HOWTO create a bootable USB installer for Mac OS X Lion

Here are instructions for doing this in the Terminal. (Other answers you find are out of date, as they change every time Disk Utility’s UI changes, which is a lot.) Before you begin, make sure to partition the USB drive as GPT and format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (aka JHFS+). Make a copy …

HOWTO update HP LaserJet Pro P1102w firmware on macOS

The current version of the firmware (20201023, as of January 22, 2022) for the HP LasterJet Pro P1102w only runs on macOS 10.14 or earlier. This is not great, as macOS 10.14 was released back 2018. If you try to run the (unsigned, sigh) updater, it crashes looking for a missing dylib (/usr/lib/libnetsnmp.15.dylib): The workaround …

How to register a Kindle DX in 2018

I recently repaired a Kindle DX for a friend. As part of that, I reset it to factory defaults. When I went to register it so it would connect to his Amazon Account, I received the following error: Your Kindle is unable to connect at this time. Please try again later. If the problem persists, …

Using a Dell DRAC5 with a modern browser and OS

The DRAC5 is a remote access card, letting you control a server such as the PowerEdge 300. With it, you can simulate physical access to the machine, viewing the screen on boot, entering commands and cycling power. Unfortunately, Dell has neglected this aging product. Trying to use it today will lead to errors in modern …

HOWTO register for a Verizon online account for your business land line

TLDR: Be sure to enter only the first 13 digits of your 16-digit account number. Use hyphens when entering the phone number. I recently had to register for a verizon.com account for the Verizon account for our landline. This process was more difficult and took way longer than it should have, due to: poor website …

Fixing git-svn on OS X El Capitan

When you install a new version of Mac OS X, git svn breaks. This happened with Mountain Lion and Mavericks, it happened with Yosemite. It happens again with El Capitan. Unfortunately, the old solutions no longer work due to El Capitan’s System Integrity Protection: $ sudo ln -s /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Library/Perl/5.18/darwin-thread-multi-2level/SVN /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.18/SVN ln: /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.18/SVN: Operation not permitted …

HOWTO make readline and history work with irb and rails console on OS X Yosemite

Here’s how to make readline (including control-R reverse search) and command history work with both irb and the Rails console with rbenv and OS X Yosemite (10.10.4). You need to install Readline first, as OS X ships with libedit instead. You also need to make sure rbenv knows where you put readline. 1. Install rbenv …

fixing dlopen “no suitable image found” errors with node, sass and grunt

I ran in to this error today: $ grunt css Loading “sass.js” tasks…ERROR >> Error: dlopen(/path/to/project/node_modules/grunt-sass/node_modules/node-sass/vendor/darwin-x64-node-0.12/binding.node, 1): no suitable image found. Did find: >> /path/to/project/node_modules/grunt-sass/node_modules/node-sass/vendor/darwin-x64-node-0.12/binding.node: truncated mach-o error: segment __LINKEDIT extends to 1765408 which is past end of file 1765309 Running “sass:theme” (sass) task OptionParser::InvalidOption: invalid option: –image-path=assets/img Use –trace for backtrace. OptionParser::InvalidOption: invalid option: …

Quick Cruz and Paul updates

Good news: Ted Cruz’s https homepage no longer 404s: $ curl -I https://tedcruz.org/ HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently Server: cloudflare-nginx Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2015 02:03:46 GMT Content-Type: text/html Connection: keep-alive Set-Cookie: __cfduid=d738dec08ca404d83f8aa2b5baafa66821429063426; expires=Thu, 14-Apr-16 02:03:46 GMT; path=/; domain=.tedcruz.org; HttpOnly Location: http://www.tedcruz.org/ Set-Cookie: X-Mapping-fjhppofk=FDCC6397B2B0DC55E6AEB95E4FAB3D36; path=/ CF-RAY: 1d74136e3b2b076d-EWR I noted Rand Paul is running PHP 5.5.9. That’s …