September Ride (Foothills Madness 2)

Today was another ride with The Sky Island Riders.

Howard called the ride Foodhill Madness 2.

I rode it on my Stella, Sean was there on his Riva 180.

Howard led on his Stella, It was nice riding with another hand-shift bike.

I have to say this was one of the more difficult rides that I've done, There was a lot of technically challenging riding due to the constant changes in elevation and all the curves. The Stella ran like a Champ for it altho at one point in time it started to smell a little funny. Later I learned that Howard had the same problem, We think it was because we were both coasting with the clutch in and may not have been getting enough oil into the engine or were wearing the clutch.


Pictures!

Fit Pix

Pictures of my FIT

Moped? More like Less Ped.

Behold my latest Bike. Or at least most of it.

It's a Italjet Pack Away from the Late 70's or Early 80's.

I have most of the pieces I think. It should be sweet when its done.

My First NEW Car!

Friday I used the Cash for Clunkers program to trade in a 1991 Isuzu Amigo for a 2009 Toyota Fit Sport.

This is my first new car. It came with roughly 120 Miles on it from test drives at the dealer.

After having it since Friday I had to fuel it up for the first time today. I've decided to track my mileage using Google Docs.

Below is a chart of my mileage.

My Weakness

I think after nearly 30 years on Earth I have figured out what my major Weakness is.

It's been something I've struggled with for years, and its become more and more apparent over time.

Paper. Yes, Paper is my downfall. There is too much of it in my life, Its all over the house.

The only room that doesn't have a stack of papers waiting to be filed is the bathroom I think.

I've never been good with it, I never know what to keep and what to trash so I end up keeping nearly all of it.

If I could get rid of all of the paper in my house it'd be so much cleaner!

August Ride

We met up at the El Con Starbucks at Broadway and Randolph Way. We then rode east to Old Spanish trail and followed it out to Vail then came back through Rita Ranch. 


This was the first ride on my Stella, What was Awesome is Julie was there with Her Stella and it was also her first ride with her Stella.


This also marks one of the first rides I've been on where I have the same size engine as everyone else, It was nice not being the turtle!


My Stella ran great, I do admit to stalling it out once or twice while we were riding by not giving it enough gas or letting the clutch out quick enough. I think Julie may have stalled hers a couple time too.


Pictures!

Mmm Bacon

# yum install bacon
Loaded plugins: dellsysid, dellsysidplugin, fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* epel: mirrors.solfo.com
* dell-community: linux.dell.com
* updates: linux.mirrors.es.net
* base: linux.mirrors.es.net
* addons: mirror.hmc.edu
* extras: centos.mirrors.redwire.net
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
No package bacon available.
Nothing to do


No Bacon :(

I do however have Cobbler now.

Mount Lemmon Ride

Went on a nice ride with The Sky Island Riders up Mt Lemmon, It was really cool as it turned into a Four Club ride with GGR, The Sky Island Riders, The Club in Phoenix and the club in Green Valley showing up.

We met up at Le Buzz Cafe on Tanque Verde and headed up the mountain, I rode my Riva 125.

We had 24 riders show up for the event.

My Riva 125 wasn't running so well, The 4th of july trip I had a problem with fuel filter clogging and the bike had been consuming a little bit of Oil, This trip turned out to be the last for the bike as I suffered ring failure on the way back from the ride. However it was still a great time and it was quite the adventure. At one point going down the mountain Craig from GGR gave me a push to get me some help going up one of the inclines. The bike did make it all the way down to the Hooters on Wilmot. It was crazy, I got cheering when I showed up at the 1/2 way point going up the mountain and again at the top. Despite leaving with everyone else I was a good 10-15 minutes behind them due to the bike loosing compression.

The Riva will run again however! I should have no problem rebuilding it with Seans help.

Yesterday I went with Sean on a 140+ mile Scooter ride along with a number of crazy bastards from one of our scooter groups.

We rode down to Patagonia Arizona to see a parade and a hanging, Saw the parade but the hanging was taking too long so we left part way through.

I rode my 1987 Yamaha Riva 125, We finished re-assembling the bike Thursday night about 10PM and put some miles on it Friday to test but nothing near the mileage we did on the trip.

The bike runs fairly well and is a nice upgrade from my 1997 Honda Elite 80, The extra 45cc allows the bike to do 50-55mph flat, 65 downhill and in the 40's uphills.

I consumed three fuel filters during the trip and about half a quart of oil due to the bad valve stem seals and the rusty tank. Both will be addressed in the near future.

Sadly even with the bigger bike this ride I still had the smallest bike on the ride with the 125cc. There were two 150's, Sean's 180, a couple 200's and 250's, a 400 and a Harley 850. (The only non scooter on the trip).

As one friend remarked I look like a gorilla on a tricycle, But hey its a bigger bike than the Elite 80 so its a little less out of proportion.

It's been a while.

I know it's been a while since I blogged, I've just been so busy lately.

I'm part of two scooter clubs now, the Go Go Rilla and the Sky Island Riders.

I just sold the moped to raise the cash needed to buy a larger bike than my Elite 80. I'm looking at a 150 or a 250.

I'd love to buy a metal bike like a Vespa, Lambretta or a Stella.

The volvo is on the road again as my 2ndary vehicle (With the Elite 80 as my primary) It needs an oil change, plug change and some hope to get through emissions later this month.

I'm part of a local SCIFI themed Meetup group run by my friend Cheryl.

We're watching Babylon 5 all the way through, At 1 DVD every other week it should take about a year and a month to see it all.

Still planning to do the 2009 BABE, Will be using the volvo again for it likely.

That's about it for now, Going to try to update a little more often.

It's Us!

The Gog Squad
Originally uploaded by Warphammer

My Team From the BABE Rally back in May.

http://www.baberally.com/babe.esp?ID=13&PG=full

Elites

Picture 023
Originally uploaded by salmend8

My white Elite 80 at the Parade and with Seans Red Elite 80.

Licensed

Saturday Morning I got my Motorcycle License.

Failed the U-Turn portion of the test due to misunderstanding the instructions but hey I passed everything else so the license is mine :D

To celebrate I must have put close to 100 miles on the scooter Saturday.

Scooter is Go!

Sunday the 7th of December with the assistance of my friend Sean I picked up a 1998 Honda Elite 80 from a gentleman in phoenix.

With the addition of some parts from a 1994 Honda Elite 80 I picked up two weeks prior and $50 or so in gaskets I now have a fully functional Scooter.

Today I went down to the MVD and took the written test for a motorcycle permit, I am now allowed to use my scooter when visibility is more than 500 feet between Sunrise and Sunset on any public highway.

I plan to get used to the bike and take the road test in the upcoming weeks.

Had a really awesome sandwich at eegees today, it was the hot italian. I cant remember when I last had a sandwich this good there.

its 10AM and I'm already thinking about lunch plans.

had Mongolian BBQ for lunch and is quite full and satisfied.

playing with ping.im for status updates.

Ripped Off.

Had my car broken into last night.

They took my camera and the 2GB card that was in it.

The loss of the photos hurts more than the loss of the camera.

I'm quite miffed.

It's Craptastic!

My bag of crap arrived from woot.

What did I get for my money? I'm glad you asked!

A 'ClipCam' which is a tiny USB camera

A Logitech Quickcam Express

A Curious George Gift Bag

A VHS Cassette 'Buns & Abs of Steel 2000'

Brakes

Front brakes are done on the Toyota with the help of a friend.

He did the drivers side and I watched, then I did the passenger side by myself.

Real simple compared to the brakes on the Volvo.

Need to find out where things are leaking out of the engine, I ran low on coolant today and there is still a possible oil leak.

Laundry

Went to a new place last night to do laundry, It was interesting in that all the machines had girls names.

The machines were not as high-tech as my usual place, The Dryers lacked any kind of indicator as to how much time they had for their cycle.

Clothes got clean which is what counts but I dont think I'll go back there unless its an emergency as the older washers didnt have a way to add softener to the cycle.

Seen on Postsecret

I liked this one. Might have to see about moving the Volvo.

Displacement

Boy can I feel the difference between the 2.3 liter rear wheel drive car I've been driving for most of the past year and the 1.6 liter front wheel drive car which I'm driving now.

QRZ Photo Upload

Does anyone know if the QRZ Photo Upload works for modifying a profile?

I'd like to add my picture.

Classic Volvo Interior.

P1000478
Originally uploaded by johnkiniston

From Arizona Volvo Day 2008. My 1983 Volvo 240 doesn't have nearly as cool of a dash.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

ToDo:

By the end of this month:
Purchase all parts needed to get the 1500 engine going.

Within four weeks from now:
Get engine to spin over, Possibly get engine to start using hacked together harness.

In two months time:
Fix major wiring issues

In Three months time:
Start floor replacement. Have floor prep complete.

To Purchase:
Need a valve cover gasket, Need a second carburetor kit and a second air filter.

probabably need upper and lower heater hoses too.

Bag of Crap

I think I've just got my first Bag of Crap off woot, I've only been trying for four years or so.

Volvo 740 Video

Hello!

I have re-discovered this blog and will once again attempt to update it.

Digicide

I remember years gone by when I used to be on IRC 24/7 and on Mucks 24/7, Wonder if anyone is looking for me.
Digicide: "It’s tough to tell when someone disappears. You always just figure they’re busy at work, or studying for finals, or on vacation, or something of the sort, so none of us thought anything was strange when we didn’t see Nodek for a while. Actually, to be brutally honest, none of us even noticed. I mean, he was kind of quiet to begin with, and only piped up when he had something to say. Half the time, you’d have to check the room list to know that he was even there. So I don’t know how long it took us. Maybe a week. Maybe two. But then, one day, this troll shows up and says something like:

NoobLOL42: star wars is for fagz!!!

We don’t get trolls very often, but Nodek was some kind of film geek, so he’d always rip them a new one in words that none of us understood. It was pretty funny to watch, actually, and it became kind of a running joke. So Jil says:

AdminJil4984: nodek? u hungry?

and there was no reply.

NoobLOL42: whos nodek?

AdminJil4984: whos nodek?!?!?!?!?!?

The last one to see him had been 3jane, who said she was in PM with him a few weeks ago, but when we tried to check the logs we got a server error. We weren’t freaked, though. Like I said, people come and go. We shot off a few PMs, but since we figured he w"

Civic Duty

Civic Duty: "It was Friday evening and Lucas was getting ready to perform his duty. He’d already tugged off his leather loafers to put on a pair of combat boots. He’d disheveled his black hair in front of the bathroom mirror and traded his pinstripe jacket for an old worn t-shirt and army fatigue vest. After arranging these things, he looked himself over in the full body mirror and decided whether or not he would be afraid of himself.

Lucas ate a bowl of chicken noodle soup and drank some iced tea. He figured he could make use of the empty tea bottle as a Molotov cocktail if need be, and he chuckled at the thought. It was funny to him how he came to think of this as humorous. The rest of the world never seemed to get the joke.

8:00 pm rolled around and he heard the phone ring in the kitchen. He wiped off his mouth after finishing the soup and went to pick up the line. “Hello, Merryweather residence. Lucas speaking.” Lucas listened as the reminder that his Friday night was ruined berated him through the receiver.

“Look, I already told you,” Lucas continued as he went to tap the opened letter on the counter as if he’d somehow forgotten why he was dressed like this. “I have Riot Duty today. I told you this last week. No, we can’t play poker. No, I can’t get out of this. You know"

Adsum

Adsum: "The glass beads were black and white: tiny flattened circles that made a loud clattering sound when he emptied the bag onto the glowing white floor. Most of the 1,394 settled within a few feet of his legs, although a few rolled to the outer reaches of the room.

“The problem here is that you don’t understand the potential,” Sudoku told her without lifting his attention from the beads. “You use this thing to play games and watch stimvids. You’ve never even opened the console.”

“And this is the console.”

“This is what the console looks like today.”

From her position on the floor across from him, Ery glanced around the room, then snorted. “Nice. Well, now that that’s over with, I’m going to go finish my coffee.”

“This room isn’t actually empty,” he said when the edges of her body started to shimmer with logout. She recondensed with a sigh that was slightly louder than necessary.

“I know an empty room when I see one.”

“There’s me. And you.”

“And stimvid pickup lines, apparently. But there’s coffee back in your apartment, and it’s winning.”

He wiped the beads into a small pile, then swept them onto his palm before spilling them over the floor again. “What’s a st"

Using an Oscilloscope

Using an Oscilloscope: "Ever wonder what an Oscilloscope is? Or how to use one? Here's a good guide on getting starting 'An oscilloscope is easily the most useful instrument available for testing circuits because it allows you to see the signals at different points in the circuit. The best way of investigating an electronic system is to monitor signals at the input and output of each system block, checking that each block is operating as expected and is correctly linked to the next. With a little practice, you will be able to find and correct faults quickly and accurately.' Link."

Father Knows Best

Father Knows Best: "I don’t remember being a citizen, but when I was growing up, it was all my father ever talked about. ‘Back in the valley,’ he would say, and point to the acrylic mural that took up most of the wall by the front door. It looked nothing like a valley. It was a jumble of angles and curves, oddly pixellated like most of my mother’s art. I don’t remember much of my mother either, but there are bits and pieces of her all over the apartment, plotted out in meticulous detail on nearly every flat surface. Of course, my father wanted me to go into something with computers. He still does. “Dennou,” he says, when I meet him for coffee, “when are you going to give up that mess and buy yourself a datafeed?” “I have a datafeed, dad.” Actually, I have six. Only one has been turned on, and I use it as a lamp in the hallway. Across from me, my father began listing the merits of computer operation, chuckling and gesturing like he was describing a woman he wanted to set me up with. I smiled and nodded a few times, but we both knew nothing would come of it. It’s not that I don’t know how to use a computer. I grew up around them, after all. I used to type eighty words per minute, but I haven’t tried in months. My father has never been aw"

Set: geeky card-game that rewires your brain

Sounds like something neat to try, I think I'll look for it in town.

Set: geeky card-game that rewires your brain: "Cory Doctorow: Last week on a rainy afternoon in Amsterdam, I ended up playing a few hands of Set on a friend's houseboat. I'd watched the game played once before at a nerdy event, and the fiendish intensity of the players was a gigantic warning-sign -- this was a game with an event-horizon, something that would suck me in and never let me out again. It's true: Set is amazingly addictive, a nerdy game of great fascination, one that makes your brain reel and reconfigure itself, so the whole world starts to appear Set-like after a few hours' play. The dealer puts down twelve cards, and players hunch over them, trying to find three-card sets. For three cards to form a set, each of their attributes must either match or diverge. There are four attributes with three possible configurations each: shading (solid, outline, grey); color (blue, red, green); number (one, two, three) and shape (rectangle, oval, squiggle). It's a little like Boggle in that the winning strategy is a combination of directed searching and general unfocusing of the eyes and trusting to intuition to make the sets pop out of the well. Players are penalized for calling out false sets, which happens all the time, since once you engage the pattern-matching centers of your brain, they can't help but see phantom sets in the cards."

Better day today

No Chest pain that I can recall, My head feels more together now that I'm off the medication.

Free lunch, Burgers & Chips for the Advertising open house.

Got MySQL replication working on the DR Server.

Still no luck with DBD::mysql tho.

Went to the river office on the way home to look at the ethernet in their conference room, Didnt find any problems so I spent some time showing one of the people there that yes it works and then gave him info on how to use the WIFI access point we have there as well.

The escort is acting up, I need to check the plugs and filters this weekend, could be the fuel or air filter maybe.

And with that I'm going to bed , Gotta go to the allergist tomorrow.

'Fun' day

More chest pain, Chest pain in the morning on the way to work, Chest pain at work, Chest pain at lunch, Chest pain when leaving work, Yay!

Worked on a couple things at work today, rebuilding the Disaster Recovery server on the drive that had the corrupt fileystem, Got 10.3.9 installed, all the patches and the new XCode.

Turns out we've been installing XCode 1.2 from CD when there's a download of XCode 1.5 and a update to it.

Still no luck compiling DBD::mysql with the new XCode, I have no idea why it is failing and it is quite frustrating.

I did get zziplib compiled and php zip support working I think.

Had to enable .htaccess support and register_globals for php on a virtual host today for the redesign work.

Called apple about the trouble I'm having getting SSL to work on my mail servers, Fat lot of good that did, What's the use of Applecare Premuim support if they wont help you when you have a problem? I mean this is stuff right out of the OS X Server manual and its not freaking working!!!

Spent most of my time on the phone with applecare registering the server and figuring out which plan went with which server, I created a spreadsheet for it so I can keep things straight in the future.

I also registered the rest of the XServes as the apple guy mentioned they were running out of time to be registered, tomorrow I need to remember to register the XRAID.

I'll also be working on getting MySQL Replication going on the DR server so I have the databases live on it, Cant recall how I did that last time but google is my friend.

Speaking of google, I had a friend call me on my work phone today to google something for him because he was driving! What a dork, He was going out to get a pizza but got the address wrong. Dont we have something called 411 for that?

Chest pain again last night (Twice!)

Had more chest pain last night, I tried to use my new inhaler for one of them but it didnt seem to do anything.

Right now my chest is a little bit tight.

Just had a some oatmeal for breakfast, I'll take my last pill in just a bit.

Chest pain again.

Maybe its food related, I just realized that both tonight and last night I ate a corn dog kinda late, after my normal meal times.

I'll have to see what I can do to determine this.

Anyway onto the day,

I woke up with a little bit of chest pain, not a whole lot of it however.

Had a breakfast of the 'Tortilla De Patatas' which I've linked this post to.

I modified the instructions slightly, Used frozen potato gratings (hash browns I guess) instead of fresh cut potatoes and I added in some sausage I had and then sprinkled on some cheese, Turned out OK but I dunno if I'll add the meat again.

I didn't get a lot done before work, Not sure if I really did anything but check mail and read webcomics thinking back on the morning.

Today wasn't all that great at work, I forgot to bring my lunch so I had to eat out with some former co-workers.

We went to Eegees, I got the meatball sub thinking Rob always gets one so it must be good... Boy was I wrong, Rob gets the meatball sub at Subway not at Egees and the meatabll sub at Eegees sucks.

Most of the help desk staff was gone or in training today so that left me manning the help desk phones, that always distracts me and makes it harder to get my own tasks done.

Had to replace a disk that had failed in a server today, made a backup of the disk with the semi corrupt filesystem in another server and started the format process of that disk in the hopes that I can use it again after a fresh OS install.

Lets see.. Tomorrow I need to remember to check the fluid levels in the car and go for another bike ride, I was bad and didn't go today or yesterday and I wont be loosing any weight if I keep putting it off!

Cheast pain

Ugh.

Maybe its being caused by the carpet cleaning spay we used to clean up cat barf.

Quick update before I sleep

I've been up since 4AM due to having to go into work.

Had two slices of toast, bottle of OJ and a fried egg with cheese for breakfast when I got up.

I'm a little early taking my pill but I'm tired and want to get some more sleep in, I should have gone to bed earlier last night but I didn't.

Last week when I did this I went to bed real early Saturday and pulled a 20 hour day Sunday, don't think I'm gonna be doing that today tho.

The escort drove OK which is good, the power steering is much better after tightening the belts.

Power change at work wasn't the big deal it was supposed to be, the data center never lost power and the auxiliary rooms that did were not without power long enough for their UPS systems to die.

I swapped a server out while I was there, pulled the system foam the DR rack and put it in the Production rack so I can work on re-building a new DR system on the failed production machine from last week.

I wanted to switch the network ports for the VPN concentrator so it'd be on a full duplex port but by the time I was ready to make the change it had already started to see use from the remote sites so I'll have to try to do it some other time.

Anyway, I'm going to lay down now and try to get some sleep, I'll go for a bike ride when I get back up again.

Stuffit 10 Rocks!

So are games getting larger or is my iBook getting slower?

Pluto Immortal

365 Tomorrows has a short story every day about the future, I recently started to read it and this is one I really like.

Pluto Immortal: "Marcus wiped blood from his chin. The thick red fluid stuck to his fingers. He stood slowly, pushing himself up off the ground with all the dignity he could muster as his foe stood proud and arrogant. Marcus’ feet were pressed into the soft Mars soil as he readied himself again. “You fool!” Marcus screamed out across the yards between him and his adversary. “You do not comprehend how much more precious is my life than yours! I am Mars-born!” Gaither kept his eyes on his quarry and turned his attention inward for a moment. Focus the rage. Do this professionally. It’s a high-profile case; lots of media attention. Don’t give them any reason to cry brutality. His fist ached from cracking into the Red Planet monster’s jaw. He shook it off and pushed the pain back down, eyes boiling with a deluvian hatred that conquered all other emotion. He knew that if he didn’t kill him today, Marcus would go on living for another four hundred years. All of the Mars-born did- at least the ones who could escape Marcus’ knife. This time, however, Gaither had to stop him. Ninety-seven murders, eighteen rapes, and so many robberies that NASA police were still piecing it all together; Marcus had outdone every other criminal in extra-Earth territory. It stopped here. The fiend spat blood, shaking off the solid hit that ja"

Geek to Live: The Usable Home

Interesting article at lifehacker about designing a functional space.

Geek to Live: The Usable Home: " by Gina Trapani As a computer programmer in a new apartment, I've taken the same approach to setting up my home as I would developing a software application: with a focus on usability. Like any good software package, my home should be a tool that helps me get things done, a space that's a pleasure to be in and a launch pad for daily tasks as well as my life goals. Whether the task at hand is to relax after work, phone a family member, or keep track of a dry cleaning receipt, there are lots of simple ways to create a living space that makes getting things done a breeze. I'm no home organization expert, but here are a few tips I've gleaned over time that can help make your house a Usable Home. Create space for incoming stuff Every day you walk into the house with your hands full of mail, pockets full of change and a cell phone that needs recharging. Instead of dumping that pile of bills onto the coffee table, scattering a mess of pennies and dimes on your dresser and tossing the phone onto a table, create useful places to drop off stuff without having to think. Say, a large change jar that goes to Coinstar every few months, an indoor mailbox for you and your housemates, and a phone-charging center with an easily-accessible plug. Fact is, after a long day at work, you don't"

Morning

I slept better last night than I did the night before, didn't wake up in the middle of the night with my heart beating like I'd just run up a couple flights of stairs.

Took my pill with breakfast like I'm supposed to.

Even remembered to brush my teeth which is something I'm bad about forgetting on weekends after meals.

As planned I went on my first bike ride today after airing up the tires on the bike, Its a lot harder than it looks.

I made it up Condor to Lanuire??? I think but I was too winded and my heart was pounding in my chest to make it any further than that so I rested for a minute and turned around and came back home.

Had to lay down next to my Hepa filter for about 10 minutes before I could breath enough and my heart had slowed down to normal.

This Morning

This is day two on Prednisone.

Last night was interesting, as listed I ended up quite thirsty, had to then use the bathroom a lot because of everything I drank, I didn't suffer from any insomnia or anything but I did wake up at one point with a super fast heart beet.

Good news is today my chest pain is much less than what it was all the other days of this week, Its still there but its a lot less.

Dental Work

Today I went to a dentist for the first time in my life to deal with a tooth I broke.

The options I were given by the doctor were (1) Pull the tooth or (2) Have the tooth repaired but with a high chance of the tooth breaking while being repaired and needing to be pulled anyway.

I went with the pull, Quicker, Cheaper, Easier.

Hurts like hell, and the bleeding, yuck.

Wish I was home instead of at work.

Zaurus Video Success

I have video playback working on my Zaurus using mplayer.

This is with Open Zaurus 3.5.2 on my Zaurus 5500 Personal Mobile Tool.

I use the following to encode:
#!/bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/mencoder $1 -srate 24000 -vf eq=10:-0,scale=320:-2::: -o Zaurus.$1 -oac mp3lame -lameopts preset=15:mode=3 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate=150 -ofps 15 -sws 2

I call the above zmencoder.sh I give it a filename and it spits out a Zaurus.filename encoded file.

I play it on the Zaurus with mencoder with the following in my .mplayer/config
ac=mad
cache=4096

I no longer need to use -framedrop or -hardframedrop to play back video.

Shipped the G3

I shipped out the G3 I'm giving to a Open Source developer today via the UPS Store.

He should have it monday if all goes well, I made sure to get insurance on the computer and had them pack it.

Hopefully this will enable the developer to make a OS X version of his program.

Batteries...

I wonder how much money I waste on disposable batteries.

I just tossed out two "Energizer E2 Titanium" batteries that were running my mouse and replaced them with some normal Duracells.

Thinking about it I have another battery powered mouse,Two cameras and a GPS that take Double A batteries, I'm gonna try to keep track of how many I go through in a period of time.

A new Top, A Topless Scout, A scout meeting!

It's been a busy day!

This morning I went shopping for the week and got some frozen food to take to work for lunch, Then I went to the east side of town and picked up my new top for the scout with my Dad.

We got a pretty good deal, $110 for the top, Normally they cost between $300 and $600.

The top is in OK shape, its got some holes in it from a lightbar and it needs to be painted.

So when we got home my father started to take the old top off while I had the unpleasant job of cleaning the fish tank.

Later after we got the top off Jon came by to take some pictures and go for a ride in it without the top.

We got the new rear bulkhead mostly in place, there are some bolts that don't fit right so we will have to work on it some more this week, But it was good enough for me to drive to the meeting.

The meeting was good, Got to see people I had not seen in a while and I finally got my Rendevous kit from last year which Joel had been bringing to meeting after meeting in the hopes of catching me.

There was a new guy at the meeting, has a '79 scout that he bought 'new' with 2000 miles on it from a IH dealer in '79.

Quite impressive to see one with the interior in it still.

Crash & Burn

I didnt actually forget to blog tuesday.

When I got home from work I went to lay down because of a headache but instead fell asleep before 7pm!

Closet Cleaning

I'm doing a big cleaning / organizing of my closet today.

Current results:

5 pairs of well fitting pants
18 well fitting shirts
11 T-Shirts
3 Car/Yard work shirts
5 shirts I want to slim down to be able to wear
4 pairs of pants that fit but are not well fitting
3 black sweaters that fit
2 pairs of sweat pants
2 jackets
1 vest
1 windbreaker

1 iMac? (Forgot I had one)

Lan Party

I just got home from today's Lan Party at RD.

The attendees were Doug, Doug, Jason, Jimmy, Chris, Rich, Brian, and Myself.

We played from about 11AM to 11:30PM which is when Jimmy and I left, I don't know how many more hours the rest played.

Starwars Battlefront and The Battle for Middle-Earth were our games this time.

We stopped for lunch about 1 or 2 and did sandwiches, Quizno's for most and Eegees for Brian Jason and Myself.

Dinner was late, maybe 7 or 8pm at PeiWei.

The drive home was nice at 11:30, it was pitch black and there was not a lot of traffic on the roads so I took a longer route than usual on the side-roads instead of taking I10 to get home.

Moving up in the building

Today I made a serious effort to get moved out of my office in the lower level and into my new corner of the IT room.

With the help of Jimmy I now have network connectivity to both the inside and outside networks.

Eric and Mike were nice as well and I netted a replacement PC and a new eMac, I hear there is also a G5 iMac and a new flat panel in the works for me.

I like working in the IT department sofar!

Also today I attended a goodbye kind of lunch that the former VP above Online held, It was at Micha's which was decent food, Not the best food around in my opinion but still nice. It was a little strange since not only is the Online department its own stand alone department now instead of being under Marketing I have also left the department with my reporting to IT starting Monday.

Funny

anole:~$ screen -x
Suddenly the Dungeon collapses!! - You die…

Yay for screen.

I just learned it has a 'nethack' mode where if you go into command mode and do a nethack on there are other amusing messages.

Ouch

Ow, I fell just after finishing with dinner tonight.

I was sitting crosslegged on the floor infront of a small table where I was eating, I got up and evidently didnt notice my foot/leg was asleep and over I went.

I think I either sprained or broke part of my foot, it hurts quite a lot.

Good news is that I missed hitting the Bed, Table, TV and Tivo on the way down.

Time for some pain killers and bed.

Work

I'm trying to remember what all I did at work today.

Swapped out the two tape drives on Algol that stopped working with the last spare drive from the Annex, It's only a DLT4000 instead of the DLT7000 I was using so none of my existing tapes are readable.

I ran a cleaning tape through it before I put it into service in the hopes that it will work.

The drive also seems dog slow, I've been dumping a file to it since early this afternoon and its still not done.

Oh, I also finished up the TNI Intranet server, Moved some MySQL data around via the wonderful phpmyadmin, I love that tool.

Compiled RRDtool on the new intranet server so Cacti will be able to produce its graphs of all the switches in the building.

Did a followup check on the new citizenmail server to make sure I actually finished it.

Moved a box of books from my office to my new desk (And hurt my back in the process, Note to self don't fill boxes with books, they get heavy!) and took down some awards in my office I wont have room for.

Digg

Found another neat site today: digg

Digg feels like a cross between Slashdot and Metafilter, I'm currently reading through the archive of past stories for neat articles.

Lunch with Louis

I had a nice lunch today with my friend Louis,

Louis came by to pick up a pair of SPUD brackets and a 2 gig SCSI drive for the Sun Ultra 1 that he is attempting to put Debian Linux on.

We drove over to El Gorrion and had the #4 plate which I love so much.

Funny thing is that we ran into part of my normal lunch group (Rob, Kerry and Tim) also having lunch at El Gorrion.

After lunch Louis drove back to TNI a different route than the one I had planned to show me a restaurant that he recommended that I try from when he worked in the area.

When we returned to TNI I gave Louis what was supposed to be a short tour but it ended up being half an hour long as I showed the two levels of the press and related folders inserters and binders.

del.icio.us

I have decided to once again attempt to use web-based bookmarks to keep track of bookmarks I use on multiple computers.

I have in the past tried Furl and SiteBar, I hope that del.icio.us works well.

You can see my current bookmarks via the attached link.

Happy Newyear

So far my newyears resolution is to attempt to blog more.

I will start with the New Years eve party that I went to.

It was hosted at Chris's house, Not a lot of people I knew showed up but that was OK, it was a pretty small gathering and I felt privileged to be invited.

Jimmy and Rich were there along with their wives, Chris's brother showed up with his wife, Shannon's mother was there and there were three pairs of couples who's names I can no longer remember.

It was a lot of fun, There were a couple delays with the food due to overloading the grill I think but that was OK.

Played some gamecube, Set off some fireworks and had a great time.

I made sure I hadn't drank any alcohol in the hours before I left for home and I made it home without any problems except for my fingers got damn cold due to the lack of heat in my borrowed car.

Best Soap Ever.

Neutrogena Men's POWER SCRUB Deodorant Bar.

I've been using it for about a month now and I swear I feel the cleanest I've ever felt in my life.

The soap is contained in a pouch that is textured so it scrubs better.

I gotta remember to buy more when I run out thus this post.

Belated Birthday lunch.

Today I had a late birthday lunch with some of the folks from my lan party group, Chris , Doug, Jimmy and the other Doug.

Fun lunch at Pei-Wei, had the Honey Seared chicken which Doug paid for.

Got a gift, Doom3, It came wrapped in a printout of a playboy centerfold, Now that was a interesting thing to have at the table at the restraunt.

Time taken to drive home

Using the frontage roads from Silverlake to Grant took 41 minutes 54 seconds. This was with exiting on Sunrise and taking the river train crossing.

Game Night

Another Great night last night.

Two games of Ground Control Two and HOURS of Starwars Battlefront.

Rich did not get on my shit list this time as he didnt steal my name, Infact I cant really think of anyone who got on my shit list.

Chuck was awesome, he brought a extra PC for me to use as mine is still not working corectly, You Rock Chuck!

Tylers Birthday

Today we celebrated Tylers Birthday.

First we went to El Greco's Grecian Gardens.

Nice place, Run by a family I guess, They knew Gus.

In attendance were Tyler, A woman who's name I can not remember, Matt, Matt's brother, Gus, Alex, Jon Shay, Steph Shay, Madison Shay, and briefly Jack. Oh and myself.

I'm not sure how the food was, I only had a small salad which I couldn't finish, It didn't agree with me.

The dish with the fried cheese was really good however.

Next we went to the Fox and Hound.

At the Fox and Hound we had Tyler, Alex, The woman who's name I can not remember, and Myself initially.

We ran into a Co-worker Amy, I hope she doesn't feel offended or anything by the way we acted, It was nice seeing her but I had no clue what to say or talk about.

Oh and I also introduced Alex as Gus which seemed to piss him off a lot, Sorry Alex!

We got a pool table finally and started playing, initially it was Tyler vs Alex, Alex one.

Next up was the woman who's name I can not remember vs Myself.

We were evenly matched, Both doing really poorly.

Still it was fun, She won.

At this point in time the Grossman brothers, Gus, and a guy from Login named Ryan showed up.

Next up was Gus vs Ryan from Login.

I'm afraid I don't know the outcome of the game as I had to go home at this point in time as the smoke in the Fox and Hound made me very sick :(

Sakura

Tonight we went to Sakura,

Jack, Matt, Tyler, Gus and Myself.

Damn cool place, We went to the east side one which they all siad was gheto on comparison to the West one but I still had a lot of fun.

Having a dude cook the food at your table is neat, and he was amusing.

I voted today.

Today I voted for the first time.

Not as cool as I thought, I was expecting digital voting machines, or something with chad atleast.

Nope, Felt tipped pen and a scantron sheet.

Well maybe it'll be cooler next time.

GNU screen

screen has to be one of the most usefull tools in my sysadmin arsonal.

It lets me move terminals from work to home, from home to work.
It lets me run jobs overnight without worring about them not completing
It lets me not worry about my desktop crashing and taking out whatever I was doing on the servers.

Today I wrote a new .screenrc and I think I'll share it with the world.

#make scrollback work in terminals
termcapinfo xterm*|rxvt* 'ti@:te@'
#use my .bashrc and .bash_profile
shell -$SHELL
#kill the nag
startup_message off
#scrollback
defscrollback 1024
#status line
caption always "%{.bW}%-w%{.rW}%n %t%{-}%+w %=%{..G} %l %{..Y} %m/%d %C%a "
# remap w to the selectable list
bind 'w' windowlist -b
bind 'W' windows

Crushed

I just broke my 512mb SD card.

I'm quite unhappy with myself now, I dropped it on the floor and rolled my chair back from my desk so I could get up and look for it.

*CRUNCH*

There the card was, under the wheel of my chair.

No visiable sign of breakage, but it no longer shows up on the Zaurus or my Mac or my Linux Box.

Mysql Reminder

I can never remember how to change the value of a table from the mysql cli.

update table set field1='value1' where field2='value2';

insert into table values ("one", "two", "Three", "Four", "Five", "Six");

Is Work making me sick?

Am I sick because I don't want to go to work?

Is this my body's way of trying to cope with the stress of the office?

Back in Jr. High and HighSchool I used to get sick a lot, When I dropped out of school my sickness magically went away.

I won the Attendance award at work years ago before I got promoted into this position.

I also don't think I was this sick when I was working for Rob or Doug.

Is it something about my current work environment that is making me sick?

I will admit I'm not happy currently at work, I feel unappreciated and overworked.

I want things to be back like they used to, I want to work on cool projects and have fun again.

I don't even feel like I'm part of the team, I feel like I'm a burden to my boss and that he does not like me or the work I do.

Fortune Cookies

My co-workers found the fortunes I received at work today quite humorous.

You have unusual equipment for success, use it properly.

Your creativity will take you to unexpected places.

Scam or Stuff?

Today I found a link to FreeFlatScreens.com and I thought in the name of Science I'd try it out.

Currently I've found 7 people to help me out, I still need a 8th.

I picked the Ebay signup as my offer to do as it's free and doesnt even need a Credit Card which isnt true about the other offers.

I'll update with details as things progress, They claim it'll be 5 days or so before the Ebay signup registers.

Hacking Tivo

Tonight I hacked my friends Tivo.

We replaced the 14 gig disk in his Series 1 with a 40 gig disk.

The Tivo is much faster now with its 7200RPM disk and he appreciated the additional 24 hours the upgrade gained him.

We also installed some of the hacks for a series 1, He doesnt have a Ethernet card yet so we hope that everything will be OK.

Stargate Atlantis

I'm enjoying the new Stargate series, The characters are starting to get fleshed out a little and it's a good thing.

Tonight I half expected the thing that would remove the creature to be the chocolate bar that McKay was eating.

I wonder if we will see him use the shield device from last week again.

Nice explination about their lack of inertia being a problem, and a reasonable sollution as well.

Tivo

I ordered a Refurbished Series 2 Tivo yesterday.

$49 from tivo.com after rebate.

Would have been nice if it was in my hands tonight, I look foward to the ability to pause live tv.

Registered to vote

Today I filled out the paperwork to register to vote.

I've not voted before, I'm not sure what I was doing last presidential election but this time I plan to take part in the process.

Currently I feel I'm very uninformed about issues, I spend too much time watching tech news and alike but I've never really paid attention to politics, I hope to change this.

John Kerry looks to be my candidate of choice, He rated a 81% match with my answers on Presidentmatch and I like the things his website say.

Trying out Flickr

This service sounded like a neat way to add Photo's to this Blog. Here is one from the Oranski Wedding.

Mike and Jen Originally uploaded by johnkiniston.

Perl FTP

Here is the first program I'm giving the source for, it's a FTP upload script that is designed to run from Cron.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use Net::FTP;

use File::Copy;

#Setup the variables

$ftphost = "ftp.hostname.com";

$username = "user";

$password = "password";

$remotedirectory = "public_html";

$outputdirectory = "~/transfered/";

$localdirectory = "~/dropbox/";

$fromaddress = "username\@host.com";

$toaddress = "tousername\@host.com";

$subject = "Automated FTP Transfer";

# Build the filelist

@files=`ls -1 $localdirectory`;



#Connect to the FTP Server

$ftp = Net::FTP->new("$ftphost", Timeout => 30, Debug   => 1) or $erroroutput = $erroroutput."Can't connect: $@\n";



#Login with the username and password

$ftp->login($username, $password) or $erroroutput = $erroroutput."Couldn't authenticate, even with explicit username and password.\n";



#Set Binary Mode

$ftp->type(I);



#Change Directories

$ftp->cwd($remotedirectory) or $erroroutput = $erroroutput."Couldn't change directory\n";



#Upload the files if everything is OK So far.

if (!$erroroutput){

        foreach $file (@files) {

                chomp $file;

                $ftp->put ($localdirectory.$file) or $erroroutput = $erroroutput."couldn't upload $file\n";

        }

}



#Close the FTP Connection

$ftp->quit();



#Mail the results

$mailer = "/usr/lib/sendmail -f$fromaddress -oi";

open(MAIL, "|$mailer -t") || die;

print MAIL "To: $toaddress\n";

print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n";

if ($erroroutput) {

        print MAIL "Error $erroroutput";

        foreach $file (@files) {

                print MAIL "Did not transfer $file\n";

        }

}

else {

        foreach $file (@files) {

                chomp $file;

                print MAIL "Transferred $file\n";

                move ("$localdirectory$file", "$outputdirectory$file");

        }

}

close (MAIL);

Rippoff Alert!

reservationrewards.com just put an unauthorized Charge on my Visa.

See http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff97160.htm for more info about these people.

Code I've written

From now on I plan to share anything that I write be it Perl, Shell or PHP here in my Blog so it may be usfull for other people.

Off the top of my head I've written a quick FTP droplet in Applescript, Several FTP transfer Shell and Perl scripts (Both FTP and SFTP), A module for a webpage that shows a random graphic based on the Time of day and Day of week from a predefined set, A graphical forum signature that grabs information about the current viewer and displays it,And a image watermarking program.

I'll be adding the sources to these programs to here as time permits.

Results from 07/27/04

Did backups.
Checked Oil (Low added two quarts)
Stayed Positive
Didnt stay as focused as I could have.
Sent Registration Project Data storage draft to Jeff.

Goals for 7/27/04

Stay Positive
Stay Focused
Work on Registration project
Check OIL in Escort
Do Backups

Results for July 26

Stayed Positive
Stayed Focus
Turned in phone bill for partial re-imbursement
Worked on Data Storage plan
Asked for help about Test plan

Got stuck in meeting from 10AM-4PM, Did not get much else done.

Short Term Goals for July 26 2004

Todays Goals:

* Stay Positive
* Stay Focused
* Turn in final Phone bill
* Data storage plan for Registration
* Ask for help on Test plan
* Backups
* Camera

Things I need to bring to work:

# VPN Endpoint
# Can opener
# Zaurus
# iPod
# Phone Bill

Handy Zaurus applications.

I dont know if I've mentioned before that I have a Sharp Zaurus 5500 Personal Mobile tool or not but I do and it's quite handy.

I've found a number of programs I love:

Gaim
Mileage
Opie Reader (With the addition of Plucker)

I'm currently searching for a PIM that I like, I tried using MiniRubyWiki Which worked but it required a lot of upkeep in starting and stopping it every time I changed my network settings so it would have the new IP.

I'm using TKCRom so I no longer have the Sharp PIM apps built in, but I didnt like them anyway.

Another Lan Pary

Another Lan Party this weekend,

They are starting to become a quite often event it seems.

This weekend it was at Doug's house, Which was nice for me as I'm about 15 minutes away from his house instead of over an Hour away from Chris's House.

Doug has a nice house, Two floors, decent yard and best of all AC.

There were 7 of us this time and we played the same two games we always play, C&C Generals : Zero Hour and Battlefield VietNam.

We were supposed to start at 10am per Doug's email, I arrived there at 10:15 because of a slow gas station line.

Unfortinately the next person arrived at roughly 11:30am, And forgot to bring the table they were supposed to bring to set up on (7 gamers with space for 3 machines does not a lan party make).

Luckily we were located close to a Super Walmart where we purchased a new table, food and drinks and lunch at the Wendy's in the parking lot.

Online Shopping

I'm quite unhappy with the state of Online Shopping for Servers.

On the 28th of last month I placed an order from Dell, Dell did not ship my order with the three day shipping I paid for, Infact they never shipped my order at all because of a 'Miss-Configuration' Somehow their online tool set the server up with a DC power supply, That wasnt even an option on the page!

So instead of calling me or emailing me they just sat on the damn order.

Fast forward 10 days, Where the fuck is the server?

We look online, Order is gone.

We Call Dell, They cant find the order, Claim it was never ordered.

Finally we got them to process the order or so we thought but once again the server got held up for a 'Miss-Configuration' This time it was because we had 3 disks in the server one 40 gig disk and two 80 gig disks and we specified we anted Raid 1. Most people would put the two matched disks in a raid 1 configuration, but noo not dell.

At this point we either had the option of starting over or going with another vendor, I chose to change vendors and went to CDW's site to spec out a IBM.

I found a nice IBM for about the same price as the Dell which fit our needs, Using their options page I ordered it with a Extra processor, 4 Gigs of extra ram, One 40 gig disk, Two 120 Gig disks, A RAID 1 controller for the disks and a 3 year warranty.

Monday I got a call from CDW saying that they were out of the RAM I ordered so they upgraded me to 2Gig dimms from 1 Gig dimms.
That was fine, It wasnt supposed to impact the shipping process at all.

Today I got another call from CDW, They said that the Disks I ordered were IDE and the Server was SCSI, Asking about the RAID controller I ordered it was IDE but they said it would not be compatible with the server as the server had SCSI Raid.

Also it turns out their ordering system allowed me to order 3 disks for the server when it only had 2 Drive bays.

So today we ended up switching to a HP from CDW with two 140 Gig Ultra 320 SCSI disks, a Built in RAID 1 controller and 5 Gigs of ram (It came with 1 Gig and we added our 4 from above to the order)

I hope we get the server by Friday, I need to have it received by then for Billing reasons.

Photography

This article http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/06/22/dark_room/ makes me want to learn photography now, I've never done much with a camera, I have three or four cheap Digital cameras that produce poor quality pictures if they produce at all, Film sounds damn cool right now.

Scout Update

Well the fuel pump worked for as long as I could run the scout when we tested it.

Unfortunately now the starter has failed.

There is a loud CLUNK when the key is turned which indicates the Bendix is being moved into position but there does not appear to be any power being applied to the starter itself.

Tucson Alternator has 6 Starters that are compatible with my Scout so I'll be getting one from them and installing it this weekend.

Gmail

Woohoo!

Thanks to Tim I now have a Gmail account to call my own.

It's damn spiffy!

Repairing the Scout

It's been a while since I posted about the problem with the Escort I had been driving.

Unfortunately it still will not start, despite a new timing belt, new plugs, new TFI module, new plug wires, new rotor, new distributor cap, new coil and new waterpump (had to remove it to change the timing belt and it looked warn).

We have given up on the Escort for now as it's cost us a lot of money in parts and we have had no luck in restoring it to operational status so we have gone back to working on the Scout.

Today we ordered a new fuel pump to replace the one that is currently spraying gas everywhere and leaking fuel into my Oil, Checkers had it for about $60 which is about half the price it was when the Scout broke and we decided to hold off on repairing it due to the cost of the part needed when we had other working vehicles.

I'm looking forward to getting the Scout back on the streets again, It's nice and warm out and I want to take the hard top off and maybe even fold the windshield down and go adventuring with it.

Mexico

I recently left the USA for the first time in my life.

It was a short trip, Just a drive down to Nogales Mexico for lunch, Total trip was just over 3 hours long.

We went to celebrate a bonus my boss got, He treated the entire department to the best Mexican food I've ever had (Wow I should go to Mexico more often!).

Pretty cool, We rented some big SUV thing with three rows of seating yet it still wasnt big enough for the 10 people we had total so we also had a party in Christina's small car.

Leaving the country was easy, just a step through the turnstyle and there I was in another actual country!

Now this was a big step for me as I've only left the state of Arizona one other time since we moved here in 1988.

The restaurant was really cool, A place called La Roca which was partially inside a cave in the side of a big hill.

After we ate we wandered around the Mexico side of Nogales for a while looking for a store to buy some stuff in, That's when I got to see the worse side of life there: little kids begging you to buy their candy/plastic toys, People in wheelchairs and on crutches missing limbs selling things as they moved from car to car at the vehicle entrance to the border.

I now wish to learn spanish as only Jeff and Dora could really understand what people were offering us and what was on the menu in the restaurant and I really want to go back to Mexico again.

Cars, Gotta hate them.

Well I'm pissed off.

Yesterday on the way to work a belt broke on the car I'm driving.

I got it switched out without a problem but somehow now the car will not start, the starter turns the engine over, I've got spark from the plug wires and I can smell gas yet it does not start.

I wish I lived close enough to work to bike or walk at times like these.

Lan Party!

Wow,

I had so much fun this weekend at Chris's lan party.

There were 6 of us including myself that attended, We started at about 2pm and ran till 2am, 12 hours of continuous gaming!

We played two games, Battlefield Vietnam and Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour, Alternating between the two of them as we got bored or tired of one.

This was a whole lot of fun and I cant wait till I can go to another one.

Long work day

8:45 AM - 8:07PM

Today we did a site re-launch which took a lot of work, a number of things had to be fixed at the last minute.

It looks like I'll have another long day tomorrow, 10-8 and then late night work at like 11pm or 1am to replace a failed disk.