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Technology

A Better Broadband Router: Linksys WRT54GL and the Tomato Firmware

My family has been using Midcontinent Communications for our broadband internet for about three and a half years now, and have had a very good experience with it. About a month ago though, things seemed to really slow down. This was especially noticeable whenever I loaded up a video from YouTube – or any other […]

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Technology

Household Energy Conservation

Last Saturday, we had the opportunity to have an Xcel Energy employee come out to our house and perform a home energy audit. This program, subsidized by the company, gives you a very clear picture of types of things that could be improved to use less energy and ultimately save you money. Because our home […]

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Video

8-bit Marching Band

You’ve got to love a marching band that can not only play the Tetris theme, but create the game while marching (direct link): How many songs do you recognize? Also, previously, Nintendo A Capella (direct link):

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Technology

Mobile Organization with Sandy and Jott

Since its release in May 2005, I had been using 37signals’ Backpack web application to keep track of pretty much anything I needed to remember. It worked well for awhile, but eventually became a burden. It became a dumping ground for everything in my head, and I began to dread logging into my account each […]

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Work

How the Command Line Saved Me from 19 Hours of Tedious Work

At work the other day, I ran into a somewhat odd problem. I had a Windows server with nearly 3,000 folders, each containing a PDF file and an empty ZIP file, looking a little something like this: 2ec99d82-4b79-4454-9f4a-3b52c1cc63cc |– 2ec99d82-4b79-4454-9f4a-3b52c1cc63cc.zip |– 2ec99d82-4b79-4454-9f4a-3b52c1cc63cc.pdf Sidenote: In case you’re curious, that long, weird looking string of numbers and […]

Categories
Politics

Voting in this Country is a Mess – Let’s Fix it Already.

I recently read a couple of really interesting articles about two big voting/election issues the United States is currently facing – the system we use to elect our politicians, and the process we use to do it. And while the status quo falls short on the trust and transparency we should all demand, there are […]

Categories
iPod

Getting Back Into Shape With My New iPod Nano

This Christmas, my big gift from Casey and the boys was a shiny new (red) iPod nano that replaces the 3+ year old 3rd generation iPod that died on me over six months ago. It was a great surprise, and is an amazing piece of technology. Seeing Cover Flow on a tiny 2-inch screen is […]