Category Archives: Tech

Technology related stuff

Microsoft thumbs down.

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I’d like to take some time and dedicate this post to some alternative software that is available for your computer. All of the following software is free of charge..

Firefox
Firefox is a fairly well known alternative web browser… This browser is really gaining in popularity, as it recently passed 50 million downloads. The guys at mozilla dot org really do a nice job. The Firefox web browser is simply awesome. When it first came out, I was against it. Much like I was against netscape, and the original mozilla. But now, I am fully converted forever. Tabbed browsing, additional security, popup blocking, etc. There are tons of extensions that make this program even better… FoxyTunes for example will allow control of almost any media player via your firefox browser. Calander, FlashGot, FireFTP, it really is an admirable software suite. I hope the guys that work on this get what they deserve; And to help with that, I’m almost surely going to order a Firefox polo shirt to wear to work on “casual Friday”

ThunderBird
Thunderbird is the email client that compliments Firefox. It functions very similar to Outlook or Outlook express… But it goes far above and beyond in terms of security, and features. Most notable is the RSS subscription capability to make Blog or news browsing much more efficient. Again, there are many addons and extensions that can be very easily installed to customize this email client.

So let’s review… These softwares are free, they are more secure against spam, popups, “malware” in general, and they are very simple to install and use. If you’re like me, it’s fun to use something different. I completely deleted outlook express… I add/removed it in windows components, and then deleted all instances of “msimn.exe”. I’m going to take some screenshots of these programs with various extensions and themes… I’ll put them into a gallery.

Finally, I’m going to download and install Sun’s latest version of OpenOffice. Which, according to the AP, is going to be the killer of microsoft’s office suite. I’ll update this same post later with comments….

Nerd Vol. 2

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Yesterday I finally found a digital camera that I felt OK spending money on. I purchased an Olympus D589. The lower end 3.2 megapixel olympus camera is usually 229 at Bestbuy and Circuit town… This ‘step up’ model was on sale at office max for 199. I got a 128 meg xd card, so I’m pretty sure im going to take pictures of everything that exists. I’ll be adding albums to the gallery in rapid succession

Continuing with my latest nerd venture: Python. I have been downloading program examples, reading up on Python, just trying to get the jist of it. I still dont know why, as I have no interest in doing any real programming. But, I found out through some article that alot of Google’s engineers use python.

That said, my ‘vending machine’ has made some progress. Vending Code

Tidbits: Dont make reservations at Carraba’s– still waited 25 minutes. Take student ID’s to see movies from now on. If your not a student, wait to rent. Im so sick of being price gouged. 7.75 i believe was the ticket price to see “Constantine”. I absolutely HATE price gouging. “You cannot bring your own candy into the movie!” — I wonder why they have that rule. Probably so you will pay 2.50 for a box of raisinets, and 3.50 for a soda. It seriously should be illegal. One of these days the world is just going to push itself off a ledge. We continue to ever so slightly nudge it in the back and smile.

i am frowning.

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Definitely…. A nerd

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If anybody ever had any doubt that i am a total nerd, please review the following:

This weekend i spent 50 dollars on a Cisco CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) self certification library. This includes two official Cisco textbooks, as well as a router emulation software that simulates various networks and allows you to “virtually” configure them. Basically, it is step 1 of getting Cisco certified. That’s nerd point 1.

Next, for some completely unknown and unseen reason, i have started to learn a programming language called python. This is even more shocking because I really didnt like programming when i was attending good ol’ gvsu. I had always heard about the language, and its especially easy to use with linux/unix. So i just started doing some on line tutorials to gte the feel of it. Now, I am re-creating my CS-162 project of creating a “vending machine”. Although in the very early stages, i did write all this from scratch. Check out my code!! SourceCode. During this, i experimented around with some ‘hacking’ on my friends websites. Not really successfully, but some of you can be telnetted to port 25 😉

As far as work goes, im still loving it. I got my “official” business cards today. “Eric Vanbergen: IT Technician – Server Support”. I’m still kind of on a high from this whole thing… I feel like im finally “here”. And that its downhill from now. Things feel like they have all just fallen into place.

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