I’ve been ripping Sirius from my DishNetwork receiver for quite some time. I copy the created mp3 files to a USB drive and bring them to work. (I find that I program better with music in the background.) I’ve always thought “Hey. I could just stream the audio to my computer at work.” VLC handles the job quite nicely.
I’ve got VLC running on my server at home streaming the audio via HTTP with authentication on a specific port. I setup my DSL modem to port forward that traffic to my server. All I do at work is open my dynamic DNS address via VLC using the username, password, and port. I get streamed Sirius Octane 20 in real-time without having to pay for it twice. I’m a cheap bastard. Sue me!
Griminal Grim's Ramblings
My wife and I went to my company Christmas party last night. Management gave out a handful of awards. I was astounded when I and my partner each received one. There are nearly 400 people working there, and many do MUCH more important things than we do, yet they feel that we’re such a valuable asset that they awarded us.
The president went on to list list some of the projects that the two man IT department completed over the last year:
- Migrate from WordPerfect to Microsoft Office.
- Migrate from GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange.
- Implement VMWare ESX.
- Upgrade to Active Directory 2003.
- Move over to TrendMicro AV protection.
- Install a new Backup system.
- Configure IBM NAS for primary network storage.
- Upgrade the NEC PBX phone system.
- Completely configure and install IT infrastructure for the new facility.
- Maintain current ERP and software packages.
- Roll out new PCs, printers, and technology based equipment.
- …. tons of other things I can’t think of right now.
All that just this year. Wow. Something I don’t understand though. At my last job, we never upgrading anything. Here, I upgraded nearly everything and management is ecstatic about the IT department. Go figure. I mean, here I stand, the plain old IT guy, in the ranks of two doctors and three directors of operations. That is just outstanding…. all for just doing my job.
Griminal Grim's Ramblings
The boy and I are going to a local LAN this weekend. I’m hoping they play lots of TF2.
At work, the database server I’ve been using decided to take a crap. Come to find out the service shut down due to low disk space. I have to give props to MySQL. They make the tools to export, import, u-port, i-port, whatever-port, copy, paste, etc. so easy. I threw up a VM 2003 R2 server, installed XAMPP, copied the databases into the MySQL database folder, and started the service. I went from a down machine to not being down in 20 minutes.
Griminal Grim's Ramblings