All posts by grantboulanger

Lease an Apple?

Hi, Geeks.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m running a start up Spanish language immersion summer camp out in Vermont this year. It’s sponsored by Middlebury College, which you may know of.

We’re looking to lease some machines for the 6 week summer program to avoid having to buy. I’m looking for tips on any Apple angles for leasing machines. Anyone have experience with this?

We have 3 sites serving 150 – 250 secondary students at each site, so quantities would be reasonable.

Data Recovery- earn some spare change (NICE change)

Geeks,

I’m looking for someone with the skills (and software) to recover some data from a seagate barracuda 160 that was soaked in the water of a firefighter’s hose.

Assignment:

My friend’s house burned down a year ago in the middle of the night. The videos and photos he shot of his kids from birth to 3 years old are on this drive. Your job is to recover as much of this data as possible.
Context:

One person has already tried and failed.

Further context:

He was about to send it off to some bigwig company and pay a bigwig price. He’s willing to pay to recover these memories.

Limitations:

He would like to turn in a receipt to his insurance co., who would cover a portion (not all) of the cost. His timeframe for turning in receipts to his insurance lapses in 3 weeks. If your cost is low enough, he may forego turning in the receipt, which would alleviate the time crunch.
If there are any takers, hit me up at my email. I’ll provide more details there.

Anyone for a good deed? WTB free laptop for Nicaraguan family friend

Ok, bear with me on this for a minute…

Several years ago I worked very hard to bring a nicaraguan potter to my former school to do a 6 wk residency with my students. Cristina was an amazing woman, potter, community leader, social reformer, etc. (I’ll tell you all about the way she led a group of 13 women to create a female pottery cooperative in her small town).

Shelley and I eventually went down to visit Cristina in her element and got to know her family.

3 years or so ago she got sick and couldn’t work anymore. After a year she couldn’t walk. then she was diagnosed with an inoperable cancer and died in May. I’ve sent money to offset the cost of pain killers and have helped in other ways. Her two daughters are studying with scholarship at the university, but she still has one in grade 7 and one in grade 4. The daughter studying Business Administration asked if I could somehow get ahold of a used laptop so she wouldn’t have to pay by the 15 minute interval to use the university computers (remember when it was like that here?). She has many papers to write and the cost is unjustifiable when the dad’s low income has to support the whole family.

I promised nothing, but thought, “now this is a job for the geeks!”

A friend from brainerd who owns land in Nica-landia and also knows the family would likely take whatever I can scrounge together down in January when she goes for her vacation.

If you have any leads, or better any old paperweights that will run xp with sp2, then fire me an email.

See you all next Tuesday.

PC pings the world but can’t see it through a browser

I’ve been helping a neighbor with his new PC purchase. To say he’s at a disadvantage is an understatement. He has a limited formal education, speaks broken English, and has no conceptual schema for the world of the computer whatsoever. He’s recently purchased a PC running XP and has upgraded his dialup to qwest dsl.

IE won’t access his private IP address or anything else for that matter. We can ping the modem. In fact, we can ping anything in the ether we want both using IP and URL. So, we have verified that the modem works and is configured properly (I’m able to browse w/o problem with my Mac laptop). But IE won’t browse.

Qwest has verified the computers LAN is properly configured.

With the help of his previous ISP he’s erased any software that their CDs had installed.

With the help of his computer manufacturer he’s cleanly reinstalled XP twice.

I’ve installed alternate browsers (Ffox and Opera) and can’t browse with them either.

So, that’s the extent of my PC-troubleshooting knowledge. Anyone out there have any advice (short of selling the crap to some sucker and buying a Mac)?

wireless routers- link ’em up

My sister-in-law is looking for a quality wireless router for her home. She uses a standard Dell desktop and brings her work laptop home in the evenings. Can’t get the Dell to connect to the VPN for whatever reason. Has a standard A-DSL hookup via Cwest.

What models do you recommend and which of you, for a free Chipotle burrito (or two), would be willing to help her set it up?

who’s your DSL provider?

Ok brothers,

2 weeks ago I finally had enough with my cable connection and called to cancel. They talked me into trying RoadWalker instead of Earthmissinglink and I told them I’d give it a try but if the drop outs continued I was walking.

I’m walking.

So here’s your chance to plug your favorite ISP. I’m looking for a simple ADSL that runs over my existing line 1.5 Mbps is enough, I suppose, though I’d be amenable to giving up my qwest phone service all together if there’s some kind of VoIP/DSL bundle out there that’s worth it.

What do you know?