yaleman.org

This isn’t the most interesting of posts, but a good “note to self” for future reference. If not disabled, SSHD will try to do a slow reverse lookup of the IP address of the client causing for an unnecessary delay during authentication. I often run into trouble with this when creating a new install of Linux or FreeBSD. Do the following to disable it:

In file /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

UseDNS no

In Excel the Edit Find facility is malfunctioning. Sometimes it finds the word being looked for and sometimes not. Could you please see if there is anything you can do to fix this issue for us?

Ok, I can see that it’s just user error, but this is what happens on my day off. Ugh.

Dear workmates,

When I provide you with numerous solutions, do not say “that’s not what I want to do” because there’s only so many ways I can stop your Blackberry’s email inbox filling up.

Ta,
yale.

Finally, I bought myself a laptop. For a very long time I thought I’d buy a macbook, having some of the best features and build quality out there, but while Mum and Dad were looking for a rice cooker today they toddled over to the electronics section of Harvey Norman and got talking to the computer guy there. Toshiba have just released a new version of their A100 series laptops, with new pricing and so forth.

I was at home, and Dad called me for my opinion on one (he was looking for a new one as well) and I rendered it, saying that it was a damn good buy. I ended up going and having a look, so we bought two.

It’s an Intel Core Duo 2.0Ghz, with a 120Gb SATA HDD, 1gb Ram, Nvidia 7300 Go graphics, 15″ widescreen (1280×800) and all the other usual things (including bluetooth) So far I’ve played EVE Online with it, and done a bunch of other things and it seems to be a quite capable machine, especially since it was only $2500 including a 3 year warranty

The next test is to install linux on it – I’m not sure which distro I’m going to use – it’ll either be gentoo or ubuntu. I’ve been using ubuntu on my desktop for a while, and it “just works” … except for sound. Gentoo might get put on in that case.

Symantec’s info on w32.Hoots. When internet fads get WAY out of hand, this is what happens. The virus sends print jobs to a bunch of different hard-coded printer addresses with a picture of the ORLY owl! It seems to have been designed to spam someone in particular’s network, but it’s funny nonetheless.