Diary of a Network Geek

The trials and tribulations of a Certified Novell Engineer who's been stranded in Houston, Texas.

8/3/2009

The Geek As Rockstar

Filed under: Art,Criticism, Marginalia, and Notes,Deep Thoughts,Geek Work,Life, the Universe, and Everything,Ooo, shiny...,Red Herrings — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Tiger which is terribly early in the morning or 5:17 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

Because, this is totally why I got into computers.

Yeah, right, sure it is.
Look, these new ads by Intel highlighting the “rockstars” of the geek world are great.  They’re cute.  They’re funny.  But they work because this is so NOT how our society works.  Geniuses who invent things that change the way many of us live are mostly not appreciated in their time.  They don’t have trading cards.  They aren’t the subject of comic books.  They don’t get their faces on boxes of breakfast cereal.
But, isn’t that wrong?  I mean, shouldn’t that be what we reward?  Not the super-jocks who can throw a ball or run the bases or whatever, but the geniuses who actually change the world?

Maybe I live in a dream land, but, well, that’s how I wish it was.

6/27/2008

TypePad Marketing

Filed under: Criticism, Marginalia, and Notes,Deep Thoughts,Fun Work,Geek Work,MicroSoft,The Network Geek at Home — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Horse which is around lunchtime or 12:05 pm for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Gibbous


TypePadfromIntel

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

The folks at WordPress better wake up and take notice.

So, you probably know by now that I run this blog via WordPress. And, in the past, I’ve recommended the free blogging service provided by WordPress.com. Well, while installing software on a new PC I’d put together at work today, I saw the screen to pictured here. If you click the link and take a closer look at the screen, you’ll see an option to install a three month TypePad account. TypePad, like WordPress.com, has both free and paid accounts. So, this would give someone three months of the paid TypePad service.

I don’t know what this cost the folks at SixApart, who own TypePad, but this is some damn clever marketing, in my opinion. If this is included with every Intel motherboard sold… Well, let’s just say that I think it would get a lot of people trying this service and starting a paid account. It’s like Microsoft giving schools huge rebates and offering student editions for cheap to make sure that their software is what the fresh crop of workers are trained to use. It’s good marketing. At least, it sure seems to have worked well for Microsoft.

WordPress, are you watching this?

1/30/2008

Linux Imaging – Update

Filed under: Criticism, Marginalia, and Notes,Fun Work,Geek Work,Linux,MicroSoft — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Tiger which is terribly early in the morning or 5:20 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

So, I figured it was about time for another hardcore geek post.

I’ve been using the Linux-based imaging solution that I detailed here and here for quite a few weeks now. Mostly, it’s been going very well.
Okay, once I figured out it was better to start with a small drive partition as my base system, from which I created the standard image, the process got easier. The thing is, it’s always easier to start with a small partition and then use tools built into the Knoppix live cd to grow the partition larger than to try and shoe-horn a big disk partition onto a small disk. And, by “easier”, I mean it’s the only way to do it. I spent quite a bit of time trying to make it work the other way, but I never did. On the other hand, starting with an image based on a 30 gigabyte or less partition then expanding it to fit a 150 gigabyte hard drive has worked just fine.
Incidentally, I used a bootable gparted cd to make that change.

Also, I had a small problem with a particular Intel motherboard chipset. Specifically, it was the Intel 965 chipset, and the problem may effect other motherboards. In short, the problem was that Knoppix didn’t see the SATA drive to mount it. If Knoppix can’t see the drive, it can’t image it or take an image from it. Luckily, there is a work around. If you’re using my method to image WindowsXP machines running the Intel 965 chipset, ensure the BIOS is set to AHCI. To do that, get into your system’s BIOS and go to Advanced > Drive configuration > Configure SATA as AHCI. Then, when booting into Knoppix, hit F2 and use the following command-line to boot:
knoppix 2 all-generic-ide pci=nommconf
This will start Knoppix in text-only mode, so you can run everything from there instead of opening up a terminal session.
After you put the image on the fresh machine, you need to ensure the BIOS is NO LONGER set to AHCI. To do that, get back into your system’s BIOS and go to Advanced > Drive configuration > Configure SATA as IDE. After reconfiguring the BIOS, you can boot into the new Windows XP clone and proceed as I’ve already described in the other posts.

Oh, one last thing on this…
I kind of cheated on reimaging machines in text mode with that Intel 965 chipset.  Because the tools I used to resize NTFS disk partitions were all GUI based and XWindows was having a problem running on those Intel 965 boards, I installed one machine from scratch and just grabbed the larger partition table and master boot record.  Then, when I made the new machines, I just used the larger partition and MBR images to get everything out of the disk.  I still used the smaller data disk partition images, but I used NTFSResize to expand the NTFS partition to fill the disk.  Worked like a charm.

Anyway, I apologize to my non-geek readers, but, hey, I am a professional network geek and I love this stuff.  I think I strutted around for a full five minutes after figuring out that set of little tricks the same afternoon.  Of course, it wasn’t long before some other stupid thing brought me right back to reality, but that couple of minutes where I was the king of the world, network geek genius extraordinaire, made it all worthwhile.

3/3/2006

Geek Pickup Lines, Part 4

Filed under: Fun,The Network Geek at Home — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Tiger which is terribly early in the morning or 5:24 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

The top eleven Geek Pickup lines, fourth edition, as stolen from BBSpot, for your Friday afternoon funny:

Geek Pick-Up Lines: Part 4
11. I have so much love to give you’ll have to pipe it through more.
10. Did you make a Google Bomb? Whatever I search for, it’s you I find.
9. Do you work for a TelCom? Because I bet you’d be good at pulling cable.
8. I was hoping you wouldn’t block my pop-up.
7. Would you like to play Scrabble with me? I am tired of playing with myself.
6. You compute me.
5. Girl, I wish I was your differential, because then I’d be touching all your curves.
4. But enough about me, let’s talk about mu.
3. Be my queen and mate me with your knight moves.
2. You’ve stolen the ASCII to my heart.
1. You must’ve been made by Intel to be that hot!

And, just as a side note, if you’re in Houston, female, over the age of twenty-one and any of these would work on you, drop me a line! 😉

12/20/2005

Poor Don’t Want Laptop?

Filed under: Criticism, Marginalia, and Notes,Geek Work,Linux,News and Current Events — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Tiger which is terribly early in the morning or 5:27 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

Uh, then, can we have them?
Remember that hand-crank laptop I mentioned some time back? Well, the chairman of Intel, Craig Barrett, seems to think that the poor don’t really the clockwork laptops. Uh, okay, then can the moderately poor get some? How about the barely middle-class? I know a lot of those kind that would dig them, especially if they’re going to run Linux.
Gee, you don’t suppose he’s trying to kill this because they’re not going to use Intel chips, do you? Naw! Of course not! What was I thinking?

7/9/2004

Anatomy of a Hoax

Filed under: Criticism, Marginalia, and Notes,Fun,Fun Work,Geek Work,The Network Geek at Home — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is in the early morning or 7:15 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

No, I’m not talking about a biased film documentary…

I’m talking about a different kind of hoax alltogether! Have you ever gotten that stupid spam about the e-mail tracking program that’s sponsored by Micro$oft, or Intel? Ever wondered where that got started? Well, Wired has an article on it! Yep, it’s the whole story from the very earliest days to the present. It’s a story of Darwinian proportions! And, it really has taken on a life of it’s own.

Hey, it’s Friday, so soft news is the best kind. Enjoy!

Tags:

Powered by WordPress
Any links to sites selling any reviewed item, including but not limited to Amazon, may be affiliate links which will pay me some tiny bit of money if used to purchase the item, but this site does no paid reviews and all opinions are my own.