Ask post: Bread for all seasons.

You can build a proofing box, AKA a cooler with a (incandescent) light bulb in it. Good both for maintaining your culture and proofing your dough. You'll want a low wattage bulb and you may need to allow for some adjustable venting to keep the temperature ideal.
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 9:46 AM on August 25, 2008 marked best answer

Ask post: holesome bread (literally)

Is there always one big hole right in the center? An ingredient with more moisture than the other ingredients (like fruit) that is distributed unevenly will make holes like that because of the expanding water vapor. This is why my fruit croissants always turn out hollow (but delicious). I guess you don't have fruit, but is there a log of sloppy wet graham in the middle? It might also explain the wet bottom as unevaporated moisture trickles down due to gravity.

200 deg C... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 7:43 AM on August 25, 2008

Ask post: High-acidity Tomato Variety Wanted

I'm down towards NYC and we've only started ripening in earnest a couple weeks ago. I'd say you're probably right on schedule for upstate. Tomatoes are acid loving plants in general, and that is down to the soil composition. I imagine a high acid variety likes seriously acidic soil. If your tomatoes are bland, you might be harvesting too early. Are they deep red? Or do they still have orange in them? If any are still partially orange or even green when you harvest you can let them continue to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 11:41 AM on August 21, 2008

Note to self: take tomatoes out of window sill.
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 11:43 AM on August 21, 2008

Ask post: 500 MHZ PIII + FreeNAS + OpenVPN + m0n0wall = love?

As GoodBrain says, you'll want another server for your firewall with 2 NICs. For a firewall, ideally you run as little extraneous software on it as possible, but in practice a lot of people run remote access, DNS, DHCP on it as well due to limited budget for hardware.

I've heard of Zeroshell but I've found Untangle to be dead easy to install and configure.
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 11:27 AM on August 21, 2008

Ask post: Cheapest/Best solution for remote file access?

Uh oh, my previous comment got munged because of unjudicious use of greater-than/less-than characters. Here it is demunged:

I've had a lot of trouble with this myself. I'm trying to make much bigger groups of files, from small < 1MB Word Docs to massive zipped DVDs available for remote download to XP, Vista and OS X clients. None of the users of these clients is very tech savvy.

I've been trying to make a pure WebDAV solution work, with... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 10:14 AM on August 19, 2008

Ask post: How do I fix my gmail server error?

Can you find the IP address of mail.google.com as reported by your DNS servers using this technique? If so, please post. As some posters have already stated, this could be dodgy.
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 9:10 AM on August 14, 2008

Fogster: Yeah, nslookup reports several IP addresses for GMail. Every time I query a different set is provided. So far all of those IP addresses have show up as being owned by Google at ARIN. So any IP address where this is not the case would be telling. IANANA (Network Administrator) but seeing a server running "Apache/2.2.2 (Fedora)" and claiming to be mail.google.com suggests to me that somebody successfully poisoned a DNS cache but failed to properly configure their host.
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 10:21 AM on August 14, 2008

Though I do find it odd that a reboot would fix anything if that were the case. If it's a 'bad' DNS server giving rogue IPs, a reboot should give you the same 'bad' DNS server which would give you the same rogue IP, no?

Yes fogster, I agree. But I'm having trouble thinking of any scenario where a 404 error delivered by a server would be fixed by rebooting the client. A lot if stuff happens when you reboot a client though. Maybe... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 1:53 PM on August 14, 2008

A proxy server would be something your ISP puts between you and the web-at-large to mediate your requests for various sites. This allows them to cache (parts of) frequently requested sites (like Google or GMail) and thus reduce the overall net traffic they have to send across their network. Theoretically this can also increase your browsing speeds since files are stored much closer to you on the network than your target website's actual servers. This assumes that the proxy itself has plenty of... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 3:47 PM on August 14, 2008

Ask post: Should I buy a loft in Bridgeport, CT?

Travel times between Bridgeport and Grand Central Terminal are as low as 74 minutes. This is about 20 minutes longer than the express train between Huntington and Penn but one might make that up to some degree by proximity to the train station. Luckily I'm also somewhat of a semi-remote worker so would only have to do the commute 3 days per week on average. Plus if sufficiently motivated I find I can accomplish some work on the train. It's not ideal, but it's doable.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 6:23 AM on January 21, 2008

Ask post: Scary waffles

Generally it takes some effort to wake up a starter after it's been dormant in the fridge for more than a few weeks. I've been guilty of neglecting my starter in the past, and I've seen the "hooch" settle on top, and even turn dark and cloudy. I think the environment is still so inhospitable to any beasties aside from your beneficial yeast and bacteria that I've never seen it start to grow anything scary, even after 3 or 4 months of neglect. It will take some time to restore the proper... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 5:30 AM on January 21, 2008

Ask post: It's me against the alpha males!

You need to make it worth their while to use the tool.

Negative reinforcement
Let it be known that failure to keep up to date will get them a nagging visit from you. Track logins to the tool and send automated emails if they're not in there at least once every 24 hours. You'll need to follow up on your threatened visits for a while but eventually they'll realize it's easier to fill the stuff out on time and avoid the nagging.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by rocketpup at 6:44 AM on December 4, 2007