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XP and QEMU
Last week I decided to try building a virtual machine to run Windows XP. I figured I’d install XP, install all the recent patches, then make a snapshot of the virtual disk. Then I’d have a clean XP install that I could use to run various apps as needed. Several years back I purchased a…
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Bye-bye Taxcut, hello TaxACT
Don’t look now, but it’s Tax Season again. This is usually the time of year I start looking for the best deal on H&R Block’s TaxCut product, which I’ve been using for several years. Truth be told, I’ve always been pretty happy with TaxCut. I usually pay between $15 and $25 for the “Deluxe” product…
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Late Christmas Present
Got a late Christmas present yesterday from an unlikely source: my employer’s 401(k) provider. Well, it actually came in early October, but I didn’t notice it until the other day when I checked my quarterly statement. Now, the plan has always had a decent selection of investment choices, but there have always been a bunch…
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Card Reader
So, for the past year or so I’ve been using my Palm Tungsten E2, with 1-gig SD card and headphones, as a portable mp3 player, because it’s there, and it works. It’s actually kind of cool — I can play games, read e-books, etc. on the Palm while listening to music. It’s quite the thing…
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Fun with Michael’s future bedroom
Well here it is New Year’s Eve again. Once again, I took a nice, (2 week) long holiday break from work. And once again, I started out hoping to get tons done around the house, but it didn’t happen. Well OK, I got some stuff done, just not as much as I wanted to. It’s…
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mp3act hacking
9 months or so ago, I installed mp3act, a PHP-based online MP3 streaming server. I’ve found that I really like it, but like everything else, it would be oh-so-much cooler with a few little tweaks. Development on it seems to have stagnated (no releases since mid 2005), so I’ve decided to hack on it a…
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Floor drain plan
OK, so here’s the current plan for the basement floor drains. I haven’t quite finished poking and prodding the drains in the office and the back basement, but assuming the configuration is the same as what I predicted in my previous post, I want to scope them out with a video drain inspection system like…
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Basement floor drains again
I’m slowly learning more about our basement floor drains. I bought a small pump (a Little Giant PP-1) that sucks and discharges through a garden hose, and it does a wonderful job of pumping the drains out. A short length of hose easily fits down the drain, and I run the discharge into the office…
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End-of-season outdoor work drones on
I’m still having no end of fun working on the usual mid-November chores of leaf removal, and winterization of the pool and lawn equipment. Saturday, I finished up with the pool, following my own instructions, and it went smoothly. I did forget to backwash the filter before shutting it down, but it wasn’t too dirty…
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Gone Fishing
We moved the upstairs computer today, into our library/study. So, I figured I’d fish some Cat 5 and install an ethernet jack there. Nothing I haven’t done before… should take, oh, an hour or so, right? Well, not this time, it turns out.. The difference between this time and all the other times I’ve fished…