Custom Baby Bedding
Posted by UncoolJohn in Uncategorized on February 16th, 2009
So, Last month at work, we launched what we’ve been calling DYOBB (pronounced Dee-yob), short for Design Your Own Baby Bedding. It was intersting to watch the feature being developed and I feel proud of the final product. It’s a flash application that allows people to make custom crib bedding for their nurseries. It’s nice being behind the scenes because I get to see all the designs that come in. Now, everybody has different taste, but some of these are downright hideous.
Ugly
Pretty
It takes all kinds.
My co-workers say I need DYOCC, Design Your Own Cupcake for Cubcake Bakery. An interesting thought.
Travel past and future
Posted by UncoolJohn in Uncategorized on February 16th, 2009
Brooklyn Bridge
I was lucky enough to be able to satiate my wanderlust last year by going to New York City in July and on a cruise to The Bahamas in October. New York was awesome. I went with a couple friends and we stayed in a hotel about a block from Times Square. I loved how easy it was to get around Manhattan. I also saw two shows, Spring Awakening, and RENT. It was a lot of fun and only wish I could have stayed longer.
The Carnival Sensation
The cruise was great as well, although Nassau was disappointing. I would love to take another one this year.
Speaking of this year. I have already started brainstorming on trips. I would love to go to San Francisco (I’ve never been west of the Mississippi) and I may cruise again. I’ll try to remember to keep you updated!
An Uncool Million
Posted by UncoolJohn in Uncategorized on August 24th, 2008
I will make a million dollars by the time I am thirty. A little under five years. This is my goal.
I know nothing about business. I do know from talks with a friend who works in the web-hosting support business that there are many less intelligent people with websites that generate millions of dollars in revenue. Surely if they can do it I can… right?
So, where do I begin? I’ve been searching for online business ideas but I don’t really have any of my own. I have the skills to create and maintain a website, but come up short on content. And beyond that, what legal and financial steps do I need to take to protect myself and my business once I have a great idea? Maybe that’s thinking too far ahead.
Any input would be appreciated.
Finished!
Posted by UncoolJohn in Crafts on February 26th, 2008
With a week off between jobs, I finally got around to finishing the afghan I started crocheting last year. Finished it’s about six feet by four and a half feet. I believe it’s the largest craft project I’ve ever taken on. And it only took 4 months, haha. With a lot of breaks.
Wanderlust
Posted by UncoolJohn in Uncategorized on February 17th, 2008
One of my New Year’s resolutions this year was to travel. I am not a traveller. The last flight I took was to Louisville, Kentucky for work. Before that was about 10 years earlier to Miami for a cruise with my family (great vacation). I went to New York city with my High School band. Other than that I have only been to Chattanooga, TN, Hilton Head, SC, and Gulf Shores Alabama for vacation.
I get the bug to travel every once in a while. I’ll fantasize about just getting in my car and driving, but I’ve never followed through on this craving.
I got an email from AirTran a few days ago offering $25 off any ticket purchase. This sparked my interest to get away again. I happened to have just sent in my tax return as well and was expecting a good size refund. I started to check out hotels in New York City because although I have been there, going on a band trip doesn’t exactly afford freedom to explore. I researched rates, asked friends about areas, looked at attraction prices, planned out a budget.
Last night I booked my flight and hotel. I’m still a little in shock that I’m actually taking a real trip for myself. I’m finally a traveller.
Tools of the Trade: Yesterday.bat
Posted by UncoolJohn in Tools of the Trade on January 31st, 2008
Batch files are a great way to get things done simply. They simplify common tasks a sysadmin may need to do and are easy to create and schedule to run at intervals. Plus they make me feel smart. I’m talking mainly about the Windows side today. I have not ventured into shell scripting for linux or unix yet.
Anyway, it is often necessary to perform jobs on files with names that have yesterday’s date in them. For instance, you may want to zip a bunch of logfiles at the end of the day. Unfortunately there is no simple command to return yesterday’s date from a Windows command prompt.
Enter Yesterday.bat. Yesterday.bat is a script I came across by way of a coworker at an old job. It is a complex batch file that computes yesterday’s date using today’s date and a series of calculations, it even takes into account ends of months, years, and leap years. The batch file parses the dates into variables which you can use within code you add to the batch file. Yesterday.bat has helped me script jobs for many things using a variety of date formats.
If you have any need to write scripts using yesterday’s date, check out yesterday.bat. Thank you, Rob van der Woude for making this great tool available.
Late Nights
Posted by UncoolJohn in Uncategorized on January 20th, 2008
Oh woot and shirt.woot, you make me stay up just that much later.
Hobby ADD
Posted by UncoolJohn in Cooking, Crafts on January 16th, 2008
I recognize that I have hobby ADD. It’s a serious condition. It controls my non-working hours. In the past year and a half, I’ve bought a Nintendo Wii, taken up crochet, started to cross stitch, learned grilling techniques from my dad and put them to use (Meat Party ‘07), bought an Xbox 360, and made about 30 batches of cookies. I have an unfinished crochet project, an unfinished cross stitch project, I bought Mario Galaxy for the Wii and haven’t played it more than 2 hours, I’m trying to learn how to make perfect cupcakes from scratch, and I’m reading a few books.
Maybe time management is the problem. I have found myself baking at 2:30 in the morning more than once. My bowling ball (a hobby from 2 years ago) sits in the closet gathering dust.
I think by far my favorite hobby is cooking. I love that I can share what I make (I haven’t really personally eaten a lot of the stuff I have baked). I also love to entertain (although 12 racks of ribs and 4 whole chickens was a bit extreme). I like to make things, and cooking forces a finished product before my mind can wander. So I think this year I will try to focus on cooking. I would like to try many new recipes and maybe even experiment with creating a recipe.
Tonight I made chocolate cupcakes from scratch. I made frosting for them but it sucked (they can’t all be winners). Tomorrow I will be attempting a pot roast as well as yeast rolls.
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Posted by UncoolJohn in Uncategorized on January 7th, 2008
I have no idea what to put here. Please continue to hold.
Tools of the Trade: System Rescue CD
Posted by UncoolJohn in Tools of the Trade on November 8th, 2007
I’m planning on “Tools of the Trade” being a recurring topic in which I post information about tools I find useful as a systems admin. I make no claim that these are the best tools, they’re just what I use.
Often, a co-worker will come to me with a laptop whose hard drive has become so damaged they can no longer boot into Windows. Usually the drive is making clicking or grinding noises, and I wonder why they didn’t do anything sooner, such as backing up their data. Anyway, they are scared because they think all of their data is lost. Sometimes this is the case, however sometimes the data can be recovered.
Enter SystemRescueCD. SystemRescueCD is a bootable Linux operating system on a CD-ROM. You can probably use another CD or USB drive booting Linux variant, but I like SystemRescueCD. The bootable ISO comes with various useful tools such as GParted, a partition editor, PartImage, a drive-image maker, Shred, a secure file deletion tool, and network tools such as smb. Best of all, it’s free!
The fact that the SystemRescueCD OS runs from the CD and memory, not the hard disk, allows you to boot it when you might not otherwise be able to get into your normal OS which is running on the faulty hard disk. I can boot into the OS, mount a flash drive, external hard drive, or a smb network share, then try to mount the faulty hard drive. If the drive mounts (only read access is needed), I can begin trying to copy files to the media I previously mounted. Often the disk will throw errors during the copy process, but I have had good success getting most or all of a person’s data off of failing drives. I mainly focus on getting their My Documents, Desktop, and Favorites folders but also check the Local Settings/Application Data folder for mail archives.
If you are extremely attached to the data on a failing disk, I would not recommend this. You should keep your computer off and not use the disk to prevent further damage. A professional service such as Drive Savers may be able to save your data. However if you’re not willing to pay hundreds of dollars, and this is your last-ditch effort before replacing the drive, SystemRescueCD may be the tool for you.
I have also used SystemRescueCD to resize partitions on a hard drive to install a second OS or just to make a data partition. Again, this may not be the best tool for these jobs, but it has worked for me and it can work for you.