Home Fileserver

I installed a file server at home this past week. There was a spare PC lying around. I think its either an old Celeron or an AMD Sempron on an ECS motherboard. It used to be the POS at our store. But after Ondoy, we replaced several of our equipment.

Anyway, I installed Turnkey Linux's File Server Appliance on it. I love the stuffs from Turnkey Linux. This is the third type of pre-configured appliance I've downloaded from them. There's the Wordpress Virtual Machine appliance that I'm using for Dragonpay. I'm also running three (3) barebone core Linux virtual machines. Now, its the File Server appliance.

The File Server image is available in both ISO and VM format. Since I wanted to test first how it behaves, I initially played around with the VM version by running it under the free VMWare Player. It worked without any configuration necessary. My Windows XP could immediately see the SAMBA share from the VM.

For the home file server, I burnt the ISO image onto a CD-ROM disc. It took me some time to get the old PC to boot from it mainly because my CD-ROM drives are all unusable already. I had to throw away three old CD-ROM drives before finding an old Asus one that still worked. Installation from there was a breeze. The installer CD prompts you for basic things and reformats/repartitions your drive. Enter an IP address and you're off. A quick check from our home Windows XP shows the share is already available.

What's Going On?

There's a school along Annapolis Greenhills called Fountain International School. Its right across Atlanta Center (which is more popularly known as the building where Nida Blanca was killed). I've passed this school a few times in the past couple of weeks and there is a banner outside that has been bothering me.

The huge sign across their wall says: "ENROLLMENT IS ON GOING". Is it just me or does it look grammatically incorrect? As far as I know, "ongoing" is one word and not two.

Normally, I would not make a big fuss out of a wrong grammar in a signage as that is very common in the Philippines. But this is a school for crying out old! This is a place where children are supposed to learn good English. If the school administrators and principals who enter that school every day do not even find their own signage strange, there is something very wrong with the English standard of that school. Parents beware!

The Birds and The Bees

I'm babysitting the kids this weekend as Cols is in GenSan. Over dinner the other night, Caitlin started asking me about the birds and the bees -- you know, where do babies come from? She's only 7 years old. Isn't she a bit too young to be asking this? Anyway, I quickly parried the question by explaining to her that it is still too difficult for her to understand the concept and that her biology teacher in high school will be able to explain it better. She did not insist after that. Phew!

We went to watch Jack Black's Gulliver's Travel at Greenhills Theater this afternoon. I used the Citibank credit card movie promo. For every single credit card receipt of at least P1,500, you get P100 off from the movie ticket. One of my receipts was more than P5k (it was for a car battery). That one entitled me to a completely free movie pass. Greenhills Theater now charges P180 for an ordinary movie (ie. not 3D). So I still had to pay P80 per person.

The movie is so-so. It was interesting how they used different camera perspective to make Jack Black look larger than the other characters. But you can still tell that they are just super-imposing the different shots on top of each other. I guess if you do not have a budget like that of James Cameron, you just have to make do with what you have.

Hello World from Up In The Air

I'm currently flying on board Delta Airlines from New York City to Salt Lake City. The plane is offering free Wi-Fi service until Jan 3 (tomorrow). So even though I'm really sleepy for having to wake up at 4am today, I just had to try the experience.

The speed is pretty fantastic and rivals wireline DSL service. Each session lasts for 45 minutes only. But you can just close your browser and re-login. Lots of people are using their laptops and iPads on board. When it goes commercial, the airline will charge about USD12 for the service (not sure if that is only still for 45 mins). Would be great to have this service in PAL or CEB in the future. Yeah, maybe 10 years from now.