Whew…

Posted on 11/20/2006 by Kyle

I’ve driven over 1,000 miles in the past few days and have had a wonderful time. From Houghton, I hit East Lansing, Madison Heights, Auburn Hills (and then back to East Lansing) before heading to see my parents in Rose City (where I’ll be until Saturday).

Many thanks to Jess and Melissa in Lansing, Chris in Madison Heights (who has tempted me with the Xbox 360) and Kattni in Auburn Heights for putting me up and entertaining me. If any of you feel like getting up to the North Country, let me know.

Pictures will be on flickr once I get off dial-up.

Escaping Houghton

Posted on 11/15/2006 by Kyle

Friday afternoon, I’m heading downstate. I plan on getting to Lansing around midnight and spending the weekend there. The plan is to get into Rose City Monday morning.

If you want to get together, either in Lansing or Rose City, let me know before noon on Friday (email, AIM, cell or comment will do).

Why the Zune will fail

Posted on 11/15/2006 by Kyle

I’ll let CNN tell you, because they do it about as well as I can.

Ubuntu – Linux on the Desktop (Event Notifications)

Posted on 11/10/2006 by Kyle

As I mentioned in a recent post, my friend Matthias got a notification the other day that the battery on his wireless mouse needed to be charged.

Well, a mouse battery isn’t the only thing those notifications are good for.

I live in a pretty remote part of the country. There’s only one fiber line in and we get at least a few (5 so far this year) power outages a year. The fiber outages tend to be caused by constructions crews (mostly in Wisconsin) but wild animals, mother nature and single fault tolerance equipment make the power unreliable. A UPS is a good investment; at the very least, it will let you shut the computers down properly.

The last time the power went out, I couldn’t figure out what was beeping. That’s where the message that showed up on my screen was useful:

Ubuntu – “Hey, idiot! The obnoxious beeping is the giant battery you connected to me!”

Have a picture of an event notification you’ve gotten from Ubuntu? Post it in a comment.

Debian Etch and Apache2

Posted on 11/8/2006 by Kyle

Anyone running Debian Etch and Apache2 may have noticed that a recent update (to version 2.2.3-3) has rendered AuthDigest unusuable. Here’s what you need to do to get it working:

Change any instances of AuthDigestFile to AuthUserFile (in apache2.conf, your VirtualHost definitions, etc.)

The recent update unlinked authz_user.load from the enabled modules. You’ll need to relink it.
ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/authz_user.load /etc/apache2/mods-available/authz_user.load

That should fix the problem for you. There are a couple of bug reports that have been filed, so hopefully it gets fixed soon.