I’ve tried out a few financial management applications in my day, not limited to MS Excel, MS Money, and Quicken, and I can’t say that I have been in any way impressed with any of those approaches.  They require a lot of work to set up, a lot of work to maintain, and in some cases (here is looking at you, Quicken), just plain don’t work at all..in my seemingly endless quest to get a budget going, I have typically ended up giving up.

That said, it was with both hopeful optimism and well-deserved skepticism that I started playing around with Mint.com a few months ago.  Mint.com is a free online financial management application with the ability to automatically connect to over 5,000 financial institutions to import transactions and help you manage your financial life.  Desperately wanting some solution to make managing my finances easier, I put aside the inherent security concerns of having all of your financial life located on some company’s servers, and dove in.

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Test Server

Dell PowerEdge 2950
Dual Quad Core Xeon CPUs (3GHz)
16GB RAM
2x 300GB 15000rpm HDD, RAID-0

Test Client

Dell PowerEdge 2550
Dual Xeon CPUs (933MHz)
4GB RAM
2x 18GB 10000rpm HDD, RAID-1

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Reflecting a current trend in higher education, and the broader computer industry, I recently received an Apple MacBook Pro for work, and I thought I would post a brief review from the perspective of someone who has mostly dealt with Windows for quite some time.

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I was having some trouble getting my BartPE disc to work correctly with Dell’s new Optiplex 755 desktop, due to the fact that it comes with a new Intel Gigabit NIC chip (82566-2, specifically). I had added the new drivers as downloaded from Dell’s website, to no avail, getting a “Cannot install network devices” error at bootup.

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1. Windows Media Center: If I happen to throw down a small fortune for a Digital Cable Ready (read: CableCard) Windows Media Center PC, I would love the ability to stream both live and recorded TV to other Windows Media Center PCs in the house. It only makes sense to offer the ability to combine the resources of multiple WMC PCs with eachother, with a unified electronic program guide (EPG). Media Center Extenders should also be able to use this aggregation of resources, presenting a seamless experience.
2. iPhone: the closest thing to the perfect phone needs some serious upgrades before I’d consider owning one.
   • Exchange ActiveSync
   • 3G
   • Picture Messaging
   • WPA enterprise
   • Bluetooth DUN/PAN or WiFi sharing support
   • More storage would also be nice
3. Other automobile OEMs to offer something similar to Ford’s Sync. It doesn’t necessarily need to be voice activated, but I really would like my car to seamlessly integrate with my iPod and Bluetooth phone.

Engadget had a post yesterday detailing rumored plans for a Lotus Notes application for the iPhone. I’m pleased to see that at least someone is doing something to try to get corporate email on the iPhone, but my immediate response is “WTF about Exchange”? You can access Exchange via IMAP, but that hardly compares to the push-email features of Exchange ActiveSync or even on a BlackBerry. I’ve come to enjoy push email on my seriously outdated Treo 700w. Why I can’t have my cake (wicked cool phone) and eat it (push email) too?

I stumbled upon a really nice utility for Windows Vista called Start++.

From the website:

Start++ is an enhancement for the Start Menu in Windows Vista. It also extends the Run box and the command-line with customizable commands. For example, typing “w Windows Vista” will take you to the Windows Vista page on Wikipedia!

http://brandontools.com/content/StartPlusPlus.aspx

Problem

• In an age where globally route-able IP addresses are treated as a precious commodity, your residential Internet Service Provider happens to give you three as part of the basic package, but all over DHCP.
• You want the flexibility provided by having those three global IPs, but the safety and security of a router/firewall, or you happen to have more than three devices that need to use the Internet.

Solution: Build your own Router!

• How to build your own router is more than well documented on the web, and I won’t re-invent the wheel here. Most solutions involve a cheap PC, two network cards, and a Linux distribution.
• Assigning more than one static IP address to a single Network Interface Card is common practice for certain applications like Web Servers, and is accomplished in Linux using aliases (e.g., eth0:0) or in Windows by editing the Advanced TCP/IP properties for your network connection.
• The tricky part is getting those addresses via DHCP.

But how do I get more than one IP address on the same NIC via DHCP?

The way I discovered was by using a DHCP client for Linux called dhcpcd, which is available in many distributions’ package managers. dhcpcd has an option -I that allows you to specify your “Client ID” to the DHCP server. If not specified, the DHCP client sends your MAC address as the Client ID. For instance:

/sbin/dhcpcd -I 00:0B:20:21:22:23 eth0
/sbin/dhcpcd -I 00:0B:20:25:22:24 eth0:0
/sbin/dhcpcd -I 00:0B:20:25:22:25 eth0:1

You’re not spoofing your MAC address to the network itself, but just to the DHCP server.  From here, you can go on to create iptables rules to do whatever sort of NAT or Port Forwarding you wish. For instance, you might want to enable Remote Desktop to two different computers on your home network. With an off-the-shelf router, you would have to assign 3389 to one internal computer and a non-default port (e.g., 3390) to another. With the flexibility of more than one address, this is not necessary.

One of the most annoying things about Windows Vista’s new User Account Control is the “Secure Desktop”. I particularly dislike how it interrupts your work flow in the most startling way possible short of setting off an air raid siren. While I understand the premise behind it (it is supposed to prevent spoofing of the User Account Control prompt), I am perfectly comfortable recommending disabling it to any moderate to advanced Vista user. In any case, here’s how:

• From the Start Menu search box, type Local Security and allow yourself to elevate.
• The Security Settings window should appear: Navigate to Local Policies, Security Options.
• On the bottom of the right hand side, double click the setting User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation, Disable it, and you are good to go.

I’ve found the User Account Control prompts to be considerably more tolerable when disabling this feature. While this will not protect you from a malicious coder attempting to spoof the UAC prompt, I am OK with that level of risk.

Welcome to my blog. This blog will mainly cater to technical topics related to my background in Information Technology, with a spattering of politics, personal development, and other potential discussions. I already have a LiveJournal, so I do not suspect I will use this as a personal journal. In any case, it should be the source of most of the content for this web site. Stay tuned for future updates!