Foul, I cry. How dare he? After all we’ve been through. He is leaving. After all the begging, cajoling, blackmailing, bribing, etc… I had to do to get him out here; he has turned the tables on me. He is taking his certifications and running. Good help is so hard to find! In case you are wondering what I am talking about, read below for the dirty, grimy details of my excursion with BS and his inevitable departure.

There definitly seems to be a trend on the rise again.  Letting people have a free whack at your software before they can buy it.  Microsoft seem to be jumping back on by handing out free trials of Exchange Server 2007.

It seemed like for a good while companies stopped doing this but I think they have found that there is no better QC then letting the real world have a stab at the software.  Afterall, actual users with various environments make the best beta testers.  Engineer's just can't think of all the different senario's that users in the wild can come up with.  So, if you are an Exchange admin, go get a copy and tinker.

The good folks over at Ubuntu have cracked off another new version of the free OS. There are several ways to download it for free, order CD's for free, or if you really like to help, you can offer to pay for a set of CD's to be shipped.

I'm currently stuck without a spare PC to test out the new version.  I may give it a shot using a virtual PC setup and see how that goes but it will be after the weekend.  If you are thinking about trying Linux out or maybe tried it a long time ago and didn't care for it.  I'd like to suggest you give Ubuntu a try.  They have made it very simple to install, it updates itself in a very similiar mannor to Windows and in most cases, installs a lot faster than Windows and also support just about all the hardware there is out there.  Of all the distributions out there, Ubuntu has got to be the most user friendly, no doubt about it.

Give it a try, I doubt you will be dissapointed.

When Calimus and I start working on something you can bet neither of us are going to be getting any sleep.

In the olde days we'd stay up for literally days on end coding mIRC scripts and darkbot scripts for our network.

Tonight ain't much different, except we're testing out chat software on the other domains.

Midnight and all is well.

Language warning but I think our in-house filter will get 98% of it.

Ok.  So BS and I gave podcasting a shot.  All the hard work was on my end having to use 3 different PC's do do this using Skype.  Problem is, BS's lousy dialup connection just doesn't have the umph.  This was after making some packet size adjustments and such.  We wern't looking for top quality, just to be understandable.  What came of it was about 2min of us sounding like idiots.  Alright, I sound like an idiot, BS sounds like he's from a 8-bit nintendo game running on half-dead batteries.

Oh, and don't think that we wouldn't let you hear this gem.  If you just can't resist and have to listen, be my guest.  Feel free to make comments on how bad we sound.  However, I did let one 4 letter word slip, so don't play it around the kiddies alright.  Matter of fact, you can be quite certain that in the future, you won't want to play these around the kids.  Anyway, here is the link to the very first crappy podcast. Enjoy.

Back in the 80's, super-computer cooling was a problem.  Cray computers solved this by keeping their processors and such submerged in fluorinert which worked, but talk about a messy solution.  Today, it looks like another company is doing the retro thing. Very-PC is looking into dunking all their new server racks in oil. For some more info on the oil specs as well as what it can do to help cool things down, head on over to this link to check it all out.

My take is that oil cooling is fine.  It will require pumps to move the oil, otherwise, the components will just head up the surrounding oil and you are back to square one.  The only real drawback that I see is that when a component finally does fail, it will not be fun for the tech to make that replacement.  Nothing like putting on a wet suit to change out a processor or daughter card.  However, it is a hell of a lot more effective than air cooling, there is certainly no doubt about that.

Denizen and Sometimes Techo Commenter and frequent E-mail passer to yours truly, Murray (our favorite Kiwi) has finally launched his trebuchet site.

Welcome to 22AD ladies and gentlemen.
22AD is my hobby of things ancient and rock flinging that is an offshoot of my costume armour business. Having produced a large volume of plans, cast parts and working models I now plan to cash in on my work and make some money from it.

I'm based in Featherston, New Zealand so if something looks like it's spelt wrong it's because it's in "English". Anything else is accent.

Anything new will be anounced on here on the home page so check back here regularly.
Since this site has only just been launched everything is new so go have a look around.

Over time all the products will be added so you can actually PAY ME for them instead of demanding that I give you the results of my hard work for free which seems to be some kind of prevaliing mental condition amongst the young these days.

Its called capitalism and it's what makes the West great. Deal with it or move east.

Go Take a look!

I've been waiting for this to come about.  Basicly, the only downside to owning the larger capacity iPods is that they have actual hard drives in them and that they are seceptable to vibrations, g-force and other HD killing forces.  Hence why the iPods nano's are so popular.  They work on Flash memory that has no moving parts and therefore isn't easily damaged by jogging, drops, sudden fast movements.

So it would only seem logical that someone would get off their butts and drop some flash memory in a HD equiped iPod and tell the world how to do it.  Well, it's finally happened over at Geek Technique. Their article shows you how to hack your iPod and add flash memory, right where the HD used to be.  I will warn that at the time of this posting, the site was rather slow and sluggish.  Turns out that Slashdot found out about this before I did and already has the Slashdot Effect is alreday in full swing.  So you might want to wait a bit before checking it out.

Google the worlds more recognizable search engine is looking to step it up a notch or two. They are now beta testing a 411 service that is totally free. You can try it yourself by dialing 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411).

I just gave it a try myself and it worked perfectly.  Not to mention is super quick, but what made me laugh was the durring the search, the "voice" did a little "dododododod" noise which I guess indicated the search.  It offered to connect me to the searched business or I could get details.  When I asked for the details, it let me know that I could have the details text messaged to my cell phone if I liked.  The whole system uses voice recognition and was able to understand me with no problems.  I tested it about 8 times and each test was flawless.  Give it a try, it's free and I'm sure Google would appreciate the testing.  I just wonder what they will come up with next.

How do you know that as a Blogger your making an impression with something you have written?

And that you may have scooped the local News Media Giants?

Seriously?

Read More heh.