The FreeBSD Diary |
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BSDCon 2000 - Monday
16 October 2000
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It's almost 1pm now. I spent most of the morning modifying my slides for my FreshPorts presentation. It was originally written in Powerpoint. Now it's a StarOffice document. I must say, I'm impressed with my first introduction to StarOffice. If the rest of the suite is as good as the presention product, I'm positive it's a fine set of programs. |
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Hardware update
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| On the hardware side, I have managed to order my CDRom and a motherboard.
As someone has donated two XEON 550MHz CPUs, I've been able to raise enough money (via
advertisements and cash donations) to buy a Supermicro SUPER S2DGE
motherboard from Next International and a Plextor internal SCSI CD-RW
drive from Multiwave Technology. I placed orders
on Saturday via their respective websites. I telephoned them today to check on the orders.
Both should be shipped today. Which means they should arrive at BSDi by Friday, when I
drive back in the convertible, with the blonde (don't tell her husband). On the sad side, the 2x9GB SCSI Ultra drives didn't make it here from England. The drives didn't get to the courier (a BSDCon 2000 attendee) before he left for the airport. But I hear there are other drives on the way and should arrive on Tuesday (or so). |
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Ordering stuff via the web
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| If I was ever going to do this type of ordering again, I would place the orders well in advance of arriving in USA. You don't want to spend your vacation dealing with this type of thing. Also, remember to use a USA credit card and ship to the same address as the card's bill is sent to. With these steps, the purchase should be quick and easy. If time is important, be sure to verfiy that the goods are in stock. |
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Fry's Electronics
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| Fry's Electronics is quite well known in the San Francisco area. They started off as a grocery store. Then, bit by bit, they started to get into computer gear. Now, they are *the* place to get computer gear *if* you know what you want *and* you can cope with the service. They have the reputation of being low of price and service. On the drive down, we passed a Fry's just off 680. I just wanted to go in and have a look, but we didn't have time. But if you've got the time, and the patience, have a look. Apparently, if you're a geek, they are the only shop you need. They stock all the necessary geek food and geek hardware. And if you need a washer or a dryer, they have that too. |
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What's going on at the Con today?
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| Alan Clegg's BSD System Security
tutorial finished last night. Kirk McKusick has
been running the BSD Kernel Internals tutotial. Bill was taking some pictures and these
are at ht
tp://gfx.dub.net/travel/2000-10-bsdcon/indexjs.html. I hear Jim has been doing the
same thing at http://www.soupnazi.org/pics/index.php?pageType=folder&currDir=./work/bsdi/2000-10-bsdcon_monterey. Enjoy. |