Daniel Von Fange

Please ignore the writing.

When installing Windows 2003 Server, I get this message:

I have a coworker call out the 25 digit code on the Certificate of Authenticity, conveniently located on the server four feet behind me.

It doesn't work.

I call out what it on screen. Everything is confirmed by my coworker.

It doesn't work.

I take a photo of the Certificate of Authenticity, and carefully compare each digit. All are correct.

It doesn't work.

I wonder if we have a bad Certificate of Authenticity.

I call Tiger Direct tech support, and hold for ten minutes.

A man with a heavy Indian accent comes on the line. I tell him my problem. He puts me on hold.

I stare at the server and wait.

I stare at the server and wait.

I stare at the server and am enlightened.

There are TWO 25 digit codes on the server. And the one the one that "appears on the lower section of your Certificate of Authenticity" is for Outlook.

Tiger Direct support comes off hold, and offers me the phone number for the server manufacturer.

I tell him that maybe I have this one figured out, and sorry for the trouble.

Where is my toy?.

I ordered a Garmin eTrex Legend from Amazon, and can't wait for it to show up. I kept going back to the shipment tracking page to see how much farther it has to go.

Then I found simpletracker.com. Now I've got an RSS feed of my packages location.

Great Glass.

I held my Digital Rebel up to the peephole in my front door. $1,000 camera with less than cell phone quality.

After years of working in television, my Dad is always saying "It's the glass that makes the difference". If you want to take great photos or video, you have to have great lenses.

At the moment, I've only got one "great" lens. A Canon 1.8 50mm only cost $72.50, but the quality is awesome.

Phreaking to call the grandkids.

As kids played in the parking lot, I overheard one woman telling another how she was able "transfer her minutes" from her cell phone to her house so she could make free long distance calls on nights and weekends "with land line quality".

Huh?

Simple. Turn on call forwarding on the cell phone, with the number of the person you want to call. Then call your cell phone, which gets forwarded to your intended number - even if it's in Montana.

Danger you do have to remember to turn off call forwarding when you are done. When you forget, your husband may be confused when he calls you and is routed to the last person you were talking to.

Crypto Tools.

What utility will tell you if a number is prime, generate random bits, connect a secure server , and benchmark your machine's performance? It's openssl from the command line. Most people only use it to generate keys for apache and SSH, but it has quite a few handy things you can do with it. Here's the OpenSSL command-line HOWTO.