Category: Life

Life, Personal and Leisure

Microsoft Virtual PC

I happened to spend most of this week in an IBM class using VMWare for the training environment (Windows XP Pro hosted on a Windows 2000 machine). This got me wondering about the free systems offered by many providers.

Here’s a few quick thoughts on Microsoft‘s offering, which admittedly seems pretty good.

Their product overview shows that you can run most (all?) previous Microsoft Operating System’s (MS-DOS, Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/Vista… etc. ), even IBM’s OS/2 all on a single host machine with enough resources. Minimum usage per VM appears to be about 64MB RAM and 500MB disk space for the older OS’s, newer versions obviously requiring significantly more resources.

Since I’ve got most of these old OS installation disks in storage, I’ll give this a try and see how well it works. This may make for some interesting testing lab scenarios.

References:

Personalized Internet Radio

While many terrestrial radio stations “stream” their content to make it available to anyone with an Internet connection, sometimes it’s still “just radio”.

For a true ‘net’ user, it’s often better to make the whole thing personalized and interactive, not to mention…. commercial free!

There are several popular services available for this, here are a few that I’m familiar with:

All of the above are free (for now), though the RIAA is trying to change yet another “good thing” and may make this impossible for these companies to support in the future.

Happy listening!

Free Instant Messaging (IM) Clients

As indicated way back in my ‘Contact Information’ entry, I use several IM client networks. To make it easier on myself (and my poor computers), it’s usually easier to get an integrated client that connect to many services within one program.

My favorites:

For an even easier way to connect without software installations and to bypass many corporate proxy’s and/or firewalls is to use a web client.

My favorite (as I’m not aware of any others that are still online):

TTYL!

Unreal Tournament 2004

I’m not much of a game player, but a group of guys from the office decided that it would be fun to blow off some steam by fragging each other once in a while. I’ve got a dedicated server setup, but for obvious reasons it’s password protected. If you are a regular reader of this blog and are interesting in joining us on occasion, please drop me an email or reply to this post. Even better… see me IRL.

Happy fragging!

Business Jargon – aka Office speak for the cubicle constrained!

I saw this article today and realized just how much of this language has become my own…. I really need to just “get a life” 🙂

http://dumblittleman.blogspot.com/2007/01/business-jargon-dictionary.html

For more, see the following:

Like acronyms…. see these:

Personally, i’m into Demotivators….

Now get back to your cubicle and code, you hippie!

Citizens Band (CB) Radio

Before there were cellphones or a (public) Internet for chatting, there was CB Radio. I spent a lot of time on these things in my teens and early twenties.
I grew up with my father having a CB in his car for some of our long road-trips, mostly between Maryland and Wisconsin. Back then (apx. 1975) you needed a license for the radio itself (an old Sears model), i think his was KBKI-7971.

When I was in high-school in Adak Alaska, and there not being much to do, the CB became a way for us kids to figure out where the parties were… usually out in the tundra in abandoned WW2 cabins.

Returning to the lower-48… in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, I occasionally hung out with a few of the locals but never became a pivotal part of their clique. I joined the Navy in 1989 and was sent to Groton CT for submarine school that fall.

The following winter/spring, I quickly became associated with the group in Groton/New London named Midnite Modulation, and spent nearly all of my non-work time with this crew.

I left CT in December of 1990, and spent the next 4 years in Hawaii…. there was not much radio activity out there to speak of.   I returned to CT several times over the years, notably Nov. 1991 (for a few weeks of school) and four short visits in 1995-96 after I was out of the Navy and in college. I passed through on my way between Boston and NYC in 2004 (i think), but unfortunately had no radio to do a ‘shout out’ for any of the old crew.

The old group has spread to the corners of the globe, but is now assembling once again online at http://groups.myspace.com/midnitemodulators

White Knight – out!

Video Blogs (Vlog?)

When I first started subscribing to Podcasts, I used a variety of client software. Notable was iPodder “Lemon” (now known as Juice). Soon after that I found Democracy Player (now Miro), a client that natively supported video in addition to the common audio (MP3) standard. Both clients are free and available on many common platforms.

In the video space, I’m a regular watcher of:

Places I’ve Lived…

I began my life as a “Navy Brat” as such, my family moved every few years… later I too spent six years in the Navy prior to settling down in the Chicago area for school and work… here’s a history of my journeys.

  • Rice Lake, WI
  • Pensacola, FL
  • Todendorf, Germany (03/1974 – 03/1976)
  • Ft. Meade, MD (1976-1979)
  • Adak, AK (1979 – 1982)
  • Winter Harbor, ME (1982-1985)
  • Adak, AK (“again!” 1985-1988)
  • Rice Lake, WI (August 1988- July 1989)
  • “Boot Camp” Great Lakes, IL (July – Sept. 1989)
  • Groton, CT (Oct. 1989 – Dec. 1990)
  • Pearl Harbor, HI (Jan. 1991- July 1995) – onboard SSN-725
  • Rice Lake, WI (July 1995- Oct. 1995) – mostly traveling.
  • Glendale Heights, IL (Oct. 1995-1996)
  • Palatine, IL (1996-1997)
  • Wood Dale, IL (1997-1998)
  • Carol Stream, IL (2000-November 2007)
  • Plainfield, IL (November 2007-present)

Alpine Slide

After hearing about this for years, I finally got to try this exciting event/sport. The closest location to Chicago that I can locate is at Chestnut Mountain in Galena, IL (apx. 3 hrs away on the Iowa border). While it’s advertised as “safe for the entire family”, it’s VERY easy to get carried away and get hurt…. i left some ‘skin’ on the ramp myself, leading to some ugly “road rash” on my arms 🙂

Check it out…

http://www.chestnutmtn.com/summer/