Ok boys and girls, in an attempt to be a bit more usefull arond here, I'm going to be handing out a usefull Google tip once a week.  Since Google has become the super power of all search engiens, it can only benifit us if we learn to use it more effectively.  An so, here it goes.

This weeks tip is: Use Wild cards when performing your searches

Google is smart enough to finish a sentence for you.  So if you are looking up who started Ford Motor Company, all you have to type in is, "Ford was started by?"

peek.....

huh

While this isn't an axact how to, it's enough to give you the right ideas. Even still, how could you resist the urge to build your own sentry gun?

Two brothers couldn't resist the urge and now they have one that shoots small 6mm BB's. If you hop on on this link you can go see some pics of the build and there is even a video of the gun in action.

Of course they do mention one of the biggest flaws for a device like this. There is no FOF (Friend or Foe) systems that would keep it from shooting the wrong person. However, I could see something like this being a lot of fun at parties. Or even a smaller version for the office cubical, now that would rock.


BTW - this is the 700th article on this site!

In the last 8 months, I went from working for a fairly good sized company to a massive world wide giant. Being that I'm in the IT Dept. that means that I've gone from seeing small IT problems to Massive ones that I've never had to deal with before. Today was one of those times.

As a consultant and a contractor I end up, about 90% of the time, being the guy people call when their project is in arears.

Basically if you have a project on fire, sinking, going down in flames, crashing, burning and heading to entropy, I'm one of a handfull of guys the local clientele demands vendors to hire.

In my time however I have found numerous references to help teach my self to stop being a Staff Seargent, be a civilian leader, and still be good at both.

This is one of my favorite references as well as very accurate.

Marines throughout history have shown great resolve in the face of adversity to see a job through. Perhaps this is why retired Marine Colonel, Jim Hodges, states that many civilians have a “break out in case of emergency” mentality when employing Marines (Interview, July 11, 2003). When something really needs to get done, it seems intuitive to the business world to get a Marine on the task, explains Colonel Hodges. But after the crisis passes, the Marine in the civilian world is often inexplicably shelved until the next emergency comes along. Thought of as a square peg in a round hole, many civilians hold the belief that the leadership skills learned by the Marine while on active duty, somehow do not translate well to the civilian sector.

Enjoy.

The great folks over at Tom's Hardware have come up with a way to make WinXP usable for raid 5 storage solutions. It's not something for the beginner to try, but those familiar with Raid array's and comfotable with a hex editor can re-tool WinXP to allow Raid 5 configurations.

You can find the article here that helps explain the entire process as well as the advatages of raid 5 over other arry configurations.

Sarahk is hosting it this week, so with a bit of arm twisting from Kung Fu Master FrankJ (who has never eaten my food) and some butt kicking by Calimus (who has much to his chagrin) I have decided to post this entry!

Update!: Ironically I have been asked to submit an entry in to my Office Park Chili Cook Off on October 29th. So I'll put that recipe up as well!!!

If you are already in IT or thinking about getting into it, it's always nice to know gobs of what you will be talking about, dealing with or wanting to deal with. As such, knowing about some of the latest server architecture is a must and why not start with the smallest ones of them all, the 1U rack server.

Tom's Hardware has this article on a DIY ( Do It Yourself ) guid to 1U rack servers. Having a few of these in the PBX where I work, I can say that this guide is very well done and stresses the importance of proper cooling in such a small setup along with what components you can expect to see and how the differ from a standard workstation.