Brandt is gone... :(

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So, Brandt is back at his Mom's...  It's just now starting to hit me. I don't like it one bit. I haven't for many years now and I suppose I won't every like it. But then I think about what she goes through when he is with me. I'm sure it will all be ok. So I'm watching a movie called "Ghost in a Teeny Bikini". I'm sure this movie will someday be a classic. Just in case you were wondering, I'm already getting sore from my workout today. ouch...

Factory reset a Cisco 7640 or 7960...

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I've been using the Cisco 7940 and 7960 phones for a while now. That's why I was so surprised the other day to find a handy way to do a factory reset on them. I don't know how I could have missed it all this time...

Simply hold down the # key while you power-cycle the phone. (If you already have the SIP firmware loaded, simply press * and 6 and Settings at the same time, and the phone will reboot. Then press and hold the # key while it boots.)

After a second or two, the phone display will say:

Reset key sequence detected

The headset, mute, and speakerphone lights will cycle. Now, simply press the following keys:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 * 0 #

Now, the phone will ask you whether or not you want to save your network configuration. I usually press 2 for no.

Save network cfg? 1=yes 2=no

The display will then say:

Factory reset initiated

and the phone will continue to boot. There you have it -- a quick and easy way to do a factory reset.

He's getting better...

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Well Leo is finally getting better. He somehow got these really big cuts/gashes/holes/sores or what ever you want to call them on his hip. I tried to take care of it myself by keeping it clean and keeping antibiotic cream on it. That wasn't working and it started to look really bad. So Monday I took him to the Vet and they gave him a shot and some medicine. It's just been a couple of days and he's looking SOOO much better. A few more days and he might be well enough to go out side and play a bit.

Leo’s Wounds

WARNING, Work Stuff: Panasonic KV-S2045c/Kofax Out of Paper error...

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Issue: I have a Windows XP SP1 machine. It has a Kofax Adrenaline 650i scsi card and a Panasonic KV-S2045c scanner attached. After upgrading to SP2 all scanning stops. Home grown scan software has weird random crash. Panasonic RTIV scan software has a divide by zero crash. Kofax vcdemo and vbdemo report Out of paper error. Reinstalling, removing, upgrading, or downgrading and all combonations of those do not fix it. Uninstalling SP2 does fix this issue.

Fix: Downloaded ASPI drivers from adaptec at http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/speed/software_pc/aspi/aspi_471a2_exe.htm . Ran aspiinst.exe and then aspichk.exe and verified that updated drivers were installed. Rebooted and attempted to scan. Same error. Removed scanner from device manager and attempted a scan. This time it worked as normal. Made a few scans just to be sure. Scanned for new hardware, reinstalled scanner drivers when asked.

All is well...

I has a plan...

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Ok... anybody that has known me for more than about ten minutes knows that I'm not the guy that can plan anything. I can't plan the future more than about what I"m doing right now. But I'm here to tell you... I know what I'm going to be doing on Monday June 11th. I have two things going in my favor that day. First, I'm off on Mondays so I can pretty much do what ever I need when ever I need it. Second, Brandt will be at Rachel's so I don't have to worry about getting him to school. So bright an early on that Monday I'm going to be setting my ass in front of the Cingular store waiting on my iphone. So if you need me on June 11th, now you'll know where to find me.  :)

Pointy ears = hot...

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So tonight on the treadmill I was catching up on my podcasts. Specifically the video podcast. I was watching Tiki Bar. In episode 17 and 19 they had that woman that plays Cally on Battlestar Galactica, Niki Clyne... She cleans up pretty good. Of course for some reason they gave her pointy ears. They even had a Battlestar reference in Ep 19. Anyway, I'll catch up on the rest of them next week. La La is smokin hot too by the way.

Two Loves...

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This video combines my two favorite loves... The song "Code Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton and hot Night Elf chicks....

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA]

For the past year, Jonathan Coulton has released a song every week through his fabulous Thing A Week podcast. He makes his songs available via the Creative Commons license, which enables projects such as this video.

Mike Spiff Booth is a Program Manager at Adobe who though this great song really deserved a video. This video is a tribute to Jonathan's amazing Thing A Week experiment and all the great music it produced.

Before you ask, since apes, goblins, and night elf receptionists don't tend to interact much in the wild, I couldn't only use captured game footage to make this video. Every frame of this video was composited together by hand using images captured from the WoW Model Viewer, WoW Map Viewer, and the World of Warcraft game itself.

No monkeys were harmed in the making of this film.

The song at the end of the video is "Big Bad World One", another great Jonathan Coulton song.

All you ever wanted to know....

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Leeeeroooy Jenkins... If you are unfamiliar with this term, everything you ever wanted to know, PLUS SOME is here in a link to a Dever newspaper article on Leeroy and all that is Mr. Jenkins. If you wanna see Leeroy's stats you can check them out at the World of Warcraft Armory. And of course the movie that started it all...
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=iv4KrxCbTO0]

At least I got chicken!

Daylight Savings Time Change

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So I've been spending the last couple of days updating servers and such for the change in DST. Basically the law govnerning DST was changed. It used to be first Sunday of April to the last Sunday in October. It's now changed to the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.


  1. Check the time zone as it currently is...
    $ zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

    Should come back with something like this...
    /etc/localtime  Sun Apr  1 07:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Apr  1 01:59:59 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600
    /etc/localtime  Sun Apr  1 08:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Apr  1 03:00:00 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
    /etc/localtime  Sun Oct 28 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Oct 28 01:59:59 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
    /etc/localtime  Sun Oct 28 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Oct 28 01:00:00 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600


  2. In a my downloads directory I created a directory and changed to it...
    $ mkdir tzdata
    $ cd txdata

  3. Download the update TZ files from Uncle Sam...
    $ wget ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2007c.tar.gz

  4. Untar the files...
    $ tar -xzvf tzdata2007c.tar.gz

  5. Format the timezone files to the proper format...
    # zic -d zoneinfo northamerica

  6. Copy the new files into the live system...
    # cd zoneinfo
    # cp -r * /usr/share/zoneinfo/

  7. Check to ensure it's updated correctly...
    $ zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

    Should come back with something like this...
    /etc/localtime  Sun Mar 11 07:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600
    /etc/localtime  Sun Mar 11 08:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
    /etc/localtime  Sun Nov  4 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov  4 01:59:59 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
    /etc/localtime  Sun Nov  4 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov  4 01:00:00 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600



Experiment if you will...

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I'm going to try an experiment for a few days on here... I've tried things like this in the past and have even migrated some of that info over but never have I really sat down and tried to actually do this. I'm going to from time to time document some of the problems, issues, and occurrences I have here at the office. I'll attempt to show the symptoms, the cause, and the solution. Most people won't be interested in this and I understand. This is more so I can document these issues and can call on my experiences of today in the future.

These entries will all be in the "Professional" category so you may ignore anything in this category if you'd like.