Ramblings from the Marginalized

I am still having a few minor issues getting used to the smaller keyboard. I also have not installed Open Office yet so I am instead taking advantage of the installed copy of Word. I’m not sure how long Word will continue to work for me because every time I start Word it asks me for a registration key. I’m sure the key is in my documentation but I’m simply too lazy to look for it right now.
Since Word is currently working well enough for me (even though I have no idea where any of the tools are) I’m going to go ahead and write up the next few posts using Word.

In fact, while preparing to write this particular post I was clicking on the “New Document” option when I saw an option to create a new “blog post”. I did not know that Word had added some blogging tools.
I started to use the tool but stopped when it started asking me about how to publish the post. I’m not connected 24/7 to the Internet with this little machine so I do most of my work offline. Because of this I’ll be writing my posts offline and then copying them to the blog later.

Battery life has been decent. I have the three cell battery and it appears to last about 2.5 – 3 hours on a full charge with the wireless turned on. In fact I just reached in front and hit the wireless switch while checking on the estimated battery life:

Wi-Fi on = 2:46 hours / 95%
Wi-Fi off = 3:47 hours / 94%

When using the front mounted switch to turn the Wi-Fi on and off a one line message in green appears at the bottom of the screen. This message can be hard to read because it is displayed right above the status bar on XP.

Another thing I have noticed (now that I have had a chance to use this machine somewhere quiet) is the fan noise. It’s not as loud as the fan on a full size laptop but it does generate a low level buzzing noise. It almost sounds like the hard drive is doing something but it is the fan. I’m not sure if the fan is monitoring the CPU temp or if it just runs all the time.

I have also been having a few issues with selecting text using the mouse pad. I normally turn off the tap feature on a touch pad but I’m leaving it on for ease of use issues. The placement of the mouse buttons to the left and right of the touch pad are taking some getting used to.

That’s all I have for today.

• Windows 7 + AOA Fan = Ear Damage
• Windows 7 beta on the Acer Aspire One
• Wal-Mart reveals their (pre)Black Friday deals
• Netbook Review: Acer Aspire One
• Windows 7 beta + NetFlix = FAIL

Believe it or not I am currently writing this article on an Acer Aspire One netbook. I picked it up today because sometimes I just don't want to lug around a full size laptop. I know that might seem hard to believe but it is true.

The first thing that you have to get used to with a netbook is the smaller keyboard. When reaching for the backspace key I often find myself hitting the +/= key instead. It's not a major issue but the keyboard does take some getting used to. It is also important to note that some keys are merged and accessible via the Fn button. These are yes most people do not use so it's not much of an issue unless you do a lot of writing (the Home and End keys require the Fn button).

The mouse pad on this machine has a multi-touch function though I have not experimented all that much with it. When I did fool around with it I was writing this article and caused the font size to grow and shrink based on my finger movements. The right and bottom areas of the mouse pad function as scroll sliders so you can easily scroll up/down or left/right with the mouse pad.

The mouse pad also has two buttons that are on opposing sides of the pad area. These function as left and right buttons but are a little bit on the difficult side as far as getting used to. I'm so used to hitting the buttons with my thumb on my laptop that hitting these two recessed buttons will take some time to adjust to.

When it comes to networking this little machine has both a wired jack on the side and built-in wireless 802.11 b/g. A small switch on the front right side of the machine allows you to quickly turn the wireless off so as to conserve battery life and to allow you to get some work done. Seeing as how this is a netbook one might wonder why you would want to disconnect yourself from the network but I can tell you from personal experience that there are always times when you want to shut it off, even if only to conserve power.

As for general specs I'll run them down quickly:

Intel Atom CPU N270
8.9" CrystalBrite WSVGA LCD (8MB Video RAM)
1 GB DDR2 RAM
160GB 5400RPM SATA drive
2 SD card multi readers
Web Cam
Windows XP Home ULCPC edition

Not too bad for a machine that retails for about $299.

All ports are on the sides of the machine and there are four LEDs on the main body right below the monitor. These LEDS are the generic ones you find on most laptops.

I find the screen to be very crisp at its native 1024x600 resolution. Most websites are handled well and the only real difference from this screen and most other screens is that you do not have the same amount of height at similar width settings. My previous machine would run at 1024x768 and the 168 pixel differences is not a major issue. This is due in part to the fact that most web designers concern them selves with width and not height.

There are some issues with the smoothness of moving a window around the screen but nothing to concern yourself with.

This particular model came with a 3 cell battery that lasts about 2.5 hours. You may be able to stretch or shrink that time depending on whether or not you use the built-in wireless and other issues.

All in all I consider this to be a very nice portable machine for casual use. I can bring this to meetings to take notes or even use it while in the passenger seat of a car or while on a train. It is very small and very light. It does not have the power features of a full size machine but if you are buying a netbook you are not buying it to be your main machine. The hard part will be keeping my daughter off of it!

• Windows 7 + AOA Fan = Ear Damage
• Windows 7 beta on the Acer Aspire One
• Windows 7 beta + NetFlix = FAIL
• Wal-Mart reveals their (pre)Black Friday deals
• Hasta la VISTA, baby!

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OutSystems:

NEWS FACTS
• OutSystems®, provider of the industry leading Agile Platform, today announced that the OutSystems Agile Platform is a winner of the Jolt Productivity Award in the Enterprise Tools category presented by Dr. Dobb’s during their 19th Annual awards ceremony.
• The Agile Platform is the first unified solution based on Agile methodologies to address the full life cycle of delivering and managing web business applications. Companies use the Agile Platform to integrate, assemble, deploy and manage applications on-time and on-budget — delivering business value within weeks versus months or years.
• A Jolt Award is the “Oscar of our industry” because they recognize the most innovative, trend-making, ahead-of-the-curve products available today. The Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards are presented annually to products that have “jolted” the industry with their significance and made the task of creating software faster, easier and more efficient.
• The Jolt Award winners are chosen by a team of esteemed editors, columnists and industry gurus who provide insight into the latest and most promising industry trends and define which software development products are ahead of the curve.

Supporting Quotes
• “OutSystems was already deeply honored to compete with an amazing group of peers, and we are thrilled to receive the Jolt Productivity award in the Enterprise Tools category — a prestigious award that is renowned throughout the industry,” said Mike Jones, VP Marketing, OutSystems. “OutSystems is dedicated to equipping organizations with the tools they need to lower costs, while enhancing the creation and delivery of web business applications using agile methods. This Jolt Productivity Award is a true testament to the achievement of these goals.”

Comments

Jolt award? I honestly did not know these existed and I was equally surprised to find out that this is the 19th Annual Jolt Product Excellence Awards! When I think of Jolt cola I think back to my high school days and drinking the nastiest tasting soda on the market because of their tag line, "all the sugar and twice the caffeine!" Yup, we used to buy the big two liter bottles in bulk for our all0night gaming sessions. Yes, I was (and to some degree still am) a gaming geek.

After doing a little bit of research I have found that the Jolt Cola company has gone through a lot of changes since I was a kid. For one thing they dropped sugar and use high fructose corn syrup in their drinks now.

They were one of the first "energy drink soda" makers in the market but are now fighting off a myriad of competitors, the most famous of which is Red Bull. As recently as six months ago I purchased one of those "battery" cans of Jolt and I have to say that the berry flavor is in the right can because it tasted about as heinous as something that would come out of a battery.

I'll treasure my wasted days of youth chugging down Jolt by the liter but I wont be giving up my Red Bull any time soon.

• Quartile wins Major fun award!
• Blogger’s Choice Awards is a PPP scam.
• Playing Without Achievements
• Dell + Blizzard = WOW Laptop?
• Pokemon Tournament in New Milford CT?

Australia is an incredibly diverse and beautiful country, and it has its foot firmly placed in the 21st century when it comes to broadband internet services. The country`s largest telecoms company, Telstra, owns the majority of the land line networks, though there are other companies who help to keep the market competitive, and competition from fibre optic cable broadband services and 3G Mobile Broadband are also beginning to take hold. Because Australia is a large country with a diffuse, small population there is still a modest base of users who connect to the internet using dial up, though roughly two thirds of the population have access to a broadband internet connection. Another symptom of Australia`s population and their position on the globe is that often the price of broadband internet based on the monthly data allowance is much higher than in comparable western nations, though there are of course some great deals to be had out there. Let`s take a look at the main players in the Australian broadband ISP marketplace and compare the deals they have to offer.

Top Australian Broadband Deals

• Telstra - Being the largest telecoms company in Australia, Telstra are of course able to offer broadband to the largest proportion of the population, and they do so under their `Big Pond` subdivision. Big Pond offer all of the mainstream forms of broadband to Australian users, with super fast cable broadband available to users in Sydney and Melbourne for as little as $20 a month, ADSL services of up to 20Mbps for just under $30 a month and of course mobile broadband, offering up to 7.2Mbps download speed in areas covered by HSPA+ 3G networks. If you want the most comprehensive and versatile packages then Big Pond and Telstra may well be able to help.
• Austar - Though Austar are only just over a decade old and have their roots in subscription TV, they also have competitive dial up internet options for new and old customers, suited to those in rural areas without ADSL coverage.
• Internode - Offering home ADSL services within South Australia, Internode have a variety of packages, ranging from the basic `naked` ADSL without the need to sign up for a home phone service from just $50 a month, to more comprehensive packages. There`s a lot of choice and there are some `extreme` options for heavy users.

Choosing a Provider
The easiest and quickest way to choose an Australian broadband provider that is right for you and your needs is to use an online broadband comparison site to compare broadband packages and options. Whether it is your first time signing up for a broadband connection and you want to find out which services are available in your area, or even if you`ve already got a broadband connection in your home but you`re dissatisfied with the service and want to see what other options there are, a comparison site will help put all this information in one place.

• Forward Concepts Publishes Detailed WiMAX Market Study
• at&t offers free Wi-Fi to customers with high speed broadband
• Focusing on Online and Downloadable Video in the United States to Date
• Corinex Releases GameNet, Gamers ask why?
• Amazon.com Completes Acquisition of Audible

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced it is shipping Amazon Kindle 2. Already the No. 1 seller in Electronics on the Amazon.com Web site in just 15 days since it was introduced on Feb. 9, Kindle 2 offers revolutionary wireless delivery of content in a new slim design with longer battery life, faster page turns, over seven times more storage, sharper images and a new read-to-me feature. Kindle 2 began shipping today to customers who were in line for the original Kindle and customers who pre-ordered beginning Feb. 9. New orders placed today will be released for immediate shipping.

“The response from customers to Kindle 2 has been tremendous. In order to ensure we ship Kindle 2 by the original ship day of Feb. 24, we started shipping one day early,” said Ian Freed, vice president, Amazon Kindle. “We’re excited about the new design and features of Kindle 2, and we think our customers will be too.”

Kindle 2 builds on everything customers love about the original Kindle and extends the experience to a slimmer and sleeker design.

• Pencil-thin and lighter than a typical paperback at just over 10 ounces and 0.36 inches
• 25 percent longer battery life
• Pages turn an average 20 percent faster
• Holds more than 1,500 books with 2 GB of memory
• Sharper images and crisp text with 16 shades of gray
• “Text-to-Speech” read-to-me feature converts words on a page to spoken word
• “Whispersync” technology saves and synchronizes reading location across Kindle devices

With more selection than ever before, the Kindle Store — Earth’s biggest e-bookstore — gives customers access to more than 240,000 books and top U.S. and international magazines and newspapers, plus more than 1,200 different blogs.

For more details or to purchase Kindle 2 for $359, visit Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation).

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I recently purchased a new server from Dell and settled on the PowerEdge T105. I didn't max it out when I ordered it because I know most things can be purchased later for a much lower cost. What I did settle on is listed below:

• Opteron 1212 CPU

• 2GB of DDR 800Mhz RAM
• 250GB SATA Drive

I could have purchased a second drive from Dell but they wanted close to $200 for another 250GB drive. I ended up picking up a 500GB drive from Seagate for under $100. I also chose not to get the keyboard and mouse because I planned to run the server remotely.

My first foray into setting the machine up was to install the current version of 64-bit FreeBSD. The machine did very well with FreeBSD 7.1 64-Bit but all of the software I needed did not perform so well in 64-bit. Yes, it is true that many system administrators end up running 32-bit on their 64-bit machines because of software compatibility issues.

In the end I settled on FreeBSD 6.3 32-bit. Although I have used this version of FreeBSD on other machines in the past I encountered a problem. The chipset on the integrated Gigabit NIC is too new for FreeBSD6.3. I had a spare NIC card kicking around my shop so I ended up using that to install my software until I was able to find a solution that would allow me to use the built-in NIC.

In the end I narrowed it down to some code that needed to be edited in the source code for the bge driver:

/usr/src/sys/dev/bge
if_bge.c*
--- 169,175 ----
{ BCOM_VENDORID, BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5715S },
{ BCOM_VENDORID, BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5720 },
{ BCOM_VENDORID, BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5721 },
+ { BCOM_VENDORID, BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5722 },
{ BCOM_VENDORID, BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5750 },
{ BCOM_VENDORID, BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5750M },
{ BCOM_VENDORID, BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5751 },

if_bgereg.h*

--- 2011,2017 ----
#define BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5715S 0x1679
#define BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5720 0x1658
#define BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5721 0x1659
+ #define BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5722 0x165a
#define BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5750 0x1676
#define BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5750M 0x167C
#define BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM5751 0x1677

The Dell PowerEdge T105 has a built-in NIC that uses the Broadcom 5722 chipset. By adding the two bold lines above to the source of the bge driver files and recompiling the kernel I was now able to use the NIC and pull out my spare card.

I am still having an issue with the machine powering itself off at odd times but all of my diagnostics have come up clean. I have turned off all power management in the system BIOS just in case something is in conflict there. I also purchased a UPS with auto voltage regulation in case I have some dirty power issues on the circuit.

• Server Move
• Replacing a Failing Drive on a FreeBSD System
• Monitor Your Server With Cron
• Welcome to the new server
• Dell Wants to Love You Long Time!

Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you want to know what your server is doing but you can't get to a secure terminal to SSH in. What do you do? You look to cron.

Cron is a daemon that can be found in Unix and Unix-like operating systems. What it allows you to do is execute commands at any hour of the day and you can even use it to run commands multiple times a day. Cron may be a daemon but it's an angel to most sysadmins.

There are two main ways to use cron. You can either put a script into a cron subdirectory or you can edit the crontab file.

Using the subdirectories is very simple. You can find them in /etc and they are: cron.hourly, cron.daily, cron.weekly and cron.monthly. As I am sure you can figure out the scripts inside these subdirectories are executed based on the name of the subdirectory. Sometimes you need a little more control over when your script is to execute, this is where crontab comes in.

When using crontab you edit the /etc/crontab and insert a line of code that tells cron when you want your command to run. You can customize the time frame down to the minute. You can have it run every 15 minutes or even have it run every 15 minutes but only between the hours of 9:00 and 17:00.

My favorite Unix command has to be top. You can get a wealth of information from this simple command but you need to be at a terminal to run it, or do you?

By using crontab you can set top to run at preset intervals throughout the day and have the results emailed to you.

*/15 * * * * root /usr/bin/top | mail -s "top results" admin@domain.com

That little bit of code above will have the top command run every 15 minutes (as root) and the output will be sent in an email to admin@domain.com with the subject "top results". Not bad, eh?

You could also use this to email yourself error logs, netstat information, anything really. Cron is a sysadmin's best friend.

Further Reading:

Configuring the cron Utility

• Everything is all right now
• How To: Use a cron job to backup your databases
• Server Move
• Technorati can’t count?
• Welcome to the new server

People who work in the utility business often discover some very strange animal-based troubles. This one falls under the "strange but true" grouping of animal-based telecom troubles.

source

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