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.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
