Rants of a computer geek

Ice Storm

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 23:23:51 GMT

Wow, what a couple of weeks. The storm struck on a tuesday me and my crew were sent out to highway 303 toward the war eagle mill. when we arrived there was a small bucket truck already there putting up a line that was down. that crew said they had been out sence 2:00 that morning. for about 8 hours we fought the ice there on 303 untill we were called off to go and look at a feeder comming out of the hindsville substation. 303 was worse off when we left about an hour before dark that it was when we had got there that morning. all day was spend dodging falling trees. when we got to hindsville sub we found about 16 poles of double circuit 3 phase on the ground. no trees on them, the line was in the field, they just fell off because of the weight of the ice. We called the office and reported what we had found, and they said to let it weight untill that morning and to come on it. on the way in we got a call to go swing by the harp hill sub and see what could be done about one of the transmission lines being repaired. it was getting dark at this point. It was dedcided that we needed another truck to come an help us so in the mean time we went up on 412 to help another crew that had the 3 phase off because a swepco transmission structure had fallen over the top of our lines. once that was cleaned up we returned to harp hill and in a little bit the truck we had been waiting on arrived. we connected the transmission line to a 3 ton jack, and wasn't getting any where. about 2 hours into it the boss called us off and the office said we could come it. once again the office called to see if we could look at a line on joise street. when we got there it was a 3 phase angle pole and the anchors had pulled because of the weight of the ice. it was leaning at souch an angle that you could put your arm down the hole it had created on the back side of the pole. at this point it was about midnight, and I know I hadn't warmed up any on the ride from our last job. We connectec the digger truck to the pole with the winch. We pulled the pole back to where it should be with the line hot because we were afraid if we shut it off it wouldn't come back on. and we left. we left the truck on it over night. the boss had us leave it running because it would have never started if left to get that cold. so the truck ran there overnight unlocked because we only have one set of keys just off joice st. And that was just the first day. we worked at the least 18 hours a day for 18 days. Time has started to return to normal now but we are still finding things wrong with the system, poles broke, lines down to cabbins, etc,etc

Update

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:36:28 GMT

So, I have failed in my quest to learn more about social networking sites. Although I have started using Facebook, most of the networking sites are beyond me. This one for example, LJ. I have no idea how to use it, or really any content to put up here.

Nerd Toys

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 18:18:06 GMT

I just purchased an arcade cabinet for $20 at a garage sale. It will need to be rebuilt. I'm so hyped up. I don't know much about it yet but I will post when it is complete.

Update

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:51:48 GMT

Not a whole lot to report. had a good chalice circle last night, been helping S to move some of her things around in the church. I did get to go to a meeting at the library where some people are discussing of leasing some land that was donated to a conservation organization and building some sort of eco-village on it. I don't know a whole lot about it but is sounds exciting and like something I would like to get involved in.

Time to learn a new skill

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:58:14 GMT

So I have decided to learn a new skill. That skill is using social networking sites. I'm the type of person that when I decide to do something I go all out so I signed up for all the big ones, and tell me if I left one out. Live journal of course, Twitter, FaceBook, Flickr, Myspace, and Yahoo Messenger.

I have no idea how to use most of these services or even what some of them are for, like twitter, but I plan to find out. I think I will start to keep a blog here on live journal for my day to day life but my adventures in technology will remain on my personal website that can be found HERE

Forums

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 05:01:53 GMT

Wow, A lot is happening in a very short time. Last night I got the forums up but with some minor problems (No Visual Confirmation or E-mail Confirmation), Tonight I have installed a MTA or Mail Server and it will send mail though my ISP blocks port 25 they conveniently provide a SMTP server. So MINI will now send E-mail although it will not receive it yet, but that will be coming soon. It will be cool to have Darkhematite@darkhematite.com as my E-mail. Or even better Admin@Darkhematite.com. With the Mail Server running I got E-mail Confirmation working. If you still have problems registering just e-mail me with desired user name, password, and E-mail. My current address is darkhematite@yahoo.com. Next step is getting Visual Confirmation for the forums and incoming E-mail on the mail server. Still working on some sort of blog software. It won't be long and I won't have to access out side my network for my day to day internet business. As for the forum use it and abuse it and please if you find something that doesn't work E-mail me. darkhematite@yahoo is my e-mail for now.

It's Alive

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 09:52:47 GMT

It works. After hours and hours of work pulling hair and crying I now have exactly what I had 2 months ago. A living breathing Web enabled server. But now it is Linux powered. Oh yeah, what does that mean? Well I'm not sure exactly but I believe that in the very near future I might just be able to run forums and an E-mail server Etc... What ever my heart desires and no more windows. Command line all the way for me. Oh, before I forget http://darkhematite.hopto.org

Getting Closer

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 19:05:57 GMT

Well, after about 2 weeks of messing with it I now have Ubuntu server installed on MINI. That was the easy part although I had to install it 3 times and pull a hard disk out of the box to get it to boot up. Most of the time spent though was getting it to work with my Wi-Fi card. I had thought about saying forget it and leaving it connected with ethernet, but wow it's loud. That was accomplished about and hour ago. Whoo, McDonalds to celebrate. You feel stupid when you spend about a week on a problem because one word in a configuration file is in the wrong spot and the file is less than a hundred words long anyways. But it works now. I can access it through ssh and through Webmin which was very easy to install. A couple of problems left to resolve before my website is put back the way it was. One is DNS, I can't remember the website that I used to point DNS to my website, but they will E-mail me within a couple of months to try to get me to give money so I'll fix that then. Also when I access my site from inside the network I get an apache page that has a link to my website, I'm sure that is a setting with apache and will be resolved as soon as I can figure out how. Last for the moment is the character encoding I used when I wrote my website is not recognized by Linux, so I will have to boot into windows and re-save all my files to UTF encoding instead of UNICODE, but that will just take some brainless time. On a side note. I have Free NAS installed on a Compaq DeskPro. The software was very straight forward and easily installed. However the CMOS battery in the DeskPro is dead, and even when power is not interrupted between boots it still halts on keyboard error so I don't believe this system will ever make a good headless system. I had wished it would because of it's size but I have 2 full sise computers put up in the closet mabey on of them will make a better NAS Box. Still don't know what I will do with this one if it won't boot without a keyboard but I'm sure I'll come up with something. Ideas?

Well, It's done

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 01:34:03 GMT

About 4 weeks to Christmas I backed up all of my files to the new hard drive and disconnected it. I tried to repartition the main partition on my old drive and when I did something went awry. I had the backup so I didn't think anything about reformatting the drive. I installed windows, then linux just like all the websites said to do. The installations went fine. Ubuntu started and ran. I was thrilled, then I booted to windows, and... nothing, after about 4 hours I found some information and reinstalled windows for the 2nd time in one day, I then rebuilt Grub, from the Ubuntu live disk and wahla. At this point I have a clean install of Ubuntu and windows XP Pro. Successes, I think. When I plugged in the backup disk nothing. Ubuntu wouldn't find it, windows kept trying to format it. So after a weekend of research I found for some reason It was showing as a RAW file format instead of FAT32. Still windows wouldn't read it and neither would linux. I downloaded some HD recovery tools and ran a battery of them against it. The only program that would pull all the data was one that I couldn't find a serial for and the developers wanted over $100 for the thing. At this point I am 4 weeks into a 45 minuet project. Piss on it. The only thing I had that couldn't be replaced was Outlook.pst that I was sharing with my wifes computer. Both me and her have PDAs so I figured that was as good as 2 backups. Reformat. Now can read and write to the drive from both operation systems. Yes. Go to reinstall Microsoft Office on my computer, can't find the CD. Now we wait until I can get the CD back from the friends house that it was left at. Got the CD last weekend. Installed the software in about 2 minutes, 3 more to find the outlook.pst and another 1 to point both computers to the new file and sync iPAQ to it. Finally. A 45 Minuit project done in only 1 1/2 months. Oh, Some where in there I got infected with some nasty Spy ware that I couldn't get removed so that was another install. During this process when my wife couldn't access her music files I had to ask my self how I got here. My computer has always been a sand box. Could need a format at any time. Now it's mission critical and trying to learn something new I screwed something else up. Well that has to change. So I think my next project will be Free NAS. So when I crash my computer again the whole system doesn't come crashing down. I have already downloaded the live disk and found a platform. A small desktop with a Pentium 3 that I may be able to fit 2 hard drives into if I remove the floppy drive. I just need to find out what is on the hard drive that is in it, again I can't get it to load. Any suggestions?

Try Again

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 15:45:16 GMT

Well, I'm ready to try again. I had a birthday this week end and my favorite person got me a 250 Gig hard drive. I got to thinking, and that is five times as much memory than I had before. Between 2 computers and 4 Hard drives I had a total of 42 Gig. So I now have enough space to transfer my storage hard drive to the new one, install ubuntu on that drive, the server version is a LAMP Server, and place my website on the 2 gig drive that is now running Windows XP. I should also have enough room to clean the C drive off of tank and install a boot loader so I will be able to Boot Edgy Eft off the new drive. I don't know if I'll get either of these projects done or not but I will have a lot of fun trying. I really hope to. I am trying to get away from commercial software. If I get both computers to run linux, then maby nest is installing linux on my Pocket PC

WTF is Favicon.ico

Sun, 05 Nov 2006 00:45:13 GMT

Looking through my web server logs I found a lot of errors that file Favicon.ico Could not be found. After a quick google search I discovered Favicon.ico is the small icon that in firefox is displayed by the page name in the tab menu. Well I had to have one and although it's not very good I know have my very own Favicon.ico check it out at "http://darkhematite.hopto.org" I don't know If I have said here before but I have only used free tools to create my website.

I did it

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 13:49:42 GMT

Well, I did it. I started installing Linux on Mini/Limo. I hope I get it to do all I hope it will. This means My web site is down for real for a while.

Decisions

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 00:06:33 GMT

I think I have found a new name for mini. I have decided to use automobile types as my naming convention. Right now I have mini, tank, and starrscomputer. Soon I will have Tank, Limo, and I don’t know what yet. Tank because of the size and Limo because it will be used to transport web pages. I also plan on installing linux instead of windows XP. That will be interesting. I have never had more than a passing use with linux. In other news I bought a micro camera. It takes crappy photos but they are much better than my cell phone. I wish I had had one when I found the pole half way into the road.

updates

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 02:37:40 GMT

While I work in my site I will transfer my blog over to here for a while

Oh crap

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 06:22:02 GMT

So to ring in the new year, I had some time and went to the local barns and noble where I found a new magazine called blacklisted 411. It is simalar to 2600. Any ways there was a entry on war driving that scared me and I came straight home to increase the security on my home network. I was just about finished when I enabled the MAC address filtering on my router, the only problem is I typed my MAC address in wrong and the router would'nt let me connect to anything. couldn't get to the internet, or the router itself. Luckly for me I had found the manuel for the router just the day before. As I was picking up the phone to call the help desk I found the reset button on the bottom of the router. whew, starr only had to endure about 30 seconds of down time. Better to try new things like this when she is going to be gone for a while.

New Year

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 21:19:56 GMT

Wow, new year and a new journal.