Posts on Lea-Tech Blog

Ceiling Fan Science

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When you consider ceiling fans, your mind isn’t typically drawn to the science behind how they work. They are just a fan that hangs from the ceiling that blows air down on you to keep you cool. Well, things aren’t always that simple.

My wife and I are one of those couples who sleep with a ceiling fan running. We do this year-round. We like the air moving and also the small amount of white noise created by the motor and air movement. A few days ago, the ceiling fan in our bedroom started making a sort of squeeky click at a regular rhythm. This does not make a good companion sound for sleeping. So, we went to our local big-box hardware store and bought a new fan.

Post Corruption

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Post Corruption

I was reviewing the admittedly old content on my personal site and I discovered that several of the posts are corrupted. Additional ASCII characters have been added in various places throughout the posts. I started to clean them up, but decided that everything here is so old, there really is no point.

Since my last post was way back in 2016, maybe it is time to revisit this site and start posting content again. I doubt there will be much interest, but maybe my kids and grandkids can use what I post here against me in the future.

Jason Bourne

Sat, 30 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Last night, I took Becky and Dorie to see the new Jason Bourne movie. We’ve always been fans of that series and Dorie wanted to see this over the other new releases that are out. I think it was a good movie.

Emphasis on the word “think.”

Interesting Read

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I found this article over at InfoWorld.

http://www.infoworld.com/t/it-management/10-truths-it-must-learn-accept-934?page=0,0

Windows 7

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Because my current employer has a select licensing agreement with Microsoft, the final version of Windows 7 became available to us a few weeks ago. Out of morbid curiosity, we downloaded and installed it on a couple of systems that we had been running Windows Vista on. It almost pains me to say this, but Windows 7 is a very nice operating system. It is everything that Vista should have been.

ProFTP on Ubuntu Server

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Installing the ProFTP 1.3.1 server on Ubuntu Server 8.10 is a pretty straight forward process. I won’t go into the whole thing here, but a standard apt-get works just fine.

I started running into problems when a user noticed that after uploading a file to the server, the time stamp on the file was six hours ahead. That corresponds with the six hour offset from GMT for Central Standard Time. The confusing thing was that the problem was only visible through an FTP login. If I connected to the server through an SSH session, all of the date information on the files was correctly showing CST time.

SharePoint

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I have had the opportunity to deploy Microsoft’s SharePoint Services and also Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. I have to admit, they really have it going on with these products.

My current employer is not going to proceed with a full blown deployment of SharePoint, which is too bad, but we do have a couple of small implementations that I maintain. During the last couple of days, I’ve been able to work with these small environments again, and it has renewed my disappointment in our lack of future deployment plans.

Christmas/Year End

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I’m glad it’s Christmas.

My only regret for this year’s Christmas season is that it has gone by way too fast. I don’t feel like I’ve had time to enjoy it this year. We have been so busy, going from one thing to the next, that I feel like it has all slipped past and I missed it. I never put off buying a gift for my wife, but this year I’m shopping on Christmas Eve. Yikes!

MS08-067 and VNC

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Well, I’ve finally done some testing and it appears that the MS08-067 patch doesn’t break VNC. I have been testing with an XP SP3 system and the latest version of Tight VNC.

I started with the XP system and no patch. I installed and configured VNC as a service and tested it. I was able to take remote control with no problems, which I would expect.

After installing MS08-067 on the XP system, I rebooted as required. Everything seemed to come up fine and I noticed that the VNC icon was in the system tray. Again, this is as would be expected. I fired up my VNC client and took remote control of the XP system without hesitation. All works well.

I just love Micro$oft...

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Hmmm… well maybe not so much. I’ve been caught up in the latest “emergency” patch deployment.

I’m thankful that we have made so much progress in our patch deployment processes. I believe we have over 800 workstations in our patch management system. Many of our servers are also in that system, but we still have to connect to each one and allow the patches to be installed.

We've almost eliminated Windows in our home office

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

After using my MacBook Pro on a daily basis for several months, I started buying other Mac systems for our home office. (We have a small video business that we run out of our home.) I had originally thought that the transition would be much more painful, but it has turned out to be reasonably easy.

2008 Vacation - We're Back!

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

We hit the ground running when we got home on Sunday.

I immediately started mowing the yard, as it had been two weeks since it was mowed and I think it rained every day we were gone. I had a little trouble with the mower at first. It appeared that the fuel pump was not working, but after I worked on it a bit I found that it had lost it’s prime. After that, it was just a battle to plow through the wet, thick grass. The yard looks horrible. I should have had a local farmer come over and bale it for hay. :)

2008 Vacation

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

We finally got on the road at about 2:00 Wednesday afternoon. (June 18th) I really wanted to be on the road by noon, but packing and trying to get videos for Dance Craze kept us too busy. After a trip to town for a few things, we finally set out.

Our first stop was Mammoth Spring in Arkansas. By the time we got there, we were all in need of a restroom and a leg stretch. The park is very pretty. Stef and I managed to get a few good pictures. We saw some kind of little critter in the water that we first thought was a beaver, but after we noticed that the tail was not right, we decided it was something else. We also saw a water snake of some kind.

Digital Photography

Wed, 14 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I have rejoined the magical world of photography after a few months hiatus. My buddy Mark started using my Nikon D50 a few months ago for sports photography, and I never got it back. It’s just as well. He has been able to use that rig to get some fabulous photos and has even managed to sell a few. His efforts came to a screeching halt when the 55-200 lens he was using went toes up.

Church Ministry on the Web

Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Unless you want to spend the money to hire a professional developer, there just doesn’t seem to be a great solution out there for churches. Now, I understand that there are some good efforts going on. My problem with those is that I need to be able to hand off the daily maintenance of the site to a staff member or a ministry volunteer and the “good efforts” are still not very user friendly.

Active or Passive FTP

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I recently needed clarification on the differences between active and passive FTP. I found a great article that explains it very well.

http://www.slacksite.com/other/ftp.html

I’ll be adding this site to my list of research resources for future use.

Dreamhost saved my bacon

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Kudos to Dreamhost for outsmarting my attempt to delete critical data.