At around 9 PM last night, Southwestern Bell lost a data line. My DSL connection became sporadic and my telephone became so full of static as to be unusable for voice. Within an hour, I lost all use of my voice line. DSL would drop and come back occasionally.
They are aware of the problem and gave an ETA of 10 PM on Wednesday of clearing it up. The DSL has been reliable for a couple of hours now, but that’s not really an indicator. We’ll see what happens.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/11/expect-things-to-be-sporadic-until-10-pm-tomorrow/
You probably don’t want to know what I was searching for on Ebay that matched this.
But, whatever people want to collect, I have no room to talk.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/11/the-search-is-over-my-life-is-complete/
I’ve been playing around with the perspective correction feature in Gimp 2.0, and while it’s invaluable, I’ve noticed that it really has a tendency to blur up a picture.
You can reduce this some by not editing JPEGs–it’s always best to convert JPEGs into PNG or TIFF format before editing anyway–but it only reduces the problem. And Gimp’s sharpen tool leaves a lot to be desired.
Enter SharpControl.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/11/a-good-tool-for-salvaging-really-bad-photographs/
It’s the weekend after Thanksgiving. The time of year when nostalgia runs high and ancient toy trains come out of the basement or the attic and get set up again until sometime after the new year.
Well, hopefully they make it that long. Here are some tips for getting old Lionel, American Flyer, Marx, and similar trains running again.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/11/how-to-get-that-dusty-old-train-running-again/
Lycos has released a screensaver that combats spam. It just tries to repeatedly download the web content of known spammers in hopes of driving up their bandwidth costs.
I am famously opposed to screen savers, but…
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/11/id-actually-consider-running-a-screensaver/
It’s out, and the entire inventory of 250K units was bought by QVC.
So much for getting one of these at Kmart. Anyway, it’s a C64 in a joystick enclosure with 30 games built in, similar to the Atari 2600 and Intellivision units you see in stores.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/11/the-commodore-64-direct-to-tv-is-out/
Even if you aren’t really a Linux person, the live CD Linux distribution Knoppix is incredibly useful. If nothing else, you can use it to replace Ghost, Partition Magic, and Nero or EZ CD Creator. That’s $100 worth of utilities for the cost of a download, or, if you don’t have broadband, for $5-$10 from a Linux distributor.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/11/how-to-use-knoppix-to-replace-at-least-100-worth-of-must-have-utilities/
The Polar Express is turning out (so far) to be a bigger hit for Lionel than it is for Tom Hanks. Dealers are sold out and the sets are turning up on Ebay, usually with asking prices $100-$200 higher than the suggested retail price. It’s not as hot as Tickle Me Elmo, but since the words "hot selling" and "train set" haven’t appeared together since the late 1950s, well…
So what should you do if you (or someone in your household) wants The Polar Express and can’t get one? Hint: Ebay shouldn’t be your first resort.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/11/what-to-do-if-you-cant-find-a-lionel-polar-express-set/
It’s the time of year that a lot of people buy computer equipment, and wireless networking is one of the things people look for. But what things should be on the shopping list?
I was hoping you’d ask that question.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/11/things-to-look-for-in-a-wireless-router/
The disk defragmenter that Microsoft includes with Windows 2000 and XP really stinks up the place.
I’ve been playing with an alternative.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/11/disk-defragmentation-in-windows-2000-xp-and-uh-nt4/
