Jared0×90

For some reason I decided to google GPG thunderbird tonight and started reading about a plugin called enigMail. After I spent about 10 minutes reading about the plugin and how it worked with GPG I decided to give it a go. I downlaoded and isntalled the latest version of GPG (1.4.2.2) which I had to obtain from a mirror and then downloaded the enigmail plugin for thunderbird. After installing the plugin and restarting thunderbird I went through the wizard that enigmail provides. Everything went seemless and before I knew it I had my own PGP public key and thunderbird all set to send emails with all of my accounts. I must say after trying to do the same thing with outlook express many years ago this process has improved immensely. Google enigMail and GPG for some quick tutorials.

For those interested in electronics a professor in Maryland has been selling a cheap LCD controller on the order of a few bucks. You can buy a whole kit with backlit screen for about 30 bucks. It has been pretty fun to play with thus far and could be used for projects like a system resource monitor or displaying RSS feed titles.

I released a “Spyware Attack Pack” on De-Blander.com. I know it is not life altering but it just has a group of good standalone tools I usually download at one point or another when working on a computer that has been crapped on by spyware.

I modified modRC4 to add a simple file encryption routine. Check it out in the source code section of the site. If you use this module I’d love to hear some feedback. Thanks!

Seems like everyone is trying to sell copies of the software Microsoft is giving away on their VS2005 tour. I sure would be interested in a package like that if it was legit. I wonder if Microsoft monitors those kinds of sales.

Update Read comments from user MWare below if you are having any trouble

So I wanted an easy and free way to backup my source code everyday. Well if you run Windows NT and have an Internet connection to download a copy of 7-zip you most certainly can backup your files regularly with unique filenames containing the date and time they were created - something that was a must for me. It helps if you have your source structured in a way that it all resides in a central location such as:

M:\XYZ Software\Source\Project A\
M:\XYZ Software\Source\Project B\
M:\XYZ Software\Source\Project C\

This way we can create a backup folder in the XYZ folder such as:

M:\XYZ Software\Source_Backup\

Then in XYZ Software place a copy of the 7za.exe file you downloaded and a batch file with the following code:

View the original version here (11/8/2005)

Every time this batch file is run from now it will generate a file in the Source_Backup folder like:

M:\XYZ Software\Source_Backup\2005-11-17-PM-11-04-Archive.zip

View version 2 here (3/15/2006)

This generates .7z files instead of .zip like listed below and is multithreaded for improved performance on multicore/multiprocessor machines. If you have a single core/CPU machine you may want to remvove the “-mmt=on” portion of the last line.

With the AM/PM setup this way when you sort by filename you will have your archives in the correct chronological order. Next simply schedule a task in Scheduled Tasks to run this batch file everyday at a given time. There you have it. Your own automated backup system. You could even add extra commands for AES encryption and then back it up off-site with FTP! Ah good old command line interface!

One of the most successful open source projects, OpenOffice, released version 2.0 today! This has been a long time coming. I got my notification email at 6:52AM EST and had it downloaded at roughly 6:55 at which point I was installing. This project is great. There has been a lot in the news about this project stealing the spot light away from MS recently and for good reason. Great community, great software and of course it is open source and free. I would highly recommend giving it a try if you are an MS office user. There are literally state governments in the USA that have declared they are switching completely away from MS office to OpenOffice.

So I noticed Cox’s Easypay didn’t show up on my latest checking account statement. Interesting. I go back another month. Nope. Another month. Nope. So I go on line to pay the obvious bills that are waiting. It informs me my account is locked. So I call them and they tell me they have sent me an email informing me that they have been unable to bill me. Gee, what if I don’t use your P.OS. email service? Apparently lifting a finger to contact someone is impossible these days. So I tell the lady I have been locked out of my account and she says she will forward me to tech support. After sitting in a 25 minute wait to hear her 20 seconds of information and resolving nothing she thinks I want to go sit in another call line. So before she is able to forward me I abruptly stop her and inform her that I at a minimum want to get the billing straighted out before I go sit in another 20 minute plus line and then have to come back and sit in this one. We go through the payment system and get the bills paid yadda yadda yadda and she forwards me on to tech support. I inform some hot-shot of the situation and he informs me I can now login to my account. Great. I am on the road at this point on my way home from work so I clearly can’t check it. So I get home and try to login and wow - what do you think? It is the same error message. Sounds like the hot-shot didn’t know what he was talking about. So I call back and sit in another 20 minute wait for someone to answer my call. I get a young sassy girl (and for me at 22 young she must be very young!) who is clearly reading from some sort of automated manual. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the there automated customer support program on there website she is using. After making tons of completely ignorant and/or meaningless statements like “there is one main computer connected to every router - that is the one you need to shut down”.. Yes because that will affect my cable modem right? Even though neither one is aware of the others existence since they are on a router. Or perhaps because it has some magical weight the other machines on that switch and wireless network don’t have I suppose. Anyhow after debating this point with her I give in and follow her instructions like a zombie for about 20 minutes. Nothing is resolved and at the end of this I now have another account I cannot login to supposedly on there EasyPay system that is registered to a non cox email address because she claims that was the problem. Another one of her brilliant statements. She informs me it is a billing problem and they close at 5:00 EST which is a lie because my initial call to them was well after 5:00. I don’t call her out on it and hang up. I call back cox about an hour later and speak with an admittedly nice lady who listens to me and forwards me to another person who I am on the phone with now. My password is now being reset for the second time today. Whooptie-whoo let’s see how this goes. Nope! No dice surprise surprise! Now I am on hold for a “quick check on the system”. 1 minute passes… Another… And another.. So far this call has just hit the 30 minute mark. OK after 40 minutes on the phone with this guy he realizes nobody knew what they were talking about. He resets my password and unlocks my account. I can now login again. Amazing. Now I can view my EasyPay account which is separate from the view and pay your bill info. Amazing…Simply amazing. Why cant they have one login screen with a SIMPLE easy to follow interface? So 3 hours and 5 levels on competence later ranging from absolutely none to decent I am fine again. Or so it seems. They still can’t find the other account stupid woman #3 had me create. I will have to call back later this week I suppose. Give them “48 hours for it to process in there system” Anyhow there goes a day down the drain.

Intel released its response to AMD’s complaint this past thursday. I posted the PDF of the response on IntelVsAMD.com. I have not read through it yet but from what I understand the jist of it is that Intel denies most of AMD’s claims though it does admit to certain facts listed in the complaint but none that are “monopolistic”, as would be epxected. I also understand that Intel claims that AMD’s statements in their complaint are contradictory.

Things have been quite busy as of late. My wife’s family and mine both have had some health problems as of late and I haven’t had much time to spend on the site. Hopefully things will settle down a little bit now.

AMD released info about the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ recently. It looks like a pretty amazing deal and supposively they should be able to be had for around ~$350 when they are released. Tom’s hardware has a review and some benchmark results for the new X2. Needless to say it’s performance is very impressive when multitasking or using multithreaded applications. It actually beats there FX-57 in a lot of those tests - a chip that costs around $1,100! I think I may have found my next CPU.