All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin

Geek

I has Drobo

In Geek, Hard Drives, Life, Photography on 3 September 2008 with 3 comments

[View on Flickr]

As of August 30th, I’m a proud owner of a Drobo 2G. It currently holds two 500GB hard drives for 460GB of protected space, and I’ll probably need to add a 1TB hard drive in the next 3-6 months.

The protective skin was still on when I took this. Since then, I’ve removed it.

The Emergency Party Button revealed

In Gadgets, Geek on 7 May 2008 with no comments

Remember the Emergency Party Button photo I took back in March? My friend, Brian Gaut, finally explained its workings — geeky details and all. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Explanation of the Emergency Party Button [plasma2002.com]

Deep cleaning the HP LaserJet 4250tn

In Geek, Hardware, Photos, Printers, Work on 13 April 2008 with 2 comments

I cleaned the laser scanner of a HP LaserJet 4250tn and it was the scariest hour of my week.

At work, one of our HP LaserJet 4250tn printers started to have a print quality problem. The print down the middle would be extremely light compared to the rest of the page.

• I tried using a different toner cartridge.
• I ran a few cleaning pages.
• I interrupted a print job before it hit the fuser to see if that was the problem, but it wasn’t.

Since the warranty ran out from HP, all they would offer is email support. However, after these troubleshooting steps, they ceased their free email tech support.

So, I called The Printer Works for tech support. After explaining what I’ve tried, they suggested I clean the laser scanner and emailed me comprehensive instructions.¹

I took my time disassembling the printer to reach the laser scanner assembly, gently cleaned it with glass cleaner and cotton swabs, and put everything back together.

Then came the moment of truth.

I plugged it back in, powered it on, ran a test page, and held my breath.

Success!

The Party Button - literally

In Gear, Geek, Photos on 22 March 2008 with 1 comment

Bryan Villarin | March 21, 2008 | Riverside, CA
50mm * f/1.8 * 1/40 sec * ISO 400

***

No joke. My friend, Brian Gaut, made this button.

You press it, then the blinds close, the lights dim, a strobe light in the kitchen starts to flash, a laser by the TV starts going crazy, and Haddaway’s, “What Is Love” plays.

Awesome.

Currently, there’s no protection if someone accidentally presses it. He needs to integrate a key next.

[View on Flickr]

Want me to sell this print? Let me know!

Update 3/27/08 — Ooh, I got Dugg!

nLite 1.0 beta 4

In Geek, Windows XP, nLite on 23 June 2005 with 2 comments

I’m going to be using nLite 1.0 beta 4 (with quite a bit of customization in the setup) to clean install Windows XP on my laptop. If that goes well, I’ll basically do the same at home (of course creating another nLite CD for that system). I’ve put it off for awhile on both systems, but I think they’re due.

Tech Baton

In Geek, Meme on 19 May 2005 with 1 comment

Yet another meme? Bah. Fine Jon! Instead of a music baton, it’s a tech baton:

What was the the last ‘tech’ item you bought?

Ink (for my Epson Stylus Color C84) from Mr. Ink Man. Been using them for over two years.

What’s the last online purchase you made and from where?

The ink purchase was online, but I suppose I should be different for this answer. I’m going to be buying DateBk5 and BackupBuddyVFS Personal before their trials run out.

Are you going to E3? Do you know what E3 is?

I didn’t know what E3 was before, until reading Jon’s tech baton. I’m not going, but I’m sure it would’ve been fun to check out.

What’s your favorite video game?

I loved Tecmo Bowl. But somewhat more recently, I was loving Madden 2005 on PS2.

Who are you passing this on to?

• Anthony, because he didn’t do the last one and I’m trying to bug him
• Matt Read, because he hasn’t posted in awhile)
• Ria, because I don’t talk to her too often

Crash

In Asides, Geek, Palm Software on 29 April 2005 with no comments

My Tungsten E doesn’t crash too often. When it does and I don’t know about it, I wouldn’t want the battery to die because I didn’t press reset. I think I’ll install Crash as soon as I get home. (Golf clap: PalmAddicts)

Free CD/DVD burning program?

In Asides, Geek, Software on 28 April 2005 with 5 comments

I got a new computer at work, and it came with a CD burner. We didn’t get any software with it. I’m sure my supervisor has something if I need it, other than the built-in Windows XP CD writing utility. Just for kicks, is CDBurnerXP Pro any good?

Quick and Dirty

In Asides, Gadgets, Geek, Tungsten E on 22 April 2005 with no comments

Andy is letting me use his Palm Wireless Keyboard for my Tungsten E. (It’s no longer on the PalmOne website; it’s the one with 4 rows of keys, not 5.) I’ve had it stored in my glove box of my car for quite sometime - until yesterday. I just had a phone call, and wanted to jot a quick note/lesson to myself. I just popped it open in bed and typed it out in Memos. This morning, I did a HotSync to my desktop then created a new post for it right now. If I used the laptop right away, I might’ve been out of it.

Trying BackupBuddyVFS Personal

In Asides, Backup, Geek, Palm Software on 21 April 2005 with no comments

I’m trying out BackupBuddyVFS Personal. I haven’t been too good in backing that data up, other than HotSync - and that doesn’t cover everything.