del c:\ /f /s

I have been in the process of converting from the dead-end Windows Home Server product to a FreeNAS server for my home NAS.  I was trying to replicate the same sort of set up that WHS had for user directories.  In WHS, there was a share called "Users" and under that share there were various user directories corresponding to each user account.  I thought it would be pretty simple to replicate that same behavior to allow users to simply attach to \\nas-server-name\Users in Windows, and then navigate to their own user folder.  What follows is how I achieved this, as well as a problem I fought with for a while that prevented certain users from connecting via CIFS. First, I started off the process by installing FreeNAS to a USB stick, added a few disks in the server, plugged in the USB stick and booted up.  I performed basic config for the networking, and admin account passwords, and turned on the CIFS service. Next, I created a some user accounts fo...

I love new things just as much as the next person. So I have to admit that I was intrigued when I saw the little banner above pop up above the normal Pandora music player in my browser. I clicked on the link to change to the new Pandora layout and was immediately greated with a splash screen, styled similarly to the Pandora mobile apps. I was immediatly struck by the better use of space that the new Pandora had, and how it seemed somehow more responsive. Everything seemed to be rendering so much better/faster with this new version, and it just seemed to integrate better with the browser. I was able to resize the player, and it made much better use of the page space than the previous version did. After playing with the new interface for a bit, I had a suspicion that this might not even be a Flash app anymore. Sure enough, the task list in Google Chrome showed that the Flash Plugin wasn't running! After discovering this, I had to compare the old player vs. the new player in term...

All of the cabbage that I planted was destroyed by some kind of caterpillar. I didn't notice anything at first except for a few plants that had been gnawed around the edges. Then when I started inspecting the interior of the plants to see if heads were forming, I noticed all kinds of little green caterpillars chewing away at the tiny, forming heads of cabbage. It kills me because they seemed to be doing so well up to that point. I ended up having to pull all the plants up, and compost them. I'm going to try planting some summer crops now, and spray them with an insecticidal soap to hopefully prevent this from happening again. Not to be beaten, I've added another bed, and I'm going to try some squash, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, and maybe another vegetable or two.

I've started a library for a type-safe criteria API for Hibernate called SafeCriteria. I've always been bothered by the fact that the Criteria API always requires one to use text strings for the property names. Strings aren't checked by the compiler, so they can hide errors in your code until runtime, which is way too late. In short, SafeCriteria allows you to query via "showing" the API what properties you want via the getter methods for that property. The great thing is that the getter methods are checked by the compiler so you at least get some help there, and if you need to refactor a property getter the refactoring tools of your IDE will help you catch these references as well. I also have some ideas for handling class aliases better than with remembering strings in your property names, but that is coming after the basics are working properly. Maybe I'm just scratching my own itch here, but someone else might have the same itch. If anything, I'll a...

Today, I had to thin out the cabbage as all the sprouts would never have enough room in the bed to grow. This process was quite difficult for me because I had to kill some perfectly healthy sprouts. It was for the benefit of the remaining cabbages, but it was still hard for me to choose. The bed looks a lot more sparse now. I hope the remaining plants get bigger soon. On the plus side, the small thinnings from the cabbage are tasty enough for even my youngest to eat with some ranch dressing. I think I'll take a salad with them for lunch at work tommorow. Today's conditions: Partly Cloudy, High of 84°, with late night thunderstorms.

I had a bit of a scare this morning with my phone. I have a Dell Streak running Android 2.2 and for some reason this morning when I powered it up, it wouldn't connect to the cellular network. I had grey bars with an X next to them in the status bar, and I couldn't make calls, or get on the internet except for wifi. Going into Settings -> Wireless & networks , I noticed that "Airplane mode" was checked. I figured maybe I set that at some point and forgot, so I tried to uncheck it. The button would stay greyed out for a while, and if I left the settings page and came back, it was still checked. I tried pulling the battery, SIM card, SD card, and then putting the battery back into to restart. Still no cell connection. I pulled the battery out again, put everything back in, but still there was no cell connection. Finally, I searched some forums and found that people have this problem for various reasons. Suggestions ranged from the procedure I tried to a ful...

In an attempt to keep myself focused on my garden this year, I'm going to try and keep a log of what I'm doing and the results I'm seeing. Hopefully this will also help guilt me into making sure that I keep checking up on the garden and taking care of it. Well, we decided to move our raised beds up to a location that gets better sunlight as our vegetables last year just didn't get enough. All in all, it took me about 3 weekends to get the old bed moved up to the hill, leveled, and then build a second bed for planting. We ran out of dirt from cutting into the hill as the hill is a pretty steep one. I ended up putting in some old rubber mulch as a fill under the front bed. Therese and the kids helped me at various points, and I think the results are pretty good. We're using the same method as last year from the Square Foot Gardening book, although I couldn't get the same vermiculite we used last year. I had to get the bigger, pearl-ized kind. I did find som...