Posts by Year

2024

Madonna and Post Malone

less than 1 minute read

Rumor has it that Madonna and Post Malone have been dating for a while and are getting married.

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2023

Slip N Slide

1 minute read

My parents were geniuses. They didn’t believe in buying crappy toys that would bust two seconds after being purchased.

80s Cereal

3 minute read

Back when I was a kid in the 80’s, we couldn’t afford all the cool gadgets, gizmos and toys all the other kids had. This made it very challenging for me, wh...

Maps and Atlases

less than 1 minute read

Today, I bring to you a pretty incredible band you gotta check out. I’ve been listening to them for a few years, and they rock. Some of their stuff sounds a ...

Packets don’t lie

less than 1 minute read

What people believe vs reality is a lot of times different. Take for example your application architecture. What was documented in the past may not be a true...

Becoming Eggscelent

1 minute read

I just met with Colby Meline for an informational interview. We had a wonderful conversation, and if your looking to fill a junior developer role, I would st...

Naming Confusion

less than 1 minute read

If you’ve been in tech for more than a few minutes, you’ll note that naming things is always a challenge. Some that I’ve come across are:

AWS OpenSearch Serverless

less than 1 minute read

Whelp, unbeknownst to me and just prior to my last post, AWS announced that OpenSearch Serverless is now generally available.

Rightsizing AWS OpenSearch

less than 1 minute read

Rightsizing AWS OpenSearch. This was a recent task of mine that came up to help one of our engineering teams. The problem with rightsizing effectively is tha...

Everybody Standup

less than 1 minute read

As a cloud architect, my position and responsibilities sometimes be ambiguous, so I need to gather research and information to assist in determining our stra...

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2022

Cross Account S3 Bucket Access

2 minute read

I had a use case come up recently for cross account access to grant the user in one account (Account A) to a different account’s (Account B) S3 bucket. The r...

Growing up

less than 1 minute read

Growing up means wearing different footwear inside vs outside.

Unicorns

less than 1 minute read

Where do unicorns come from?

Primus

less than 1 minute read

Primus is a band who has been around since the late 80’s. Ever since I was introduced to them by a good friend (hey J!) I’ve always been fascinated by them, ...

AWS Opensearch and EC2 Scripts

less than 1 minute read

Been working on some AWS reports lately, some for EC2 and OpenSearch to help determine costs, and what it would take to migrate to Graviton instances.

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2021

No More PATs!

less than 1 minute read

No more PATs! No more PATs!…well, almost. I was setting up a new local development environment, and found that that you no longer have to cache your Personal...

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2020

OpenBSD PF and OpenDNS

1 minute read

At home, I needed a way to prevent anything but OpenDNS from being used for DNS, and needed a rule that would do it in OpenBSD PF.

AWS IP Range Automation

less than 1 minute read

AWS provides a list of their IP ranges for you to use when configuring whitelists, firewalls, and other things. The list is available in JSON from:

AWS Data Migration Service

less than 1 minute read

I was just doing some testing of the AWS Data Migration Service (DMS), and it isn’t obvious when setting up endpoints that the public IP address of the repli...

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2019

Summertime

less than 1 minute read

My daughter has played this song a few times for me called, “Doin’ Time” by Lana Del Rey. I had to explain to her that there is a better version, and that th...

Dredg

less than 1 minute read

The greatest band you’ve never heard of —Dredg

Oysterhead

less than 1 minute read

What happens when you mix some great musicians from Primus, The Police, and Phish? Is it “P-cubed?” Or “P-To-The-Three?” As much fun as those play on words w...

Amplifier, Incubus, and Infectious Grooves

1 minute read

Today, I discovered a new band that is surprisingly good. It’s sort of like a cross between Rush, Black Sabbath, and David Bowie. The band is called Amplifie...

Weezer

1 minute read

Recently, I have been collaborating with a few folks at work by sending them some music recommendations on Friday’s. One of them recommended that I go bigger...

The Hu

less than 1 minute read

( ••)

Physwall (Science Fiction Short Story)

5 minute read

EL PRESIDENTE! The new, barely-elected president was celebrating her victory. She felt she was born to win this, and nothing could take this from her. All h...

Sunglasses for Big Heads

1 minute read

For me, it never fails. I go to purchase some sunglasses, put them on for a few seconds, and they look and feel good, so I go ahead and buy them. Then when ...

Welcome to Jekyll!

less than 1 minute read

You’ll find this post in your _posts directory. Go ahead and edit it and re-build the site to see your changes. You can rebuild the site in many different wa...

New Mutt and Outlook365 eBook!

less than 1 minute read

This $4.99 (USD) eBook describes a basic IMAP connection Ubuntu setup from mutt to control your Office 365 or Outlook mail. This should also work with Mac a...

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2018

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2017

OpenBSD Xenocara Missing Resolution

less than 1 minute read

This is just like I had to do in Linux, except the directory already existed. Create directory and add a file called 10-monitor.conf

Powershell grep

less than 1 minute read

Just need this little Powershell snippet for later:

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2016

Trim/Convert mp4v2 files using ffmpeg

1 minute read

I had to trim some videos to a 30 second clip, and needed to do it in a way that kept the codec. Using straight ffmpeg, I couldn’t figure out how to get an m...

Weechat, Slack and Dunst

less than 1 minute read

I run weechat to integrate chat communications and protocols. I recently found the notify.py script that was invaluable for dunst notifications.

Download Brightcove Videos

1 minute read

I like to listen to video conferences and podcasts at higher than normal speeds. Brightcove video doesn’t allow you to speed it up, so I was wondering if I c...

Cloud Foundry Set JVM Args

less than 1 minute read

In case you need to set arguments for cloud foundry application on startup: cf set-env appname-uat JAVA_OPTS '-Djavax.net.debug=ssl,handshake'

Tmux in 30 seconds

less than 1 minute read

I wanted to do some quick video tutorials on using tmux. Let me know what you think in the comments below:

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2015

Grossest Halloween Ever

2 minute read

One specific Halloween party I remember from my youth was when we were at church with all the young’uns gathered round. I’m sure I was looking forward to hav...

Compiling Mutt With Slang

less than 1 minute read

I needed to compile the mutt e-mail client with slang so my colors would work correctly. This is how it’s done:

qemu & physical disk

less than 1 minute read

Just messing around with quemu, and needed to install a VM easily onto a physical disk. The magic command was this:

Art

less than 1 minute read

I re-created my art page. I also added these images to my blog cover image. http://www.benfrancom.com/art/ Here is “a little taste of the glory…see what it ...

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2014

Mutt Offline Outlook365 With mbsync

6 minute read

Nitty Gritty I’ve been using the mutt e-mail client for about two years now. I love mutt. I’m a die hard Linux/BSD guy, and am in the console a lot. I love...

tnsping & sqlplus On Ubuntu 13.10

less than 1 minute read

I need oracle tools to diagnose and troubleshoot.  This is the easiest, and least intrusive method I’ve found: Download and extract the "u01" folder from t...

Switched site!

less than 1 minute read

I switched my site over to OpenShift for hosting, and changed my theme as well. I’ll try to update soon!

Moved Book Over to GitHub

less than 1 minute read

Since my “Space Captain Rowan” book is open source made with the open source software, Inkscape, I decided to move it over to github.  This actually makes it...

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2013

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2012

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2011

Thank you tcpdump.

less than 1 minute read

Used TCP dump (again) to fix an issue today.  Thanks to all the developers of this fine tool!

Xfce, Thunar and GPG

less than 1 minute read

I needed a way to encrypt files with GPG via the file manager (Thunar) right-click-context-menu in XFCE.

Mythbuntu, XBMC, HDMI

less than 1 minute read

Had a bit of issue re-routing all sound through HDMI.  Here is the fix:

Google Chrome OS

less than 1 minute read

I’m trying to build Chrome OS on Ubuntu since I can’t sleep, but git doesn’t like my proxy authentication wrapper.

Dysart Unified School District…

less than 1 minute read

Dysart Unified School District saves more than $100,000 by switching computer operating systems to #Linux http://tinyurl.com/68szwlf

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2010

Reconfiguring Home LAN

1 minute read

I took off this past week to extend the holiday, and spend time with the family. Unfortunately, I came down with a cold at the beginning of the week which...

Reconfigured #Squid #proxy. C…

less than 1 minute read

Reconfigured #Squid #proxy. Came to the conclusion that #Netflix on #Wii doesn’t like proxies. Bypassed it just for Wii IP using #PF rule.

“The [ #COICA ] bill is an unc…

less than 1 minute read

“The [ #COICA ] bill is an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech and a threat to innovation.” https://www.eff.org/n/11887

Used a friends #Droid today. T…

less than 1 minute read

Used a friends #Droid today. The on screen keyboard was far better/more accurate than my experience with the #iPhone or blackberry #Storm

Next Wed. I will be presenting…

less than 1 minute read

Next Wed. I will be presenting on #Inkscape an open source #vector #graphics program. Anyone is welcome to attend! http://is.gd/gaGkZ

Tired of Viruses & Malware? Wa…

less than 1 minute read

Tired of Viruses & Malware? Want a better & open computing environment? Newest version of #Ubuntu #Linux is here: http://www.ubuntu.com

Updating #FreeBSD Hadn’t notic…

less than 1 minute read

Updating #FreeBSD Hadn’t noticed before since I usually call fastest_cvsup from another command. Result: “Speed Daemons” lol #CVSup #BSD

Microsoft’s Ballmer: Android…

less than 1 minute read

Microsoft’s Ballmer: Android Isn’t Really Free — You Have To Pay Us For Patents http://t.co/Uloap9P via @techcrunch

Is it overly nerdy of me to us…

less than 1 minute read

Is it overly nerdy of me to use #RequestTracker (RT) at home for personal use? I just finished setting it up w/ #Postfix and #GMAIL #SMTP.

Russian Soda Commercial using …

less than 1 minute read

Russian Soda Commercial using #Blender3D by ARt DDs - http://www.blendernation.com/russian-soda-commercial-by-art-dds/

Today I started changing our d…

less than 1 minute read

Today I started changing our disaster recovery plan. It involves an on-site hot spare with a large #RAID array, #Linux and #RSYNC

Just recovered a deleted photo…

less than 1 minute read

Just recovered a deleted photo off my #SD card using #PhotoRec It’s a great tool for recovering files and photos. http://is.gd/eaV8R

Linux and Soekris Presentation Follow Up

less than 1 minute read

My presentation this past week on Soekris and Linux went pretty well. There were 9 of us there, and we stepped through an Ubuntu server installation. We had ...

btrfs

less than 1 minute read

One of the many great things about Linux is choice.  You can choose from a vast array of file system types to keep your data on.  You can even slice and dice...

Oracle, Sun, & MySQL

1 minute read

From Eben Moglen: I believe that Oracle sees clearly the nature of its business interests. It knows that MySQL is much, much more valuable to it alive than ...

Change Management

less than 1 minute read

Doing some further research on change management.

REMUS: Transparent high availability for Xen

less than 1 minute read

I read about an interesting tool that is being integrated into Xen that offers high availability.  It is developed by The University of British Columbia. Our...

Post: Quote

less than 1 minute read

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. Mark Twain

Post: Notice

1 minute read

A notice displays information that explains nearby content. Often used to call attention to a particular detail.

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2009

Google Chrome on Ubuntu 9.10 Linux

less than 1 minute read

As Chrome was just released for Linux, I just got it installed on my workstation.Screenshot:<img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:ce...

Informative Quote on Using Open Source

less than 1 minute read

<blockquote>“A lot of people have laughed at me. Theysay that they buy their software onlyfrom very large companies and thatthese companies will be aro...

FreeNAS

less than 1 minute read

I was doing some research on some open source Network Attached Storage (NAS) utilities earlier this morning, and came across FreeNAS. It is based on FreeBSD...

Data/Communication Cabling Rates in AZ.

less than 1 minute read

Just an informative post for anyone looking for rates on premise data/com cabling in the Phoenix area. I just spoke to a highly trusted source, and in the v...

Disable XRandR

less than 1 minute read

aticonfig --set-pcs-str="DDX,EnableRandR12,FALSE"

GroupWise 7 SLED 11

less than 1 minute read

I had to add this onto the startup script for GroupWise to function better on SLED:<blockquote>/opt/novell/groupwise/client/bin/groupwise.sh -jvm=-Dawt...

Linux Project Management Utilities

less than 1 minute read

I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for project management tools for Linux, and this one caught my eye: It is GPL, and I must say looks very slick. They have...

SLES 10 SP2 FreeNX Installation Tutorial

less than 1 minute read

<img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 100px; height: 100px;” src=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com...

TinyURL

less than 1 minute read

http://www.tinyurl.com is great at making long URL’s (web addresses) small and easy. Check this one out:http://tinyurl.com/Benjamin-Francom

iPrint Canon ImageRunner 2022i

less than 1 minute read

<img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 64px; height: 64px;” src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_...

SLES 10 SP 1 OES 2 LUM Enable User Broken

less than 1 minute read

<img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 120px; height: 116px;” src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com...

Blackberry 8900 Wipe Address Book and Resync

less than 1 minute read

One of our users purchased the blackberry 8900 today, and the address book wouldn’t sync. In order to wipe it and repopulate from the server, go to the addr...

CACLS

less than 1 minute read

User rights ACL’s on windows xpcacls “C:windowstemp.” /e /g EVERYONE:Fcacls c:windowstemp /e /g everyone:f

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2008

Join Multiple mpg Files

less than 1 minute read

cat file01.mpg file02.mpg file03.mpg > alltogether.mpgOther notes:mpegdemux -d -s 0xe0 source.mpg dst.m1vmpegdemux -d -s 0xc0-0xdf -b audio_##.mpa source....

FLV to MPG Script

less than 1 minute read

#!/bin/bashffmpeg -i “$1” -ab 128000 -ar 44100 -b 200000 -s 320x240 -ac 2 “$1”.mpg

SLES 10 x86_64 Subversion

less than 1 minute read

At work I needed to install subversion for the programming department. The problem I ran into was that SLES 10 does not include subversion in their reposito...

HP Care Pack Registration and Firefox=BROKEN

less than 1 minute read

I’ve tried to register a hardware care pack with HP, and it doesn’t work in Firefox. This is the error:error ‘80004005’ <p> /csn/csnfw/system/sys_shel...

Openswan & Cisco ASA 5505

less than 1 minute read

I successfully connected a Cisco ASA 5505 and Openswan using IPSec VPN recently at work. I’ll have to post the configuration files when I have time.

wsname.exe

less than 1 minute read

Nice tool to change computer names in M$ Windoze.

PDRVGen.exe

less than 1 minute read

This little utility creates printer definition files from your installed printers. Works sweet to replace the regular drivers for NDPS since they sometimes ...

XEN SLES 10 SP 2 Networking

less than 1 minute read

I’m testing out XEN, and am trying to figure out the best way for networking. Above is what I am attempting.

openSUSE resolution not filling screen

less than 1 minute read

Found the fix here.<blockquote> The available solution is in the openSUSE 10.3 Release Notes:Older Intel Graphics ChipsOlder Intel graphics chips are s...

Ubuntu Hardy Heron Review

less than 1 minute read

Updated to Ubuntu Hardy Heron last night, and it went nice and smooth. Everything came up afterwards, and the only differences I’ve noticed are:Speed: It se...

Ubuntu Minimall Installation (mini.iso)

less than 1 minute read

I didn’t realize that Ubuntu had mini.iso’s like debian until I had a laptop that required a net boot.https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD

Cygwin RSYNC ssh hang in “pull” mode

less than 1 minute read

I’m trying to workaround cygwin hanging when using rsync over ssh in a “pull” mode. I used to have it set up to where each box would “push” to a central ser...

Squid NCSA Auth JVM Java Applet Problem

less than 1 minute read

After setting up ncsa_auth in squid (FreeBSD 6.3), Java applets wouldn’t run. I found this link that solved it.<blockquote>You can solve this by creat...

Yet Another Java HylaFax Client (YajHFC)

less than 1 minute read

I was having troubles setting up WHFC, and JHylaFax didn’t have all of the cover page variables I needed, so I took to looking around for a new HylaFax clien...

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2007

NetWare 6.5 User Rights Listing

1 minute read

I had a hard time finding something that would list what a user has access to in eDirectory. I then found out about trustee.nlm. It is already part of the N...

Tweaking Hylafax 4.3.0 on OpenSUSE 10.2

1 minute read

I’ve just put a Hylafax server in production, and now am in process of fixing little issues. Some things that have cropped up are:Resizing legal faxes to le...

CUPS Error, “w2 invalid pers”

less than 1 minute read

I was setting up an HP LJ4Plus as a printer for Hylafax in OpenSUSE 10.2, and received the error:w2 invalid persAll it needed was a driver change in CUPS. ...

Hylafax Custom Coverpage

less than 1 minute read

I had a dicken’s of a time trying to come up with a good way to customize the Hylafax coverpage for our company. I was able to get partially there from modi...

How My Desktop Has Changed Over Time

less than 1 minute read

I’ll preface this by saying that I made some of the icons you see on the pic and stuff (the Nacho one, and the one just above him). This is my home PC runni...

Tar to archive over ssh

less than 1 minute read

[[Modified]]Does anyone know how to tar and gzip an archive over ssh so it ends up compressed on the remote host?For example, boot from Knoppix to rescue som...

Ubuntu Edgy Eft

less than 1 minute read

Jan 20 2007…Just wanted to update this. The days I was trying to do this, the Ubuntu servers must’ve been overloaded. I tried it again, and got everything ...

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2006

Mapping Drives in Cygwin

less than 1 minute read

Map drive cygwin:I had a dilemma whilst executing cron jobs on a box that needed some NetWare drives mapped. (This ought to work for Windows mapped drives a...

Novell Linux OES SP2 Part Deux

less than 1 minute read

The trick is to install the Novell services (i.e. NSS) during install time, rather than after.This worked, and we’ve got RSYNC working on traditional OES Net...

4412D+ Template Update

less than 1 minute read

Since this was at one point the most accessed entry on my blog, I’ve updated it with more templates.See here:http://hachijuhachi0.blogspot.com/2006/06/4412d-...

Novell OES Linux SP2

less than 1 minute read

I did a minimal install of this NOS, and things went great. When I went to add some Novell services it choked hard. Not only did it have me rotate CD’s lik...

SSH Problem

less than 1 minute read

I kept getting this error when trying to port forward on an ssh connection to a remote server:“channel 2: open failed: connect failed: Connection timed out”I...

RAD Mobile

1 minute read

I found some old stuff from my senior project. Notice the Autobots logo? It is so sweet. The project consisted of sending IP strings over a cell phone to ...

Vi

less than 1 minute read

You know you’ve been using vi too long when you start pressing “esc” to try and save your work in Notepad.

(no title)

less than 1 minute read

Test<p>This is a test from my linux boxen using “Blog Entry Poster”</p><p>June 30th 11:18</p>

Huh?

less than 1 minute read

There was a device someone read the name to me. It was supposed to be “Ethernet Broadband Router.” They said, “Ethanol Baudband Rooter.”I found it funny.-La...

Google Personalized Home Page

less than 1 minute read

I was using my.yahoo for a while, and I didn’t like it a whole lot. I tested the Google personalized home page, and it works even better.

4412D+ Template

less than 1 minute read

10/25/06Here is a template for all for the Avaya 4412D+ handsets.Blank One:BLANK.PDFBLANK.SVGORIGINAL.PDFORIGINAL.SVGThe SVG’s should be editable if you down...

Xgl Compiz

less than 1 minute read

I finally got it up and running on me laptop. It was dang easy with OpenSuse 10.1.

Ubuntu Dapper Drake

less than 1 minute read

Just upgraded to the newer version of Ubuntu. It was released today. So far, so good!

Xine

less than 1 minute read

I was having troubles playing DVD’s in Xine. It kept dropping frames. I finally found a fix:Enable dma mode on the CD/DVD drive.Do this by:sudo hdparm -d1 ...

PFS First Choice Running on XP

less than 1 minute read

I came across a question on Computing.net. I tried to answer, but it wouldn’t let me. It said the post was too old and wouldn’t get a response (and therefore...

Hylafax on Suse 10.0 Fax to E-mail

less than 1 minute read

I finally got the e-mail to fax gateway working. Faxes come in from the world, then transferred into a pdf attachment and finally are e-mailed to the user o...

(no title)

less than 1 minute read

Suse 10<p>Testing out the new version of OpenSuSE. It is pretty good thus far. I chose the Gnome desktop since I don’t normally run it. I usually us...

Pet Peeve

less than 1 minute read

Don’t you hate it when you go to a website and it reads, “click here to see a larger image,” and you click it and the image is the same size?Well, I came acr...

Hylafax

less than 1 minute read

hyla# faxaddmodem ttyf2Sorry, I been testing Hylafax at work. It is a fax-server. It has the abilities for lots of junk. We are using it for being an e-mai...

Lame Law Submitters DCSA

less than 1 minute read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Content_Security_ActPlease write your congress rep and tell them “Heck No” on passing the DCSAPlease also see EFF for mo...

The Disney and Pixar Merger

less than 1 minute read

I cannot believe this happened. I know it was talked about for the past several weeks, but sheesh! I cannot stand Disney.And ya’ll know how I feel about...

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2005

Back into 3D

less than 1 minute read

I’ve started testing (again) Blender, the Open Source 3d animation software. It is pretty sweet. I’ve tested it out before, but coming from 3d studio max, a...

MythTV Setup

less than 1 minute read

Well,After working on my Fedora Core 4 upgrade for several days, I’ve finally got a working system again. I had a problem with the tv listings. Needed to u...

Fedora Core 4

less than 1 minute read

Updated my Linux box last night, and am psyched to test it out…Prolly need to tweak it to get my MythTV back up and running. Also considering buying another ...

Blender 3D :: Project Orange

less than 1 minute read

I have been testing out Blender, the Open Source 3D Animation/Design software. The cool thing is that a bunch of guys are going to do an Open Movie using thi...

Linux and MythTV sound FINALLY!

less than 1 minute read

I finally got sound working under MyhtTV and my PVR-250. It has been quite the process. But I have learned some, so it was worth it. Now I need to configu...

Drum Machine for Linux

less than 1 minute read

As an avid advocate/user of Linux (an operating system for those of you who no habla geek), I feel it my duty to share the goods

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2004

Great Article, Great Quote!

less than 1 minute read

I was reading a nice article that is pro BSD. See here. I found one of the funniest quotes in there: “Due to the nature of the business and financial const...

Induce Act

less than 1 minute read

Can’t let this act pass. It is very bad. read here We want to innovate.

Links

less than 1 minute read

If you haven’t got the links already,…. Minibosses (Nintend0 Songs) Freezepop (Electronic Songs)

HP Web JetAdmin 7.6

less than 1 minute read

Just wanted this to be available for people who didn’t want to register on HP’s site for the WebJetAdmin software ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software3/COL3...

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