Category: Personal
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Converting from Procmail to Maildrop
I’ve been using procmail to filter mail on the server forever. I like it, so it’s important to note that even though I switched, I have nothing bad to say about procmail. So, why did I switch? Procmail can be a little terse to read (obviously, I’m used to it by now). Over the years,…
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Sidux Wins Again
Almost two years ago, I wrote a post about an ancient (and very broken) laptop. Of the various Linux distributions that I tried on it, I really liked Sidux the most. I wrote about it in my In Praise of Sidux post. I ended up trashing that laptop when the unreliability was more annoying that…
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Self-Service Pain
It’s extremely easy to cause yourself a lot of pain while performing maintenance on your computer. Here are two sure-fire steps: Do something really stupid, while being aware that you are doing so! Compound the error by being macho, and wanting to fix it manually! Voila! You will have no one to blame but yourself…
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VirtualBox Multiboot USB
Yesterday, I wrote about paying for free software. At the very end of that post, I highlighted a program called Macrium Reflect. That program can automatically create a Linux-based Rescue CD (in order to restore a previously saved image to a damaged or new hard drive). On their site, they have a good tutorial for…
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Paying for Free Software
There is a lot of free software available for every operating system. Some of it is open source, some of it is proprietary, but still free. Some of the free stuff comes with strings attached (shareware, for example). Some of the programs are amazing, many are just toys (or worse). One relatively common theme in…
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Happy New Year
For the past six years (2002-2007) we’ve spent New Year’s Eve in Richmond, VA. There are four couples there who get together each year and cook a very special (and sumptuous) dinner at each others houses (rotates each year), and we hitched our wagon to their tradition back in 2002. Of course, we were invited…
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December 2008 Poker
December was no different than November. Good results in Omaha (though not many tournaments in general), and a total wipeout in the big Sunday Hold’Em tourneys, accounting for a terrible economic showing. Bottom line for the month: -$694.60. In one of the big tourneys, they paid the top 135 spots. I finished 137th. I probably…
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Home For The Holidays
Until this year, our closest friends could always count on their family being together for the holidays. Their kids (our godchildren) went to school in the vicinity, or at least were guaranteed to choose home (Richmond, VA) for the school break at the holidays. Now, things aren’t as guaranteed. Laura is married and living in…
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Cable Woes Resolved
On December 13th I wrote about my long-standing cable Internet woes. At the end of that note, I mentioned that I would update everyone if my solution worked. Today is the first day that we are back in the apartment, and I can now report that we’ve had zero drops in the past six hours.…
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Vista speech recognition
I’ve been fascinated by speech recognition for a very long time. I used a program called Simon on a NeXT computer back in 1992. I have toyed with every version of Dragon Naturally Speaking since v2 (now owned by Nuance). I keep upgrading my copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking (through v9, I haven’t done v10…