Win XP Tweaks

Remove text from taskbar running program icons: http://tweaks.com/windows/39472/remove-text-on-taskbar-icons-like-windows-7/

Very nice background switcher program: http://johnsadventures.com/software/backgroundswitcher/

New cell phone plans

Jen and I are switching over to prepaid cell phone plans. We both transfered our "known" phone numbers to Google Voice, so that it is easy to switch plans and not have to worry about transferring the number.

I am still on Lockheed's cell phone plan, but we just bought Jen a sim card and 1000 minutes on T-mobile prepaid. The first challenge was getting Jen's cell phone an old Cingular phone unlocked so she could use it (all the prepaid phones are pretty ugly).

In the end I had to call AT&T to get the unlock code, but they didn't have a problem giving it to me, even though I had already canceled my plan with them, so that was nice. Here is the process:

1. Get the IMEI number: Dial: * # 0 6 # and it will show up. I had to put in the old SIM card so that I could find this information. So get it while you can.
2. Call the phone company (AT&T: 1-800-331-0500) and get the unlock code ours was: 4992009364755526, though I doubt it will do much good for anyone else.
3. Enter the unlock code, for our w300i we had to press left, left, star, star while it was booting up. You can probably find instructions for most phones online.

The only problem is how to get the callee to see our GV number instead of our disposable phone number. You can do it multiple ways.

• If someone texts you, the text will appear to come from some random number, you can call this and it will appear as if GV called them.
• You can program in the number to call as , <2>, . the comma's are pauses, you also have to set GV to not ask for a password when the call comes from you mobile phone.
• You can make the call from GV itself, and it will call your phone then your callee's.

Not a prefect system, but probably the best they can do w/o becoming a provider.

NFS is a ...

I recently started my new job and have been tasked with creating an embedded application to speed up the processing a certain web pages. The process for embedded application at Trane involves booting the SC from a NFS mount, so that you can build your application and it is immediately ready to run and debug.

It was really strange, the SC would boot once, then it would return a -13 error during boot. Running the NFS daemon in the foreground showed me that it was complaining about my /etc/exports. I had my export set to "10.*", which seemed to cause a problem, even though the client was a 10..

Anyways changing the export to * seemed to fix the problem, so I am going to go with that for now. Might try to look at it again if things slow down again someday.