How Your IT Guy Really Feels

I know I said I would be taking a break here, but I found this today and it was too funny to not repost it. I honestly don’t feel like this too much any more, but I certainly did back in my help desk days. Some times you would get on a call with someone, and it would feel like an eternity. Especially if that person was somewhat computer illiterate. Also, it would be exacerbated by the fact that when most users call you with their issues, it is automatically your fault! sometimes when you head to work, you feel like the guy below: [Via Make Use Of] del.icio.us Tags: geek,funny,humor,tech support,help desk Related articles Help Desk Rules (writteninc.blogspot.com) What's a 12 O'Clock Flasher? (bauer-power.net) Big...

Read more »

Holiday Review of Set Top Boxes Via Tech Chop

I hope everyone had a great long weekend! I certainly did. It was nice having four days off with the family to not have to think about work for a bit. Even better was that my wife let me film another installment of Tech Chop!This one was about a month in the making really. I bought two set top boxes, The WD TV Live Plus, and The Boxee Box. Plus my desktop tech Frank let me borrow his Apple TV. I already had the Mvix, which finally crapped out on me and was the inspiration for this whole idea.Anyway, I plugged them in and tested them all out, and came up with this review!I have to say it was so therapeutic smashing the living crap out of the piece of junk Mvix. That thing was fine for about a year, then it would overheat and would stop in the...

Read more »

Taking A Short Break From Bauer-Power

Hey guys, first I hope you had a great Thanksgiving yesterday for those of you in America reading the blog. I am sure like me you are stuffed from eating all that delicious Turkey and fixens! I'm also sure you are probably in a drunken stuper right now from dealing with all of your family members and inlaws... errr... I mean, ceebrating with them of course!Anyway, the purpose of this post is to let you know that I will be taking a week or so off from writing on Bauer-Power. My long time buddy Karl over at Ask The Admin has been way too busy to keep up with his Internet presence. Since I am still officially a guest blogger for Ask The Admin, I told him that I would take the reigns for a little while to keep his content current. I mean, his blog...

Read more »

Block Adblock On Your Blogger/Blogspot Site

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS AN OLDER POST. THE JAVASCRIPT FILE MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. I guess that title is a misnomer. I mean, this method doesn't really "block" Adblock software per se, but it certainly does the next best thing! If you don't use Adblock software, then you probably aren't aware of any changes here at Bauer-Power, but if you do use it (I'm looking at you Ryan, and Frank), you probably noticed a nice little message pop up asking you to kindly disable Adblocker when using this site. For those of you whose arms are tired from shaking your fist in the air while cursing my name, allow me to plead my case a bit. You see, a lot of you come here because you are looking for a solution for something. Maybe you are...

Read more »

37 Tips For Using Wireshark

I talked about an alternative to Wireshark yesterday made by Microsoft called Network Monitor. What if you still are on the Wireshark bandwagon though, and you don't want to give up on it? I mean, it is probably the most well known packet sniffer/network analyzer out there right? Well, I've got something for you, or rather Wireshark University does. It's their list of 37 tips and tricks for getting the most out of Wireshark, including steps on how to do them.I thought I would re-post it here as an aid for you guys, but also as a sort of knowledge base for myself. If there is something I had a hard time fixing, or finding on the internet, I like to post it here on Bauer-Power. I'm sort of self-serving that way I guess. Anyway, here it is:Tip...

Read more »

Alternative To Wireshark in Windows For Network Monitoring and Analysis

I have been dealing with an intermittant network issue for the past month and a half at work. Maybe once or twice per week, one of our VLANs will drop out for about 5 minutes, then come back up. I was talking with a Network Engineer friend of mine, and he thought it was probably a spanning-tree issue, however I'm not convinced of that. I explained the issue to another friend of mine who has been doing networking for a really long time, and he doesn't think it's a spanning-tree issue because only the one VLAN goes down, and all traffic on that VLAN doesn't stop. Anything on that VLAN can still talk to each other, it's the inter-VLAN routing that stops working, and that is handled by the firewall.Great, so look at the firewall right? Not really,...

Read more »

An Ode To Epic Meal Time

The wife took the kids out to a potluck over the weekend and left me at home to fend for myself. Me being the fan of Epic Meal Time that I am, I decided to head out to the store and get stupid, and make a truly Epic Meal!Not only that, but I decided to film the madness, and share it with you haters here on the Internets! Flippin' smart! Now, I am only one man, so I couldn't quite make a meal on the scale of Epic Meal Time, so I scaled it back a bit. Still, what I created, even though it looked like a food abomination, was really damn good!Check it out!Want to make this nonsense epic meat loaf? Here is what you'll need:2+ LBS of Ground Beef3 EggsDried OnionsItalian Bread CrumbsApplewood Smoked BaconBox Mac and Cheese2 Sausage Biscuits with Egg...

Read more »

Prepare For SOPA Round Two

Well my fellow anti Internet Blacklisters, according to the guys over at Fight For The Future, the Internet stepped up to answer the call to protect our freedoms on the Internet from the proposed Internet Blacklist legislation known as SOPA and the Protect IP act.According to Ars Technica, even Nancy Pelosi (Who I normally despise) has joined the opposition to SOPA. According to Timothy B. Lee:Reacting to a tweet from San Francisco resident Jeffrey Rodman, the San Francisco Democrat tweeted on Thursday that her colleagues "need to find a better solution than #SOPA." She also urged Congress: "#DontBreakTheInternet." This seems to be the first time Pelosi has weighed in on the SOPA debate, and it suggests that the concerns of SOPA's critics are...

Read more »

The Internet Blacklist Bill [Infographic]

Yesterday I posted a little about the Internet Blacklist bills that congress is trying to shove down our throats. These bills are similar to Internet censorship bills you may have heard about in citizen loving countries like China, Iran and Syria (Did you catch that sarcasm?)Well the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is a non-profit Internet watchdog group that fights to preserve your rights to a free internet which includes free speech. These bills seek to erode those freedoms, and I just can’t sit back and do nothing about it. Neither should you.Check out this infographic explaining the dangers of the Internet Blacklists:Want to do something? Click the infographic to find out how you can ask your representatives to fight this nonsense....

Read more »