Madsystem.net Jim Shonk

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Well looks like ya found my blog: Way down here in Crooksville , Perry County that is, smack in the middle of the Ohio Valley, Madystem is hosted on a Home born Slackware Raid server, Running Apache, Mysql, Bind, KDE, WordPress, all free open source and just plain bad ass, I just wanted a place to keep up with freinds and Family share some Mini How to’s, photos and play with code,

I can also be found on FaceBook

Jim Shonk | Create Your Badge

Sincerely: Jim Shonk

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Baughman Park another Lost Ohio

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Presidents in the Woods

Picture_211_Small.jpgHIGH ON A RIDGE IN A REMOTE, HEAVILY WOODED AREA OF SOUTHEASTERN Ohio, a towering stone figure of Warren G. Harding guards a rarely traveled gravel road. Barely visible through the undergrowth a hundred feet farther down the road are strange figures carved into sandstone outcroppings: an eagle in flight, an elephants head, Abraham Lincoln, an Indian chief. A crouching lion and a wildcat cast wary eyes at passersby. William McKinley stands presidential on a pedestal in the front yard of an abandoned house from which some of the siding has fallen, revealing the original log cabin underneath. The road continues past statues of James McPherson and James A. Garfield and climbs thirty feet to the top of the ridge, where solitary figures are dotted around a two-acre clearing: George Washington, a dough boy, a headless William Tecumseh Sherman, Theodore Roosevelt. Deep in the brush in a natural amphitheater on the hillside below the clearing, a stone shelf bears a carved dedication: “Baughman Memorial Park. Named by Chas. Long. …” The rest of the inscription is obscured by moss and dirt.

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Vacation 2008 Smoky MT Biltmore House

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This vacation had some unexpected surprises, We did the usual, dolly-wood, pigeon
forge, Mountains, Cable car,but it wasn’t until reading a flyer on things to do that we discovered the Biltmore House. The largest private residence in the USA, this was the best $40 bucks I ever spent. We enjoyed the self guided tour and the winery, ate lunch and spent the afternoon exploring the property. This is wealth beyond your wildest dreams, it was amazing to me that the Vanderbilts could even have the vision to build something so spectacular. There are more photos HERE or read more

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Big Muskie AEP’s Goliath

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One of my favorite pastimes as a teens was to to go fishing at Ohio Power Lakes. Aep.s recreatiom land were  there are over 700 man maid lakes and many nature made,  That in it self was a blast but the best feature for me was to watch big muskie ripping away at the land, Built in 1969, owned by Central Ohio Coal Co. Last used in 1991. Cost $25 million to build. A model 4250-W Bucyrus Erie drag line: only one ever built. She moved in her life time over 608,000,000 cubic yards of overburden ( twice that amount during the construction of the Panama Canal) Pictures and video are cool but words can hardly explain the shear aw struck feeling that would overwhelm you when this beast was seen in action, It maid you feel very small and insignificant, Sadly like many other great man maid wonders this toy was dismantled and sold for scrap, The bucket was saved and is now on display at at Miners Memorial Park along rt 78 10 miles east of McConnelsville Ohio,  READ MORE ->>

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Our new Puppy Autumn

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Autumn is the pain in the butt controlling our life at the moment, Autumn came into our life after my wife’s beloved dog Corky passed away, Corky was a wonderful dog and was her best friend for 14years, loyal and loving, she left a huge void in our life, After many weeks of cumming home to an empty house we decided to get a new Puppy, And boy did we get one, This little bundle of joy has filled the void and takes up most of our free time.

There are more photos HERE

Vacation 2007. Rockies Yellowstone, MT Rushmore

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ys17.JPGI just thought I would share some photos from our vacation, This was something I always wanted to do, We left Ohio and drove to the Black hills of South Dakota were we saw Mt Rushmore, Then over to Bad Lands national park, We left there and went onto Yellowstone and checked out old faithful and the lodge witch was awesome. After a few days there we drove down through the Grand Tetons and onto the Rocky mountains, it took 9 days almost 4k miles, If you have never driven through this part of the country I highly recommend it.

There are more photos HERE

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Someplace under the rainbow

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Rainbow

Today was just one of those early summer days that was almost perfect,  The temperature was around 80 all day and there was little to know breeze at all, then around 7 pm it started to storm, the rain was out of the east which was sort of strange, also there were small pieces of hail in it, the sky never really got dark like it does in most thunderstorms and then the next thing I see is the biggest most perfect rainbow ever, so I grabbed the camera and snapped some shots.  These photos were taken standing on the front porch looking straight ahead,  The arch was just perfect and the sky above the rainbow was light and bellow was dark which I have never seen as well, everything about it was so well defined. It lasted around 30 minutes and then the sky was blue and the wind was gone, just like that.

See the rest of the photos here

The truth about Stonewall Cemetery in Lancaster Ohio

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st2.jpgI grew up on this road named after the Stonewall Cemetery, And ened up living in the farm house less than 1/4 behind it. We had a blast as children playing here and even more parking here as a teen.

There are several legends and myths about this place, So I thought I would post some history about it. Stonewall Cemetery is located on Stonewall Cemetery Road, about ½ mile from US-22, outside Lancaster, Ohio (Hocking Township, Fairfield County). The coordinates are 39° 41′ 28.55″ N, 82° 38′ 22.9″ W. Stonewall Cemetery a small family cemetery that is no longer active. It is maintained by the Fairfield County Historical Parks. The cemetery is kept locked to prevent vandalism. The inscription above the gate gives some history about the cemetery. It reads:

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What happened to San Toy Ohio

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While out taking a sunday drve with the wife, we stumbled upon San Toy Ohiosan1.jpg
The town of San Toy, in Perry County, is gone now, but it has a lot left to indicate that a thriving town once stood at this intersection in the rural backwoods of Perry County

Between 1900 and 1927, San Toy was a prosperous company town. It was created by the Sunday Creek Coal Company to provide lodging for its employees at the two San Toy coal mines. How did it get its odd name? There are so many stories that it’s impossible to say. It was a fad of the Victorian era to give things Chinese-sounding names, so maybe San Toy just sounded good. Another story says that the town’s best boxer was named Sam Troy, and they wanted to name the town after him, but the handwriting on the town’s charter was misread and misprinted. Probably the closest thing to the truth is the story that the Sunday Creek Coal Company had invested in a Broadway musical called San Toy (which actually did exist around the turn of the century). When it flopped they lost a lot of money. The story goes that, surveying the town, one said to another, “Let’s hope this isn’t another San Toy.”……. Read More —>!

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Favorites or Book Marks as a Home Page

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Here is a kewl trick I have used for years, Bookmarks as your home page.
This trick works for Internet Explorer and Fire Fox.
First go to you (C:\) drive and make a new folder called homepage.
Now open your Internet Explorer and go to File Import/Export Then hit Next and chose
Export Favorites. You will get a pop up window, Just hit next and then Browse and Thin hit the drop down box and point to (C:\hompage) and then choose save.
Now go to My Computer (C:\Homepage) and double click on the new file called bookmark.htm. Read More –> Read more »

Delete Temporary internet files

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Temporary internet Files
Well this should help some of you. While tiring to optimize my system one night . “Believe it or not”, I found this little bug, Temporary internet files were slowing down my system and taking up disk space, Now I know your thinking for Christ sakes MadDoG I have deleted my temporary internet files many times, Nope!. You have never deleted your temporary internet files.
Let me tell you why, It seems our little buddy bill gates either missed this little bug or built it in intentionally , If it were a mistake you would think service pack 1 would have fixed it. So here is the skinny, You can go to control panel, internet options and delete your cookies and temp files right? Shore ya can, However it does not delete them. it deletes there face known to windows but keeps all the files there. “REALY” This pissing me off big time I had to find a solution. and here it is, Read More –>!

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Increase BROADBAND

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A while back we lerned about “gpedit” Now we are going to use this hidden tool to hop up our braodband a bit. Now this is not some tweak that will jump up and announce i’s self out loud. But it will increese data transfer under heavy loads. So here goe’s
This is for broad band connections. I didn’t try it on dial up but might work for dial up.
make sure your logged on as actually “Administrator”. do not log on with any account that just has administrator privileges. After Logged in hit start then run and type the following… Read More –>

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Add an Item to the Send To Menu

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This weeks tip will show us how to add a folder or location to the SEND TO menu when you right click a file or folder, The first thing you will need to do is make shore your viewing hidden system files and folders, To do this go to Control Panel , Folder Options, and click on the view tab. In the list make shore you have “Show hidden files and folders” is checked, You can create a new shortcut on the Send To menu, for example, one that goes to a frequently-used folder. (I use my Temp Folder) To lern how to do this… Read More –>

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Create desktop icons for Shutdown or Restart


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I like things simple so I make shortcut’s to things I often use and want real fast, This is my fovorite, Fast shut down and Reboot.Tool: Create Shortcut WizardInstead of clicking Start>Turn Off Computer and selecting Shutdown or Restart, you can create desktop icons which automatically shutdown or restart your PC with just a double-click. This tweak makes use of the Shutdown.exe command to create a new shortcut as follows: Shutdown Icon Read More –>
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Lonley Key Print Screen

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This week tips will cover a key on your key board that just sit’s there and seems to never work, The Print Scr/Sys Rq key. What the hell ya say. Believe it or not this lonely key has a purpose. It’s the only way to take a screen shot of your desktop without installing a 3rd party program. So lets try it together, Go ahead right now hit the Print Scr key 1 time. Nothin happened right? WRONG, a picture of you desktop is now hanging in limbo on the clip board. Now go to Start / Programs / Accessories / Paint, Now in paint chose Edit Paste. You may also want to make it full screen. Hit the center square on the upper right function bar. There is your screen shot. Now just choose save as . Name it, Pick the format and there ya go. You can also use adobe photoshop if you have it. Just open adobe pick new and right click paste. Be careful not to do this while viewing Hamster Porn.

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Clean your prefetch to improve performance

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This is a simple tweek that will improve system preformance,

This is an unique technique for WinXP. We know that it is necessary to wash registry and TEMP files for Win9X/ME/2000 periodly. Prefetch is a new and very useful technique in Windows XP. However, after using XP some time, the prefetch folder can get full of rarely used or obsolete links which can slow down your computer noticeably. My suggestion is: open C(system drive):/windows/prefetch, delete all files (or at least those more than 3 weeks old), reboot. I recommended that you do this every month.

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Explore your system

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Here is another nice tool built in the XP OS that rarely gets used, Explorer, I would guess the main reason is, it’s tucked away under accessories and the darn thing opens to my documents by default. But Explorer is a lot better than MY COMPUTER, It lets you have control of the complete system, Recycle bin and all , so I felt around with it a bit and figured out how to make it open any ware I want, the C: is best for most. Here is how to do it.. Read More –>

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A free CPU meter

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This little tweak will let you put Windows XP’s built in CPU meter right down in the system tray. So let’s have some fun and make this toy available.
I love these little built in toy’s that you have to hack to get them running. Here’s how it’s done.. Read More –>

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Flush DNS

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DNS is one of the most important parts of the net. Each time you type in a web adress (ie) “www.whateversite.com” you contact a DNS server that takes a look at that name and finds what ip it lives at.
This can be slow or fast but it will most likely account for the firts 2 or 3 secounds (sometimes much more) of a page loading.

Your system caches this, That can be good but once there are to many it can be bad becouse it takes longer to look threw them all.

You can take a look at your DNS master records by going to “START” then “RUN” and type “CMD” that will load the comand line console.
Now type “ipconfig /displaydns” This will return the master records. each master can contain thousands of ip translations.

It’s a good idea to kleen this out from time to time, we can do that by typing “ipconfig /flushdns” this will clear the master recors out and start fresh. It’s sorta like getting a new phone book. Nice and clean with no wrinkeld pages.



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Internet Explorer cache size

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The maximum size of your Internet Explorer browser cache is most likely 100 megabytes or more . Generally, cache sizes above 80 megabytes waste disk space and can actually cause slower performance.:

How to adjust the IE cache size

Start Internet Explorer
Select Tools | Internet Options | General tab
Under Temporary Internet Files click the Settings button.
In the box for the amount of disk space to use, enter a value between 5 and 80 megabytes.
Click OK to accept the changes.

PS: Since I have a very fast Internet Connection I have found that setting my temp Internet Files to one Megabyte gives me the best performance.

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Faster IP information

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Well, since the replies to last few post have complemented the LERNING FACTOR I thought you all mite enjoy a small taste of some C+ code. So here goes .

Use this if you just want to display your IP address and not the extra information (default gateway / subnet mask)

Simply copy and paste the following into notepad

@echo.
@ipconfig | find “IP Address”
@echo.
@pause

And save as IP.BAT (save to your windows dir if you want to be able to access it anywhere)

Then go to “SART” then “RUN”

Now when you type IP and hit enter you will see:

—————————

IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : x.x.x.x

Press any key to continue . . .
—————————

What the hell is all this, Simple Codeing

(information about the code: @echo. produces a blank line, @ipconfig | find “IP Address” causes the output of ipconfig to be piped to the find command, which looks for the line containing “IP Address”, find then outputs your IP address, @pause causes the terminal to wait for user input before continuing. The @ before each command tells the terminal not to echo the command being typed.)

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Faster Disk Seek Time, Gpedit

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This week we will tweak up your Disk Seek Time.

Windows XP by default run’s a program on your hard disk called indexing service. This program came about during the development of XP to speed up file searches on the local disc for third party end users who run large data bases, The down side is. Each file is tagged with a index symbol that XP looks for each time the disk is called upon. The result is “SLOWER SEEK TIME” If you feel you do not benefit from finding files on your own system a little faster, “BELIEVE ME YOU DON’T” then you can turn off Indexing witch will speed up your disk seek time by at least 2 ms . To do this.. Read More –>
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Control XP Services

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This week were going to hop things up a bit.

This tip will cover the services you are running in the back ground and are probably not even aware of. So let’s get started. Now go to Control Panel, Then Administrative Tools, and Finally Services. Now lets go ahead and make the widow big, Jump up and click on the maximize button. Center one near the X UPPER RIGHT. Now to help a bit more lay your mouse right over the little hash between Name and Description and drag to the right making the Name column now wider to expose the complete title of the service. Now there are 5 columns, Name, Description, Status, Startup Type, and finally Log On As. We are concerned with Status and Startup Type, in the Status column you will see Started if the service is running. And in the Startup Type there are 3 options. Manual, Automatic and Disabled, Now highlight one that is started and right click on it.. Now Read More.. –>

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Control Panel Short Cuts

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The Run dialog gives you easy access to many different programs and options. To get to the Run dialog, click the Start button, then click Run. Type in the command and press Enter, to launch it. For example, type “control folders” (without the quotes) in the Run dialog and press ENTER. Here is a list of commands to use, and what they do:…. Read More.. –>

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