Year: 2003

Shopping for hardware

Since I’ve decided to replace my wireless video extension burned yesterday with a proper PC setup for playing DVDs, divx, and mp3s, I needed to do some shopping. The goal is to get something simple and good enough for my entertainment needs.

Quick shop inspection left me with Shuttle AB48N motherboard, Intel Celeron 2.0GHz CPU, a stick of 256MB DDR-333MHz RAM, and Prosource PS-520DF power supply (520 watts, since it’ll have to support a lot of hard disks in the same machine). I’ve paid a bit less then 200CYP (about 350USD).

Now I will have to push myself to actually assemble the whole thing.

Fire in the hall!

Oops! I’ve burned my Wavecom Wireless Video Set (just the receiver actually). Just in time – minutes before I’ve rented another couple of DVDs to entertain myself with. No problem – nobody like that wireless thing too much anyway. I’ll be getting myself an upgrade for the ex-home server machine (PII/233MHz), so that I could use it for DVD watching tomorrow.

Lev’s blogging anniversary

I’ve noticed that Lev is blogging for more then a year already. And he didn’t want to do it at first. I’ve congratulated him and suggested that it’s about time he “expands” on two one-two paragraph entries with pictures. :) That should be interesting, although I somehow think he needs more persuation.

Back to work on Hylafax

Interesting developments at work: suddenly my boss remembered, that there was once an effort to use HylaFax in stead of GFI’s FaxMaker for Exchange. This effort was done when we were migrating MS Exchange 5.5 to MS Exchange 2000 and FaxMaker was stupidly refusing to work. A lot of waters ran since that time and noone remembered where we stopped and what exactly has been done. Currently, we are about to renew our FaxMaker licenses and that is where everything starts. After a quick review and series of simple tests, it turned out that 95% of job has been done. There is a Red Hat Linux 7.1 machine with serial multiport card attached and configured. HylaFax is installed and it even can send faxes. There are two phone lines connected for testing purposes and even Exim has been configured to work as email2fax gateway. The remaining 5% of the job include things like proper coverpages, access rights, incoming fax routing to proper people, and reporting both for users and management. These 5% should be finished until the end of next week, so that several people could try the functionality. So, here I am on my night shift in NOC sending faxes to myself. And they say that shizofrenic people sometimes use email to talk to other personalities within themselves.

Reservoir Dogs

Not to leave the evening spoiled I watched the second movie. And that was “Reservoir Dogs“. I’ve already seen this Tarantino’s masterpiece long time ago and with terrible Russian translation which forced me to fall asleep like twenty times during the movie. Now I can confidently say that that was only thanks to translation. Excellent movie, with excellent acting. It’s rare that I get to see such good movies, so I value them especially.