^{Photo by MarkyBon}

About last week my Windows Server [2003] (I had 2008 on there, then went back to 2003) server wouldn't boot. Since it's not accessed externally, I run TVersity to transcode by movies of which I watch on my 360.  

So, it wouldn't boot up which was great. Kept going into an endless loop, after POST it would keep rebooting. Dead RAM? You'd think it would beep if it was. But nope. Swapped the power supply and still nothing. Loose connection to the case fan? Still, nothing. Only other object that was still plugged in was the hard drive. Unplugged it. Booted normally (though it couldn't since it was the only one). Awesome. Ended up re-installing Server 2003 last night, turned out fine. 

Still puzzles me that it wouldn't boot at all. BIOS detected it fine, but once it tried to boot from the hard drive an endless loop occurred. Working well now, which is a surprise.

Back in school, so that's just great. Thought I'd write a post, since I haven't for a couple weeks now. Was planning on working on WorkSimple the other day, but didn't. Set up a CS:S server, running pretty good too @ 1.8ghz with 512MB (Debian with XFS of course). 

I found myself having a TI-83+, but no sync cable. So, I tried to use the same type of cable that was used for a PDA but no luck. There's some pretty cool stuff you can do with the TI's. Just and update, I'll write another post in the coming days with some stuff that I've been doing.

 Seeing as blackra1n is only a tethered jailbreak, installing your own [custom] firmware is the way to go. But, (at least what happened to me) is that I constantly got 1604 errors while installing firmware of which I made using PwnageTool. As a short howto, here's what I did:

1. Get blackra1n and run it. It'll put your iPhone in recovery mode. iTunes should be closed.
2. Download or create custom firmware. If you are using PwnageTool, make sure to check off Activate so it is not activated. Just before it's done creating the firmware, click Yes to if your iPhone has been pwned before.
3. Start up iTunes, and restore using the firmware you just made. For Windows users hold shift and click on Restore. For Mac users hold option. Make sure your iPhone is in recovery mode not DFU mode. That's the part that I forgot.
4. iTunes should do it's thing and you'll be good to go.
5. After I put the firmware on, I had no service whatsoever so I ran blackra1n again and I had service. If you have the 5.11.07 baseband, be sure to install sn0w in blackra1n. You might need to fiddle around with things.

I finally put together a load balancing setup together this weekend, and I'm surprised it was this easy.

What you'll need is three servers, two web servers and one server for the load balancer. It's not recommended that you only use one load balancer since it's a single point of failure (SPOF) but I only had one extra server on hand. For this tutorial, I used Debian Lenny.

First thing's first, download and install pound on your load balancer. 

I recently swapped out my router (a PIII) running Smoothwall with pfSense. I'll say that I'm glad I switched. Anyway, what I found is that Smoothwall wouldn't let me add another LAN interface, making it a real router.

So, once you get pfSense installed, go to Interfaces->(assign) 

^{Photo by ToniVC}

Finally got around to installing the 3.1.2 firmware on my iPod.

1. Get the 3.1.2 (or 3.0) firmware. 
2. Grab PwnageTool from TPB (you'll need a Mac for this :) )

Everything else is downhill from there. Open up PwnageTool, pick your model, find your firmware and that's about it (unless you want to change boot logo, etc.)

Then restore your iPod with the new [custom] firmware with iTunes. In iTunes, go to your iPod on the left hand side, hold shift and press restore. Find your firmware and that's it.

^{Photo by psilver}
I'll skip the whole 'I haven't posted for two weeks' intro. 

It's only October and it already snowed, a couple of inches and it's still here. Mornings are sure colder.

I finally put together my new fileserver, and up  from my one harddrive server before. I was going to do a RAID1 configuration, but instead went back to a normal partitioning setup (XFS on the secondary HDD for the files). Recieved another computer the other day, so I'm at a total of 7 servers.

Being the geek I am, I usually stay up a minimum of 24 hours when I'm really interested or concentrated on a subject. Below, I'll point out what I do, for those that want to accomplish the feat.

• Sugar

 Increase your sugar intake, not by sugary drinks though. Small candies (gummy worms, etc. )worked the best for me. Last thing you want to do is crash.

• Sleep

Get a good nights sleep the night before.

Less than a week 'till school starts; you'd be surprised how enthused I am. Tomorrow I get to pick out my locker, fun. So excited. Bouncing off the walls, excited. That's right.

Anyway, I finally received two more servers. One, I just turned into a SmoothWall firewall, which is working excellent I must say. Worked out of the box, cool web interface as well.

The other, I'm not too sure what to do with yet. Turns out, this is faster than my newest web server. I think I'll take the disk out of the newest one, pop it into my NFS server, add another disk from somewhere and put it in a RAID 5 array. Which would be quite intriguing, since I've never worked with RAID before.

I've recently taken up the hobby of lockpicking. I've ordered a set yesterday, so they should arrive in the next couple weeks. I'm sure these will be much easier than a paperclip and a screwdriver. Here's a mini guide who those curious one.

Anyway, I found that either two paperclips or a paperclip + flathead screwdriver work as a makeshift lockpick set. Bend the paper clip straight out, but leaving one end bend to have some kind of leverage. Bend the tip of the paperclip to a 20-35 degree angle. That's the pick.

I've also made a rake, by bending a paperclip in a mountain-valley formation.

As for a tension wrench, a flathead screw driver or another paperclip works. Simply bend the paperclip at a 90 degree angle so you have an L shape. It also depends on the size of the key hole and how much room you have to work with. There are numerous ways to bend a paperclip to work as a tool (in this fashion), so use what works for you.

Now, to pick it.