Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Doubling the odometer
This post has moved to http://behindthebars.blogspot.com/2007/12/doubling-odometer.html
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
The finger moves (a little)
So more time wasted as a result of my few seconds of inattention. Today I had a doctor's appointment with my surgeon to follow up on my finger. The nurse came in and removed the 11 stitches. Holy Cow! That hurt worse than cutting my finger in the first place. At one point I told the nurse he was in real danger of me punching him because he was a guy and I had no problem hitting guys who caused me pain. He laughed and told me he was almost done.
So the doctor comes in and we talk. I find out that in about 3 months time I should have full use of my finger and for the next 4 weeks I get to wear a new split and that he wants me to do finger exercises. OK, so at least I'm past wrapping the finger in gauze. But 3 months before I have full use of the finger? Crap!!! I was only inattentive for 3 seconds. Ouch!
At the end of the visit, he sends me upstairs to see a physical therapist and so I can get the splint. So I head upstairs and they are able to see me. Kristy, my therapist, fits me with a spiffy hard splint made out of plastic and gives me instructions on my finger exercise and massaging for the next 4 weeks. Oh boy, this sounds like fun...
So I went in at 10am, walked out at Noon. 2 more hours spent for a few seconds of inattention. Not to mention the pain from having the stitches removed. Stupid hurts.
So the doctor comes in and we talk. I find out that in about 3 months time I should have full use of my finger and for the next 4 weeks I get to wear a new split and that he wants me to do finger exercises. OK, so at least I'm past wrapping the finger in gauze. But 3 months before I have full use of the finger? Crap!!! I was only inattentive for 3 seconds. Ouch!
At the end of the visit, he sends me upstairs to see a physical therapist and so I can get the splint. So I head upstairs and they are able to see me. Kristy, my therapist, fits me with a spiffy hard splint made out of plastic and gives me instructions on my finger exercise and massaging for the next 4 weeks. Oh boy, this sounds like fun...
So I went in at 10am, walked out at Noon. 2 more hours spent for a few seconds of inattention. Not to mention the pain from having the stitches removed. Stupid hurts.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Dell's Open Source computers
A customer of mine needed an inexpensive computer to use as an IPCop firewall. Knowing how much he liked Dell machines I looked on their web site for an inexpensive desktop computer, under product category I found "Open-Source Desktops". Perfect! No Windows OS, just good hardware with FreeDos included. Since I wanted to keep the cost down I went with the Vostro series. For less than $350 my client was able to get a Dual Core 1.6Ghz Pentium w/ 1GB of Ram and an 80GB hard drive. Perfect!
Today I pulled the computer from it's shipping box and tried to install IPCop 1.4.16. It can't find the CD-Rom drive. So I do a little googling and discover that the Vostro 200 uses a very new chip set that really isn't supported in Linux distributions yet. While the Hard drive/DVD Drive issues can be solved by switching the SATA controller from IDE to RAID in the Bios, you still have to recompile the e1000 driver from the latest source at Intel's web site. Dandy! And switching from IDE to RAID in the bios didn't do anything in IPCop, the CD-Rom still wasn't found.
So I decided to load the machine with CentOS 5 and VMWare. Then I loaded IPCop in as a Virtual Machine. Sure it's over-kill but a dual core 1.6Ghz machine is over-kill for a small office firewall anyway. Since the Vostro 200 only has 1 onboard NIC I needed to install a second NIC anyway for the firewall functionality. So I installed a Realtek 8139 card as eth0 and set the onboard Intel as eth1. I then assigned a public IP to eth0 and configured VMWare to use both ethernet cards with the Realtek being the Red (Public) interface. Once installed I'll lock down the public IP of the host OS so it's only accessible from my own IP space and since the card on the public side has been well supported in Linux for some time it shouldn't be an issue to keep upgrading the host OS as needed.
The moral of the story is, while Dell may sell Open Source machines. They don't necessarily run all or even most Open Source OSes in stock form. Heck, if you check their web site, the only drivers they offer for the box is for Windows Vista and XP. So what's Open Source about these boxes????
Today while searching for answers I did stumble across Dell's Ubuntu computers which apparently come pre-installed. They are using slightly more expensive hardware which likely isn't quite as cutting edge. Thus better support in current distros I suspect.
Today I pulled the computer from it's shipping box and tried to install IPCop 1.4.16. It can't find the CD-Rom drive. So I do a little googling and discover that the Vostro 200 uses a very new chip set that really isn't supported in Linux distributions yet. While the Hard drive/DVD Drive issues can be solved by switching the SATA controller from IDE to RAID in the Bios, you still have to recompile the e1000 driver from the latest source at Intel's web site. Dandy! And switching from IDE to RAID in the bios didn't do anything in IPCop, the CD-Rom still wasn't found.
So I decided to load the machine with CentOS 5 and VMWare. Then I loaded IPCop in as a Virtual Machine. Sure it's over-kill but a dual core 1.6Ghz machine is over-kill for a small office firewall anyway. Since the Vostro 200 only has 1 onboard NIC I needed to install a second NIC anyway for the firewall functionality. So I installed a Realtek 8139 card as eth0 and set the onboard Intel as eth1. I then assigned a public IP to eth0 and configured VMWare to use both ethernet cards with the Realtek being the Red (Public) interface. Once installed I'll lock down the public IP of the host OS so it's only accessible from my own IP space and since the card on the public side has been well supported in Linux for some time it shouldn't be an issue to keep upgrading the host OS as needed.
The moral of the story is, while Dell may sell Open Source machines. They don't necessarily run all or even most Open Source OSes in stock form. Heck, if you check their web site, the only drivers they offer for the box is for Windows Vista and XP. So what's Open Source about these boxes????
Today while searching for answers I did stumble across Dell's Ubuntu computers which apparently come pre-installed. They are using slightly more expensive hardware which likely isn't quite as cutting edge. Thus better support in current distros I suspect.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Up on the cutting board
Today was the day. The day for surgery. No food or water since midnight. I'm supposed to be there @ 11am.
We arrive on time @ 11am and start the check in process. "There's a problem verfying insurance benefits Mr. Walters. Please take a seat and I'll be with you in a few minutes", the lady said. Reagan and I take a seat and wait. And wait... The lady comes by and takes my card to see if she can call a different number. Still no luck so we wait. Finally she comes back and tells us she hasn't reached the insurance company but she's cleared me to proceed into surgery so I should be called in shortly.
About 11:45 we are heading back into a prep room. Scott, the pre-op nurse tells me I should be in surgery in about 45 minutes. Around 12:20 the 'sleep Dr.' comes in and gives me shot. The last thing I remember is being rolled into the operating room. Nite nite...
The next thing I know it's about 1:20pm and I wake up with a nasty taste in my mouth. I'm groggy but I check my finger. Oh oh, I have a splint, guess that means I've got 4 weeks of the splint. Grrr. I get some water and chew on some ice. Finally they move me to a lounge chair and get I get some Coke to alleviate my headache. Unfortunately they didn't have any Monster energy drinks.
My check out nurse was fun and bubbly. We compared scars and discussed our past motorcycle accidents. She tells me no alcohol for the next 24 hrs, so much for enjoying that Crown Royal Cask 16. After she's done giving us instructions she coordinated with Reagan to make sure she picks me up at the right area. A few minutes later my wheel chair arrives and get moved over to it. Out the hospital I go and by 3:30 I'm on the way home.
When I get home I curl up on the couch and go back to sleep until about 6:30pm. Now I'm feeling better and it's time to eat. Hmmm, what's on Tivo?
So 11am to 9pm was tied up with my injury, that's another 10 hours wasted all because of a few seconds of inattention. Stupid hurts!
We arrive on time @ 11am and start the check in process. "There's a problem verfying insurance benefits Mr. Walters. Please take a seat and I'll be with you in a few minutes", the lady said. Reagan and I take a seat and wait. And wait... The lady comes by and takes my card to see if she can call a different number. Still no luck so we wait. Finally she comes back and tells us she hasn't reached the insurance company but she's cleared me to proceed into surgery so I should be called in shortly.
About 11:45 we are heading back into a prep room. Scott, the pre-op nurse tells me I should be in surgery in about 45 minutes. Around 12:20 the 'sleep Dr.' comes in and gives me shot. The last thing I remember is being rolled into the operating room. Nite nite...
The next thing I know it's about 1:20pm and I wake up with a nasty taste in my mouth. I'm groggy but I check my finger. Oh oh, I have a splint, guess that means I've got 4 weeks of the splint. Grrr. I get some water and chew on some ice. Finally they move me to a lounge chair and get I get some Coke to alleviate my headache. Unfortunately they didn't have any Monster energy drinks.
My check out nurse was fun and bubbly. We compared scars and discussed our past motorcycle accidents. She tells me no alcohol for the next 24 hrs, so much for enjoying that Crown Royal Cask 16. After she's done giving us instructions she coordinated with Reagan to make sure she picks me up at the right area. A few minutes later my wheel chair arrives and get moved over to it. Out the hospital I go and by 3:30 I'm on the way home.
When I get home I curl up on the couch and go back to sleep until about 6:30pm. Now I'm feeling better and it's time to eat. Hmmm, what's on Tivo?
So 11am to 9pm was tied up with my injury, that's another 10 hours wasted all because of a few seconds of inattention. Stupid hurts!
Monday, November 26, 2007
Time wasted
So last Thursday a few seconds of inattention resulted in a few hours wasted in the ER. Well today that time is expanded by an appointment with a specialist and a few hours trying to register for surgery. When Dr. Phan walked in the room he spent less than 5 minutes talking to me and laid out my choices. Pay the fiddler now and get the tendon checked and possibly fixed or wait and let it heal and see if there are complications. If the tendon tears I'll loose use of the finger abruptly and then having to go through the surgery plus another recovery time.
So the logical thing is to just get this thing stitched up and get on with the recovery.
My appointment with the surgeon was @ 1:45pm and they wanted me there 30 minutes early. Immediately from the office I went next door to get registered. No food or drink after midnight and surgery isn't until 12:45pm. Oh boy!
Finally I get to go home about 4:30. So here's another 3 hours wasted because of a few seconds of inattention. Geesh, stupid hurts.
So the logical thing is to just get this thing stitched up and get on with the recovery.
My appointment with the surgeon was @ 1:45pm and they wanted me there 30 minutes early. Immediately from the office I went next door to get registered. No food or drink after midnight and surgery isn't until 12:45pm. Oh boy!
Finally I get to go home about 4:30. So here's another 3 hours wasted because of a few seconds of inattention. Geesh, stupid hurts.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Thanksgiving day massacre
So it's just before 2pm and it's time to carve the turkey. I decided to sharpen a chef's knife with my handy dandy hand held sharpener. Stroke, stroke.... my mother-in-law is moving around the kitchen looking for some serving bowls... stroke, stroke... "look up there" I say, stroke, stroke OUCH!!!! Without even looking down I knew what I did, I had cut my finger. Quickly I set the knife down along with the sharpener and turn on the faucet to put my finger under it and apply pressure. I figure as long as I didn't see blood squirting out I would be OK.
I tell Archie and Marilyn to get Reagan, I'm going to need to go to the hospital. I remove my hand for a second and see a very deep cut with blood starting to fill the space. I figure I have a little time on adrenaline so I take advantage of it. I tell Marilyn to get me some bandaids and gauze out of the bathroom. When she comes back I realize that bandaids weren't going to cut this (pun intended). I tell Archie to go out into the garage and get my first aid kit for the motorcycle, I knew exactly where it was since I had taken it out of the bike just the day before. He returns and we open it and find some tape. I wrap up the gauze with a good bit of pressure to control the bleeding.
By now Reagan is out of the shower and has come to see what's going on. I grab a water bottle, my phone and my wallet. We make sure I have the right insurance card and Archie takes me to the hospital down the street.
Upon arrival I walk in and tell the front desk of my foolish mistake and take a form. The form was simple to fill out and I turned it back in and began waiting. Five or Ten minutes later I hear my name and I think "wow, this shouldn't take long". Al is the first nurse to talk to me. He's about my age and we share a few things in common like working out on a bow flex. He even suggested a new way to do my ab crunches, which I'll have to try later. After customary bp and temp checks he takes me back to an exam room where I wait. It's about 2:25 when I get into the exam room.
I wait, and wait and wait. A nurse comes in to check on me and asks me about my last tetanus shot. I couldn't remember, I'm bad with dates. She also asked why I wasn't in bed. I told her I was people watching and I'd get in bed as soon as the doctor was ready to see me. I also told her we weren't taking off my bandage until the doctor was ready because I didn't like to see my own blood.
3:30pm... still waiting. A nice lady was brought in by EMS and transferred to a hospital bed. It seems her hip had popped out while she was bending over to pick up some jewelery. From her patient history she gave this wasn't her first rodeo and she told the nurse that if he had magic fingers he might be able to get things put back together without surgery. Hmmmm, so much for patient privacy and HIPPA huh? It's sort of hard to have privacy when you are in the hall just outside my door.
The nurse returns and tells me to hop up in the bed because the doctor will see me in just 3 more patients. So I hop up there. At the same time she resolves the tetanus shot question by giving me one. Now I remember my last tetanus shot was Thanksgiving 2007. I wait some more but now I'm freezing...
A little later... Monica comes in and wants to look at my finger. She was either a nurse practitioner or doctor, she never said which. She starts by trying to unwrap the bandage. Nope!! That doesn't work as that was some industrial tape. She gets the attention of one of the nurses, James I think, he looked like Santa Claus without the suit. He has a pair of scissors and we cut the bandage off. Quickly it starts bleeding DUH!!! She says it doesn't look good and thinks I've cut the tendon. I ask her to just glue it up. She says that's going to take a little more than glue and that I'll have to see a surgeon in the coming days. "Oh joy", I think. She wraps some gauze on it and I take my finger back and apply pressure. This is exactly what I wanted to avoid. She says she has to go get a suture kit and that she'll need to numb it up. Out she goes....
Santa Claus, I mean James, comes back down the hall and picks up the hip lady to take her to a room. There goes my entertainment. Darn, I wish I had gotten a remote control for the TV so I could watch something... Now would be a good time to have that sling box, I could just watch TV on my phone...Another ER Tech comes in and decides the bed is too high so she lowers it. I ask her for a blanket as I'm very cold. She heads off to get a blanket and never returns.
4:00pm Monica returns with her hands full. She raises the bed and starts to numb the finger. "You'll feel a prick and a burn", she says. I never felt the prick but oh the burn!!! A few more injections and things are pretty numb. Then she's looking at the cut and taps the bone asking if I can feel that. "The rattle? YES", I say. "Well you did a good job and cut all the way to the bone, right through the tendon", she says.
She starts making small talk and I mention that I've been in the ER before following my motorcycle accident. Her response, "I'll bet you gave that up". "Nope, in fact it inspired me to become a motorcycle safety instructor", I say. Then we get onto the no helmet issue and she wished there was a helmet law. I told her there was and that enforcement was part of the problem, followed by education and peer pressure. She keeps sewing and we keep talking... I found out her husband worked at the hospital too and didn't like the sight of blood either. That's funny. When she's done she says "OK, your stitched up. I'll have someone come in and bandage and splint the finger then you can go".
4:30pm still waiting for the dressing and splint.
4:45pm still waiting...
Finally Cheryl comes in and takes care of things. She starts wrapping me up and the tetanus shot nurse comes in with my discharge papers. "When was your last tetanus shot", she asks... I pause thinking is this girl loopy??? Then I say "Thanksgiving day 2007". She thought she had me. She gives me my prescriptions and tells me if I'm going out partying to take one of the pain pills before I go and that I'll be feeling really good after a beer. I laugh and tell her "I won't be taking the pain pills but thanks for the tip". She seemed pretty sure I'd need the pills when the throbbing started.
5:00pm I'm walking out of the room and stopping by the business desk. All paper work is done, nothing to pay, I'm good to go. I thank the staff on the way out and joke with them a little. I meet Archie in the waiting room and out the door we go.
CVS pharmacy was closed on Thanksgiving so no drugs for me. Which turned out alright as a Sam Adams Winter Ale and 600mg of Ibuprofen worked fine.
So 3 hours in the ER plus however much time I'm going to waste in the coming days with the hand surgeon. All because of a few seconds of inattention with a knife. Stupid hurts!
I tell Archie and Marilyn to get Reagan, I'm going to need to go to the hospital. I remove my hand for a second and see a very deep cut with blood starting to fill the space. I figure I have a little time on adrenaline so I take advantage of it. I tell Marilyn to get me some bandaids and gauze out of the bathroom. When she comes back I realize that bandaids weren't going to cut this (pun intended). I tell Archie to go out into the garage and get my first aid kit for the motorcycle, I knew exactly where it was since I had taken it out of the bike just the day before. He returns and we open it and find some tape. I wrap up the gauze with a good bit of pressure to control the bleeding.
By now Reagan is out of the shower and has come to see what's going on. I grab a water bottle, my phone and my wallet. We make sure I have the right insurance card and Archie takes me to the hospital down the street.
Upon arrival I walk in and tell the front desk of my foolish mistake and take a form. The form was simple to fill out and I turned it back in and began waiting. Five or Ten minutes later I hear my name and I think "wow, this shouldn't take long". Al is the first nurse to talk to me. He's about my age and we share a few things in common like working out on a bow flex. He even suggested a new way to do my ab crunches, which I'll have to try later. After customary bp and temp checks he takes me back to an exam room where I wait. It's about 2:25 when I get into the exam room.
I wait, and wait and wait. A nurse comes in to check on me and asks me about my last tetanus shot. I couldn't remember, I'm bad with dates. She also asked why I wasn't in bed. I told her I was people watching and I'd get in bed as soon as the doctor was ready to see me. I also told her we weren't taking off my bandage until the doctor was ready because I didn't like to see my own blood.
3:30pm... still waiting. A nice lady was brought in by EMS and transferred to a hospital bed. It seems her hip had popped out while she was bending over to pick up some jewelery. From her patient history she gave this wasn't her first rodeo and she told the nurse that if he had magic fingers he might be able to get things put back together without surgery. Hmmmm, so much for patient privacy and HIPPA huh? It's sort of hard to have privacy when you are in the hall just outside my door.
The nurse returns and tells me to hop up in the bed because the doctor will see me in just 3 more patients. So I hop up there. At the same time she resolves the tetanus shot question by giving me one. Now I remember my last tetanus shot was Thanksgiving 2007. I wait some more but now I'm freezing...
A little later... Monica comes in and wants to look at my finger. She was either a nurse practitioner or doctor, she never said which. She starts by trying to unwrap the bandage. Nope!! That doesn't work as that was some industrial tape. She gets the attention of one of the nurses, James I think, he looked like Santa Claus without the suit. He has a pair of scissors and we cut the bandage off. Quickly it starts bleeding DUH!!! She says it doesn't look good and thinks I've cut the tendon. I ask her to just glue it up. She says that's going to take a little more than glue and that I'll have to see a surgeon in the coming days. "Oh joy", I think. She wraps some gauze on it and I take my finger back and apply pressure. This is exactly what I wanted to avoid. She says she has to go get a suture kit and that she'll need to numb it up. Out she goes....
Santa Claus, I mean James, comes back down the hall and picks up the hip lady to take her to a room. There goes my entertainment. Darn, I wish I had gotten a remote control for the TV so I could watch something... Now would be a good time to have that sling box, I could just watch TV on my phone...Another ER Tech comes in and decides the bed is too high so she lowers it. I ask her for a blanket as I'm very cold. She heads off to get a blanket and never returns.
4:00pm Monica returns with her hands full. She raises the bed and starts to numb the finger. "You'll feel a prick and a burn", she says. I never felt the prick but oh the burn!!! A few more injections and things are pretty numb. Then she's looking at the cut and taps the bone asking if I can feel that. "The rattle? YES", I say. "Well you did a good job and cut all the way to the bone, right through the tendon", she says.
She starts making small talk and I mention that I've been in the ER before following my motorcycle accident. Her response, "I'll bet you gave that up". "Nope, in fact it inspired me to become a motorcycle safety instructor", I say. Then we get onto the no helmet issue and she wished there was a helmet law. I told her there was and that enforcement was part of the problem, followed by education and peer pressure. She keeps sewing and we keep talking... I found out her husband worked at the hospital too and didn't like the sight of blood either. That's funny. When she's done she says "OK, your stitched up. I'll have someone come in and bandage and splint the finger then you can go".
4:30pm still waiting for the dressing and splint.
4:45pm still waiting...
Finally Cheryl comes in and takes care of things. She starts wrapping me up and the tetanus shot nurse comes in with my discharge papers. "When was your last tetanus shot", she asks... I pause thinking is this girl loopy??? Then I say "Thanksgiving day 2007". She thought she had me. She gives me my prescriptions and tells me if I'm going out partying to take one of the pain pills before I go and that I'll be feeling really good after a beer. I laugh and tell her "I won't be taking the pain pills but thanks for the tip". She seemed pretty sure I'd need the pills when the throbbing started.
5:00pm I'm walking out of the room and stopping by the business desk. All paper work is done, nothing to pay, I'm good to go. I thank the staff on the way out and joke with them a little. I meet Archie in the waiting room and out the door we go.
CVS pharmacy was closed on Thanksgiving so no drugs for me. Which turned out alright as a Sam Adams Winter Ale and 600mg of Ibuprofen worked fine.
So 3 hours in the ER plus however much time I'm going to waste in the coming days with the hand surgeon. All because of a few seconds of inattention with a knife. Stupid hurts!
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Upgrading my Verizon Treo 700p
Today is the day before Thanksgiving and it seems that everyone has taken off this year for parts unknown. Everybody is taking advantage of the 4 day weekend. Personally I'm using the day to get some things done around the house so I can leave for the deer camp tomorrow evening and hunt Friday through Sunday.
One of the issues I needed to take care of was my Treo 700p's charging port. It doesn't work. So I went by the Verizon store and talk to someone in tech support. After describing the problem she asked if I had the insurance, which I did. She then dialed a number and handed me the phone, a pen, and a sticky note pad. She told me to get the name of the person and my claim id. About 5 minutes I completed the call and have a new Treo 700p on it's way. The only problem... it won't be here until Friday and I plan to be GONE Thursday night. Oh well, I can live with the old Treo for the weekend since I've been dealing with the charge problem for a while and I have a cradle.
So what's a techy nerdy type supposed to do the day before he goes out of town when he has a replacement phone coming??? You guessed it, upgrade the darn thing with the Palm Maintenance Release. Wooo hoooo!
OK, so I decided to go the SD Card route because of some things I read about the Sprint upgrade when it came out many months ago. OK so I follow the directions I get from the Palm site. The funny thing is that the update actually checks to make sure you've plugged in your AC connection. Well by propping it up in a corner I seem to be able to put enough pressure on the connection to keep it registered for the update.
So far so good, I've completed the first 5 minutes in which the update upgrades the ROM. Now on to the firmware. After a few reboots I get another message telling me to plug in the power cable and press OK. I figit with the phone's position until I hear the charging tone and then I proceed with the firmware upgrade. The instructions warn that this update will wipe out the users settings and data. I find it entertaining that I see a status line that says "backing up items" and then another one that says "Restoring items". In between those 2 messages though it does a lot including upgrading the modem. I can only hope it makes my data performance better.
Oh glory days! The update completed successfully. I did have to fiddle with the power cable a few more times but I got through the update and the phone now reports software 1.10-VZW. I think I'll keep the SD Card and update my new phone when I get back from hunting. Thanks to Resco Explorer I was able to quickly restore my apps. Unfortunately it doesn't back up my bluetooth devices so they had to be reset but that's a cake walk.
One of the issues I needed to take care of was my Treo 700p's charging port. It doesn't work. So I went by the Verizon store and talk to someone in tech support. After describing the problem she asked if I had the insurance, which I did. She then dialed a number and handed me the phone, a pen, and a sticky note pad. She told me to get the name of the person and my claim id. About 5 minutes I completed the call and have a new Treo 700p on it's way. The only problem... it won't be here until Friday and I plan to be GONE Thursday night. Oh well, I can live with the old Treo for the weekend since I've been dealing with the charge problem for a while and I have a cradle.
So what's a techy nerdy type supposed to do the day before he goes out of town when he has a replacement phone coming??? You guessed it, upgrade the darn thing with the Palm Maintenance Release. Wooo hoooo!
OK, so I decided to go the SD Card route because of some things I read about the Sprint upgrade when it came out many months ago. OK so I follow the directions I get from the Palm site. The funny thing is that the update actually checks to make sure you've plugged in your AC connection. Well by propping it up in a corner I seem to be able to put enough pressure on the connection to keep it registered for the update.
So far so good, I've completed the first 5 minutes in which the update upgrades the ROM. Now on to the firmware. After a few reboots I get another message telling me to plug in the power cable and press OK. I figit with the phone's position until I hear the charging tone and then I proceed with the firmware upgrade. The instructions warn that this update will wipe out the users settings and data. I find it entertaining that I see a status line that says "backing up items" and then another one that says "Restoring items". In between those 2 messages though it does a lot including upgrading the modem. I can only hope it makes my data performance better.
Oh glory days! The update completed successfully. I did have to fiddle with the power cable a few more times but I got through the update and the phone now reports software 1.10-VZW. I think I'll keep the SD Card and update my new phone when I get back from hunting. Thanks to Resco Explorer I was able to quickly restore my apps. Unfortunately it doesn't back up my bluetooth devices so they had to be reset but that's a cake walk.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Living with the n800
It has been far too long since my post. It's not like I haven't plenty to blog about, the Dallas 3day breast cancer walk, the nascar races in Ft. Worth, deer hunting, a motorcycle trip from Dallas to Sugar Land via Amarillo and Roswell,NM. I even have draft post that chronicles my trials and tribulations of getting my custom seat for the BMW.
Well today's post is really just to make sure the n800 can still post. It's the 3rd weekend of deer season and the n800 has been with me for most of the days I've hunted. Battery life is pretty good @ 5 hours per charge but since I put it into heavy use on October 25th I've had to reflash and reload at least 5 times. It seems that after a little use the jffs root filesystem would get corrupted and cause the unit to get into a reboot cycle which seems to result in certain reflashing and reloading. This last time around I decided to run the root fs off of the sd card and it's running on an ext3 fs instead of jffs. With the bootmenu installed now I can also load the new OS2008 which will give me most of the benefits of the newer n810. And I can switch between the 2 OSes until 2008 gets all the apps ported that I like to run. I need to figure out how to mount my /home directory as a separate mount point so it can be shared between the 2 OSes.
Cell coverage has improved @ the deer camp this year. I can now make calls from any where on the property and data speeds seem to be on par with the service around Sugar Land. It's not as fast as wifi but it's fast enough to use my imap email clients (claws on n800, evolution on laptop).
It's now 7:45am and I haven't heard any shots in at least 45 minutes and haven't seen anything in over an hour. So much for my hope that rut was going to be in full swing.
Well today's post is really just to make sure the n800 can still post. It's the 3rd weekend of deer season and the n800 has been with me for most of the days I've hunted. Battery life is pretty good @ 5 hours per charge but since I put it into heavy use on October 25th I've had to reflash and reload at least 5 times. It seems that after a little use the jffs root filesystem would get corrupted and cause the unit to get into a reboot cycle which seems to result in certain reflashing and reloading. This last time around I decided to run the root fs off of the sd card and it's running on an ext3 fs instead of jffs. With the bootmenu installed now I can also load the new OS2008 which will give me most of the benefits of the newer n810. And I can switch between the 2 OSes until 2008 gets all the apps ported that I like to run. I need to figure out how to mount my /home directory as a separate mount point so it can be shared between the 2 OSes.
Cell coverage has improved @ the deer camp this year. I can now make calls from any where on the property and data speeds seem to be on par with the service around Sugar Land. It's not as fast as wifi but it's fast enough to use my imap email clients (claws on n800, evolution on laptop).
It's now 7:45am and I haven't heard any shots in at least 45 minutes and haven't seen anything in over an hour. So much for my hope that rut was going to be in full swing.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
The N800 sees day light again
So itś been almost 2 months since I posted to my blog. Why? Well because Ive been distracted with my BMW R1200GS and posting on the advrider forums. It amazes me how many people are active in the forums and somehow they find time to ride too.
So today I dusted off the N800 today and updated the OS to the latest version. Without the upgrade I would have had to wipe the unit anyway since it was once again stuck in that constant reboot cycle after about 2 minutes. Thankfully the new update seems to be a little more stable. I´ve tried to be careful this time and only load the things I need. I have Claws for email, Mozilla for browsing, ssh, nano and xterm. I think that should take care of my needs when away from the home office.
Logging in to the blog with the mozilla browser seemed as good as my laptop. It seems the Ajax stuff really works well on the N800 with Mozilla. Will this finally let me travel with just my N800 and phone. Only time will tell but this is looking good. Now that I have plenty of room on the bike, if I can carry a smaller computer I´ĺl have more for other goodies.
The next post will probably be about my Rick Mayer custom seat. It´ĺl chronicle the entire experience which I expect to take about 6 weeks. More to come.
So today I dusted off the N800 today and updated the OS to the latest version. Without the upgrade I would have had to wipe the unit anyway since it was once again stuck in that constant reboot cycle after about 2 minutes. Thankfully the new update seems to be a little more stable. I´ve tried to be careful this time and only load the things I need. I have Claws for email, Mozilla for browsing, ssh, nano and xterm. I think that should take care of my needs when away from the home office.
Logging in to the blog with the mozilla browser seemed as good as my laptop. It seems the Ajax stuff really works well on the N800 with Mozilla. Will this finally let me travel with just my N800 and phone. Only time will tell but this is looking good. Now that I have plenty of room on the bike, if I can carry a smaller computer I´ĺl have more for other goodies.
The next post will probably be about my Rick Mayer custom seat. It´ĺl chronicle the entire experience which I expect to take about 6 weeks. More to come.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Monday, May 28, 2007
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Is Home Depot really for the D.I.Y.er?
The same goes for Lowes too.
So I went to Home Depot to get some sand blasting media. Guess what. They don't sell the media but they do sell the cheap little syphon feed guns. That seems odd to sale the tool but not the supplies. Then again they sell Oxy/Acetylene torches but the don't sell the gases.
Going to Lowes didn't yield anything either.
So what about Northern Tool or Tractor Supply Co? Sure they sell it but the inexpensive stuff they sell is too abrasive for my rig, and the stuff that will work in my unit costs $25/50lb bag. Holy cow Batman!
I've got a lead on a more commercial source that I'll go talk to tomorrow. I guess sandblasting is like welding, you've got to get your supplies from a commercial oriented shop and not from the wanna be D.I.Y. stores like Lowes and Home Depot.
So I went to Home Depot to get some sand blasting media. Guess what. They don't sell the media but they do sell the cheap little syphon feed guns. That seems odd to sale the tool but not the supplies. Then again they sell Oxy/Acetylene torches but the don't sell the gases.
Going to Lowes didn't yield anything either.
So what about Northern Tool or Tractor Supply Co? Sure they sell it but the inexpensive stuff they sell is too abrasive for my rig, and the stuff that will work in my unit costs $25/50lb bag. Holy cow Batman!
I've got a lead on a more commercial source that I'll go talk to tomorrow. I guess sandblasting is like welding, you've got to get your supplies from a commercial oriented shop and not from the wanna be D.I.Y. stores like Lowes and Home Depot.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Test burn in the barrel pit
Just like General Dynamics or any other fighter jet builder tests their latest incarnations of jets, I performed a test burn on part of the pit this weekend. And just like those experimental figther jets, there are a few tweaks needed.
So what happened? What did I learn? What needs to change?
The test burn was in part a necessity because I needed extra grill space for all the food I was cooking for a friend's party. 2 briskets, 12 racks of baby back ribs, 8lbs sausage and 3 pans of beans is a little more than my N.B. Smoker can handle. So once I wrapped stuff in foil it got transfered to the barrel pit for further cooking.
The pit was quick and easy to light with the log lighter assembly. No charcoal needed, just stack up some logs and light the propane.
Temp variations
Once things were going I noticed some real variations in pit temperature. The top right shelf (on the firebox side) got to 300 degrees while at the same time the bottom left shelf (farthest from the firebox) was just a little over 150. The variation was even noticeable on the same shelf. The top shelf for example was 300 on the right side and 250 on the left. I also found it interesting that the exhaust temperature was lower than the hottest part of the pit. In general the exhaust temp matched the top right shelf temp which makes sense as that's where the exhaust is.
I think tuning plates are going to be needed after all. I had hoped that I could avoid them since they make it a little difficult to clean up the grease but they are going to be needed. No problem, my plasma cutter should be back (from repair) on Wednesday so I can cut out some plates from the remaining steel plate I have.
Where's the shelf?
When moving things over to the barrel I quickly discovered what was missing, a place to set things like hot pans of beans. So I need to build a little 12 inch deep shelf for both pits. Just something wide enough to set my baking sheet pans on.
Who cut the foil?
It seems my fresh new metal grates have a sharp edge on them. I don't know if it's part of the forming process in making expanded metal or what but there's definitely a sharp edge on the grate that seems to rip aluminum foil if you drag anything across it. I'm going to try sand blasting the grates to see if that helps. If I still need to dull the edge I'll pull out the sanding wheel for the grinder.
Bottom shelf needs a handle.
It's no good to have slide out shelves if you can't slide them out. That was the problem with the bottom shelf. Since there's not a gap under the bottom shelf there's nothing to grab hold of. So the only way to pull out the bottom shelf is to stick your fingers into the metal grating and pull. Ouch!!! So the bottom shelf will get a small pull handle.
Leaky door
The curve on the door doesn't match the barrel. This seems to be a result of how the barrel was formed in a press brake instead of a roll. I thought I could bend the door into shape but 3/16 inch steel doesn't bend easily. So I think I'm going to source some stove gasket material and use it to seal up the sides and bottom. If I use 2 different size I should be able to seal up the gaps.
Grease drain
After the fact I also discovered another adjustment needed. I failed to put a drain in the bottom of the barrel pit. I thought the grease would simply drain back into the firebox. Nope! I pooled about 12 inches from the firebox. It also seems there's a slight leak on the bottom of the barrel pit where it joins with the firebox. So I need to weld that up. I think it's just a weld I forgot to run anyway.
So what happened? What did I learn? What needs to change?
The test burn was in part a necessity because I needed extra grill space for all the food I was cooking for a friend's party. 2 briskets, 12 racks of baby back ribs, 8lbs sausage and 3 pans of beans is a little more than my N.B. Smoker can handle. So once I wrapped stuff in foil it got transfered to the barrel pit for further cooking.
The pit was quick and easy to light with the log lighter assembly. No charcoal needed, just stack up some logs and light the propane.
Temp variations
Once things were going I noticed some real variations in pit temperature. The top right shelf (on the firebox side) got to 300 degrees while at the same time the bottom left shelf (farthest from the firebox) was just a little over 150. The variation was even noticeable on the same shelf. The top shelf for example was 300 on the right side and 250 on the left. I also found it interesting that the exhaust temperature was lower than the hottest part of the pit. In general the exhaust temp matched the top right shelf temp which makes sense as that's where the exhaust is.
I think tuning plates are going to be needed after all. I had hoped that I could avoid them since they make it a little difficult to clean up the grease but they are going to be needed. No problem, my plasma cutter should be back (from repair) on Wednesday so I can cut out some plates from the remaining steel plate I have.
Where's the shelf?
When moving things over to the barrel I quickly discovered what was missing, a place to set things like hot pans of beans. So I need to build a little 12 inch deep shelf for both pits. Just something wide enough to set my baking sheet pans on.
Who cut the foil?
It seems my fresh new metal grates have a sharp edge on them. I don't know if it's part of the forming process in making expanded metal or what but there's definitely a sharp edge on the grate that seems to rip aluminum foil if you drag anything across it. I'm going to try sand blasting the grates to see if that helps. If I still need to dull the edge I'll pull out the sanding wheel for the grinder.
Bottom shelf needs a handle.
It's no good to have slide out shelves if you can't slide them out. That was the problem with the bottom shelf. Since there's not a gap under the bottom shelf there's nothing to grab hold of. So the only way to pull out the bottom shelf is to stick your fingers into the metal grating and pull. Ouch!!! So the bottom shelf will get a small pull handle.
Leaky door
The curve on the door doesn't match the barrel. This seems to be a result of how the barrel was formed in a press brake instead of a roll. I thought I could bend the door into shape but 3/16 inch steel doesn't bend easily. So I think I'm going to source some stove gasket material and use it to seal up the sides and bottom. If I use 2 different size I should be able to seal up the gaps.
Grease drain
After the fact I also discovered another adjustment needed. I failed to put a drain in the bottom of the barrel pit. I thought the grease would simply drain back into the firebox. Nope! I pooled about 12 inches from the firebox. It also seems there's a slight leak on the bottom of the barrel pit where it joins with the firebox. So I need to weld that up. I think it's just a weld I forgot to run anyway.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
That old generator
One of the things that I was able to keep following the sale of the ISP was my original generators that we first used when there were power outages. Well 2 of them were given away and I kept one for myself. These units only saw limited use in the ISP business because we eventually got a big diesel generator.
Basically this thing has been in the garage taking up space and collecting dust. The tires tend to leak so every 4 weeks I have to air up the tires. Lucky for me I had just aired up the tires 2 weeks ago while cleaning out the garage. Otherwise I would have had to start the generator to run the compressor to air up the tires to move the generator.
Well after 2 years of storage I turned on the fuel valve, set the choke and pulled on the starter cord. 1st pull.... nothing. 2nd pull.... put put smoke smoke vrooommm! It started right up. No stabilizer in the gas or anything. The little generator runs great.
So the power was out for about 40 minutes (it just came back on) and I was able to keep things up and going past the duration of my UPSes. So I guess keeping it in the garage was a good thing.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
A weekend with the N800
I did it! I went from Thursday to Monday without actually using my laptop while I was away from home. I have to say the N800 wasn't a perfect substitute but it was pretty handy. Here's a few things that caused me problems over the long weekend:
BTW: The Stoaway BT keyboard works great on my lap!
Rebooting on Startup: For some reason it would reboot automatically after being on for about 2 minutes. I'd have a few seconds where I could open a browser or try tell it to connect to the Internet via my phone and then Boom!!! It would just freeze and reboot. On Saturday it did this 6 or 7 times before it stopped and finally settled down. After that I left the car charger plugged in and left it on.
I thought this whole reboot problem was related to not being able to get on a network but when I got home I tried booting it up with the same results, freezing after start up and then reboot. I can't seem to find any correlation. It does it with the bluetooth keyboard on or off. It does it when you have a network connection or not. The best thing to do seems to be to let it just boot up and sit there for a few minutes. Then it will work.
Opera and Ebay: So ebay is trying to make more of it's web site Web 2.0 friendly. Only problem is that many of their enhancements don't work so well with Opera. One in particular is the drop down box under the action column. It's supposed to give you a list of options that you want to both for items you are buying and selling. In fact it's the only way to end an auction early. But when you click on the drop down it just shows you a blank box. That's a problem. Luckily I also installed Minimo so I just logged in using Minimo when I needed to do things that required use of the drop down boxes.
Wrong memory card for my camera: Unfortunately my camera uses the older, very outdated Smart Media cards so I couldn't view the pictures I took. This really isn't a problem with the N800 it just means it's time to get an updated camera uses MMC cards.
Well that about sums it up. While writing this entry I've been trying to turn on my N800. It just keeps rebooting after 2 minutes. I can get into it remotely via ssh and top reports jffs2_gcd_mtd4 as the highest usage program so maybe it's time to figure out what that is and what it's doing to cause my problems.BTW: The Stoaway BT keyboard works great on my lap!
Friday, April 13, 2007
2 days with my N800
So it´s the end of the day and I´ve surprised myself with how easy it is to leave my laptop in it´ś backpack. Sure if there was a big server crash I´d probably have to pull it out just to work quicker. But for basic email and web surfing it works fine. The most difficult thing I´ve found so far is with logging into the dashboard to publish this blog. For some reason the signin link at the top of the page doesnt work. Instead I have to go to sign up for a new blog, then click on the sign in page and enter my credentials. Then I can type in www.blogger.com as the URL and I´ĺl see my dashboard. Sort of a pain but easier now that I´ve figured out how to do it.
One annoying thing is when there isn´t a connection available. I´ve had problems with it freezing and then rebooting. Tonight there were some updates available so I applied them. I´ĺl have to see how the unit does tomorrow.
It seems it´ś harder than I expected to find open wireless networks. I guess more and more folks are figuring out how to secure their wireless networks. Thankfully using the DUN on my Treo I can get connectivity almost anywhere as long as I have cellular service. Hooray!
One annoying thing is when there isn´t a connection available. I´ve had problems with it freezing and then rebooting. Tonight there were some updates available so I applied them. I´ĺl have to see how the unit does tomorrow.
It seems it´ś harder than I expected to find open wireless networks. I guess more and more folks are figuring out how to secure their wireless networks. Thankfully using the DUN on my Treo I can get connectivity almost anywhere as long as I have cellular service. Hooray!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
N800 and the Stowaway BT Keyboard
So tomorrow I´m going to try to spend the rest of the weekend without using my laptop. We are heading to Ft. Worth to watch the NASCAR races. So this just seemed like a good time to try more of my mobile options. I haven´t really used my N800 for much more than a novelty item. Mainly because I kept forgetting to carry it. In preparation for this extended weekend adventure I purchased a Think Outside Stowaway bluetooth keyboard to make things a little easier.
So today it arrived and I opened the box and ripped open the packaging. I skimmed through the book to discover how to pair it to my Treo. OMG, I have to install software on the Treo, uggg! More on that later. So I put the kb into pairing mode and tell the N800 to search for blue tooth devices. Just like that Ive got it and I type in my pair code and Presto! I have a keyboard.
Oh crap now the fun starts. This is no ordinary keyboard, and characters aren´t necessarily where you´d expect them. But as I type more and more of this post I´m finding it´ś pretty easy to get used to. I seem to be having problems with the apostrophy key. I press it as hard as the others but it doesn´t always work. This could be due to the keyboard dipping a little as I press on keys in that area. I think I´ll try propping it up with some cardboard to see if that helps. If so I´ĺl figure out a little spacer.
Overall this seems like a great purchase for my mobile adventure. Now if I can figure out how to make the screen larger :) When Im typing on the screen keyboard the unit is closer to me so it seems bigger. When I´m on the stowaway though I have the N800 farther away. Something to work out this weekend I guess.
So today it arrived and I opened the box and ripped open the packaging. I skimmed through the book to discover how to pair it to my Treo. OMG, I have to install software on the Treo, uggg! More on that later. So I put the kb into pairing mode and tell the N800 to search for blue tooth devices. Just like that Ive got it and I type in my pair code and Presto! I have a keyboard.
Oh crap now the fun starts. This is no ordinary keyboard, and characters aren´t necessarily where you´d expect them. But as I type more and more of this post I´m finding it´ś pretty easy to get used to. I seem to be having problems with the apostrophy key. I press it as hard as the others but it doesn´t always work. This could be due to the keyboard dipping a little as I press on keys in that area. I think I´ll try propping it up with some cardboard to see if that helps. If so I´ĺl figure out a little spacer.
Overall this seems like a great purchase for my mobile adventure. Now if I can figure out how to make the screen larger :) When Im typing on the screen keyboard the unit is closer to me so it seems bigger. When I´m on the stowaway though I have the N800 farther away. Something to work out this weekend I guess.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Getting mypodder to work with FC6
I use a java client called mypodder to download podcasts I like to listen to. It's all part of the service available at PodcastReady. It's pretty simple really, you load the application on your USB drive and when you plug it in the program is supposed to autorun. Well it works on Windows but it wouldn't work on Fedora Core 6. Research time!
It seems Fedora Core 6 uses the gnome volume manager which is well... lacking in features let's say. I'm not sure who made the decision but someone decided that we should mount USB thumb drives with noexec. OK, fine I understand the security concerns but I also want mypodder to work when I plug in my USB drive. Despite the fact that I'd set my preference to "Auto-run programs on new drives and media" this won't work since the file system is marked as noexec.
So what can you do to get around this?
Well I decided to simply enable the exec option on all vfat filesystems that are mounted. Here's how to do it.
From the command line:
* make sure it's all on one line.
From a gui:
use gconf-editor
system -> storage -> default_options -> vfat -> mout_options
Add "exec" to it's string value
That's it! All you have to do is insert the thumb drive and your autorun should work. No need to reboot.
You might also want to think about adding the "sync" option to mount_options as well. It will slow down the writes but when the application tells you it's downloaded a new podcast it really has completed downloading the podcast.
It seems Fedora Core 6 uses the gnome volume manager which is well... lacking in features let's say. I'm not sure who made the decision but someone decided that we should mount USB thumb drives with noexec. OK, fine I understand the security concerns but I also want mypodder to work when I plug in my USB drive. Despite the fact that I'd set my preference to "Auto-run programs on new drives and media" this won't work since the file system is marked as noexec.
So what can you do to get around this?
Well I decided to simply enable the exec option on all vfat filesystems that are mounted. Here's how to do it.
From the command line:
gconftool-2 --type list --list-type=string --set /system/storage/default_options/vfat/mount_options "[shortname=winnt,uid=,exec]"* make sure it's all on one line.
From a gui:
use gconf-editor
system -> storage -> default_options -> vfat -> mout_options
Add "exec" to it's string value
That's it! All you have to do is insert the thumb drive and your autorun should work. No need to reboot.
You might also want to think about adding the "sync" option to mount_options as well. It will slow down the writes but when the application tells you it's downloaded a new podcast it really has completed downloading the podcast.
Monday, April 02, 2007
It's on fire!
So this past weekend was spent like so many weekends before, with me working tirelessly on the BBQ pit. However, this weekend was special because I had promised Reagan that we'd have a fire in the pit and sure enough I delivered. Ahead of schedule even. I told her to schedule the marching bands, cheerleaders, the mayor and fireworks for a fire starting at 2pm. At 12:34 I walked inside to report that it was ready for lighting so we lit the fire early. I guess that's why the parade never started :)So is the pit done? No! Not yet. The basic barrel pit is finished. The smoke stack is installed as are the shelves. Even the little side shelves are installed so it's basically complete. The lid needs some tuning to get a better seal and it may be necessary to add another smoke stack to allow a little more flow through the pit. But we had a fire to see if it would actually breath and it did!
New pics are up in the gallery starting with the fabrication of the rotisserie spokes.
Hopefully I'll finish the rotisserie this week and we can have a ceremonial fire in the rotisserie side on Saturday. Then it'll be time to pressure wash the outside and build real fires to actually season it for cooking.
I also need to figure out how to rig up some propane burners to start the fire instead of having to use charcoal in a chimney. This is a big boy's BBQ pit now.
Monday, March 26, 2007
One weekend closer on the BBQ pit
So I've found new energy to finish my BBQ pit. Mainly because our annual BBQ is coming up, in June it'll be 1 year in the making, it's getting warmer, and my recent experience at the Houston Live Stock Show and Rodeo has fueled my fire to cook for larger groups of people.
This past weekend I really put in some time on the pit. First thing to do was get a counterweight on the lid for the barrel pit. At 109lbs that hunk of steel was a real challenge to mount up there. It's amazing that it's as straight as it was. Prior to mounting the weight I had the lib propped up on a piece of round bar. Yep, you guess it I knocked the round bar out and the lid fell on my left arm. OUCH!!!! I have a nice bruise but fortunately I didn't break it.
Work continued for the rest of the day without further issue. At the end of the day I had an exhaust stack mounted and the shelf guides were going in.
Sunday started out good. By 8:30 I was actually working. By 9:30 I was stuck. The tip on my plasma torch needed to be replaced. I decided to also replace the electrode since it looked worn out too. Big mistake. The electrode has gotten stuck in there and when I tried loosening it with a pair of pliers the soft copper just crumbled. OK, I thought, I'll just drill it out a little. 3 hours later I managed to get the electrode out. In the process I think I damaged the seat just slightly because I have to "whack it" on the metal cutting surface to get started. None the less, I was able to keep going once I replaced the electrode. This little set back cost me valuable time for the day and by the end of the day I had just finished the 3 removable shelves. I still have to complete the little side shelves before I can fire the barrel pit up for it's first smoke test. I know it's going to leak, the question how bad and in how many places.
The good news is that I'll have 4,500sq inches of cooking space. The rotisserie will have between 7,900 and 11,880 sq inches of cooking space depending on whether I go with 2 or 3 shelves per spindle. Yes I said 3 shelves. After building the shelves for the barrel pit which ended up having 6 inches of useable space between the shelves I'm now considering 3 shelves per spindle with 5" of space between them. That would give the top shelf at least 18 " inches of cooking so I could easily put beans, briskets, pulled pork, beer can chicken and more on the top shelves. But when the need arose I'd be able to cook between 105 and 150 baby back ribs at once. Now that's capacity!
The real question is whether I want to go back to the steel store for another sheet of expanded metal and more 1" angle iron. Since I'm planning to build the shelves in a jig it's just as easy to cut up 15 shelves as it is 10.
Another way to think about this is that I could cook 100 racks of ribs AND briskets all at the same time. If you then consider the fact that ribs take me about 5 hours now and only 3 of them are on smoke, the cooking capacity in a full day is enough for a small army. I could easily serve 200 racks of ribs and 30 briskets between lunch and dinner. Now who's going to clean this mess up?
This past weekend I really put in some time on the pit. First thing to do was get a counterweight on the lid for the barrel pit. At 109lbs that hunk of steel was a real challenge to mount up there. It's amazing that it's as straight as it was. Prior to mounting the weight I had the lib propped up on a piece of round bar. Yep, you guess it I knocked the round bar out and the lid fell on my left arm. OUCH!!!! I have a nice bruise but fortunately I didn't break it.
Work continued for the rest of the day without further issue. At the end of the day I had an exhaust stack mounted and the shelf guides were going in.
Sunday started out good. By 8:30 I was actually working. By 9:30 I was stuck. The tip on my plasma torch needed to be replaced. I decided to also replace the electrode since it looked worn out too. Big mistake. The electrode has gotten stuck in there and when I tried loosening it with a pair of pliers the soft copper just crumbled. OK, I thought, I'll just drill it out a little. 3 hours later I managed to get the electrode out. In the process I think I damaged the seat just slightly because I have to "whack it" on the metal cutting surface to get started. None the less, I was able to keep going once I replaced the electrode. This little set back cost me valuable time for the day and by the end of the day I had just finished the 3 removable shelves. I still have to complete the little side shelves before I can fire the barrel pit up for it's first smoke test. I know it's going to leak, the question how bad and in how many places.
The good news is that I'll have 4,500sq inches of cooking space. The rotisserie will have between 7,900 and 11,880 sq inches of cooking space depending on whether I go with 2 or 3 shelves per spindle. Yes I said 3 shelves. After building the shelves for the barrel pit which ended up having 6 inches of useable space between the shelves I'm now considering 3 shelves per spindle with 5" of space between them. That would give the top shelf at least 18 " inches of cooking so I could easily put beans, briskets, pulled pork, beer can chicken and more on the top shelves. But when the need arose I'd be able to cook between 105 and 150 baby back ribs at once. Now that's capacity!
The real question is whether I want to go back to the steel store for another sheet of expanded metal and more 1" angle iron. Since I'm planning to build the shelves in a jig it's just as easy to cut up 15 shelves as it is 10.
Another way to think about this is that I could cook 100 racks of ribs AND briskets all at the same time. If you then consider the fact that ribs take me about 5 hours now and only 3 of them are on smoke, the cooking capacity in a full day is enough for a small army. I could easily serve 200 racks of ribs and 30 briskets between lunch and dinner. Now who's going to clean this mess up?
Friday, March 23, 2007
Progress on the BBQ pit
Last June I finally pulled the trigger on the construction of my first large BBQ pit. The smart thing to do would have been to start out small and just make something larger than I currently have with my New Braunsfel smoker. But then again that's not me. When I do something I usually try to go all out. That's why my new pit will have a rotisserie and dual cooking chambers.
Fast forward to today and I've spent about $2500 in materials and I'm still not there yet... Yesterday I picked up about 800lbs of steel to make all the shelves and rotisserie as well as a big hunk of steel to act as a counter weight for the barrel pit door. So here it is currently:
I've got to add the exhaust stacks (which I picked up in yesterday's steel run) and build all the shelves and the rotisserie. No small task but it's definitely come a long way.
Last night and a good part of this morning I spent trying to figure out the motor situation. Unfortunately I bit off more than I could chew when I decided I wanted to cook between 70 and 100 racks of baby back ribs at once. The torque load on the rotisserie is somewhere between 1500 - 2000 in. lbs when loaded. So my inexpensive $300 motor turned out to be too weak. Fortunately Barry at Electric Motor Warehouse helped me to find just the right 1/2hp motor that I could gear down to 6RPM and nicely exceed the 2000 in. lb. requirement. The only problem, $500 ouch! But it's all in the name of BBQ.
So now I have this motor on it's way to me, actually it's at the factory where they are assembling the gears. Now I need to order the sprockets and chain. Oh oh! I found the drive sprocket at Graingers but they don't sell to the public. So Google to the rescue! I've found a manufacturing company in Indiana called B & B Manufacturing. Their website claims that they can modify the sprockets they manufacture. Hopefully they can modify the sprockets I need without breaking the bank. I'm waiting on a response to my email.
Sounds like I've almost got it all together. Well except for the bearings. I'd like to use food grade bearings even though the Q will probably never come close to touching that part of the pit. I've got a request out to a company who has told me they can handle an order as small as 4 bearings but so far I haven't heard back from them. There are some 4 bolt flange bearings in an e-bay store that I'm looking at as well. Hopefully I can come up with something in the bearing department soon.
One cool thing I managed to pick up while searching on ebay was a pair of triple burner cast iron stoves. I haven't figured out where I'm going to mount them just yet but they will definitely come in handy. I may try to find a piece of stainless steel to make a griddle to fit over one of them.
Work continues, and the motorcycle riding is on the back burner until it's finished.
Pictures are available at http://brian.lonestarsupport.com/gallery/bbqpit
Fast forward to today and I've spent about $2500 in materials and I'm still not there yet... Yesterday I picked up about 800lbs of steel to make all the shelves and rotisserie as well as a big hunk of steel to act as a counter weight for the barrel pit door. So here it is currently:
I've got to add the exhaust stacks (which I picked up in yesterday's steel run) and build all the shelves and the rotisserie. No small task but it's definitely come a long way.
Last night and a good part of this morning I spent trying to figure out the motor situation. Unfortunately I bit off more than I could chew when I decided I wanted to cook between 70 and 100 racks of baby back ribs at once. The torque load on the rotisserie is somewhere between 1500 - 2000 in. lbs when loaded. So my inexpensive $300 motor turned out to be too weak. Fortunately Barry at Electric Motor Warehouse helped me to find just the right 1/2hp motor that I could gear down to 6RPM and nicely exceed the 2000 in. lb. requirement. The only problem, $500 ouch! But it's all in the name of BBQ.
So now I have this motor on it's way to me, actually it's at the factory where they are assembling the gears. Now I need to order the sprockets and chain. Oh oh! I found the drive sprocket at Graingers but they don't sell to the public. So Google to the rescue! I've found a manufacturing company in Indiana called B & B Manufacturing. Their website claims that they can modify the sprockets they manufacture. Hopefully they can modify the sprockets I need without breaking the bank. I'm waiting on a response to my email.
Sounds like I've almost got it all together. Well except for the bearings. I'd like to use food grade bearings even though the Q will probably never come close to touching that part of the pit. I've got a request out to a company who has told me they can handle an order as small as 4 bearings but so far I haven't heard back from them. There are some 4 bolt flange bearings in an e-bay store that I'm looking at as well. Hopefully I can come up with something in the bearing department soon.
One cool thing I managed to pick up while searching on ebay was a pair of triple burner cast iron stoves. I haven't figured out where I'm going to mount them just yet but they will definitely come in handy. I may try to find a piece of stainless steel to make a griddle to fit over one of them.Work continues, and the motorcycle riding is on the back burner until it's finished.
Pictures are available at http://brian.lonestarsupport.com/gallery/bbqpit
Monday, March 12, 2007
Treo700p Bluetooth DUN it!
So I've managed to get my Bluetooth DUN working on the Treo700P with my N800 but I hadn't tried it with my HP Laptop. Well this morning I'm going to take my laptop to an environment where cables aren't going to be the best thing in the world. So I thought I'd give it a try.
I already had the /dev/rfcomm0 device set up from previous endeavors to get the HotSync working. (It does btw).
I tried connecting to /dev/rfcomm0 with minicom and kept getting ^M errors. Thankfully Google to the rescue! I stumbled across this link. That also pointed me to this link at Guru Labs which walks you through the whole process step by step. Between these 2 pages I got the one thing I needed. RESET THE BLUETOOTH on the phone. Once I did that, presto!!! I have a connection.
So now any time I have my laptop and my phone I can get connectivity even when I forget the cables.
Speed is better than a modem I guess:
I already had the /dev/rfcomm0 device set up from previous endeavors to get the HotSync working. (It does btw).
I tried connecting to /dev/rfcomm0 with minicom and kept getting ^M errors. Thankfully Google to the rescue! I stumbled across this link. That also pointed me to this link at Guru Labs which walks you through the whole process step by step. Between these 2 pages I got the one thing I needed. RESET THE BLUETOOTH on the phone. Once I did that, presto!!! I have a connection.
So now any time I have my laptop and my phone I can get connectivity even when I forget the cables.
Speed is better than a modem I guess:
Thursday, March 08, 2007
More N800 fun
So I've found all sorts of distractions this week with my Nokia N800 but I've also learned a lot about it. Talking to another user of the N800 I got a different perspective on it and what it means to other people.
I found a great blog where the user talks about useful mods you can make to your N800 like dual booting with your internal SD card, activating virtual memory and more. I'm interested to see his suggestion for backup in the unit.
I've successfully installed Gizmo. This little program allows me to use my N800 as a sip phone with my Asterisk server at the house. Currently I'm running the very old ASterisk@Home 2.2 but thought I'd try out the newer Trixbox 2.0 in a VM. In testing the new set up I figured out what Gizmo was doing. They didn't actually write it such that the secondary account settings logged directly into your server, but instead they seem to proxying the connection through their servers. Not a big deal but you have to make your Asterisk server available to the web in order to test things. I've also noticed that I can't dial numbers starting with the * symbol. Those calls get routed to the Gizmo network. So Gizmo's not a perfect sip phone for your Asterisk box but it seems to work pretty good. This setup also explains why I have a 1 to 1.5 second delay when I establish a call via Gizmo through my Asterisk box.
I also have managed to find and install ping and traceroute on the garage.maemo.org site. It comes up under a search for "basic networking tools" but yet not when you search for ping. Uuuuug! Also installed the bind tools unfortunately it doesn't look like it included dig. Maybe I'll try compiling that myself. I need to get my dev VM working first though.
Battery life was pretty good today. I made it until 5pm before I had to plug it in. I wasn't using it heavily most of the day but it was on and reachable via the network. So that's not too bad.
I found a great blog where the user talks about useful mods you can make to your N800 like dual booting with your internal SD card, activating virtual memory and more. I'm interested to see his suggestion for backup in the unit.
I've successfully installed Gizmo. This little program allows me to use my N800 as a sip phone with my Asterisk server at the house. Currently I'm running the very old ASterisk@Home 2.2 but thought I'd try out the newer Trixbox 2.0 in a VM. In testing the new set up I figured out what Gizmo was doing. They didn't actually write it such that the secondary account settings logged directly into your server, but instead they seem to proxying the connection through their servers. Not a big deal but you have to make your Asterisk server available to the web in order to test things. I've also noticed that I can't dial numbers starting with the * symbol. Those calls get routed to the Gizmo network. So Gizmo's not a perfect sip phone for your Asterisk box but it seems to work pretty good. This setup also explains why I have a 1 to 1.5 second delay when I establish a call via Gizmo through my Asterisk box.
I also have managed to find and install ping and traceroute on the garage.maemo.org site. It comes up under a search for "basic networking tools" but yet not when you search for ping. Uuuuug! Also installed the bind tools unfortunately it doesn't look like it included dig. Maybe I'll try compiling that myself. I need to get my dev VM working first though.
Battery life was pretty good today. I made it until 5pm before I had to plug it in. I wasn't using it heavily most of the day but it was on and reachable via the network. So that's not too bad.
Monday, March 05, 2007
my n800
So last Friday I was in CompUSA looking around since they are going to close the store near me. Just my luck they have/had a Nokia N8OO left and it was on sale. Of course I couldn't pass up a bargain so I got it.
Within The first 24 hrs I had To reload the flash because it would no longer boot
Currently I have it connecting via my wifi and my treo7OOP Phone
As you probably notice from the miXed case I'm still learninG how To use The handwriting system
The neatest thing so far is that I have Openvpn worKinG so I can connect to My office when I'm out and about. VNC worKs surprisingly well.
Within The first 24 hrs I had To reload the flash because it would no longer boot
Currently I have it connecting via my wifi and my treo7OOP Phone
As you probably notice from the miXed case I'm still learninG how To use The handwriting system
The neatest thing so far is that I have Openvpn worKinG so I can connect to My office when I'm out and about. VNC worKs surprisingly well.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
RoadRunner slows me down finally
Well I figured it would finally happen, RoadRunner put the cap on my wonderful speed.
It's not horrible by any stretch but it's not the blazing 6M download either. Bummer.
It's not horrible by any stretch but it's not the blazing 6M download either. Bummer.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
IPCop traffic shapping does work
So over the weekend I got RoadRunner Business service to go along with my DSL. The idea is that if my DSL goes out again I'll have a secondary connection with the cable. The only requirement was that I had to have a static IP. OK so I ordered a 2.5M/768k business class service .
Since I'd now have 2 connections to the net I needed 2 routers/firewalls since IPCop doesn't support dual WANs. No problem, I just installed VMWare server on my firewall box an old AMD Duron 950Mhz computer with 385M of ram. Definitely not a power house. After loading IPCop into a VM I restored the backup from my original DSL configured box. Then I simply cloned the VM and renamed it ipcop-rr. Starting up the DSL vm and getting back on the Internet was a snap. Then I turned my attention to the VM for the new connection. I changed the IPs andwent to test it out....
Oh Oh! That's horrible! What's going. I tried hooking a laptop directly up to the cable modem and speeds were WAY faster. I thought it might be the whimpy server I was running the vm on so I set up a faster machine and just loaded up the single vm for the cable connections. Speeds weren't any better. What was going on?????
Then it dawned on me. I had copied the DSL image and several months ago I had turned on traffic shaping. A few clicks later and my suspension was true. I had traffic shaping turned on and it was for DSL speeds. Hence the poor performance. After turning off Traffic Shaping I ran the speed test again...
Now we're talking! That's more like it. Just for comparison I ran the same speed test on my DSL connection with Traffic Shaping turned off. Yikes!!!!
I'm supposed to be getting 3M/384k on the DSL. As the graph shows I'm not getting the bandwidth I'm paying for on DSL and I'm getting really good bandwidth on Cable. I think I'll make the Cable my primary connection and DSL my secondary.
Since I'd now have 2 connections to the net I needed 2 routers/firewalls since IPCop doesn't support dual WANs. No problem, I just installed VMWare server on my firewall box an old AMD Duron 950Mhz computer with 385M of ram. Definitely not a power house. After loading IPCop into a VM I restored the backup from my original DSL configured box. Then I simply cloned the VM and renamed it ipcop-rr. Starting up the DSL vm and getting back on the Internet was a snap. Then I turned my attention to the VM for the new connection. I changed the IPs andwent to test it out....
Oh Oh! That's horrible! What's going. I tried hooking a laptop directly up to the cable modem and speeds were WAY faster. I thought it might be the whimpy server I was running the vm on so I set up a faster machine and just loaded up the single vm for the cable connections. Speeds weren't any better. What was going on?????
Then it dawned on me. I had copied the DSL image and several months ago I had turned on traffic shaping. A few clicks later and my suspension was true. I had traffic shaping turned on and it was for DSL speeds. Hence the poor performance. After turning off Traffic Shaping I ran the speed test again...
Now we're talking! That's more like it. Just for comparison I ran the same speed test on my DSL connection with Traffic Shaping turned off. Yikes!!!!
I'm supposed to be getting 3M/384k on the DSL. As the graph shows I'm not getting the bandwidth I'm paying for on DSL and I'm getting really good bandwidth on Cable. I think I'll make the Cable my primary connection and DSL my secondary.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Getting closer to having a 1&1 server up again!
So this past Saturday I was reimaging a server for a customer and things went awry. Here's the story.
Yesterday, Monday, I called in to find out what the progress was. Still the same old story. Waiting on the server department to identify the problem and fix it. For those who know me and know how I handle vendors I should have been taking people's heads off by now. But since 1&1 is such a large organization I thought I'd try a different approach. Politely asking to speak to their manager.
This morning I called into 1-877-HELP-AT-1AND1 and talked to Mary who dutifully told me the same old story. The server department is looking at it and will get back to me. I asked to speak to her supervisor so she put me on hold. When she came back her supervisor did not want to talk to me but instead wanted her to forward me to the "Server Line". This sounded promising. Next I spoke to Michael. I didn't ask him what department he was in but after giving him all the same information he said he was going to transfer me too the "Server Line". I guess I didn't make it the first time. Next I heard "Server Line may I have your customer id?". OK now I've gotten some where. The guy didn't even introduce himself. I gave him my info and he started looking at things. After a bit I got his name, Steve, and then he told me the same old thing. We have to wait on the Server Department who is working on it. I did not lose my temper, I simply asked him if he understood my problem. Then I asked if I could talk to a supervisor. He politely transferred.
"This is Richard", OK now some one who seems to want to get straight to the point. A nice British chap in the U.K. We talked for a little bit and I found out that the group I originally talked to on Saturday had goofed up and opened the wrong kind of ticket and that it was basically sitting in limbo. He went on to say that Steve had already opened the proper type of hardware ticket and that he expected some action in the next few hours. Now we are talking! I took this opportunity to ask a little more about the server support and how the data center is manned. It turns out that calling the 1-877-GO-1AND1 sales line and choosing the option for server support is the better way to reach the right group. Although it is possible that the call could still be routed to the general call group if they don't have enough people on the Server Line. As for the question of people manning the data center, he said they don't have an office immediately in the data center itself but that a Server Department person is on duty 24 hours a day and that their office is less than 5 minutes from the actual data center. I didn't ask if that was 5 minutes walking, running or driving. None the less someone with a pulse is near the data center all the time. That's the important part.
So here I sit, waiting... Well actually I have plenty of work to do besides worry about that server. The upgrade to Plesk 8.0 and CentOS didn't go so easy. There were problems with the DNS records, GID on mailman, the missing lists, and ownership of webuser accounts just to name a few. One good hint, always look at the /etc/psa/psa.conf file. It can let you know where things are just incase they are moved, like the mailman lists.
2:55pm:
Hooray!!! I got the email from 1&1 saying the re-imaging process has been competed. Hmmm lets try that one more time just to make sure it works.
3:55pm:
Back from the bank and all looks well. Time to start the install of CentOS and Plesk 8.0. Wow! it just installed CentOS in under 4 minutes. This is a happy server now.
Yesterday, Monday, I called in to find out what the progress was. Still the same old story. Waiting on the server department to identify the problem and fix it. For those who know me and know how I handle vendors I should have been taking people's heads off by now. But since 1&1 is such a large organization I thought I'd try a different approach. Politely asking to speak to their manager.
This morning I called into 1-877-HELP-AT-1AND1 and talked to Mary who dutifully told me the same old story. The server department is looking at it and will get back to me. I asked to speak to her supervisor so she put me on hold. When she came back her supervisor did not want to talk to me but instead wanted her to forward me to the "Server Line". This sounded promising. Next I spoke to Michael. I didn't ask him what department he was in but after giving him all the same information he said he was going to transfer me too the "Server Line". I guess I didn't make it the first time. Next I heard "Server Line may I have your customer id?". OK now I've gotten some where. The guy didn't even introduce himself. I gave him my info and he started looking at things. After a bit I got his name, Steve, and then he told me the same old thing. We have to wait on the Server Department who is working on it. I did not lose my temper, I simply asked him if he understood my problem. Then I asked if I could talk to a supervisor. He politely transferred.
"This is Richard", OK now some one who seems to want to get straight to the point. A nice British chap in the U.K. We talked for a little bit and I found out that the group I originally talked to on Saturday had goofed up and opened the wrong kind of ticket and that it was basically sitting in limbo. He went on to say that Steve had already opened the proper type of hardware ticket and that he expected some action in the next few hours. Now we are talking! I took this opportunity to ask a little more about the server support and how the data center is manned. It turns out that calling the 1-877-GO-1AND1 sales line and choosing the option for server support is the better way to reach the right group. Although it is possible that the call could still be routed to the general call group if they don't have enough people on the Server Line. As for the question of people manning the data center, he said they don't have an office immediately in the data center itself but that a Server Department person is on duty 24 hours a day and that their office is less than 5 minutes from the actual data center. I didn't ask if that was 5 minutes walking, running or driving. None the less someone with a pulse is near the data center all the time. That's the important part.
So here I sit, waiting... Well actually I have plenty of work to do besides worry about that server. The upgrade to Plesk 8.0 and CentOS didn't go so easy. There were problems with the DNS records, GID on mailman, the missing lists, and ownership of webuser accounts just to name a few. One good hint, always look at the /etc/psa/psa.conf file. It can let you know where things are just incase they are moved, like the mailman lists.
2:55pm:
Hooray!!! I got the email from 1&1 saying the re-imaging process has been competed. Hmmm lets try that one more time just to make sure it works.
3:55pm:
Back from the bank and all looks well. Time to start the install of CentOS and Plesk 8.0. Wow! it just installed CentOS in under 4 minutes. This is a happy server now.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Upgrading Plesk, what a nightmare!
I started upgrading 3 servers at 8pm tonight (Saturday). It's now 12:27am (Sunday). No server is up yet.
First, 1 server is hung in the reimaging process. I probably could have avoided the reimage altogether by using the stock plesk key and clicking retrieve key but I realized that too late. As it is I'm stuck waiting for some stupid 4 hour window to lapse before 1&1 will escalate the problem to a tech that can actually fix the problem. The person I talked to didn't even know where you went in the control panel to re-image the server. Oh boy!
So the other servers reimaged in record time and then I loaded my trusty CentOS load on there and let my cool little script load plesk 8.0.1. Everything is fine until.... I try to restore that backup that I made on the 7.5.4 version of the server. Ugggggg! It seems you can't restore a 7.5.4 backup onto a 8.0.1 server. Strange because I would have sworn that I had done that on another system. Apparently not!
So now I'm sitting here waiting for that one server to get reimaged, the other 2 servers are reloading a fresh install of CentOS 4.4 and then I'll install Plesk 7.5.4 manually using the autoinstall app. Then I should be able to restore the 7.5.4 backup. Then I plan to make a plesk 8.0 backup using their tool that I can download. Afterwards I'll update the servers in place, since it'll just be a plesk update and not an OS update.
More to come...
So it's now 1:20am. I've got plesk 7.5.4 installed on the 2 servers that reimaged earlier. Guess what? They won't retrieve 7.5.4 keys. Ugggg!!!! OK so 2 out of the 3 servers have backups of the /etc directory before all this mess started. I'll pull the keys out of there. Hopefully I can use the same key on 2 servers as longs as it's not at the same time. I have 8.0 keys for all 3 servers. The only really big down side to this step? Both of the keys are stored in really large backup sets that have to be ftp'd across from the backup server. Uggg!
Still waiting for 2am when hopefully(fingers crossed) that 1&1 oxygen wasting being will escalate to a real tech. We'll see.
More to come...
4:00am:
So 2am has come and gone. All I could get out of the 1&1 folks was that it had been escalated to the server techs and I'm supposed to wait around for some magical email. Hmmm, I wonder what they would do if my email was on the server that was down????
Progress is definitely being made on the other 2 servers though. One is almost done now. I made an 8.0 compatible backup and stored it on the FTP server. Right now I'm just waiting on a few additional Plesk 8.0.1 updates to finish installing. Then I need to add my favorite AtomicRocketTurtle packages and that server will be done.... SWEET! Just got the report that server is up to date! Now I can turn the email back on and forget about it.
More to come...
5:15am
Well I found a few more things I could do on that server that I thought I had finished. Now I'm just waiting for a nagios alert to clear. Presto! It's clear. Now I can mark off one server.
So what's the status on the downed server? Still nothing from 1&1 and the control panel is still telling me the server is being reimaged. I'll call them at 6am when it's been down for 8 hours. Maybe I can get some attention then. I'm starting to think the techs are asleep in the data center somewhere.
And the other server that made it through the reimage? It finally completed it's restore of the 7.5.4 backup. Now I'm running the yum update psa to upgrade it to 8.0.1. Crossing my fingers...
More to come...
9:07am:
Yes, I'm still at it. 2 servers down and 1 to go. Here's the kicker to this last server. I finally got someone at 1&1 to admit they don't have server techs in the data center on the weekends. He started talking about being short handed and stuff, and then I asked him point blank. Did they staff techs on the weekend. Aaaaaaah, no. Then he tried to convince me that they weren't needed because this was all automated. Right......
OK, so the plan is to set up a vmware on another network and snag the plesk key. That should be good for a few weeks at least. That's more than enough time to get this stuff straightened out. Once I have a stable server running again and I do a migration one evening and be done with it!
Oh, and here's a valuable note on Plesk 8.0 on CentOS. It seems with the newer versions of Plesk you now have the ability to turn 'safe_mode' on and off at the domain level. That's fine except during the upgrade from 7.5.4 to 8.0.1 the system turned 'safe_mode' on for all the domains. I probably chased my tail for 2 hours working on Joomla sites. It kept telling me it couldn't find the templates. Google searches kept talking about corrupted files and permissions. Then finally I found a blog post comment that mentioned turning it off. Presto!
More to come...
10:50am:
So things are going as planned, sort of. For some reason the plesk 7.5.4 installation on CentOS 4.4 fought me tooth and nail the whole way. I think I got sloppy in the vm and added the Atomic repo too early. None the less I now have a updated 7.5.4 plesk server awaiting a dump file. Oh that. Yes I'm waiting on the download of the dump file from the 1&1 servers. I'm tapping out the circuit at 5M on the VM side. At least I know that IP Cop firewall protecting it isn't a bottleneck. 33 minutes to go according to the scp progress bar.
I've kind of sort of given up on 1&1 for today. Hopefully they'll get the server fixed by tomorrow, in the mean time I think I've got a slick way to get this customer back up thanks to VMware.
Hmmm, 30 minutes that's not enough time to get some rest. Maybe I'll go fumble around with VTBook card. I've got it working with FC4 but I'd like to have it working with FC6 because that's what is on my main laptop.
More to come...
12:30pm:
Hopefully I can take a break. The third server is up. Web pages are being served and email is flowing in. The spam filtering needs some tweaking and the postini mailmgr wedge needs to be put in but those things can wait as I have to wait for the full system backups to download. That'll be another hour or so but it can wait.
Wonder when someone from 1&1 is going to look at the server?
First, 1 server is hung in the reimaging process. I probably could have avoided the reimage altogether by using the stock plesk key and clicking retrieve key but I realized that too late. As it is I'm stuck waiting for some stupid 4 hour window to lapse before 1&1 will escalate the problem to a tech that can actually fix the problem. The person I talked to didn't even know where you went in the control panel to re-image the server. Oh boy!
So the other servers reimaged in record time and then I loaded my trusty CentOS load on there and let my cool little script load plesk 8.0.1. Everything is fine until.... I try to restore that backup that I made on the 7.5.4 version of the server. Ugggggg! It seems you can't restore a 7.5.4 backup onto a 8.0.1 server. Strange because I would have sworn that I had done that on another system. Apparently not!
So now I'm sitting here waiting for that one server to get reimaged, the other 2 servers are reloading a fresh install of CentOS 4.4 and then I'll install Plesk 7.5.4 manually using the autoinstall app. Then I should be able to restore the 7.5.4 backup. Then I plan to make a plesk 8.0 backup using their tool that I can download. Afterwards I'll update the servers in place, since it'll just be a plesk update and not an OS update.
More to come...
So it's now 1:20am. I've got plesk 7.5.4 installed on the 2 servers that reimaged earlier. Guess what? They won't retrieve 7.5.4 keys. Ugggg!!!! OK so 2 out of the 3 servers have backups of the /etc directory before all this mess started. I'll pull the keys out of there. Hopefully I can use the same key on 2 servers as longs as it's not at the same time. I have 8.0 keys for all 3 servers. The only really big down side to this step? Both of the keys are stored in really large backup sets that have to be ftp'd across from the backup server. Uggg!
Still waiting for 2am when hopefully(fingers crossed) that 1&1 oxygen wasting being will escalate to a real tech. We'll see.
More to come...
4:00am:
So 2am has come and gone. All I could get out of the 1&1 folks was that it had been escalated to the server techs and I'm supposed to wait around for some magical email. Hmmm, I wonder what they would do if my email was on the server that was down????
Progress is definitely being made on the other 2 servers though. One is almost done now. I made an 8.0 compatible backup and stored it on the FTP server. Right now I'm just waiting on a few additional Plesk 8.0.1 updates to finish installing. Then I need to add my favorite AtomicRocketTurtle packages and that server will be done.... SWEET! Just got the report that server is up to date! Now I can turn the email back on and forget about it.
More to come...
5:15am
Well I found a few more things I could do on that server that I thought I had finished. Now I'm just waiting for a nagios alert to clear. Presto! It's clear. Now I can mark off one server.
So what's the status on the downed server? Still nothing from 1&1 and the control panel is still telling me the server is being reimaged. I'll call them at 6am when it's been down for 8 hours. Maybe I can get some attention then. I'm starting to think the techs are asleep in the data center somewhere.
And the other server that made it through the reimage? It finally completed it's restore of the 7.5.4 backup. Now I'm running the yum update psa to upgrade it to 8.0.1. Crossing my fingers...
More to come...
9:07am:
Yes, I'm still at it. 2 servers down and 1 to go. Here's the kicker to this last server. I finally got someone at 1&1 to admit they don't have server techs in the data center on the weekends. He started talking about being short handed and stuff, and then I asked him point blank. Did they staff techs on the weekend. Aaaaaaah, no. Then he tried to convince me that they weren't needed because this was all automated. Right......
OK, so the plan is to set up a vmware on another network and snag the plesk key. That should be good for a few weeks at least. That's more than enough time to get this stuff straightened out. Once I have a stable server running again and I do a migration one evening and be done with it!
Oh, and here's a valuable note on Plesk 8.0 on CentOS. It seems with the newer versions of Plesk you now have the ability to turn 'safe_mode' on and off at the domain level. That's fine except during the upgrade from 7.5.4 to 8.0.1 the system turned 'safe_mode' on for all the domains. I probably chased my tail for 2 hours working on Joomla sites. It kept telling me it couldn't find the templates. Google searches kept talking about corrupted files and permissions. Then finally I found a blog post comment that mentioned turning it off. Presto!
More to come...
10:50am:
So things are going as planned, sort of. For some reason the plesk 7.5.4 installation on CentOS 4.4 fought me tooth and nail the whole way. I think I got sloppy in the vm and added the Atomic repo too early. None the less I now have a updated 7.5.4 plesk server awaiting a dump file. Oh that. Yes I'm waiting on the download of the dump file from the 1&1 servers. I'm tapping out the circuit at 5M on the VM side. At least I know that IP Cop firewall protecting it isn't a bottleneck. 33 minutes to go according to the scp progress bar.
I've kind of sort of given up on 1&1 for today. Hopefully they'll get the server fixed by tomorrow, in the mean time I think I've got a slick way to get this customer back up thanks to VMware.
Hmmm, 30 minutes that's not enough time to get some rest. Maybe I'll go fumble around with VTBook card. I've got it working with FC4 but I'd like to have it working with FC6 because that's what is on my main laptop.
More to come...
12:30pm:
Hopefully I can take a break. The third server is up. Web pages are being served and email is flowing in. The spam filtering needs some tweaking and the postini mailmgr wedge needs to be put in but those things can wait as I have to wait for the full system backups to download. That'll be another hour or so but it can wait.
Wonder when someone from 1&1 is going to look at the server?
Thursday, January 25, 2007
VTBook Video card on a Linux Laptop - FC4
So now that I have my fancy 24" monitor running with the laptop I decided if 2 screens are good 3 screens must be better! Right?
Well maybe...
I ordered a VTBook card from Villagetronic. Heck for $249 you can't go wrong.
Well it does seem to work but it's not for the faint of heart. I'm usually pretty reluctant to jump in a recompile the kernel anymore. Mainly because I use several packages from 3rd party repos that depend on a particular kernel. So what I did was download the kernel source rpm and then rebuild the package with the same naming id. This way I could add the changes necessary for the card while still keeping compatibility with the other modules I use.
OK, so the good news I have it working.... on a Fedora Core 4 laptop! So far I haven't been successful getting it to work on a Fedora Core 6 laptop. I've opened up a support request with the folks at Villagetronics but so far all I've gotten back was an automated email and a followup email saying they'd have someone contact me ASAP! Still waiting...
In the mean time, I've put my xorg.conf and the kernel.spec file up on a server so others can enjoy this as well. I rebuilt the kernel using the kernel-2.6.17-1.2142_FC4.src.rpm package. So you just have to download it and then copy my spec file into /usr/src/redhat/SPECS. Then it's just a little time spent waiting on
rpmbuild --target i686 -bp kernel-2.6.spec.vtbook
Ok so maybe it's a lot of time. Once I get more bandwidth I'll make the RPMs available for download.
I also had to change settings in /etc/grub.conf and remove the "rghb" option from the kernel options. Otherwise it would try to use the X server while booting and that would cause problems as the card wasn't ready yet.
As the instructions mention you need to add a line to /etc/init.d/pcmcia for the setpci command. Otherwise you'll have problems when your X windows does start up.
I've noticed that when you are shutting down the laptop the monitor connected to the VT card will sort of go crazy and flicker as if it's trying to get a signal. It might be wise to turn off the monitor when you start to shutdown the laptop. I notice the same problem when I switch to one of the console screens also. When I switch back I have to power cycle the screen to get my extra desktop back.
Well maybe...
I ordered a VTBook card from Villagetronic. Heck for $249 you can't go wrong.
Well it does seem to work but it's not for the faint of heart. I'm usually pretty reluctant to jump in a recompile the kernel anymore. Mainly because I use several packages from 3rd party repos that depend on a particular kernel. So what I did was download the kernel source rpm and then rebuild the package with the same naming id. This way I could add the changes necessary for the card while still keeping compatibility with the other modules I use.
OK, so the good news I have it working.... on a Fedora Core 4 laptop! So far I haven't been successful getting it to work on a Fedora Core 6 laptop. I've opened up a support request with the folks at Villagetronics but so far all I've gotten back was an automated email and a followup email saying they'd have someone contact me ASAP! Still waiting...
In the mean time, I've put my xorg.conf and the kernel.spec file up on a server so others can enjoy this as well. I rebuilt the kernel using the kernel-2.6.17-1.2142_FC4.src.rpm package. So you just have to download it and then copy my spec file into /usr/src/redhat/SPECS. Then it's just a little time spent waiting on
rpmbuild --target i686 -bp kernel-2.6.spec.vtbook
Ok so maybe it's a lot of time. Once I get more bandwidth I'll make the RPMs available for download.
I also had to change settings in /etc/grub.conf and remove the "rghb" option from the kernel options. Otherwise it would try to use the X server while booting and that would cause problems as the card wasn't ready yet.
As the instructions mention you need to add a line to /etc/init.d/pcmcia for the setpci command. Otherwise you'll have problems when your X windows does start up.
I've noticed that when you are shutting down the laptop the monitor connected to the VT card will sort of go crazy and flicker as if it's trying to get a signal. It might be wise to turn off the monitor when you start to shutdown the laptop. I notice the same problem when I switch to one of the console screens also. When I switch back I have to power cycle the screen to get my extra desktop back.
Monday, January 22, 2007
FC6 on my Toshiba P35-S611 Laptop Freezing
Since installing Fedora Core 6 I've noticed more and more freeze problems with my laptop. Sunday night I decided to backup my entire laptop HD onto a USB drive. Then I wiped the hard drive and reloaded Fedora Core 6.
There are some nice things when starting from scratch. One thing in particular is the suspend/hibernate features. Back in FC4 I could never get this to work. I managed to get most of my application settings back without having to manually enter them.
Evolution:
.evolution/*
.gnome2/gnome-pilot.d/*
.gconf/apps/evolution/*
Aqua Data Studio:
.datastudio/*
Firefox:
.mozilla/*
My Menu mods:
.local/*
.config/*
So after copying over all of this stuff I cranked up my xmms and started to listening to podcasts and mp3. Arrrrgh!!!!! The system froze. Thinking it was xmms I switched to Rhythmbox. Things seemed promising but 30 minutes after a reboot and the machine was freezing again.
I conducted a memory test and a stresslinux test with no problems. Hmmmm what is wrong?
I stumbled on to some posts that talked about cpuspeed. I disabled it and restared. The laptop has been running nicely for 2.5 hours.
I have had some problems with podcasts on an SD card. It seems that reading the card from the USB hub/card reader works well. Using the builtin card reader in my 80GB USB drive seems to cause pauses when reading from the card.
Time to go to work!
There are some nice things when starting from scratch. One thing in particular is the suspend/hibernate features. Back in FC4 I could never get this to work. I managed to get most of my application settings back without having to manually enter them.
Evolution:
.evolution/*
.gnome2/gnome-pilot.d/*
.gconf/apps/evolution/*
Aqua Data Studio:
.datastudio/*
Firefox:
.mozilla/*
My Menu mods:
.local/*
.config/*
So after copying over all of this stuff I cranked up my xmms and started to listening to podcasts and mp3. Arrrrgh!!!!! The system froze. Thinking it was xmms I switched to Rhythmbox. Things seemed promising but 30 minutes after a reboot and the machine was freezing again.
I conducted a memory test and a stresslinux test with no problems. Hmmmm what is wrong?
I stumbled on to some posts that talked about cpuspeed. I disabled it and restared. The laptop has been running nicely for 2.5 hours.
I have had some problems with podcasts on an SD card. It seems that reading the card from the USB hub/card reader works well. Using the builtin card reader in my 80GB USB drive seems to cause pauses when reading from the card.
Time to go to work!
Friday, January 19, 2007
Living without DSL - Day 2
I had hoped the problem with my DSL would magically get fixed over night. No such luck.
At least this morning when I called in to Internet America their Auto Attendant had an updated message saying that Alltel, I mean Windstream, had a major piece of equipment fail and they didn't have a spare for it. That's just a guess but the prediction that it would be back up later this afternoon sounds like they are waiting on a part to come in. In the mean time I get to enjoy the not so high speeds of my EVDO connection. At least it's better than nothing.
At least this morning when I called in to Internet America their Auto Attendant had an updated message saying that Alltel, I mean Windstream, had a major piece of equipment fail and they didn't have a spare for it. That's just a guess but the prediction that it would be back up later this afternoon sounds like they are waiting on a part to come in. In the mean time I get to enjoy the not so high speeds of my EVDO connection. At least it's better than nothing.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Stupid Alltel DSL
So I get home from a meeting and I'm all jazzed to start working on some stuff that pays the bills. But first I need to figure out why I can't listen to xmradio online. Hmmm I need to figure out how to play Windows Media files in Linux and in firefox. Didn't I already accomplish that years ago????
Oh yeah, that was in FC4. So I start googling to remind myself what I need to do and BOOM!!! SPLAT!!! Nothing! My DSL connection is down. OK time to switch back to tech support mode and remember all the things I had people do when they called in with the same problem.
1. reboot modem and wait for all 4 lights to go solid - CHECK!
2. reboot firewall machine and restart PPPoE process - CHECK!
3. reboot modem one more time this time leaving it off for 5 minutes - CHECK!
4. call Internet America..... CHECK
After about 20 minutes on hold Brad comes on the line and asks what's the problem. I say my DSL isn't working. He asked if I was in Sugar Land and had Alltel. Yep! Well they started having problems an hour ago and they are working on it. I tried fishing to find out what areas were affected but he didn't know me from Adam and wasn't very cooperative. At least 2 other DSL customers are up so I guess I'm the lucky one today.
So I open up my Network Device Control applet and fire up USB Modem on the Treo. For some reason connecting to the Internet via the Treo seems slower at the house than at the deer camp. It's probably just a perception thing though. I mean at the deer camp I'm happy to have access to the outside world. At home I'm in the outside world already so I shouldn't have a slow connection to it.
Since I run my mail server here at the house that means that I can't receive email.
Break time!
Oh yeah, that was in FC4. So I start googling to remind myself what I need to do and BOOM!!! SPLAT!!! Nothing! My DSL connection is down. OK time to switch back to tech support mode and remember all the things I had people do when they called in with the same problem.
1. reboot modem and wait for all 4 lights to go solid - CHECK!
2. reboot firewall machine and restart PPPoE process - CHECK!
3. reboot modem one more time this time leaving it off for 5 minutes - CHECK!
4. call Internet America..... CHECK
After about 20 minutes on hold Brad comes on the line and asks what's the problem. I say my DSL isn't working. He asked if I was in Sugar Land and had Alltel. Yep! Well they started having problems an hour ago and they are working on it. I tried fishing to find out what areas were affected but he didn't know me from Adam and wasn't very cooperative. At least 2 other DSL customers are up so I guess I'm the lucky one today.
So I open up my Network Device Control applet and fire up USB Modem on the Treo. For some reason connecting to the Internet via the Treo seems slower at the house than at the deer camp. It's probably just a perception thing though. I mean at the deer camp I'm happy to have access to the outside world. At home I'm in the outside world already so I shouldn't have a slow connection to it.
Since I run my mail server here at the house that means that I can't receive email.
Break time!
FC6 on my Toshiba P35-S611 Laptop
So I've been running Linux on this laptop for almost 2 years now. After some procrastination I decided to upgrade from FC4 to FC6. While the stability doesn't seem to be as great I have gotten a number of things to work that I never bothered to get working on the FC4 install. Those things include the built-in modem, a bluetooth dongle and dual displays.
The easiest thing to do was getting the internal modem working. I found the slmodem-alsa package on the Livna repo. I just installed it since I already had the Livna repo installed on my la
yum install slmodem-alsa
Then I edited /etc/sysconfig/slmodemd
COUNTRY=USA
Then start up the daemon
/etc/init.d/slmodemd restart
Now I had a /dev/ttySL0 interface
ls -l /dev/ttyS0
I made a symlink to /dev/modem
ln -s /dev/ttySL0 /dev/modem
Then I went into the system-config-network applet and set up a dialup connection
Unfortunately I haven't been able to make the modem speaker work but I can now test dialup accounts when I need to. And in a pinch I can use a dialup account if I have to.
YOU DON'T NEED TO COMPILE slmodemd FROM SOURCE!
Here's a cool pic of my current dual head setup:
And my xorg.conf config:
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Multihead layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" absolute 0 0
Screen 1 "Screen1" absolute 1440 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Synaptics" "AlwaysCore"
Option "Xinerama" "on"
Option "Clone" "off"
EndSection
Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "fbdevhw"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
Load "synaptics"
Load "dri"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
Option "LeftEdge" "120"
Option "RightEdge" "830"
Option "TopEdge" "120"
Option "BottomEdge" "650"
Option "FingerLow" "14"
Option "FingerHigh" "15"
Option "MaxTapMove" "110"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "20"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "20"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.3"
Option "MaxSpeed" "0.75"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "ExtMonitor"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1900x1200"
### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
HorizSync 31.5 - 74
VertRefresh 50.0 - 60
Option "dpms"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "LaptopLCD"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1440x900"
HorizSync 31.5 - 39.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 70.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "ATI Radeon Mobility 9100 IGP"
Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS, CRT"
BusID "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard1"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "Videocard Vendor"
BoardName "ATI Technologies Inc RS300M AGP [Radeon Mobility 9100IGP]"
BusID "PCI:1:5:0"
Screen 1
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "LaptopLCD"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Videocard1"
Monitor "ExtMonitor"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1900x1200"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "DRI"
Group 0
Mode 0666
EndSection
I use the bluetooth to network sync my Treo 700p
/etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf:
options {
autoinit yes;
security user;
pairing multi;
}
device {
name "laptop";
class 0x120104;
iscan enable; pscan enable;
lm accept;
lp hold,sniff,park;
auth enable;
encrypt enable;
}
/etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf:
rfcomm0 {
bind yes;
# My treo 700p
device 00:07:E0:B8:F2:D4;
channel 1;
comment "Brian's Treo 700p";
}
/etc/sysconfig/dund:
DUNDARGS='--listen --persist --msdun call dun'
chkconfig bluetooth on
chkconfig dund on
service bluetooth start
service dund start
Then I just paired the phone to the laptop and set up a network sync.
To get gpilotd to netsync,
.gnome2/gnome-pilot.d/gpilotd:
[Device0]
type=4
name=Cradle
timeout=5
I didn't actually want to bind it to any particular IP address or I'd have added a few other settings.
The easiest thing to do was getting the internal modem working. I found the slmodem-alsa package on the Livna repo. I just installed it since I already had the Livna repo installed on my la
yum install slmodem-alsa
Then I edited /etc/sysconfig/slmodemd
COUNTRY=USA
Then start up the daemon
/etc/init.d/slmodemd restart
Now I had a /dev/ttySL0 interface
ls -l /dev/ttyS0
I made a symlink to /dev/modem
ln -s /dev/ttySL0 /dev/modem
Then I went into the system-config-network applet and set up a dialup connection
Unfortunately I haven't been able to make the modem speaker work but I can now test dialup accounts when I need to. And in a pinch I can use a dialup account if I have to.
YOU DON'T NEED TO COMPILE slmodemd FROM SOURCE!
Here's a cool pic of my current dual head setup:
And my xorg.conf config:
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Multihead layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" absolute 0 0
Screen 1 "Screen1" absolute 1440 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Synaptics" "AlwaysCore"
Option "Xinerama" "on"
Option "Clone" "off"
EndSection
Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "fbdevhw"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
Load "synaptics"
Load "dri"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
Option "LeftEdge" "120"
Option "RightEdge" "830"
Option "TopEdge" "120"
Option "BottomEdge" "650"
Option "FingerLow" "14"
Option "FingerHigh" "15"
Option "MaxTapMove" "110"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "20"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "20"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.3"
Option "MaxSpeed" "0.75"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "ExtMonitor"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1900x1200"
### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
HorizSync 31.5 - 74
VertRefresh 50.0 - 60
Option "dpms"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "LaptopLCD"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1440x900"
HorizSync 31.5 - 39.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 70.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "ATI Radeon Mobility 9100 IGP"
Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS, CRT"
BusID "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard1"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "Videocard Vendor"
BoardName "ATI Technologies Inc RS300M AGP [Radeon Mobility 9100IGP]"
BusID "PCI:1:5:0"
Screen 1
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "LaptopLCD"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Videocard1"
Monitor "ExtMonitor"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1900x1200"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "DRI"
Group 0
Mode 0666
EndSection
I use the bluetooth to network sync my Treo 700p
/etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf:
options {
autoinit yes;
security user;
pairing multi;
}
device {
name "laptop";
class 0x120104;
iscan enable; pscan enable;
lm accept;
lp hold,sniff,park;
auth enable;
encrypt enable;
}
/etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf:
rfcomm0 {
bind yes;
# My treo 700p
device 00:07:E0:B8:F2:D4;
channel 1;
comment "Brian's Treo 700p";
}
/etc/sysconfig/dund:
DUNDARGS='--listen --persist --msdun call dun'
chkconfig bluetooth on
chkconfig dund on
service bluetooth start
service dund start
Then I just paired the phone to the laptop and set up a network sync.
To get gpilotd to netsync,
.gnome2/gnome-pilot.d/gpilotd:
[Device0]
type=4
name=Cradle
timeout=5
I didn't actually want to bind it to any particular IP address or I'd have added a few other settings.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
5 does in the field
Well this morning has been good although there has been 0 shots fired.. 5 does where in my area at the same time. 4 came in via the center shot lane while 1 appeared in the right lane. After a bit they finally met up in the right lane and headed back toward the feeder. Eventually they all left together via the center lane.
I reckon clearing the center lane was a good thing. Hopefully I'll be able to return this spring and do a little more clearing before things warm up. I'd like to take the lane all the way to the fence. I figure I'm halfway there so far. Maybe when the loggers come in they'll help me out a little.
While eating breakfast I looked through the log book. Turns out I got to hunt 21 days this season. That's not too bad considering how many other things take up my time in December every year.
If things go well this coming year maybe I can get the total up to 31 days. Heck if I win the lottery maybe it'll be 45 days even. :)
My 9 point rack should be finished drying in a few weeks so I can finally mount it. Looking forward to hanging it on the wall next to Papa's rack. Maybe I can bug Ron or Chris to bring their laser levels over and help me reorganize my racks. Maybe....
Saturday, January 06, 2007
My treo takes deer hunting hi tech
So this deer season I've been using my treo to pass the quiet time on the stand. I've managed to read PDFs, read emails, review web sites and solve problems via texting. This afternoon though I took my Javo ear buds with me and listened to podcasts. Nice...
I've been using the mypodder beta on Linux for a few weeks now. I keep the podcasts on my SD card in the Treo and play them on my Laptop or on the Treo using mocean. Well after listening to all of my downloaded podcasts I thought I'd try out the podcast feature built into mocean. Well it certainly doesn't work nearly as well as mypodder but in a bind it'll suffice.
I've been using the mypodder beta on Linux for a few weeks now. I keep the podcasts on my SD card in the Treo and play them on my Laptop or on the Treo using mocean. Well after listening to all of my downloaded podcasts I thought I'd try out the podcast feature built into mocean. Well it certainly doesn't work nearly as well as mypodder but in a bind it'll suffice.
broken shower and a trip to town
Wouldn't you know the last weekend of the season and the shower gets broken. Ugggggg.
It looks like there was some water still in the vertical pipe going to the shower head. Normally that's ok but with all the freezing temps in December it finally just cracked the pipe.
I went into town to get some couplings so I could make a new section but the hardware store was already closed. Sure doesn't seem too smart to close the only hardware store in town at noon. Oh well it wasn't worth the 30 miles round trip to go to Dibol. I'll just have to bring the parts from home before next season. I need (2) 3/4 slip to 1/2 threaded couplings for the showerhead and valves. Maybe I'll find a better valve assembly while I'm at it.
While I was in town I thought I'd make a donation to the Texas Lottery a.k.a. buying a ticket. I asked for a quick pick, cash option for the next 5 drawings. The first lady didn't understand English very well and claimed the machine was broken and that I should come back in 30 minutes. Problem is I watched her sell a ticket to the guy in front of me. I guess spanning multiple drawings was too difficult. So I left that store and went to the Exxon.
I asked for the same thing, QP CO 5 drawings. The lady looked at the machine and then said the other cashier would have to do it because she didn't know how to work the machine for complicated tickets. Meanwhile the other cashier was on the phone trying to straighten out a previous problem caused by this cashier. It seems she had inadvertently charged a young lady's credit card $540 for a $4 purchase. Oooops!!!! The real problem was that it was a debit card and that had just tied up that money in her account.
Honestly, I'm not making this up...
Oh did I forget to mention the poor girl said she didn't have $500 in her checking account to even cover the charge. She also didn't have enough cash to get home or another credit card. I have to give her credit though she was far calmer than I would have been in the same situation. At the point they were at I would have been demanding to see the store owner and calling the cops for potential credit card fraud.
So this clueless cashier was perfectly happy to let me just stand there waiting on the other cashier while holding up the line. When I realized she wasn't going to try and help one of the 5 other customers behind me, I suggested she go ahead and take care of the next person in line while I waited. This confused her. At this point I moved away from the counter so I could watch the checkout process hoping the customer would try to pay by credit card. No such luck but paying by cash appeared to be equally challenging for this cashier. That's enough entertainment for me I'm heading to another store.
So I drive across the street to the Brookshire Bros grocery store. Yep they sell Loto tickets. They even had a sign out front saying so. The other side said Beer And Wine To Go. I guess that's the big news in Corrigan. I walk in and go to customer service. By this time I'm willing to fill out one of those forms you normally use when you are picking the numbers manually figuring all they have to do is insert it into the scanner. Problem is there's no pencils but plenty of forms. So I ask the girl for the same ticket that I've asked for @ 2 other stores. QP CO 5 drawings. Oh boy I get a deer in the head lights gaze from this poor highschool student. Fortunately for me she's quick on her feet and gets the manager's attention to show her how to do it. About a minute later I hear "that'll be 5 dollars". I pass her the money while I double check the ticket. All looks good so I take my change and walk out the door.
So it appears while the lottery has been going on for a number of years it's still a challenge to get a multi drawing ticket in Corrigan,Tx. Thanks to a thinking high schooler and a trained manager I managed to get my ticket.
Whoever said small town America was boring.
it's a quail, it's a pheasant, what the heck is it?
If you sit on the stand long enough you eventually see something you haven't seen before. That's what happened just now. (11:15)
Since it's closing weekend I figured there's nothing to do at camp so I'll stay on the stand until lunch. Up pops this fat bird in the center shot lane I cleared earlier this season. At least twice as large as a dove. He had markings like a bobtail quail but more of a flat top looking do on his head. The other interesting feature was the long tail. At least 1.5 times the length of it's body. The feathers were brown with white spots. I think this might be a pheasant hen but I'm not sure. A quick search on Google didn't yield any good pictures for my Treo.
BTW: Staying on the stand until Lunch has yet to yield any big deer but it's a relaxing way to pass the time.
is anybody out there
Sometimes when you're setting on the stand you start to wonder if you are the only out there. This is just such a morning.
It's a little past 8 and I haven't heard a single gunshot all morning. The sky was pretty clear last and we had a bright moon. This morning however was wet. Not rainy wet more like foggy wet but without the reduced visiblity. There's water on the pine needles like you have after a good rain.
The temperature is in the low 50's and the wind is non-existent. The number of feeders going off this morning sounded lower too. Most likely they have run out of corn as mine has. Strange that most of the stores around here were out of corn by Thanksgiving weekend this year.
At last, a rifle shot in the distance. That's one more deer that won't make it to the end of the season I guess. Less than 48 hours remain of the 2006-07 season and I think the deer know it. Maybe they've decided to sleep in for the weekend. Certainly not a bad idea from their perspective.
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