I Rock

I just thought I'd take a moment now to say I kick arse. If you knew how much I rock right now, you'd faint. My geek skills are so white hot, you'd get burned just watching me work from a distance.


More details to come. I have to sleep :-)

Ok, so here's the deal. Due to a few reasons that I can't reveal, that company that I work for lost its internet connection on Monday night. So for most of the day Tuesday, we were dead in the water, with no chance of getting our T1 turned back up any time soon. After going over serveral options for internet access, we came to 1 immediate solution. Run the company's internet activity over my cell phone's unlimited data access. So by Tuesday evening, we were running a ~60-70 person network over a ~115kbps connection. Painful, but workable. I even ran our email over it.

Yesterday, a co-worker approached the business next door about sharing internet access for a couple days. So, after setting up a laptop with IPCop, we had a reasonable internet connection up and running. One problem tho, we were now running over an already NATted connection: no port 25 (SMTP/Email) access. We do, however, have a ServerBeach system with Win2K3 installed. After investigating the option of doing connection sharing there, and running port 25 over a VPN link (too complicated, and risky routing), I decided to setup an SMTP server. However, much like most MS products, you can't do what you need without spending a fortune. The solution? XMail. I was able to set it up to receive mail for our domains, then forward the message via the VPN link. Much simpler, and less risky. After a few hour pouring over the docs, and realizing that I was missing a carriage return in the config files, we were up and running.


It's now Thursday, and since ~8AM Monday, I've been either working, driving to/from work, or sleeping (+/- 1 hour free time). So yeah, I could care less what a certain previous employer claimed: I kick ass.

Zaurus Essentials: QashMoney

This week, in a successful attempt to fix a bux with the Calendar app on my SharpROM installation, I decided to re-install my Z from scratch. So now all the of apps I've been playing with on the Z have been wiped out, the good with the bad. This gives me a great opportunity to properly document what apps I like (and actually work), and how to install them. To kick off this project, I'd like to make my first reccomendation: QashMoney

QashMoney is a free checkbook/finance/expense app. It helps you keep track of your finances, like MS Money, or Quicken. I'm pretty new to it, so functionality and compatibility suggestions are yet to come. If you'd like to try it out, here's how to install it (or at least how I did it):

Download the following ipk files:
  sqlite_2.8.6_arm.ipk
  libofx_0.6.3_arm.ipk
  qashmoney_0.77_arm.ipk

Optionally place the IPK files on your flash card.

Install the IPKs, using the builtin "Add/Remove Software" app, in this order: sqlite, libofx, qashmoney.

Run and enjoy!

I'm Moving, Again!

I thought I'd let everybody know that on February 1st, I will be moving in with my cousin Chris in St. Paul. This will cut down on my commuting costs (~$300/mo), and will allow me to start building a new social network.

The Diplomad

Robi2106 led me to an interesting blog that I plan to read in the future: The Diplomad.