Category: Personal
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Welcome Back Courier-IMAP
When Matt was maintaining this server, starting back in 2001, he installed Courier-IMAP for our mail service (both IMAP and POP). It worked extremely well for many years. At one point, IMAP folders started taking a long time to open. Once they were open, performance was excellent. I think this was due to […]
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Sister Hazel at Fillmore NYC
We own two Sister Hazel CDs. In the pre-iPod days, Lois used to bring 20-30 CDs along whenever we took long drives. One or both of the Sister Hazel CDs made it into that pile nearly every time. In the last few years, even though Sister Hazel is on our iPod, they didn’t […]
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Cable Internet Woes
A long time ago (I can’t remember when), we had a stable, reliable connection in the apartment (provided by Time Warner Cable). It was never super fast on the download (when it was stable, it was roughly 3Mpbs downstream). It was always pokey on the upstream (used to be roughly 360Kpbs). Now, it’s […]