Author Archives: mike

As a System Administrator, I am constantly looking for the ultimate commands to make my job easier.  Moving files around, renaming files for archival purposes, downloading updates, and building reports are a lot easier with scripting.  This is another document for the reference library, folks.

http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ Continue reading →

Score one for the consumer.  The head of the FCC has recently announced that they are proceeding with charges against Comcast for traffic shaping, or selectively slowing down and blocking specific protocols on their internet service.
I haven’t been a very big advocate of bitorrent, but this will also prevent ISPs from messing with services such [...] Continue reading →

As a contribution to the community, I am performing a crude usability test.  For years, bookstores have been selling thousands of self-help teach yourself office application books.  My curiosity focused on a book that my wife recently finished.  I have in front of me an Excel 2003 book and over the next few months, I [...] Continue reading →

Ahhh… the good old days. I had ones of these DataLink watches when I started flying on my first tech job. It saved a ton of time and helped me reschedule several flights, including one where I was north of the border without my luggage. Forget about cellphones, pdas, and wireless internet [...] Continue reading →

Just a heads up to Ubuntu and Debian users out there. There is a major bug in openSSL that needs to be patched on all Debian and Ubuntu systems and you must regenerate your ssh keys. I’ve included some links to the gory details:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00152.html
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-612-1
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-612-2 Continue reading →

To my dismay today, I ran into a problem with Firefox 3 Beta 5 on Hardy Heron.  Apparently, Mozilla has decided to put the screws to people who sign their own certificates or use certs not issued by their own domain by creating a four step process to bypass the error message.  Here is an [...] Continue reading →

This one was driving me nuts and I finally found a solution. For several weeks, Thunderbird has not been opening links I click on them. I found a solution here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=502651

Open Thunderbird version 2.0.0.14
Go to the Edit menu
Click on Preferences
Click the Advanced tab
Click the Config Editor button.
An about:config window will open up.
In the Filter [...] Continue reading →