Pointman’s Page

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature! If you don’t get it that’s ok, nothing to see here… move along… move along…

As an IT Admin it’s not that we won’t tell… its that it makes our job much more difficult when you know. A fair warning to those considering trying some of these tricks, in some corporate enterprises the attempt alone could cost you your job if you’re found out.

It is no surprise to me to read that Workers Rarely Jump Ship Over Pay Alone. Eighty-eight percent left their last employer for reasons other than pay. That is a huge number and completely unsurprising.

Check out Leo’s Icon Archive claiming 12,500+ free icons, buddy icons, xp icons, vista icons, desktop icons, aim icons. It looks to be an impressive collection. Normally when I need an icon set for an application I start in /usr/share/icons but sometimes that perfect icon isn’t there and Leo’s is my next stop.

Hmm.. I wonder if Simpler Times Village needs a technologist?

If you need a refresher on why public education is failing take a moment and read an example of Contra Costa’s lost computers from 15 years ago. They lost the computers and the paperwork, renegotiated with IBM to pay in ‘08 and now that the time to start paying has come they’re begging for […]

I don’t often link to software but considering the dearth of such software i figured I should point ou the Giveaway of the Day, Total Network Inventory. I haven’t installed my copy yet but I certainly dropped a copy on my desktop for further investigation.

We ran into a weird issue when we replaced GAIM on our terminal servers with Pidgin. All the text was white. Turned out that GTK 2.10 in the Windows Pidgin package does not support 8 bit displays (256 colors) on a terminal server. So my resident guru Eddie figured out a work around […]

Maybe I’m in a foul mood today but that as it may be I’m sick of buying non-existent vendor support. My vendor for phone software is proving they don’t know how to earn the $6k in support subscriptions I pay for annually. In the past 2 months I’ve now opened 4 incidents with my […]

I don’t listen to any of the satellite radio systems but it is tempting with XM recreating the D-Day radio coverage in real-time:
This incredible broadcast will air, in real-time, starting at 12:41am ET (which was the time of the first airing) and will end June 7th, at 5:45pm ET on The ’40s (ch 4). The […]

I’m not much of a gamer but a friend of mine worked hard on the Linux and Mac version of Penumbra: Overture so if you game on the Linux or the Mac be sure to check out Frictional Game’s announcement.

As someone who’s used PHP since PHP/FI I thoroughly enjoyed the interview with Stefan Esser on PHP Security and PHP core development and the problems, technically and personality, within the project.

I started on the Internet in the days when registering a domain meant filling in an email template and they’d bill you later. Those days are long gone but until recently I stuck with Network Solutions for commercial use domains because of the potential for disputes. And though Network Solutions dispute resolutions have often drawn […]

For some time I’ve been using various Google services especially the calendar and documents for some light project management duties. As my father retired I had even considered setting him up with Google for his domain rather than hooking him into either desktop apps or my company’s own groupware but something about using Google’s office […]

If you’re unfamiliar with the story of the P-38 found frozen in the Artic then it’s time you read Exhuming the Glacier Girl for a fantastic story. This would make a great movie for as the saying goes, fact is stranger that fiction. And this discovery and the subsequent resurection of the P38 […]

Remember how the “fellow travelers” said we didn’t need SDI? Even at the reinstigation of the effort by the current administration many are saying we don’t need it and it’d never work anyway. Well guess what, the Chinese have successfully tested their own SDI and it works. Getting a missle to fly 4000 miles is […]

I seldom post anything related to DRM because the technical aspect requires too much extra writing. The conversation has been had around family gatherings on why the High Def push, digital encoding, the DCMA, the “broadcast flag”, commercial zapping, fair use, etc. After having just went through the speel this past weekend, twice, […]

Techies and especially Canadian techies aren’t typically the type you’d find at the range anywhere let alone in Manhattan. But it looks like maybe we’re making some headway as one of Wired’s writers makes a 4-week quest to shoot straighter. It is difficult to tell from the article if he’s shooting a pistol or […]

I’ve maintained for years that were it not for HTML email the whole malware storm we’ve been battling for the last 7 or so years would have been seriously dampened. Throw out Outlook and it’s progeny and it would have been dimenished still further. When you get right down to it what about […]

I needed to check my DSL performance due to some problems and stumbled onto Speedtest.net. They have a very cool interface that lets you actually watch the test in progress and it tests both down and up which is handy and the first one I’ve seen that does this so transparently. Though admittedly I […]

I’ve been building computers well over a decade but the whole “casemod” thing has never really done it for me. I’ve always built to get more bang for my buck or to help other do the same. But I think I’ve finally found a casemod that would be really cool to do… the retro […]

So, can’t get tighter CAFE standards passed to force auto makers to produce more efficient cars? Then rewrite the rating system to force another 8%-12% out of the 2008 models.
There is a link to more info as these changes seem to have the support of the auto industry but I cannot read the […]

I have had this open to post for a couple of weeks; interestingly enough our boys in the sandbox have found that the silly toy Silly String has some real urban combat uses.
Specifically they spray it across choke points during close quarters battle to indicate trip wires commonly used by the enemy to trigger IED’s. […]

In the event you’ve missed it please be sure to checkout Microsoft(R) Firefox. If you’re not a geek it will probably be over your head. If you are a geek please save your monitor and do not attempt to enjoy a beverage while visiting the website… Someone put a lot of time into […]

While it’s rather WordPress focused this informal blogging survey by The undersigned has some interesting results. Surprisingly my own answers appear to be mainstream - I blog because I like to, for non-commercial purposes and I don’t run advertisements. Though my traffic, which ranges from 800-1500 daily visitors seems above normal but it’s not […]