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Messages - Liquidmantis [ switch to compact view ]

Pages: [1] 2next
1
Living Room / Re: How many people work from home?
« on: April 24, 2008, 06:58 PM »
I work from home as of October 1st.  We moved to Colorado but my Austin job let me switch to telecommuting.  I guess it helps when I'm the system/network admin and the only one that knows all the various passwords, configuration, network appliances.  Of course the only way it works is with a couple of technically proficient people on site to serve as remote hands as needed.

I've considered transitioning to a freelance/consulting self-employment gig but I'm comfortable and don't want to constantly feel like I'm chasing my next paycheck.

2
Official Announcements / Re: January 2008 Software Drawing Winners
« on: January 29, 2008, 09:55 AM »
Woohoo!  Free software!  That'll help offset all the money I've spent on new software over the last couple of months between the great DC discounts that have been rounded up and general holiday discounts.

Let's see if I can remember the new purchases:
TruePianos VSTi
EverNote
ClipMate
Dash
Beyond Compare (DC discount)
I didn't buy NoteZilla but it led me to RecentX which I'll have to buy in the next couple of days now that my trial is about to expire
TeraCopy Pro
Direct Folders
ObjectDock
With all that I need to register PS Tray Factory now that the trial expired.

A lot of those were purchased based on user mini-reviews and user comments here at DC.  I love this place!

Time to download Surfulator and start playing. 

3
General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?
« on: January 23, 2008, 03:21 PM »
Some other firewalls, work with IP addresses, but of course, this is nearly unusable at a user level, and I don't know if it's ever used at an enterprise level.

Huh?  Other than HTTP, everything we filter is done by IP address.  Our particular policy for HTTP access from our production network is to only allow access to a predefined list of URLs that the firewall appliance resolves.  My firewall policies always start from a blank slate, no access config then get built up with the smallest possible pinholes as needed.  And from too many lengthy negotiation and explanation meetings with our clients' IT staffs they are similarly restrictive.

4
General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?
« on: January 18, 2008, 05:35 PM »
Yup, and they monitor for code injection.

5
General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?
« on: January 17, 2008, 01:55 PM »
Well, outbound protection lets you know when something has gone wrong and can help minimize the damage.  I also like to make sure I know what the "benign" apps on my system are doing.

6
General Software Discussion / Re: Fantastic: XsX Alphablended Cursors
« on: January 17, 2008, 11:05 AM »
Stardock's new CursorFX Beta is gratis, and PLUS is $20 - and they are both GREAT.

http://www.stardock....m/products/cursorfx/

I've been a long time CursorXP user, in fact I had a license from before Stardock absorbed the developer.  But I've finally quit using it and really prefer these cursor packages.  I'd have issues with z-buffer issues with CursorXP, in some applications it would be behind menus, etc.  Plus if you remote desktop to the system running CursorXP the mouse was terribly slow and jerky.  A quick hotkey disable of CursorXP would deal with that but occasionally you'd end up with no cursor at all.

I'm not sure how many of these issues persist in CursorFX (I'm sure the remote desktop performance is still lacking, just because of what the program does) and I'm a little annoyed that their product branching would require me to buy it again, albeit discounted.  All in all, I've become disenchanted with Stardock's products being half-baked and then development ceases.  My Object Desktop subscription expires in March and I think I'm finally going to let it lapse after subscribing for seven years (maybe longer even?) now.

7
General Software Discussion / Re: WordWeb
« on: January 17, 2008, 10:41 AM »
I love this program.  Although lately it's been acting up.  I'm sure something I've installed must be causing it issues (Vista?) but it sometimes comes up with complete gibberish in the Lookup field.  Actually, it may have started when I enabled the mouse cursor "radar ring" on CTRL press.  I wonder if that can break the way it grabs the text depending on the timing of the ring.

8
General Software Discussion / Re: Stickies 6.5a released
« on: January 17, 2008, 10:37 AM »
Thanks for the heads up.  I was just on the site yesterday looking at the command-line add-on.

9
I've been a lurker on these threads and since the Lurkians have been called out, I'll throw in a couple of Lincoln tokens.

First of, I'm not going to touch the NSFW aspect as I am left-leaning enough to even be left-handed.  I can't believe this is even a concern on DC but then I don't really go into Living Room so for all I know it might be full of Roman orgies and Paganesque cavortings.  (If that's the case let me know so I can start frequenting it more.)

As for backing the tagging idea, Mouser's explanation of his concept really has me intriqued.  I find a lot of useful software on DC and also when looking for reviews or comments on something a literal search isn't always the best method.  If tagging can be implemented for this idyllic usage then I'm all for it.  My only concern is the high probability that I'll start on a tag trail only to find myself missing an hour or two and no idea of what I was originally trying to find.

10
Citrus Alarm Clock - Works ok, but could use some work. Not very user friendly. I'm using this one right now.

Which version?  I'm running the 2.0b3 version and it works great, easy to configure, and is visually appealing.

11
Living Room / Re: The Rule of 3 Drives: How to Build your Next PC
« on: January 07, 2008, 08:53 AM »
What does drobo run internally? Linux w/kernel software raid?

"Drobo OS", with which they've been fairly close-lipped about the details.  At least they were when I looked at the Drobo.

12
Living Room / Re: The Rule of 3 Drives: How to Build your Next PC
« on: January 06, 2008, 09:21 PM »
If I might comment on the RAID topic, be very wary of where you place your confidence.  After multiple failures on a variety of "SOHO" type RAID implementations (low/moderate cost cards, motherboard built-in offerings, etc.) I've written them off and use non-realtime disk mirroring.  As an added bonus you get some degree of versioning protection that way.

The problem with the budget RAID solutions is that they won't rebuild.  The failures I've had in RAID1 configs made the mirror drive unreadable.  Since moving to a multilayer asynchronous drive mirror solution my file servers at work have been bulletproof.  And from skimming Google's whitepaper on data protection they use a similar system.

Now our enterprise level RAID systems recover well, especially when configured with a hotspare.  The only RAID system I'd consider at home now though is a Drobo.

13
Living Room / Re: The Rule of 3 Drives: How to Build your Next PC
« on: January 06, 2008, 06:50 PM »
I'd bet great odds that an SSD drive will long out last a HDD.

In the ReadyBoost thread Justice posted this quote from Wikipedia:
With these mechanisms in place, some industry analysts[1] have calculated that flash memory can be written to at full speed continuously for 51 years before exceeding its write endurance, even if such writes frequently cause the entire memory to be overwritten. This figure (51 years) involved a worst-case scenario using specific data parameters and should not be confused with a particular "shelf life" for a flash memory device. The bottom line is that a typical user using a commercial device, such as a camera, with a flash drive will probably not wear out the memory for the effective life of the camera.

14
Living Room / Re: The Rule of 3 Drives: How to Build your Next PC
« on: January 06, 2008, 05:27 PM »
That's the way I run:
C: (OS)
D: (Program Files)
E: (Storage, with My Documents remapped)

When I reinstall I just rename my D:\Program Files to D:\Program Files(OLD) and I have an easy reminder of what apps I need to reinstall and have a backup of any config files if needed.

15
ContextMenu Commander / Re: When?
« on: January 04, 2008, 08:50 AM »
While I'm excited to see what Mouser has up his sleeve for CMC I will say that I've been using FileMenu Tools for some time now and I'm really happy with the functionality it adds.  The only thing I can think of as lacking is the ability to move other applications context menus into subfolders.

16
This has bugged me before but not enough to bother looking for a solution.  A quick Google search for default program extensionless file turned up this on WindowsITPro.com though:

A. Normal files with an extension can have a program associated however this is not the case with files that don't have an extension. If you double click on one and select an application and check the box to always use that application it is ignored and every time you select a file you have to choose the application.

You can force this using the registry:

   1. Start the registry editor (regedit.exe)
   2. Move to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
   3. From the Edit menu select New - Key
   4. Enter a name of '.' and press Enter (don't type the quotes)
   5. Select the new '.' key
   6. Double click the (Default) value
   7. Change to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT used to open, e.g. NOTEPAD for the notepad.exe application
      NOTEPAD
   8. Click OK

17
Admittedly it's not exactly what you asked for, but I really like NetLimiter for this.  It'll keep track of how much has been done through each application as well as the cumulative total.

18
General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster
« on: December 30, 2007, 06:56 PM »
I had some emails go completely unacknowledged back when I originally tried Direct Folders but it seems like Jeff (DesertEagle) with Code Sector is actively developing and is replying to comments on the new blog.  Given the improved communication, I took a gamble and just bought Direct Folders and TeraCopy.  Hopefully I don't end up regretting it but $25 is a lot better than $40.

In reply to one of the comments on his blog he mentions that he'll be picking up development on Direct Folders after the stable release of TeraCopy 2, thought to be in another week or two.

19
Yeah, I was really happy to find that after quite a bit of hunting around when Nvidia removed the hotkey function from their drivers.  It's even multi-monitor aware.

20
General Software Discussion / Re: Top 3 programs you use
« on: December 18, 2007, 05:18 PM »
I am totally and utterly one very large questionmark: What is it wih this Resque Time: Are (nearly) all of my PC operations recorded online if I install this program?

I'm not completely certain I understand what you're asking.  The time you spent working in any application is recorded online, but not what you did in that app.  It then makes pretty graphs showing how you're misspending your time.

21
General Software Discussion / Re: Top 3 programs you use
« on: December 18, 2007, 12:12 PM »
According to RescueTime, my three most time-used apps are:

  • MuRD - a fantastic multiple remote desktop manager app.
  • Firefox - obvious
  • FeedDemon - RSS reader

22
Yep.The buton my laptop has, doesn't extend the screen, it clones the screen...

That's strange.  Are you using the video drivers from the notebook manufacturer or ATI's drivers?  All the laptops I've done this on cycle from LCD only, external only, clone, extend with subsequent hotkey presses (maybe not that order).

23
Entech makes a little freeware app called iRotate.  That's what I use.

24
Yeah, Ultramon will let you do it as easily as double-clicking on the systray icon (if you configure it for that action).  Plus you get a lot of other really nice multimonitor functions to boot.

My laptop actually handles this automatically when I plug/unplug the monitor signal cable.

25
N.A.N.Y. Challenge 2007 / Re: Backup Revision Folder
« on: September 10, 2007, 11:39 AM »
Another contender in this space, and the one I bought some time ago, is AJC Soft's Active Backup.  It monitors specified locations for specified file types and versions them automatically at save time.

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