Kasperian Moving Parts

kinda like Batman, but with a wife and 3 kids

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Category: Life in General

Treo 650, VMWare, HotSync Woes

So, after several weeks of beating my head against the wall, I’ve found this simple fix for syncing my WinXP guest VMWare virtual machine inside my SuSE Linux host.  Basically, it looks like because usbfs wasn’t being mounted at boot time, VMWare wasn’t getting notified of my Treo 650 as it was trying to HotSync.  Make this change in /etc/fstab: #usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0 usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs defaults 0 0 and/or run this manually if you have to: sudo mount -t usbfs usbfs /proc/bus/usb Thanks VERY much to andyb for this little tidbit!!! Oh, and in case you’re asking, no, I can’t seem to sync evolution/gnome-pilot successfully/consistently with my Treo 650 (yes, I’ve added the correct lines to devices.xml) and Exchange (couldn’t sync the calendar?!?!?), and Read more…


Fantom o’the Opera

Tickets to the Phantom of the Opera: $380 … Wearable memorabilia for the whole family: $130 … 5 Smiling Kaspers and a cross-eyed dog: $Priceless …


Log4j, Tomcat, and Family Campfires

First, the family campfires bit… We have an AMAZING house that God has blessed us with, and with it a really nice back yard. And we have TONS of trees all throughout our property (note to self: take pictures of house and back yard for our little viewers). Well, as happens in a forest (that’d be where we live, complete with deer, bears, and coyotes), trees fall over (even when we’re not there to hear them fall), and quite a few of the little guys have fallen in our yard. I’d like to burn them, for the following noble reasons: To honor the fallen tree-warriors (okay, well, it sounds good) To serve as a warning to other trees as what Read more…


Now I Remember Why I Don’t Run Sid

It used to be that I used Debian’s unstable tree (Sid–named after the “unstable” child from Toy Story) for my work machine and home machines. The only problem was that occasionally, when I would update to the latest and greatest packages, things would break and then it would take a bit of time and effort to get things back to working order. To some extent, this was actually fun and a good way to learn how things work. In general, I don’t learn how things work until I get over the fear of breaking something–play with it, break it, learn how to fix it, etc. At some point in the last few years, it became less than fun to constantly Read more…


A New Family Car

2000, Family Pictures, originally uploaded by vanRijn. No, it’s not the trike I’m sporting in the picture, but I thought it was blog-worthy all the same. Oh. We broke down and bought a 2005 Chrysler Town & Country. It’s a truck, dangit.


I Win!!

My New Toy, originally uploadd by vanRijn. The funniest thing happened to me on the way to the Store Support Center the other day…. I’d been getting e-mail notifications from someone I didn’t recognize like this: This message was sent to you at the request of SERENA SOFTWARE, INC. to notify you that the package information below has been transmitted to UPS. The package(s) may not have actually been placed with UPS for shipment. To verify when and if the shipment is tendered to UPS and its actual transit status, click on the tracking link below or contact SERENA SOFTWARE, INC. directly. So I figured I’d better check my work mailbox, did, and opened the envelope I found. I read Read more…


The Night of the Terrible 406s

I have not been able to do the “blog this” thing from Flickr for a while now. Irritating. I finally had enough of it tonight, so after a few minutes Googling, I found that some hosts are blacklisting xmlrpc.php and sending back 406 errors intentionally because of security problems with old versions of xmlrpc.php/WP that people haven’t bothered upgrading/fixing/patching. To get around it, all you have to do is copy your xmlrpc.php script to some other name and tell Flickr to use that endpoint instead. Which reminds me, I need to upgrade to the new 2.x WP release, when I get a spare couple of hours (yeah, right)…. [update]: Yikes. Just as I was trying to post this entry, I Read more…


Mike and the Cupcakes

Dude, I cannot tell you how much I miss you. =:( You were the wind beneath my wings… er… um… well, that is to say that you always made my day, made me smile, and in general made it fun to go to work–something that’s sorely lacking in my life just now. =:/


The Sky is Falling

We now are the almost owners of a 2005 Chrysler, Town and Country “Truck” (read: “minivan” for those not worried about what it means to one’s coolness factor to own a minivan). Oh, and what the heck??? Is it finally time to go buy a few guns, install solar panels and windmills, convert the cars to run on raw sewage, go buy some cows and chickens, and plant an acre of vegetables in my new back yard??? And equally as important, will there be any use for mathematicians or computer hackers or IS Architects whatsoever in the new world order? What trade could the mathematically/algorithmically/computationally-inclined possibly transition over to when there is no more electricity, oil, power, or the like? Read more…


Into a New Home

Just wanted to prove to everyone that I’m not dead yet. Long time no update, etc. We of the travelling Wilbury Kasper persuasion are closing on our new home this Friday!! We’ll be having furniture delivered on Friday evening at our new home, our possessions (that have been in storage for the last month+) delivered on Saturday, our new refrigerator delivered on Saturday, and our new mattress delivered on Saturday too. Piece of cake. =:)