Monthly Archives: April 2006

Digital design by committee

Posted on April 26, 2006 by Eric

I was at my grandparents’ house, and they had a bunch of guests over for dinner.  They were discussing an electronic design project I was working on, and became convinced that I wasn’t dealing with a particular signal correctly under … Continue reading →

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House-sitting; plumbing; flu; robbery; postman; tornado; zoo

Posted on April 21, 2006 by Eric

I visited a friend and her family living near Washington DC.  I ended up house-sitting for them while they went on vacation. I got to know some of the neighborhood kids.  One of them gave me a tour of the … Continue reading →

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Spam: Free 4X Life Printer

Posted on April 19, 2006 by Eric

So if I buy the “Free 4X Life Printer” for which I’ve been getting spam lately, and print out my life at 4X, will it look any better than my life does at actual size?

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Visiting friends at another company; dinner with a former coworker; personality worms

Posted on April 18, 2006 by Eric

I was in Colorado, so I decided to go visit Phil, an engineer at a Big Company in Broomfield (northwest of Denver, on the way to Boulder). At reception I asked to see him, and after a few minutes he … Continue reading →

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California AB 2097 – transparency in voting machines

Posted on April 17, 2006 by Eric

Sorry for the short notice, but I just found out myself that there is an Assembly Elections Committee hearing tomorrow (April 18) for AB 2097, which would require that the specifications and technical details (including source code) for voting machines … Continue reading →

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Disastrous bank visit

Posted on April 17, 2006 by Eric

On our lunch hour, a coworker and I stopped by the bank.  I just used an ATM, and then waited in the car while my coworker was inside.  Unbeknownst to me, he robbed them.  When he came back and got … Continue reading →

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HDCP Could Have Been Better

Posted on April 17, 2006 by Eric

Professor Ed Felten writes about how HDCP Could Have Been Better, primarily by using well-known but more secure cryptography rather than a homebrew algorithm. He points out that the reason the flawed HDCP algorithm is being used may be due … Continue reading →

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Cleaning the apartment; power out; calculus

Posted on April 8, 2006 by Eric

My apartment had gotten messy while my roommate was out of town, so I needed to clean it up before he returned.  But when I got home, the power was out.  I’d remembered to pay the phone bill, but I’d … Continue reading →

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Added more memory to server, but it doesn’t all show up

Posted on April 6, 2006 by Eric

I upgraded the dual Opteron server (Tyan S2892 motherboard) from 2GB of RAM to 4GB, but the BIOS only finds 3GB of it. I’d put the memory on the second CPU. At first I thought perhaps one of the DIMMs … Continue reading →

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Monitor power-save aggravation

Posted on April 6, 2006 by Eric

I have a server machine in a colo facility. The facility provides carts with monitors, keyboards, and mice. The monitors are CRTs. Last night I changed the hardware configuration of a machine, and since I was having problems I needed … Continue reading →

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