What is the manufacturer and model of your two motherboards?

Sorry I don't have a good answer, only that I've seen the purchase of chassis & motherboard as sort of inseparable. Server motherboards, and rackmount chassis, tend to have as you note so many customizations for things like the ones that have built-on lights-out/IPMI support, different power supplies, different onboard peripherals (if that's not a contradiction) such as one or two GigE... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 1:30 PM on June 5, 2008

Don't get one machine. A low-end desktop PC running solely as a web server can actually perform quite nicely as a web server- and 3-4 of them exceptionally well when it comes to sharing the load and maintaining high availability. As noted, you haven't given us information as to what kind of web serving this will really be doing: is it all static content, is there a lot of dynamic page creation requiring heavy processor utilization, etc? These kinds of things are somewhat important to know... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 8:40 PM on April 8, 2008

Oh, and I should have mentioned that something like LVS mentioned in this post just a few down from yours is an example of load balancing on the cheap. Whichever box has the "load balancer" CD in it is the one that is also set to use the static IP that you have for your hosting purposes (where you direct users, or where your company's firewall NAT points to) the rest are booted using a LAMP CD-distro and DHCP'ed in a range that is load balanced to, and the load... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 8:46 PM on April 8, 2008

Wow, thanks for all the help mrzarquon (and others)!!! The short version sounds like "everything you want to do, you can do", so at least I know I won't be making a pricey mistake or painting myself into a corner; just might take some work.

I'm not really familiar with Time Machine; far and away my biggest concern is with dataloss from a failed hard drive, and not so much reverting old versions of documents (things like mp3 and movie/tv show files... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 2:14 PM on March 17, 2008

Thanks for your help; I've memailed mrzarquon for the drive particulars, but since I can solve those post-purchase, it sounds like I'm gonna buy me a Mac tonight! :)
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 4:51 PM on March 17, 2008

Just an FYI to close out the thread; I did buy a base model Mac pro a week ago, it's been working great. I didn't get the AppleCare plan (since it has a 1-year parts warranty, I'd be paying $250 to insure against the chance of a parts failure in years 2 and 3 that might itself cost less than $250 to replace; for the rest, I figure I can research as well as anyone to get information and tips).

I've since added two 750GB drives, set up Time Machine,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 12:02 PM on March 30, 2008

There's the internet printing option that comes with IIS, but I don't know that it's terribly safe- when it first came out, it was one of those security holes in IIS that IIS 6 was meant to tighten by not enabling by default. That allows people to print via HTTP to a web resource. But you're talking about updating their local printer settings based on their actions on a web page.

The thing is, installing drivers- or running any clientside programs from a webpage- is... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 1:00 PM on March 17, 2008

What you're describing is a level of control and QoS/routing manipulation that would be damn near impossible using existing network configuration elements of XP- or most any OS. As Netzapper noted, you can set up routing rules and prioritization so long as you can tell individual applications to use an IP as a gateway (and thus use routing rules to send that traffic to the interface best matching it, etc), but if the applications are just "I'll use whatever the OS... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 5:42 PM on March 5, 2008

I will give you the same advice I'd give myself, as one who is 10 years older and very much like you- including the traits of being boastful, narcissistic and self-absorbed. I don't take my own advice, so I imagine you'll take this with a fairly hefty grain of salt.

Up above, someone said you can think yourself out of depression, and that's both true and false. It's true in that, well, I suppose one can contemplate oneself out of depression. But... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 12:35 PM on February 20, 2008

A suggestion: a few years ago, when I'd write little scripts to do things like regularly parse all the servers in a farm, I quickly found the xmlhttp object to be unreliable in general: sometimes it'd report the same http responsetext from the last request in the latest one, etc.

The WinHTTP 5.0 and 5.1 COM object is far better, so if that works on Windows 98 you should look into that. It's mostly the same use/syntax of the XMLhttp, but my own... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 5:16 PM on February 2, 2008

Or girl. Don't be that girl.
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 6:54 PM on December 31, 2007

I love my 360 because it's a turn-on-and-play system. The diversity of games, the online element- arcade, the downloadable content, the friends-experience- are all awesome. I can't believe I'm saying this, but that silly Elijah Wood hosted pre-launch MTV special was right: the 360 with live really is a total experience. Sorry to say to any PS or Wii fanboys, but the 360 is simply the best console out there, by a tremendous margin.

1) Can't speak to thrills/annoyances,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 6:50 PM on December 31, 2007

The other reason to go with deadmessenger's suggestion of simply replacing him now is that even if you simply replace him because you need that 20th employee while he's gone, and he comes back and wants his job... at worst it's 21 instead of 20 employees, where that 21st employee is not needed but you are legally obliged to take him back. That's not nothing, but it means all the restaurant owners are essentially risking is having to support a 5% increase in payroll costs for the time before... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 6:27 PM on December 31, 2007

Ooh! Ooh! You can favorite this, it's the right answer. :)

What you want is a simple stub in your script that will be called when it starts, which detects how the script was started, and re-starts it explicitly using cscript.exe if needed. It makes use of the wscript.fullname property (which is the path to the running host executable, either c:\windows\system32\cscript.exe or wscript.exe). If your script is running as wscript.exe, it will simply... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 12:17 AM on December 27, 2007

One ding against the Pink Door- doesn't it have a burlesque show on Saturday nights? Might not be the best thing for a 7-year-old... Wild Ginger is fantastic, and their satay menu or the amazing squash and yam soup are really affordable yet filling, but it may be for more of a discerning palate than a typical 7-year-old has.

Not far from your hotel is Icon Grill, which I think would be kid-friendly, food wise: they serve fairly tasty "home cooking comfort... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 11:23 AM on December 21, 2007

Thirding the Pure Beech modal from B,B&B, which I also recommended here. No one who has 'em doesn't seem to love them, as you can see from this and other threads. I'm on my second sheet set of this kind (got a new color when I got a better duvet cover), and they feel like I'm being hugged by a teddy bear all night long.

One caveat; they are thin, more like a softer tee-shirt type fabric, and not exactly flannel like, so they can "get... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 11:06 AM on December 21, 2007

Seconding nax & nadawi- I've always found high-thread count sheets, and silks, to be very uncomfortably rough. Silk for example always feels scratch to my fingers, like a vinyl record. Silk against my skin feels like nails on a chalkboard. Some people like that "stiff, hotel room" feel of high-thread count sheets, but not I and I'm guessing not you.

The jersey modal fabric found in these sheets (I've got two sets, I love these so much!!!... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 6:55 PM on December 4, 2007

I'm not clear here- you had an original XBox on it, and were able to use a PS2 controller on it for GH1/2 using a USB adapter? Now, you have a 360, and want to use a similar controller for Rockband... am I understanding correctly?

Not sure if that will work, but we know this much:
1) GH2 and GH3 controllers are compatible with Rockband, but not vice versa (the Rockband stratocaster, which I like, isn't compatible with GH2/3). So if you already were able to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 1:47 PM on November 28, 2007 marked best answer

Seconding jocelmeow's answer; that is the very case for which pivot tables were meant. You can make drop-down filterings and sortings of your datasets, and use that as your graphed/displayed data.
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 2:16 PM on October 11, 2007

The personal chef is actually a fantastic idea. My mom is a dietician, she runs a distance learning program for dietetic internships (dieteticintern.com). A lot of the people getting into the program are doing so because- she says- they see it as a way to make a difference in people's lives, and also as a good career path as our country continues to struggle with weight and nutrition. It's precisely because our country is getting so heavy that mr. remy's "safe,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 2:14 PM on October 11, 2007

It's not clear if the problem you have is "building a portal" or "getting RSS content". I'm reading it as a question of "I have a diverse amount of content, and want an easy way to arrange a portal to display that for people."

So... here's another option you might really like- Page Flakes. You'll recognize the format, it's the same one originated in myMSN, and then iGoogle. A very slick drag-and-droppable AJAX-y website that lets you... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 11:17 AM on September 29, 2007

Seconding scody (I don't see where you defined your location as Nebraska, though). If the "checklist" wasn't part of your original lease, then it's completely meaningless.

In WA state, and I suspect most others, the rule is that deposits must be returned in full, period, provided the condition of the apartment is no more than "normal wear and tear" (certainly, basic clean up like counters needing a wipe down count as... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 11:36 AM on September 12, 2007 marked best answer

Well, no one's responded, so yeah: you'll need an accountant. This seems fairly open-and-shut, but citing the relevant law/providing the correct documents could be the difference between winning your hearing and losing; certainly, relying on common sense to prevail is not a winning strategy. Ultimately, unless you've left out some critical detail, there's no good reason you should be "double-dipped". You've likely just fallen into some quirky vortex of tax law where some 1099 form... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 8:44 PM on September 5, 2007 marked best answer

From roomwithaview's CNET link, I just bought this model (Samsung LN-T4665F, the 46" widescreen 1080p LCD flat panel) at BestBuy this past Saturday, and it's been... fantastic! So I'm fourthing Samsung, although not necessarily the same model. I paid $2299 including tax for mine.

In the store last weekend with a friend, I spent a good hour comparing the various models side-by-side, and this was to me the best one I found- anything with higher... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 12:43 AM on August 30, 2007

jaded, that's not entirely true; bad drivers, especially bad video or sound drivers, can cause the same behavior.

This article is an amazing intro to basic "My computer reboots when I play game 'x'" problems. Below is the easy-to-follow condensed version, although the article has more info and commands you can run if you're feeling adventurous.

Quickie version
Note: if you have mini-dump files from recent attempts... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 2:37 PM on August 22, 2007

Oh- forgot to mention the above obviously only works if you are in fact having a windows system crash (which the default settings don't show a blue screen of death any more, I believe- you'll want to look for the minidumps, or the System log events that suggest it recovered from a stop error).

And in any event, the best it'll tell you is that a specific driver is, in fact, likely at fault, and your only recourse is a driver update with the vendor.
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 2:41 PM on August 22, 2007

Echoing pocams: you'll want to learn some basic vbscript if you're principally dealing with Windows machines It's super-easy, nearly "plain-language" scripting, and there's a ton of pre-made common task scripts available. Check out the MSDN Script Repository for lots more info (in this case, in the section for "Storage").

If the tricky part is the date, then something like this would work. If you change the strFolder at the top... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 11:10 AM on August 21, 2007 marked best answer

What Brak said- there's lots of samples out there, I like to have a re-usable function as below that I can just quickly copy/paste in my scripts, like so, so that I simply call sendmail( from, to, subject, body) to send an email from my script.


' ---------------------------------------------------------
Sub SendMail( strMailFrom, strMailTo, strMailSubject, strMailBody )
On Error Resume Next

Set oMail =... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 5:04 PM on August 21, 2007 marked best answer

Mostly your problem comes down to learning to accept that the good is not the enemy of the perfect.

Three of the principles I bring to bear in any system design:
Simplicity is a sign you're doing something rightBuild a village, not a mansionDefine things once, and only once
What this means:

Simplicity is a sign you're doing something right
If you can express it on the back of a napkin, if a simple diagram on a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 5:11 PM on August 13, 2007

I'm a frequenter of Bleu Bistro on Broadway, the predecessor of Chez Gaudy; doesn't really have the selection of beer you might be looking for (Stumbling Monk would be your choice there, I think the Cafe Metropolitain has a decent selection as well), but it can be quite comfortable in an "old shoe" kind of way, and interesting, and Thursday nights especially turn into a bit of a fun night (I'd like to think I have something to do with that). If you hang at the bar,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 5:14 PM on August 8, 2007

I don't think you'll find anything server-side that won't require changes to Exchange; any Exchange rules you'd set up that would run on the server would *not* do what you're looking for without Exchange being enhanced by some 3rd party plug-in. So almost anything else will have to be a "run from your desktop and send to your cell phone" situation.

If you open up Outlook, go to Help, and search on "Reminder", you'll get hits on commercial plug-ins... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 6:35 PM on August 6, 2007

Are you on an Exchange server at work, or some other type of mail server (the webmail leads me to think it's Exchange)?Is it contact specific, or email specific? I.e., when you reply to a certain contact, it *always* strips the original text, or is it just certain email types that tend to come predominately from those contacts?Does it make a difference if the mail was sent in HTML vs. plain text vs. rich text format?Does it matter if you attempt to forward the email to yourself?Is there any... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 10:26 AM on August 1, 2007

Wow- no idea. Well, at least you found your own solution, but I've not heard of that happening before. On the plus side... it's a waste to use Word as the email editor, since plaintext or rtf are fine by themselves, and having word running in the background just for email editing means extra memory and slower performance. :)
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 10:44 AM on August 2, 2007

If it's just one user, then the "create a low-level windows user, disallow anonymous authentication, and make sure that account has access" is okay.

If you want more than one user, or don't have total control over that web server, you might just try rolling your own: if it's an option, asp.net via the web.config lets you specify a set of non-windows username and password combinations and grant them access to sections of your site, so that you don't have to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 8:58 PM on July 5, 2007

Um, so I'm confused. I guess I have one of two answers:
1) If all you want is a map on your own site showing "here's where we are!" then why not just do a print-screen of that map, slap it into mspaint and save it as a .jpg and host that? It does not need to be an embeddable interactive map, does it?

2) If you want interactivity- showing a mapping app on your site that can provide directions to your store from wherever the customer says they're... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 11:12 PM on June 29, 2007

kaozity: Well, I have data that is changing every minute. So i would want the program to go in every couple of minutes or so and automatically update the graph that it is producing.
Oooh- THE program you need is logparser, which is a MS-created free utility that's since been included in the resource kit.

Why you need logparser:It's native to windows/MS-producedIt comes as a self-contained command line exe suitable for batch or scheduled... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 11:33 AM on June 25, 2007

So VLC media player plays flv's natively, and also converts them. It seems that it'd be easiest to simply convert the flash videos to a format natively supported by whatever VJ software you currently use.

After that, it's a matter of getting VJ software that supports audio, which I'm surprised if you're having trouble finding such a thing. Are you really just after the ability to have a large playlist of videos and be able to rapidly select/loop segments of the video... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 6:04 PM on June 24, 2007

I answered something about the scale of (generic search engines) here. That thread has some very interesting information in general, as well.

The short answer to give you an idea: Google is estimated to have hundreds of thousands of machines, in dozens of datacenters (all the major search engine players typically do).

The number of clusters is large- several clusters in each datacenter I'd presume, each cluster representing... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 4:52 PM on June 20, 2007 marked best answer

I'd say very common at any professional place- in previous Ops jobs, the cell was either provided or reimbursed; the home high-speed line was also covered (especially since it's usually less than $50) in full. And the argument is, if even one time a month you get paged to handle a "major site issue" in the off-hours, the cost of you not fixing it in a timely fashion is far far more than paying for the monthly fees to get that immediacy. I've... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 2:17 PM on June 19, 2007

So... without more info your best bet is to simply ask them next time you are in the store. Is there a reason you can't go back? Pivotal is right: if a google search on those lyrics doesn't help, what with those being pretty generic phrases, you won't likely get an answer from that description. Heck, even if you found the lyrics, they likely are from another song that was sampled and used in the one you heard.

My guess is like most places, the staff is either force... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 11:56 PM on May 21, 2007

You could just save it as an .xls file to begin with, then open in excel, highlight the first column, and choose Data -> Text to Columns, and choose to use Delimiter of Comma. Once it's split, just choose to save it again and you're done.

If you want programmatic control, just do a search on vbscript excel.application and you'll find a ton of sample scripts using the Excel object; you could rather easily automate a "for every line in the csv file, split it by... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 2:16 PM on May 14, 2007 marked best answer

Isn't one thing being forgotten in the straightforward maths- the idea of redundant configurations? If we're able to pivot the individual rooms in any direction, and move the rooms around in any relation to each other, isn't it the case that for every possible configuration of rooms, there are numerous permutations of the super-cube that exactly mimic it, but is just oriented differently- i.e. where the individual rooms are oriented and adjacent in exactly the same way in relation to each other,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 9:07 AM on April 25, 2007

Thats what anaelith said above.

Whoops- guess I missed that post. But it *does* change the order of magnitude, and since this is a purely hypothetical situation, we may as well be precise. :)
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 10:12 AM on April 26, 2007

Well, disregarding why explorer.exe is not shutting down gracefully, you can change the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\AutoEndTasks key to a value of 1 to force a shutdown of apps.

More details here:
http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/199/
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 7:26 PM on April 25, 2007 marked best answer

Actually, I believe the sources say that the ingredients are not illegal at all, as the DEA has tried but failed to get the non-active plants explicitly classified as Schedule 1; you can buy and sell them quite readily from several sources in the US. Buying online, you won't likely be arrested (broken windows theory and all) even if there were zealous arrests.

The DMT-containing leaf is by itself not psychoactive orally (unlike mushrooms,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 12:40 PM on April 16, 2007

I'd say it's clearly Foo Fighters, and if not now then soon- they're still an extant band, recording and touring.

We can state confidently that Grohl has made far less than Cobain/Cobain's estate did for the Nirvana albums. Nirvana has sold 60 million albums worldwide, acc. to Wikipedia. Tellingly, however, is this snippet:In April 2006, Love announced that she had arranged to sell twenty-five percent of her stake in the Nirvana song catalog in a deal... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 12:34 PM on April 8, 2007

phaedon, that's probably gross for the merch sales, but the point stands: tour revenues are HUGE compared to album revenues, and the Foo Fighters have been touring far longer than Nirvana did. Even for the U2s, Princes, and Madonnas and the like, who get probably the highest per-album royalty in the ~$2 range I believe, still make far more on their tours. Hell, I think on his last tour Prince simply gave his album away with ticket sales, because he was making far more by having seats filled... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 4:40 PM on April 8, 2007

Yeah, what effigy2000 said- you're all but an athiest, by definition. Your higher being is not anthropomorphic, so it's pointless- if you don't believe in a higher being that is anthropomorphic, you don't believe in a higher being at all. Unless, by higher being you mean "the wind" or "electroweak forces". That's what you meant, yes? For all practical purposes, you are an athiest, regardless of having these fuzzy "higher purpose" concepts, which is just like a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 11:41 PM on April 7, 2007

Although, I do want to do this on the cheap so I don't feel like subscribing to Live.

Isn't XBox Live still free for the silver membership- it's only the gold membership that you have to pay for? You should easily be able to download demos, trailers, free content, etc, and have your friends circle etc. Xbox live to me is the near-killer-app of Xbox that no other console can currently compete with.
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 10:25 AM on April 5, 2007

I'm betting from the nature of the question that he is as much "network admin" as anyone else.

Also- let's just make sure you have network connectivity of some kind; you won't be able to join the domain if, for example, you aren't configured on the network.

Try going to a command prompt on the Vista box and doing a "ping computername" where computername is one of the win2k machines. If you can't even do that, then you aren't... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hincandenza at 2:40 PM on April 4, 2007