Posts by Brent Ozar

It’s Sunday morning, and I’ve already been plugging away at this for more than two hours. My only goal this morning was to get VMware up and running. Sounds simple – it’s literally a two minute process under Windows. You run the installer, and you’re done. Should be straightforward, right? After all, this is a…

I’m back at home after a week in Dallas, and I’m in the process of setting up my basic development tools under Linux. At first I thought it’d be easy, but it quickly became so overwhelming that I’ve had to create a text file with all of my to-doos. The first line in the text…

Day two, and everything’s cool so far. I’m in the process of tracking down applications to replace the ones I’m used to. For the last few years, I’ve used Nero to burn CD’s and more recently, DVD’s – but it’s a Windows program, so now I have to find the best equivalent in Linux. Sites…

Moving right along – I have a bunch of tools set up, and figured I’d take a chance on the digital camera. Plugged in my USB flash card reader, and sat there like a dummy waiting for Xandros to do something. Uhhh, news flash, Brent, Linux doesn’t quite have the automated tools available in Windows…

I’m typing this from Mozilla (as usual) via Xandros 2.0 (nowhere near usual.) After giving up on third-party video cards and making do with the onboard integrated Intel video, the installation went smoothly. I’ve done the security upgrades and basic application upgrades, and things seem to be going well so far. Much to my surprise,…

The second Xandros installation, using an ATI Radeon 9200SE, looked promising, but didn’t handle the flat panels correctly. It said it saw a Dell 1901FP (correct, hooked into the digital video port) but it rendered on the IBM T541 (hooked into the analog port). Said there weren’t two monitors. So then I tried downloading all…

It’s noon, and I’m on the second install of Xandros. The first install hung when booting – the NVidia logo came up and wham, no workie. I had a very nice Geforce2 FX video card that could handle both of my flat panels, but everybody tells me NVidia drivers in Linux are horrid, so off…

My office is littered with installation cd’s burned from LinuxISO.org. I’m about twenty-four hours and three Linux distributions into this, and all of them have had flaws big enough for me to start over with another distro. I tried Mandrake first, and looking back, it was the best. Mandrake detected both the NVidia GeForce FX…

This morning, I lost four hours of work time due to Active Directory flakiness. Thank goodness I have three machines here, so at no time was any of my work in jeopardy, but I decided enough is enough. First off, I’m going to stop hosting stuff at my house, and I’m going to be done…

JinWicked drew me a set of icons to use in online forums, and I’m really tickled with the way they turned out. The one shown here is my favorite, because it captures the way my eyes close when I smile. I gotta rescan them at a higher quality and chop ’em up in Photoshop this…

I’ve resisted splurging on a flat panel because the cost is usually at least double what a similarly sized CRT monitor goes for. Today I took the plunge because I found an internet guy who was selling a new IBM T541 15″ LCD dirt cheap. I couldn’t pass it up, and I’m thrilled with the…

The coolest thing so far about my Audiovox Thera PocketPC phone isn’t the integration with Microsoft Outlook, the speakerphone quality, or the form factor. (Definitely not the form factor – this thing’s pretty bulky.) No, the coolest thing is that it runs so many Windows CE applications, like Microsoft Chess. I love playing chess, especially…

My Sprint phone from work can’t seem to get any coverage at the new house, so I sent it back and ordered a new Audiovox Thera from Verizon. I’m a big fan of Verizon: I’ve had an account with them since around 2001, their coverage can’t be beat, and their customer service deserves kudos. Anyway,…

We’re doing a migration to Java at work, so I’m getting started on some Sun training material this morning. I’m hoping to be done with the initial training by next Wednesday, when I go on vacation to close on the house and move in. Finding the right training material is such a challenge. The particular…

When I saw this ad slogan for a computer case company, my first thought was that it was run by a couple of my ex-girlfriends. Then I looked closer and saw the word “stable” and realized it couldn’t possibly be them. Anyway, if you’re into computer cases, Tom’s Hardware ran a great summary of the…

I can see why big companies have a hard time getting traction with new systems. Today I had amusing conversations with two web design opinions at opposite ends of our organization, both doing web development: one wants to build an all-Flash version of our marketing web site, and the other wants to remove all graphic…

This morning’s MSDN Flash email almost made me spit coffee through my nose. Ordinarily you have to take this stuff with a grain of salt, because it’s written to sell more Microsoft products, but this one takes the cake. Here’s the snippet: “How to Process E-mail Orders Using Outlook and Access: Learn how the authors…

About two years ago, on the morning of September 11 2001, I was working from home as a computer programmer. A friend of mine in our Dallas office emailed me asking what was going on, that they couldn’t get to any news web sites. I turned on my favorite news channel, MSNBC, and watched the…

I’m never going to make it to the show Inside the Actors Studio, but the questionnaire they ask each guest amuses me. I’d love to sit in the chair across from James Lipton, but since the odds aren’t looking good: What’s your favorite word? Solution. (I like words with multiple meanings, and I’ve always wanted…

I run a free class reunion site. It’s a lot like Classmates, except it’s free and there’s no ads. I originally wrote it for my 10th reunion for high school, and being the wild and crazy programmer that I am, I designed it to be hugely scalable from the beginning. Anybody can sign up any…