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One slight pain about getting a new computer is having to remember how to copy the Firefox bookmarks from one computer to another.  Of course the easy way would be to click Bookmarks/Organize Bookmarks on the old computer and simply export the bookmarks to a file and copy that file to the new computer.  The problem is if your old computer is already turned off, gutted, windows won’t boot or any other reason that would prevent you from actually running Firefox on the old system.

Fortunately there is a somewhat easy way to copy the bookmarks file from one computer to another just by accessing the old drive and coping the file by usb key or a direct-drive copy.  This information assumes you are using Firefox 3.

If the old computer is Windows XP, navigate to the following folder – replace the username and profile names with whatever is correct for your computer:
C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\Application Data\Mozilla\
Firefox\Profiles\<profile name>\bookmarkbackups\

For a Windows Vista, use the following path:
C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\
Firefox\Profiles\<profile name>\bookmarkbackups\

Here you will find an automatic bookmark backup Firefox creates on a daily basis.  Copy the most recent file to the new computer.

On the computer, start Firefox and click Bookmarks/Organize Bookmarks from the menu.  Then click the Import and Backup button and Restore/Choose File.  Navigate and select the backup file from the old computer, click OK and voila!  Your bookmarks have all been restored to the new computer!

Happy surfing!

It was finally time to reward myself for all the hard-work I put in to developing and teaching three web development courses at the University of Winnipeg Department of Continuing Education by getting a new computer.  I bought everything from Memory Express since I’ve been impressed by their customer service, their prices and their customer-friendly return policy.  Here are the specs on the new computer:

Intel Core i7 920 – Quad core at 2.66Ghz CPU
ASUS P6T Deluxe v2 Motherboard
OCZ 6 Gb (3x 2Gb) DDR-3 1600Mhz 7-7-7-24 Memory
BFG MAXCORE GTX 260 OCX 896Mb
Seagate 500Gb SATA-2 Hard Drive
PC Power & Cooling 750W Power Supply
Antec Sonata III Case

Since it’s not often I get to play with new hardware, I like to build the system myself.  Fortunately Memory Express installs the CPU, fan and memory in to the motherboard to test and that saves me some work.  Here’s a picture of the stack of boxes I brought home.  Yes, the kitchen table is my work desk.

After swapping out the default 500W power supply with the 750W power supply and installing the motherboard, there are cable everywhere!  Almost looks like a cylon hybrid…

The BFG GTX 260 OCX video card.  Not only is this thing HUGE but it requires TWO additional power inputs!

I spent about an hour making all the cables nice and neat for good air flow, aesthetics and because I’m a big nerd.

So far, the system absolutely kicks-ass.  Installing Vista x64 was pretty fast and everything I do is lightning fast and super responsive.  I /had/ to try Left 4 Dead and all the settings are maxed out and the game play is smooth. I’ll have to install VMWare Server 2 and get this machine really working.

Once all my data is moved over and triple-checked, I’ll rebuild the previous AMD 64×2 computer as the new VMWare ESXi server.  That should be a fun project as my server desperately needs an upgrade!

I think I’ve done all the testing that needed to be done at this point.  I believe that my existing AMD Athlon X2-3800+ will make a suitable VMWare ESXi server for Windows Server 2003 and Fedora Core 6 Linux running along side eachother.  Should be a good upgrade over the existing Dell P4 1.5Ghz system that currently runs Windows Server 2003 native with Fedora Core 6 as a VM guest through VMWare Server 1.

For my main system, I’ll be moving up to an Intel Core i7 920, 6 gigs of RAM and a shiney new BFG GTX 260 OCX video card.  The video card is a monster both in size and power consumption but hey, it’s nice to reward yourself every once in a while.

I’ll post more details about the new computer, the ESXi migration and pictures when I get the new hardware.

Took my first kick at setting up VMWare ESXi 3.5 U3 tonight.  Result: Fail.  ESXi wouldn’t recognize the IDE hard drive on my ASUS A8N-SLI Premium motherboard.  Some information online shows ESXi will recognize the IDE drive if I enable RAID mode on the motherboard or if I use a SATA drive instead.  Sooooo might have to buy a 500GB SATA drive from Memory Express – my new personal vendor of choice.  Oh well, can’t really go wrong with another 1/2 terabyte of storage to play with.  The plan is run SATA RAID-1 so I’d be buying two 500gb drives anyways.

Following up to an older blog post, getting Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP) to reverse-proxy with a half-recent version of Apache is pretty damn impossible.  It’s also pretty hard getting an older version of Apache 2.0.x to build cleanly on modern Linux but it’s a good learning experience.

Fun stuff, honest!