Lee.org

“Lee, you sure use a lot of plugins on your site. Could you give me a list of all of them?”
“Sure thing. I’ll give you the whole rundown..
(more…)

If you have multiple computers with multiple monitors, Synergy is a great way to keep your hands on a single keyboard & mouse. It’s kind of like a KVM, but it’s not.

I have 2 monitors on 1 computer (my main desktop PC) and a laptop that I haul from home to work. Now, I can keep my hands on one keyboard and mouse while I slide my mouse from my big 19″ main screen, over to the right to my 17″ screen and then … magically to the right again onto my laptop!

You can slide from your PC to your Linux to your Mac. Keyboard input follows the mouse. You can copy/paste across boxen! It’s magic, and it’s FREEE!

Get Synergy
Read a good tutorial. (I thought it was overly verbose and then I needed to read it to figure out one concept)

I was up and running in < 5 minutes.

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I took down the original post I made about Synergy a week ago because I wasn’t ready to recommend it; there were some crashing problems. I found out that the crashing issue was quickly fixed (1.2.5 was no good) and I had just come in at a bad time. I had written to the author when I saw the poor performance and he got right back to me, pointing out that he had very recently posted a fix.

I need a new bed.

In most every bed I’ve ever slept in for more than a few months, this divot forms where I sleep on my side. Yes, yes, I know that you’re supposed to rotate your bed every couple months. I do that but it only staves off the divoting for a while. I think it’s that I fall asleep stay in once place; I’ve read how people toss and turn in their sleep all night but I think I toss very little if at all.

I spent like $800 on this snazzy bed a few years ago. 4 years later, the divot became permanent. I’m sleeping on an Ikea mattress right now; for the first 3 months I thought I had found a mattress that didn’t sag beneth me. Nope. I put a good-ol’ divot in my family’s guest bed too. The destruction continues.

I didn’t have this problem with a water bed and Stevie points out that his Select Comfort air mattresses don’t get divots.

I’m thinking about getting a Select Comfort bed. What do you think?

I was fiddling with my BIOS settings trying to get my Cybex Autoview Commander 4 port KVM to stop messing up my keyboard input. Avocent (who bought Cybex) said that I might want to change the BIOS keyboard input setting from “fast” to “normal”. Well, I couldn’t find that option in my BIOS but….

There is an option for hard drive performance. You can choose: bypass, quiet hard drive, or performance hard drive. It had been set to “bypass”. I switched it to “performance” and Yeeeh Haawww! The drive is now a bit louder, making those traditional hard drive clackity sounds, but some disk operations are now much more responsive. Several tasks have gone from “click, wait-a-sec… wait-a-sec… wait-a-sec… done” to “click-done”.

Cool beans.

Here is how to set up an SSHD service on your Windows XP Cygwin machine. This comes from a great guide from Pigtail.net on how to turn an old PC into a Linux Router… aptly named the Linux Router Project (LRP)

Local version of how to install SSHD. And how to install SSH

And yes, this works.

The NoNofollow plugin

…is a very simple WordPress-plugin to remove rel=’nofollow’ (as proposed by Google) from links in comments in WP’s output.

This plugin checks the date of any comment and removes rel=’nofollow’ if the comment is older than a configurable number of days. This gives the site admin a chance to remove comment spam whithout the risk of Google following the links.

This will hopefully make hyperlinks in comments and on my site more relevant to search engines. It offers encouragement to legitimate commenters to post legitimate links on the site.

update 10-29-05: Nonofollow wasn’t working correctly all the time and I didn’t bother to figure out why so I’ve switched to a different nofollow plugin, DoFollow. I’ve tried it out and it works very well. Note that it is a filter plugin… it doesn’t alter the database like NoNoFollow (I believe) attempts to do. This is probably a good thing from a forward compatibility standpoint.

Phoey. I can’t get a free discount on my car insurance in California. That said, taking this driving class saved me a lot of money in New Jersey in 2002-2005. Some car insurance companies honor programs like this, some don’t. Read on.

I took an online driving safety course, sent the certificate of completion to my car insurance company and now my car insurance went down by $150 a year for 3 years! That’s $450 free money!

Here’s what to do:

- Call your car insurance company and ask what kind of discount they’ll give if you take an online drivers safety course that’s sponsored by the National Safety Council. My insurance, GE gave me $150 each year for 3 years. Some companies don’t offer any discount… Sorry.

- Take the course at http://www.nscddconline.com/ It’s also offered at

http://www.tutorials.com/catalog/catalog_item_n.asp?pid=2037 but they charge a bit more.

- Send your insurance company the certificate of completion that you’ll receive a week later.

The course costs $42… IE it instantly pays for itself. The course is mind-numbingly easy. It asks questions like: If you come to a Stop sign on a busy street and an old lady is crossing, should you A) Stop, look and listen B) Accelerate to clear the intersection quickly C) Swerve and continue down the road D) Turn on your hazard lights.

The course took about 3 hours for me to complete. It should take you less given this bit of advice: there is no final test and just about everything they try to teach you is about common sense.. They won’t ask you stuff like “How many feet do you have to park away from a fire hydrant? 5, 15, or 20. (No, I don’t know the answer)

I took the test in August 2002 and I’ve saved about $300 in insurance since.

Yes, this is legit, go to www.nsc.org. Click on “Driving” then click on “DDC-PC Online” and read up on it.

If it works out for you, I’d love to hear back.

As we were passing by a bar near where I live in the Mission district, Holly asked me which was (with quotations) “your local bar”. In a flash, I thought back about all the bars I had been in that I liked… bars in NYC, Hackettstown, Boston… all the interesting eateries, brew-pubs and homey coffee shops. I couldn’t think of a single place that was “my” place.

We walked along, looking for something to do on Saturday night in the Mission. Or if we only found some cool night air, we’d be happy too. There was a little artist gallery/nightlife spot I had randomly found a couple weeks ago while coming back from the post office so we were walking in that direction. We found the place.

As we approached, we worried that the place wasn’t open; the lights were out… or at least they were really dim. A sign at the front door directed us around to the side.

As we stepped inside, I had this comfortable feeling… the patrons looked at ease and happy, the ambient sounds were soothing, there was a pitcher of mohito on the bar and the band was gearing up for their second set. I knew immediately that -this- was -my- local bar.

www.redpoppyarthouse.org

The blog has been running a little slow so I…. what should I do? Let’s see….

Install a plugin!

WP-Cache-2 stores blog pages for quick retrieval. It theoretically only takes 0.5 seconds or so off the creation time of the pages but (if my estimations are correct) it’s actually bringing load times from 5 seconds down to 2. Images take just as long to load but the text appears quicker. I’ll work on that.

update 9-28-05 This plugin isn’t compatible with my Theme Switcher. I’ll leave the Cache and dump the theme switcher.

This from the Federal Trade Commission: (page moved to here)

Your Access to Free Credit Reports

Soon you’ll be able to get your credit report for free. A recent amendment to the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies to provide you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, once every 12 months.
…

Q: How do I order my free report?

A: The three nationwide consumer reporting companies have set up one central website, toll-free telephone number, and mailing address through which you can order your free annual report. To order, click on www.annualcreditreport.com, call 877-322-8228, or complete the Annual Credit Report Request Form and mail it to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. The form is on the back of this brochure; or you can print it from www.ftc.gov/credit. Do not contact the three nationwide consumer reporting companies individually. They are only providing free annual credit reports through www.annualcreditreport.com, 877-322-8228, and Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281.

You may order your reports from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies at the same time, or you can order from only one or two. The law allows you to order one free copy from each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies every 12 months.

Read more about it.

I found 1 error on my Experian credit report… I had paid off a loan 3 years ago but they had it listed as being past due. It’ll take 1-2 months to fix. Better to do this kind of thing now than when I want to buy a house or something and time is more important.

update 8-8-05 Experian just got back to me and fixed the error. The loan is now “Paid, Closed”. That was easy. :-)