I am working on putting together my own dynamic DNS service, similar to dyndns.org. I will be needing some guinea pigs in the coming months to take part in this project, which will provide you with your very own myname.faildns.com hostname which you can update as you see fit.

Initially, you will be asked to work with this service manually via your web browser or other similar methods, but eventually I should be providing a client of some sort for Windows and Linux.

If you're interested, shoot me an e-mail at tim AT faildns DOT com.

I've spent about the last 2 hours trying to get Ubuntu 8.10 installed on my desktop. I opted to use the "Install Ubuntu Inside Windows" feature, which seemed to be pretty straight-forward. Then I found problems. Before I get into those problems though, I want to point out that this was intended to be a quick "Let's install Linux and see how it does on this system" run. From the word-of-mouth reviews I've heard from others about Ubuntu 8.10, I figured it would be a very simple process: Wrong.

First off, let's go to the sound. I like listening to music when I work. The first thing I wanted to do after I got everything running was to listen to some tunes. The problem though is that my on-board sound card isn't supported natively. I'm sure there are kernel patches out there that I can use, but let's say that I'm not the Linux "guru" I am, and that I'm an average user. This would be a very frustrating event and would probably cause the user to be soured on Linux.

In the course of trying to fire up some tunes, I tried to access my RAID, since it holds my MP3 collection. No go. I'm running 2x500GB drives in hardware level RAID-0. The hardware is provided by nVidia, just like everything else in this system. While the nVidia graphic drivers are easily available, the RAID drivers are not. Even a quick apt-cache search nvidia shows nothing RAID-related. I did find one article that discussed how to recompile the kernel to add dmraid, but again, think of the average user.

And lastly, let's touch on the nVidia graphics drivers. I was able to get them installed pretty easily, and I was able to configure my Multi-View monitor arrangement, spanning my desktop across both of my Acer x193w+ monitors. The one super annoying thing I found though was how the effective center of my desktop is the actual center, but instead of opening on a single screen, new windows open right there at the center. I even tried one of the available 3d games, and I couldn't read the menu because it was split by about 2" of monitor bezel.

If we want to look at it with all those issues aside though, the system is running really smoothly and I have no additional complaints (yet). Since I'm not able to survive without my music though, it's back to Windows for now.

This post is kinda twofold. The first point is based on the previous car troubles I've mentioned.

I received my federal tax refund last week and decided I would go get a quote for the necessary repair, which turned out to be about what I would have expected to pay for doing it on my own. I had a feeling the actual price would be a bit higher when the work was done, so I went ahead and left the car at the shop last evening. They claimed they would be able to finish the job in about 2 hours, so I told them that was fine. About an hour and a half later, I got a call from the service manager, who informed me of what I had feared to be the case; that more work needed done, which would push the cost up about 250% of what they had previously quoted. Knowing that the guy wasn't just trying to make a sale, I told him to go ahead and take care of the rest of the work. Today, I went to pick up the car and pay my tab, and it turned out to be almost 300% of what I was quoted. When I looked at the invoice, I spotted no inconsistencies, so I just paid the dues. The price I paid was about 75% of my tax refund check, which made me sad, but here's to helping the economy.

Speaking of the pit we're in, today was an amazing day on the stock market. So amazing that I'm going to be one of the people who causes economic turmoil in the coming weeks. That turmoil being any shareholders waiting to break even, then dumping their investments. I don't know that I'll be doing that for everything; In fact, I may re-invest. However, the transportation and finance markets are not where I want my money to hang out. Yeah, I'm the one jerk who bought some FNM and FRE shares when they were on the way down, and I'm waiting for them to rebound to make a (relatively) quick buck. All they need to do is break $10/share.

I remain doubtful, but I really hope this economic stimulus package will cause enough of a jolt to get things back to normal.

I'm looking at getting a VoIP account so I can have some sort of normal-ish phone in the apartment. The two contenders are Vonage and Packet8. I need opinions though. Is one of these providers better than the other? If so, how?

Like everyone else in the geek world, I've decided to give Windows 7 a try. Well, I have my first impressions, right down to the "Oh God, I'm having to go back to Vista now!" emotions.

The install process was as smooth as glass. I had absolutely no complaints there. It did take a little longer than I had expected, but one can't complain.

The three reboots that were required after the installer seemed a bit much. I don't understand why all of the information couldn't have been collected after the first reboot, then just one more reboot into the new OS.

After I got to my desktop, I started by downloading Firefox 3, the ATI drivers for my video card (packed for Vista), and I grabbed Winzip and PuTTy from my other computer. I was pretty happy that the only driver I needed to find was one for the graphics so I could run in my preferred resolution: The sound and network were operational out of the box.

After I installed the ATI drivers, which was a horrible pain no thanks to Toshiba's packaging method, Windows needed to reboot. At this stage in the game, I don't understand why the OS needs to reboot because a new driver was installed. I have yet to come across a modern Linux distro that requires a reboot to reload a driver (or kernel module as the case may be). Anyhow, this is where the headache started (and didn't finish).

When Windows powered down, I decided to go ahead and remove my USB drive before the bootloader fired. After the bootloader kicked off though, it was straight to a blue screen. I didn't get a chance to see what the error was before it dumped the memory and powered down, but I was able to somewhat boot back up. The failure started after the GUI loaded.

Windows wanted to try to repair the OS right away, and only gave me the "Yes" and "Shutdown now" options. I decided to let it try to repair itself, but half an hour later it said it couldn't, and that my only option was to power down.

I tried to boot it up again after that, but got the same run-around, so I'm now reinstalling the factory software.

Conclusion: Windows 7 isn't ready, and it really hasn't solved anything.

I don't remember if I mentioned it or not, but back when I was without power from Hurricane Ike, I got a new laptop. I got a Toshiba (I couldn't tell you what model it is) with a dual core Athlon 64, 3GB of RAM, and Vista Home Premium. My first reaction to it coming with Vista was "ew!", but I decided to give it some usage and see what I thought.

So far, everything has gone well. I turned off Aero and all the "this app wants to make a network connection - are you sure?" nag dialogs. This has made the experience pretty enjoyable, and I've not had any complaints thus far. However, I found a couple things that annoy me about it today.

1. Vista Home Premium doesn't support joining a network domain
2. There's some issue with the graphics driver (ATI) that causes Eclipse.org to redraw certain panels every time the mouse is moved

While the second issue isn't so much a Vista issue, and could be related to Java, the graphics drivers, or Eclipse itself, the first issue is very annoying.

I got the itch a while back to set up a roaming profile server, using Samba from my Linux box, and just have one profile to use on both of my machines. I figured this would also make OS reloads on my workstations less painful, as well as making it easier to get started with a new computer. It appeared to be pretty simple to configure on the Linux and Samba end, but when I tried to join the domain from the Vista box I basically was told "no way, Jose!"

So now my dream of having roaming profiles at home is gone, and Vista has one bad mark against it. I'll keep using it though and hope that no further issues come about.

If the subject isn't enough, let me just say this:

About a quarter of the way through the new Heroes tonight, the digital signal dropped. Another quarter of the way through, the analog signal dropped.

I can't see spending money on cable just for one or two shoes, but it would sure be nice if I could pick up the broadcast stations.

I feel like a complete idiot. I have always preached to the world, "Use an anti-virus solution, even if you don't do much on the computer." Well, now I can pridefully call myself a hypocrite.

I rarely use my laptop, and it just sits there on the charger for days. About the only time I'll fire it up is when I want to sit on the porch and work, or I am traveling and need to be able to work while I'm away. One such example was this weekend; I came to my parents' and needed to be able to follow up on a few things.

My Dad had told me about something weird he's been seeing on his computer. He said that it would be working just fine, then reboot for no reason. I told him it was probably a virus, and that I would take a look at it while I was here. When it happened to him last night, he told me, so I fired up VNC and logged into his computer from upstairs. Almost as soon as I did, my laptop started getting all kinds of popups, fake blue screens, the task manager was disabled, and all kinds of other stupid crap. Why? Because I didn't install an anti-virus on it.

I set it aside for a couple hours, because I was so frustrated, but I got it back out after that and tried to clean it up. The first thing I ran into was resource consumption. Since the task manager was disabled though, I had to do all my work at the shell, using the tasklist and taskkill commands. After I finally got all the rogue processes killed off, I was able to get AVG installed, but then the resources were sapped up again. I gave the computer a hard power cycle, and AVG fired up when Windows came back up. It found several DLL files that it identified as "threats", so I told it just to nuke 'em.

Finally I was able to start a full system scan, but it was taking so long that I just went to bed. When I woke up this morning though, the power was off and the charging indicator was flashing orange. According to the owner's manual for the laptop, this means that the batter was low. It makes no sense though, because it's not even trying to charge. That aside, I was able to get back into Windows, but everything is still a wreck. Luckily I have nothing of major importance on here, so I'll be doing a full OS reload tonight. I may give up and put Ubuntu back on, but we shall see...

I've come to the conclusion that "The Learning Channel" needs to be re-badged. Every time I've turned to the channel, I have been greeted by shows like "Flip That House", or "What Not To Wear". While these may be informative and educational programs, nearly all of the shows on this channel are design or fashion related.

I really think that the content of TLC needs to be diversified again, or the channel needs a new name.

I may be throwing away my million dollar idea here, but I need to share it and get some feedback.

Having arthritis and limited motion in my hands, I've wondered if there would be any sort of external prosthetic assist that may help out. Then one day, I saw an article somewhere about a revolutionary helicopter design that used piezoelectric fibers to twist and bend the rotor blades. After pondering it for a little bit, I wondered if it would be able to make some sort of thin and lightweight gloves, using some sort of sensors and microcontrollers to determine what movements were attempted, then make use of specially placed highly flexible piezoelectric fibers to provide assist on the the appendage needing the assist.

Now, what if such a thing could be expanded to something less complicated? What about people who have trouble moving their leg, due to muscle and nerve damage? Could a non-surgical product be developed in the form of say, tight pants, to apply this concept to help that person walk again?