After spending hours trying to get the HAL/FDI method to work, I resorted to modifying the xorg.conf directly, though I was able to only add a couple lines, since my current xorg.conf is basically empty, with everything being auto-detected.

The main difference that I wanted (from lots of other posted information) was that I liked the fdi method of configuring things (xorg.conf has always been a scary file to play with) and so I didn't want to have to hard-code everything, which means, as far as I could figure out, to not have a ServerLayout section at all since once I added that to get the touchpad to work properly, it broke everything else.

A hearty welcome goes out to those engineers and hobbyists who have found us via the recent Circuit Cellar article about our DOS USB project last year. 

We hope to post more articles about past projects soon.  The articles will be back-posted (with timestamps to match the dates the projects were completed), so be sure to check the projects page again later.

If you are interested in hiring Lime Daley for embedded software and/or hardware, we'd be happy to hear from you.

Probably not very exciting news for most of you, but to try to keep the cobbler's-kids-don't-have-shoes syndrome at bay, we've updated our web page, which will hopefully be easier to navigate.

Answer 1: The Drink and Inspiration

Here is the recipe for a Lime Daley:

• ice to taste
• 1 lime, cut in half or quarters
• 1 twelve-ounce bottle Blenheim "Old #3" (red cap) ginger ale

Put ice in a tall glass. Squeeze lime over ice and drop in the rinds. Slowly pour in Blenheim. Stir well. Be prepared for the strongest kick a non-alcoholic drink can have.

How do I make a Lime Daley if I don't have fresh limes?

We based this drink on a Lime Rickey, a favorite with Star Island visitors.

Heather's Dad thought it appropriate to name our modified recipe Lime Daley. Heather fixed Jon a Lime Daley while he was researching domain names and wracking his brain for a good company name.

Answer 2: Superior Service and Support

At Lime Daley, we believe that God has given us our gifts and talents and we hope that you will see a reflection of Him in our work. What this means for you is that you will receive honest, dependable answers and incredible service.

Our beliefs also extend to the load on our servers, where we don't oversell bandwidth or disk space, because we expect our customers to use the space they buy. We sell what we have, and don't sell what we don't have. The most common initial response from our customers when first signing up is, "Wow. Your server is so much faster than my old host." That is closely followed by: "I can't believe you respond to my questions so quickly!"

You won't get fast pre-sales responses and then slow responses once you have signed the check -- most queries are answered within thirty minutes, and never more than 12 hours and you can always call or have someone paged to get the work done more quickly.

We believe that our hosting is the best that is available. Thank you for considering us, we look forward to serving you for years to come.

Answer 3: The People

• Circuit design
• Manufacturing support
• Product quality analysis, developing software tests and monitoring the contract manufacturer in order to provide timely and accurate reports to management
• Embedded software for Windows CE 3, 4, and 5
• High level application and web development software design and implementation for increased efficiency in various departments throughout the company.

Throughout all of this work experience, Jon "moonlighted," designing circuits and software for other companies in the areas of manufacturing, test, and also brain imaging. Web hosting provided the opportunity to "jump ship" (or at least slowly slide off the edge of the ship holding on with one hand to the stay) and start Lime Daley, increasing hours fairly linearly from 2004 through 2008, when he started working exclusively for Lime Daley.  He hasn't looked back since.

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Some people have been talking about whether they think in blogging, as in: "this is so much fun, I should blog about it", or, "look how cute the kids are being, I should grab a camera so I can post it on flickr", etc.

I didn't particularly relate to that, but this morning I re-discovered a cipher book I liked as a kid, and thought it would be fun to go through some of it.  And then thought, I could write a script to do this for me, and then, maybe I should blog about that. hrm....

The IRS is supposed to be working on an online calculator to help everyone figure out how much of a rebate (if any) they are due this year.  I was confused about my own taxes, and so once I figured it out, thought I would write an online calculator to help the rest of you.  Try it out here.

The IRS hasn't published their calculator yet, and I have been reading about lots of people trying to figure out what to do with line 70 on their 1040 (ie. the famous RRC that is causing probably more time wasted than was worth the money that was sent out last year.

So, I wrote a calculator this morning.  I went through a bunch of cases, so I think I got all of them, but of course, who knows, with all of the tax tricks, etc. if my understanding of the credit is how it actually works.

And if the IRS ever gets around to actually publishing their calculator, it will presumably be better than mine.  Have fun.

As I wrote earlier, I use worklog to keep track of my time.  I use some other scripts to help manage worklog's output, and now that I made one of the scripts work even nicer today, I figured I should post them.

One of our upstream providers (Sprint) has been having connectivity problems for the last hour, and worse, even after routing to/from them is turned off, they have something misconfigured, so they are grabbing traffic that they don't own, and so generating circular loops into never-neverland.

The worst of it seems to be over, and most traffic seems to be resolving well, but it is not 100% up yet.

I have been quite behind in my magazine reading, and this morning I caught up to August (2008 - at some points, it has been necessary to specify the year when saying how far behind I am).

There is an interesting article in Dr. Dobbs, by Scott Ambler, regarding methods of estimating costs of software development, and whether the typical, fixed price model is even ethical.