My friend seva is an admin of some unix boxes (including linux) at a firm that does some stockish stuff. Appearently, some of their applications are based on java. He was running into a weird situation where the box was in EDT (where it lived) and but java kept thinking it was CDT (where the box was originally.) Well, it was reporting “America/Chicago” technically.
Continue reading Java dumbness of the day
Category Archives: Geek
All things geek
Yet another Fry’s update.
My sources tell me that the Downer’s Grove Fry’s is open today until 7pm in a preview mode. From what I’ve been told they are doing a run through with the staff so they have some experiance before the grand opening. My sources also report that the grand opening will be over the weekend of the 4th.
Other sources say that “Old man Fry” was there yesterday making sure that all was ready.
Looks like its almost time. Whee.
A tale of two RedHats, Part 2
I upgraded my desktop at home to Fedora Core 2 this past week. Partly because I was home sick and bored and also because I was sick of not having DMA support in ATAPI CD and DVD burns. The fact that its taken this long for Linux to support it is really sad. But thankfully that’s over. I did a fresh install since I’ve never trusted upgrades.
Continue reading A tale of two RedHats, Part 2
A tale of two RedHats, Part 1
A bunch of friends and I have rented a box at ServerMatrix, a managed hosting service where you get total control (root) on your box. They support Windows, BSD, and Linux. The flavors of Linux they’ll install are RH9, RH EL3, or Debian. I’ve been elected as head admin of the box and MARK NOTARUS is my other partner in crime. Mark and I were most familiar with the free RedHat versions, and since EL3 is based on those, we went with that.
To sum it up, I’m really impressed with EL3. It seems like a really well QAed version of RH9, which was a solid distribution.
Continue reading A tale of two RedHats, Part 1
openssl as a debugging client
Today’s “useful tool of the day” comes to us thanks to the openssl command line tool from openssl. It was probably well known to all, but I just found out about it today.
From the openssl man page:
s_client This implements a generic SSL/TLS client which can establish
a transparent connection to a remote server speaking SSL/TLS.
It's intended for testing purposes only and provides only
rudimentary interface functionality but internally uses
mostly all functionality of the OpenSSL ssl library.
Here’s an example:
Continue reading openssl as a debugging client
Google being evil? NOT
Edward Kasner, with the help of his nephew, Milton Sirotta, coined the term googol. We all know it now to be 10100. Kasner’s relatives are supposedly upset that everyone’s favorite search engine Google is making money of the word he coined. Peri Fleisher, Kasner’s great-neice, is appearently talking to NPR and anyone who will listen about this injustice.
First note, in that second article, I love this quote: “I had heard of Google in 1988 before most people were aware of it. I didn’t know if the company was going to take off or not.” (Emphasis mine.) I’m sure this is a typing mistake, but its still funny to me.
Second note, this seems really silly to me. I guess the controversy comes to these two points: 1) In Google’s favor, Google spelled it differently. 2) In the family’s favor Google acknowledges that they based their name on this term, but doing a play on the word. The family might have some merit, but once a word is released into the lexicon for general use, its too late. Especially a seemlingly general term like googol. Unless you’ve trademarked it and defend that trademark, or something like that.
Being a geek, I knew the world googol long before Google came along. How many “normal” people did? Scrabble and Upwords players maybe. And that’s why the family is all ticked off.
Seems like a lot of sour grapes to me.
Fry’s news
Looks like the Chicago area Fry’s is still moving forward. (Thanks to MARK NOTARUS for the link.)
From Suburban Chicago News:
Fry’s Electronics wants to broaden its national presence and hopes its first venture east of the Mississippi River will pay big dividends.
After almost two decades of operating exclusively in the western and southwestern United States, the consumer electronics retailer is ready to make its Midwest debut in Downers Grove. The store is near interstates 88 and 355 and was built on the site once occupied by Auto Nation.
Update:
Martin Maney has pointed out on the LUNI mailing list, that our friend whyme has a newer update at his site that says Fry’s is actually hiring.