The Quietness of the Library

I am in the process of setting up a computer system in our church library. One of the first things I thought about in this process is “Locking down the computers”. I decided to observe a local county library’s way of doing the same.

The library is just down the street from my home. This is a small library — Only 10 computers linked to their wired network. They have just installed wifi, but I am not going to check it for now. Just want to see how the “protected ” computers are setup.

Observations:
1. All are running windows XP professional.
2. all have sound enabled
3. all have usb ports to allow you to save your work ( assuming you have a memory stick of some sort )
4. Limited programs are loaded.
5. start/run is disabled. no external bat, com or exe files are allowed.

There are some deficiencies noted (so far ):
1. java applications are allowed if accessed through a web page
a. This means that if you create a web page on a memory stick that has java application within it, you can use your browser to access this application. Voila! An application that you can control.

I have tried the following java application types with good success.
1. ssh client
2. ftp client
3. file browser

None of these cause any harm to their system. I am trying to think of other applications that would be useful if my system at home died.

More on this is a future post.

 

My High School English Teacher — how we “hated” her

Over fifty years ago, in my high school years, we had a unique english teacher. No one seemed to like her. When you had papers to do, she would praise you verbally and ripped the paper apart when grading it.

You were never sure of what your grade would be. I had two or three years with this same teacher. Each year, I would shake my head with some degree of exasperation when I found out who my english teacher would be.

“I will be glad when I am out of High School and away from Mrs. …. “. I know that I said that more than once while still in high school.

After high school, I went off to technical school in western North Carolina. It was really surprising to me that I felt that I knew more than our English teacher at that school. Yes, once I was away from high school, I realized how well my high school english teacher had prepared me ( and most of the rest of the class as well ).

I need to look her up and tell her “Thank you”.

 

What a difference a Facility Makes!

( First posted on 2007-04-03)

My mother has been in an assisted living home for sometime now. The first home was not the best for her. Most of the staff was low pay, just out of school. Once they had a little training, they would find another job and be gone.

It wasn’t long before, mom was making regular trips to the hospital for urinary tract infections, strokes, or possibly slight heart attacks.

About 3 years ago, her last trip to the hospital was so bad that I didn’t really think she would make it out of the hospital. The doctor overseeing her care advised that we find a higher level of care faciity and suggested another within the same town.

What a difference that has made!

When she arrived at the new facility, she wasn’t even swallowing her food well on her own. To expect her to chew the food and swallow it was asking too much. Now she chews and swallows her food on her own. She gets around much better and is more conversational than she was during the last months of her stay at the original unit.

The new facility is more like a hospital. Every one acts professionally. The place is very clean and only occasionally do you detect odors that were a regular occurrence at the initial place.

Mother just had her 94th birthday. We celebrated with cake and ice cream. She really enjoyed all of us being there.

Hope there are many more to come.

 

What is it? Computer room? Or something else?

It is time to tell you about my computer room? Or is it a computer room?

There are two workstations, one co-located computer, 4 servers of various descriptions and that’s not all. It is equipped with a workbench to troubleshoot & repair all sorts of electronic equipment, plus an audio-video equipment rack for sound and video work as well. When everything is energized, it can get a little toasty in here.

I do web design, webserving, video production ( usually weddings and other special events ) and occasionally just sit and cruise the internet.

 

Hooray for Backups!

Hooray for backups, no matter how incomplete they are.

Earlier I wrote that I had a hard drive disaster on MARINA sometime ago. I thought all was lost, but slowly I have found pieces of information for the websites that resided on my webserve.

One thing I wanted most was all ( or at least, some ) of the articles that I wrote on my BLOG.

This morning while looking for something else on my hard drives, I found a mysql backup database for the weblog. It doesn’t have all of the posts, but some of them. Looks like I might be missing about 10 of the latest posts, but at least some of my “literary” work has been recovered. Soon, I will add these posts back to this website, properly dated, of course.

 

Gypsy Toast anyone?

I pride myself in being able to easily find items that I search for on the internet, but there is one thing I can’t seem to find. Perhaps one of my readers will be able to help.

During my youth ( approximately  1940 – 1955 ), my mother cooked a dish for breakfast that I really enjoyed. We called it Gypsy Toast. It consisted mainly of can tomatoes in a gravy/sauce type mixture that was poured over toast.

My mother is now in her nineties and doesn’t remember the recipe for this delightful dish. I have searched the internet and found references to gypsy toast, but each time, I find that it is a variation on french toast and no tomatoes in it. I have found some recipes that have what I think were the contents, but none named Gypsy Toast.

One thing I do remember about this recipe was that I am the person that gave it to my mother. I had found the recipe in a Girl Scout manual in the early forties.

If any of the readers to this Blog know of the recipe for Gypsy Toast, I would appreciate hearing from you. You can contact me at:

jonesjc@intrex.net

Thanks.

 

Bounce Back is Back

The Bounce back Blog started in August of 2005. Recently, the server it originated from had a major disaster and the blog disappear. It is now on a difference server and I am still attempting to retrieve my past files.

More to come as I get everything back in order.

 

Cranberry Juice Anyone?

About five years ago I had an attack of Kidney stones. It wasn’t my first and it probably won’t be my last. At the time, a friend on mine suggested drinking cranberry juice each day. “it will help with your kidney problems”, I was told.

Not long after that, my mother was hospitalized with urinary tract infection and while visiting her, I found that the hospital was giving her cranberry juice. Hmm, might be something to this cranberry juice.

I began drinking a half a glass of cranberry juice cocktail each morning. Since then, I have had three kidney stone attacks. None of them were painful. Just aggravating. I captured the stones and compare them to my last painful attack. The painful stones were jagged with spikes. The non painful ones were very smooth.

I continued to drink cranberry juice each morning, but was “disturb” to find that a group of researchers did a test that seemed to indicate that cranberry juice didn’t help with kidney stones.

See http://www.foodnavigator.com/news/news-ng.asp?n=62124-cranberry-juice-kidney-stones-urinary-tract

 

The last paragraph of the article says “The study does not detract from the scientific evidence supporting cranberry juice’s use for urinary tract health, but it does indicate that it is not an advisable course of action for those with a tendency towards kidney stones.”

As usual, I am the exception. 🙂 

 

Good Clean Cartoons

While checking out some scriptures today, I found a humorous site that might be a daily visit for you.

Check out http://www.reverendfun.com
It is a new cartoon each day in a biblical sort of way.

 

A Computer Challenge

Recently, my brother-in-law visited relatives in Washington, DC. When he was about to leave for home, they presented him with a computer that didn’t work. He brought it to me with the instructions to “fix it if it is practical, otherwise, pull any parts out that you may want and throw away the rest”.

When I first looked at it, I noticed that the cdrom and floppy drive were missing. It also had the sound of loose parts inside. When I opened it, I found both the cdrom and floppy drive inside, unsecured. Wires were ripped from the front panel, possibly from the loose drives tugging on them.

I cleaned the outside of the case and blew out the dust from inside using compressed air and began my visual inspection.

I have already decide that this is not a practical fixer up, Repair costs (parts and labor) are already over $200. This is mainly a challenge to me. I want to see how far I can get with this pc.

Here is a list of “obstacles” within this computer.

1. ripped wiring between the front case and the motherboard

2. password protected bios (unknown to me or my brother in law)

3. password protected login on win-xp/home (unknown to me or my brother in law)

4. unknown motherboard ( I looked everywhere — both sides of motherboard, still no manufacturer identity)

5. Loud noises from Hard drive

6. Need to re-install cd rom and floppy drive

7. one defective usb port out of two available

Using some of my software tools, I was able to determine that the processor was 1.6ghz pentium 4 with 256mb of ram. Hard drive is a 17gb hard drive.

I now have it working. So far, I have substituted a new power supply and because of the ripped wires it will need a new case, and the hard drive is making noises like it may go at anytime.

I rejuvenated the hard drive with spinrite, but would not recommend continuing it’s use. I called my brother in law with the news. He has decide to pay for the repairs, so my challenge has become profit ( a little — anyway ). If I had billed my brother as a regular customer instead of giving him the “relative discount”, it would not have been practical to fix.

I have learned techniques that will be useful in other repairs and in troubleshooting. I have made a little money, plus my brother-in-law is happy! The challenge was worth it.