DeckerD: Drew's Personal Corner of the Web

Installing VirtualBox Guest Additions from a Linux Host

Drew — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:37:37 +0000

Installing VirtualBox Guest Additions on a Linux host is a straight-forward task which can make life much easier on a guest operating systems, or OS. The Guest Additions install is the equivalent of installing VMWare Tools on a VMWare host (onto a VMWare guest OS). I'll discuss the enhancements of installing the VirtualBox Guest Additions, and will run you through the installation process. A Little Background Information Try going out there on Google or any other search engine and search Read More »

Compiling Duplicity on CentOS 5.x

Drew — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:22:55 +0000

Duplicity, an encrypted backup utility that uses the rsync algorithm, is becoming quite useful for my day to day backups. I've written several backup scripts using rsync, gzip, and other useful backup schemes. Heck, I've even written my own backup subroutines that create a backup structure based of the current date. So, trust me, I usually never change my ways, unless it's something that really intrigues me. Some Background Information I'm still testing some stuff out, however, I'm Read More »

Engaged!

Drew — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 20:50:17 +0000

Today I bring great news! I'm engaged! Actually, the big day was February 10th, 2009. So, here's the story, in all its glory. I tried to do something that would be remembered and told on to our kids (when we decided to have one, or two, or four, of course!). The lucky girl is Christie, but that's what she says; I'm the really lucky one here. So, this is how it starts. I basically made reservations for a place in Sundance Square, Fort Worth, for a nice Mexican dinner, at Cantina Read More »

VMWare: Unable to load the BIOS due to the VMWare Splash screen not showing

Drew — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:47:46 +0000

After upgrading my version of VMWare from VMWare 1.6 to VMWare 2.0, and then installing and updating the VMWare Infrastructure Client, I had a new issue; accessing the BIOS from the VMWare splash startup screen. Before the upgrade, VMWare would display the VMWare splash screen as it loaded the NVRAM (I believe), and had a section that said "Press F2 to enter setup"; it went by fast, but it was at least there. After fiddling around with VMWare for a few minutes, I found a way around this Read More »

Record Cell Phone Calls with Drop.io Service (free)

Drew — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:00:03 +0000

This was a pretty cool find, that was merely an accident. I joined the Drop.io service due to trying to find a decent, free AJAX upload script, since I didn't have the time to write something basic myself. I never actually found one, however, I decided that Drop.io was the closest thing to a solution. Basically, I needed to upload a few files, quickly, so that I could download them on a remote system (without using rsync or scp). If you have a chance to check out Drop.io, please do, then Read More »

Dynamic DNS IP Retrieval Script

Drew — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:38:52 +0000

You ever try connecting to your system at home, using a domain name (that has been setup using Dynamic DNS), only to find out that your ISP has, yet again, changed the public IP address to your house? This is very common with DSL setups, but still is a factor with other internet connections such as FIOS, Cable (also known as High Speed Internet, and most definitely dial-up (since dial-up isn't really used much anymore, I'm not covering that). Of course, there's those Dynamic DNS providers, Read More »

Google’s 2008 April Fool’s Joke

Drew — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:38:38 +0000

Here it is (I know I'm late!): http://mail.google.com/mail/help/customtime/index.html Let's you got back in time and send that email your forgot to send (even if it is 2 days old!). You can have it sent as unread or read and it will show in chronological order. That would be hilarious if this could work, however, this is all based on the user-agent and how email works. This would be considered SPAM. However, Google is good at thinking of different April Fool's jokes. I almost believed Read More »

Splunk Free: .htaccess Protection using Apache

Drew — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 01:29:06 +0000

You ever hear of Splunk? Splunk enables you to search and navigate all your logs and IT data in real time; logs, configurations, messages, traps and alerts, scripts and metrics. It's an awesome tool to make it easier to monitor and watch your log files. Unfortunately, Splunk is expensive. How expensive? Try $5000 a year, for the cheapest license. Here's the main problem; the free version of Splunk does not come with any user authentication, not even Admin authentication. This means that Read More »

Back To Work

Drew — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:42:07 +0000

Well, yesterday was my first day back from my vacation, and WOW (as in whoa, or holy crap). It was busier than I would have expected. We had a record sales day and I am sore from it. Try going from doing absolutely nothing for a week and a half, to building out over 50 servers (over half that in 3 hours). This week is going to be short for me due to taking Sunday off as part of my vacation, however, I think you could call yesterday a double Read More »

My 1st Car Crash

Drew — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:22:26 +0000

Call it a car crash, a car wreck, or an accident. Whatever you wanna call it, my first car accident was a scary one. So, let's get to the point, you wanna know what happened - I got it. So, here's the story. Oh, before I start this, this is almost two weeks old, but just not got around to actually writing this out. The Crash I was on highway 75, this was right before Royal Lane exit. The roads were dry, but it was cold outside; it was November 22nd, Thanksgiving Day. I was on my way Read More »