tsclient vs. rdesktop

If you use tsclient under Linux to connect to a remote Windows desktop via RDP5, then you may want to check out using rdesktop instead. From my (admittedly brief) experience with rdesktop, the speeds are much greater, and I’m not entirely sure why. I don’t know if rdesktop has more options that allow for fine tuning the connection or if tsclient (being a GUI) is slower than the command-line rdesktop due to the extra overhead of the GUI rendering. I’m not sure.

If you’re looking to use rdesktop instead of tsclient, you can read through the well-written man page for figuring out your command line. To help you out, here is the command line that I use to connect to my remote Windows 7 desktop:

/usr/bin/rdesktop -u[USERNAME_REDACTED] -z -xb -P -g1280x960 REMOTE_HOSTNAME_HERE

Hope this helps!

Welcome Linux MINT

I’ve been a long-time user of Ubuntu for my desktops, laptops and netbook, but those days are over. I got fed up with the Unity interface and the kludge of packing GNOME on top of it to make that work semi-properly. I’ve been using Ubuntu since 6.04 (11.10 is the latest) and that’s quite a few years.

Now, I’m a dedicated Linux MINT fan after only two days of using it. It took me only a few hours to backup $HOME, install MINT, restore $HOME and configure/polish/tweak things to where I wanted them. That’s not too bad.

I’ve only done this on my work laptop thus far, but I plan on dropping MINT on my desktop (probably over the weekend) and once I’m done with that, I’ll go with MINT on my netbook as well.

My server (the one hosting this site) will remain Ubuntu server because I don’t have to put up with any GUI garbage on servers.

I’m A Master!

I just received my complete transcript from Regis University today. As of 11 days ago, I’m officially a master of information assurance!

Happy Dance!

I haven’t received the fancy diploma yet. That’s coming in the mail in the next few weeks. I can’t wait to get it, frame it and hang it on the section of the wall in my office that makes me look like I know what I’m doing.

So Busy

Sorry for the severe lack of posting here. I’ve been hammered by tons of stuff lately. Let’s go through the list:

• Work
• Daddy duties
• Role playing and/or gaming most Saturdays
• Running my writer’s group
• Looking for an agent for my first book
• Working on the second book
• Finishing my masters degree in information assurance***
• Reading

Yeah. That about sums it up.

*** I am pseudo-officially done with my MS in IA!!! I received word a few days ago that things are completed on the paperwork side of things and I have all of the signatures that I need for the thesis. I’m just waiting for graduation day to arrive (no, not walking across the stage,) so I can get my diploma and mount it on the wall alongside the rest of my educational accolades!

I Love the Internet!

On the drive into work this morning, I thought about a book that I read back around 6th or 7th grade. The book was “The Man in the Maze.” I could remember the title and the basic storyline, but not the author, publisher, ISBN, publication date or many of the other critical elements necessary to find the book. I plugged in the title into Google and added “novel” to the end of it. The first link was to the Evil Overlords, Amazon, so I followed it. The synopsis of the story matched what I had thought the story to be, so I snagged the ISBN from the summary data and ran over to half.com and searched for it. Sure enough, there were plenty of copies for purchase, but many of them were priced well over $70. That was a stupid amount of money for a book that’s not even leather-bound or signed. At the bottom of the page, I noticed a section marked “Other Editions,” so I followed the link to the first printing, just to see how much more stupid the prices could get. Much to my surprise and pleasure, there were several copies marked as “Like New” for $0.75.

To make a long story a little longer, I snagged a copy for the seventy-five cents (plus almost four dollars in shipping) and it’s already on its way to me!

If you know me well, then you know I have a huge backlog of books to read. Yep. This one will go in the pile, but it’ll probably go in the “keep forever” shelf since I’ve been thinking about this fantastic science fiction book for about ten years now.

I Love Google!

A co-worker was telling me of a movie, but could not remember the lead actor’s name nor the movie title. It did sound interesting enough that I wanted to see it with a beer or two in me. The premise of the movie went something like this:

The protagonist is imprisoned for a crime and frozen for 1,000 years. During that time all of the smart people decided to stop having kids because of the expense, hassle or whatever. However, the idiots of the world kept having kids “like rabbits.” When the protagonist wakes up from his incarceration, his formerly average intelligence is now nearly superhuman as compared to the rest of the world.

He was unable to find the movie in his head or on IMDB (no actor and no title makes it rough.) I turned to Google and entered, “movie future people get dumber” and the first link was this one. Idiocracy was the name of the movie.

It’s for this reason that I love Google. It makes finding rare, obscure and seemingly irrelevant facts easy to find.

Thank you, Google!

Telescope

I bought a telescope about two weeks ago, and it should be arriving any day now. I’m expecting a call from the local telescope shop very soon telling me that it’s time to come get trained on its usage, pack it up and take it home. I can’t wait to get my grubby little hands on it!

I ordered this telescope along with this lens set and this AC adapter. I didn’t order them from telescopes.com, though. I ordered it through a local telescope shop. It cost me about $200 more, but the training will be well worth it. They also test out the telescope to make sure that it works properly before handing it over to me and will support them during my learning curve days. Well worth the extra cash.

I thought about setting up (yet another) domain to host my astrophotography images, but I think I’ll just use this blog here to do it. The theme is already setup for that angle and I haven’t put this site to use much lately. Maybe my photos of remote objects in the sky will give me something to write about.

Serenity Springs Wildlife Center

Over the weekend, Kiara had the great idea to pack up Kiernan and me and haul us 90 minutes out to the eastern part of Colorado to visit Serenity Springs Wildlife Center. We had a great time on the tour and Kiernan was vastly amused and impressed by the large number of great cats that they have there. Christy, the tour guide, really knew her stuff and was very open and friendly. We even had our picture taken with one of their tiger cubs, and it came out great. Kiernan wasn’t too horribly sure about touching the cat even though we have plenty at home, but he did pet the little cub a few times after our urging.

If you have the time, head out to Calhan and visit Serenity Springs. They’ll show you a good time for $10 a head at the gate. You really can’t beat that price for 3 hours of fun and education. Make sure to take your camera (no video, though!)

OSCON 2010 — MIA

I’m MIA from O’Reilly’s OSCON this year, and this has turned me into a very sad techo-geek. I’m missing out on familiar faces, many classes, tons of learning opportunities, the great FSF people (Hi, Deborah!), a few after-hours parties, staying up too late, getting up too early, the SourceForge Awards (are these even happening this year?), free tattoos (if SourceForge is having their party, that is), and much much more.

Even though I’m not in Portland this week hob nobbing with the best and brightest of the Open Source world, I am here at the office having a very productive week. I guess that’s something, eh?

Light Email Day

Today’s one of those odd days where I haven’t gotten much in the way of email: personally or professionally. It’s given me some free time to clean up some stuff, get started on a few projects, do a little more reading than I normally would have done at lunch, and simply relax a bit. It’s a good start to a busy weekend.