blog.emerick.org

They can be a pain, but we all love them…

Anyways i have been working on a plan for all of my computers that i have… 5 now…

1. My Dell Ispiron 8600 laptop
2. Old Toshiba Sattellite AMD K6 400 MHz i think and ~192 MB ram with a whopping 6GB harddrive i think
3. Old desktop, 500MHz AMD something, ~380MB ram, 60GB of space i believe… Currently acting as the webserver
4. Beyond TV server, AMD Duron 1.3MHz i think, 1GB ram, harddrives: 160GB (files) +250GB (TV recordings) + 30GB (operating system)
5. The 5th computer hasnt been put all together yet… Its just a bunch of parts i have laying around, the processor is an AMD sempron 2500, via motherboard, 512mb ram i think, 40gb harddrive that i hope still works

Heres the plan… I plan on putting the Sempron 2500 processor into the BTV server and taking the slower one out and putting it with the older motherboard… and it will become the webserver…? The webserver now will become my beyond tv link box which will interface with the BTV server and allow me to watch my recorded shows on my TV, with my fancy new remote… I am pretty sure it still has the TV out card, atleast i hope it does… if not, i am not sure what ill do with it..? The old laptop has been pretty much retired as it can really do much… it will become my christmas light conrroller comptuer (its in use right now controlling the candy canes)

Also i now no longer need a new $75 powersuppy, im just going to go without a CDROM drive in the server, and in the place of the cdrom tray will fit nicely the power supply that i got for Christmas…

The only other thing that i needed to get was a heat sink which i just ordered 20 minutes ago.. and should be here in 2-3 days…

Update on the Christmas Controller: i just ordered all of the parts that i need with the exceptopn of the resistors which i will order here shortly…? Got my new soldering iron, the Cold Heat one that you see on tV that works really great… So i will be doing a lot of soldering next week sometime…

Other than that, not much else going on… I finished the book i was reading, The Cuckoo’s Egg, and now plan on starting my new book tomorrow night, The Art of Deception… The Cuckoos Egg was a really good book and the Art of Deception looks very promising…

Had dinner at a new place in Williamsburg tonight called Cheeburger Cheeburger (no, i didnt mispell cheeseburger, thats what its really called)… It was really reallly good… excellent cheeseburgers and milkshakes… The Reeses PB cup and the PB milkshakes are highly recommened by me if you like peanut butter… Also i saw Colby working there which was cool, havent seen her since this past summer while working at Busch…

Well its late… I am going to go clean all the comptuer stuff off of my bed and get some sleep, later…

–Jason

Well i am about to start ordering all that parts that i need to start making my controllers and relays…

I should have the controller wired in about a day and the relays will probably take another couple of days to solder all the parts and such…

Should have the entire controller up and ready to go before i head back to school, or well atleast thats the plan…

Currently i am over here chillen at travs playing some xbox 360… Has some pretty awesome graphics on an old standard TV… cant wait to see how it looks on my HD widescreen TV…? should look amazing…

well i am going to go play some perfect dark 0, later…

–Jason

I just upgraded the blog to the newest version from wordpress, version 2.0…

So if you notice any problems with the blog let me know… There shouldnt be any bugs, but you never know…

The other features, picture and moblog havent changed and should still be good to go…
–Jason

Got a lot of good stuff this Christmas… here is a list:

• 2U rackmount case
• new processor, already have a motherbord
• powersupply (of which i found out i need a different style, thanks to the case being smaller than my previous one)
• heatsink/fan (of which i realized is too tall for the 2U case…)
• Firefly remote for Beyond TV
• socks
• boxers
• white tshirts
• The Art of Deception book (of which i plan to actually read!)
• Cross over connector
• Peanut Butter Twixs (my favorite candy bar of all time )
• Tux Crossing poster, making fun of windows and promoting linux
• $20 and some life savers candy from travis
• $6 gift card to best buy from dave

Hmm i think i covered everything so far… want to add anything to that list?

–Jason

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

here is a really cool zipcode map.

click on the map and type a zipcode in…

–Jason

Merry Christmas!

Click to see it a lil better.

–Jason

I installed ubuntu on the laptop the other night… got most of the stuff installed that i need… few more things to configure and set up to make it work right…

Car started leaking oil today… and when i say leaking i mean leaking… the dipstick was bone dry… It appears that the crankshaft gasket blew out… not an easy fix so im going to have to take it to a garage… however with the holiday season, everyone is on break and they are already busy, so i wont be able to get my car into the garage until jan 2… So i will be without a car for a little while… If my dad is home i can take the truck, other than that you will have to come pick me up

Went to the dentist today, all is well there…

Not much else going on… Depending on how much this car repair is going to cost me, i will start ordering parts for my controller and relays… the parts for the relay will be the most expensive… ~$200 worth of parts… for only 64 channels… crazy i know…

Well im going to go do something, later…

–Jason

Just finished installing XP Pro on the laptop… got most of my applications installed…

Not a big fan of the new aim… just too much, i like things simple… they are trying to add too many features into it and all i think… GAIM is a great alternative… and its available for windows and linux… try it out… I will be using gaim on linux once i install that next…

So ill be offline for another few hours… Later…

–Jason

Not much going on at the home front… Just been chillen here, watching TV and playing with christmas lights and circuits…

Last night i went out to dinner w/ Jen, Allie and Hargrave.. went to Fridays… It was good…

Finally got the Beyond TV server set back up… So its recording away again…

Also backed up my laptop to the server as i am going to reformat this laptop today… So you may not see me on for a few hours… Going to set it up to dual boot XP Pro and Ubuntu…

My goal is to use Ubuntu as much as possible to see how far one can go on just using linux to see if it is possible for someone to make the switch excluding those applications that i need that run exclusively on Windows… One example of this would be the Beyond TV Link software that i use to watch and control my beyond TV server from…

Also plan on upgrading the Beyond TV server to Windows Server 2003 since Windows XP Pro doesnt do that great of a job as a file server… So i will be doing that upgrade in the coming days as well… Probably before Christmas sometime… And after christmas, if i get a new processor and rackmount case, i will be setting that up as another webserver most likely since it will be more powerful than the current one and will most likely have more memory as well… And for the old computer I will probably turn it into a Back up server or a Domain Controller… maybe try out Fedora’s Directory Server… Ill figure something out

Well i am going to go finish a few more backups from the laptop and start process of installing everything again… Later.

–Jason