TechZilla Said…

AOL just pulled the plug on Netscape's life support system. Seems like they never recovered from the Internet Explorer Wars. Updates will be ceasing in February of 2008. Before selling out to AOL, Netscape created the Mozilla Foundation who is responsible for Firefox. The Netscape browser engine was also known as Mozilla....hmm.

Anyway it seems awful funny that AOL would buy Netscape and never really offer it or use it in thier AOL software package? Isn't it funny how they always were using the Internet Explorer Engine? And now are pulling the plug?

I wonder how much it cost Microsoft for this to happen. Of course AOL is famous for killing everything they put thier hands on sooner or later. So it's one or the other or a little of both. I mean look what they have done to thier customer base.

Here's a pretty good article on it any way. http://tinyurl.com/3xf68t

Netscape was a good reliable browser when it was actually being developed. Sure it had it problems but it did manage to find it's way to millions of desktops worldwide.

R.I.P. Netscape

Didn't take the finches long to find the feeder socks. This is the one in the back yard. After taking this picture, I checked the front one which is now half full. The front one had 4 birds...and one on the ground doing cleanup.

You can see the cat is concerned.

Well let's see this is early in the day of Day 6.

Day 3 was Christmas and spent alot of the day tweaking my computer a bit and testing stuff.

Day 4,  I went and did a private job and picked up a new DVD burner for the lady in the house that has been dealing with a loud CDRW egg-beater for ages. My boss called and informed me that he was unable to contact the right people for permission to get a 4th-party company to cover my area. And of course not enough of the other full-time staff was available because of vacation also.

Day 5,  Worked for 6 hours at double time. Found out Santa couldn't get through the chimney because we have the pellet stove going 24/7. So he told me to stop at BestBuy.com and order Seasons 1-5 of Babylon5. I gotta admit the bearded guy has quite an eye for deals. $19.95/season saves around $200 bucks! Santa says it's on the way but the sled isn't tracking yet.

Day 6 is still up in the air.

We had planned on taking a run up to the SETI project at Hat Creek and taking a tour yesterday but we have been unable to get a reply back by phone to confirm them being open for tours. In addition to the holidays, the road back into the site may be somewhat covered with snow. I doubt if I would chain-up even for aliens. I have 2 private calls I need to run prior to the 31st which I may do late today or tommorrow morning.

Hope Santa was good to everyone. Stay Safe, Sane and Warm.

I was up early today and found Santa had left a mess. Cookie jar empty almost and the milk almost gone. Good thing a client sent me a $100 Home Depot gift card.

 REMEMBER THIS AT CHRISTMAS TIME

Of course, and how exactly would we explain a similar glow to Rudolfs nose on Santa's nose? Bumped into a tree?

Any way Merry Christmas

Well actually, my computer went down again for whatever reason. Windows was so corrupted that I couldn't fix it. This actually happened at the end of Vacation Day 1. I was up the entire night and finally took a break yesterday at 5:30 or six when we had dinner.

For times like this, I actually have a hard drive on the shelf with everything already installed and configured on it. So basically all I have to do is pop it in and copy it to my normal work drive. The problem was that it was basically in an unfinished state. It lacked settings and several current applications I use being installed. It also had a problem with Windows Installer 3.1 and Windows update.

After fixing all that, I cloned the drive and setup Acronis Secure Zone. Providing the computer or the actual hard drive is not dead, all I have to do now is press F11 when the computer starts up and I can restore the computer. I did the same thing actually on my laptop at the same time. I needed a little added security for when I'm on the road. One of these days I'm gonna get a larger hard drive for it so my old one will make a good spare to carry with me.

After all that was done, I copied over my data from a copy of my work drive I made prior to doing anything.

Even after all my preparation on the drive I keep on the shelf, I found a few more things that it lacks. I have a running list I keep to log changes I need to make to it at some point. Fortunately, I had already updated a whole slew of things previously, but there were still several things to work out. My current list however is rather small. I missed a couple applications and need to make a couple setting changes.

The time doing this is astronomical. Of course this also exceeds what a manufacturer would do in engineering a recovery system for a product line.

Anyway So much for Vacation Day 2.

This is my name in Chinese, according to http://www.mandarintools.com/chinesename.html

But you can call me anything except late to dinner.

You could even get a way with calling me Amanda   as In Amanda HugNKiss. LOL

I must really have been bored today. Got out and raked the leaves into piles, hung some rock address letters on the fence and put reflectors on the cornerpost of the fence at the alley so I could see to turn in. Also cleaned out 99.9% of the inbox. Also moved the pellet box to the back of the house closer to the car and unloaded 10 bags. Took a nap in there somewhere.

I have several little things I have been putting off so I may get to a few of them over the next week weather permitting. It was actually fairly nice today and was able to take the coat off after a bit.

We've noticed a few finches hanging out around the hummingbird feeder for whatever reason. A few months ago I bought some Finch sock feeders and finally hung them out today also. Our crew of Humming birds is still rather large. I'm hoping to build a similiar crew of Finches. They are fun to watch also. I expect by next year we will see several now that I have feeders for them.

Dynamic DNS is a great tool when it comes time to try to access your pc from a remote location. Your PC, when connected to the internet is assigned what is called an IP address. This is a unique number assigned only to your machine while you are connected to the Internet by your Internet Service Provider. This is the good news...

The bad news is that every time the connection to the Internet is broken and then re-connected, the likelyhood your ISP will assign you another IP address is almost a certain thing. This means discovering the current IP address of your machine prior to leaving the house or office, AND hoping the connection holds until you need to access your pc.

If the IP address of your PC changes without your knowledge, you will be out of luck accessing your files or applications. Obtaining a Static IP address is an alternative to an ever-changing dynamic IP Address but is more costly. You could certainly find your IP address before you go by surfing to http://whatismyip.com/.

Basically, Dynamic DNS is a method that employs a small utility that runs on your PC and reports any IP Address changes to a Dynamic DNS server located on the Internet. And your system can be accessed using a "people-friendly" website name like mine which is "blueplanetpc.dynalias.org".

DNS (Domain Name Service), is the mechanism that converts friendly site names you type in the address bar or on a link you click to the associated IP addresses. From a Dos command window if you are connected to the Internet you could type the following

Ping  blueplanetpc.dynalias.org

and the dynalias.org DNS server returns the current IP address of my router. This is the exact same ip address reported by http://whatismyip.com/ and http://www.portforward.com/. Only my router actually recieves an Internet IP address. All the other machines on my network share the Internet access using IP addresses the router assigns.

For several years, I have been using http://www.dyndns.com/ as my Dynamic DNS provider using a free account. They provide an awesome service and the cost is right. Creating your account takes a little advance planning though. You will need your current IP address when the account is created...and then some method of updating.

In my case, my Linksys router has an built-in updater that works with dynalias.org Dynamic DNS accounts. That's why I selected my blueplanetpc.dynalias.org account name as opposed to the other possibilities. To get it to keep me updated, was only a matter of configuring my router through my web browser. Otherwise, if your router doesn't have this feature or you don't have a router, you can download and install the updater software provided by the website.

Portforward.com has a fairly comprehensive guide for configuring your router firewall and PC for various applications using thier utility or by the helpfiles, Providing of course your system is behind a router.

Setting the PC to a Static IP Address http://www.portforward.com/networking/staticip.htm

Configuring the Router http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm                       

Whether you are behind a router or not, you may find this usefull also.

Configure Software or Hardware-based Firewall http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/firewalling/routerindex.htm

Using my Dynamic IP address account, I am able to stream all my audio files, download my movies, run applications, accesses any file generally run my computer from a hotel room or any computer on the Internet. The software I use is similiar to GoToMyPC but doesn't have a monthly charge for it's use. To make this work consistently,My PC uses a static IP address and my router is configured to "port forward" any request it receives from my 2 applications I use directly to my PC. Basically it's a matter of opening a specific port the application requires and telling the router what machine to send it to. Then it's a matter of configuring the firewall.

Testing my setup is easy since I have a laptop and the pc I want to access. However right after you create your account you can test it from any pc...Ping your dynamic dns name from a Dos Command window like I previously described. If it shows the correct Internet IP address of your machine or router  it's working. However, if you haven't manually opened the same ports you set to port forward in the router within your firewall, it may require that someone be sitting at the PC clicking on the option to create a rule and to allow the traffic.

Remote access client software can often be carried on a memory stick, floppy or a cd so you can test remote access from somebody elses computer if you don't have a laptop. This is true for RADMIN, VNC and UltraVNC.  Personally I use RADMIN.

In addition to remote access, dynamic dns could make it posible to host a website, run a mail server, FTP server and a number of other things. Trust me that running a webserver over dial-up is possible but ill-advised. I've used RADMIN with great results over a 28.8 modem connection and OK marginally over a 14.4 connection. Even a slow wireless connection from a hotel works fairly well.

Just got back from Spokane Washington for an overnight run. Seems like a nice place. Plenty of really neat old buildings downtown. Seattle could take a lesson on traffic. I was joking around with the client an mentioned that everyone spoke English that I met....must be the official Spokane language. LOL. He said there is not much diversity of people up there.

Since I didn't need to haul any computer parts for the 2 jobs I ran I ended up renting a little booty scooter.

Pretty nice little ride and was fun to drive but hard to see out the right-side. Normally I get a mid-size when I have to rent a work car.

Got to the airport as bit early and was real fortunate of that. I turned the car back in and had to walk through the entire terminal to the far end. Checked-in and went through security...then realized I left my cellphone inb the car. So I hurried back and they already had it in the office. Still had plenty of time to get on the plane.

This trip I flew out of SAC because of booked flights so that's an extra 300 miles of driving to and from the diggs. And got back just in time for dinner and to start my vacation. of course I have one call I need to run tommorrow and possibly something on the 31st but basically off for 12 days...There is no real getting away from this job.