Let’s look at a rough catalogue of events (all times are end-times, except the first) :

Leave NYC - depart @ 12:45pm
Arrive at Microcenter, buy wireless router, head back to Merrick […]

One small thing I neglected to mention in my previous post - I think I am mostly done with building my own computers from scratch. I always seem to fuck something up along the way, and I’m sick of it. I’d rather pay someone who is very good to put in good parts […]

Timing really is everything, and the timing of placing my order for a new desktop PC was superb.
Not only was I excited about this system, since it would be faster (3.0 ghz P-something), but I’m moving on from a shitty, cheap on-motherboard raid controller to a real controller. I’ll include the full machine specs […]

So far, I’ve managed to do the following:

Install a HiFN card.
Remove critical system files from a machine about to enter production.
Nearly wipe out my home computer.

I just need to spill my coffee on the open Soekris on my desk, and then I’ll be set!
Update: It’s been a long day, but I’ve now got my Soekris […]