Matthew's Journal

Well, the Ronald Brown is heading back to Panama. The engineering staff still doesn't have a handle on the cause of the problem with the Z-axis drive controllers so we're headed back to port where we're going to meet a Tech. Rep. that is being flown down… more »

Boy did I ever wake up to chaos this morning. At around 3:30 last night the starboard Z-axis drive starting spinning of it's own free will and can only be controlled manually. For those of you playing at home, the ship is propelled by two Z-axis drives a… more »

I went down to Charleston Thursday night to begin my preparations for boarding the Ronald Brown for the VOCALS research cruise. However, Friday morning I learned that there had been a significant electrical problem aboard the Ronald Brown early that morn… more »

My car broke down over the weekend. I did some troubleshooting and I figured out that the fuel pump wasn't working. I was supposed to pick up the part to fix my car this morning. When I got in my wife's car this morning with her to pick up the fuel pump… more »

Recently, we've been have a lot of trouble with servers in my lab. We've had a lot of frustrations with computer hardware and configuring the Linux operating systems to work the way we want. My adviser, Dr. Yuter, was complaining to one of her colleagues… more »

I have a 1991 BMW 318is. For the past few weeks, it has had a vacuum leak in the intake system that's prevented it from idling correctly. My father-in-law, a master mechanic, was kind enough to track down the leak for me. The culprit was the hose coming… more »

Since I moved, my Vonage VoIP internet phone service hasn't been working properly. I was receiving a lot of audio nose and I could barely make out incoming voices. Through some troubleshooting, I isolated to cause of the problem to my Linksys RTP300… more »

A piece of advice to those of you who use both Microsoft Office and Open Office: don't try to mix and match programs! For example, despite claims to the contrary, Open Office is not compatible with Powerpoint. If you create a presentation in one program… more »