How Pusher Killed the Labs

This is the story of how 3 lab environments were rendered inoperable with a click of a mouse button. Well, there was some configuration involved, but it was completed with a single click.

Who is Behind Job Spam?

If you have been in the job market, chances are that you have received a lot of “offers” from recruiters. Lots of times, these “offers” are for short-term contracts, in random places around your country. I thought I’d pick apart the email header, and share it here. It’s not uncommon to receive email from recruiters, especially through services… Read More »

Don’t Throw Away Your Servers Yet

Recently, Jon Evans of TechCrunch posted a really intriguing article discussing why your software development package is behind schedule. It’s a really good article, and I agree with 66 percent of it. He makes and explains two of the three points really well. As a systems guy, I take a bit of umbrage with the third point.

Manual install of DX7VB.DLL

A recent tip for installing VB6 on Windows 7 has included the installation of an old version of the DirectX 7 library. Here is that process. Note: this process can be used for any .dll that you’d like to register. Download and Install First things first. You need to download the zip file, extract it, then copy it… Read More »

It’s been a long and winding road

It’s been ten wonderful years since I brought this site on line. Ten years. Wow. This is the longest job I’ve ever held. Let’s see what’s been going on here for ten years.

Twelve Days of Christmas, SysAdmin Style

I present to you now a classic. This was originally submitted to the Network Working Group as RFC1882 by Bill Hancock, Ph.D., in December of 1995. I revisit this every year, and it never fails to bring a smile to my face. Enjoy this blast from the past.

Dead Disks, Dread, and File Retrieval(.com)

Recently, one of our developers came to us with a failed “server”, and requested the IT department assist in recovering data from it. Powering the box on revealed the click of death. Ouch. Let’s give this a shot.

Creating Circles with CSS

Have you ever needed to make a circle for your web site, with text inside of it? Normally, you’d create a graphically representation, with the text inside. Did you know you could do it with a simple little CSS class?