Panorama of the Concord

concordpano2.jpg
Originally uploaded by reboot95

Here is a panoramic picture I took off the Concord at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

2 Gig

I just updated the memory in my iMac and Macbook. The physical process is fairly easy except the macbook needs a really really really small Phillips screw driver. I used one of the blades on a multi-tool but it was not ideal.

The performance increase with 2 Gigs of memory over 1 Gig is nice but most noticeable in the Parallels Virtual Machine. Before if you were running one of the Virtual Machines it pretty much locked up the rest of the machine. Now the rest of the machine is running just fine and the Operating System running in Parallels is very snappy.

Purchased the memory from Crucial. I was just poking around and looking at what the price would be to upgrade. When I realized it was really not that much I decided to go ahead and purchase the memory. Cost about $21 on the iMac and $46 on the Macbook. I had to replace both memory chips in the Macbook. The iMac only needed an additional 1 Gig chip.

Nearly a Foot

Well I'm sort of thinking that Spring might get skipped this year. This is probably the most snow I've had at one time since I moved into this house in 2002 nearly as much as we got in 1989. Take note this is March 4 !!! All I can say is yikes.

Is Spring coming

Well here we sit in the month of March. Looking forward to the
flowers poking through and coloring our world again. But wait we live
in the mid-west so we are going to have our world colored but it is
going to be a different color than most people had in mind. It is
going to be white. Yes a major winter storm is winding up to hit us.
Go figure.

Apple Store and Genius Bar

I've had to have my Apple Macbook in for a few repairs in its first year (Great OS and features but build quality is lacking). There was the issue with micro cracks in the case. Ok right now go look at your Macbook in good light and see if you can find any hairline cracks in it. Go on I'll wait....... Then there was the issue with the Superdrive, it stopped ejecting disks. You know Apples really don't have a mechanical release I can find. I finally had to resort to turning it sideways and shaking it while repeatedly hitting the eject button. Then the latest was the power adapter burning a hole in the wire. OH FUN.

Here is the problem, each of these were a definite visible hardware issue. Yet each and every time I had to go to the silly Genius Bar to get the privilege of leaving my Macbook with them while they fixed it. This is really really annoying. The one in St. Louis West County Mall really seems to be backed up. You usually have to schedule the meeting a day ahead for the next afternoon or evening then you have to wait while the two Genius' on duty wade through iPod problem after iPod problem with a couple of iPhone problems thrown in. The list for iPod is like 10 people long and there are three of us waiting to get our computers looked at. Hey I got an idea I'll tell the iPod folks this is how you reset it, or you need to let the battery run all the way down then recharge it all the way to full, or you just need to resync it. Then the Genius could do the paper work so I can drop my laptop off.

Apple needs to rethink the way they are doing the Genius bar for hardware issues. The Genius bar is okay except for the wait and the fact they really have never given me a definite answer when I've asked questions.. But if each and every item that is any sort of repair or issue has to go through the Genius bar they really need to increase the staff, maybe promote a few of the floor folks to Genius, they don't usually seem all that busy. Or if it is a hardware issue that requires leaving the computer give me somewhere to just drop it off, hey you are going to be keeping it a week or so why do I have to wait 45 mins to an hour just to drop it off. UGGHHH!!!

Has anyone else had this issue.??

Mac OS X Your network has been compromised

Gee so glad to know that my network has been compromised. I now need to jump up and run around in circles going crisis crisis crisis. Wow I feel much better now.

This has been plaguing my Macbook every time it wakes up from sleep since Leopard 10.5.1 came out. I have not tested 10.5.2 yet to see if it fixes the problem. It seems to occur when I am connecting to WRT54G's running the DD-WRT firmware using WDS. This allows multiple wireless access points to look sort of like one access point and extend the range of your access point. It also appears to be centered around using WPA.

My solution. Well running around in circles going crisis crisis crisis can be fun but it really did not solve the problem. Rebooting would fix it but gee that takes a bit. Googling came up with a forum on Macrumors that suggested deleting the saved password. I can't remember if I found another link or just did it wrong but here is what I did.

Removed the offending network from the list of preferred networks. Now when I put the Macbook to sleep it wakes up and asks which network do I want to connect to, I double click on the one I was using and bam I'm on the network again no silly error.

Update
Nope 10.5.2 does not fix the problem.

Let it snow let it snow

And man did it snow.

It actually snowed enough I did not have to go to work today how cool is that.

Adding Verse of the Day to your website

You might wonder where the Verse of the Day is coming from that is included on this blog. I'm using a free bit of HTML code provided by the BibleGateway project. If you use the following link you can easily generate a snippet of html that can then be included in your blog or website.
How to do that is an exercise left up to the student.

BibleGateway.com: Build custom Verse of the Day HTML code

Rocky Creek Falls

IMG_2282.JPG
Originally uploaded by reboot95

Yes believe it or not that really is a falls in the State of Missouri. This is a little out of the way place in the Missouri Ozarks outside of a little town called Winona

Seneca Rocks, Dolly Sods

Want to see what mountain bones look like? Take a trip to Seneca Rocks West Virginia. This is a place where the backbone of the mountain has worn through. Sort of a spectacular view but if you want to get good photos you need to be careful with the lighting. I'm thinking afternoon lighting will give you the views. I took my photos in the morning so the lighting was not as good.

People even like to climb up the rock faces but nope not me. I get dizzy on the top step walking down the the viewing area.

One of the nice out the way places to visit is Dolly Sods. Head north on 28 out of Seneca Rocks

and look for Jordon Pond Road. This will take up to public road 19 then FR 75. FR 75 takes you through Dolly Sods. This is definitely a wilderness area, no McDonalds. You also want to be

careful if you decide to really do some serious hiking in here. There some unexploded artillery shells left over from practice during

WWII. I mainly just stuck to driving through and checking out the overlooks. Also check out the Northern Loop Trail. Although the loop does come out down the road from the parking lot. I'm thinking loops should come where they start....

A must see is the last overlook of the area "Bear Rocks" you can see all the way to Virginia from there. Isn't that cool?

Roadside Cafes

You know when you stop at little out of the way places on little out of the way roads you can end up with a gem of a meal or maybe not.  Probably best to go with your instincts, even if they are really proud of what they are serving unless it looks like a Bar-b-que place their Bar-b-que will probably not be good.  So go with what it looks like they might be good at regardless of what they are proud of.

New River Gorge

The New River Gorge known as the grand canyon of the east.  Sort of a cool stop along highway 19.  As long as you are going by take a stop at the visitor center and check out the New River Gorge bridge from the outlook below.

 

Also as long as you are there go ahead and drive down to the bottom of the gorge to see the bridge from way way down there.

You can see the old bridge that has been replaced.

And take a look at the gorge framed by the new bridge.

This area is sort of famous for white water rafting.  Ummm Yeah you're not going to be seeing any pictures of that :-)

Babcock

Babcock State Park, home to probably the most photographed grist mill in the world.  The Glade Creek Grist Mill.  Here take a look.

 

Took these pictures today.  I've visited this park several times, the have some cool cabins you can rent but you really need to reserve them ahead of time.  I've only gotten lucky once and that was because someone had canceled.  Really a must see in South West Central West Virginia.

Definition of Morning

How come every time you go on a vacation you just can't sleep the night before.  So the next morning instead of getting your clothes together and car packed you are just wanting to sleep.  Well 11:30 is still morning right?

 

Needless to say we did get a late start this morning but we are now in a Quality Inn in West Huntington West Virginia.  Yeah I know we were supposed to be camping but hey it is nicer in the hotel and it will give us the chance to get up and out in the morning and hit some of the cool areas in West Virginia.

A simple camping trip

Amazing what it takes to go on a simple camping trip....  Oh yeah and we still need to stop at WalMart.

Vacation.

Getting ready.  The air smells right.  Clothes are being washed.  All electronics are charged and all the camping gear is in a closet waiting to be tackled.  Yep it a vacation.  More to come.

iPhone and terms of service

Most people have heard about the iPhone "update" that bricked (technical term meaning it is broke) any iPhone which had been manipulated to unlock it from the AT&T carrier. This reaction and remedy by the combined legal, technical power known as Apple, AT&T causes one to ponder when did terms of service start allowing a company to come into your home (virtually) and destroy your personal property.

Now a lot of people on the net have been proclaiming loud and long that you bought it you agreed to the terms and you got what you deserve nah nah nah. Okay I'm game what subsection of the terms of service allowed Apple, AT&T to destroy equipment (virtually). Yes I know they had a warning "oh thank you mighty Apple, AT&T". Where is Apple, AT&T's proof that everyone who had equipment destroyed agreed to those terms. Say they did not activate through iTunes and used Tmobile as a phone carrier would they have ever agreed to those terms. Is it okay to sell a device that has such terms of services if the consumer can not view and agree to said terms prior to plunking down cash and walking out of the store. When did it become okay for a company to provide a "software patch" that destroys a device and not have responsibility for said destruction. And so what if the software patch did have terms of service as well what the heck gives a vendor the right to destroy things. Is there a clause that goes

i Blah da Blah
ii. Oh and hey if you have fiddled with this thing in a way we don't like we reserve the right to kill it.

This is where it leads folks. Microsoft has terms that states Vista home can not run under a Virtual environment. So say they detect they are in a virtual environment and if they are say the running Vista zaps the hard drive of the Operating System running the Virtual environment. Or if Sony had its way when you tried to rip a CD little spikes would come out and turn the inside of your CD drive to shreds. Actually they might even be happy if some of the little spikes flew out and did bodily harm just to teach you not to steal.

Consumers need to wake up and take a look around realize this goes way beyond cows and cheese (Read Leo Laport's blog) it goes to the heart of ownership and what it means to "have" things. If we don't pay attention some of the Sci/Fi stories about consumers existing only to support large companies might come true. Where ownership is taboo and all you are allowed to do is lease items for a "reasonable" rate and if you are not willing to lease things, well there is a van down by the river for "those" type of people.

Canon Rebel XTi

It is a joy to take pictures with. Settings are easily changeable and the basic shooting modes do a good job. In the creative modes the photographer can control just about any aspect of the shot they desire. One miss though is the control over the flash. In the basic shooting modes it does what ever the heck it wants. So you have to switch to the creative modes to force it on or off. Maybe this is something they can fix in firmware. It seems like an odd feature on such a user controllable camera otherwise.

The shake the sensor to get rid of dust spots does seem to work. And yes dust spots are a huge problem on DSLR's. I will probably be investing in a cleaning kit for the sensor at some time.

My old EF lens work great. My 200mm with the 1.6 multiplier of the DSLR is effectively a 380mm which is pretty nice. It allows you to get in real close on anything.

The weight of the camera is just about right, it has a nice heft to it, you won't forget you are carrying it but it does not weigh you down.

The function for the most part is a lot like my old old Canon Rebel EOS so it took very little time to get comfortable with the camera. And the magic of digital shows through in that you can snap off as many pictures as you want with out worrying how much it is going to cost to get them developed. You end up with a lot more bad shots but hey you just through those away and you end up with a few spectacular shots that you would have missed with a film camera

I've put up a flickr gallery of what I think of as some of the best shots I've taken with it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/reboot95/sets/72157600506124069/

IMG_0098

IMG_0098
Originally uploaded by reboot95

Picture of a iron bird about to take flight. Don't blink, don't look away, blink and you are Dead.

Check out this blog

Check out my friend Stephanie's Blog.

She is spending a year teaching in Taiwan.

http://stephhendrix.blogspot.com/

All Things Cool

I am becoming more and more frustrated with the drive in American Business to grasp on to the the latest Cool things. This is most likely exacerbated by the fact I'm taking a very boring online course dedicated to the Japanese concept of Lean manufacturing. This is being presented as the answer to all business woes. Well why not a few observations.

Oh where to begin. We are taken into a fantasy land of a Major cooperation and follow around a new hired Product manager who is a intolerable suck up. He is given a troubled division and soon is being indoctrinated (brainwashed) into lean concepts. I really wish training creators would stop trying to be clever with these silly things. Oh yeah they come up with what they believe to be clever scenarios situations that will engage students. Then they get some of the most dull and flat voice actors in existence. Yep that works....

Next on my list. The training essentially formalizes a concept of organization, simplification, reduction. Wow there you go genius why hadn't anyone thought of this before. Well we have. The key to what is being presented is to wrap it up in a new box so people will think it is revolutionary and will make changes in the way they do things. But any system can always benefit from those concepts. The key is just to do them, so I get a bit aggravated at something that is being sold as revolutionary just to get people to do things they already know is the right way to do it.

Another fallacy is that all cultures are the same and concepts that are key in one culture will work in another. We have a lot of basis and patterns dictated by the culture we are a part of. Philosophy that might be somewhat predicated on the culture doesn't always work in another. Let's have a reality check. Japanese companies are based on a culture that has a different level of commitment to jobs and work that the American culture does. When a workforce is completely dedicated to there job above all else there is a great potential for success regardless of anything else. American culture is no longer that job focused, we are more self absorbed. For us a job pays for what we do, for the Japanese culture the job is what they do. Given what I've read though the next generation in Japan is more self absorbed so we will see what happens.

So come lets' just say hey these have always been good ideas and lets figure out how to organize simplify and reduce with out acting like we have been on a mountain and received some new stone tablets.

Snow_plow

Snow_plow
Originally uploaded by reboot95.

So don't you think the cars below are about to get a big surprise.

Brrr Brrr Ice (Originally from 1/16/2007)

We had a pretty major ice storm hit the old midwest. And you know what that means don't you. One you better go to the store and get your bread and milk. It is a midwest thing. Anytime we have snow or ice or the predicition of snow or ice we have to stock up on bread and milk. Man you if you don't have bread and milk you could die. Second power outages.

Yep power outages. The ice covered trees amy be pretty but those limbs snap like tooth picks and take out any power lines that happen to be near by. I thought I was doing good until Saturday night. As I drove up to my house I noticed hmmm lots of dark houses. Pushed the button for the electric garage door to go up nothing, pushed again, nothing. Pushed it with more force nothing. Got closer nothing. Stared at door in disbelief pushed the button again. In resignating started digging in my pocket for the manual over ride device (ie keys).

It was dark and cold bummer... Okay lets start bringing in firewood. While my fireplace is a really pretty little fireplace in the basement it does lack a bit in the heat the house department. It is more of a ohhh what a pretty flickering there is there in that there fireplace. So time to cart out the camping gear and climb in the 20 degree mummy bag and stoke the fire all night long. Not a bad night but was a might chilly. I also have a new appreciation to how much work my Dad put into heating the house with a fireplace.


And brrr taking a shower in a house that is 50F is a challenge. But don't want to smell on Church Sunday morning now do I. And the old wood fireplace makes everything in the house smell like smoke...

Stayed the next night at a friends house. Did not want to do with out the CPAP a second night. You can wake yourself up snoring only so often before you cry out enough I must do something else.

Power came back on Monday afternoon huray.... Given that the temps were in the Teens F wow that would have taken a lot of firewood. And if I had not been at home the cat would have been mad and very cold. And I'm already concerned that she might be trying to kill me. Leave her one more night in a freezing cold house and it might just push her over the edge.

iPhone

Eh.

I'm not exactly impressed by the old iPhone. One issue two year contracts, most people are currently tied up with a two year contract on their existing phone and service and breaking those contracts are really expensive.

Next it costs a lot of money, man is it expensive. Not sure I buy the idea that most people that have a smart phone have an iPod. I don't think they bought them at the same time.

Really disappointed that Apple choose to bring out a wide screen video device on such an expensive low memory platform. I was thinking about getting an iPod but not the iPhone. I'm in a two year contract.

It looks like an okay PDA with innovative features, but I already have a PDA that I paid less for and there are tons of third party applications for. And more importantly I can read a lot of books in the Microsoft reader format. Which for me is the killer PDA app.

What it did do right? I think they got the concept that these devices are for consuming data not creating data. That is where I think the PDA market has made a huge mistake in building devices that you are supposed to take notes on, put contacts in, and do you scheduling. PDAs excel at reading text and that is about it. So as a book, Bible, text web snippits reader they are great, data entry not so much.

HAMSTER DANCE VIDEO

Hamster dance...multicolour style. I a remember back when the little guy was just a set of animated gifs in a row

Openvpn with Clarkconnect 3.2

I recently installed and configured openvpn 2.0.7-1 to work on my Clarkconnect 3.2 firewall.

Here is what I did.

Down load the openvpn rpm from:
http://dag.wieers.com/packages/openvpn/
The specific one I downloaded was:
http://dag.wieers.com/packages/openvpn/openvpn-2.0.7-1.el3.rf.i386.rpm

Down load lzo from:
http://dag.wieers.com/packages/lzo/
The specific one I downloaded was:
http://dag.wieers.com/packages/lzo/lzo-1.08-4.1.el3.rf.i386.rpm

Then install both RPM's with rpm -ivh
lzo needs to be installed first.

Okay then the configuration part.

Take a look at the documentation for openvpn
http://openvpn.net/howto.html#install

The first thing I did was cd to /usr/share/doc/openvpn-2.0.7/
Then cd to easy-rsa

And follow the instructions on creating your on PKI from the openvpn howto guide.

After that cd back up one level to /usr/share/doc/openvpn-2.0.7/

Then cd in to the sample-config-files directory

Copy the server.conf file to /etc/openvpn

You will also need to copy the the following files from /usr/share/doc/openvpn-2.0.7/easy-rsa/keys folder
ca.crt
dh1024.pem
server.crt
server.key

Then you will need to modify the server.conf file in /etc/openvpn to reflect your set up.

The conf file has a pretty good set of comments to tell you all about what needs to be filled in and how it needs to be set. I really did not do anything special for the Clarkconnect firewall.

I did set
push "redirect-gateway"
So all traffic would go through the vpn and be encrypted.

Okay here is the magic part for Clarkconnect

You need to go to the clarkconnect web admin. Select the network tab under firewall select incoming.

You want to allow incoming connections port 1194 (or what ever port you set up in your /etc/openvpn/server.conf file) for UDP or TCP depending on how you set up your server.conf file.

Here is what stumped me for awhile.

The problem is with all the iptables examples that are given on the openvpn site use the A option which is append. This errrr appends the rule at the bottom of the table the problem with this is it places the new rule after the very useful for a firewall rule that says "deny anything from anywhere" the packets hit the deny anything and boom they get dropped on the firewall floor.

So to get around that do this.

cd to /etc/rc.d
vi rc.firewall.local

I added something like this
iptables -I INPUT -s 10.8.0.0/24 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I FORWARD -s 10.8.0.0/24 -j ACCEPT
Okay I changed that entry a little.
iptables -I OUTPUT -s 192.168.7.100 -d 10.8.0.0/24 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I INPUT -i tun0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I FORWARD -i tun0 -j ACCEPT

On iptables -I OUTPUT the -s (source) address is the ip for the internal interface on your clarkconnect box.

where 10.8.0.0/24 is the subnet for the openvpn connections. I guess it would work with the interface instead of the source port
The -i tun0 worked except for the output rule

This way the rule gets added higher in the iptables and the packets are passed on instead of dropped. Also by using the rc.firewall.local the rules will survive a firewall restart.

That pretty much configures the server.

For clients I used.
For OS X tunnelblick
http://tunnelblick.net/
Go right for the version 3.0 product (it was rc3 when I grabbed it) the 2.0 version just did not work.

For Windows Openvpn Gui for windows :-)
http://openvpn.se/

You will need to check the instructions on where to copy the client certificates that you created in /usr/share/doc/openvpn-2.0.7/easy-rsa/ folder.

That pretty much is all I did to get it to work.

I'm still having a problem with routing to the CC box using the inside interface, when the tunnel is up. I can now get to the internal interface after entering the OUTPUT iptables rule shown above And anything to the outside interface, the public IP is unencrypted I think. This means any service I normally get from the clarkconnect box is not working right.

Oh yeah and it really does not work to good when I'm trying to connect from the inside you really need to be on the outside connecting to get a good test.

So far though it seems to work.

Lightening

This was from a strom that came out of the North East on July 19, 2006.  It is one of the few storms I can remember that followed that track.  There were 90 mph winds recorded. 

One of the things that was unique was nearly constant lightening for a period of time.  That is what made these shots possible.
... See my Tabblo>

The joy of a Digital Camera

CIMG1760
Originally uploaded by reboot95.

Hey check this photo out. I have the plant in front of my house one evening when I got home I thought I would take some macro photos of it.

Well this Bee kept buzzing around and around. It was pretty hard to catch it still long enough to snap the photo. That is one thing nice about digital cameras even if you take 8 shots to get one good one you don't feel so bad because you can only print off the one good one.

Oh go check out the big picture on Flickr it looks pretty cool

Disney

I'm in Florida we arrived about 12:00 on Southwest. Had a nice stroll through the airport. Rented a Red Saturan Vue. Nice care. Had lunch and we are now at the condo. Pretty nice and every things is going very well. We will be hitting EPcot in a little bit.

I'm on Dial up so I'm having flash backs 1993..... :-)

New 2006 Explorer Limited

CIMG0351
Originally uploaded by reboot95.

I did it, I really did it I have bought a new car. It is a 2006 Ford Explorer Limited. A really good looking and performing vehicle in my opinion.

The Good

• The V8 really does have more power than you think.


• The Gas mileage is as good as my V6 98 Eddie Bauer Explorer


• It has a great ride for an SUV


• Still set up high


• Nice Styling


• DVD based GPS navigation with first in class Street names announced for turns


• Roomy


• Heated Steats



• A whole set of electronic stability, traction control features

Some misses

• Door handle in a strange place, but it is there because of new side impact beams


• A bit pricey


• Still not great gas mileage


• I've heard it does not have any skid plates


• Speed electronically limited to around 100 mph


• My 98 has a few features that this one does not.


• They moved the place you put gas in to the right side, I keep pulling up on wrong side.

So what is the final verdict this is a good successor to my existing Explorer. I feel like I've taken a step up and am over all happy. None of the other SUV's I looked at had the right mix to make me plop down my money. The V8 at first does not really feel like it is that much stronger than the V6 in my 98, but when you have the right combination of speed and gear selection it will throw you back in the seat with some authority and you think yeah this engine did come out of a Mustang. The engine is a 4.6 Liter 3 valve per cylinder variable timed V8. The 6 Speed automatic is a bit slow and misses some punch at certain speeds. But once you get it right you go yeah it does have nearly 300 HP! The DVD Based GPS navigation system is pretty cool it has a bright readable screen only direct sunlit with the moon roof open makes it hard to see. It has voice prompts and will give you street names for turns this is supposed to be another first in class. It is very comfortable and the ride is a lot better than the 98. I'm looking forward to the first snow to see how the electronic controls systems help out with less than optimal traction. I've had it out in a hard rain and there was really no issue with traction or handling. Over all it had enough features to convince me to spend the money

Click on the picture at the top of the post to see the flicker gallery.