Posts by Brent Ozar

After using an Audiovox Thera PocketPC phone for what seems like forever, I’ve ordered matching new phones for Erika and I. The Thera was pretty cool, but it had two strikes against it: it’s friggin’ big, and Verizon no longer lets you use data minutes out of your voice pool. They’re making you pay for…

When I went downstairs this morning to make my second pot of coffee, I opened the kitchen blinds and saw a little creature in distress. This fella got his legs caught in the boards of my back fence overnight, probably while walking along the top, and was stuck. He was still alive, thank goodness, and…

Some blog authors use their blogs as a cross between a public information source as well as a private one: for example, John Dowdell will often make notes in his blog when he wants to save information for a later date, in an easily searchable format, that other people may also find useful. I’m going…

I’m so frustrated that I’ve gotta take a few minutes and vent. I rarely air my work laundry here on the personal site, but at the moment, I’m so angry it just doesn’t even matter anymore. Seven months ago, when our company decided to move development to Java, I found out that my personal laptop…

Wow, about time. The site’s finally moved over to Linux. Ended up using PHP just to get it to go live quicker & smoother – I can always play around with Java on other sites. Besides, I don’t edit the code on this one much now that I use MovableType. Lots of things going on.…

OK, I give up. This morning I figured I’d take another shot at setting up a VPN client, this time using SSH like a guy at my company uses. I got started, got about an hour into it, and it doesn’t work on Xandros because the kernel doesn’t have the PPP module built in. Sure,…

I’ve been running Linux on the desktop for a little over a month. I’m using it as my mail server and DNS server, and now it’s time to start migrating my web sites over from ASP to JSP. Most of the translation should be pretty straightforward – there’s hardly any dynamic code in brentozar.com, for…

A few days ago, the RIAA announced that they were suing another 477 people who shared MP3’s. I had a fake Yahoo press release rigged up so that people could put in a friend’s name, and it would generate an official-looking link that they could send to their unwitting friend. The friend would read the…

Three solid days of work have given me the ability to both send and receive email using Courier under Linux. Something that takes literally ten minutes under Windows (well, and a pirated copy of various software programs) finally works under Linux. I succeeded in getting SpamAssassin working to filter my email, too, thanks to these…

After what can only be described as a struggle, I now have smtp mail working – meaning, I can receive mail. I can’t send it yet, though, because it keeps saying my passwords aren’t right, even though I know they’re right and I can log in correctly. At least the mail is coming in, though,…

I’m in the second round of Java training this week. When I walked in on Monday, I headed straight for the Solaris workstation: I figured now that I’m migrating to Linux, I could take this knowledge and sit down to any Unix box and start work. Sure enough, I’ve been able to do everything I…

I’ve got a Tivo with the Home Media Option, which lets your Tivo play music from your computer’s MP3 collection. JavaHMO is a third-party server program that is a vast improvement over Tivo’s software, which lets your Tivo do things like show the local weather forecast, the movie schedules at your local cineplex, show internet…

I built a workbench using a kit from Simpson Strong-Tie this weekend, and I’m quite proud of it. Simpson’s directions were easy to follow, and I built the work bench in a few hours of pleasant labor. It’s solid, it doesn’t wobble, and I can’t say enough good things about their self-drilling Strong Drive screws.…

A couple of days ago, I thought I’d managed to get the pptp vpn client working under Linux. No luck. The next morning, I found out that it would let ping packets pass through, but wouldn’t the Watchguard firewall at our office wouldn’t send back any other packets. Great. Lovely.

So I’m several days into working on my VPN connection, and I just flat out gave up last night. I’m doign my work inside a VMware window, which lets me run Windows XP inside of Linux. I have my easy VPN connection in the Windows session – it takes just a few mouse clicks to…

I started working on getting PPTP VPN working at 5:30 this morning. I was determined to be able to VPN into our office Watchguard Firebox from my Linux desktop, because I can’t get work done without it. I struggled and struggled, and finally got it via an obscure command line switch. Pptp wasn’t returning an…

This afternoon I took a few hours out of the Linux install mess to build a workbench. I’d purchased a $250 miter saw a few weeks ago in an attempt to put crown molding in the house, but the saw was sitting on the garage floor. Working on my hands and knees isn’t my idea…

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…