Welcome and thank you for taking time to visit my website. This site was originally built to fulfill a project goal in my Writing Class. As I began working through the process involved in actually building the site, I became interested in fleshing it out from the single page that it started as. Over the course of the following two weeks I had created a web space that included over thirty pages of content, but no real way to manage or navigate them.

It was about this time that I decided that I really wanted to understand how to build out a full featured website.  This also has given me the chance to create an area that my family and friends can browse to see what I have been up to, as well as a virtual repository for my completed works. At present, I have posted all of the major exams and papers that I turned in last semester.  Although there is a lot of content available, the scope is relatively limited.

I am currently attending Pima Community College, studying Network Administration with a concentration in Linux based technology. I am looking forward to posting notes and guides on how to implement what I have been taught in the classroom here, so that it can be available for everyone.  For those who would like to keep an eye on what I am doing, feel free to join the RSS feed and get updated with topics as I find time to post them.  I will also be completing the server backend to allow people to register accounts.  If anyone has any suggestions please feel free to let me know!

Thank You & Enjoy Your Stay!

  Prerequisites: Before proceeding with the installation you need to verify that you have an active Internet connection for the installation of software required for setting up the encryption. This method of encryption utilizes logical volume management. It is assumed that you know how to use LVM. If not, here is a beginners guide to understanding how to use LVM: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/410 Download the 32bit version of the Ubuntu 11.10 Desktop and burn the image to [...]

  Modern hard drives are comprised of metal platers that are aligned on an motorized spindle. The spindle accelerates the platters up to 3600rpm – 7200rpm on standard consumer grade drives. Between each platter is an arm which contains the read/write heads that accesses and writes to the platters that are spinning beneath them. The actual data is recorded onto the surface of the metal platters by magnetizing extremely small magnetic domains. When data is [...]

Modern hard drives are comprised of metal platers that are aligned on an motorized spindle. The spindle accelerates the platters up to 3600rpm – 7200rpm on standard consumer grade drives. Between each platter is an arm which contains the read/write heads that accesses and writes to the platters that are spinning beneath them. The actual data is recorded onto the surface of the metal platters by magnetizing extremely small magnetic domains. When data is accessed [...]

In the consumer arena IDE was the dominant connection protocol until the connection speed could no longer be increased. IDE stands for “Integrated Drive Electronics” and is a form of the Advanced Technology Attachment protocol originally developed by IBM for their AT Computers. The IDE controller resides on the drive in the form of a circuit board and connects to the host adapter on the motherboard via a ribbon cable. The maximum speed for IDE [...]

Modern CPUs process binary data objects and instructions by moving, organizing and processing data using the following methods. Data flows into the processor from memory into the Bus Interface. It is then moved to the L2 Cache control Unit which will determine based on priorities if it needs immediate execution or not. If not it is placed into the L2 Cache until other higher priority tasks have been completed. If it needs immediate execution it [...]

Modern computer memory has seen many different forms and evolutionary improvements in recent years. In todays electronics there are three common forms of memory that are most used. The most common is dynamic random access memory. This is the form of memory that is known as volatile memory as it needs a constant source of electricity to retain the information that is stored within it. It is the most commonly used form of ram due [...]

The boot process begins when the power button is pressed on the computer. The first thing that occurs is that the BIOS is initialized and firmware (Hardware drivers) are loaded into system memory. Once the BIOS loads the firmware a set of tests begins to verify that the system is running correctly before the computer loads the operating system. These test are called the Power on Self Test otherwise known as POST tests, and begin [...]

The CMOS (Also referred to as non volatile BIOS memory) is the portion of the BIOS which contains the settings that are adjusted within the BIOS configuration menus within the BIOS settings. This is typically a separate chip from the one that contains the BIOS, but is usually physically close on the motherboard to the BIOS chip. It’s main function is to make it easy to adjust and revert basic system changes without potentially damaging [...]

The BIOS is the Basic Input and Output instructions of the computer. There are three main components of a modern BIOS. The first contains all of the hardware drivers that are required to initialize and use the hardware. These drivers are typically referred to as firmware. These drivers are different than drivers used within operating systems in that they interact in very specific ways with the hardware to provide the operating system a common hardware [...]

Modern motherboards have been made in many form factors over the years. Most are compliant with the IBM AT defacto standard. Direct descendants of the IBM AT series of motherboards are the Micro-ATX and the ATX. Intel has also introduced in recent years the FlexATX and BTX form factors and Via the Mini-ITX form factor. Mini-ITX is the smallest of the available form factors which still maintains the modularity similar to the original ATX motherboards. [...]