Disable the “No mail” notification on machines which have no local mail
On machines which are set up to have no local mail and send all their messages to a smarthost, using e.g. exim4, the "No mail." message at login is both unnecessary and annoying, because when things are set up correctly, there should never be any local mail in the first place.
This can be remedied by editing /etc/pam.d/ssh (or whichever file corresponds to the login method you're using) and taking a look at the two following lines:
# Print the status of the user's mailbox upon successful login. session optional pam_mail.so standard noenv # [1]
It's time to comment something out 
Hardware clock fix for Debian on Mac Mini
On my Mac Mini, the hardware clock was seriously screwed up under Debian. The clock would set itself 1 hour back for each boot and cause all kinds of strange issues with cron when corrected. A small fix will remedy this situation.
1. sudo vim /etc/init.d/hwclock.sh
2. change 'HWCLOCKPARS=' to 'HWCLOCKPARS="--directisa"' (note: that's two dashes before directisa, even if your browser might put them together)
3. On Debian Lenny, you have to do the same to the HWCLOCKPARS line in /etc/init.d/hwclockfirst.sh
Disable Debian’s motd on login
Tired of seeing this?
Linux ***** 2.6.18-6-686 #1 SMP Fri Jun 6 22:22:11 UTC 2008 i686 The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software; the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright. Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law. Last login: ***** from *****
Edit /etc/motd, remove everything in it, or 'echo "" > /etc/motd'
Then edit /etc/rcS.d/S55bootmisc.sh and comment out the two lines following "#Update motd"
Nifty linux oneliners
This is a list of nifty oneliners I often use and just as often forget. Now I have a place to jot them down.
Installing vmware from scratch
This is an updated (as of 6. July 2008) howto on how to install vmware server on top of a fresh install of Debian Linux.
The stuff I always install on a Debian box
Sitting here installing a brand new box, I look through what I use on other machines and figure out a list of things I want to have installed on any box I'm on. Here's the list so far, in no particular order:
SMS Message Recieved Confirmation – IMPLEMENT IT PROPERLY
Okay. If you have a cell phone, you've probably sent an SMS or two. I hate writing them, but sometimes they're useful. When you're on the subway and the connection goes in and out constantly, when you're in a meeting, sending something which needs to be remembered or simply when you need to say something to someone you can't stand talking to.
How to reset the root password on a Debian machine
Today I had to bring up an old virtual machine which was used to test some homebrew modifications to the apache webserver. The root password, of course, was nowhere to be found. What can you do?
Intellisense issues in Visual C++ 2005
This content has been deliberately stolen from http://blogs.msdn.com/yash/archive/2007/09/19/intellisense-issues-in-visual-c-2005.aspx and saved here for personal reference.
All credits to that page.