I am looking for someone to set up a dual boot Linux/Windows system on a new laptop that will be arriving after Thanksgiving. In the past, I've tinkered around with getting Linux running on laptops and this time I don't have time to mess with it. I don't want to have to do the driver research, troubleshooting, etc. So, I'm looking to pay someone to set up the configuration described below. There is an entry for this laptop on the Linux on Laptops page which indicates that this task shouldn't be too difficult. http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~mmastran/fedora-core-3/index.html

Incidentally, I do NOT want "help doing it myself" or pointers to tutorials. I have other, more important tasks to do and am offering cash for your services. Please respond privately with your price quote and availability.

I'll need someone who's available to take care of it within a couple of days of the laptop's arrival from Dell. Estimated Ship Date: on or before 12/01/2004. The laptop in question is a Dell Inspiron 700m. It will ship with the following additions to the base model:

* 60 GB hard drive
* Integrated Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 Internal Wireless card
* Total of 512 MB RAM
* 24X COMBO - DVD/CD-RW

Requirements:

Fedora Linux on 20GB

Must include functioning installations of:

* Graphics card at full native LCD resolution and color. No 8 bit 640×480.
* 10/100 Ethernet networking functioning
* Integrated Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 Internal Wireless card wireless networking
* Sound for MP3, CD and DVD
* DVD video using VideoLAN
* CD writing with the built-in drive
* Both Gnome and KDE
* OpenOffice
* Firefox and Thunderbird
* Wine
* Development tools installed
* Printing to a Dell 1600n printer on the network

Windows XP Home on the rest of the drive - Laptop ships with license, I have OEM media if you need it.

I'm still trying to figure out which is more offensive. That Britney Spears HAS a greatest hits album or that Amazon actually thought something in my buying history would indicate I'd be interested in knowing it existed. It's calling into question everything I've bought through that site. This is a very sad day on multiple levels.

Amazon.com: Music: Greatest Hits: My Prerogative (Limited Edition with Bonus CD) [LIMITED EDITION]

I just got an email "receipt" from a company we use for email autoresponders. This is a company that spends a great deal of time talking about the impact of following up with customers, the power of email newsletters, etc.

Yet, this message came across as entirely arrogant. Not because it was about anything particularly controversial. After all, we use the service and the monthly bill is entirely routine. However, the tone of the message is just like fingernails on a chalkboard.

See, rather than sending an actual receipt with a note indicating that the credit card on file has been billed, they had this excited tone and informed us that our credit card had been sucessfully processed and informed us that there were no problems taking our money.

Basically, it revealed their glee at being able to take our money. All in all, the wrong tone to take with a receipt. Imagine if the wait staff at your favorite restaurant came back to the table with your reciept grinning ear to ear, loudly proclaiming her excitement that your credit card went through and wasn't declined. Pretty tacky.

In short, the tone of the message can be just as important as the message itself.

After deciding that, given the number of hours I spend hooked up to my Neuros, I needed some decent headphones, I bought some. In the past, I've had some $20 headphones before and lots of $15 sets, but wanted to go a little higher. While the ones I went with aren't what most audiophiles consider great, but it's a matter of small steps. I bought Beyerdynamic DT 231's and couldn't be happier with the purchase. These things sound SOOOO much better than I could have hoped. Definitely more of an increase in quality than the difference in price over my $20 pairs and I don't think I'll be able to put those crappy "free" ones that come with audio devices in my ears again.

Keep in mind that I'm the LAST person who will spout off about "oxygen free cables", etc. making all the difference. For the most part, I think that audiophiles tend to hear what they want to hear. While I'm sure there is some placebo effect involved, the simple reality is that these things sound great.

I took a pass through most of my collection, trying to put them through their paces. From Bad Religion, The Beatles, Parliment Funkadelic, Thelonious Monk, The Who, Santana, The Sopranos theme song and the Kill Bill Vol. 1 sound track it all sounded great.

There was a new release of PriadoBlender a few days back. It's now free from MMCache and the GPL. Output EXE's now only need comply with the PHP license. It also now has some nice code for pulling in includes and a new GTK-based GUI. I still like the PHUI way of building screens (as it's still HTML forms) and may build a PriadoBlended version of PHUI such that the processors are actually EXEs instead of PHP files. It would still give you the "compiled" protection of the EXE, but the flexibility of the PHUI GUI. However, I may not as just running the PHP through IonCube's encoder accomplishes the same end result: a PHUI app that can't be easily modified.

PriadoBlender.com- Compiling Your PHP Scripts Into Executables