Author Archives: Jim Vanderveen

About Jim Vanderveen

I'm a bit of a Renaissance man, with far too many hobbies for my free time! But more important than any hobby is my family. My proudest accomplishment has been raising some great kids! And somehow convincing my wife to put up with me since 1988. ;)

Spinach dip

Posted on 2009-11-24 by Jim Vanderveen

Here’s a recipe for spinach dip from one of Barb’s co-workers. – 1 c sour cream – 1 pkg (1/2 lb) cream cheese, softened – 1 pkg ranch dressing mix – 1 pkg (10 oz) frozen spinach – green onions … Continue reading →

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“Jet Lag”, veal mignonettes

Posted on 2009-11-23 by Jim Vanderveen

A few nights ago we watched “[Jet Lag][]”, starring Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno. With those two in the leading roles my expectations were pretty high for this movie, perhaps too high. It was decent, worth watching, and the score … Continue reading →

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My callsign

Posted on 2009-09-29 by Jim Vanderveen

I just realized that I never posted my ham (amateur radio) [callsign][], something which I meant to do as soon as I received confirmation. It’s: N3JIM If you want to know more about radio callsigns (both ham and broadcast), here’s … Continue reading →

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Orange ginger beef

Posted on 2009-09-05 by Jim Vanderveen

This is one of my family’s favorite recipes. It’s my adaptation of Martin Yan’s recipe from [A Wok For All Seasons][wfas], currently out of print. My copy of this book is falling apart, and I have modified Martin’s recipe quite … Continue reading →

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ADODB on FreeBSD

Posted on 2009-05-23 by Jim Vanderveen

Recently I’ve had one of my student assistants working on setting up a web server. She’s pretty much got it, except that she hasn’t been able to establish a connection from the web server to our database server. We’re wanting … Continue reading →

Posted in FreeBSD, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

DTV conversion

Posted on 2009-03-07 by Jim Vanderveen

My friends and family know that we generally don’t watch TV, so I haven’t been too worried about the digital television conversion issue. Likewise it was no big deal when I heard that the DTV-to-analog rebate program was suspended due … Continue reading →

Posted in Our home remodeling project, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Arden Park hams

Posted on 2009-03-02 by Jim Vanderveen

I got my amateur radio (“ham”) license last week, but I haven’t posted my callsign very widely because I applied for a [vanity callsign](http://www.arrl.org/arrlvec/vanity.html) as soon as I got my license. (It isn’t possible to apply for a vanity call … Continue reading →

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Xserve disk mirror repair

Posted on 2009-01-27 by Jim Vanderveen

Looking over the last few posts, I seem to be stuck in a rut. I apologize to readers looking for stories about our remodeling project, progress on Barb’s quilt shop, cooking, or other tales of home. Believe me when I … Continue reading →

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Duplicate DHCP leases

Posted on 2009-01-16 by Jim Vanderveen

We’ve been getting the following types of error messages on our DHCP server (running on FreeBSD): Jan 12 07:01:52 *someserver* dhcpd: uid lease 192.168.100.200 for client 00:12:34:56:78:9a is duplicate on 192.168.100/24 Google turned up a [helpful post][] which told me … Continue reading →

Posted in FreeBSD, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Background fsck problems

Posted on 2009-01-14 by Jim Vanderveen

We had some trouble with our [FreeBSD][] systems over the holiday shutdown a few weeks ago. Our backup generator didn’t kick in during an extended power outage, and our UPS’s didn’t provide enough runtime to see us through. Result: all … Continue reading →

Posted in FreeBSD, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments