Author: Dave

He was born in Canada, but currently lives in Boulder, CO up in Boulder Heights.

Greensburg in the news

Well, after we helped out the family in Greensburg, we’ve obviously been following the news about the rebuilding very closely. What’s amazing is the number of news coverage items and shows on Greensburg’s rebuilding as a reinvented “green” town:

Blown Away on the Discovery Channel
Greensburg, a series on the Green Planet channel (Leo DiCaprio) [initial episode aired on Discovery Channel, featuring John “the Sage” Janssen, my father-in-law, wearing McGuckins suspenders from Boulder)
CBS Early Show
NPR

And many others…

Tags green, greensburg, rebuild, tornado

Personal Technology & Gadgets

Review requests

Post author By Dave
Post date July 6, 2008

Well, I’ve purchased/borrowed a number of gadgets and toys in the last year or so that I HAVEN’T reviewed, so I thought I’d list them, and see if anyone wanted me to review any specific items (comment below with which item you want reviewed):

Tags gadget, review

Personal

WWF

Post author By Dave
Post date June 20, 2008

Tags panda, world wildlife fund, world wrestling federation, wwf

Technology & Gadgets

Forgotten passwords…

Post author By Dave
Post date June 19, 2008

A buddy of mine in the fire department forgot his password on Windows XP. Turns out he mistyped it twice when he changed passwords. Since I need to fix this type of problem reasonably infrequently, I thought I’d put in a blog post so that I could remember the program I used for the password recovery, ophcrack. This could even be run off a memory stick!

Tags ophcrack, password, recovery, windows, xp

Technology & Gadgets

Setting up wview (3.9.0) on Ubuntu (8.04)

Post author By Dave
Post date June 10, 2008
22 Comments on Setting up wview (3.9.0) on Ubuntu (8.04)

I decided to document my setup of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron running with a weather station, the inexpensive WS-2310. I built this computer setup for a buddy who wanted to run a weather station, but didn’t want to buy a Davis Vantage Pro2. The machine is a Pentium 4 2.8GHz, 80G HDD, 1 GB of RAM.

Tags hardy heron, radlib, server edition, ubuntu, ws-2300, wview

Technology & Gadgets

Booting Ubuntu installer off flash

Post author By Dave
Post date June 8, 2008
2 Comments on Booting Ubuntu installer off flash

I was trying to setup a buddy’s old laptop to run Ubuntu and wviewweather, and having no luck because his CD-ROM drive was flaky. So i found this great utility (OK, google found it) that sets up a USB flash drive so that it will boot as if it were the CD-ROM. This is: UNetbootin. Tell it where to find the ISO, tell it where your flash is, and ta-dah! Great utility.

No, copying the files from the ISO onto blank USB memory stick doesn’t work, in case you were wondering…

To give a little more detail, wview now supports a very inexpensive weather station, the La Crosse 2310 (I bought it for $120 including shipping off eBay). This is great for those who want to participate in CWOP and can’t afford or don’t want to spend the money to get a $400+ Davis Vantage weather station, and have an old PC with a serial port lying around.

Tags boot, flash, install, iso, Live CD, ubuntu, unetbootin, usb, wview, wviewweather

Technology & Gadgets

Funambol for Blackberry-Outlook OTA synchronization

Post author By Dave
Post date June 7, 2008
2 Comments on Funambol for Blackberry-Outlook OTA synchronization

I’ve been working on getting Over-The-Air synchronization working on my BlackBerry using only SyncML, Blackberry Internet Services (BIS) and Funambol. All with no luck! If anyone reads this and knows what’s going on, please drop me an e-mail or leave a comment.

Tags crash, funambol, myfunambol, outlook 2007, scheduleworld, syncml

Personal Technology & Gadgets

Wiping a Blackberry

Post author By Dave
Post date June 3, 2008

Well, who’d have thunk it. Wiping a BlackBerry is very difficult. From my previous post, it should be apparent that I left my previous employer, and I have a Blackberry Curve 8310 (personal property). Well, the IT department at my previous employer had imposed a IT Security Policy (that required a password, etc.). It turns out that invoking the Wipe Handheld command does not remove this policy. This is a bad thing, as I do not have access to my new employers BES server to overwrite the policy. SO, here’s two ways of doing it:

Upgrade your Blackberry to OS 4.5 and then run the JL_Cmder utility to perform a real factory reset. (I used the Beta OS 4.5.0.37)
Follow the regedit procedure in the documentation here to install a “blank” policy into a Blackberry.

Tags blackberry, it policy, wipe

Personal

Gainfully unemployed

With mixed feelings I left Seagate, with my last day of work yesterday, and my last official employment day on June 13.

I really enjoyed working at Seagate, and getting down and dirty with hard disks, and I wish all my colleagues the best (and beat out that there W company).

I’m moving (first day June 30) to a new company. It’s a small company with unique technology.