C.J. Steele

viva la xsnow!

2011-12-10T18:24:00.000-06:00

In the late 1990's, my friend Doug introduced me to `xsnow`, its a simple little program that makes it snow on your desktop. Ever since, around Christmas time, I have waxed nostalgic and run `xsnow` in honor of the on-set of winter and Advent. I was surprised this year when I ran `apt-get install xsnow` and was bluntly told that there was no installation candidate for xsnow!

I did a little digging and discovered that `xsnow` is still in the source repository! w00t! Unfortunately, it's VERY infrequent that I actually build a package from source, so I had to do a bit of reading to help me do it. I figured, if I had to look it up, it might be of value to others if I provided the synopsis of how to build the package.

First, make sure your /etc/apt/sources.list file includes the following:

cjs@hp8540w:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list | grep deb-src
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free

Next, run `apt-get update` followed by `apt-cache showsrc xsnow | grep Build-Depends`, which will reveal:

Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 7), dpatch (>= 2), libx11-dev, libxext-dev, libxpm-dev, libxt-dev, xutils-dev

Now you'll need to make sure these dependencies are installed, with `apt-get install debhelper dpatch libx11-dev libxext-dev libxpm-dev libxt-dev xutils-dev`.

Now you should be ready to build from source. You build the source via `apt-get -b source xsnow`. This will build a .deb and dump it in /var/cache/apt/archives.

You can install the .deb via `dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/xsnow*.deb`.

Note: I had to build from source because in Sid there's only an i386 binary for xsnow. If you're running Sid on a 32-bit x86 box, you should just be able to do an `apt-get install xsnow`, provided you have the non-free repositories in your apt sources.list.

You can run xsnow from an `xterm` OR, whatever means of launching you prefer (e.g. synapse or gnome-do, etc.)

How to build your own laptop

2011-04-02T11:49:00.000-05:00

Ever wanted to build your own laptop? What about mod'ing your existing laptop? These are the kinds of questions that keep me up at night (among others.) I did a little checking this morning, and with minimal effort I found some really fascinating stuff. I probably have some advantage based on the fact that I've done my share of maintenance on various laptops, but I think that almost anyone could reasonably do this...

So, what do you need? I'll do a run-down on the "major components", but I'm really only going to spend much time on the ones that are more difficult to find.

Core components:

Base-kit -- this is, by-far, the hardest piece to find in all of this, and certainly the most critical. These will typically include the mother board, power-supply, battery, display, keyboard and pointer, as well as all the chassis plastics. This is going to predicate most of your selections below.
Video card -- incidentally, nVidia and Radeon both make some fairly glorious mobile graphics processors. As such, these are pretty-easy to find on-line.
Hard disk -- your disk space. Duh!
cd/dvd/bluray drive -- one beauty of building your own is that you don't even have to if you're hard-core, you may not even need such a thing (or you may want to use an external drive), but these are not difficult to find either.
Wireless card -- sometimes these are integrated into the mother board, but a lot of times its a module you have to add. These are fairly trivial to find on-line.
CPU -- the base-kit is going to predicate which CPU form-factor you can support, but these are easy enough to find on-line.
Memory -- the base-kit, again, is going to predicate type and quantity.

So, lets talk about the base-kit, because there's a lot of variation with these. While there are some really crap chassis out there, I don't think that's a governing feature; for the most part, your base-kit is getting you two big things: the motherboard and the display.

The display is fairly straight-forward: you want to get the highest resolution display you can, in the size you want. Unfortunately you need a magic decoder-ring to understand the display-names and how they relate to features and resolution. There is a Wikipedia page that decodes these code-names and translates them to features. Since this is bundled in the base-kit, I'd settle on a lesser display if I got a mother board with all the features I wanted.

The motherboard is the pre-eminent component that governs all other aspects of your build. I'll go so far as to say that the number-one requirement for any mother board is that it support an independent video card... this ensures that you'll not get a crap graphics solution. Everything else, for the most part, is a balancing act. You want to get a mother board that support your CPU of choice, as well as the amount of memory you want/need. After that, all other features come in to play, such as its expansion slots, card-slots, etc. For my money, the big-three are maximum CPU support, quantity of memory, and support for an independent video card.

There are some big players in the base-kit market, most notably MSI. There are some others that provide good info too, such as Directron, but I didn't look at any of the primary suppliers from China, India or Taiwan, so I know there are a LOT more out there.

Simply put, I think you'll find its not too difficult to scrounge-up the parts, so why not build your own laptop? I'll tell you why: warranty. While the majority of your components will come with a 90-day or 1-year warranty, you won't get any sort of extended or 3-year warranty, and as someone who's had four laptops in the last three years, I can tell you that an extended warranty is a good idea if you do a lot of mobile computing -- for me, I've gone through so many laptops because I carry it with me all the time and routinely work at between two and four sites each day -- including putting my laptop in my backpack, putting it in my car, etc... my laptops get a LOT of wear and tear, probably more than the average user.

Anywho, hopefully this is some help.

Make images into a movie

2011-03-12T12:58:00.000-06:00

Boy2 has been making stop-motion videos using Lego mini-figures. I found a slick little Linux utility to convert a series of images into an AVI. VERY useful if you then want to use `kdenlive` to add audio to said video, or edit it otherwise.

mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -o movie.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mjpeg

At some point, I'll post some of his videos.

Confessions

2011-02-08T15:22:00.000-06:00

I was a bit surprised/amused this morning when I read that there is now an app to assist people with their examination of conscience in preparation for the sacrament of confession... The story from the BBC explains, "Now senior church officials in America have given it their seal of approval, in what is thought to be a first."

That American bishops are on the leading edge of the integration of technology in the Church is somewhat surprising as they don't exactly have the reputation as being techno-evangelists (of either stripe), but I'm glad to see the Church reaching out to people of my generation in ways that don't involve "guitar Masses", or other such "innovations".

Of course, I'm not about to pull out an iPhone (or any other phone) in the confessional, but if this helps someone then I'm in favor of it... call me old fashioned, but I made my kids learn the Ten Commandments.

Latin Vocabulary

2011-01-09T18:42:00.000-06:00

I've been looking for a Latin vocabulary testing module... that was free... because I'm a cheap-ass. Well, I couldn't find one. SO, I wrote a little chunk of code to parse a latin dictionary I found on-line into an XML format suitable for KWordQuiz. I put it all on-line here if you're interested -- all you'd really need is kwordquiz (which is free) and my kvtml file. I don't think the dictionary I found was very good, but it was unrestricted by copyright, so I can't complain.

I included the little bit of perl I wrote to mangle the dictionary into XML. If you're interested.

Predictions for 2011

2010-12-25T00:06:00.000-06:00

I may not be Nostradamus, but I have a couple of predictions for 2011...

1) Symbian OS, Microsoft Windows Mobile, HP Palm, and Blackberry will all try to regain market-share by releasing new version of their operating systems. They'll fail. The lead Apple and Android enjoy is too substantial.

2) Tablets will become the dominant personal computing platform towards the end of the year when the second generation tablets start hitting the market.

3) Security on mobile and tablet devices will become a real issue -- the limited bandwidth of mobile devices and the complete absence of security software on mobile devices makes mobile networks particularly vulnerable to a wide spectrum of security threats.

4) Accessories for tablets and mobile devices that foster "real" computing (e.g. keyboards and other similar input devices) are going to become an emerging market. Even better, why not have a slide-out keyboard on tablets, just like on mobile phones? (It makes sense, right?)

5) the really necessary and cutting-edge market will be for devices that allow people to interact with technology without a keyboard and mouse. (This is probably more like 2015-2018, but hey, as long as I've got my crystal ball out, why not look further?)

6) Microsoft will continue its trend of non-standard "standards", and in so-doing will seal the fate of their browser as a second-class internet access-device, like AOL, back in the day.

7) Net neutrality isn't going to happen -- the FCC, ICANN and every other regulatory body will capitulate to strong-arm of communism and capitalism.

8) Fox News (particularly Glenn Beck and Bill Orielly) will beat the "e-terrorism" drum and they will create a whole new vocabulary around "e-terrorism". To those of us who know about such things, this will be hillarity!

We'll see how I did in a year.

Sexify Your Linux Desktop

2010-12-05T00:50:00.000-06:00

I have been playing with beautifying my Linux desktop, and I think I've made pretty good progress, in large part thanks to three little apps: adeskbar, synapse, and Emerald Theme Engine.

aDeskBar provides me an OS X style "kicker" (as its called in KDE). Its really light-weight, and easily customizable.

Synapse is like KeyLaunch or Gnome-Do, both of which provide ready-access to apps via a quick-key. Very useful stuff. A simple press of Ctrl+Space and you can type any app in and it will launch.

And, then there's the Emerald Theme Engine, which is glorious and beautiful. I am fond of it, in particular.

To be frank, I have been using Linux for almost fifteen years now... and I will tell you, a great many of the applications I had encountered many moons ago have either disappeared or have matured into marvelous creations. I'm fairly sure I have used aDeskBar back when it sucked, but neither Synapse or Emerald are known to me.

So, its pretty cool to see Emerald in action -- its the epitome of theme engines. In fact, it contains many different rendering engines. Even better, most of the really awesome themes available from the various Gnome theme sites, are for Emerald.

Synapse is a rocking replacement for Gnome-do, which as near as I can tell, is the chief replacement for Gnome-Do. Gnome-Do was basically an experiment, and was never developed to its full potential.

Between Synapse, aDeskBar, and Emerald, I have achieved a right-sexy desk-top.

Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) & VMware Workstation 7.1

2010-10-27T10:01:00.000-05:00

My employer is a VMware partner and I've been a long-time VMware fan; I have ESXi on a white-box server at home, and run Workstation on my work laptop. Since upgrading/installing Ubuntu 10.10, I've been dragging my feet about getting Workstation installed again, but this morning I fired it up and like always I had to hunt-down a patch to get the modules to build. *sigh*

Fortunately, some kind soul has made a lovely patch available and has further made it very easy to install! W00t! I love the Open Source community.

So, my VMware Workstation is back up and rocking. Hooray!

Native USB tether for Android Phones!

2010-09-17T14:55:00.000-05:00

I've been a Linux nerd for many years, and today I discovered one of the most amazing hacks I have ever seen. By "hack", I do not mean something cobbled together in a haphazzard fashion, but rather and impressive feat of skill. This particular hack, by Shannon Van Wagner, allows you to natively tether your android phone in Ubuntu! This is remarkable because of the diversity of pieces that had to be put together to accomplish the feat.

I am willing to bet that while some other hacks I've seen may have been more difficult, none required a broader base of knowledge, and as such this one takes the cake in my Ultimate Hack list. I emailed Shannon to see if I could give him a tangible reward for his hard work.

Kick-ass Android Apps

2010-08-23T12:40:00.000-05:00

As more and more of my friends switch to Android-based phones, I find myself keeping a list of "must have" apps for the Android. Since I've been going to the trouble of maintaining it, I figured I might as well share it. SO, here are my must-have apps for the Android (ones in bold are essentials):

launcher pro -- desktop replacement, very cool features unavailable in the stock desktop. This was the first app I loaded after I reset my phone to default.
better keyboard -- replacement keyboard, much better predictive text suggestions and multiple entry modes. This keyboard is MUCH more forgiving than the stock one. It also has themes, if you're stupid like that.
task manager (by Adao Team) -- kills unnecessary apps (like amazon music store?!? wtf!) without this, your battery life will suck more than a Thai donkey show. Make sure of two things: 1) that you mark your essential apps as ignored, and 2) that the thing actually is running -- out of the box it will kill itself.
xScope Browser -- this is hands-down the fastest web-browser I've seen for Android, and it doesn't skimp on the features. If you've got a sub-ghz processor, you'll find this to be your best bet for surfing.
no lock -- prevents Exchange policies from locking your phone (if you don't have an exchange account setup that requires screen lock policies, don't bother with this one.)
shop savvy -- product barcode scanner with internet shopping built-in! WOW, this one is sweet. you can do wishlists and the like.
thinking place -- mind mapping/brainstorming app, I use this one quite a lot.
lastpass -- password manager (if you aren't already using this on your desktop, you absolutely MUST, its the coolest thing since sliced bread.)
meebo -- instant messaging that can be used anywhere (web, mobile, etc.)
sysmonitor -- runs in your notification area and gives you instant access to system resources without clicking through menus. I really like this one.
where -- like the yellow pages, white pages, and google maps smashed together with citysearch.com very cool, very handy.
dropbox -- like dropbox on your PC, allows you to sync from your dropbox acct.
file manager -- browse your SD card, handy. Totally optional though because xScope also has a file browser built-in.
beam reader -- the PDF viewer that isn't complete shit. It actually works.
Old Android Agenda -- widgets for viewing your calendar without opening it, by far the best calendar widget available.
Sense Analog 24-hour Clock -- best 24-hour desktop widget I've seen!

you'll find these apps already installed, but very useful:

power center -- manage services like wifi, gps, screen brightness and background data sync with toggles on the power center. Very VERY useful.
settings -- duh
market -- to find the goodness

beyond apps, there are a couple of things that you need to orient yourself to to really maximize your android device.

multiple desktops are a means to organize information. Some phones call these "scenes". The crux of it is, if you're like me, you'll find organizing your desktops by purpose to be the most efficient way of finding what you're looking for. I have desktops for: "weather and travel", "main page" (clock & agenda), "contacts", and "settings".
in launcher pro, use the bottom launcher buttons to dock your mail, sms, and other common apps -- bonus: if you use the launcher pro icons for mail, phone, sms, gtalk or gmail, you'll see notifications about how many new messages you have. YAY!
if you find you're accidentally dialing random peeps because of lag in the device, get "call confirm" from the market. The Eris is a bit gutless (not unmanageably so, just a little), and this was a constant frustration for me before I got call confirm.

pyScout - threaded port scanner with heuristic protocol identification

2010-08-11T11:08:00.000-05:00

In 2007, while attending a training event in Chicago, NYC, or Washington D.C., (my memory is fuzzy as to which), I began to learn Python. I needed a project, and since I'd always wanted to tinker with the inner-workings of a port-scanner, I decided to write one in Python. While this may not be the most novel utility to code, it afforded me the chance to learn Python and scratch a curious itch I'd always had. As I began work on this simple port scanner, the thought occurred to me to incorporate something most other port scanners don't do: application/protocol/service identification. Seemed like a good idea at the time. There were a couple of others out there, but none that really incorporated both a high-speed port scanner and protocol identification. SO, I decided to write such a beast. Thus, pyScout was born.

As I began working on a pen-test for a client today, I was dusting off the old pyScout 0.0.3 code, and I realized that the C&C components were largely broken, but not badly. I made a couple of minor changes and decided to put it up on Google Code so that others might benefit from the project. If you'd like to browse the repository, you can, or you could check it out from SVN and use it.

If anyone would like to contribute to pyScout, feel free to drop me an e-mail or reply to this post.

Poor-man's Bells

2010-07-15T22:04:00.000-05:00

One of the things the Queen and I have been trying to do is get everyone on the same schedule and to have a family routine around that schedule... I stole a page from the monastic play-book and setup bells to ring at 0900, 1200, 1500, 1800 and 2100. I had tried to find a simple little program that would let me do this, but there were none that didn't either cost $20USD or suck emensely, so I cooked-up a quick little batch file I run on our media-center PC:

@echo off
net use t: \\lnx-dc1\shared
t:\bin\nircmd.exe mutesysvolume 0
t:\bin\nircmd.exe setsysvolume 32768
"C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" --qt-start-minimized --no-repeat t:\sounds\bells.wav vlc://quit
net use t: /delete /y

So, all I do is have this little script execute via the Windows Task Scheduler at the desired times, and it works like a champ!

My thought was that the 0900 bell would be our official "start of the day" bell, the 1200 bell would be lunch time, 1500 would be mid-day, and 1800 is dinner. At 2100, its time to head for bed. One could easily use this method to create school bells for their home-school (to mark breaks, and such) or to mark the passage of the Liturgical Hours, etc... And, its totally free. I used NirCmd and VLC as well as a WAV of bells I found on-line.

python: XML-RPC over SSL

2010-05-25T06:38:00.000-05:00

For quite some time I have been looking at writing a simple management agent that is cross-platform, extensible and secure. My primary interest is that there are often times where I would like a means of performing some task on a remote system, without the necessity of actually connecting to those systems. My thinking on this little project really got ratcheted into high-gear when I was studying for one of my recent certifications, wherein I was studying the architecture of an enterprise management platform.

For my part, I have the framework of the server in place, and will be fleshing-out the bits to transport and execute arbitrary plugins/modules and configurations. Once that's done, the sky is basically the limit.

LastPass

2010-03-16T23:03:00.000-05:00

If you haven't switched over to LastPass, you need to, and NOW. This is the coolest password manager I've ever seen.

vSphere on Windows 7

2010-02-28T22:55:00.001-06:00

Whew! Running the vSphere client on Windows 7 was getting to be a bit of a dire need... got it sorted with some help from the interwebs.

Times Person of the Year

2009-12-16T11:17:00.002-06:00

This morning, the first thing I heard when I got in the car was a report from NPR about Ben Bernanke being named as Time's Person of the Year. My immediate response was the same as when I had heard that Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. "Really?"

As I sat, listening to the litany of blessings Mr. Bernanke has bestowed upon the whole of Western Civilization -- including navigating one of the most difficult financial eras in history. Okay, I'll admit that Poor Old Ben inherited something of a shit-storm, but in the same token, I don't think that the "landing" of this economy has been as well as it could have been. Moreover, the whole "bailout" is counter to everything we hold sacred as a free-market/enterprise society.

If I were the Bernanke, how would I have done it? From the bottom-up.

There are an estimated 308,000,000 people in America. Statistics have shown that only about a half of those are tax paying persons. So, if you took the $8.5 TRILLION dollars, and distributed it evenly among the 154,000,000 or so tax paying persons... we would have each received a check for $55k, roughly.

So, how is it that giving everyone a check for $55k would solve anything? Well, two points:
1) most people would be depositing that money into their bank accounts. This would bolster the balance sheets of the banks, thus fixing the "corporate paper market" issue.
2) most people would be spending that money straight-away. I don't think I'm unreasonable in speculating that a LOT of people would use said money for one of two purposes: to buy a home, or a car. Either of these would result in solving the problems with the housing and auto industries... except... not enough people would be buying American cars to sufficiently save GM and its various brands.

That brings me to the second half of my diatribe against Bernanke: government taking ownership of what was heretofore privately or publicly (as in stock-market, not Gov't) owned companies is just flat-out wrong. If the company sucks so bad that it can't survive without being on Federal Life-support, then it shouldn't be allowed to persist! Let it die and the void it leaves will be filled by new businesses that are better able to adapt to the changing world, provided that the niche left is genuine!

Long story short, Bernanke deserves the Person of the Year as much as Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize... not one damn bit. If you ask me, the Obama administration is using its media-savvy and clout to effectively buy these designations to bolster their image in the public eye and to gloss-over the fact that they have done basically nothing as we approach the one year anniversary of the administration.

console-kit-daemon

2009-12-15T11:36:00.004-06:00

Periodically, I pop-open `htop` and see a slug of threads for `console-kit-daemon`. I've tried to find what the heck this thing does, and failing that I've tried removing the package... problem is, its required by everything I actually use. After reading an interesting bug report on console-kit, I've implemented a fix suggested there: created /usr/sbin/console-kit-daemon to contain simply:

#!/bin/sh
exit 0;

This has solved my console-kit-daemon glut, but has no appreciable impact otherwise. Oh well. I'm still trying to figure out why Ubuntu 9.10 is such a dog on this box -- UrT and a variety of other apps are just absurdly slow, for no apparent reason. :-(

Awesome WM

2009-11-23T22:27:00.002-06:00

Its a well-known fact, among my friends, that I am a UI-bigot. That is, I think roughly 99% of user interfaces are pure garbage. Its not really a transcendent fault of user interfaces as a whole, but rather the awkward puberty they've gone through over the last twenty years. So, it may come as no surprise (to my friends) that I've found my forray into the Awesome Window Manager (heretoafter referred to as simply, "awesome") something of a blessing. Awesome, for those that don't know, is window manager for X11 that defies the conventional wisdom of window managers and forces all windows to one of a few fixed layouts.

Tiling window managers, such as awesome, started out as a joke. Some whit was flaming a news-group about a drug-induced coding frenzy in which the window manager was simply a distraction. Out of that satirical post rose a breed of window managers called "tiling wm's". They are more than a bit obtuse to the average user, and at first blush I think I was even put off by the superficial neanderthal-like clubbing Awesome did to my windows. Having now run Awesome for a week and some days, I have concluded that awesome is in fact probably my favorite window manager of all time.

Granted, I may still be in the honey-moon phase with this thing, but let me tell you why Awesome is awesome:

No frilly window decorations cluttering my desktop
No wasted space for panels, widgets and whatsits
Configurable to a ridiculous degree (more on that in a moment)
FAST AS HELL
VERY light weight

Those benefits being what they are, Awesome is not without its foibles. Most notably, Awesome's configuration. There are two reasons Awesome's configuration sucks:

the DEFAULT configuration file is over 300 lines.
your configuration is written in LUA.

Taking each of those in turn...

No configuration file should be 300 lines. Honestly. Consider that you can configure MySQL, Apache, AND Postfix -- TOGETHER -- in fewer than 300 lines, it is a travesty that Awesome's config is so vast. Proponents of Awesome's configuration system say that its complexity is the price for its flexibility... while that may be, its still unnecessarily complex for anyone short of a supreme power-user.

Who has ever heard of LUA before? Certainly not I. LUA isn't even on the top 20 languages most programmed... more people have used SMALL than LUA. While LUA is fairly trivial to pickup (hell, I learned big chunks of it today) its still unreasonable to require a user to learn a whole programming language and various API's just to configure their window manager.

SO, that said, I think the good out-weighs the bad and Awesome is Awesome.

(P.S. I am afraid Awesome suffers the same plight as Enlightenment in that its principle author(s) are ego-maniacs with little concern for fixing bugs vs. adding features. Oh well, I used E for years despite Rasterman's obtuse and sporadic personality.)

Compiz + UrT == FAIL

2009-11-04T15:04:00.002-06:00

Apparently, I'm not crazy. Shocking, I know, but I've found others who have experienced frustrations while running opengl apps on top of compiz. Let me back up a second... I play Urban Terror. A lot. I've noticed, lately, that my FPS (Frames Per Second) has been HIDEOUS -- like around 30-40. This is a big problem, because I am not accustomed to playing at such crappy rates. I had noticed, periodically, that my FPS would be MUCH better, and slowly I'd correlated this to times when compiz had died when I launched UrT. SO, now when I play, I launch UrT, launch a terminal, and use the terminal to `killall compiz` so I can get good FPS when I play.

If anyone else is having this issue and has come-up with a better solution, please let me know.

Remembering 9/11

2009-09-11T21:11:00.000-05:00

I remember almost everything about 9/11. I was in Aurora, CO, at the Hampton Inn. I was in Denver for advanced training on the Cisco PIX. I was in the hotel lobby getting breakfast for my wife. I remember walking in to the area where breakfast was being served and was taken by the herd of people standing, silently, watching the television. I saw the first tower burning. I asked someone next to me, "what the hell happened?" He said, "a plane hit one of the Trade Center towers." As I stood there, I watched a second plane fly in to the second tower. I was stunned. I brought some breakfast up to Amanda and told her to turn on the television. I spent the next several hours at the training center with my classmates, trolling the web for information.

That night, Amanda and I took John with us to the 16th St. Mall to walk around and find some food. There were cops in riot gear. Cops in fatigues with machine-guns. Cop cars. Armored personnel carriers. It was surreal.

Now, eight years later, I watched some of the footage that's since become part of our cultural awareness, and had my kids watch it too. I think its important that we all remember that the preservation, and advancement, of Western Civilization is essential not only to ensuring we maintain our current place in the world, but also to ensure that we hand our children a bright future.

ESXi file transfer woes

2009-08-25T21:22:00.005-05:00

SO, I recently built an ESXi server. Its nothing special, but she's got it where it counts. A comedy of errors has unfolded as I've tried to upload even a single ISO to the system. It shouldn't be this hard.

First, I tried upload images using the built-in function in vSphere. Unfortunately, VirtualBox OSE so grossly underperformed at this task that the uploads wouldn't complete, ever. For example, I began the 650MB upload of the OpenFiler virtual appliance at 2030, woke-up the next day and the session had STILL not completed. This is over my LAN, not the Internet. That's absurd!

Next, I enabled SSH and tried to use SFTP to upload. For some bizarre reason, I couldn't use the CLI sftp client, so I turned again to my VirtualBox XP install. WinSCP is a brilliant piece of code. It really is. And I suspect it would have worked marvelously if I weren't running it on the feable IP stack made available to it via VirtualBox. As it were, it couldn't maintain a session long enough to transfer even the 650MB virtual appliance for OpenFiler. :-(

At this point, I considered throwing in the towel on the whole network transfer gig and using DVD's to get my data up to the ESXi server, but that would've been too easy. SO, I enabled FTP on my ESXi server using the glorious instructions over at vm-help.com. Now, I can FTP files from my native Linux install, and its blazing fast, like it bloody should be!

The real beauty of all of this is that my foray into ESXi was prompted by my efforts to build a virtualized Hackint0sh. I had heard tell that it was possible using VMware Server, but I didn't have a whole lot of luck with that... so I used a Jedi mind-trick to convince myself that the logical choice was to build a full-out ESXi server. I think it was probably just an excuse.

Now that I'm finally able to upload to the box without serious difficulty, I know I'm not going to have the time to tackle the original Hackint0sh project because a friend sent me a pre-installed Hackint0sh! w00t!

...and this is why I'm Catholic

2009-08-21T21:38:00.003-05:00

When I was looking for answers from the Methodist church about all the things I was wondering about as a teenager, I was dismayed to find that their official church doctrine (if you can call it that) would on one hand condemn a thing and on the other bless it. This was true of homosexuality, divorce, abortion, and more. That is what lead me to look elsewhere for spiritual direction... I sought something that was congruent, something consistent both with itself and nature.

When I looked at the Lutheran church and found it to be lacking in congruity, in very much the same way the Methodist church was. Now, the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) has formally acknowledged that homosexuality is not only fine, but its fine to have practicing homosexuals as clergy. This view is inconsistent with Scriputre, Tradition and Nature.

And this is why I'm Catholic -- because there is nothing in the Catholic Church that is in conflict with Scripture, Tradition or Nature.

Pulse Audio == Pure Fail

2009-08-08T14:14:00.003-05:00

I don't know what future gains Canonical hopes to see from deploying Pulse Audio in Ubuntu, but I'll tell you this much: I've removed it and won't re-install it until every comment I see about it is positive. Pulse has been nothing but a pure pain in the ass for the last week. Finally, today, I removed every pulse-related package from my system and switched back to ALSA. `apt-get remove pulseaudio*` DO IT!

And what's more, lets write to Canonical and tell them that Pulse Audio is garbage.

Pulse Audio 'glitch-free' in Karmic

2009-07-29T11:22:00.004-05:00

If you're running Ubuntu Karmic Koala (the up-coming 9.10 testing release) and you recently did a dist-upgrade, you may have noticed your sound is fubar. I did lastnight, and fairly quickly that all was not right with my sound.

I did the normal trouble-shooting things (going through sound properties, making sure the modules were loading, etc.) and nothing changed. SO, I did some googling and came-up empty-handed. As a last ditch, I joined #ubuntu+1 on Freenode and was instructed me to enable the 'glitch-free' setting in Pulse. This enables pulse to dynamically load modules as needed.

I made the change to 'glitch-free' and logged-off and back on again and sound worked for everything! w00t!

To enable 'glitch-free', you need to edit /etc/pulse/default.pa and search for the line that ends "tsched=0" and change the "0" to a "1".

One other note is that under the "Sound" dialog there is a new tab called "Applications" which allows you to adjust the volume levels PER APPLICATION! This is brilliant, but I believe the default mode is for applications to be muted. SO, if after enabling 'glitch-free' you're still having issues, try looking there and adjusting the volume levels for the app in question.

Three Cheers for Rep. Pete King!!!

2009-07-09T10:35:00.004-05:00

I watched this video, and can't agree more with Rep. King. Michael Jackson was a dirt-bag, that he has been deified by the media is a true testament to the state of our society. What a lot of crap. To answer Rep. King's question, "would you leave your child or grandchild alone with Michael Jackson?" I have a resounding, "NO." The man was a pedo and a FREAK. In my opinion, we should have had a national day of celebration that he is no longer preying on the youth of our nation.

Taste of New York

2009-06-24T13:30:00.002-05:00

Today, a couple co-workers and I went to Taste of New York (TNY) for lunch. Its a new pizza joint in down-town Sioux Falls. Ordinarily, such trips as this are not worthy of writing about, however today it was.

In an effort to avoid the painfully unnecessary details that preceded the events that ultimately transpired, I'll give you two key pieces of detail that are relevant: Brian's cheese pizza was burnt, and I was in the restroom when the first offensive was launched.

Picking-up with me returning from the bathroom, the mood at the table had clearly changed since I had left. I asked what was up, and Gochal said that he'd explain later, that he just wanted to leave. SO, we all got up, and started to the door.

As I approached the counter to settle our tab, the manager called out to Brian, who was leaving the building peacefully at this point, and said, "The next time you want a free lunch, go to the food pantry!"

I was stunned. Totally didn't see any of this coming.

Brian, understandably upset, shot back, "are you f'ing kidding me?" Which was all the manager needed to launch into another salvo of back-and-forth with Brian. Ultimately, Brian left saying, "good luck with your next job, 'cause you won't be here long."

Having not yet paid, I was waiting awkwardly with Brock while the manager fumbled with my card. This was the point at which things got VERY uncomfortable for me.

Brock asked if she had any tooth-picks, she did not, and was very quick (and rude) to tell him. At this point, Brock says nothing.

As she continued to ring-up our bill, and riff against Brian to Brock and I.

"Your friend has a problem," she said at one point.

After several of her salvos, Brock finally pipes-up and says, "I think two people may have acted inappropriately today." He said this in a very non-confrontational tone, the kind of tone you use when you're trying to correct your grandmother about how old you are.

She proceeded to riff against Brian and Brock, at which point Brock and I simultaneously turned to each other and said, "maybe only one person."

She finished taking our money and promptly asked both Brock and I to leave.

I have never, in all my life, witnessed customer service like this. Not only did she alienate a customer who had a legitimate grievance, but proceeded to alienate two paying customers who had DONE NOTHING WHATSOEVER.

I will never be back there again.

Notify ODS command-line utility

2009-06-22T22:30:00.003-05:00

Linux has this nifty little notification system that is grossly under utilized. According the the folks over at Canonical, they're working to make most applications support this handy little interface called Notify OSD. I wanted to leverage this facility to notify me when snort had triggered on something, so I wrote a pynotify -- small python script to allow me to interface with Notify OSD, from the command-line and/or scripts.

The potential here is enormous. If you have scripts that run in the background, but that you need to know when they're done, you can just call this little puppy and get notified in an ultra cool way. Feel free to mangle this into other things. It should be pretty straight-forward.

wajig

2009-06-22T13:48:00.003-05:00

I recently came-across wajig while looking for a way to show the suggested packages for an installed package. The short story on wajig is that it is basically an abstraction layer for various apt and dpkg utilities... and its works very similar to apt-get except has additional directives that allow you to do things like install the suggested packages for a package, or install the recommended packages, or install both the recommended and suggested packages, or find out what package a file belongs to, etc. Its very slick, check it out!

TrueCrypt -- OpenSource File Encryption Goodness

2009-06-15T22:01:00.001-05:00

I've been working with a number of customers on data security needs lately, and it occurred to me that I haven't been practicing what I preach about data encryption. SO, today I jumped in with both feet and installed TrueCrypt, an open-source file cryptography utility that will help me keep my data safe should my laptop be lost or stolen.

D-Day & Patriotism

2009-06-08T14:51:00.004-05:00

You may have noticed on Saturday that there were a lot of flags being flown. You may have even known why they were out. In case you didn't, Saturday was the 65th anniversary of D-Day -- the day that Allied forces landed on the European main land to re-take the continent from Germany. Today I saw an interview with Arthur Seltzer, who was one of the thousands of brave men who landed at Normandy. Arthur's story is compelling beyond words. No words I could write-here would do it justice. Please watch the Interview with Mr. Seltzer here.

When you're done watching, have your kids watch it. Have your parents watch it. Have all your friends watch it. Show it to complete strangers.

We - as a nation - fail, too often, to appreciate the profundity of the sacrifices made for our Freedom. And while I'm seldom the gushing patriotic type I'm damn proud to be an American. For all our cultural foibles and political faults, this is still the greatest nation on the planet. God Bless America!

OH NOES!!!11 CREDIT FRAUD!!!

2009-05-13T16:19:00.003-05:00

I got an email today from Bank of America saying they had detected fraudulent activity on a credit card I have with them. I deleted it. I got THREE MORE. I decided to check in to it. Being the paranoid android that I am, I didn't dare follow any of the links in the emails (all of which went to some subdomain at bankofamerica.com) and instead went directly to the BoA website, logged in, and was greeted with a message that my account couldn't be viewed because it was currently locked. They provided a number to call. I called...

They wanted my social security number, right off the bat. After considerable jockeying (because I wouldn't give them my account number or SSN), we authenticated one another and they informed me that someone had tried to place a $1500 order at mypolicestore.com using my card (the not so subtle irony of fraud at a store for cops is not lost on me.) Fortunately, BoA rejected the transaction, and triggered the current status.

Now, this incident -- alone -- wouldnt' typically be enough to scare me, but earlier today I had gotten a statement for my corporate AmEx card. The problem there is that I don't have a corporate AmEx card. TWO incidents in one day? Uh oh. SO, I promptly went to the Big Three and initiated credit freezes on my credit profile. I've also put a notice in with my other credit card vendors.

I'm worried that my ID may have been jacked. That would suck. This is the last thing I need to be dealing with right now.

Karmic Koala

2009-05-12T10:22:00.004-05:00

Ubuntu Linux 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) is only a couple of weeks old, and already I'm on to Karmic Koala (9.10). I upgraded, initially, because the goons rolling kernels in 9.04 managed to release TWO kernel packages within two weeks, both of which broke sound from when I was running 9.04-pre-release... so, I was hoping Karmic would have the new 2.6.30 kernel so I could have sound again. This morning, I saw that some kind soul had committed 2.6.30 to the Karmic tree, and my path was set. This has not been an effort for the faint of heart.

After accidentally interrupting an `apt-get dist-upgrade`, I had to hand-salvage my apt-get database by hand removing most of KDE (which is fine, it was there mostly as a novelty anyways). Once that was done, a quick reboot followed by an `apt-get dist-upgrade` brought the system back to a working state, including the new 2.6.30 kernel. w00t! And do you know what? Sound works. Holy crap.

Now, the real crux of my entry today is to document (for myself and others) how to prevent rouge kernel upgrades from fubaring their system. SO, what I've done is mangled /etc/apt/preferences to include the following lines:

Package: linux-image*
Pin: version 2.6.30-2.3
Pin-Priority: 1001

With those in place, no careless kernel commit is going to trash my box. Admittedly, upgrading my kernel will now be a much more manual process, but honestly, how often does that NEED to be done?

Slow Open/Save Dialogs in GTK

2009-04-27T21:35:00.004-05:00

I've been running Jaunty (beta and RC's) for several weeks. A couple of weeks ago the open and save dialogs began loading VERY slowly. I've been researching this particular issue and have come across some interesting issues related to the 'tracker' package and corrupted tracker databases. To remedy, I have uninstalled tracker via

sudo apt-get remove tracker --purge

and whacked my local tracker database via


rm -rf ~/.local/share/tracker

This seems to have helped some. It'd be nice if part of the install scripts of this package would remove and rebuild the tracker cache so this crap doesn't happen.

Home-built DVR

2009-04-04T18:35:00.002-05:00

On Friday, the cable guys were out to install our cable service. This is part of our on-going effort to cut costs around the house. The numbers are pretty clear: spend $175 to buy a tuner card, remote and cable modem while cutting the $9/mo for DVR service, $30/mo. extra that Dish cost, and the $5/mo. charge for "renting" a cable modem... Basically a four to five month ROI, with a first year savings of about $310. That's pretty impressive. To accomplish this I used my IBM ThinkCenter S50, a Hauppauge PVR-150, Anywhere GP-IR02BK MCE remote, new 160gb hard disk, and Yahoo! Go TV. This setup is SLICK. The hardware is solid (as near as my limited experience can tell) and the software is easy enough my Mom could use it!!! The best part is, is going to save me big dollars over the next two years.

Strawberries, shrimp and beans, these are just a few of my favorite things...

2009-03-31T18:57:00.002-05:00

Strawberries. I like strawberries. I also like shrimp. Beans are most tastey, even the frozen variety. In addition to being things that I like, these disparate foods have something else in common... they found themselves floating in my toilet tonight. How? Let me tell you.

This strange stew of frozen goods, along with pop cicles, bratwurst, porkchops, bread, frozen peas, and a variety of other things was discovered, by me, while making dinner. The Queen had asked for frozen corn to be the vegetable for dinner tonight, and my search for said corn lead me to the chest freezer on our landing, which in turn lead to the discovery that our freezer had been off for several day.

There is nothing in life -- not even children -- that can prepare you to handle a discovery such as this. The combination of smells, sights, and sounds is enough to make even Chuck Norris sick to his stomach. Suffice to say, I did not relish the job of removing the contents, but I knew my wife wouldn't/couldn't, so I did the right thing and cleaned it out.

I pray that none of you ever experience such a thing as this.

Transformational Thinking

2009-03-23T12:42:00.003-05:00

Over the weekend I was talking with Dad about technology. The conversation started with a simple question about my Blackberry, "Is it a phone with the Internet, or the Internet with a phone?" Seems simple enough, and at first blush maybe even a bit trite, banal and irrelevant. However, I would posit that it is a highly relevant question.

Consider it like this: if its the Internet with a phone, who holds control? The people. If its a phone with the Internet, who holds the control? The service providers.

The transformational question is simply this: what would it take to shift the paradigm away from cell phones to truly pocket computers with sip capabilities? The answer, incidentally, is fairly short: a nation-wide wireless network.

How hard would it be to build a nation-wide wireless network? Lets run some simple numbers with some basic assertions. Lets assume that the whole country is flat and that buildings aren't an issue. Lets also assume we'd be building this network on existing technology -- lets use a basic ProCurve 530AP as an example. We have an effective radius of 100m. The effective coverage of a single access-point then is π*100², or 31416m² or 31km². Figuring that the continental US is 8,080,464.25 km²... you'd need about 260,000 access-points. Which, incidentally would only require about $91,000,000 to purchase, but now you've got to get towers, power, and internet connectivity to every one of these guys... figure you can get power to them for $5/mo and Internet for $45/mo, and now we're talking about a monthly cost of $13,000,000... $100 million to setup, $157 million/year to run, and that says nothing about maintenance costs, or the fact that many areas would need more than 1 AP for service. I think a conservative estimate would put this project at the $5 billion mark with little trouble -- we all know how the government can screw up even the simplest projects.

SO, if every man, woman and child kicked in about $15 we could pay for this thing... and everyone would have free broadband... wtf? WHY HAVEN'T WE DONE THIS YET? Imagine everyone having free access to the Internet... everywhere... most smartphones that I've seen are SIP capable (on a blackberry, you can see that it is by dialling ##000000 and scrolling down). I'll tell you why this won't happen: corporate greed.

Its amazing to me that a few pigdogs can halt progress because they want to be richer...

Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit on an HP nx9420

2009-03-12T11:41:00.003-05:00

I had been delaying loading a 64-bit disto on my nx9420 since I wasn't entirely sure it would be kosher, but yesterday I had some time on my hands, so I threw caution to the wind and gave it a whirl. The 64-bit version of 8.10 isn't as solid as the 32-bit version; I say that because I had a couple of issues: 1) NetworkManager is still broken garbage, 2) getting the supplicant drivers to work for wireless encryption was not automatic, 3) goofy issues with xul and firefox, 4) the menu.

I've contributed a couple of posts to my loathing of NetworkManager, so I won't go in to that any further. I'll simply leave it at: INSTALL WICD FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY.

The supplicant drivers not working out of the box really threw me for a loop. It'd been YEARS since I had to manually mangle those, so I'd mostly forgotten. Fortunately, `man` steered me right. The crux of it is that the wpasupplicant package doesn't create the /etc/default/wpasupplicant file. I hand created the file and put in only one line: ENABLE=0 After this, you're 'supposed' to be able to do a `/etc/init.d/dbus restart` and have things work, but I'd suggest you just reboot -- because if you restart dbus, your X session is going to go away anyways (unless you're using something like openbox). Once you've rebooted, just make sure wicd is using the wext supplicant driver (its under preferences) and you should be golden.

The whole xulrunner and firefox pissing match is probably my fault. I was doing an `apt-get dist-upgrade` and I think half the packages were installed but the finish-up scripts hadn't run. SO, when I ran firefox, it crashed because of a suitable GRE interpretor. I was able to get around this by manually running `xulrunner --register-global` before apt-get had finished its thing. So this was really a fairly small issue.

The main menu in Ubuntu is heinous. Really, its the stallwart Windows 95 Start button... but we're 14 years on from that particular 'innovation', so why haven't we made any real progress? Vista -- and dont' get me started on this -- has a fairly good Start Button (except that its painfully slow because its an eye-candy resource hog!) Linux Mint, and several other distros, has an EXCELLENT start button that is very much like Vista's. This is the 'slab' or 'uslab' start-menu. Unfortunately, I don't want to use Mint -- they've over branded the hell out of it, and I find it particularly annoying. (I just stopped myself from raging about Mint, so...) The beauty is, of course, that Mint's menu (a.k.a. mintmenu) is a DEB, so I just downloaded it and installed... added it to the panel, and BOOM! Instant goodness! I had tried a couple of other slab-esque start menus, but they all sucked and weren't as refined as Mint's. The MAJOR downside of this is that mintmenu has a 'dependancy' on two other mint packages, which in turn are dependant on other packages, etc... so if you let apt-get do its thing, you'll basically end-up upgrading to Mint. That's a problem. SO, I hand installed mintmenu. Now, apt-get barfs about unmet dependancies every time I try to do anything. I'm working on a solution to this.

One *MAJOR* bit of niceness about 64-bit ver of 8.10 is that suspend to RAM worked OUT OF THE BOX! I didn't even have to apply the patch from Stephan! W00t!

Anywho, all said and done, I'm very happy with my 64-bit install. There were some bumps in the road, but overall I don't think any of them are sufficiently bad to warrant abandoning the effort.

FC10 on iMac == FAIL

2009-03-12T11:39:00.002-05:00

I struck out on getting FC10 on my iMac. Not that it couldn't be done, but I can't be arsed with that kind of effort for something that is basically just a hobby box. SO, I cut my losses and installed OS X 10.3. :-( Oh well, its still a pretty sweet little rig, all things considered.

FC10 on G3 iMac

2009-03-05T08:37:00.002-06:00

I did something rash today: I installed Fedora Core 10 on a G3 iMac. This was not accomplished without some difficulty -- and as near as I can tell, a substantial bit of luck. I hit a number of snags:

FC10's anaconda installer wouldn't run in graphical mode
There isn't a documented way to launch the text mode
Seven CD installation
Missing `xterm` package
botched X autodetection and FB install

That anaconda wouldn't run in graphical mode isn't shocking -- its a bit disappointing, but not too shocking. Getting in to text mode though, that should've been well documented.

Okay, about the seven CD's. Yes, I know FC10 is available on DVD. Really, I do. However, my decrepid iMac only has a CD-ROM. SO, here's a thought: ship a base install that will get you a functional desktop without having to swap CD's like floppies of old. Holy crap.

My first attempts to fire-up X were thwarted by a missing xterm package. After carefully scouring each of the SEVEN discs, I discovered the xterm package was no where to be found. I downloaded it and installed it by hand. Not a big deal.

Unfortunately, missing xterm wasn't the biggest issue I've got with getting X going. The biggest issue is that the fbdev and ati driver do NOT work well with this chipset. I still have no graphical love. This is not so good. I've got ideas how to sort it out, but I can't get to those until I have more time.

Requiescat en pacem, Maria Louise Meyer

2009-03-05T08:35:00.000-06:00

I remember the first day I met Louise: it was the fall of '02 and I was walking home from the grocery store, alone. I suspect most people remember the first day they met Louise. On Friday, February 27th, Louise was killed in a car accident.

I found out about the accident Friday afternoon, while driving home from a client site in Iowa -- Amanda, called and told me. I was stunned. The more I think about it, the more tragic her passing is. The thing that hits me the hardest is her two boys: August and
Leonard. I can't help but think about them even now.

Jerome, Louise's husband, is understandably devastated. I can't even fathom what he's going through. As selfish as it may sound, I think trying to empathize with Jerome is what really tore me up: the thought of losing my wife, my Queen, coupled with the thought of having to
raise the kids without her love and support is just incomprehensible to me.

I went over to see Jerome this morning, and to express my condolences and found myself surrounded by Louise's friends and family -- I was staggered to see so many people from so many different places and ways of life, all bound by their kinship or friendship with Louise, were
there.

I've never lost a friend like this, and though I know she won't be the last, I'll always remember her and how her passing affected me on a personal level.

Requiescat en pacem, Maria Louise Meyer.

GNOME Network Manager STILL 100% FAIL

2009-02-11T16:42:00.003-06:00

Almost a year ago I wrote about WICD for the first time. Mostly out of frustration for how badly Network Manager SUCKED. Well, nine months later I'm writing about WICD again, and again its due to Network Manager FAIL. My office uses an WPA+TKIP access point... this is pretty standard stuff... but Network Manager COULD NOT ASSOCIATE ME TO THE AP!!!! O-M-F-G!? So long as that hunk of shit is the default network manager in Ubuntu, Mint, Arch, etc., Linux will not gain widespread acceptance. WICD FTW!!!!!!!!!!

A trip to the library...

2009-02-09T00:04:00.002-06:00

Amanda (The Queen) shared with me an interesting statistic she had read: that homeschoolers are responsible for approximately 40% of the books checked-out from libraries. HOLY CRAP! 40% I didn't believe her...until today, when we went to the library.

The boys are studying medieval times in school along with the military lessons I've been working with them on (to my shame, I've been doing a poor job of that!) SO, Amanda located the correct section at the library and, as near as I can tell, checked-out every book on the subject.

I kid you not, we must've checked out just shy of 50 books today. Its staggering. Those kids will know about the medieval times! If not through simple osmoses...

So long Vista, and thanks for all the...fish?

2009-02-07T10:14:00.004-06:00

I installed Vista Enterprise about four months ago in an attempt to familiarize myself with it for work... though no one intentionally sends me out to do Windows support anymore, it does happen on occasion. As such, I felt I needed to be familiar enough with Vista to actually support it. That said, the last four months have been a living hell. Between the `explorer.exe` hangs, hideous performance, and learning-curve, I've come to loath Vista even more than most. SO, last night I installed Linux Mint 6. Oh the joy.

This install was on my HP Compaq nx9420, which I've had for a couple of years. Its a great box and has served me very well. Unfortunately, the nx9420 still isn't an install and go platform. There are issues you have to address that I've documented in the Ubuntu Wiki page for the nx9420. The most glaring issue is, of course, that suspend to ram doesn't work out of the box. From a support perspective, everything else seems to be dandy, you just can't suspend.

Unfortunately, Stephan Graber has changed his website and as a result there is a broken link in my wiki entry for his hp-s2ram.patch. SO, I had to do a fair bit of digging to find it. :-\ I have found it, and it can be downloaded here, as well as a mirror I've put up on my site, here.

Other than having to fix suspend, everything seems to work dandy. Any other nx9420 owners out there that would like to contribute their tips are free to contact me at coreyjsteele_a.t_gmail.com.

PG2 on Vista

2009-01-03T15:17:00.002-06:00

I had a bugger of a time getting PeerGuardian2 to work under Vista. SO, I figured I'd document my solution for others so they don't have to experience what I experienced. The biggest problem is that there are like twenty-thousand people out there that THINK they can show you how to use PG2, but most of the time they're completely wrong. That said, here's how I did it:

Uninstall any instances of PG and/or PG2 that you presently have installed.
Make sure the "C:\Program Files\PeerGuardian2" directory is COMPLETELY empty.
Download and install PG2-RC1 from PhoenixLabs.
Go through the on-screen dialog
Create a batch-file that includes the following:

del /Q "C:\Program Files\PeerGuardian2\cache.p2b"
del /Q "C:\Program Files\PeerGuardian2\history.db"
del /Q "C:\Program Files\PeerGuardian2\lists\*"
start "C:\Program Files\PeerGuardian2\pg2.exe"

...the batch file is how you will launch PG2, not by any other means. That's it. It works like a champ.

Python in a hosted environment

2008-11-05T16:23:00.002-06:00

I have a server that I can't exactly install whatever I want on. I need to be able to talk to a MySQL database from a Python script. I didn't have any of the database interfaces installed, and couldn't install them system-wide. What is a geek to do?

Fortunately, Python's package installer is pretty smart. SO, I created ~/python, and then used ` python setup.py install --root ~/python` to install each module I wanted to install. Next, in my actual code, I used the following to ensure python could find the modules...


import sys
sys.path.append( '/home/hostedby/python/usr/lib64/python2.3/site-packages/' )
sys.path.append( '/home/hostedby/python/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/' )

One note: ADOdb requires MySQLdb, but the errors you get from it are completely non-sensical and do not give you even the slightest indication about the inter-dependancy. You could have figured this out by reading the README ,but who does that?

My New Bumper Sticker

2008-11-05T02:39:00.003-06:00

I found my new bumper sticker tonight... I'm bitter.

Mostly, I'm bitter that Initiated Measure 11 was defeated. I had really hoped that South Dakota would be the state to re-kindle the Supreme Court decision about abortion. I guess that plaque I have that says, "if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans," is as accurate now as ever.

My "new" laptop

2008-10-20T12:32:00.002-05:00

I'm posting from my "new" laptop. This is what I suspect will ultimately supercede my ASUS Eee PC, which seemed like a good idea at the time. That said, this little box isn't over-sized (yet), but I'm working on it. Here's what its go, at this moment:


$ dmesg | grep -i vga
vga1 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 "ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY" rev 0x00
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
$ dmesg | grep -i cpu
cpu0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 2.40 GHz
cpu0: FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,SBF,CNXT-ID
cpu0 at mainbus0
npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0/16: reported by CPUID; using exception 16
$ dmesg | grep -i mem
real mem  = 267411456 (255MB)
avail mem = 250511360 (238MB)
spdmem0 at iic0 addr 0x51: 256MB DDR SDRAM non-parity PC2100CL2.5

My immediate needs for this thing are: 1) a new battery (its a laptop, afterall), 2) a wireless card (a PCMCIA card that works with OpenBSD), and 3) more RAM. If by some miracle I got all three of those things taken-care of, I suspect this would be a fairly respectable little laptop! I think I could get it all taken-care of for under $200, so I'm going to see what kind of price I can get for my Eee PC...if I can get $200+ for it, I'm in like Flynn!

cable modem woes

2008-10-10T19:34:00.003-05:00

TCP has a 16-bit port address, which allows for 65535 ports for source and destination ports. That fact appears to be lost on the vendor of my cable modem as they seem to think that 40960 is all that anyone would EVER need, however that fact is not lost on me. I have discovered this limitation "the hard way." I've crashed my cable modem three times this week while trying to conduct a pen-test for a client.

In all fairness, it seems like assuming a home user would not exceed 40960 simultaneous or embryotic connection is reasonable. That said, it still seems assinine not to support either the full-capabilities of the protocol's specifications OR that if it isn't going to handle all 65,535 ports that it at least not just die violently.

Ironically, this is not the first device I have discovered this limitation (which is why I know what is wrong here.) I've discovered this limitation in a variety of firewalls: Novell BorderManager, SonicWall, and various Linksys devices. This is, however, the first layer 2-3 device I've discovered the problem on.

fslint

2008-10-07T21:42:00.001-05:00

Frequently, I find myself manually cleaning-up garbage files produced by various applications... be they the random swap files produced by `vi`, backup files ('*~'), or other similar riff-raff... with OS X, it had gotten so bad that I wrote a script to clean-up after Finder -- flushFinderCrap. Incidentally, I'm not the only one to loath the manual nature of this task, and some enterprising chap has written `fslint`. Bravo.

`fslint` basically automates the process of finding garbage files, or files that are otherwise undesireable, and reparing the issue(s). I highly recommend it.

AIG Executives Blow $440,000 After Getting Bailout

2008-10-07T21:37:00.000-05:00

This is simply criminal. Words to describe my disgust and anger elude me.

In other news, I finally figured out the link between the so-called "corporate papers" market, the mortgage crisis, and the bail-out. I certainly won't bother attempting to articulate it here, but it was a proud day for me...now if only it weren't so bloody depressing.

Forums

2008-09-26T16:11:00.002-05:00

I've been a member of various on-line communities for a LONG time. Slashdot, Antionline, BSDForums, Digg, Reddit, various USENET groups and IRC channels, and I've ultimately found all of them lacking for one reason or another. SO, this is a request to see if anyone out there has found the perfect community... I'll go through why I don't like each of the above mentioned in the hopes that it helsp you identify what I'm looking for:

Slashdot - tired and old. Content was lagging.
Digg - whinos with a lefty bent.
Reddit - too busy complaining about Digg
Antionline - maturity was a foreign concept
4chan - see antionline
craigslist - meh
redhotpawn - too many egos
IRC/Usenet - too many groups to actually participate in them all.

...so, what I'm looking for is a community that has a lot of different topics (like 4chan and craigslist) but without all the bs that comes with them. For instance, I don't want to discuss politics all day long. I'd like some tech, some weather, some culture, some current events, with a relatively conservative tone. Is that too much to ask for?

P.S. I've been quiet for a while and an explanation is forth-coming. Just not right now.

Wachovia Posts $8.9 Billion Loss - NYTimes.com

2008-07-22T16:09:00.000-05:00

Wachovia Posts $8.9 Billion Loss - NYTimes.com: "Its shares rose $1.19, or 9 percent, to $14.37 in afternoon trading."

Really? You can lose $8,900,000,000 -- IN A SINGLE QUARTER -- and have your shares go UP *9%*?!?

Stunning.

Maybe I don't get the economics behind the markets, but this strikes me as completely contrary. If General Motors comes out (as it has) and says that its posting a multi-billion quarterly loss, it gets PUMMELED on Wallstreet. Would someone with a better grasp on the economics at work here care to explain how this works?

12 Babies die during vaccine trials in Argentina

2008-07-15T13:16:00.000-05:00

12 Babies die during vaccine trials in Argentina

This is utterly tragic. I realize that progress has a price, but when that price is a human life, do you really think its worth paying? Its the same price we pay in war, and that is not something people embark on callously (except George Bush.)

Encrypt the Entire Internet?

2008-07-10T08:57:00.001-05:00

I saw an article on Reddit about members of The Pirate Bay wanting to encrypt all traffic on the Internet, end-to-end. This is an interesting idea on a number of levels that I'd like to explore: the practical, the legal, and the information security.

From a practical perspective, such an endeavor would require hurculean effort, to say the least. At a minimum, you're talking about adding a layer to every IP stack on every server and workstation on the planet (or at least those that "need" to participate in the encrypted Interweb.) This poses a number of challenges, to say the least. Not the least significant of which is how many other applications shim into the IP stack already, e.g. antivirus, intrusion detection, spyware, performance monitoring tools, etc. Interacting with all of these pre-existing shims will likely be hideously problematic. Supposing these obstacles can be navigated successfully, there remains the performance overhead that such a shim would invariably introduce and in turn the end-user satisfaction issue. This, of course, says nothing about the additional hurdles that Vista represents, but that's another matter altogether.

From a legal perspective, there are two-sides: those who want to protect their privacy and those who have a legal RIGHT to infringe on a persons privacy. Now, let me be clear: I'm in the camp of Believers who think that the right to infringe on a persons privacy is both necessary but HORRIBLY abused on a ROUTINE basis... so, my ramblings on this matter may need to be taken with a block of salt. That said, as for those who wish to protect their privacy I have two thoughts: if what you're doing is secretive there are already mechanisms in place to protect you, but if your secretive because what you're doing is illegal (e.g. kiddie pr0n) then you don't deserve privacy. Long-story short, encrypting the transport of data across the interweb will set law enforcement back a DECADE (and its already lagging horribly behind criminals.) I foresee any technology that prohibits law enforcement like this would as being legislated into oblivion, around the globe.

The perspectives from the information security world are slightly different, but they overlap somewhat with those of the perspective from the legal world. The basic issue is parallel to that of the LE world -- we can't do packet captures anymore. That makes our job harder. More than that though, it adds an element to the mix: non-repudiation. That is, if we DO get a capture (i.e. through a backdoor on the host from which we're trying to sniff traffic from), we can prove, with a high degree of certainty, that the traffic did come from the targeted host and that it could not ahve come from any other host -- because the cryptographic private keys would be unique (this is, mathematically, a misnomer, but it plays out in practical terms because of probability. I.e. if you take an infinite set -- all numbers -- and try to represent them in a finite set -- a cryptographic key -- you will have collisions, or instances of duplicate keys.) There is also the matter of "trust", i.e. can you trust a network shim conceived- and implemented-by people who's primary livelihood is on the "other side"? "Nay nay," as the great Jimmy Pardo would say.

Baseball

2008-07-07T22:36:00.002-05:00

Monday night I had the dubious honor of being the home-plate umpire at a little league baseball game... I had a front-row seat to six of the worst innings of baseball EVER played. I'll cut right to the chase: the final score was 22 to... wait for it... wait for it... 2! That's right, there was a TWENTY point spread.

These were 9 and 10 year old kids. The difference between skill-sets was absurd, especially in pitching. The "visiting" team's pitchers had mechanics while the "home" team was just playing catch, badly. Mechanics? I didn't even know what mechanics were when I was ten. For example, the "home" team's last pitcher -- I had to open the strike-zone to the point of where if the batter didn't have to dodge the pitch and it wasn't in the dirt or over the batter's head, it was a strike. It took this last "home" pitcher close to fifty pitches for him to get out of the inning and he didn't get any strike-outs. It was painful.

Kids Rock!

2008-07-07T14:48:00.004-05:00

Amanda (my wife) and I have four kids: we were blessed (so saith the Psalmist in Psalm 126) with three sons first and recently a daughter. Four out of five people that I introduce my family to seem to think in incredibly shallow terms because invariably they say say something to the effect of, "Oh, you finally got your girl!" Like its some sort of "congratulations", or like we had son number three hoping he'd be a girl and that we were disappointed that James is anything but who he is? No.

I realize that some people may find this difficult to believe, but there are those of us out there who view children -- regardless of sex, color or developmental disposition -- to be a precious gift from God. Those of us who do view children in such a light are not so shallow as to be hung-up on having one girl and one boy. We're grateful for any blessing God bestows on us.

SO, the next time you meet someone with lots of kids, don't think you'll be cute and say something ignorant like, "you know what causes that, don't you?" Such comments are not polite, original or funny -- making such comments only proves you to be an idiot and a stooge for the Culture of Death.

Flock Media Plugins

2008-07-07T14:45:00.002-05:00

I'm running Flock 2.0 (beta) and had heretofore been frustrated by my inability to get various multimedia plug-ins to work, until I discovered a slick little script that via the Flock forums. The script crawls your box and finds different media player plug-ins and makes the necessary links in your flock directory structure(s). This is pretty cool. Now, all my media bits work and some that didn't even work under Firefox!?! Wow. This is, of course, a Linux-only fix... if you're running Flock on Windows (God help you!) you're on your own.

Man found in WI basement covered in BBQ sauce

2008-07-03T16:01:00.002-05:00

According to this story, "A couple telephoned police in the middle of the night after finding a man in their basement covered head to toe in barbecue sauce."

There are two sides to this story, and we're only getting one... as is the case with most shoddy reporting. SO, in the absence of the "perpetrator's" side of this affair, I'm going to write-up a short-story on how this guy came to be naked, covered in BBQ sauce and in someone else's basement. Suffice to say, this story will likely involve much wild conjecture and patent lying, but it ought to be good for a laugh... if it turns out, I'll share.

Flock

2008-07-01T14:23:00.000-05:00

I've been playing with Flock, a "social browser". I knew of flock but hadn't used it in a VERY long time and since I've been getting more into the social networking thing I figured I'd give it another whirl. Turns out that aside from being grotesquely slow, its pretty dang cool!!! We'll see how well it holds-up over time, but for now I'm liking it a fair bit. If you've got a chance, check it out.

File Recovery: How to Recover Deleted Files with Free Software

2008-06-13T09:19:00.000-05:00

File Recovery: How to Recover Deleted Files with Free Software

Since I do some data recovery on the side, this was a pretty-good run-down of the free stuff out there that you can use to recover data. Some day, I'll write a longer post about data recovery methods, but for now this will suffice.

Obama + Hillary == No Vote; McCain + Romney == No Vote

2008-06-09T15:22:00.004-05:00

Like many of the Nation's "younger" voters, I find Obama's views on the economy and foreign policy quite appealing... if he weren't pro-abortion, I'd vote for him without hesitation. This presidential election has the potential to build a dynasty out of whoever is elected -- this president will probably get to appoint a chief justice, and will get to appoint new Federal Reserve officers... these are not trivial events. Moreover, we are at a dangerous time in our nation's history: the dollar is declining, oil is skyrocketing, we've done nothing about our dependence on foreign oil, China and India are rising in the East, Europe's influence on the world is ebbing severely (because they have not sufficiently reproduced) and the problems facing the world-over are broader than ever before. How our next president handles this tumultuous politiscape is going to shape -- good or bad -- our future for generations to come.

That said, could I vote for Obama? I don't know. Could I vote for McCain? I don't know. I think a lot of my decisions depend on who either of them select as a running mate. The next couple of weeks will be interesting, because I expect to see both candidates announce their running mate and that will solidify who I'll vote for, regardless of what else transpires on the campaign trail.

Minnesota Catholic Home Education Conference

2008-06-04T13:31:00.004-05:00

Last weekend, Amanda and I attended the Minnesota Catholic Home Education Conference. Amanda had attended last year, but this was my first year. Generally, I found the conference useful. One thing, in particular, that struck me was the absolutely overwhelming volume of curriculum available! Its truly staggering. We'll be homeschooling our kids for the third year starting this Fall; our oldest will be in second grade, with our only other "school-age" child being in first grade.

Homeschooling has been an interesting experience for "us". Certainly by "us" I mean mostly my wife, who is primary care-giver, educator, nurse, and friend to all of our children, however as the kids get older I am trying to get somewhat involved. Its not easy, especially since I have no patience on a good day. :-\

If you're thinking about homeschooling, and live in the upper-plains, consider attending the conference next year.

Hillary

2008-05-23T20:12:00.003-05:00

On my way home from work tonight I passed Hillary's motorcade. In a rash of impulsiveness, I gave them "the bird", the whole time I could see them. At first I hoped she had seen me. Then it occurred to me that with her four troopers, many Secret Service agents, and over-head F-16's, that that probably wasn't the best move.

After my initial freak-out, I decided I'd do it again if I had the opportunity. Besides, how many people can say -- honestly -- that they've flipped off a presidential candidate and/or former first-lady of the United States? Probably more than you'd think (given its Hillary), but I take some small satisfaction in being one of the very small percentage of humanity that Did The Right Thing.

Hillary == The Whore of Babylon (Revelation 17:4-18) And if you're not into eschatology, I think that label still applies. I know a lot of people -- in all seriousness -- that would build a bunker and prepare for The End if ever she were elected.

iwl3945 performance is hideous

2008-05-23T17:03:00.004-05:00

After upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04LTS, I noticed a DRAMATIC difference in the performance of the wireless on my HP nx9420... by "dramatic" I mean the difference of being able to download at between 4 and 8MB to downloading at never greater than 512K. That's pretty extreme. That said, I have previously noted that the iwl3945 drivers that shipped with 8.04 were broken and that I had to use the Linux Wireless Project's compatibility drivers. I suspect this is the root of my problems.

I've found a bug that indicates that the iwl3945 problems are not unique to me or my nx9420, and though most people have been able to remedy the problem simply by installing the LWP's compat drivers, I do not think this is a very solid solution on account of the fact that it leaves you with a functional yet extremely crippled wireless rig.

I'll continue working on this, but if anyone else has experienced this problem and has something they'd like to share as far as solutions are concerned, I'd LOVE to hear from you.

NetworkManager: busted old crap; WICD: hot freshness

2008-05-22T13:10:00.002-05:00

I suspect that anyone who uses GNOME's NetworkManager application and tray applet to manage multiple network connections shares my frustration. I did some hunting after I wasted gobs of time yesterday fighting with NetworkManager... I found WICD. WICD is a sweet little suite of python scripts that can manage wireless and wired network interfaces, and so far it hasn't been the epic pain in the ass that NetworkManager has consistently been. w00t!!! I'm running it in XFCE on my EEE in addition to GNOME on my work laptop.

Return of an old domain

2008-05-21T23:55:00.002-05:00

A long time ago (like the late 1990's) I had registered the domain, "sodaphish.com". This was a vanity domain I had registered to host my computer security-related site back in the day... when I gave up the Black Arts, I abandoned the SodaPhish moniker and with it the domain. A couple of years later, I re-registered the domain, for nostalgic purposes, and had been running a site there for several years until 2007. In 2007, I forgot to renew the domain and someone registered it out from under me. I was pretty livid at first, but had since gotten over it. Really.

Back in February, the domain was up for renewal. I contacted the registered owner and offered them $150USD -- a very generous offer, in my mind. They declined. I explained to them, in simple, clear terms, that the audience for people looking to buy this domain was VERY small -- me. They never replied. Yesterday, the domain was released by the Registrar of the pirate that pilferred it from me, and I snatched it up via GoDaddy's Backorder process. Hooray!!!

And thus, an old domain returns... SodaPhish.COM

Cisco VPN on Ubuntu 8.04

2008-05-16T15:01:00.001-05:00

One thing I hadn't tried following my upgrade to Ubuntu 8.04 was VPN. I use the Cisco VPN client with has native Linux support. Unfortunately, the install of the VPN client in Ubuntu 8.04 is horribly broken, and not just to the point of re-installing... 'cause it won't, without a patch. I had started hacking through the code on my own, but decided to do a quick check to see if anyone out there had already conquered this particular Linux Monster. In fact, someone had.

The patch went in without a hitch and the install took-off without incident.

I have the VPN connection up and all is well...

replacing GNOME Power Manager in XFCE4 on a laptop

2008-05-10T21:48:00.003-05:00

I am running XFCE4 on my Eee PC, and since it was recommended to not use the GNOME Power Manager, I decided I'd implement the hack that allows you to use the XFCE battery manager and still have the power button bring-up the shutdown dialog... that hack is documented on the eeeXubuntu page... but there's a step missing: you have to tell X that your user is authorized to run programs like that on your display (this might seem like a bit bizzare to a Linux novice, but to those of us who grew-up running X11R6 from back in the day, it isn't too odd.) To do this, you have to add an entry to your /etc/X11/xserver/SecurityPolicy file:

property SCREEN_RESOURCES cjsteele ar aw

Once you've made the change, you just have to restart your X server -- I know you can do this without rebooting, but logging-out and logging-in didn't accomplish it, so I took the lazy path and rebooted. Now, it should Just Work.

Linux 101: Enable DVD Playback in Ubuntu in Two Commands

2008-05-02T21:09:00.000-05:00

Linux 101: Enable DVD Playback in Ubuntu in Two Commands

...in the interest of Freedom, every red blooded, American Linux user is obliged to do this.

Whacked-out Weather

2008-05-01T22:15:00.003-05:00

So, its no mystery to anyone that the weather has been WEIRD this year, but here's just how weird it has been... this evening, on my way home I passed a weather spotter just outside of my home, which lead me to check the NOAA's website for weather warnings. On the NOAA's page, for my particular locale, there was a Tornado Watch and a Blowing Snow Advisory. I'll give that a second to sink-in... okay... tornados and snow.

I realize that I'm not a meteorologist, but I'm pretty-sure I understand the basic physics (in principle) behind how tornados form, so I'm utterly mystified at how a tornado could be formed in a weather system that is also going to drop SNOW!?!?

It turns out, that they aren't the same two systems, but two. However, you can imagine my shock at my initial reading of the warnings.

Ubuntu 8.04 upgrade == not so painless

2008-04-30T14:28:00.004-05:00

I took the leap into Ubuntu 8.04 today on my HP nx9420. In typical fashion I didn't really think about it before I did it. That was probably an error in judgment on my part. Fortunately, things didn't go badly for me. I would say that they did NOT go smoothly -- I would expect that a Linux user of less experience would've been fighting these issues for days instead of a couple of hours. Briefly, I had four issues: 1) I dorked-up and let debconf over-right my grub.conf, 2) my video resolution in X was AWFUL, 3) the wireless driver would not associate with any wireless access-points and 4) video didn't resume after suspend.

The whole issue with debconf and my grub menu.lst boils down to the fact that I have a lot of different kernels sitting in /boot and it didn't pick the "right one" and what's more it picked one that didn't have an initrd. SO, on reboot I got a lovely kernel panic. After booting to a Debian 4.0 CD I had laying around, I was able to determine the problem and resolve it without too much issue. Stupid. Teach me to leave unused kernels about my file-system!

The video resolution with laptops and nVidia gfx cards always seems to be an issue. Fortunately, the ONE file I did back-up before the install took-off in full-swing, was my xorg.conf file. I simply copied it back to /etc/X11 and all was well. Incidentally, this was also the source of my woes in regards to video resuming after suspend.

Wireless on this thing really blew me away. Not that it was that hard to fix, but figuring it out wasn't so trivial. The basic problem is that there's a bug in the 2.6.24-16 kernel that comes with 8.04 by default, that affects anyone who uses an Intel wireless chipset (i.e. the iwl3945 or the iwl4965). This can only be resolved by either rebuilding your kernel or installing the Linux Wireless compatibility drivers from the Linux Wireless Project. Fortunately, installing the wireless compatibility drivers is virtually trivial. There are thorough instructions on the LWP homepage. I suggest you follow-them.

On a side-note, I did have to go through /etc/default/acpi-support and make the changes I noted on the Ubunto Laptop Testing Team wiki. Had I not previously applied Stephane Grabber's HP resume patch, I would've had to do that as well.

Gmail advanced search features

2008-04-30T09:05:00.002-05:00

If you use Gmail, you may not be aware of the phenomenally powerful searching features that are available to you. Google has a really cool list of search operators you can use. I don't have anything spiffy to add to this, I'm just pointing it out for those who might not be aware of it.

"Yahoo! + Microsoft" or "Developing v. Delivering"

2008-04-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

I'm not a business analyst and am barely even conversant in the mysterious ways of the "markets", but I do know that if I were a Yahoo! share-holder that I'd be voting to approve the proxy-bid for YAHO stock by MSFT. The reason is simple: Yahoo! and MSN have focused on DEVELOPING content while Google has focused on DELIVERING content. The "War of the Web" boils down to who can drive the most traffic through their site(s). Despite the fact that developing content will draw people, it cannot necessarily beat the delivery mechanism which allows content developed by anyone to be distributed to everyone -- its a marketing problem, at its most fundamental level.

Developing content is a complicated and costly business. I won't even try to act like I know what it takes when you're talking about the scale that Yahoo! and MSN do it, but even from my layman's perspective its rife with pitfalls: targeting the right audience, maintaining relevancy, factual accuracy, staffing, multi-media, etc... its a staggering number of hurdles, all of which have to come together in just the right way to make any real significant impact on an already crowded space.

Conversely, Google is simply a platform upon which others develop content (think here search rankings, news aggregation, etc.) and then the masses decide which of it is really worth having. Its very probably just as complex as developing content, but in a different, more achievable way, and it is proving to be dramatically less costly (compare the head-count of a combined MSFT & YAHO vs. GOOG... staggering!)

Google, in effect, has an army of content developers who are all eager to get their content out through the Google Machine, to generate their own revenue. YaMSN can't compete with that. Its like ants against grass-hoppers: sure grass-hoppers are bigger, but there are a billion ants to every grasshopper.

Ubuntu: WebDAV + DAVfs2 + FUSE == Thunar Goodness

2008-04-21T21:33:00.003-05:00

One of the corner-stones of any *nix utility is that it should do a simple job and do it well. Every piece of software that I can think of that defies that basic principle is junk (e.g .emacs). Thats why Thunar totally kicks ass as a file-manager: it is a file manager, and ONLY a file manager. It doesn't even bother to handle things like mounting non-local file-systems for you, its JUST a file manager. And a fine one at that.

...back-up... a few months ago I got into a lease on a server that has ridiculous amounts of storage and obscene amounts of data transfer, and I wanted to figure out how to harness this box as a potential on-line backup of all the data I am responsible for creating and maintaining. I had used WebDAV for such endevours in the past, but couldn't quite find the time to piece together the different bits needed to make it work in my present environment (which is XFCE4 + GNOME). Tonight, I made the time.

Since my provider's cpanel install handled all of the muckety-muck of getting WebDAV setup, I'm not going to go into that detail. I will however explain what I did to get the WebDAV mounting to my workstation and visible in Thunar so I could transfer files up to it easily.

First, make sure you have FUSE and davfs2 installed. In Ubuntu, fuse comes pre-compiled and davfs2 is available via `apt-get install davfs2`. Once you have davfs2 installed you can test your davfs functionality by doing something like:

`mount -t davfs https://yourwebdavserver.com/webdavshare /tmp/networkdrive` (provided /tmp/networkdrive exists.)

It should prompt you for things like a username, password, and whether or not you want to accept the certificate being offered. If your `mount` completes successfully, verify that you can see what you expect to see in /tmp/networkdrive. If you can, you're golden. Next-up: automating it.

DavFS supports a file that feeds your authentication credentials to mount, automagically. This magical file is /etc/davfs/secrets. You need to create an entry for your new webdrive in the secrets file. The format is simple: There are ample examples in the secrets file too, for reference.

Once you have your secrets file created, simply make an entry in /etc/fstab for the new filesystem... this should look like:

davfs http://yourwebdavserver.com/webdavshare /tmp/networkdrive uid=USERID,gid=GROUPID,user 0 0
Once this is complete, you should be able to type `mount /tmp/networkdrive` and get the webdav drive to mount without having to provide a password or username. In some instances, yuou may still have to accept the certificate, but that's trivial. The nice thing is, if you've properly populated the USERID and GROUPID fields, you should be able to access those files without incident as your normal user.

Hooray! You should be done.

EEE PC: minimizing disk writes by relocating browser cache

2008-04-20T09:32:00.002-05:00

I got my ASUS EEE PC 4G Surf on Friday. It took me all of ten minutes to decide that that default OS is pretty-much junk for a long-time Linux geek like me. SO, on Friday evening I installed EeeXubuntu. I rather fancy it. Seems like they've got the big issues worked-out, there are some asthetic issues that need to be overcome, but that's another post.

This post is dedicated to reducing disk IO on the EEE. SO, there have been others who've written about hacking /etc/fstab with mount options like 'noatime' and the like, and that is all well and fine, but here's my addition...

The overwhelming creation of temp files on my system comes from web-surfing. Therefore, I decided to make my Firefox Cache a ramdisk. This is pretty trivial, simply find your cache (usually in ~/.mozilla/firefox/SOMETHING/Cache where SOMETHING is a bunch of garbage text) and make an entry in /etc/fstab for it as follows:

tmpfs /home/USERNAME/.mozilla/firefox/SOMETHING/Cache uid=USERNAME,gid=USERGROUP 0 0

Next step is to close Firefox, delete everything in your Cache, and reboot (or do a `mount -a -t tmpfs -o remount`) and DISCO! your web browsing will all be cached.

This configuration has a couple of interesting security ramifications that I had not previously considered until I wrote-this-up... that is: 1) the forensic evidence of malicious web activity will not be stored on any disk, therefore there is virtually no forensicly sound information recoverable from the device unless it is taken "hot", and 2) since all cached data is destroyed after each boot, chances are that any malicious activity done TO YOU (i.e. malware from websites, etc.) won't be traceable either.

All of that aside, I still think for the purpose of cutting down on writes to the flash drive, this setup has merit... and it won't change my intentions of running this way.

MLB.tv -- no more condensed games!?!?

2008-04-15T13:40:00.002-05:00

Alright, I understand the MLB has a fascist agenda, but do they have to be so explicit about it? I mean, honestly? SO, last year MLB.tv had two features that I thought absolutely kicked-ass:
1) it worked in Linux (which is of INFINITELY less import than the next feature, which was...)
2) it had so-called "condensed games", which were inning-by-inning wraps of each game played lastnight.

This year, some jackass at MLB decided that instead of "condensed games", they'd give us "Rewinds", which are basically the MLB's own sports desk doing highlights... THAT IS NOT what "condensed games" were! Garg!

I've submitted a request that they cancel my MLB.tv subscription and that they refund my money. Monsters.

Asus EEE 4G

2008-04-15T09:14:00.002-05:00

I'd been thinking about it for quite a while, and I finally dove into the muddy waters of the sub-compact laptop market -- I bought an Asus EEE PC 4G in "Galaxy Black"... it should be here Friday. w00t! I'm most interested in this thing for my travel days. E.g. my upcoming trip to Vegas for the HP Tech Forum... it'd rock to be able to just have that dainty little thing instead of lugging my monster HP around!

At this time, my plans are to run XUbuntu on it, but I'm probably going to explore loading other desktops too... but only after I jack-up the RAM in that bad-boy... 512MB? I haven't had that little ram in eight years!!! Wow.

HP Tech Forum 2008, here I come!

2008-04-15T09:11:00.002-05:00

I'm officially registered for HP's Technology Forum 2008 in Vegas. I'm actually really looking forward to it because they have an awesome mix of infosec, linux and networking sessions! I'm stoked. If you're going to be there, let me know!

that blasted Alero blew another motor...and this time, it wasn't my fault.

2008-04-11T09:19:00.002-05:00

Over the past six months, I estimate I've sunk very close to $2k into my car... and its not even paid for. $2k!!!! How? Well, $400 for snow tiers, $300 for summer tires, $500 for a new motor, and another $500 for ANOTHER new motor. Come to find out that the "quad four" that comes in the Alero is perhaps the world's worst motor. I'm so pissed.

TRENDnet TK-207K 2-Port USB KVM Switch

2008-04-08T19:38:00.002-05:00

If you have a TRENDnet TK-207K KVM, which is a two-port KVM that only supports USB keyboard and mouse... you may have discovered that the SCRLK+SCRLK+UP key combination doesn't switch between workstations. I asked TRENDnet about this and they told me two key things: 1) that they don't support wireless keyboards, and 2) that if SCRLK doesn't work, to try NUMLK.

NUMLK worked. It is glorious.

FIERCE is re-born.

2008-04-05T17:39:00.003-05:00

SAVAGE, and VENGENCE, my WinXP and Linux Laptop, have been joined by FIERCE, their Linux brother. FIERCE is a 1.7Ghz Athlon with a gig of RAM and 80GB of disk running Ubuntu 7.10.

FIERCE used to be the heart-and-soul of my on-line presence -- it had been a Red Hat-based box for seven years. My recent relocation to BlueHost for my web-hosting has meant I'm free to do whatever I want with the old server (a.k.a. PROFESSOR). I still don't know what I'm going to do.

Killing `fsck` on boot

2008-04-01T14:57:00.003-05:00

Being a laptop Linux user, I turn my box off more than the average user (or, more accurately, it hangs coming out of suspend so I have to reboot)... the result is that my laptop decides to `fsck` the drives after so many reboots. This really really sucks because invariably it happens at the least opportune time. I've been raging about this, privately, for quite some time and today finally decided to do something about it. Enter `tune2fs`.

`tune2fs` is a utility that allows you to tune the file system parameters of ext2 and ext3 file-systems. There are two switches of particular import: -c and -i. -c controls how many mounts the volume can go through before having to go through a `fsck`, while -i controls how long between `fsck` intervals (in days, weeks, months, etc.)

From my experience, I know its a bad idea to disable `fsck` altogether on account of the slight yet horrible possibility that you could end-up with file-system corruption. That said, I also don't want it to happen except with the rarest of frequencies. SO, I disabled the mount counter and set the `fsck` interval to 3 months. I figure I can handle a reality in which I have to sit through a full-fledged `fsck` of my disks four times a year. Here's the actual command and its output.


cjsteele@vengence:~$ sudo tune2fs -c -1 -i 3m /dev/sda1
tune2fs 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
Setting maximal mount count to -1
Setting interval between checks to 7776000 second
cjsteele@vengence:~$

Another Clinton Liar? SHOCKING!?!?!

2008-03-25T08:55:00.000-05:00

ABC News: Clinton: I 'Misspoke' on Bosnia Recollection

So, is anyone surprised that Hillary lied about her Bosnia trip? I mean, honestly surprised? Why would you be? What kind of person stays with Bill? The kind that is just as good at his games as he is. She's evil, this is just proof. I pray for an Obama v. McCain race -- in which case I won't know WHO to vote for.

Ani-war protesters attack Catholic parishioners in Chicago

2008-03-24T13:03:00.000-05:00

Ani-war protesters attack Catholic parishioners in Chicago

...the "logic" of these "protesters" is astounding. I mean, read the article, watch the videos, and tell me if these people aren't just absolutely insane. I believe I commented a few days ago about how the ADL, SPLC and CAIR were ratcheting-up their attack on Catholicism, and I would offer this incident as proof that the problem extends well beyond the organized hat-mongers to smaller 'cells' of anti-Catholic terrorists. Its no surprise this took place on Easter -- these hoodlums knew blind well what they were doing and how offensive it is. This is a hate-crime.

odf-converter-integrator - OpenOffice.org Ninja

2008-03-24T10:59:00.000-05:00

odf-converter-integrator - OpenOffice.org Ninja

In grand fashion, MS Office 2007 uses completely different file formats from those of previous editions. The result is that the stock OpenOffice suite that ships with most distros isn't able to open documents created in Office 2007. The preferred fix, at this point (until OO.org 3.0 comes out) is to use odf-converter-integrator. Check out the link above.

Unix Toolbox

2008-03-24T09:54:00.000-05:00

Unix Toolbox

If you're a *NIX novice, chances are you find the CLI (command-line interface, or "shell") a bit daunting. A thousand volumes and more have been written attempting to demystify the command-line, virtually all of which miss the mark. One simple solution is to provide people a list of commands with a very brief outline of what they do, and refer them to `man` for further reading. That's what the Unix Toolbox cheat sheet does. Of course, if you don't need it, don't waste your time with it, but if you're new to *NIX (Linux, BSD, UNIX, etc.), then it doesn't hurt to give it a quick look to see if it fits your needs.

Open Source Mac - Free, Open-Source software for OS X

2008-03-11T10:25:00.000-05:00

Open Source Mac - Free, Open-Source software for OS X

This site is THE source for F/L/OSS software for OS X. Most of the apps here are ones I had already used, but I know it took me a while to find them, so it might be of interest to someone else if they didn't have to do the digging...even if you're a long-time Mac geek, you might find something new.

Linux desktop imitating OSX | Lauri Taimila

2008-03-07T22:09:00.000-06:00

Linux desktop imitating OSX | Lauri Taimila

...for those of us who are Mac-o-philes, but run Linux out of necessity, there's still hope!

Pinnacle PCTV HD PCI Tuner == Junk

2008-02-19T12:40:00.002-06:00

A few weeks ago I jumped into the murky waters of the world of HDTV with the express intention of being able to hook a PC up to the television so I could watch movies and play MP3's. I also had this grand notion of being able to cable my satellite receiver directly into the PC using a tuner-card and having one interface to rule them all. I think the idea was pretty solid. I bought a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse to hook up to my IBM S50, which in turn is connected to my 42" Insignia television.

The S50 has a dual-core 2.2Ghz Pentium 4 processor... and a gig of ram... and an nVidia video card, yet the video output from the Pinnacle card is unreliable at best. If you make the video full screen, or just drag the window around, its like you've just asked the computer to calculate the answer to the Ultimate Question (about life, the universe and everything.) SLOW. I couldn't believe it.

So, I did some reading of reviews. Apparently, I'm not the only person who's had this problem with the PCTV card. It is, in fact, quite common. Now, ordinarily I'd write this off as being symptomatic of infant technology, but I know this ISN'T infant tech because a good friend of mine was doing this back in 1999 on an AMD K62!!! This is a classic case of a crappy product.

Unfortunately for me, I don't really want to spend the extra $50 to go to a better video input card, so I just returned it to Best Lies/Buy and that's that. I'll take the coin I had tagged for that card and buy a two-port KVM so I can get 'vicious' back on-line.

BBC NEWS | UK | Archbishop defends Sharia remarks

2008-02-09T07:43:00.000-06:00

BBC NEWS | UK | Archbishop defends Sharia remarks

...the man is clearly a lunatic. Sharia law is entirely counter to everything that Western Civilization is based on and any fool who thinks the two can be "integrated" is stark-raving mad. Of course, the Archbishop of Canterbury is essentially a lunatic from the onset, these latest comments about integrating Sharia law are just the proof of it.

$2400 loan from my kids... sort of.

2008-02-08T21:05:00.000-06:00

As many media outlets have reported recently, Chief Village Idiot (a.k.a. President Bush) has managed to convince the morons in Congress that giving people a loan from their kids is a good idea... 'cept they called it an "economic stimulus plan". What the hell? I never studied economics, but from what I've been able to pick-up by the limited reading I've done on the subject tells me that this "stimulus" plan is really just a band-aid on a gun-shot wound. This is the second most baffling move made by the Bush administration in recent memory. The first most baffling being the administration's utter failure in all things even REMOTELY concerned with the environment. And I voted for this guy? Shoot me now... oh wait, yeah, the alternative was John Kerry, never mind.

Intertrusion Migration

2008-02-07T20:22:00.000-06:00

If you're landing here, chances are that you're coming from my domain, intertrusion.com. A few weeks back the server that hosted intertrusion.com took a dive. Hardcore. Since, I've decided that maintaining my own box -- though geekier -- just isn't worth the time anymore. SO, I have setup THIS blog to take the place of my former WordPress blog. As for the content of my old blog, I'll eventually get it over here, I just haven't had the time to jump through all the hoops I have to in order to get that data back. Enjoy, and sorry for any disruption.

"New" PIX506

2008-02-07T20:19:00.000-06:00

I was at a client's site today, helping them implement their shiny new ASA 5510 when the topic of their "old" remote office firewalls came up. Tim, the client, mentioned they had a half-dozen, or so, PIX506 firewalls that they had no use for. I asked if I could buy one, and he made it happen.

I got home, got the password recovered, wiped the config, and put it up on-line. In an odd twist of fate, I discovered I have only ONE ethernet cable in my entire house. W-T-F? That was the low point of my geekdom... how could I only have ONE Ethernet cable and call myself a geek? Pfft.

Next up: get the VPN setup so I can hit my LAN from the road! woot!

Register.COM FINALLY got my domains transferred

2008-02-07T20:16:00.001-06:00

I swear! If ever a system existed to systematically oppress progress, it is InterNIC's domain transfer policy! Combine that with Register.com's pushy, archaic, dreadful domain transfer protocol, and you're probably better off hanging yourself than getting on with a domain transfer. I'm not kidding, it took inordinately LONG. I started this process on January 26... it just happened YESTERDAY. That's five days in January and 6 days in February. ZOMG!

Anywho, everything is now over at bluehost and eventually I'll get stuff up there. I'm probably going to leave my blog here until such a time as blogger does something to piss me off righteously and I decide to go it alone.

CAIR, ADL, and SPLC are the REAL bigots

2008-02-02T12:27:00.000-06:00

I have never been coy or subtle about my utter disrespect for Islam. I have substantial respect for Judaism. I'm not a racist. On the contrary, the people at the CAIR, ADL and SPLC have labeled me as such because I am a "Traditional Catholic" and because I pray for the conversion of Jews and all non-Catholics. The CAIR, ADL and SPLC are at the nascent of their mind-war against all Christians, beginning with Traditional Catholics. Watch, because in the coming weeks and months, you'll see a ratcheted-up propoganda campaign. They'll start with the extremists like Michael Savage, and they'll move on to progressively less and less obviously skewed positions. Mark my words.

Microsoft Makes $44.6 Billion Offer to Buy Yahoo

2008-02-01T21:54:00.000-06:00

All kidding aside, yesterday I thought, "Microsoft is going to buy Yahoo!". This particular thought was sparked because of my now nearly complete conversion to Google web apps where I had previously been a die-hard Yahooligan. Turns out, I was right as Microsoft Makes $44.6 Billion Offer to Buy Yahoo. Stunning. The REALLY cool part is going to be how [I hope] this drives competition. Time will tell.

Digg Goes Ape over Scientology

2008-01-28T12:10:00.001-06:00

I admit that I've laughed at my fair-share of Digg stories bashing Scientology... it is, afterall, a religion for complete and utter fruit-cakes, alone. However, I wonder if Diggers aren't bypassing quality news items for the pursuit of Scientology. There were 124 hits to a recent search I did on Digg for "scientology". Wow. 124? Why so much attention to such a loony bunch?

read more | digg story

When Updates Go Wrong

2008-01-26T20:59:00.000-06:00

This Friday evening, lastnight, I had some time to myself and decided to do some care and feeding of my various personal servers: a Windows Server 2003 box, a Mac OS X box, and my beloved Cisco ASA 5505. Only one of the boxes made it out of the OS updates unscathed: the ASA. The reward for my dilligence is that I've driven 130 miles this evening to go to where the boxes are physically housed to do what I can to resurrect them. The best part comes when I'm pulling off of the Interstate and pull onto Main Street and see literally a dozen firetrucks parked in front of the building where the boxes are hosted. Oh you can imagine my panic.

After I got over the initial shock of seeing the firetrucks, and realized that they were fighting a house fire across the street from my hosting facility, I took on the OS X server. When the display came up it was sitting at a text-based Darwin login prompt. That's new territory for me. Being an old *nix jockey though, I wasn't daunted until it wouldn't take my input from the keyboard. I rebooted and it came back VERY VERY slowly, but never finished booting. I'm resigned to the fact that this soldier may be down for the count. I can't even get into the OpenFirmware... I see the display flash, and it chimes (POST), but no love. :-( I'll see if the local Mac Doctors can do anything to save this poor chunk of silicon.

Next up: the Windows Server 2003 box. This box SEEMS to be operating correctly, but Terminal Services won't respond on it. Its like its not even listening on tcp/3389. Being a Windows box, I gave it another reboot and after a bit it came back and Terminal Services appears to be running JUST FINE. Damn Windows boxes. I swear. It wouldn't be so awful except this behemoth takes a day to reboot!!! Grr... SO even a second reboot, to verify that the first was in fact the resolution, took me about an hour. I'm not kidding, this thing is a dog. All is well now.

...so, the NEXT time I plan on doing updates, I'm probably going to be more than a little gun-shy.

So long Register.com

2008-01-26T07:31:00.000-06:00

In the mid 1990's when I registered my first domain there were very few choices. It was basically InterNIC or someone you had never heard of. The thing is, these "guys you'd never heard of" actually provided value-added service that InterNIC didn't, which meant people like me didn't have to have a secondary DNS server and the like! SO, I began registering my domains with one of these "other guys", Register.COM. Back then, I couldn't have been happier.

We're ten years on from when I registered my first domain, and the Internet has changed A LOT. There are now dozens of value-added registrars, all vying for your business and all trying to squeeze in as much value as possible for the lowest price... except Register.com. Register.com has not added any significant changes to their basic services but yet has kept their price the same. At $35 a pop, Register.COM is pretty-much the WORST possible registrar. I've been using GoDaddy for a couple of years and REALLY like their management tools. SO, today I decided it was the last day I had domains with Register.com and submitted the necessary transfer papers. Hooray!

Now its just a matter of time before I haven't got any crappy register.com domains to manage.

Migration Aid & Taxonomy

2008-01-25T16:59:00.000-06:00

One of the things I'm struggling with in my Migration from Word Press (aside from the fact that my Server took a poop on itself this afternoon when I rebooted it) is the notion of the taxonomy. WP uses "categories", which are essentially the Web2.0 "tags", but I haven't any idea how they'll come into Blogger.

I've found a lovely bit of software from James E. Robinson, III which, despite its profound lack of documentation, promises to be quite utilitous in migrating my WordPress blog. The gist of it is you drop a couple of PHP files on your server, tweak them to point at your WordPress install, and hit them from a web-interface... the whole thing should be pretty smooth. Unfortunately, I can't test it right now because my server is presently down. :-(

Aside from the sheer act of getting the content over to Blogger, I'm considering the taxonomy of my new blog. My previous blog had a very simple, yet effective, set of tags: "soapbox", "faith", "family", "geekery", "travel" and "food". Initially, I expect I'll keep that same set of tags with the intention of elaborating on them at some point in the future.

I'm also looking for ways to integrate various other bits of my gLife (all my Google bits) into my blog. I suspect that shouldn't be too difficult, but I haven't yet explored that.

More to come.