Author Archives: Jason

About Jason

Jason R. Koepke is Founder and Data Strategist at GNT LLC, a risk-analysis and data strategy firm that provides analytical and technical services to the public and private sectors. His work and research has been featured in the academic, financial, and technical industries.

Miscellaneous Tech House Keeping

My home computers are in need of some TLC. There are no major problems, just little things. Here is a wrap up of some of the issues and solutions, some of which the readers of this blog might find worthwhile:

About two weeks ago, I downloaded Juicen, a program that handles your “podcast” (I hate that term) subscriptions. I expected it to fail miserably, as do most RSS readers, but have been pleased with its performance. Now if I can only find worthwhile pods to cast (actually, NPR has a ton of good ones). FYI, I am running this on my primary desktop machine, which runs XP Pro and handles nearly all of my DL/UL tasks).

Today I decided I was going to deal with my inability to open links in new tabs in Firefox using the wheel button. Every Windows machine I have used except my primary one allows you to use the scroll wheel button to open a link in a new tab. In about five minutes I had the problem solved. Turns out Microsoft Intellipedia’s system-wide settings override Firefox’s mouse settings. The best solution I found is to Control Panel->Mouse and then set the wheel button to AutoScroll. Problem solved.

I have a number of large files that Windows won’t let me delete, and when I try to delete them, I am greeted by a “File In Use” error. I am running out of storage space, so this problem is becoming pressing. The “File In Use” issue is a known one and I found a very basic but possibly helpful solution here. The page gives you the basic advice of how to ensure you are not actually using the given file but also points you to a program that handles deleting, copying, and moving of files before Windows gets going. They say this should work. I am a bit hesitant but will eventually give it a try.

As previously mentioned, I’m almost out of storage space (I have a lot). And I really do need to set up a RAID 5 server. I have an old machine that has a nice tower for this type of set up and it should work well. I just need to scrap the money and time together to buy a controller card (any suggestions?) and hard drives. Ugh. I wish there was some little kid around who wanted to set this up for me. In that case, I’d just have him or her build me an entirely new machine just for this purpose. Once it will set up, I will be so happy. I even built a shelf in a closet that should be a nice spot for it.

I have noise on my line-in, making recording difficult. It has not stopped me before, but when I rearranged my apartment setup (furniture moving that involved some rewiring), I was hoping to eliminate the noise or spend time identifying the problem. Neither has happened, but it is on my agenda. But what isn’t.

I have an old laptop that I wanted to install Ubuntu on. It won’t get past the initial install screen, though. Ugh. Not an important project, but one that would be nice for music-in-the-bedroom action.

DC Food Choices

One of my former-favorite magazines, The Economist, has a semi-regular e-publication for Washington DC and other cities. These e-mails are usually interesting, making me aware of some event or news about which I was clueless. So check out the city guides and sign up for sure.

In the current issue, there is a bit about DC’s street vending situation that I thought was blog-worthy (what isn’t?):

Man cannot live on pretzels alone

A hot dog can only go so far. Influenced by a recent survey that found locals dissatisfied with Washington’s street-food vendors, the District is working to improve its on-the-go fare. The city’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs Officials asked the opinions of 480 people who live or work in the District: 82% said they would buy from street vendors if the carts offered the occasional gyro, burger or burrito along with the usual hot dog and pretzel. DC’s limited vendor menu is largely due to an eight-year moratorium on new vending licences, issued when the District was overrun with over 3,000 street vendors (who often traded punches for prime spots). Since then the number of vendors has dropped to just 650.

Hankering for a wider range of food and other goods, the city is now launching a campaign to support street vendors. In November the District lifted the moratorium on vending licences. Officials will also map vending sites across the city and, for a fee, provide licences for specific locations (to avoid turf wars).

The Flood Begins…

NPR has released their top ten albums of the year, even though there is a almost full month left.

Based on their list, I’m fairly sure they listened to only ten albums. Of the top ten, I have listened to four of the albums on the list–Regina Spektor’s Begin to Hope, Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins’ Rabbit Fur Coat, Cat Power’s The Greatest, and TV On the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain–and none of them are very good, and I consider myself a big fan of Spektor and Lewis.

While I do appreciate NPR’s recent (within the past year or so) focus on music, it really is designed for the wannabe hipster or older person with a young ear. They are about as pop as you can get for “indie.” Ugh, I totally sound like a hipster.