Adventures in stupid technology

  • Wait a sec, Mr batch file!

    Today I sifted through the first 4 pages of Google search results on ‘pause batch file’ only to find that none of the suggestions work on Windows 2008 server. Why are all of these pages suggesting sleep.exe and choice.com and ping -n when the obvious solution is the timeout command? More importantly why is it…

  • Email & track a thousand subsribers for free

    MailChimp is the email campaign service I’ve been looking for. It offers free beautiful email templates, ISP feedback loops and subscriber response tracking. Signing up for a free account will let you generate beautiful email campaigns for up to a thousand subscribers and let you send six thousand emails a month.

  • Farmers Market Caprese Salad

    This weekend I had time to stop by the farmers market. I picked up some gorgeous tomatoes and ultra fragrant purple basil which I threw that together with some fresh mozzarella and balsamic vinaigrette at lunch time. It turned out to be a really wonderful little caprese salad that’s simple to make with the right…

  • Quickly find previously executed commands in bash

    Type a command, hit enter, type another command, hit enter…that’s still how it goes in terminal computing. That’s not to say that there haven’t been innovations in command line. Bash history recall using the up/down keys is just one of those examples. To quickly search for and find specific previously executed commands in bash and/or…

  • Time Warner Cable moves OTA HD Stations

    According to FCC Sec 76.630 and CFR Title 47, Sec 76.901(a), a cable provider who chooses to “rebroadcast” local Over-the-Air (“OTA”) channels, must do so in what is known as clear QAM. Clear QAM is still an encrypted signal, but a newer television set with an ATSC tuner will be able to decrypt and display…

  • Delete files using crontab

    Got some files on your *NIX system that need a good deletin on a regular basis?. Well then crontab is going to be your friend. There are tons of articles that painstakingly explain the crontab format when you Google “scheduled job Linux”, but how to actually implement a scheduled job using crontab from start to…

  • WW2 era fighter planes

    Wings over Camarillo was a wonderful opportunity spend some up close and personal time with the kind of fighter planes that ruled the sky during world war II. The air show included aerobatic displays by close to 40 ww2 era aircraft including P-38’s and some of the famous Grumman cats. Seeing these awe inspiring warbirds perform just…

  • Buy by rating and get free shipping

    Buy a lot of stuff online? Get a free year of Amazon Prime membership for students with a valid .edu email address. Later, when buying electronics or computer parts using said Amazon Prime membership, use newegg.com to comparison shop online. Its rating system is one of the most honest in the industry and they carry…

  • Skype blocks local Apache server

    Apparently Skype thinks that occupying ports 80 and/or 443 would be a great idea on Windows. I guess that’s fine for the most part, I mean you don’t really want to be debugging your local web app while chatting with grannie. So what about when you’re not using Skype? What possible reason could there be…

  • Long Beach harbor cruise

    Last weekend I went on a three hour urban ocean boat cruise covering the Port of Long Beach. Sponsored by the Aquarium of the Pacific it’s one of a few attractions there that isn’t mercilessly overrun by exhausted moms, rows upon rows of strollers and screaming kids on the weekend. It was a perfect day…

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