Brent’s Thoughts

After I got it back from the guy that “painted” it, the clutch wouldn’t work. I had my neighbor, Wayne, come over and help me take a look at it. We figured out that the slave cylinder (under the drivers floor pan) was leaking. We took it off and cleaned it up and figured out where it was leaking, he took the cylinder itself to WKU and had a guy there hone it smooth, while I ordered a rebuild kit from Moss for it.
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Pauline, some of her friends and I went to see Carlos Mencia at WKU last night.  It was a great time and I think that he is probably the best comedy show that I have seen so far.

Ron White, Lewis Black and Ralphie May were all great shows and I had a good time, but Carlos was the first comedian that made me think he felt privileged to be there.  Him and his opener Josh both talked about things at WKU and BG throughout their acts.  It made you feel like he actually took some time to learn about the place that he was coming to.

Of course he talked a lot about different races and stereotypes and how they can be correct and wrong.  How Political Correctness is killing this country and tons of other stuff.  It was very funny AND very thought provoking, which is always a sign of a good comedian.

At the end he had them turn up the house lights and he spent some time just taking questions from the audience and answering them.  For most of this part he was actually being more like his actual self and less like his “character”.

The show lasted about two and a half hours, so it was pretty long.

Definitely a good show.  If you get the chance to see him, I would highly recommend it.

Look what Pauline found in a copy machine at WKU. Notice the name and date on it?

There are a couple things that are sad here. One they are using Maxx’s test for a study sheet and two, the teacher hasn’t changed their test since 1998?

Wow. Some of Maxx still lingers on the hill.

I thought I would *direct slam* Frank J. Miles since he never bothers to read any of this stuff. So, check out Frank’s pic and new hair cut over here

http://www.deaton.com/aboutus.aspx

Hey man, that isn’t much of a power tie….

Original thread from my old forums

I have aquired a new laptop, thanks in part to WKU-Swimming, who has paid for half of the cost of the machine. After the mail in rebates, I will only end up having about $450 in it. That isn’t bad for a $1400 laptop. Smile

So far I like just about everything about it, including the extremely awesome widescreen LCD on it. It allows me to have a full screen webpage open and still have various things open on the side that I am working in.

Here is the link to the specs and such.

http://www.emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=eMachines_M6810

I haven’t gotten Linux onto it yet, but running the normal Windows XP (Not any kinda 64 bit version) it will still encode a DVD faster than realtime. Encoding at about 37 fps on the DVD I tried last night.

Original thread from my old forums

Ok so two months ago during the September WKU-Linux meeting (Sept 2) I sold gears to a guy. The original price that we decided upon was $300 for it. When he arrived he said that he only had $280, but that he could get me the rest the next day. Since he is the airborne express delivery man for Edmonson County, that seemed like a moderately decent thought so I said sure. (Actually I was pretty sure I would never see him again.) So I gave him gears and all the kit I had for it. 10/100 NIC, floppy drive, power supply, cdrom, modem, phone cord, network cable. I had gears in a laptop case that belonged to Edmonson county so I told him that I needed the case back. He ask if he could borrow it until the next day and then he would give it back to me when he gave me the $20 bucks. I silently said goodbye to the case in my head and told him sure that would be fine.

I booted gears up and showed him that it worked fine. I had just installed the severn beta on it (so that it would remove my files and everything) so it booted up to a clean desktop. I told him the root password and then stated that the only problem that the laptop has was that when you warm reboot it, it will stop at the bios with an error and not continue. If you shut the machine off and then power it back on it is fine and works great. I then demonstrated this by rebooting it. The error popped up and I turned the power off and back on to show him that it was fine. It booted up and he was satisfied. He gave me the $280 and promptly left. I haven’t heard from him since, until today. Today I got a call from him to my voicemail stating that the laptop had never worked and that it had been at Apollo computers since I sold it to him and that they had decided that it would need a new motherboard. He also stated that he had left me messages and that I had not returned his phone call. He actually had left me one message last week, while I was on vacation, that I disregarded, since he had stiffed me for the case and money. I figured that it was just some question about how to install Windows on it or something.

Now he wants me to either give him the money back, pay to have it fixed, give him another computer or he will take me to court over it (he says.).

I called him and told him that I didn’t think I needed to replace the laptop since not only did it work when he bought it (and he admitted that it booted when he got home at least once), but that he had stiffed me for the money and that I thought over a month and a half was too long to wait to tell me that it didn’t work. He stated, in less than sanitary words, that he thought I was wrong. Amazing to me I kept my cool dispite his increasingly out of hand comments. I told him that I had no intention of replacing the laptop in anyway, but that I might be able to help him get it working. If that didn’t work then he could take me to court if he wanted, because I don’t think I am in the wrong.

So he plans to bring the laptop by the office on friday so I can see if it will work. I still don’t have any plans to replace it for him if it doesn’t. I am not scared to go to court over it since IMO the worst thing that could happen is that I have to pay him $280. I don’t see how that could happen though, since I don’t see why a judge would side with him, but it is possible that I am missing some point. That is why I am posting here. I want all of you to please post your thoughts on the matter. If there is any information that you need besides what I have here then let me know. I am serious though everyone please post what they think. No holds barred.

Seriously, I really do like my job. It is pretty cool working here and I get to mess with a lot of the stuff that I want.

BUT (You guys knew there was going to be a “but” didn’t you?)

Lately I just find myself wishing I was home. I mean I am really starting to find myself longing for some time at the house to just goof off and stuff. It sounds like this is a bad time to feel that way too. This monday I am heading to Louisville with P, My mom and my sister for my sister’s 21st birthday. We are meeting my Grandma and Joe at one of the casino boats. It should be a real cool trip since I have never been to a casino. Then next weekend I agreed (rather stupidly, before I found out how long it was) to help run a Swim Meet which takes place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Plus for some continuing odd reason they always schedule this stupid meet on the same weekend that WKU has a swim meet, so now I have to figure some way to do that as well.

So anyway, I find myself wishing I wasn’t here and that instead I was at home. I am not really sure why, since like I have said I really do enjoy this job. It is one of those really odd things I guess.

Man, wouldn’t it be nice to have enough time to get to write all the stuff you want to write?

Well to keep up with what has been going on…. I am proud to announce that Pauline has officially graduated from Western Kentucky University. Congrats to her.

A math teacher that I had while at WKU is leaving WKU for at least a year to go to California to teach. She had a party last week and me and P went. While we were there I was showing her the pictures of the Triumph from the other post (which seems dumb now since I drove it there). She said how cool it was to have something like that and that it would be cool to have one while she was gone. I offered her an account on here and she decided to try it out. Hopefully you will see something from her soon. Maybe a story about herself?

The Cisco class is doing well. I actually got to spend some time on subnetting the other day with them. I also got to use Mirage for one of the cool things that I had hoped it would work good for…. Teaching. Unlimited paper. There when you come back the next day. Once you get used to it, it is really quick to work with. I think it worked really well. I would show you them, but they don’t really translate well to non-MS. I am working on finding a decent system with Linux, but since the hardware is only somewhat supported it is slow rolling.

I picked up a copy of the Linux System Administrators Handbook the other day. It is an offshoot of the Unix System Administrators Handbook, which is known to be a great book. The Unix version of the book is non-specific to Linux (though it is included), but this one is targeted to Linux alone. That helps to keep some of the static down that is there due to other systems being different than Linux.

Work continues (like work is known to do sometimes). For those of you that I haven’t seen or talked to lately… I have been officially been told that my position is here to stay. I believe the exact words were something like this… “The board voted unanimously to keep your position and there is no time in the foreseeable future that the county will not have two technical people on staff.” So that is pretty cool. Networks are starting to shape up pretty good and things are starting to flow a little easier. Unfortunately, the system was so kludged up in some places it is going to have a real troubling effect on the elegance of some of my solutions. I guess a ghetto running network is better than an elegant non-functional network though so oh well.

The triumph is what we in the business like to call, “Bad Ass”. It is just too fun. All kinds a people asking about it and all kindsa people straining their necks to check it out. Maxx you have to get over here so that we can go rolling around. I think it would be worth the cost of a plane ticket itself.

I have been far too silent for far too long. (of course some would say that there is no such thing as “too” silent, since silence is defined as the absence of sound. Thus it would be difficult to have different levels of NO sound, but anyway…..)

Several things have happened since the last posts on here. War has broke out, we have fiber up and running at our schools, I have seen GigE in action, starting to feel like a server administrator again, job opening at WKU, good news on the EdCo job front, Cisco Class moving along, new PC coming, WebVCR machine running at work, article submission, fan mouse, poison ivy, and the return of Brock Umland to KY today.

Lets see if I can tidy things up a bit around here…….

Fiber: Yeah baby!!!! Fiber between over half our schools. Works great. There has been several network outages as we rebuild and completely restructure the network. So far things have been what I like to call “BAD ASS”.

GigE: Gigabit Ethernet for those not into networking. I have it to my desktop and all of my servers right now. Coupled with the Gigabit Fiber links and the district has gigabit all the way out to every wiring closet. After that it is mostly 100 meg to the desktop. Pulling data off of a IDE drive I can actually max out the drive and not the network. I am beginning tests against SCSI arrays to see how that goes. Right now I can transfer a CD to my boss’s machine faster than I can eject the cd from my machine and carry it over to his, which is the way networking should be.

Starting to feel like a server administrator again: With the fiber links and bringing sites up on that, we have started to move servers over to our office. We have been downing them and replacing pieces and stuff constantly. Doing it all with complete disregard for users and their needs. Ah great to be back in the saddle. Actually though other than random Windows-networking-not-refreshing kinda issues stuff has went pretty smoothly. Hardest part was getting the Compaq server in the trunk of my car to move it.

Job opening at WKU: WKU has a new job opening that really reads like it is for me. Add onto that the 5000 dollars more that it pays and I am thinking I might be a little interested in what they have to say. Might be kinda cool to be back on the hill again.

Cisco Class: Moving right along….(insert rest of Muppets Song…) Class is going well. We had our first field trip the other day. Of course it was just over to our office to see our new stuff, but hey oh well.

new PC coming: Thats right. What I have decided to call Mirage is on its way. Like Gears it will also be a laptop, but as per its namesake if you rotate it in the middle it becomes a tablet PC. How cool is that? It is actually a Toshiba Protege 3500. If you notice there the list prices you will see that mine is $2,299.00. Well every now and then you can get a good deal on ebay and mine is new-in-box for $1,500.00 +SH. A considerable discount I would say, especially since I haven’t found them anywhere for less than $2,099.00.

WebVCR Runnning at Work: Not much to say here. Got a Linux machine running WebVCR that is recording lots of stuff for me. I have already forgot how I lived with out it. Mnnnmmmmm…Daily Show……

Article Submission: Submitted a write up about MusicStorm to http://www.newpenguintimes.com/ Hopefully it will become something of a regular event.

Fan Mouse: Made a fan mouse for one of the guys that helped with our fiber. It is pretty sweet. I didn’t just stop at the mouse-that-has-a-fan idea, but added a three-way switch and a button that activates the fan at one of the switch settings. Unfortunately, while building it I broke the mouse functionallity. Gonna have to figure out what is up with that. Pictures to follow soon.

I have poison ivy: And man does it suck. I haven’t been able to shave for about 4 days since it is on the side of my face and I am afraid I might make it spread. Looking kinda scruffy.

Brock Umland (of Shogun Fame) returns to KY today: Mark Hicks (of JMHwebbing fame) has found some stuff about a building for a business and Brock is headed over here to check some stuff out. I’ll let you guys know what all goes down.

Well actually yesterday was a good day, but its wholesome goodness ran long into the night so I gave up trying to post anything about it. The chewy center was especially good, when mixed with the creamy chocolate covering.

Work was work, though there were no major explosions or weapons testing. The fiber was installed and done, though the electronics for it have not arrived. I headed out to one of the schools, got everything done by three and lo and behold Lamar told me to head to the house for the day. Well actually I headed to Western where I setup Meta and updated everything on it for the meeting. Met up with Rob (aka RVF) and Ray for dinner and dancing at Puerto Viarta (SP?). After scarfing there and chatting for a bit we headed back to Western. On the way I got a call from Todd, but since the meeting was looming close I ask him to call me back that night. Arriving at Western we found that Shindhelm had not unlocked the door for us. You would think given the fact that we have a meeting in there every Tuesday every month that it might form a pattern, but Hey I am sure he is a busy guy. So I picked the door with a stick of 30 pin memory and we headed in for the meeting.

The meeting went swimmingly and MythTV only crashed once on me (pretty good for cvs IMO). Everyone seem to at least pay a small amount of attention through the whole thing. I was suprised toward the end of the meeting as Pauline strolled in through the door. I promptly made a big deal out of this to the entire assembled group and throughly embarrassed her. Teach her to show up late

There were several questions about things and nice discussion about other Linux things as well. Dr. Gary was there as well and we spent some time chatting with him about various things including WKUs recent increase in network bandwidth and their attempts to track down all the static IPs that had been assigned out there, since they are currently “running out of IPs”. After a bit I headed home and found two extremely cool deliveries waiting for me. The first was a copy of Apex for XBOX, which I will be reviewing quite soon and the other was a copy of the Second and Third Edition of the BOFH books. Son of the Bastard and Bride of the Bastard. Great Stuff!!! Review of those will be forthcoming as well. The day ended with me calling Todd (long distance to Hawaii, ewwww) and chatting with him for over an hour and a half. Good time and all. Found out that he will most likely be hitting the contenietal (wow damn that is soooo spelled wrong) US sometime in November. I hope that I can be added to the agenda of that trip. O’Happy day!!