analog_kidd

Emails sent to both TN Senators, my Rep, and the BATFE. And just for good measure, I figured out how to also send them a fax over the Internet.  :up:

Like printer manufacturers that sell the printers for cheap, but make their money on ink over the life of the printer, I'm sure Keurig doesn't make much money on the hardware, but depends on people buying their coffee packs. I can't really fault them, they are losing a revenue stream to all the knockoff companies. This seems like an attempt to keep some of that revenue, but it wasn't really very well thought out. Of course someone would come up with a way to overcome the restriction - that's the American way.   What Keurig really needs to do is figure out a way to make an economical coffee packet that can compete with the knockoffs. Stunts like this just make your customer base angry.

I was thinking all the people who protest Big Oil and Coal are sitting in their nice warm houses this week, not thinking about where that heat comes from.

  Ha! When I told my wife I wanted to try and make some paracord stuff, she said, "Oh, you mean macrame? I have a book on it around here somewhere."  I lost my interest.

I felt silly today. I was the ONLY one in my group to come into work this morning. Tomorrow, I'm checking email first thing before I leave, and I'll be doing whatever the boss is  :dirty:

Man, I would have liked to have been at this concert. When I first heard about this album, I thought It's gotta be a joke. The more I think about it, Pink Floyd was really a Blues band, so It makes sense that Gov't mule covers them. I think they pulled it off fairly well.   http://youtu.be/nu51PBboaMY      

I've been wearing Lee jeans for years. They fit me just right, and are half the cost of Levi's.

I built an HTPC a couple of years ago, and put an AMD A8 in it. I don't ever use it to play games, but it handles all of my movie watching just fine. I use it to play DVD / BluRay, and stream Prime / Loki. It never skips a beat for those.   I bought a special case that looks like a stereo component. It fits right in with all of my other electronics.   I also bought a compact wireless keyboard with a touchpad built onto it for couch-browsing.

In addition to the drug testing, my idea is to give them the choice to work, or attend state funded education program. Take the education and get good grades, you get double the cash. Slack off in class you get put on the work detail. All of it has an end date of one year. Get your training, or do menial work for the state, but after a year you are on your own. You could reapply one more time in your life, but only after a year of not being on the program. To get a pay check, you must be working or learning. No exceptions. Free, state run child care would also be offered to participants.   Oh, and if you take the work detail, it could be during the night-shift. It needs to be so uncomfortable that they gladly look for a real job.   Of course, seriously medically disabled people could get help for life. But you have to get a yearly exam by a private doctor, and a state employed doctor, who BOTH have to be in agreement that you are disabled.   One other thing, participants need to bring legitimate proof of expenses, like a mortgage statement or lease, or car payment, and payments will be made directly from the state to the business. No more checks that come in the mail and get spent on crap. 

I bet that place NEVER gets robbed!

My unprofessional and smartass advice:   Go to the scrap yard office and ask for the stuff back one more time. If they refuse, then call 911 and report a robbery and tell them you have the thieves cornered. Then wait for the cops to show up.

My life's good. I'm alive, alive, alive, alive, Dead!

I forced myself to use Windows 8 by installing it on my work computers. I actually got used to using the tiled interface. I thought I would hate it, but I actually find it OK now. I appreciate the live tiles, like weather and news.   I loaded Win 10 in a VM on my home PC and noticed right off that the tiled interface was missing, being replaced by a horrible version of the start menu. You can flip between the the startmenu, or the tiles, but not both, if I recall correctly. The New Start Menu is horrible. It flys out these bulky tiles, which are difficult to navigate.   I had heard that they were revamping the PowerShell app to function more like other programs where Copy / Paste worked from Ctl-C / Ctl-V, and be able to select text in wrap-around format instead of block. Unfortunately, this feature is not available in the preview.   I have been hearing rumors that it will be a free upgrade for people who own Win8.

We spent the last year doing exactly what you are planning. We bought a small farm a year ago that already had a barn, some pastures, and a chicken coop. I'll tell you about our experience.   Since you are a bird lover, definitely get chickens. They are my favorite livestock we have. They have personalities and are generally friendly. They make me laugh all the time with their crazy antics. You'll definitely need a coop for them to go into at night. You can either pen them in with a chicken yard, or let them free range. Be prepared to have casualties if you free range. Coyotes got all of my neighbors. We have a fenced in area, with a net over the top.   We also have a couple of guinnea fowl. They are cool looking birds, and produced eggs last summer, but then stopped.Some birds don't lay all year long, so that may be normal. We'll see what happens this spring. I tell them all the time they better start making me more than they are costing me, or they'll go in the pot ;-) We have ten chickens and two guinneas. We get about 9 or ten eggs a day, all from the chickens. It's way more than we can eat, but we give away the rest to family and friends.    Do not get a pig!!! I had a friend convince me to go halfsies and get one and it turned out to be a horrible idea. Unless you are really set up well for one, they will destroy everything. It took mine about 24 hours to turn a lush grassy pen into a sloppy mud pit. I won't be able to use that area for years. They stink horribly. All they want is food. They are extremely strong and will knock you down into the mud. We figured out how much he cost me in food, medicine, and butchering costs, and for the same money, I could have just bought a butchered pig. Trust me, don't get a pig. Plus they are very social and you should have more than one. We just had the one, and I think he spited me by being tough and full of gristle. Damned pig.   We also have bees. They are fairly easy to care for, but there is a lot to know about them. Some people coast along and let nature take it's course, but to have a really good hive, takes some knowledge, and it doesn't come over night. They don't take a lot of time to care for, I check on mine every few weeks or so. The hard part for you, is with RA you might have difficulty lifting the hive boxes. Full of honey, they can be over 75 pounds. Fortunately, there is a robust community of beekeepers in nearly every TN county. They are a cool group of people, that love bees, adn are extremely helpful and eager to assist. Get into your county's beekeeper association, and you'l easily find someone to help you out. There is also about $500 worth of startup costs, between buying the hives, tools, suit and bees. Sadly, I think between bad luck and my own stupidity, I may have killed mine off. I looked in on them today, and the only bees I saw were dead ones.    Fruit trees will take time before they really start producing fruit. At least 5 years or so. Make sure to read the labels, some trees need to be planted in pairs to cross pollinate. Plant them away from where you live and hang out. We have two well established apple trees right near the pool, and thought we'll just make a nice little orchard all around the pool area. So we planted several more trees right there. Then the apples started dropping and made a huge stinky mess. This spring, I'm pulling up all the fruit trees I planted and moving them to the back 40. The deer can eat the ones that fall, or they can turn into fertilizer, I'll pick the ones I want to eat.   We planted a big garden last year, and it was a lot of work. I learned to never plant pumpkin in the garden - it took over everything. Plant it far away form the garden. We let the weeds get away, seemingly overnight, and I eventually had to keep them at bay with a weedeater. Cukes and tomatoes did really well. I'll plant a lot more corn this year. I'll skip the lima beans, they grew well, but it takes a bunch to make a meal. I harvested a whole row of limas and got maybe two meals from it all. I ran an electric fence wire all around the garden, and bugs were the only thing that ate anything. With that much land, offer a friend a garden plot, and you can work together. It's a lot more fun that way.   Take time every day to enjoy your property. You have a blessing not many people get. Good luck.

Digging a little deeper, it looks like there may be a PowerShell command to remotely rename a PC from the comfort of your office. You may need to install PowerShell 4 on your workstation / server. I read somewhere that this cmdlet is in PowerShell 2 and 4, but not 3. Open whatever PowerShell you currently have and type "Help Rename-Computer" to see if it exists for you. It will definitely be in version 4, so just be safe and install that.   Try this command on a sacrificial Windows PC and see what happens:     Replace "OldComputername" and "NewComputerName" with the names you are actually using. Replace "domain\user" with your actual domain name and an account that has admin rights on the PC and in AD. Making yourself a Domain Admin is cheating, but being in that group will get the job done.   You'll want to verify that the PC reboots, and comes back with the new name. Also verify in AD that the name has been changed. You may want to look at DNS too and see if it's changed there as well.   If it works, you could probably knock them all out in an evening. You could get fancy and write a script using "get-content" and have it read all the old and new computernames from a text file, then sit back and let PS do all the work. Or you could copy / paste that line 200 times and edit the computernames, then run that as a simple script.   PowerShell is awesome. If you're going to be a server admin, I highly encourage you to at least learn some basic commands. There are a ton of web pages out there with sample scripts. Most of us don't write any original code, we just google / copy / paste / modify what's already out there.   Also, this command should work for Windows PC's, I'm not a MAC guy, so you are on your own there  :cool:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/01/28/dc-issues-first-gun-carry-permits/   I'm surprised: only 69 applicants? Only 8 approved, that doesn't surprise me. Still, it's a good sign.

I had been working at the same job doing IT for over 14 years and amassed a nice set of benefits myself. Mostly in the form of 4+ weeks of vacation. A new job opportunity presented itself a few months ago, and I thought, "Why not, let me take a look." Turns out the (non-vacation) benefits were much better and the job was a lot less stressful. Someone told me to ask if vacation was negotiable, so I did, and it turns out it was and they gave me 4 weeks without even flinching. I talked that story around to my circle of IT friends, and they all said that is a very common practice these days in the IT world.   Another suggestion I always tell people is to go on a job interview for a job you know you don't want. It will be good practice. You'll be relaxed, and it will allow you the opportunity to see the types of questions you may be asked. Then go on an interview for a few jobs you think you might like. You don't have to take it if you don't want. You might be surprised how motivated you become when you see what else is out there.   The certs are good, but when I was an IT manager, when I hired someone, I looked at their experience. Try to figure out ways to boost up your experience level to attain your dream job. Can you branch out at your current job? You might be surprised that just changing your job function within the same company might make all the difference. If you are excited at what you do, the schedule is less important. Plus it would help you to grow new skills. I know at my last company, we had folks on the Help Desk that were able to branch out for a few hours a day to work on special assignments, and that turned into a career path change. Several of them moved from the Help Desk into the server support group.   Right now Virtualization (vmWare / Hyper-V) and anything with Citrix in the name are very hot IT skills. If you get those skills under your belt, you would become very marketable.

The Netdom.exe command will do what you need on the windows PC's. It may not be installed on the XP boxes, but you can download it from MS and just copy it to each PC. Use Google to find the commands.   I'm a big fan of PowerShell, but It would likely need to be installed on the XP boxes as well. The Remove-Computer and Add-Computer cmdlets are what you are looking for. You can find info about them here:    https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh849816.aspx   I found this bit of code on that page that looks like it might remove all of the Windows machines at once: For that to work, you'll want to create a text file named OldComputers.txt and put all of the machine names in it, each one on a new line. Modify both of the entries that say Domain01\Admin01 to your own domain name and user account. Change "Legacy" if you want a different workgroup name, but that won't really matter since it will only be temporary.   If that doesn't work, you can run these commands from each workstation: and after the reboot   Save each of those last two bits of code into a text file named UnjoinPC.ps1 and JoinPC.ps1 and then run them from a PowerShell window. If the very first one-liner works, you wouldn't need to run the #Remove Machine From Domain script, but you will need to run the #Add Machine to Domain script on each PC.   One word of caution: you better know the local admin password on each PC, otherwise you will have no way of logging into the pc after the unjoin process and it reboots. I would try the commands above one one sacrificial PC first just to make sure it all works.     Good Luck

I'm pretty sure that ORNL has a Server Support position open, and I have a friend that works at Y12, I think he said they are also looking for server admins. At Y12 they have a thing where you have to go thru a Temp agency, like Tek Systems. If you work out after six months they hire you. Both would be cushy jobs - well paid and minimal overtime required. Oh, and Y12 works 4~10's, so Fridays off every week  :up:

I've been using a program called Kodi http://kodi.tv/ (formerly called XBMC). It has it's roots as an app that could stream video content to/from your PC/XBox, but it has grown beyond that.   It's got a steep learning curve, but there is a ton of content that can be viewed. The app knows where to find video from all over the net, such as the ABC/NBC/etc. websites, and makes it easy to view by indexing it and presenting it to the viewer.  The genius of the app is that it is modular, and people write these add-ons for it. There are add-ons for all kinds of things. There is even one for live TV streaming. Not sure how they do it, but I was able to watch Fox News Channel over the PC. Switching back and forth between the cable and PC, I noticed only a few second delay.   I built a PC in a special case that looks like a stereo, and added it to my TV rack. It's dedicated to watching stuff on the internet. We also use Amazon Prime, and use the PC for that.

"You can have my Barney doll, when you pry it from my cold dead fingers"

I was thinking about requesting one of those Google Wallet Cards, and was wondering if anyone had any experience with them, or the Google Wallet in general?   We have been doing the Dave Ramsey plan for many years now, and I pretty much just spend cash for my every day purchases, such as gas or lunch, etc. It's a real pain mostly at the gas pump where I have to go in to pre-pay, then in again to get any change.   I have a Debit card, but I don't like using it very often. We had the card compromised a time or two, and since it is tied to my primary checking account, I always worry that someone could clean me out.   I opened a second checking account that I use just for online purchases. Just before I make an online purchase, I transfer just enough money from primary checking to this account. This way, if the account got hacked, it would just be an empty account.   Someone told me about the feature of the Google Wallet App that you can scan in all of your Store Loyalty cards (you know, the grocery card that gets you the discount that brings the cost down to what it should be), so I downloaded the app and entered all my cards. We'll see how that works the next time I go grocery shopping.   Looking into the feature of Google Wallet, it looks like I can transfer money from any of my accounts, or even a credit card, and then spend from the balance of my account. Similar I guess to PayPal. Some stores allow you to pay with the app, and all you do is put the phone near the card scanner. It has to be a special scanner that can read your phone. The nice thing is they also give you a Debit card that you can use at stores that don't have the scanner.   I'm thinking that instead of getting my cash "allowance" every pay day, I can just transfer that money to my Google Wallet. Since it's easy to transfer money, I'm thinking I could close out the extra bank account.   So, has anyone else ever used this service?

  I use the hosts file method too, and never have an issue with malware. Plus it make my browser experience much nicer as it hides a lot of the more annoying ads.

My wife and I went to SA years ago for an anniversary. I recall there being enough to do to keep us busy for a day or two. Especially if you add a trip to the beach in there. We spent the better part of a day walking around the old city.Be warned, most of them are shops. But they are still cool to walk around.   Definitely stay at a Bed & Breakfast. They are awesome. Look for one in the old part of the city. It will be full of character and history. The one we stayed out loaned out bikes. We rode all over the place and saw a lot of stuff the tour guides never take you to.   Take the horse and carriage ride from the fort at night. That was one of the more memorable things we did.

I'm OK with the plan, as long as there are some restrictions. Such as, no one person should be allowed to have more than ten cans. I mean, really, who needs more than ten anyway?   Also, corn of any kind is OK, but never any of those evil Black Beans. Those cans only exist to kill.