I have been amused by the postings today that many 30GB Zune players died today. The cause is apparently, Microsoft forgot that there are leap years which have 366 days per year.

I love the item on the www.zune.net webpage. "Trouble with your Zune 30? The fix is simple." If you click on the link, it essentially tells you to let the batteries run out, and wait until January 1st to restart it.

I wonder if Zune owners can get compensated for the fact that they can't use their players on December 31st.

On the good side, Microsoft has promised a fix before 2012....

Tags: Humor

Saturday, we went for a tour of the White House and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the public parts of the White House in full Christmas decorations. Unfortunately, no pictures as cameras were not allowed inside (you had to pretty much leave everything in your car). Our gracious guide was a patient of Zandra's. She is one of the handful of permanent staff at the White House that serves regardless of the administration in office. So she told us of lots of interesting little stories.

A funny moment came right off the bat - we were having our identities checked at the entrance (you must submit your names and social security numbers in advance for screening). Turned out, the person checking our IDs and names had the same name as Andrew! We were thinking, gosh, wish Andrew could have borrowed his ID....

Lots of interesting history and sometimes humorous information behind what you see. Coming in, we saw a portrait of Hillary Clinton in the hallway. We were told that that location is always reserved for a portrait of the immediately preceeding First Lady. So when Obama is sworn in, the picture of Hillary will come down and up will go the portrait of Laura Bush. This tradition, though, did lead to the awkward occurrence of George W. having to take down the picture of his own mother and put up Hillary's portrait in its place. Wow!

There's also a portrait of George Washington that she told us Dolly Madison saved when the British burned the White House. Dolly Madison was just finishing a chocolate cake when the British arrived (so much for advanced intelligence gathering in those days), so she ordered the staff to break the frame and she rolled up the portrait and took it with her. There's often a portrait of Dolly Madison hanging around nearby so "she can keep an eye on the portrait".

We were told about the Christmas trees inside and the Nativity scenes, and learned of the "private" dining room that is a much more intimate setting with "only" about 25-30 seats. Hmmmph!

We also heard an interesting story involving the Presidential Motorcade. For security reasons, President Bush had to take a motorcade from the White House across the lawn to light the National Christmas Tree. We were told there was too much empty space around to make a walk to the tree safe. The Presidential Motorcade has 27 cars (by the way, we found you can tell how important someone is by the number of vehicles in their motorocade - it's all set by protocol...). It's so long that to the Tree Lighting Ceremony, half the motorcade was still in the White House driveway. A cat chasing its tail moment....

No Oval Office tour. No Lincoln Bedroom tour (those are all off limits). That said, still a great tour with insider insight into the day-to-day operations of the White House!

Tags: Humor

I just got off the phone with Southwest Airlines because I needed to cancel a flight. They were very busy this evening handling flight cancellations due to bad weather, so I got the very unusual opportunity to listen to their "hold music".

I have to tell you, I was laughing so hard when the agent picked up, I almost couldn't talk to ask her to cancel my flight. They've got a lot of great one liners - like "The Captain has turned off the fasten seat belt sign. You are now free to move about the cabin. Of course, unless you're calling from your car." Then there was the "Pirate Song" which I didn't get to hear all of, but started off with an intro of "It's always more fun to say Caaaaarrrrgo if you're a pirate, so here's a pirate song..." or something like that.

More businesses really need to approach things this way.

Good work Southwest. You made my evening.

Tags: Humor

So the Dina week two update is a good one. She's doing great and we're all enjoying having her around. Of course, we've had a few ups and downs:

Ups - She's much more relaxed, she's eating better, she's learning to sit and stay better, and she's not pulling on her leash when we walk her.

Downs - She's had one accident in the house, she still tries to dart out the door, and she sheds hair all over.

Side effect - We finally have a total tally on the cost of adopting the dog. Realize the dog had to have a few accessories and necessities, such as a fence (for the backyard). This last item was *really* costly. Because it was fence, lot survey, and irrigation system repairs (twice). Then we had vet bills, food, gotta get the dog a doggie bed, blankets, combs, brushes, collars, leashes....but we did save money as Zandra is making home made doggies biscuits which Dina just loves.

Worth it? You bet!

Tags: Dina

And another good one from the Simpsons:

Tags: Humor

Announcing the latest arrival in our household -- Dina!

Dina is our new 7 year old black Labrador mix. We think she's part Chow as well, but as with most rescue dogs, we don't really know that much about her.

So far, she's been great around the house. She is house trained (thank goodness!) and is very mellow. We are getting used to having a dog and so are the kids. Dina is being very good and barking at the kids when she's had enough of them.

Here are some pictures:





These are from her Animal Rescue site - http://www.paw-rescue.org I have to say that I am so impressed by these folks. After we got the medical records for Dina, it's clear that they sunk a lot of time, effort, and money into rehabilitating our dog.



This is a picture of her lounging in her new home.

I'll post more pictures of her soon in the pictures section.

Tags: Dina

Found on an internal mailing list today.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/11/10/how-we-know-that-matrix-doesnt-run-on-windows-xp/

This is a good one, in my opinion.

Tags: Humor

Great but tiring weekend this weekend. Zandra and I went up to New York City to spend the day with her sister and our brother-in-law. We did a touristy thing by visiting Liberty Island the Statue of Liberty. Here's a picture of me at the Statue of Liberty (more pictures in the Pictures section of the website).



We also walked around the city. Zandra and I visited the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). We had dinner with Zandra and Sandy's cousin April at a really great Japanese restaurant. A great way to spend the day. Unfortunately, it was a longer day than we had anticipated. For the second time in a row, we had difficulties getting home on the train, with our train being delayed almost 3 hours (putting us in the door at around 3am).

Also got up early to attend a really great marriage conference led by Dr. Gary Chapman. If you've not read his book The Five Love Languages, you really should. It's an excellent book and Zandra and I both enjoyed the conference immensely. It's great to find ways to make a marriage better. Especially when you things really aren't going that badly.

Now, back to the challenge of getting everything ready to erect a new fence in our back yard. That has to be the next blog topic...

Was sent this picture today:



I need to get one of these....

Tags: Humor

An interesting news story I heard on the radio the other day underscored something that I’ve long known since taking my PoliSci 300 class in Michigan with Professor Greg Markus. How you write a survey question can greatly influence the answers you get (and what your polls show as a result).

In addition to the normal examples that they gave, they gave an example of how not to write a survey question that I hadn’t heard before. Survey question: “Have you stopped beating your wife?” If you answer “Yes”, the assumption is you were beating your wife previously. If you answer “No”, then the assumption is that you are still beating your wife. The smart ones are the ones who I guess have no opinions on that survey. It seems like that would be the only “correct” answer....

So when listening to polls on *anything* for the upcoming election, find out how the question was asked. Or, if you’re like me, ignore the polls and vote the way you would anyways! It’s *your* vote. You don’t get paid for voting with the winning side.

And as a side note, not that I think anyone would ever *find* this entry looking for recommendations on PS300 at the University of Michigan, but that class was one of the best classes I took while being an undergrad at Michigan. Not only was it interesting and insightful, but the fact that grading was on a 100 point straight scale (meaning, 90+ was an A, 80+ was a B, etc.) and that you only had a chance to get 100 points in a 15 week semester really made the phrase “Making sure you dot your i’s and cross your t’s” really relevant.

Another sign of real economic issues - with the price of oil plunging, I just filled the Freestyle with gas at Costco for $2.37 per gallon. 10.5 gallons was around $25. That would have been almost $15 more a few months back.

That paid for pizza today for me and the boys.

I’ve gotten lots of questions about, “How was Disney”? In short - wonderful. I really admire how a company can get all their employees to be so consistently happy all the time. The only time they were close to not being happy was when Declan decided he didn’t like the kiddie coaster and jumped out of his seat while we were still out of the station to dive into Zandra’s arms. Sigh....

The weather was warm (maybe actually a little too warm the first 3 days) and we did come back sick to some degree. Still, a great trip.

We also got to go see some old family friends of mine - these are the folks responsible for my preference for Italian food. I’ll get pictures posted eventually (I did the first step which is get them off my camera...)

Some other thoughts:

- You’d never think that the favorite family ride would be the PeopleMover/Tomorrowland Transportation Authority (TTA) ride that takes you around Tomorrowland. Declan and Andrew love it. I wish Mr. Tom Morrow would ring his party from Saturn some day though. They’ve arrived after all.

- We got to see the inside of Space Mountain. One of our rides on the TTA, Space Mountain was in a “set up” condition. When the ride is down, the lights go up, and you can see the entire inside of the Mountain. It’s quite impressive. Especially for an ex-roller coaster operator like me.

- Declan doesn’t like roller coasters at present. Not even the Goofy Barnstormer coaster. And I wonder why they call the coaster an flex-octoplane. It only has 6 wings....

- All the fireworks are spectacular.

- The WDW Swan and Dolphin hotel were very nice, but I think the consensus is that next time, we will try to pay extra and get a villa again. The ability to have a fridge/kitchen and maybe eat in a few nights is really invaluable with young kids.

- 4 days is probably the right amount of time for a trip for us. I think after 4 days, we were ready to come home. Even if we had all been healthy.

- I am proud to say, I never checked work email once, and we never set up the laptop in the hotel.

So we’re back from our 4 day adventure at Disney World. It was great fun! The kids had a good time (we think) and the two parents enjoyed no work for 4 days. I even deleted the work account from my iPhone to make sure I didn’t check email.

Of course, no vacation is perfect and we’re all back with some varying degree of coughing. Zandra and Andrew are the worst off.

But to prove at least the kids were there, here’s a picture of the kids with Pluto at breakfast.



More pictures later!

Tags: Andrew, Declan

While it doesn’t make up for the losses in the stock market, the fact that the side effect has meant lower oil prices became evident to me this weekend. Filled up the Freestyle at $2.89 per gallon at Costco. Wow. Big change from a few months ago when it was almost $1 more per gallon.

Also, taking some lessons from driving Zandra’s hybrid has meant that I’m also getting better mileage on the Ford Freestyle at the moment - the current tank is averaging a little over 25 mpg.

Question now for me is will silly Americans go back to buying gas guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks now that gas has dropped $1/gallon. Maybe not this time, because Americans don’t seem to be buying much of anything right now....

After 2 years of using my Treo 650 as a work phone, I decided that it was time to get something different. There really wasn’t *that* much wrong with the Treo, though I was getting tired of the crashing during mail reading and other routine cell phone functions (like phone calls). Also, with me having an iPhone which really has a much better mail reading interface, having another phone to use to read mail with didn’t really make as much sense. Having a small phone to use as a *phone* really seemed to be the requirement. So I set off to research the latest phones. Again, the requirement was a smaller phone, good battery life, and something that would still sync nicely to my Mac using iSync. Having a 2100MHz WCDMA phone also was a “wish” - it would be nice if the phone worked in Japan in case I have to go there.

I discounted SonyEricsson phones immediately. Because after 3 years, I’m still mad at them over the Z520 buggy firmware which caused my phone to crash every day or so. I don’t like the Motorola interfaces, so that kind of left me with Nokia. T-Mobile doesn’t really have a good selection of Nokia business phones, plus, I really didn’t want to buy a carrier-crippled phone, so off to searching Amazon.com for phones.

I was originally looking at a Nokia N82, but the N-series phones are expensive, and I really didn’t need a 5MP camera on the phone. Too bad because I actually really like the Series60 Symbian OS on the Nokia phones. I finally happened upon the E51 - and on sale to boot. Small, relatively light weight, and Series60 OS with iSync capabilities direct from Nokia. I ordered one up in the black metal color.



Compared to my iPhone (left), it’s about the same thickness, but about 2/3 the width. It has an unconventional key layout even for a Series60 phone. No Edit button, but shortcuts for Home, Calendar, Contacts, and Email instead. Smallish keypad, but I have small fingers so it’s not a big deal. Absolutely brilliant display. Nice sturdy feel.

After having this phone for about 2 weeks, here is some feedback on the phone.

Pros: The battery life and size of this phone are great. Sound quality is excellent, and the reception seems to be at least as good as my Treo (which had a stubby external antenna which kept jabbing me in the side). Bluetooth works great (paired right up to my Nokia BH-900 headset). Syncing is about as good as you get from anyone that isn’t named Apple, and this has got to be the *fastest* charging phone I have ever had. Nice familiar (to me) Series60 interface and the “Active Standby” has been greatly improved so it now shows me a summary of my day’s events from the calendar, waiting voicemails or text messages, and customizable short cuts to favorite things on the phone. Nokia even thoughtfully put speed keys for Bluetooth on/off and Silent/Normal mode on the * and # keys. When using my Bluetooth headset, the mute button is the button on the right in between the volume keys. Handy! This phone also does 2100MHz WCDMA/UMTS so it should also work overseas. Also has 802.11b/g wireless so it links right up to the home wireless networks. Calendar, ringtones, and music player all work nicely. Oh, and my current Nokia chargers are compatible with the new phone.

Cons: This is not a US 3G phone. It has 850MHz WCDMA support, but AT&T only supports that in some markets, and I’m not using this phone on AT&T anyways (I’m using it on T-Mobile). The side buttons are a little hard to push. The camera is really for emergency use only. And the SIM card fits in so tight, I don’t think I’m ever getting it out of this phone.... I also had a very bad time setting up email on this phone. I interrupted it while it was downloading the initial email headers and after that, every trip to the email program caused the phone to slow down and hang. I finally had to do a *#7370# to reset the phone back to factory ROM image before that problem would clear up. How extreme! Even now, the mail program isn’t the world’s fastest. It’s good for an emergency, but not much else. That’s fine though - it fits my usage criteria. No games though - not even the standard Snake game. I guess it’s because it’s a “Business” phone...

Overall, I consider this phone to be a major winner. It’s certainly a lot smaller and lighter than the Treo and the sound quality and stability of the phone are just great. It’s nice being able to have a conversation on the phone and not having to worry about the phone mysteriously crashing in the middle of the call....

Tags: Technology

It wasn’t all smooth, but yesterday, I updated the map in my Garmin Nüvi 650 and realized that my Garmin now knows my home address! Living in a new house in a new subdivision, the various online map services have only just in the last 12-18 months begun to accept our home address as a valid location.

Of course, getting this map is never as easy as saying, “Update my map”, especially when you are trying to take advantage of a free offer. First I had to upgrade the system firmware. Then I had to get my Mac to talk to the GPS. Then I had to download the (2.16GB) map. But about an hour later I was done. So I thought.

I took the GPS out for a spin and realized it was no longer speaking the names of streets. After getting home and spending some time with Google, I found out that I needed a TTS (Text to Speech) voice for that feature. Except there wasn’t one listed.

Then I remembered during the system firmware update the note about “optional voices will be erased with the update, but you can download them again later.” I had ignored it because, hey, I had never added any optional voices. Apparently the TTS voice is optional, but happened to be loaded with my GPS.

As a further pain, I could not find anywhere on Garmin’s website how to update voices to the Mac. I found the PC installer, but no Mac information.

Frustrated, I loaded up the Garmin WebUpdater software to see if I could maybe revert back to the older version of firmware to get my TTS back. The second the WebUpdater software detected my GPS, it immediately offered to add optional voices, like my TTS back. Hey! Why didn’t they just say that in the first place!

So now, I’m happy. My GPS is back as it was with new maps. Now why couldn’t they have made that voice installation instruction a little more obvious? Hmmmph!

But everyone with a Garmin - if you want to come over and not have to punch in the address to the pool house to get here, get a map update!

Tags: Technology, Rants

I just looked at my electronic EZPass statement from last month. For those of you not from the East Coast, EZPass is the transponder thing you stick in your window to allow electronic toll collection (aka FastTrak for you Californians).

I was amused at this entry:

08/20/08 NJTP 1 08/20 08:28 9 08/20 09:38
(some personal info fields deleted).

I had a trip I was doing for work last month, and decided since the day was so nice, to take the trip from home to New Jersey in the Mini Cooper (with the top down of course).

What does this entry mean? It means I entered the NJTP (New Jersey Turnpike) at exit 1 at 8:28am and exited at exit 9 at 9:38am. That’s 83 miles in 70 minutes. And I made a 5 minute pit stop at one of the rest areas to purge coffee.

I think that works out to an average speed of 76.6mph (factoring in the pit stop).

Even more impressive, I made the same trip 1 minute faster (but in reality, 4 minutes slower due to lack of pit stop) in the middle of afternoon traffic.

Fun! Glad the NJ State Troopers don’t look so carefully at this info...

I’m working on a paper for work (actually, “executive editing” is probably a more accurate description). I’ve done a number of papers for the Sun BluePrints folks -- the technical editor for that program at Sun is an old work acquaintance of mine. It’s also given me a good chance to expound on technical wrongs and try to make them right.

I wrote a teaser for an upcoming paper I’ve been working on forever. See it here.

http://blogs.sun.com/blueprints/entry/new_dogs_new_tricks_thinking

Even if you are not totally into nerdy stuff, you still might find it an interesting read. Might.

Tags: Blog Tag

Painting the family room has been “next” on our painting list for quite a while. A few weeks ago, I started tackling this project. I’ve been doing one wall per week (it takes a while to tape and move furniture and stuff).

Of course, the first wall I picked (actually one wall and a part of a second) was the corner that Declan has tended to call home for his activities. It was first not only because it had the lightest furniture to move, but also because Declan had drawn all over the walls with crayon. With the original builder paint on the wall, scrubbing the crayon off was out of the question...

The “after” pictures (I didn’t think to take “before” pictures - click on the pictures for full sized versions):





That chalkboard is actually a usable chalkboard - I picked up some Benjamin Moore chalkboard paint. I figured I would try it - at least it looks really nice.

Tags: Declan, Home Improvement

After upgrading my iPhone to the new 2.1 version of firmware, the first picture the camera took was, well, bizarre. You can click on the picture for the full size version....



It’s not just bizarre because of the bumper sticker I was taking a picture of (that was just funny), but it has to do with the way this picture is broken up. Also realize that that soccer ball on top was part of the bumper and this bumper sticker was on the tailgate. So the camera took a picture, put the bottom half of the picture on the top half, vice versa, and then offset the last 1/3 of the picture by a bunch of pixels...

The camera appears to have been fine since.

Hmmph!

Tags: Humor

(I struggled for a bit to decide whether or not to tag this as “humor” or not....we’ll give it a shot)

So one of the things we did when in Boston was visit the Coop at Kendall Square so Zandra could load up on a few items from her alma mater. The Coop at MIT is more interesting than most typical college bookstores, simply because of the intellectual culture that exists there.

Here are a few items we did not buy, but that I found pretty interesting.

First - the childrens’ books:



Next - an explanation of light (could I have gotten away with this in physics?):



Finally, something that came close to making the list home:

Tags: Humor

Last week, we took a family trip to Boston. Zandra had a conference, so we all took the train up to Boston with her.

One thing I learned is that it’s very difficult to get a clear picture of someone on a moving train. Here are some attempts:





Finally got something close:



Because you can’t tell, this is Declan “chillin’” on the train with blanket in lap, juice cup in mouth, headphones on head, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse playing on the iPod.

Tags: Declan

Since Ronald Reagan was in the White House, there has been this association with jelly beans (in particular, Jelly Belly ones) and the President.

Last week, we found M&Ms was not to be outdone. One of Zandra’s patients brought us a few boxes.



They contain, as you might guess, red, white and blue M&Ms. The boxes are more interesting than the M&Ms (they’re just regular M&Ms after all).

Wonder what else they’ll think of next?

While I was away on business last week, I got one of “those” calls from Zandra. Kind of went like this:

Zandra: “Hi - guess what your son did today?”
Me: “Um, what?”
Zandra: “He wanted some candy at 8am out of the pantry and was told he couldn’t have any.”
Me: “Okay, I agree with that.”
Zandra: “So he got mad and put a hole in the door.”
Me: “What?!?!”
Zandra: “He got mad and put one doorstop through the door and broke the other one off.”

Here’s the pictures of the hole.



Here’s the picture of the broken doorstop.



Can’t wait for those teenage years....

Tags: Declan

Whether or not it’s true, it’s pretty funny. At least for those of us who don’t care for Microsoft.

http://gizmodo.com/5035456/blue-screen-of-death-strikes-birds-nest-during-opening-ceremonies-torch-lighting

Tags: Technology

I need a job like this one:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,395181,00.html

I think I’d qualify very well, especially with my degree in Aerospace and experience doing documentation in the Aerospace industry.

Where do I sign up?

Every year, parents all over the US go through this horrible experience called “Back to School Shopping”. I am happy to announce that this year, I’m done. Early. Now. Fini.

As schools begin to ask parents to supply more and more basic supplies, it becomes a bigger and bigger task to make sure your kids have all the right notebooks, pencils, tissues, etc., to do their work. You get a nice big list, and then head to the store where nothing is organized in remotely the same order as on your list.

I think I orbited the 4 aisles at least 4 times making sure I had all the necessary items. It probably took over half an hour. For someone like me who sets land speed records for getting in and out the doors at the grocery store, that’s an eternity.

It seems like if you were really good, you could make money shopping for people and delivering custom kits for your kids. But I’m not really good and the frustration isn’t worth the money to me. Can someone develop a standard for listing items, organizing items in the store, and then just put everything in one long aisle? Probably not.

All I can say is, I’m happy it’s over for this year.

I can’t wait until Andrew gets a little older and then we have to add on the pain of Back to School *clothes*.
Not.

Tags: Rants

I’ve posted pictures of the annual household garden in the Pictures section. For those of you too lazy to click on multiple links:

http://www.stickman.org/Pictures/Pictures-2008/garden2008/

So far, we’ve picked about a half-dozen tomatoes (early blooming Romas and large Grape tomatoes). 4 zucchini (including the one pictured - I picked it after the picture) and half a dozen cucumbers. We also picked some green peppers and one of the chiles this evening (which we’ve come to realize can’t be Serrano Chiles because they’re not the right color).

This garden doesn’t vary much from last year except it’s twice the size and we’ve added a bigger assortment of herbs. Our one disappointment this year is that both Sweet Basil plants we’ve planted are doing poorly - but in different ways. One is small, but the leaves are deep green and very flavorful (but way too small). The other is pretty big, but the leaves are very light green and taste like, well...leaves....

Will probably update this as the summer goes along.

This year’s garden is courtesy of my second cousin and her family. They bought me a huge gift card to Lowe’s for my birthday, and I spent a bunch of it on garden stuff! Thank you all!

Tags: Gardening

Someone sent me the following two links as overpackaging demonstrations by HP.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/18/hp_packaging/

and

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/enormouse/

Ayup....items definitely overpacked. Must be that oversized European A4 paper....

Tags: Humor, Technology

A bit of an overdue posting.

I got this wonderful present from my wife on Father’s Day (I was allowed to get anything that would encourage me to get some exercise - it was a hint...)



It’s the bike, not the Mini Cooper, silly....specifically, a Cannondale Adventure 4 hybrid bike. It is compared against the similarly green Mini Cooper though.

I’ve been riding almost every day. Fridays are the major exception - I mow the lawn for exercise on that morning. I’ve only fallen off twice, and probably average a short 5 miles per ride. But it does get me out of the house and getting some exercise! There are lots of nice trails around here and the terrain is varied enough that I do get a pretty good workout. I love the peace and quiet too (no iPod on these rides for me!)

Tags: Bike

No doubt, you’ve heard about Apple’s great meltdown today with the release of the new iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2.0 software.

So no, I don’t have a new iPhone 3G. I’m not in a hurry to get one. I waited 6 months to get my iPhone. I don’t feel a need to be first.

Unfortunately, I did feel a need to get the new iPhone 2.0 software. Why? It wasn’t the new Application download capabilities (though it’s nice and I’ve downloaded a couple). It was the fact that they finally added separate calendars to the calendar program and fixed a long standing gripe I’ve had about the mail reader where it couldn’t read forwarded emails. So when they posted the updated image yesterday on some of the typical Mac interest sites and no one complained of any problems, I went ahead and updated.

Bad idea to try to do anything in a way not sanctioned by Steve Jobs.

So the firmware that was distributed yesterday was different from the official release version of today. And the one distributed yesterday wedged my iPhone so solid overnight, I had to put it into recovery mode and reload from scratch. Then, what was already a painfully long recovery process got compounded by the fact that every iPhone user in the world (new and old) was trying to update and reactivate their iPhones too. ARRRGHHHH!

However, I finally got the right firmware file, did the right incantations, and at 4:15pm today, fully 8 hours after I discovered my iPhone was an iBrick, I had my phone properly upgraded.

I’m hoping it doesn’t crash again tonight.

Lesson learned - don’t be the first, don’t be impatient, and don’t do what Mr. Jobs says not to do.

Sigh.

Today is a good day not to have been transferred to department 1107940052 at work.

This is the department code for the Sun MegaRIF 2008...

Happy to say that this is not my department number today.

I took some time over this long weekend to clean out the basement. Since moving into our new house almost 3 years ago, our basement has become less and less, um, “clean” as it were. I set out Thursday to do something about that. In addition to freeing up some walking room, the other goal was to take advantage of the dwindling supply of free dumpsters in our neighborhood (the result of contruction being almost complete in our subdivision).

I made great progress, but only got 1/4 of the basement sorted. I found lots of things like pictures from junior high school and high school, documents from my office I hadn’t looked at for 5 years, and, well, junk. If I get motivated, maybe I’ll scan in a retrospective of some of those old pictures. I also tossed all my old college notes (so all thoughts of Aerospace Engineering as a second career are now gone).

I did, however, come across 7 full file boxes that have documents that require shredding. Great. Shredding one box left me with a yard bag full of confetti for recycling, and an overheated shredder which no longer seems to be shredding as well after accidentally ingesting what I think was a paper clip. Sigh.

And I never realized how tall dumpsters were until I had to toss a 30 lb. box of old course notes into it....

All in all, a useful exercise in exercise. And the basement is now *slightly* cleaner.

Tags: Home Improvement

Reading the BBC news feed this morning, I came across this interesting article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/north_west/7471102.stm

This is about a man in the UK who was punished for putting 13 people in his Volvo S70 station wagon. The BBC video on that page talks about how “hard” this was to do (and failed to put 13 people into the car -- they only got to 10 and they were using infants and children).

All I can say is: They didn’t try hard enough.

Back in 1984, at a summer computer camp (hey, remember, I’m a nerd), we decided we wanted to go out to a movie. There were 22 of us high school kids. And only two cars.

No problem. One of our cars was a high capacity Toyota Tercel (example pictured below). Fortunately, we had the 5 door hatchback version.



We put exactly 13 people in that car and drove to the movies. 1 driver in the driver’s seat. 2 in the front passenger seat. 4 in the hatch area, 3 across the seat in the back, 2 on their laps, and one laying across the two on top of the 3 with feet out one window and head out the other window (he had the misfortune of being 6’ 2” tall). We drove very carefully the 5 miles to the theater.

So come on you guys in the UK. If we can cram 13 college students into that Tercel, the 13 in a Volvo station wagon should have been a snap, especially with all the babies and young kids you had....

Disclaimer: But of course, I wouldn’t try this today because this would obviously be a violation of local seat belt laws (which didn’t exist back in 1984).

Hooray! We had Andrew’s Birthday Party today and we survived!



Zandra made an ice cream cake (yummy!) and Andrew had some of his school friends over. I’ve posted pictures here.

Tags: Andrew

A couple of entries ago, I noted that my sister had a blog. Since then, she's made more than a few references to me that I just feel compelled to respond to. So I will. In *my* blog.

In the entry Momma' Night Musings, the question about censorship "...I realize I have passed this blog info to my big brother....hmmmm, maybe censorship is good,." Big brother says...."write what you want." I'm probably not the one you need to worry about reading your blog. There's always the future employers, etc., who will find the blog and wonder about the person they're considering hiring....there's no such thing as anonymity on the internet. Not with Google around.

In the entries Suds, Glorious Suds! and Work, glorious work!, my sister makes a reference to the recent Thomas the Tank Engine release "Mud, Glorious Mud". I'm disappointed that my sister fails to cite the correct reference to the (noun), Glorious (noun) phrase to the lyrics of "Food, Glorious Food!" from the musical Oliver! based loosely on the great work Oliver Twist by none other than the beloved Charles Dickens. However, the fact that it shows her total dedication with her kids (because everything is now referenced from the starting point of something related to her children) indicates that she is doing great as a parent. Or at least fully immersed with being a parent....

Sis also notes I probably have all the tunes memorized since I have a 6 year head start. That's actually probably not true since with a 6 year head start, I've learned to start filtering out children's music in my head. It's on, but it's more like white noise than anything else. Nothing really sinks in. Except Barney. Which is why Barney is banned in our house. Sis should learn in another few years this little trick to successfully tolerating parenthood.

As far as the question, "Was I like this to my mother? Is this payback?" Hmmm....well, we were both prone to doing things like that, so payback? Probably. I have Declan (who by the way, just broke another dish in the time it has taken me to write the last 8 lines of text - but he was trying to be helpful by throwing the dish (literally) into the sink). You have your Asha and Aisha. Oh, and your ever-so-articulate Nate.

Finally, as I've been reading my sister's blog, I'm having great fun with each entry clicking on her "Location". It appears that in her blog, what location she types in gets fed into Google Maps. It leads to some very interesting results. "Padded room" sent me to the Excalibur Hotel in Vegas of all places. Interesting what those pidgeons pecking at the keyboard come up with at Google....

Are you wishing you'd never told me about your blog yet, sis?

I love you!

Tags: Humor, Sister

Random thoughts about signs I saw today:

"100% Beef" (McDonald's BigMac Billboard). Okay, so what were they made of before? Chicken?

One that Zandra saw on a bottle of solution: "For use by professional de-germers". Versus the amateur ones?

"Area Patrolled by Military Working Dogs": Versus the Military Vacation Dogs? Military Unemployed Dogs?

Probably thinking too hard about these signs.

Hey! My sister has a blog! I'm excited. Okay, maybe *too* excited, but excited nonetheless.

http://chez-hsieh.livejournal.com/

Cool!

Happy Birthday #9 for Andrew!



Andrew holding his present - a Lego City Cargo Plane. Andrew put it together himself!

In the last few weeks, I've had to go a few places where it has been beneficial to take mass transit. I normally don't take mass transit - not because I don't believe in it, but because working from home, I don't really need to use it. And where I go, I usually don't get a chance to use it. So mass transit is not an everyday occurrence for me.

My recent trips on the MTA Light Rail and CTA "El" Trains made me realize this - they're both dollar coin friendly.



When I bought my ticket for the MTA Light rail, they only accepted cash, and I only had a $10 bill. Somewhat to my surprise, I got a pocket full of 1 dollar coins back - and variety of them to boot (examples above). Going to Chicago the next week, I still had them in my pocket, and found that they were much easier to use to buy my CTA ticket than dollar bills. If you remember the movie Chicken Little, there's a scene where Chicken Little's friend Runt of the Litter is trying to buy a soda from the machine, and having his dollar bill rejected over and over and over again. That's me using dollar bill machines.

Wonder why the rest of the US doesn't use dollar coins?

With all the hype surrounding the "imminent" announcement of the new iPhone, perhaps we can hope that Steve's announcement will go smoother than some of these moments.



This made my day.

Tags: Technology, Humor

So my FiOS line was installed yesterday. Again, for those of you who don't know what this is, look here. And so far, it's been great except for a few James inflicted issues....

All during the week, I've had people painting my yard (marking various utilities) and then digging up my yard (a nice neat trench) to run the fiber cables to my house. There was a little drama on Thursday. I walked outside to find 3 trucks from UtiliQuest (the utility marking company) and the cable digging subcontractor for Verizon all pointing at my driveway. Turns out, the electric lines that feed the houses across the street go underneath the dead center of my driveway. Oh joy. This resulted in a 3" x 3" cut in the driveway so they could make sure the fiber lines didn't take out electrical power (I agreed that that was a safety precaution worthy of sacrificing the driveway - and they promised to come back and fix it).

Friday morning and John, my installation technician, showed up as scheduled all ready to do the installation. He took a look at the wiring and where everything came in in the basement, and my ethernet switch with rack of servers and blinking lights and said, "This shouldn't be too tough." It took John about 4 hours to install the new interface box, run the cables into the house, hook up the FiOS router, install the TV boxes, test everything, and be on his way. No glitches in the install. Everything worked great.

I firmly believe that no technician should ever be subject to the insanity that's called my network at home, so I instructed John to set it up as for a "typical" customer, I would verify everything was working, and after he left, I'd proceed to destroy all of Verizon's neat consumer setup to integrate it with my network -- absolving him of any responsibility for sorting that mess out. He left me with full administrative access to the Actiontec router and pointed out the master reset button in case I did something I couldn't recover from. I get the feeling he figured out I've occasionally needed that in the past.

The only real challenge in making the setup work with my existing network was figuring out how to handle DHCP requests. Changing IP addresses on the router was easy enough, but the set top TV boxes obtain IP addresses from the router, so the DHCP server on the router had to be changed. *AND*, the router also is programmed to hand out IP addresses in the x.x.x.100 to x.x.x.150 range. And John warned me that having the set top box hand out the IP addresses was important, though I have yet to figure out exactly why...

Problem with this is that I have other devices on my network also needing DHCP addresses, and I have my own DHCP server set up to configure them as needed. And there are devices on my network which I need (okay, really, really want) to get the same IP all the time (for troubleshooting purposes - those devices also don't allow static IP assignments as best as I can tell). And, how do you handle the multiple outbound routes from my home network (there's the FiOS route out and the Comcast Cable Modem route out) without accidentally routing Comcast traffic to Verizon, and vice versa. Oh, and how to best use the now 3 wireless networks in the house (though the new one added by the FiOS router really isn't usable in most of the house because it's in the basement and the signal doesn't reach well to the second floor).

In the end, what I did was for all known DHCP clients in the house, have my DHCP server hand out a static IP based on MAC address and can access the network via hardwire or any of the 3 wireless networks. Simple enough - there's about 5 devices, and that's a limited amount of work. Servers have static IPs defined and manual routes set to route out through Comcast. Also simple enough. If you're hard wire into the network, you have a manually assigned IP (I set it up for you - and I can't think the last time someone came over to my house and needed a Cat-5 jack). 100-150 is now reserved for the televisions and that DHCP range is handled by the FiOS router. Guest laptops (or anything else I don't care to set up a static IP or permanent DHCP assignment) now connect to the second wireless network which is off a Linksys WRT54G unit which hands out IPs on its own subnet, then NAT's into the main network.

So far, this setup seems to be working well. I quickly found out when the TV's got the wrong IP addresses assigned that functions such as channel guides and OnDemand services didn't work, and the set top boxes were very unhappy. Reconfiguring my DHCP server fixed that (I think). The speed off the FiOS is as advertised - 15M down and 2M up (actually, more like 15.5M down and 1.9M up). So far so good.

More reports as I spend more time with the service.

Tags: Technology

No, this has nothing to do with IBM computers.

Mother's Day is always a little sad for me. Not having a mom around to call and wish Happy Mother's Day to somehow never seems to get easier even as time passes. Yesterday, I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about one person's reflection on his mom through a car of hers that he still owned, and how he was having difficulties parting with it. He affectionately called the car "The Big Red Sled". Link to the story.

This made me think about my mom's old blue 1979 Mercury Zephyr Station Wagon. A car that we purchased just as my mom and dad were getting divorced - with just a few hundred miles on it, we drove it cross country from New York as mom, my sister, and I started life on our own in California. It was definitely a "Big Blue Box".

At the time, that car was really cool. It had every option available (from cloth seats to power everything to a really cool blue interior to a 3.3 liter 6 cylinder engine). It was really neat. It was a big blue box. But like all cars of that era, it didn't seem to do well in the long-term durability department. I remember as mom had that car 10 years later (with well over 100k miles on it) that it had all sorts of problems, kind of like what was described in the WSJ story. I remembered the morning mom telling me how it caught fire while warming up (an eternal oil leaker, one morning, the oil leaked on to the catalytic converter and started a small fire which was put out by a passing school bus driver with a fire extinguisher). How it hated starting. Steering wheel cracked. Windows that would go down, but not back up. And finally, the thing that convinced her maybe it was time to give up the car, but the steering shaft snapping in half in the middle of a left turn because the power steering pump had done its morning cut out/in/out routine at an inopportune time.

I have lots of fond memories of that car. I learned to drive in that car. I spent a lot of time going places in that car. I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time in that car. It even made it on to an episode of Simon and Simon (remember that series?). It served us well. It just wore out. Mom I think kept that car 5 years longer than it had business being in existence. The car dealer gave her $500 as sympathy when she traded it. But we were poor and getting a new car wasn't something mom could afford until I was out of college and on my own. She finally traded it for a blue Ford Escort station wagon that, honestly, endeared itself to none of us. When mom passed away, my sister asked, "Please don't make me drive the Escort." With its less than hearty 1.9 liter 4 cylinder engine, it struggled to make it up on-ramps. I considered it unsafe getting it on to the freeway, where flooring the gas pedal just meant louder noises from the engine. I traded it at my first opportunity.

Funny what reading articles in the WSJ will trigger in terms of thoughts. I hope the car has found a nice resting place somewhere. I hope it's not still on the road 29 years later...

And Mom, Happy Mother's Day. Thanks for sacrificing by putting up with that old car for so long so I could get through college and my sister could have things we might not otherwise have been able to afford.

Verizon finally flipped the switch on FiOS in my neighborhood. After false starts, more false starts, and lots of digging, I'm on the books to be installed on Friday May 16th. I was even able to help my neighbor out who works for Verizon (he gets a referral fee for sending people over).

Cost-wise, I think monthly service will be a wash with respect to Comcast cable. However, my backup DSL line (at 3M/550k) will get replaced by a FiOS internet line which is advertised at 15M/2M.

Will report on how the install goes. I just hope that they don't hit any sprinkler or cable lines while digging, and that the orange paint that they've used to mark line locations will stay on the grass through this torrential downpour we are having.

Tags: Technology

Some of you probably won't find this that interesting. Certainly not anyone who has been to the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. But I found the elevator system at the hotel to be kind of fascinating.

You walk up to the elevator banks and push a keypad as your floor destination.



It then tells you which letter elevator to go to:



After an small eternity waiting for the elevator, you walk in and the elevator takes you to your floor. There are no floor buttons.



The no floor buttons is the thing that took me the most to get used to.

What also appears to happen is that the computer system keeps track of the number of people who have requested a particular floor. So after a certain number of buttons presses for, say, the 40th floor, the next request for 40 will send you to a different elevator. Unfortunately, the system is a bit flawed because people keep pushing the pad when the elevator doesn't arrive, and there's no accommodation for people and large pieces of luggage.

But it's an interesting system nonetheless.

Tags: Technology

I'll post a few lighter pictures, but wanted to share the link below. Zandra and I were on our way back from New York City on this Amtrak train when this happened just outside of New Brunswick, NJ today.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/104-05042008-1529108.html

Say a prayer for the train engineer and the crew. The engineer said the guy stood in the middle of the track, squared himself at the train, and just stood there looking at him.

(updated 8:17am on 5/5/08 due to old link being removed)

Not that I really like the coffee at Starbucks that much, but here's something nice to know:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/01/atandt-wifi-hotspots-free-to-iphone-owners-anyone-with-a-brain/

Even if they plug the access hole, I still have an iPhone to use.

Tags: Technology

Saw this interesting picture today.

http://gizmodo.com/384479/steve-ballmers-presentation-laptop-is-a-strange-choice

Though I don't know why it's so strange - it runs Windows just fine (though I wouldn't....)

Probably fake, but regardless, wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility.

Tags: Technology

I upgraded my main web/mail server this evening. In the process, I managed to disassociate some of the images from my blog from their image files.

I have to go back through and reassociate them. Might take a few days. Sorry if you were dying to see those blog entries with pictures.

Tags: Technology

Remember the movie Groundhog Day? I feel like Bill Murray in that movie. I keep reliving my 40th Birthday. Over and over and over and over.



When I was out in California last week, we celebrated my 40th birthday again. As I was pointing out in this photo, it's my 4th 40th birthday cake. Yummy, but, well, can we stop yet?

But thank you to my sister and my in-laws who made this all possible.

And thank you everyone who has given me a cake for *not* putting 40 candles on each cake.

We've had our new hybrid vehicle for about a month now. We're still enjoying the car immensely, but we're still getting used to a few of the nuances of driving the vehicle. So far, our average mileage is around 28 mpg in mixed driving. Pretty good. The part that takes the most getting used to is that the hybrid system shuts the engine off when it's not needed, and can cruise around at speeds of up to 35 mph in all electric mode - running purely off the car's batteries. I call this "Electric Golf Cart Mode" when this happens - especially at the mall or in a parking lot.

The great benefit to Electric Golf Cart Mode is that you can cruise around the parking lot looking for a parking space and not be burning any gas. This is a tremendous gas savings and does a lot to boost mileage. It does have the side effect that people no longer get out of your way when going through the parking lot at Costco for example. I was quite frustrated yesterday about this lady who was walking along, apparently oblivious to the fact that I was driving very slowly behind her, unable to pass because she was in the middle of the road. It then dawned on us that she *was* oblivious - we were cruising around on the electric motors and I'm sure she *couldn't* hear us. You're kind of stuck in this case because I think beeping your horn in this case to be really a bit rude and unnecessarily annoying.

When I worked at Six Flags Magic Mountain many years back, they had little electric cars that went around a track as a ride. These cars were originally the gasoline lawn-mower-powered cars you still see in amusements parks outside of California, but were "upgraded" to be more "clean". The year they did that, we realized, the effect of the ride was no longer the same - the cars were totally silent except for the whir of the electric motors. The solution was to add an artificial noise maker to add a sound effect. Maybe I need one of those for our car now....

The other issue is that the display on the navigation system which shows battery drain/generation is really fun to watch. Too fun to watch though. It's distracting. But it's really helpful to know how you're doing in terms of driving. I'm hoping that this issue goes away with time.

Tags: Technology

I received the most thoughtful gift from my sister today.



This is a scan from the cover of the book my sister had made for me for my 40th birthday. It includes notes from people who have known me longer than 40 years and from just about every stage of my life. Pictures I don't ever remember taking. Things I don't ever remember doing (and no, it wasn't because I had too much beer or something...).

I apparently taught my sister well - she tricked me into giving her my Christmas Card mailing list which is huge, and I understand that she mailed everyone on the list and then collected and collated the notes and pictures in the book. Sis has, on this rare occasion, now left me speechless.

Thanks sis. Thanks everyone. I wish you guys could all see this book. I guess you could ask my sister to send you one, but I have to say, I don't think I'd want it on my coffee table... :-P

Zandra and I bought a hybrid car to replace her car about 3 weeks ago. The decision was somewhat accelerated after her Volvo got hit in the parking lot at Costco, causing enough damage to need fixing, but not enough to call the insurance company about (i.e., about equal to our deductible).

We had long been considering getting a larger vehicle to replace her Volvo S40 - we had purchased the Volvo when we were a family of 3. As a family of 4, the car was tighter and taking along a stroller or any amount of kid stuff effectively eliminated our capacity to bring anything else home. Our Ford Freestyle is wonderful as a family car, but sometimes, it was just *too* big (I think our eyes were bigger than our stomachs when it came to deciding how much capacity we really needed...) The Mini Cooper, of course, is just for fun.

But, with gas prices doing what they are, we wanted something relatively fuel efficient. We'd always been interested in getting a hybrid, and that's what we ended up doing. I won't mention what kind of hybrid we got though.

The hybrid has been living up to our expectations (and then some) when it comes to mileage. For an SUV type vehicle, we are averaging about 28 miles per gallon. Not bad for 4400 lbs. of car. We are now driving it almost everywhere, averaging about 400 miles/week in various errands, etc. It's comfy, quiet, and pretty good on power too.

Of course, I was curious to figure out how long it was going to take for us to pay for the difference in the price of the car over a non-hybrid. I calculated we paid a hefty $4500 premium for the privilege of owning a hybrid over a gas model. Here's the math.

For the gas version of this car: 15000 miles/year / 22 miles/gallon == 681.81 gallons of gas per year.
For our hybrid version, assuming our mileage stays the same: 15000 miles/year / 28 miles/gallon == 535.71 gallons of gas per year.
I save 681.81 gallons - 535.71 gallons == 146.1 gallons each year.
At $3.50/gallon of gas (what it *currently* costs for premium unleaded where we are), this works out to roughly $511.35/year in savings.
$4500/$511.35 == 8.8 years to pay the difference.

A less optimistic calculation is if you compare it to the 22 mpg we average on the Freestyle (which uses regular gas).
681.81 gallons * $3.25/gal == $2215.88 per year versus 535.71 * $3.50/gal == $1874.99
This results in a savings of only $340.89 per year, or 13.20 years to make up the difference.

If the price of gas changes, however, the time decreases. Let's say I go up 20%. Using the Freestyle calculation:
681.81 gallons * $3.85/gal == $2624.97 per year versus 535.71 * $4.20/gal = $2249.98
This results in a savings of $375/year or roughly 12 years to make up the difference.

Worth it? From an environmental point of view, yes. Dollars, it's probably a sacrifice. I may revisit this calculation later in case of errors or other new interesting data....

(Followup on 3/31/2008 - I forgot to mention that even though the $$$ may not add up, having twice the space is definitely not to be forgotten! -- JH)

Tags: Technology

Portholes have returned. And it's not a good thing.

Many years ago, Buick added what were called "portholes" to the front fenders of their vehicles. The more portholes your Buick had, the more "prestigious" your model of car was. The portholes went away for awhile, but were recently reintroduced by Buick. See the photo below of the Buick Lucerne to see what I mean.



(photo from Buick, annotations by me)

Now it seems the latest stupid car modification rage is fake portholes on your car. Like the free-spinning wheel covers and the fake Mercedes Benz hood ornaments on everything, we now have....portholes. On everything. I've seen them on a Chrysler LHX, a Honda Accord, and even on a Chevy 1500 pickup truck!

Pulllleeeeze. Why do people think that these things make their cars look cool? It's just stupid.

I recently started a project to upgrade my stickman.org server. What I thought would be a few nights work has turned into a true ordeal.

Most of my issues have centered around the web server. I prefer to use Apache - and I grabbed the latest 2.2.8 server from apache.org. All seemed to go well until I tried getting the https side of the server working. I kept getting strange failures from Firefox about an incorrect mathematical response or something of the like. Turns out, it was a problem with OpenSSL 0.9.8 which I had compiled. And it wasn't a problem with the source. It was a problem with the *compiler* - the Sun Studio 11 compiler to be exact.

I was getting, running make test:

*** Error code 9
make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `test_evp'

Turns out it was a known problem - writeup here: http://forum.sun.com/thread.jspa?messageID=99121

I chose to just get the newest Studio12 compiler. Thought I was done.

Um....nope not yet.

Now I kept getting:

Syntax error on line 78 of /usr/local/apache2/conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf:
Could not resolve address '255.255.255.255' -- check resolver configuration.

Arrrghh...this is the virtual host entry in the ssl config file that defines: What's up with that?

So the manual says, this means DNS isn't getting consulted. Well....it is. Everywhere. But guess what? My old friend nscd is to blame again (a great idea, but one that has killed me so many times...) nscd apparently has problems dealing with lookups to anything other than files. Doing an svcadm disable name-service-cache and then starting the web server worked great! Except, there are some efficiencies to be gained by using nscd. I'd like to try to keep that running if possible.

So....off to install 127111-11 (latest as of this posting). And its prereqs. All in an attempt to try to resolve bug 6612782 which appeared to fit my problem. Still no dice. Apparently some major changes went into Solaris 10 08/07 have, again, left nscd somewhat non-functional.

So I'm bypassing nscd for a bit until I can sort this out further. Actually, I'll probably file a bug....this seems to be a regression from Solaris 10 06/06.

Tags: Technology

Comments

So as I turn 40 years old today, a whole bunch of random thoughts passed through my mind.

Mid-life Crisis? Probably not - I borrowed against it two years ago to get the Mini Cooper S Convertible with the personalized license plate.

They are still debating, 40 years later, about who shot JFK.

We haven't cured the common cold. Or cancer. But we're making progress at least.

My eye sight stinks. Memo to self - need to make another appointment with opthamologist. Probably need bi-focals.

I can claim that I'm only 28. If you're counting in hexadecimal of course.

I've had a number of 40th birthday "reminders" in the last two weeks. My second cousin's family very thoughtfully got me a cake and celebrated when they were all over here (I'll post a picture at some point). We skipped the second chorus of Happy Birthday which goes "How Old Are You?" though. Tonight, Zandra and I had a date night and went out Morton's of Chicago. Made me realize I can't eat like I used to - I used to be able to eat everything on my plate without splitting anything....Everyone remembered to send me a card this year it seems.

A good friend of mine pointed out that wine gets better with age, why not me? Good point!

Anything else running through my head about this topic? Yes. I'm thankful to have reached 40. I'm thankful for all the things I have at 40. And I'm looking forward to another 40 years at least.

Only 10 more years until I get to join AARP!

A couple of years back, I passed up the chance to get one of the first MacBook Pro laptops with an Intel instead of PowerPC chip in it. I purchased a refurbished PowerBook G4 at a huge discount and was very, very happy with the decision.

So for my birthday, my wife allowed me to upgrade my old trusty G4. Apple also decided to nicely cooperate by releasing new MacBook Pros which meant that the now previous generation refurbs went into fire sale mode. Just what I had been hoping for!

I picked up a refurb MacBook Pro 2.6GHz system for $1849 plus tax. A full 33% off the new price from the week before. The system arrived in the traditional refurb plain brown box, but is otherwise pretty much perfect. It came pre-installed with Leopard and after about an hour of downloading updates and such, had a nice and quick new system.

The big motivation to the new MacBook Pro was to leverage virtualization to run Solaris (working for Sun, I really need to use Solaris a lot). I chose VMWare's Fusion product with Solaris 10 Update 4 (Solaris 10 08/07). It loaded up without issues, right off the DVD and I have the virtual machine running as its own separate IP address from my laptop on my home network.

It works so well in fact, that I have removed my old Dell AMD64 dual core system from my desk along with one of its monitors and hooked up the 22" ViewSonic monitor to my MacBook Pro. This has freed up a *lot* of desk space, and will probably save me a few bucks on electricity. I haven't had this much space on my desk in years!

Truly this has to be progress through technology!

Tags: Technology

Set aside about 20 minutes total to watch both of these videos if you are so inclined. And be prepared for a major mood swing between the two.

The first one is called Treeless Squirrel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k22oHm0O3Sg The squirrel in this video is the son of a good friend of mine (who also does other advertising design when he's not busy being nuts (sic)). This one is funny.

The second one is one you may have seen. http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=ithct48cqw Randy Pausch is a CMU professor dying of pancreatic cancer. Given I've lost a couple of friends to this disease and know currently of two others with it, it's a very interesting view on living life. http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/ is his website which folks should visit for more information. This video may lead you to tears. The full length video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo .

Tags: Humor

WARNING: Technical Rant ahead. If you don't care about email handling, skip this entry.

For the last 72 hours, I've been suffering from collateral damage from a massive spam attack.

When you receive spam, the "From" address is almost always fake. Some random domain gets inserted. One of my domain names came up on the roulette of spam death this weekend.

Combined with thousands (tens of thousands?) of stupidly configured mailers, and that amounted to my guess almost 100,000 emails that my poor server was forced to bounce back to the stupidly configured mailer.

Symantec firewalls/anti-virus scanners were the biggest offender. Followed closely by Barracuda firewalls. Followed by Exchange servers. What it appears these servers were doing was accepting the mail, running it through a scanner which determined it to be spam, and then trying to politely return the email to the faked address. Arrrggghhh.... At one point, I was rejecting emails at over 1 per second. I generated close to 200MB of log files recording the mail bounces.

Further, there are just flat out non-compliant email servers out there - those that don't understand 550 5.5.1 permanent failure codes. Those that don't send emails with valid domain names. And so on.

We wonder why the internet is such a mess. Too many systems administrators who shouldn't have a license to be on the internet.

Makes me want to get off.

Tags: Technology

I was just on hold with Verizon discussing a phone bill issue. There was a little bit of a wait for the agent (about 4 minutes) but what got me was the elevator music. It was playing the James Bond theme "You Only Live Twice".

Hmmmm.....appropriate for hold music I guess.

Tags: Humor

A sample from our recent vacation photos. Which one is James?

Tags: Travel

A few random thoughts as it's been 3 weeks since I posted anything.

My friend Fourth Breakfast sent me a pointer to a rather cool YouTube video (if you're a Jackie Chan fan). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKAtwK1tOaE .

Was looking for a box to send something off in this weekend and found a box of stuff from my Ford Explorer (the stuff I cleaned out of the car when I sold it 5 years ago). In the box was my missing Jack-in-the-Box Jack antenna ball. I put it on the antenna of the Mini.

I drove with the Mini Cooper's top down on Monday. It was 71 degrees and sunny. Lovely.

I am not going anywhere in the Mini Cooper today. Top up *or* down. It's snowing. Go figure.

When traveling anywhere, you often notice things that not only do you not see at home, but really draw your attention as being interesting, or worthy of mention at the least. Especially true when going overseas.

On my last trip the following items kind of stood out in my mind:





Package of Kleenex from Hungary with a Ratatouille theme. Just kind of cute. And the package is interestingly square instead of rectangular.




Our taxi which had an ominous telephone number...




This is most interesting - this is the switching control panel from the Hungarian Railroad station that we visited. One of the members of the group from our partner company had a big interest in trains, so our assembly plant staff arranged for a "Behind the Scenes" tour of the local train station. This was "State of the Art" when it was installed in the mid 1970's. And is still in use today. I wonder if it even has solid state technology...




Finally, a picture from the Duty Free shop at the Vienna Airport. We put these tiny little warning labels on our cigarettes. These are nice, big, simple, easy to read labels. Love them. Wish we could have them here. But interestingly, you see a lot more smoking in Vienna. I came out feeling a bit like an ashtray every time I went indoors to a restaurant or some other public place. Wonder why this is? Maybe they should have the warnings in German/Hungarian/local language? Or is it in English because the cigarettes are American?

Tags: Humor, Travel

The food in Zalaegerszeg has been surprisingly good. Ate well every night I was there. And every lunch I was there. Our hosts were apparently pulling out all the stops. And definitely doing a good job. I have a lot of pictures from the trip and will hopefully in another entry highlight some of the pictures I found the most fascinating.

In addition to the food, there were a few other redeeming points that I ended up finding. The town is major enough to have a Citibank. The people seemed friendly enough (to someone who didn't speak anything remotely sounding like the local language), and there definitely wasn't much traffic. the town was virtually a ghost town after 8pm in the evening.

Gas, like in the rest of Europe, is expensive. About 310 Forints per liter. Given an exchange rate of approximately 160:1 and 4.5 liters per gallon, this works out to about $8.71 per gallon? Wow.

I was warned that this town was a throwback to Cold War Era Eastern Europe. Not entirely far off.

It was a 3 hour van ride from Vienna through some extremely interesting, and extremely rural countryside. Went right to work on arrival at the production facility I was visiting, which seemed rather out of place. Very modern in just the middle of nowhere. Arriving at the Hotel Arany Barany, which is in the center of the town, the first thing you notice is, well, it's very dark. And I've not seen dark wood paneling in my hotel room since the 1970's. I do have free internet access though.

You notice how unmodern the hotel is when you realize there is no smoke detector in the hotel room. This hotel is very old. But given there's only two hotels in the town and this one is reportedly the more modern one, it makes me wonder what the other hotel is like.

You seriously wonder if someone is going to jump out of the hallway and scare you as you walk down the hallway. You hope the motion sensors for the lights work (you walk out the elevator and it's pitch dark until you step out and the motion sensors turn the lights on in the hall).

I have to admit I slept with the light on last night.

Hopefully more later!

Work this week is allowing me to do a little travel - I arrived in Vienna this morning and as things have it, have had a little time to sight see. Will post pictures when I get them downloaded (I've got a lot of pictures to post unfortunately from the last couple of months).

Vienna, from the limited time I've been able to sight see is neat. The airport (which I've seen the most of) is by US standards, a bit small. The hotel is literally right across the street - I typically park farther away from the terminal building in hourly parking than the hotel is to the airport! Flying in on Austrian Airlines was also interesting. The color scheme in the plane was, um, bright. But the service was friendly, I had two seats to myself, and you board to waltz music. That in and of itself was really nice!

Next stop, Zalaegerszeg, Hungary.

10 years since this very memorable picture.



So as my sister-in-law put it, 2 kids, 3 houses, who-knows-how-many cars, certainly-too-many computers later, and 10 years, here we are.

We celebrated with a nice dinner -- my comment is that despite us having a 10 course Chinese Wedding Banquet for our reception 10 years ago, we ate better now than we did back then. We only made it to course #2 10 years ago before we had to start the dress changing/table visiting/toasting thing.

Wow. Where did 10 years go?

Every year, I wait until the weekend after New Years to go calendar shopping for a calendar for my office. I kind of started this tradition years ago for a number of reasons.

First was that some years, I received calendars and didn't have to go out and buy one. Whereas, if I bought one before Christmas, sometimes I'd end up with an extra calendar.

Second, the calendars are always dirt cheap (at least 50% off) after New Year.

The bad part, of course, is that you are stuck with the selection of calendars that no one else wanted.

Last year, I ended up with the "Dubious Saying of George W" calendar which contained all sorts of humorous quotes from our President. Even die hard right-wing supporters usually see the humor in George W's choice for words.

This year was more challenging. No, I really didn't want an Obama or Hillary calendar. I've long since tired of Far Side calendars, and I have to put up with too much of Zack and Cody to want one of their calendars. We have a Thomas Kinkade calendar in our bedroom.

The verdict was the "GTV Garfield Television 2008" calendar. A bunch of drawings of Garfield making his favorite editorial comments about today's TV shows and commercials.

It tells the date and is at least mildly tolerable.

Tags: Humor