The Red 'N' Orange Notebook

Espresso recipes for the cheap ECM20 machine

2010-11-25T13:35:00.000-05:00

Moka pot coffee is not technically thick enough to be called espresso, but people in Italy think it's cool. Well, Hell, if people in Italy think it's cool, then I'll get a moka pot! As it turns out, part of my general survival strategy in the modern era states that I should avoid an open flame when in need of a caffeine hit. This survival rule made it clear that I could not get a

Notes on Perl DBI::Sybase FreeTDS

2009-06-11T10:02:00.000-04:00

Connecting to Microsoft SQL Server in RedHat (RHEL) 5 or CentOS 5 ... Install freetds. #yum install freetds Ensure that freetds can connect to the db server. #telnet server_ip_address 1433 #TDSVER=7.0 tsql -H server_ip_address - p 1433 -U server_user_login Set and export SYBASE environment variable to freetds library location. FIND libsybdb library location. # ldd $(command -v freebcp)

Verizon Treo 700wx / 700w Bluetooth DUN without "Modem Link" in Windows

2008-12-28T14:49:00.004-05:00

It took way too long to find information on this. Get the directions from Palm http://www.palm.com/cgi-bin/cso_kbURL.cgi?ID=44941. Here's a rough breakdown: # Pair your device to your Windows computer. # On your computer, click Start and select Run. # Enter telephon.cpl, and then click OK. # On the Modems tab, click Add to open the Select Bluetooth Device dialog box. # Select your smartphone

Better DOM Tooltips with the Prototype.js Libaray

2008-09-09T00:26:00.007-04:00

Or "How I got sick of seeing so many 'tooltip' libraries" The situation During the launch of a website, I was tasked with adding a tooltip to an icon to help answer those questions like "How do I log in?" Now, I've been using wz_tooltips.js for most of the projects I've had to do, and basically, it's easy enough to work with. However, since this current project uses the

Converting Mail2db from Perl to Python

2008-08-26T16:58:00.006-04:00

Why? Perl Redhat Linux sucks. That's all. Really. I wrote a script (rather, an application ...) that uses a couple of Perl CPAN modules to parse email and gently place the pieces in a database for consumption. So if this application works, why move the code base to Python? This application uses two Perl CPAN modules: Email::Simple and DBD::Sybase (with DBI). Now, DBD::Sybase can be tricky

Notes on Using Serialize in PHP 4

2008-08-25T10:08:00.004-04:00

Introduction I find myself, yet again, stuck on an old server with an old version of PHP installed. I've been tasked with maintaining an ad hoc/mishmash of code which crumbles with the slightest update. Problem I ran into a problem: how am I going to quickly view and capture all requests that are being sent to this application? Well, I thought I was being clever, and I decided to use the PHP

Download Wrangler

2008-02-24T22:50:00.003-05:00

Let me start with this: I'm just tired as hell when it comes to organizing my downloads. I find myself faced with the following problems, time and time again: Where did I put that file that I just downloaded?Didn't I download this already?Argh! There are too many files in this folder!So I've decided to reactive about the problem and write a little proof-of-concept script that queries the

Symantec Intelligent Updater

2007-04-01T03:35:00.000-04:00

Recently I was tasked with maintaining a USB key that contains the latest virus definitions for Symantec Antivirus. I discovered that I have a couple of options, one of which is using the Intelligent Updater for the product. The Symantec Intelligent Updater can be used to automagically detect your version of Symantec Antivirus and update it with the latest virus definitions. The latest

@Home DNS Setup / BIND Stealth DNS

2007-02-24T05:37:00.000-05:00

I don't know why, really, I just can't leave well enough (well-enough?) alone. I have a DNS server setup in my LAN, so I can control DHCP and all of that other nonsense. WHY? It turned out that my amazing Vonage router got very bogged down when I had swarms of people (cough, cough) connecting through it, and as a result, DHCP service on the router quit working. Using tftpd32 and TreeWalk, the