[Tech/PC] VirtualBox, Windows 7 and a new CPU

As I've done from time to time, this blog serves as a bit of a bench-notes of what I did.  However, maybe someone else hits the same problem, and finds my blog via search. About a month back, the new nVidia 2080 Ti card was announced.  I decided to hit up eBay to see if anyone was selling off a 1080 Ti, and I was not disappointed in the price drops....

15 Sep 2018 · 3 min · Gary Allen Vollink

[Shopping] eBuyer Beware

I know this.  Read the fine print.  I didn't do that.  The rest is geeky details having to do with rack-mountable servers. I have a 12U rack.  Sort-of an end-table next to the couch.  I have two servers.  One of them is happily racked.  The other one is awkwardly sitting sideways across the top of the rack. I jumped on eBay a week ago, looking to find the rails I need....

25 Aug 2018 · 2 min · Gary Allen Vollink

[Food] Homage to Pizza Gone By

Gone Not too far from where I live is a "turn key fully equipped restaurant" for lease.  The restaurant that was there until a few weeks ago was called Pizzaniste. Pizzaniste had really good pizza.  Gourmet, all fresh ingredients, coal fired, whole-wheat crust as an option; even gluten free as an option.  Partly because they also made custom fresh salads, there were some unexpected ingredients: Real anchovies, fresh basil, artichokes, black beans, corn, cilantro, carrots, chickpeas, eggplant, hard-boiled egg, zucchini and two types of olives to choose from (along with all the other things you might expect every pizza place to have)....

7 Jul 2018 · 3 min · Gary Allen Vollink

The Agony of No Heat

Or: The Longest Move 15 days without heat.  25 days to complete a delayed move, because we really couldn't live without heat.  History and some details below. Jen and I moved to New York in July of 2011, and we've lived in the same apartment ever since.  A two bedroom, one bath apartment that is quite comfortable in a relatively well maintained building in the Bay Ridge neighborhood in Brooklyn....

22 Jan 2018 · 4 min · Gary Allen Vollink