Difference between revisions of "User:ColeSlaw"

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(Cole Brodine)
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Revision as of 21:52, 6 February 2007

Cole Brodine

About Me

Born Jan 7, 1982 (Extrapolate my age from that)

I'm a Distribution Engineer working for Nebraska Public Power District in Kearney Nebraska. I'm also a member of IEEE. I design Distribution power lines. I graduated from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 2005 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. I'm married and have one child.

I started of using Red Hat Linux in 2001 and moved to Suse, then Mandrake before settling on Gentoo as my Linux of choice in 2003.

My first PVR was a Replay TV which had the skip recording ability. It died and become unusable. I couldn't live without the "commercial skip" feature which was already squashed by Hollywood. Thanks to google, I found MythTV and have been a happy user ever since. I first installed MythTV version .17 on a Gentoo Linux box and have been upgrading and improving ever since.

I lurk on the mailing list, occasionally answering an easy question. I can also be found on the Gentoo Forums.

If you really want to know more about me, by homepage is http://www.brodine.com/ although it is completely non-linux related. (My MythTV Link is passworded, so don't even try :) )

My MythTV Systems

Backend/Frontend

  • Antec LifeStyle OVERTURE Black Steel Quiet Media Case
  • TruePower 380Watt ATX12V Power Supply
  • ASUS P4C800 DELUXE Socket 478 Intel Motherboard
  • 2.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4 Processor
  • 1 GB of PC 3200 DDR
  • MSI MX440-T8X GeForce4 64MB DDR AGP
  • Lite-On 16x DVD +/- RW
  • 80 GB Hard drive (main drive)
  • 200 GB Hard drive (dedicated to recordings)
  • Hauppauge PVR-250 TV Tuner Card

Running Gentoo Base System with Vanilla Sources 2.6.17.13. Currently running MythTV 0.20_p12599 from Gentoo's Portage Tree.

Dedicated Frontend

  • Shuttle ST62K Intel Socket 478 w/ built in ATI 9100IGP (RS300) Aluminum Case
  • 1 GB PC 3200 DDR
  • Intel Celeron D 315 Prescott 2.26GHz
  • Creative Labs 6x DVD Player
  • 12 GB 5400 RPM Hard drive (salvaged)
  • Serial IR Receiver (bought from LIRC and MythTV Store on Ebay)

Running Gentoo Base System with Vanilla Sources 2.6.17.13. Currently running MythTV 0.20_p12599 from Gentoo's Portage Tree.

My Network

My TV Service

I have TV Service through DirecTV. My set top box is a D11 series box. I control the set top box using a serial cable instead of an IR blaster. Just the standard package so far, no HD yet. My DirecTV STB is connected to my PVR-250 via S-Video and a Composite Audio to Headphone adapter.

I use Zap2it for my TV listings.

Someday I hope to upgrade to HD, and at that time I will probably quit DirecTV unless they have more customer friendly equipment and recording policies. At the time of writing this, DirecTV does not provide Firewire connections on it's STB. They also charge a small fee for having additional receivers in your home. They are also restrictive about adding receivers without a land phone line (which I do not have).

My WAF

My WAF is generally very high. We have problems and quirks for time to time, but that's generally from me trying to tweak something that shouldn't be played with. She prefers it to a commercial DVR because of the other media capabilities, lack of a monthly fee or service contract, and ability to upgrade with our changing media needs.

To keep your own WAF high, I recommend keeping upgrades and tweaks to a minimum. "If it's not broken, don't fix it". When you do maintenance, make sure to do it at a time when no important recordings are coming up. Give yourself time to make a mistake or two and repair it before missing important shows. I find this especially important since I run a Gentoo System. Keep "emerge world" to a minimum, and always check to make sure which packages and config files are going to be changed.

My Other Computers

I have several other computers (7) running various versions of Gentoo and Windows XP. Most are either built by me, hand-me-down computers, or are Franken-computers. I've had some experience with over clocking and water-cooling systems.

Contacting Me

E-mail is the best method to contact me. cbrodine+mythtv at gmail.com

I use Gaim to Chat, so I'm usually connected to all the major chat networks.

MSN Messenger: brodinec@yahoo.com
Yahoo Messenger: brodinec
ICQ: 5857320
Google Talk: cbrodine at gmail.com