The big L has taken up computers like a storm. Here he is playing Tux of Math Command. He also likes starfall.com. It is amazing watching a four-year-old take to a mousepad like he has.

Cost of two boxes of donuts - $10.00

Cost of one Gateway PC Intel Core2 Duo PC with 1GB RAM - $899.00

Using eight PCs to hold two boxes of donuts...

...priceless.

Today is day 10 of our new Electronic Recording Archive. We've managed to survive the first two weeks of operation with only minor glitches. It is interesting to note what can occur when just the right mix of events take place. For example, the lead programmer on the project created a table to hold temporary documents. Not knowing in advance how the temporary documents would be stored, he decied - innocently enough - to use a VarChar field type for the temporary number. Turns out, our number is entirely numeric - being composed of the date, a cashier code and some other numbers.

Since we are not yet on Active Directory, we seemingly don't have the abiliity in our NT Domain with Roaming Profiles to choose SQL Server 2005 as a platform for hosting our databases. As much as we'd have liked 2005, it simply wasn't an option for now. [i]Apparently Active Directory is coming, we just don't know when.[/i] So, we fired up SQL Server 2000 on our fancy quad-processor boxes with 20GB RAM. Seeing as how the last patch for SQL Server 2000 was SP4, we loaded it up. No problem....

Okay, today is Wednesay, and our new Enterprise System has survived day two. All is going as expected with only a few minor issues. (Who said SQL Server shouldn't start indexing in the middle of the day on a 14M record table?)

26 Days to go until our new Enterprise Recording System goes live. We now have a 1.0 release, thanks to the efforts of my team. Here's a screenshot of the main indexing screen, showing the side menu...

[CLICK FOR A FULL SIZE IMAGE (1920X1175)]

Okay, it is now E minus 40, as the countdown to January 2nd continues. In support of my team, I've begun testing the new system at my workstation. Here's my first cashiered document in the new Enterprise Recording Archive System.

[CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE]

I'm very impressed with the work going on in my team. All is coming together. Now just ask me how it is going on January 2nd!

Okay, after much work, and some time poking around the internet - trying to avoid many of my normal tasks - I've got MAME up and running on my laptop. Now I can finally play those ROM files I've been hoarding.

Here's a screenshot...

So you want to know how to burn a bootleg Audio CD using K3B?

You’ve come to the right article. There are several sources of information on how to burn data and standard audio CD’s using K3B,
the very cool CD/DVD utility for Linux systems. Novell has one such article at their Cool Solutions site. Others are very easy to find. However, burning a bootleg CD of a concert can seem a little tricky. Here’s how to do it.

First you want to download the concert.

Now, before you go about calling in the thought police, know this: In most instances bootlegs are not illegal to posses or trade. In fact, several popular bands allow bootlegging to go on and some even give CDR copies of concerts to known bootleggers for distribution. Just don’t ever try to buy or sell a bootleg. That IS illegal and a violation of copyright and publishing laws. It also sucks for the rest of us because it could cause bands to rethink their bootleg concepts if pirates try to sell bootlegs.