zigbee???

Most DSL is dynamic IP anyhow. It's also good practice to switch the unit with the spare once in a while, to make sure it's still running. Otherwise a surprise can lurk, like a dead RAM backup battery or some flash memory leakage. Just do the switching at times when 10min downtime ain't a problem.

--
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He said it came from where he worked, when they installed a faster server. He took it home to play with, but never did, becasue it was rack mount and he didn't want to leave it sitting in the floor. I'm familiar with the bad cap issue, and that series was built during the time of the fake caps.

If I can scrape up the $100 before they others are gone, I'd prefer a newer and faster server that draws less power. :)

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

Ah, I don't sit at my desk uninterrupted. There's always something to do in the yard, something in the garage, etc. I "get up" more to "give myself a distraction" ("the mind sees clearest just after shifting its attention") than to give myself

*exercise* (or "physical relief"). It seems the best way to get everything done without getting burnt out on *any* of it.

(e.g., when I am digging out a tree stump, I don't want to spend a whole day in a hole with a shovel! OTOH, an hour in midmorning serves as a good "break" from "head work" wothout adversely affecting either)

OTOH, having to make a separate trip to the printer just because the printer screwed up is NOT something I want to do!

I want it to *work*. But, I don't mind making changes from time to time. It's one way of learning. E.g., it took me a long time with various DNS configurations (locally) before I finally "got it" and understood all of the tradeoffs in the various types of DNS configurations you could employ. And, why what *seemed* inefficient initially was, in fact, quite clever (once I had seen the cost of the other approaches).

Money is never (rarely?) the issue. Instead, it's all about learning something new or trying something and "seeing what happens". I think you only truly appreciate the issues involved in "whatever" when you actually have to *do* "whatever".

E.g., I had to build a wall in the kitchen. I spent a lot of time thinking about what had to be done; planning how I was going to do things to minimize the work *I* would have to do, minimize the inconvenience, etc. Yet, when I was in the middle of the "exercise", found myself looking at situations that sure seemed like I should have been able to *predict* -- yet hadn't! ("Crap! If I had preassembled this portion upside down, the final assembly would have been *much* easier and I wouldn't have had to spend as much time on a ladder!")

Do the Dells use the HP style printheads? (i.e., ink tank *and* printhead in a single, disposable assembly?) Or, the Epson approach (printhead part of printer, ink tank replaceable)?

All of the 'Dell' printers I've seen are made by Lexmark.

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

Only applies to *your* IP! You'd have to run DDNS internally (not supported by all devices) if you wanted to, for example, assign static IP's to each of the nodes within your house/domain.

E.g., my lasers are "Curly", "Larry" and "Moe" at 10.0.1.51/52/53. My bastion host sits at 10.0.1.99. My hosts are...

You can get around this by using "hosts" files (which is a maintenance headache) *or* force everything to deal with SMB/windows style names/protocols

And, you have to trust the DSL modem/router to be "well behaved" and have *your* interests at heart (often not so with modems supplied by TPC). As TLambert would say: "Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for"

When I was first getting back on my feet after the two years I spent stuck in bed, I did some things that made people question my sanity. Like hanging a plastic grocery bag from a hook in the ceiling, to force me to stand and stretch every time I had a scrap of paper to throw away.

Other than one screwdriver, all the hand and power tools went back out to the shop building, so I had to limp out there for every little job.

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

During the week I can rarely do that. The only breaks I get is walking our dogs, like an hour ago before the rain hit. That's the upside of being self-employed, I can catch up on the work tomorrow night when the "Dancing with the Stars" results show plays (I only watch the dances on Mondays but not that show).

We fixed that by the "hollering system". Wife prints something from the other office ... "Hey, did that come out of the printer alright?" ... "Yep".

Although, routers, file servers and all that stuff are rather cheap. Surprisingly cheap when you open them up and see what's in there.

He he, tell me about it. This weekend I fixed backyard stairs. The stringer bottoms had rotted out. Of course this is a high traffic area and the only way for the dogs to reach their "powder room". And old Rottie needs to go every 2-3 hours or there could be an inhouse mess. So that required planning like I was repairing a busy highway. Before doing anything I had to prep a box to put in some mock steps. Which then the Shepherd didn't trust ...

It's both in the disposable. Which I actually prefer because in a low-use environment and hot summers both will crud up and that gets expensive.

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Usually, the caps are easy to spot on Dells. Some of the other machines I've had to deal with haven't been so obvious. (E.g., the "shoebox PC" that I mentioned also had bad caps. It is considerably harder to service than most Dells due to its small size and "proprietary" mechanical design.)

Why? :> Is there a reason you *need* a "server" instead of a regular desktop machine? I.e., I only run my servers because I want long term reliability (power supplies and spindles). Most of my regular work I do on consumer grade machines. Servers tend to get reliability at the expense of noise and size. :<

More than one host? Wow, your electrity provider must love you.

It's all automatic over here. Plug it in, wait ... works.

Ok, maybe, but I am not a programmer and I must use Windows because nothing else will efficiently run all the SW I need for business. Oh, and it cannot be a Windows newer than XP because they broke legacy support after that.

[...]

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I have a digital ESR meter on the repair bench. :)

Yes, it is a "point of contention", here. :< Running any of the servers is a real b*tch -- I think there's just a regular desktop PC in there -- along with a 2KW resistor wired across the mains! :<

Most of the time, my electric needs are probably *below* the typical PC user (on an hourly basis) as I use X Terminals for much of my software development (the applications -- the

*clients* -- running on the basion host -- which is running *anyway*).

But, when a server is running, the electric meter gets a good workout! :<

I am currently (as we speak) tearing down one of the servers in favor of a desktop machine -- more MIPS, fewer BTUs. But, that means the server runs while I am pulling things off it...

This must get done before it gets much warmer! (We've, so far, managed to avoid turning on the ACbrrr... but that won't continue to be the case with this pig running all day!)

Then how do you reference a particular printer/computer?

Yup. I use Windows (2KS and XP) for anything that needs "expensive tools" (CAD, PCB, DTP, etc.) and NetBSD & Solaris for everything else. Since the "everything else" tends to take far more time than any of the other activities (i.e., I can design and layout a board in 10% of the time that it will take to write the firmware *for* that board!), I spend most of my time away from Windows.

OTOH, I spend more *maintenance* time on the Windows machines than any other! :<

I do most of my "work" in the evening/overnight. Cooler. Quieter. The "dark" is "calming". During the days, I do "chores" (anything that isn't "work"), catch up on email, downloads, dig out stumps, cut down trees, etc. (things that are a bit harder to do after sundown).

Nights have always been my (documented!) "best time" so this works out well for me. Neighbors get upset if my light

*isn't* on at night! :> ("Is Don out of town?")

None of the printers are in places where you would be "seated". (well, the 4M+ is under one of the workstations but doing anything other than verifying that *a* page came out of it requires getting up -- why do so many printers leave output upside down?). The postcard printer is an exception since it is so small I can just hold it in my lap *while* printing.

Yup. I have a bunch of Neoware thin clients that I am repurposing for a local nonprofit. I may request one of them to use in place of my little shoebox PC -- it's a little larger (though probably the same overall volume), draws less power, fan-less *and* I can slip a 4 port NIC into it (more useful than the assortment of peripherals that the shoebox supports!)

The problem for most of these uses is so much software relies on rotating media instead of being able to operate

*without* scribbling on a disk somewhere.

Yeah, in my case, I'd get the rise and tread dimensions backwards even after measuring twice! :< ("measure twice, cut once")

You might want to consider putting a metal footing under the stringers to keep them out of the elements (a bit) *and* prevent vermin from getting up into them from below (termites, carpenter ants, etc)

Thats why I so like the solid ink machines. Supplies "keep" for-damn-near-ever!

I don't know all the details because I just let the mfg's software figure that out. I believe it's DHCP. Essentially you plug them in and after a few seconds the printers are being recognized. Once after some sort of power glitch I had to repair the Brother MFC and that included removing power from the backup battery in there. Meaning all its settings were gone. Still, after a few seconds, tada, it showed up. I guess that's the only working method anyhow if you want to use more than one from the same model on the same LAN.

Similar with the router that has a LPT port. You need to load a driver onto all PC that want to use that feature, done.

Now they all show up in the printer selection and you just pick the one you want. But I didn't give them names like you did :-)

But how do you *reference* them? I.e., how do you "pick" which printer you want to talk to? (since their names/addresses aren't "constant")

I'm still unsure how you know which printer you are talking to. :< My UN*X and Sun boxes need (want) name/IP addresses. So, if I let the devices take their IP addresses from a DHCP server, then

*I* don't know what they are from one boot to the next...

For reinstalls, image your drive with Clonezilla (or it's ilk). This has been a lifesaver for me when trying to restore a munged system (usually the result of upgrading something and belatedly discovering that the update screwed up something else, etc.)

A lot of my time is spent managing disk space. I don't like big drives -- preferring, instead, multiple spindles (70 - 140G per spindle). So, if I install something and "C:" fills up, I have to move something off to another spindle, etc.

And, if that "something" was referenced anyplace (shortcuts, MRU lists, etc.) then there is some cost "fixing" those references.

By contrast, the UN*X boxen let me move things freely and don't rely on as many "references" as Windows does.

On a sunny day (Mon, 17 May 2010 07:57:52 -0700) it happened D Yuniskis wrote in :

That is what I do:

and i trecords satellite TV, plays audio, I program on it, it programs micros, it contorls the house, rins apache proftp named sendmail

Yes I have a spare one as backup, just about to use it for something else.

But for the webserver I have a Linksys WAP 54 G with website on the SDcard as backup.

Use my Linksys idea.

I can't do that, mostly because I have to interact with client engineers over several time zones.

[...]

I had no choice there but to cut and add strips because you can't get

2"*10" in redwood any longer.

I put them on concrete and gave them a good dose of stain. The previous ones have lasted around 20 years and weren't even redwood. I looked at metal stringers at Home Depot but they looked a bit too flimsy for my taste. Plus they dropped the first step already which I couldn't do. No idea why they did that, in particular because that makes the vertical strips and the bolts would show.

So the printer adds water when it wants to print?

--
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http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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They are mapped to always the same names. One is always "HP Laser 5L", the other is always "Brother MFC7820N" and so on. That's how they show up in the print menu on any program.

Maybe Windows is better in that respect :-)

It never fails, since years, I see the correct printer names and not IP addresses. Always.

True. Although when this incident happened it wasn't really a big deal to re-install stuff. Most of that ran in the background while I was doing some design on another computer. In hindsight I was glad I didn't mirror because Dell had furnished some new and truly better drivers for this machine. For example, now it could display movie files in fast realtime. I need this for DICOM. IOW afterwards I had a laptop that was better and more valuable than when I bought it new. All for a new $60 (and much bigger) hard drive and the modest effort of a re-install.

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[...]

And makes your electric meter really spin up :-)

[...]

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I ran two companies, one a start-up with half a dozen people, the other a division with around 100 employees. At the start-up the admin's PC was doing all the housekeeping, connecting us to the web, server for this, that and the other thing, and so on. NT4. I can't remember any downtime, ever. At the bigger place we had a server room and all that, of course. But even that was kept lean and servers were regular PCs, and only added as needed. One guy with a Harley Davidson ran IT all by himself. No downtime in years either.

--
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