Category: Technology

  • 15″ Early 2011 MacBook Pro 2.0ghz – Upgrade

    15″ Early 2011 MacBook Pro 2.0ghz – Upgrade

    I have a 15″ early 2011 MacBook Pro sitting on my desk which I use as a spare computer and as web browser while I’m working on one of the several computers and monitors at my desk. It’s also the portable computer when I need to spend overnights somewhere for work or other engagements. It’s…

  • Logitech F310 Game Controller – Adventures @ Goodwill!

    Logitech F310 Game Controller – Adventures @ Goodwill!

    Randomly walked into the local Goodwill today as I do a couple times a month or so and found a Logitech F310 game controller. It’s basically a clone of the game controller on the Xbox for use on PC’s however it does have a switch on the bottom that can put it in PlayStation compatible…

  • Gaming with a GeForce GT 710

    Gaming with a GeForce GT 710

    I have an older Dell PC. A Dell OptiPlex 7010 in fact with a 3.2 ghz Intel i5-3470 CPU with 16 gigabytes of RAM and the PNY GeForce GT 710 graphics card. The OptiPlex does come with a built in video card however there’s no need to even mention that. I originally purchased this card…

  • Cryptocoin – Month 3 – Checking In

    Cryptocoin – Month 3 – Checking In

    I still have the initial grubstake in Ripple Labs XRP Tokens with the initial buy in of the cryptocoin back in January of 2021. $10.00US minus 0.99US cents in fees, ultimately netting me 31.512036 in XRP cryptocoin which works out to $14.02US (approx. . 44US per) right now. When I initially purchased it XRP was…

  • Microsoft Azure Portal + Ubuntu

    Microsoft Azure Portal + Ubuntu

    Now with some time under my belt working with Microsoft’s Azure Cloud and getting some understanding of the Portals interface I thought I’d spend some time going over some observations I’ve had over the last couple months. I am installing the Ubuntu 18.04 distribution available in the Microsoft Azure operating system repositories and then upgrading…

  • cowsay and lolcat – more Ubuntu shell commands

    cowsay and lolcat – more Ubuntu shell commands

    If you read my article about fortune, I mention cowsay and lolcat towards the end of that article. I decided to write another article that expands on cowsay and lolcat usage. A lot of my time working and playing is spent inside or looking at screenfuls of ssh shell sessions. cowsay and lolcat are small…

  • fortune – Unix/Linux Shell Goody

    fortune – Unix/Linux Shell Goody

    “You are WRONG, you ol’ brass-breasted fascist poop!” — Bloom County (fortune) fortune is a little program that I install on just about every single Unix/Linux box I administrate. It’s not a tool, it’s not a game and it’s not a backdoor or any other program or subsystem to make your life easier or make…

  • There’s a Cursor in My Browser

    There’s a Cursor in My Browser

    A little problem started bugging me a few weeks ago. Every once in while when browsing web pages there would be a ‘cursor’ somewhere in the page. The cursor is the blinking vertical line or sometimes an underscore which let’s you know where text will output when you start typing. At first it was barely…

  • Internet Architecture for Beginners – What are Tiers?

    Internet Architecture for Beginners – What are Tiers?

    I’ve spent 35+ years of building and deploying internet facing web sites. The front end load balancers and web servers which are tier 1 and sometimes referred to as client application or client tier. Next up is the application server (tier 2) and finally the backend database server (tier 3) or data source. To tie…

  • Linux shell commands I use daily

    Linux shell commands I use daily

    In day to day administration we as system administrators have literally thousands of commands to choose from to keep our servers running in tip top condition. I’ve seen top 10 lists of essential commands every Linux user should know. I’ve seen top 35 lists of the best Linux shell commands. I’ve seen top 100 lists…