All Things Brian

Polycom BLF on Trixbox 2.6

2009-04-15T14:19:00.001-06:00

I consider my google-fu to be pretty good but trying to get BLF on my Polycom 550 seemed challenging at best. The biggest problem I had was in figuring out exactly what I was looking for. One of my biggest pet-peaves about the VoIP community is that you seem to have those who know very little and those who know so much their brains are spilling over with information so much so that they don't bother to clearly state what files they are editing and just expect you to know by what they type on the screen.

I fall somewhere in between these two types of people. I understand a lot about computers, networking and Linux. Voice is just hte bane of my existence and I tolerate it because it's beginning to put more and more money in my pocket.

So this post is how I got BLF to work on a polycom 550 with a Trixbox 2.6.1 installation.

1. Make sure you have the polycom firmware installed:

# yum install firmware-polycom

2. check your 'show hints' in the asterisk command line interface

# asterisk -rx 'show hints'

    -= Registered Asterisk Dial Plan Hints =-
                   3260@ext-local           : SIP/3260              State:Idle            Watchers 0
                   3202@ext-local           : SIP/3202              State:Idle            Watchers 0
                    709@park-hints          : park:709@parkedcalls State:Idle            Watchers 0
                    708@park-hints          : park:708@parkedcalls State:Idle            Watchers 0
                    707@park-hints          : park:707@parkedcalls State:Idle            Watchers 0
                    706@park-hints          : park:706@parkedcalls State:Idle            Watchers 0
                    705@park-hints          : park:705@parkedcalls State:Idle            Watchers 0
                    704@park-hints          : park:704@parkedcalls State:Idle            Watchers 0
                    703@park-hints          : park:703@parkedcalls State:Idle            Watchers 0
                    702@park-hints          : park:702@parkedcalls State:Idle            Watchers 0
                    701@park-hints          : park:701@parkedcalls State:Idle            Watchers 0

*** if you don't have anything for the 'show hints' make sure you have your extensions set up and working in Trixbox. It's supposed to create the hints automatically.

3. Now create a speed dial entry in your polycom phone. On my 550 I pressed the follow:

[Directories]
1. Contact Directory
[Add]
First Name: {Extension I wanted to watch}
Contact: {Extension I wanted to watch}
[Save]

Make sure you have the speed dial entry on one of your buttons now. If you don't then you either don't have an available button or you did something wrong.

These steps will create a file on your server under /tftpboot/polycom/contacts {MACADDR}-directory.xml

4. Now open the new file in your favorite editor (mine is nano). You should see something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<directory>
    <item_list>
        <item>
            <fn>3202</fn>
            <ct>3202</ct>
            <sd>1</sd>
        </item>
    </item_list>
</directory>

Add a line for the Buddy Watch so it looks like this:

        <item>
            <fn>3202</fn>
            <ct>3202</ct>
            <sd>1</sd>
            <bw>1</bw>
        </item>

Save your changes but don't reboot your phone just yet.

5. Next I had to edit the /tftpboot/sip.cfg. Look for a line starting with:

<feature feature.1.name="presence" feature.1.enabled="0"

You need to turn on feature.1

feature.1.enabled="1"

Save the file, and reboot your polycom phone.

6. Presto! Once the phone reboots you should see the extension you want to monitor but instead of a tiny keypad next to it you should see a little person. Whenever they are talking on the phone, or recieving a call your screen will update. Remember this isn't a key system, so just picking up the handset won't actually report them as busy.

This is how I got BLF on a Polycom 550 with Trixbox. Other configurations may require other settings. I think if I had edited the sip.cfg file before adding the speed dial entry I might have seen the Buddy Watch option when setting up the speed dial, then I wouldn't have had to edit the directory file by hand.

Looking through sip.cfg I noticed several other features of interest to me. I guess I'll have to play with them next. But that's another post for another day. Time to go make money with my new found feature.

Me and my new Acer Aspire One D150-1165

2009-03-08T10:19:00.001-06:00

The other day I received my new 10.1 inch Acer Aspire. Sure my 8.9 unit still works and does pretty much everything I need it to do. But heck these things only cost $350 so why not get the new one too.

Here's what I like about the 10 inch model:

Larger screen makes it easy to run smaller fonts to maximize the 1024x600 resolution
The 6 Cell battery gives me 4 plus hours of true wireless run time
The sata drive is noticeably faster than the PATA drive I put in my SSD AAO
Easier to get to the ram and wireless card, already boosted to 2GB and Broadcom card, without taking the thing apart.

And here's what is frustrating me so far:

Difficulty to find articles on google due to the similar name, AAO seems to refer to the 8.9 inch
Can't get the internal mic to work in LInux. So Skype in Linux requires a headset, not in XP or 7 though.
Haven't been able to get a Mac OS X install to work once installed, retrying now with this post
The suspend feature under Linux recently quit working, I've used this post for the 8.9" with success. I probably goofed something up...

Currently I have Fedora 10, Windows XP (came with it), Windows 7 Ultimate (Beta) and a broken Mac OS X 10.5.6 installed. I'm impressed enough with Windows 7 that I will probably wipe out the XP partition once they do a real release of 7. It surprised me with how stable and quick it is. But it's still not Linux so it won't become my primary OS of choice.

Did I mention the battery life? Really it's great. I don't know what the real life span of a charge is yet because I simply haven't worked on it that long at one time. I'll probably figure it out the next time I'm at a customer's site. I wish they included a shorter clover-leaf power cord though. I've found sites listing a 1 foot cord but everyone is out of stock. I guess that's the "in" accessory for these netbooks. When/If I ever find them in stock I'll definitely order a few for all of my laptops and then leave the 6 foot cables at home.

It's not perfect yet, but this little netbook will definitely be going to my outings with me from now on. The 8.9" will be relegated to a handy Hackintosh for testing web stuff when needed.

upgrading the wifi on the Aspire One

2009-02-04T10:58:00.001-06:00

Last week I ordered a Dell 1390 wifi card for the netbook so I could have wireless connectivity in all 3 OSes (WinXP, Mac OS X and Linux). I thought I'd mention what I did to get it working in the various systems.

MAC OS X:
This was easy. I simply booted into the OS and it told me I had a new network device. I followed the prompts, selected my access point and I was on the internet. Woopie!!!

Windows XP:
I refered back to a post about my HP dv2810 install from last summer and got the driver software from Dell. The link to the driver is here. I saved it to my SD card as I'd need it for the Linux installation as well. Next I went to the Hardware Device Manager and installed the driver for the unidentified new hardware. I told Windows I'd specify the location of the files and before I knew it I had it working in Windows. Pretty easy so far.

Fedora 10:
My first attempt, following the same instructions as the dv2810 didn't work so well. Here's what I tried:


# wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R174291.exe
# unzip R174291.exe
# cd DRIVER_US/bcmwl5.inf
# ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
# ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
  device (14E4:4311) present (alternate driver: ssb)
# modprobe ndiswrapper
# iwconfig wlan0

But this is where it broke. I got a "No such device" error message instead of it showing me the wifi card as it did on the HP laptop.

Back to the linuxwireless.org site. I noticed that it shows the bcm4311 rev 1 as being supported, since it was I thought there had to be a better way than the ndiswrapper solution. It turns out there is. I have the rpmfusion repos installed so I was able to simply install the driver.


# yum install broadcom-wl

After a reboot I was good to go.

I noticed the signal strength on the Dell card is quite a lot more than the original atheros card. Not a bad upgrade for $15 including shipping. Checking the power consumption with powertop seems to indicate a slightly lower power draw with the card as well. I'll just have to see how the battery does I guess. Without firing up the soldering iron, I think I've done all the hardware hacking I plan to do to this little netbook.

Hacking the Aspire One

2009-01-24T19:52:00.001-06:00

Well it had to happen, I mean come on you didn't think I'd go without opening the case for long did you?

Last weekend I ordered a Samsung HS081HA 1.8" hard drive on Ebay. The SSD was nice but it seemed like every other reboot of the machine would cause problems with my SDHC mounted /home directory so I decided to put a hard drive in there instead. Besides, with an 80GB hard drive I'd have room to acheive my other goal of tripple booting OSes on the machine. Yesterday afternoon the mailman delivered the harddrive and so I started the work.

First things first was to get the netbook open. Easy enough following the hard drive video from Tnkgrl. I had a little difficulty inserting the stock ZIF cable into the drive. It just seemed too thick for the connector on the drive. I took some 600 grit sand paper and carefully thinned the blue tab of the drive cable until it fit properly. Before assembling the whole thing I powered on the computer to verify the drive in the BIOS. It wasn't found, so I powered off and flipped the cable over. The second time it was recognized in the BIOS but there was an ! in the second character of the drive's serial number. I later discovered the cable wasn't properly aligned and prevented the drive from working correctly. Simple reseating of the cable solved the problem. While I had the case apart I also upgraded the ram to 1.5GB thanks to a stick of ram my sister gave me after her Sony laptop met an untimely end (Thanks Paula). I didn't do the blue tooth hack or the wifi swap out at this time.

So with the case back together and an 80GB hard drive just waiting to be loaded, I started with the Windows recovery discs that came with my Acer. I figured this would be the simplest way to get Windows loaded and it allowed me to use the Windows key that came with it. These Windows CDs only come with the SSD equipped units, and like the Linux recovery discs they want to take over the entire hard drive. That was fine by me because I could just use Gparted to resize the partition once the install was done.

Using a Gparted iso and unetboot, I created a USB drive to take care of my repartitioning. First I resized the partition from the full 74G down to 17GB. Then I created the 40GB Linux and 18G Mac partitions. I opted not to use a swap partition because of the added ram. The whole process took about an hour and a half. Afterwards I installed Fedora 10 from the Live iso. This time I opted to install the full version of Fedora instead of the XFCE spin as I use some applications that aren't quite friendly with the XFCE menu system.

After Fedora was installed and working I checked to make sure booting between Windows and Linux worked. It did, so I proceeded with the 3rd OS installation, Mac OS X. I found a guide showing how to install using the Kalaway 10.5.2 iso and then applying several updates. The key to his guide was that he installed Ubuntu first and used grub to act as the boot loader, that seemed to fit with my plans. But before trying the older iso image I opted for the newer XxX 10.5.6 rev 1 torrent I found. Obviously the "customize" section of the installation didn't match so I tried my best to match the choices. Once started, the installer indicated it would be over 2 hours before it was done. Since it was after 10pm I decided to get a couple hours of sleep while the computer worked.

This morning when I woke up and checked on the install it was stuck in a viscous loop. Now I've found out the loop was likely caused by the "cpus=1" tag you need to pass when booting the vanilla kernel, but since I didn't know that at the time. I pulled out my Kalaway 10.5.2 CD and started following the guide. This time, it took 3 hours for the initial installation to complete. By noon I had a semi-working Macbook nano, by 3pm I didn't have a keyboard or mouse working except with USB externals. Searching for help on the keyboard I found another guide on AspireOneUser where the author mentiond a PS2 kext included with his "Utility Pack". This sounded promising and indeed it was. Once I installed his Kexts my keyboard and mouse started working again. By the time I completed the Venera7 guide it was just after 5pm. I had a working 10.5.5 Mac OS X running on my little Acer. But why stop there? I mean the latest version is 10.5.6 so I had to try it. Following recommendations from another blog post, I updated the PC EFI boot loader. When I tried to follow the link to get the DSDT patcher I found a stumbling block. It seemed Insanelymac.com was down due to a DNS issue. So a little googling turned up a gui version. I wasn't able to get it to compile without using the force option. However, rebooting after the compile showed no errors so I tried the 10.5.6 update from the Software Update menu option...

So while waiting for the 10.5.6 update to download and install I decided to pull the Broadcom wifi card in my HP. In the mean time I could use the Atheros card from the Acer in it and when the one I ordered off ebay (earlier today) arrives I can swap them out. It's just too easy to open the case of the AA1 once you know how.

After what seemed like an eternity and two automatic reboots the system came up on it's own. Sound didn't work and the display settings were back to 800x600 but the upgrade worked. "About this Mac" reports version 10.5.6. A reinstall of some kexts and then a permission repair (can't be too careful) resolved the issues with a few reboots. Basically I just had to follow the Venera7 instructions for what you do after the 10.5.5 update. The only thing left to do in the Mac OS other than install some apps was to get the Broadcom wifi card installed.

So I shutdown the computer for one more round of disassembly. Five minutes later I'm booting things back up but there's no airport listed. What's worse, my HP won't even boot with the Atheros card installed. Just after the initial BIOS post screen I get an error saying the wireless card is wrong and to remove it. Since it doesn't like the Atheros, and my hackintosh doesn't like the broadcom card out of the HP I think I'll just put them back for now. I'll have the card from ebay in a week or so and until then I can work it using the LAN port and my USB cellular modem (if I can get that to work).

Well, I still need to configure my Linux and Windows OSes to be useful. Both need updates applied and Linux needs my web browser and email settings applied. Plus things like unison to sync my documents and vpn connections. I'll just kick off a yum update before I call it quits tonight. This little netbook has become my favorite device when I'm away from the comfort of my desktop with it's three 24" monitors. It's reasonable speed, fantastic battery life and lightness just makes it the handiest computer to take with me. Whether I'm on my bike or in the Jeep. It's just the most packable computer I've had in a long time. Too bad Acer couldn't come up with a little better solution for the power cube and cord.

BTW: It wasn't a completely selfish Saturday for me. I did find time to fix my wife's AA1 so that she shares her Documents between the Windows and Linux (Linpus) partions. Thankgoodness I created that 4th partition as FAT32. Then it was just a matter of pointing all the folders to it on both sides. Now she can view her work documents from either OS. She's happy.

A full day with the Aspire One

2009-01-09T23:11:00.001-06:00

Today I thought I'd work on the AA1 a little and see if I could get the stock Linpus OS to work for me. Well, I got quite a bit working but the key stopping point was the lack of support for my Novatel U727 Cellular modem. Since that is important to me when I travel and even when I'm on-site, I had to get it working.

I decided to install Fedora 10. Since I still wanted to utilize the SDHC slot for added OS capacity I initially tried to place the root filesystem on there with just the boot partition on the SSD. Nope! I'm sure I was close but it just wasn't worth it after I had to reinstall for the 4th or 5th time. Luckily I was installing from a USB stick so it didn't take long to install.

I found a really helpful blog post detailing another's experience doing what I wanted so I used his tips. I've successfullt managed to use the SDHC expansion slot for my /home directory. Currently I'm waiting on a yum update to complete, hopefully after the reboot I'll still have a working OS. At least with the Live CD on the thumb drive it'll be easy to get in and repair things if they break.

I still need to set up evolution and syncevolution but at least I have my Firefox working. More to come I'm sure, but so far it's looking like this little netbook will be going to Alaska with me this summer.

First day with the Acer Aspire One

2009-01-09T22:00:00.000-06:00

Just as I was getting home this evening, Mr. FedEX showed up with the box from Buy.com. Inside was my blue Acer Aspire One. The shipping label showed the package to weigh only 6 pounds. A good start.

Upon opening the shipping box I found my first disappointment. The unit did not come with a 16GB SSD as the website indicated. It has an 8GB SSD drive and an 8GB SDHC card. Well it's still a good deal for $300. A trip to Fry's and two 16GB SDHC class 6 cards later and my plan is back on track. Unfortunately they didn't have any sort of case that really seemed to fit the AA1. I wonder how hard it is to sew neoprene?

For grins I went ahead and booted up the machine and activated my Windows XP license. As expected Windows XP really slowed down the system but it was reasonably usable. Earlier this week I had found a torrent of the Linux recovery disk and so I made the necessary USB drive and followed the text file instructions. Luckily I had a 16G USB stick but the file is only 2G so it was probably a little over kill. But 30 minutes later my Windows XP AA1 was turned into a Linpus AA1. No fuss, no muss.

My plan now is to keep the Linpus on the SSD for the time being. I'm going to load Windows XP on a 16GB SDHC card, and load Fedora 10 on another 16GB SDHC. Once that's done, I'll try loading OS X on the 8GB SDHC that came with the unit.

The keyboard feels cramped. The trackpad needs some getting used to. But I think I can get used to this for trips. Since Firefox comes installed I added Scribefire and Foxmarks, now I'm posting to this blog.

There's plenty of info out there about how to dual boot, triple boot, etc. None the less, I'll post what I do in the coming weeks.

HP dv2810US and Fedora 10

2008-12-31T16:05:00.001-06:00

Over the summer I purchased the laptop because I wanted something lighter for my motorcycle adventures. It has served me well so far. But having recently finished a large development project I started making upgrades to my computer systems before I have to get into the next project coming in January.

My desktop was first, it got upgraded from my old HP DV8000t laptop with 2 extra screens to a new tower machine with a quad core AMD Phenom 9850 processor, Asus motherboard with 3way SLI support, and two dual port Nvidia 9500 GT 512mb cards to drive my three 24 inch screens. It was the first machine that I loaded Fedora 10 onto and finding the right version of the Nvidia drivers was the most difficult part.

So yesterday I had some time so I thought I'd go ahead and upgrade the laptop to F10. First things first, I copied the entire /home and /etc directories onto a spare hard drive so I could find all of my tweaks I had performed to the laptop since this summer. And besides, dropping my home directory back in after the install made things a lot easier.

I knew I was in for a challenge when I booted up the laptop with the install DVD and it couldn't start the graphical interface. So it performed a text install instead. No big deal though, I could just install the Nvidia driver once the install completed but I made sure to chose the development package option during the install so I'd have the compiler and kernel sources installed. So after the installation completed and the laptop rebooted I inserted a USB thumb drive and mounted it manually (the automount doesn't work when you aren't in X windows). I logged in as root since I was going to be working on several things at the system level.


# sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-180.17-pkg2.run

I followed the prompts and let it build the module and install it. When it prompted me to change my X window configuration file I said YES instead of no. This set up an xorg.conf file me to get started. Then it was easy enough to run startx to make sure things worked. They did, so I continued on.

Besides not finding the video card properly, the installation process also had problems with the wireless card, a Broadcom 4310. No problem, I simply reviewed my posting from July. The steps are pretty much the same but I did have to install the rpmfusion repos before I had the ndiswrapper packages available.

** Save yourself some time. Before messing with the video or the wireless, besure to boot up with a network cable plugged in. Then log in as root and run a yum update and let it install all the new updates. It'll save you at least one or two reboots. In my case I got to install the Nvidia drivers twice since the update installed a new kernel.

When I was working on my desktop machine I found a really helpful guide on setting up various applications at my-guides.net. Here are the links to keep pages for me:

Adobe Acrobat: http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/125/26/1/7/#pdf_acrobat
Adobe Falsh (64-bit) & Video plugins: http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/125/26/1/4

The next thing on my list was to install my Zend Studio for Eclipse. It's simply a matter of extracting the .bin file from the tar.gz file and then running sh ZendStudioForEclipse-6_1_0.bin as my regular user. However after installation it would not start. So I had to tweak a few things.

First I wanted to change the version of Java it was running:


su -c 'yum install jre.i386 libgtk-java.i386    # To get the 32bit version of Java and gtk
cd ~/Zend/ZendStudioForEclipse-6.1.0            # Where I installed it
mv jre jre.sun1.5
ln -s /usr/java/jre1.6.0_11 jre

Presto! Now my ZSE works correctly.

Next I had to get my Google Repository installed:


wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/google-repo-setup.sh
su -c 'sh google-repo-setup.sh'
yum install google-desktop-linux

There are plenty of other google things to install like picasa, but I like to start with the google-desktop so I have the quick CTRL CTRL short cut key to do a new google search. Google-gadgets may be a great thing if you like the gadget feature of Windows Vista. But when I'm on my tiny little 15" laptop screen I feel like I'm really cramped compared to the (3) 24" monitors running side by side at 1920 x 1200 on my desktop. Yes, that's 5760 x 1200. I have the capability to add another 3 screens so I could have a 5760 x 2400 desktop but then I'd have to give up my shelf above the monitors.

One other thing, my Novatel U727 USB Wireless card for Sprint. It has a builtin flash that is supposed to look like CD-rom drive when inserted into a Windows machine. On a linux machine it doesn't work so well and you have to eject the cdrom device, usually with "eject /dev/sr1". However, with a little googling back in October I found a better way.

Create a file in /etc/udev/rules.d and add a rule:


sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-novatel.rules

add the following as a single line


ENV{ID_CDROM}=="?*", ENV{ID_SERIAL}=="Novatel_Mass_Storage_#your_serial_number#-0:0", RUN+="/usr/bin/eject /dev/%k"

Be sure to put your device's serial number where I listed

#your_serial_number# above.

Now when I insert the usb card, there's a slight pause and then the Novatel is ready to place calls. Setting up the connection in the Network Manager is a peice of cake. Just go to "edit connections" and click on the "Mobile Broadband", then just add a new connection. The only thing I had to set up was the phone number, #777. The rest I left blank. The next time I inserted the Sprint card it was in my list of available connections. I tried doing the same thing with my Verizon Wireless HTC Touch Pro but since I don't have the tethering service with them it won't work.

Getting SipX and Asterisk to work on the same box

2008-11-13T19:43:00.001-06:00

OK, so I'm one of those data guys who know better than to mess with this dreaded stuff called VoIP. But money talks and there is a certain amount of adventure in making this stuff work.

I've had a Trixbox working for about 2 or 3 years now. Big deal, download the iso, install and configure. It's really pretty easy to do with all the HOW-To's out on the web. I've even been talked into installing a 100 extension set up at a church. And to be honest, besides the pain of dealing with Cisco 7961 phones it wasn't too bad. But it wasn't enough to convert me to a phone guy.

But now that same person who talked me into doing the system at the church has persuaded me to do a system at another 2 sites this isn't going away. This time he wants to use SipXecs instead because it is supposed to be a more sip compliant solution with some high availability features. That's all fine and dandy except it seems that SipX doesn't traverse NAT worth a darn. At least not in the current 3.10 version and not __MY__ NAT. When I tried the upcoming 4.0 release well.... I couldn't even get my Polycom phones to register so maybe it's not ready for me. Remember I'm a data guy.

OK. Trixbox has worked fine with my NAT set up at the house. Since SipX doesn't work with my NAT setup I tried routing my calls from SipX through Trixbox out to my ITSP and into the PSTN. It worked! But I think it's a little clunky to have to install 2 machines just to use SipX for a small site. Especially when Trixbox could probably do most of what they want without the hassle of SipX. So the goal was to get Asterisk, not Trixbox, installed on the same machine as SipX without using any virtual machines or anything of the sort. And I can say after 2 days of trial and error I've done it. Here's what I did:

Start off by installing the SipX/CentOS iso from their site. You can use Fedora or Suse if you want but I did this with CentOS and it works for me...

After install, log in as root and run 'yum update' to get any system updates available.

Follow the various how-to's for SipX to get your phones working and the basic system configured. But hold off on setting up your gateway just yet, I'll talk about that after we get Asterisk installed. In the mean time though you should be able to call the voicemail system and play with the auto attendant.

add an alias ip address to the system. I did it the lazy way by copying /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 to ifcfg-eth0:1 and then edited the file. Here's what it looked like after I was done


DEVICE=eth0:1
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
IPADDR=192.168.0.13
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=172.10.0.1

and my original ifcfg-eth0 file:


DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
IPADDR=192.168.0.12
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=172.10.0.1

Then just restart the network with 'service network restart'

Next install a few packages for compiling asterisk, 'yum install gcc gcc-c++ ncurses-devel' and whatever dependencies yum finds.

Now download asterisk to your /usr/src directory. I used asterisk-1.6.0.1 as it was the latest at the time.

extract the file and cd into the asterisk-1.6.0.1

I ran './configure' followed by 'make install' and 'make samples'

copy contrib/init.d/rc.redhat.asterisk to /etc/init.d/asterisk

then run 'chkconfig --add asterisk'

now asterisk will start automatically for you when you reboot, but first we have to configure it so don't go starting it just yet.

cd to /etc/asterisk and create a directory called samples and move ALL the files into it.

Now we can start with a basic config. copy the sip.conf, rtp.conf, modules.conf, features.conf and extensions.conf into /etc/asterisk from the /etc/asterisk/samples directory.

here's what my sip.conf looks like:


;
; SIP Configuration for Asterisk
;

[general]
context=default                 ; Default context for incoming calls
allowoverlap=no                 ; Disable overlap dialing support. (Default is yes)
bindaddr=192.168.0.13:5060       ; IP address to bind UDP listen socket to (0.0.0.0 binds to all) 
                                ; You can specify port here too, like 123.123.123.123:5080


; Need this for NAT to work correctly. VERY Important!
externip = My External IP
localnet = 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0

                                
; See qos.tex or Quality of Service section of asterisk.pdf for a description of these parameters.
tos_sip=cs3                    ; Sets TOS for SIP packets.
tos_audio=ef                   ; Sets TOS for RTP audio packets.
cos_sip=3                      ; Sets 802.1p priority for SIP packets.
cos_audio=5                    ; Sets 802.1p priority for RTP audio packets.

;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


; An ITSP connection that requires a register line
;[regitsp]
;host=x.x.x.x
;username=xxxxxxxxx
;secret=xxxxxxxx
;type=peer
;dtmfmode=inband
;disallow=all
;context=from-pstn
;allow=ulaw
;qualify=yes

;register=xxxxx:xxxxx@x.x.x.x

; My ITSP
[itsp]
username=xxxxxxx
type=friend
insecure=invite
host=x.x.x.x
dtmfmode=inband
disallow=all
context=from-pstn
allow=ulaw
canreinvite=no


; SipXecs connection
[sipxecs]
type=peer
insecure=invite
host=192.168.0.12
dtmfmode=inband
disallow=all
context=from-sip
allow=ulaw
canreinvite=no

and my extensions.conf


[general]
autofallthrough=yes


[default]
exten => _X.,1,NoOp(Got Unsolicited SIP Request)
exten => _X.,n,Congestion(5)
exten => _X.,n,Hangup


[from-pstn]
exten => 1234567890,1,Dial(SIP/sipxecs/4250)  ; not my real DID
exten => 2345678901,1,Dial(SIP/4260@sipxecs)  ; not my real DID
exten => 3456789012,1,Dial(SIP/4260@sipxecs)  ; not my real DID


[from-sip]
exten => _X.,1,Dial(SIP/itsp/${EXTEN})

and in modules.conf I added this stuff to the bottom to cut down on all the modules that got loaded, you could probably skip this if you wanted to


noload => chan_iax2.so


noload =>  res_ael_share.so
noload => res_phoneprov.so
noload => res_speech.so
noload => res_musiconhold.so
noload => app_transfer.so
noload =>  app_parkandannounce.so
noload => app_privacy.so
noload => app_speech_utils.so
noload => func_vmcount.so
noload => app_voicemail.so
noload => app_sendtext.so
noload => app_url.so
noload => func_db.so
noload => app_playback.so
noload => pbx_spool.so
noload => func_blacklist.so
noload => app_minivm.so
noload => app_ices.so
noload => app_morsecode.so
noload => app_chanspy.so 
noload => chan_mgcp.so
noload => app_dictate.so
noload => pbx_loopback.so
noload => app_disa.so
noload =>  app_zapateller.so
noload =>  app_forkcdr.so
noload => app_mp3.so
noload => app_db.so
noload => app_sms.so
noload => app_nbscat.so
noload => app_externalivr.so
noload => format_jpeg.so

I left the features.conf and rtp.conf files untouched.

The key to my success was in the sip.conf file. I added externip and localnet entries. These allowed asterisk to figure out how to write the SIP headers correctly when traversing my IPCop firewall. The other important entry in the file was the bindaddress=192.168.0.13. What I did there was to bind Asterisk to the aliased IP on the server and not the primary IP which SipX had already been bound to. (I tried just moving port to something else like 5560 but that didn't seem to work right).

With your new configs in place you should be able to start asterisk with a command like 'asterisk -vvvc'

Of course you need to configure your gateway in SipX now. Do so by going to Devices -> Gateway and add a Sip Trunk. Be sure to use the aliased IP you bound asterisk to in the sip.conf file, in my case that was 192.168.0.13.

Next add the gateway to the appropriate dial plan rules and remember to click activate when you are done. I forgot this a few times and it caused me to waste some time trying to figure out why my changes didn't work.

And you'll need to add some port forwarding rules to your firewall to help with incoming calls. Forwards upd ports 5060 and 10,000-20,000 to the ip that you have asterisk bound to, 192.168.0.13 in my case.

Well this certainly isn't a step by step guide on how to set up a complete SipX/Asterisk server but it does highlight the difficult things that took me 2 days to solve. Hopefully it helps someone else too (or me when I forget this next week)

Make America Stronger, speak English or Leave!

2008-08-13T09:05:00.002-06:00

Recently I was in an email discussion with some motorcycle education friends about the challenges of teaching folks who don't speak and understand English so well because it's not their second language. My stand is pretty much in favor of folks learning to speak English first before you are out riding and driving the roads of our great country.

One person brought up an interesting point of view. Her great grand parents were non-English speaking immigrants who came to America around the 1900's. They struggled to adapt to the language, customs and cultures of our great country. And they had to do this in Ohio which wasn't the most forward thinking area of the time.

I thought that was an interesting perspective and one that I hadn't given much thought to. Below is part of my response to her.

----

My frustration isn't so much with the people trying to learn English here, it's with the people that have come to this country and expect us to change for them. Take a look around, businesses all over are putting up signage in Spanish. How is that helping them to transition to our language, customs and culture. There are billboards up all over town written just in Spanish, again how is that helping them to transition? When I go to the ATM or Self Check out at a store I have to choose English or Spanish. And road signs in Spanish, in the US, yes already here! What about translating the US Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem into Spanish?

How do all these translations help to transition a person into speaking English. I don't believe it does. For crying out loud, our anthem and our pledge? No the businesses don't care about helping them transition, they just want their money.

I certainly appreciate your perspective and am glad to know that your great grand parents came to our country so many years ago. But that was a different time and I suspect they were like most of the immigrants of the time, they wanted to be in America and they wanted to be a part of it.

I feel like those coming to our country today, not wanting to learn the language, not wanting to get their citizenship, using fake identities get jobs and get credit, and sending lots of their money back home to Mexico. These people aren't trying to transition into America's language, culture and customs. Instead they want to make America transition to them. �

Connecting the dots

2008-07-12T20:28:00.001-06:00

I'm supposed to be on vacation this week. But I have a new laptop with Fedora 9 so I'm playing with it to see if I can make it really do all I need it to do to make my life easier. So far so good.

Previously I was using ScheduleWorld with syncEvolution on my Fedora 7 laptop in hopes that I could eventually get it to sync with my treo and publish to a google calendar so others could see what I was up to. Well I never got the treo syncing and then about 3 months ago my syncEvolution script started reporting errors so I just disabled it.

Tonight however I revived all of that intrest while trying to figure out a way to sync my old laptop (now my desktop) and my new laptop. And if I could sync with the Treo even better! Well I did it.

First I had to upgrade syncEvolution on the Fedora 7 box. It was on version 0.5 hence the errors. I hunted down the source as there weren't any rpms available for F7 in my current repos. A simple ./configure followed by a sudo make install and I was updated. Then I ran my sync script and everything work. Step 1 complete.

Next I had to install syncEvolution on the F9 laptop. Easy, I just typed yum install syncevolution and it was done. A quit copy of the .sync4j directory from my F7 laptop and I was almost ready to try it. But first I wanted to force my laptop to download everything from the ScheduleWorld server. That meant I needed to change the sync method in the config files and wipe out my local copy in Evolution. I discovered in doing so I have to kill the evolution data-server processes as well. Once done I started Evolution and then ran my syncEvolution script. Presto! I have the info as it appears on ScheduleWorld.

Then it was time to try the Treo again. I installed the Synthesis SyncML Palm client as recommend at ScheduleWorld and tried to sync. First I got the addressbook but nothing else. With a little digging I was able to get the notes and tasks. Then after clearing the name field of the events and retyping "cal" I was able to get the calendar. Woohoo!

Now I can add something on my F9 laptop and when I sync my phone it'll be there. I might just go ahead and spring for the $60 pro version of the Treo software so I can get automated updates versus the $30 standard version where you have to manually sync.

To make things even slicker I found a great little python gnome applet called Genesis that sits in my notification tray and allows me to run ScheduleWorld via a GUI. Now when I log it, it automatically syncs and will sync every 60 minutes after that while I'm logged in. There's a little problem when connected via wireless as the connection does come up in time but I think I can probaly adjust the genesis python code to delay that initial sync by 2 minutes or so in order for me to get online. I might also be able to adjust the code to detect whether the NetworkManager reports that I'm online. That would be even cooler. For now, the premature sync when I first log in is only mildly annoying and can easily be disabled with a click of a checkbox.

At this point I have my Evolution data syncing everywhere and the other day I installed Foxmarks to sync my Firefox bookmarks between computers. The only thing left is to try and install Unison to keep my Documents folder in sync. That's another project while on vacation I guess.

Living with my HP dv2810us and Fedora 9

2008-07-03T19:28:00.001-06:00

This little laptop is starting to become a favorite of mine. I'm very impressed with Fedora 9 too, almost to the point of trying to upgrade my HP dv8000 from Fedora 7. The only hold up is with the VTBook video card that allows me to have a total of 3 monitors on my desktop. Plus I need to keep a Firefox 2.0 version around while I'm developing a customer's web site. But once the project is complete, I'll definitely be upgrading to Fedora 9.

So today I took the laptop out for a little show and tell with a client. Before leaving the house I simply closed the screen and packed it up. When I got to Panera Bread (coffee shop) I opened it and let it resume operations. I went to the NetworkManager and found the Panera network. A few clicks later and I was surfing the web. Wow! what an improvement.

I had a little problem with Adobe's Flash. They haven't release an x86_64 version yet so you have to run nspluginwrapper and install the 32 bit version. Then flash works like a champ. Once again Google to the rescue. I found the solution to the problem in the Fedora release notes.

While googling today I stumbled on a post about Wine and Mapsource. So I decided to install Wine 1.0 via Yum and see what happens. Mapsource installed fine and I was able to easily install the update and unlock my maps. Now all I have to do is get it to "find" my Zumo and I'll be set. Push comes to shove I can simply save the route as a gpx file on the SD card of the Zumo. I mapped a Windows drive to the /media directory so I can see the Garmin when it's plugged in, the software just can't "find" it. That's certainly not the end of the world. Not having to boot into Windows almost feels like nirvana.

Since that worked so well I thought I'd try my luck and install the BMW RepRom DVD that I use when working on my beemer. It was worth a shot. Well things seem to work until you try to view the documentation pages. But while clicking on buttons I stumbled on a Wine warning window saying I needed to install a gecko browser which it promptly did. Interestingly some content can be viewed while other information can't. I suspect a path problem. But at least I'm close to making it work.

I can now use the built in memory card reader on the laptop. This is a very handy feature and means that's one less thing I have to carry with my laptop. At less than 6 pounds this laptop is a serious little power house with a screen I can live with.

The other night I was able to get uvcvideo installed and the webcam working with very little effort. So now I have a web cam that works. I guess I'll be exploring the world of video chatting in the coming months. It would be nice to see the misses while on longer trips.

On a slightly different note, since the bbq I've been using ScribeFire to write all my posts. I'm really starting to like it too. I find it a little easier to use than the blogger interface and I can save posts and come back to them later without ever having to post them. Sure I can do the same with the draft feature in blogger but it's just nice to have it local in my browser. On trips were I can't always get net connectivity this should allow me to record posts and then upload them when I get to a place with connectivity.

Well I think I'll go tinker with Wine and see if I can get my RepRom issues solved. First thing to try is to install Internet Explore 6. It'd be nice to carry the DVD info when I'm on long trips.

Fedora 9 on my HP dv2810us

2008-07-01T13:03:00.001-06:00

Last night was spent making the recovery discs just in case I lose my mind and want to switch back to Windows Vista or maybe if I want to put it back when I sell it. In the time it took me to burn the 3 DVDs I was able to download Fedora 9 x86_64 and burn it to a DVD.

I spent a little time this morning uninstalling all the junk that was included with Windows as I had decided to keep the Windows partition but to downsize it to 35G. I also plan to try an install of Mac OS X on here as well so there's another 35G partition for that. Once things were ready I inserted the Fedora 9 disc and began the install.

The ntfs resizing went pretty well. It was actually faster than I expected. Then the installation of software began. As I had pretty much taken the default Office and Productivity packages there were over 900 packages to install. It took longer than I was used to but then again I don't normally install that much stuff when I'm doing server installs.

Out of the gate, I had sound. The ethernet worked but the wireless did not. The monitor was useable at 800x600 but definitely not the 1280x800 that I wanted and expected. That would have to be fixed. But first I needed to update Fedora to get all the latest packages since the ISO had been spun. That took a while as there were over 250M of updates.

While waiting for the updates I restored my Firefox settings from my desktop/laptop:

from my home directory: scp -r desktop:.mozzilla .

When I started Firefox up it complained about a few plugins that weren't compatible with FF3.0 so I removed them. Firebug is the one plugin I'll want to reinstall as soon as it's available.

Then I restored my evolution settings:

scp -r desktop:.evolution .
scp -r desktop:.gconf/apps/evolution .gconf/apps
scp -r desktop:.gnome2_private/Evolution .gnome2_private

Evolution started up with a problem. All my settings, addressbook, calendar, it was all there. Now I need to start figuring out how to sync it with my desktop instead of just copying it over everytime.

And I added myself to the /etc/sudoers files so I wouldn't have to go to root everytime.

$ su -
# echo "brian ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL" >> /etc/sudoers

the NOPASSWD keeps me from having to enter my password each time

Once the updates were done, it was time for a reboot. Then it was time to try and install the NVidia driver from nvidia.com. There were a few problems along the way in the form of missing packages.

$ sudo yum install gcc

took care of the 'cc' missing error.

$ sudo yum install kernel-devel

took care of the missing kernel source error.

Finally the installation worked:

$ sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-173.14.09-pkg2.run

After the installation completed I tried startx but it failed complaining about a kernel module. So I rebooted again. This time the laptop came up with the NVidia splash screen and my desktop was at 1280 x 800. Such an improvement.

Next step was to get the wireless card working. A quick look at lspci revealed that I had a Broadcom BCM 4310 card onboard. And some googling showed that Fedora 9 already had the B43 driver for Broadcom wireless it just needed the right firmware. So I tried the instructions found at this link:

http://forums.linksys.com/linksys/board/message?board.id=Wireless_Adapters&thread.id=15114

Well that didn't work. When I found the bcm pages at linuxwireless.org I discovered that the bcm4310 is unsupported. So back to Google and it looks like it's the ndiswrapper route for me. So I did a "yum list | grep ndis" to see what packages were available to me. Luckily the ndiswrapper was available in the Livna channel (check this link for how to add the Livna repository). So I installed it:

# yum install ndiswrapper kmod-ndiswrapper

next I made sure the bcm module wouldn't load:

$ echo 'blacklist bcm43xx' | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Then I went to the HP site to get the broadcom driver for my laptop

wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp37501-38000/sp37745.exe

Unfortunately unzip wouldn't extract it so I installed cabextract

# yum install cabextract

Then I extracted the files

# cabextract sp37745.exe

Finally I could install the inf file...

# ndiswrapper -i bcmwl6.inf

then I was making progress!

# ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl6 : driver installed
device (14E4:4315) present

When I tried "modprobe ndiswrapper" I got a lot of errors in /var/log/messages about not being able to load the driver. So then I removed the driver with "ndiswrapper -r bcmwl6". With a little more googling I discovered you can't use Vista drivers with ndiswrapper. Then there was the problem of HP not having Windows XP drivers for my laptop. So I tried a dell driver:

# wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R174291.exe
# unzip R174291.exe
# cd DRIVER_US/bcmwl5.inf
# ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
# ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4315) present
# modprobe ndiswrapper
# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Oh glory days! I had success. To make sure things would work after I a reboot:

# ndiswrapper -ma
module configuration information is stored in /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper

Then it was time to try the reboot. When the reboot was complete I was successfully connected to my wifi network. It just worked.

So now it was time for the more outside the box type things like my Sprint USB U727 card. I found a post on blogspot that made it sound easy. The only problem was that I was never seeing the cdrom icon on my desktop. It turns out for some reason I'm getting error from the /dev/sr1 device thus preventing it from ever loading. My solution was to make a shortcut that ejects the device and then things work as explained in Bryan's blog. My eject command:

$ sudo eject /dev/sr1

I also needed to copy my pidgin settings over so I wouldn't have set up the accounts again:

$ scp -r desktop:.purple .

Next I installed OpenVPN and the NetworkManager plugin:

# yum install openvpn NetworkManager-openvpn

I copied my /etc/openvpn files over from my desktop but trying to set up a connection via the NetworkManager will have to wait for another day I guess.

At this point I have a working laptop that I could take on my trip. I'll probably add the shockwave and flash players. And a few other things but this little Linux laptop is good to go.

Bringing home a new laptop

2008-06-30T16:40:00.001-06:00

In less than 2 weeks I'll be heading to Gillette, Wyoming on my motorcycle for the annual BMW Rally. This trip is going to be a vacation and my wonderful wife is riding with me. So that means we have to pack for 2 people for 10 days using the hard bags, top case and tank panniers. Both of us need to stay connected while traveling so that means carrying 2 laptops.

My current HP dv8000 17" laptop would just barely fit in the door of a side case and would easily fit in the top case. But either place it would be taking up a lot of space and adding weight to the bike. So what's the logical thing to do??? You guessed it, go down to Fry's and buy a cheap 14" or 15" laptop to be my new moto-laptop.

Fry's had a sale going on today on certain laptops. I had 2 primary criteria I wanted to fulfill in this purchase. First it needed to be smaller and lighter than my current laptop. Second I really wanted a trackpad on/off switch. Other than that I wasn't really picky as long as it was cheap. Since this wouldn't be my main development box speed wasn't a major issue. It was more of a case of value once my primary criteria had been met.

I narrowed it down to 2 different HP's and a Sony Vaio. The Sony got knocked out when I realized it didn't have the on/off switch for the trackpad. So then it was a choice between 2 HPs. In the end I spent the extra bucks to get an AMD Turion 64 X2 w/ 3GB of ram, 250GB HD and a web cam. I the extra space and ram were attractive to me. The web cam could provide a challenge for me to work on next year before I take off to Alaska.

I don't know what stars have aligned but it seems I found every single new person at Frys during this process. The friendly sales person that helped me must have done something wrong because when I got to the checkout a manager drug him off to the side and started reading him the riot act. My clerk was a little confused about something but finally continued on. Then after swiping my card there was a problem which required a "csc". So the clerk's manager came over and he got in trouble for not checking something on my I.D. or some such non-sense. Finally I walk out with a new laptop and a $799 credit card bill that I'll have to pay next month when the statement arrives. At least the money is already in the bank.

I get the laptop home and start unpacking it. HP does a fantastic job with their packaging so I follow along with the pictures and do what it tells. When I power up the laptop though my screaming fast 2GHZ AMD Turion 64 X2 comes to a screeching installing the massive amount of garbage that's included with it. And I have to wait while Vista updates itself. So that's when I started this blog post.

Well all that's left now is to wait on the download of Fedora 9 and then I can wipe this thing clean and see how well it does on my OS of choice. In the mean time I might down FireFox 3 and see what all the fuss is about. According to Azureus I have at least another hour before the DVD iso will be down.

More to come on this experience when I have Fedora installed.

Putting on the 4th annual Walters BBQ

2008-06-29T21:00:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was the 4th Annual Walters BBQ and it was an overall success. Each year it has gotten larger and larger. I'm always amazed by a few friends every year and this time was no different.

First a quick little history of the BBQ. I'll spare you the story of why I started BBQ'ing but let's just say it had to do with a 1 week grocery bill of over $300 and a lot of fillet mignon while I was alone at home. Back when we owned My Linux ISP (or when it owned us), Reagan and I thought it was a good idea to have an annual company party so everyone could get together and enjoy a meal. We'd cook steaks and stuff that we'd see on the bbq and grilling TV shows. But when we sold the company that tradition went away too. Wanting to have an excuse to get together with the old staff and stay in touch with some of my more memorable clients we started the annual Walters BBQ in June of 2005. The idea was to have it the weekend before the 4th of July so maybe some party attendee would invite us to their party as well.

Fast forward to today and we have now successfully completed 4 of these events. Each year the guest list has grown larger and larger. For the past 2 years we've had some friends from Dallas come down to help with all the work of set up and tear down. Without our friends we wouldn't be able to put on such an event.

This year amazed me a little more though. At the end of the day, all but one of the people that stuck around to help clean up had been involved as crew members on past Avon and Susan G Koman breast cancer walks that I've participated in. On those walks people from all over come together as a crew to support the walkers and help pull off the event. Yesterday felt about the same. People were outside folding up tents, cleaning up tables and picking up trash. Inside they were taking turns on the dirty dishes, picking stuff up, and putting away the food. For a brief time I had to look around to make sure I was still at home and not out on a breast cancer event. It was amazing. When all the heavy lifting had been done we all enjoyed a little time visiting in the backyard before the skeeters got too big.

Next year will be the 5th annual Walters BBQ and should be even bigger. There's some discussion about the event date as I'm planning on being in Alaska on June 21st riding my motorcycle. No matter when we put it on, I'm sure it'll be great. Especially having friends like ours.

For the numbers folks, we used:
42 racks of baby back ribs
70lbs of brisket
48lbs of pulled pork
2 105oz cans of baked beans
2lbs of pintos
3 105oz cans of whole potatoes
320lbs of ice

and a lot of other stuff too.

An "Ah Ha!" moment

2008-02-22T11:09:00.002-06:00

So yesterday I managed to install Leopard on my laptop only to discover that using a 9GB partition wasn't such a great idea since it seems Apple is just as guilty of trial-ware as Microsoft is. So this morning I'm reloading Leopard again but that's not the "Ah Ha!" moment.

Currently I'm working on a Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402 laptop with a 700mhz P3 and 384M of ram. I plugged it into a 19" flat panel but the best I'm able to get on the screen resolution is 1280x1024. This is a real problem for me since I'm used to something like a 5280x1200 resolution across my 3 screens. To say I'm running out of desktop space is an understatement.

I realized the problem was that icons and text were just too large so I started poking around. In Fedora 7 you can change the fonts dpi and that was my "Ah Ha!" moment. Going to System->Preferences->Look and Feel->Font and then clicking on the Details button gets you to the Font rendering details. Lowering the resolution from 96 to 85 makes all the difference.

Now it's hard to believe that I was working on this laptop regularly back in 2004 and 2005 before I bought the faster P4. Today I have a 1 year old Centrino Duo 2.2Ghz w/ 2GB of ram and I'm already looking at a Dell m1330 Core Duo 2.6Ghz with 4GB of ram to be my next traveling computer as it only weights 4 pounds. Oh how great technology is!

Running Mac OSX on an HP dv8000

2008-02-21T20:00:00.003-06:00

The other day I started looking at running Mac OS X in a Virtual Machine under VMware. Well getting 10.4 (tiger) to work was pretty simple as there were already VM images out there so it was really nothing more than finding the torrent and downloading. Unfortunately it is a little slow and clunky but it should work OK for testing a web site in Safari 2.5 but what about the new OS X Leopard and Safari 3?

Well today I started experimenting with loading Leopard into a VM on my Centrino Duo HP Pavillion dv8000 laptop. I didn't get very far with the Kalyway 10.5.1 ISO so I tried the iATKOS 1.0ir2 ISO and got a little farther but I never managed to make it to the initial welcome screen of the installer. So I had to make a choice, give up and live with Tiger or do a bare metal install...

Of course I went with the bare metal install on an old disk that I had. I went with iATKOS first because it was a newer disk and had a few more things already done for me. The only problem is that I didn't understand all the options so it was too confusing and the install didn't work out. Then I tried the Kalyway ISO and it worked like a champ. Upon reboot I had sound but no network. I decided to load the Kalyway 10.5.2 update in hopes that it would fix my network issue. No such luck.

I decided to work on getting Grub to manage my multiboot situation and after a little effort I had it working. So now I'm able to boot into Fedora 7 for Linux, and reboot into OS X Leopard.

Next was the network. I found a post talking about using a USB network dongle and since I happened to have a Linksys USB200M I thought I'd give it a try. After installing an incorrect kext file I discovered that Leopard should natively support the adapter. Of course since I'm new to OS X I ended up reinstalling the os. Along the way I discovered that I have to use my powered USB hub for USB stuff as the the other USB ports on the laptop don't seem to work. Odd......

With Leopard reinstalled I inserted my Linksys and things worked. Hooray! So then I downloaded an ext2 application which allows me to read my Linux drives. I opted to mount them read only as to avoid possible data corruption. Once I was able to see my Linux home directory I snagged my firebox bookmarks and dropped them in the right folder. Now I have the same Firefox bookmarks in both OSes. I think I might write a little script to sync them every time I boot into Mac.

Now if I can only get dual or triple screens working as well as the wifi or on-board nic I'll be good to go.

I must be getting old

2008-02-02T12:52:00.000-06:00

or society is just losing it's compassion and respect for others...

This morning Reagan and I went to see Rambo in the AMC 24 in Sugar Land. The last few times we've gone to see movies we've had problems with people carrying on conversations during the movie. Some how asking them to please take their conversations outside is offensive to them and we're viewed as the rude people. Go figure....

Well today wasn't any different. We sat 3/4 of the way up the theater just to house left of center. This is the best seats we could get as two men were setting in the optimum spot on the row. So the movie starts and sure enough these two start yapping up a storm providing commentary about the movie. I lean over and ask politely that they wait until after the movie to discuss it or take it outside. I'm told that I picked where I sat and I could move if I didn't like it.

Reagan also had words with another movie patron about noise. The person behind us was talking on his cell phone. Of course when she talked to him he seemed to listened and stopped talking on the phone. It must have been her kind and gentle approach.

So my question is this, have I gotten old and intolerant of others or are people just becoming more self absorbed and disregarding those around them. I'd like to think I'm getting old and intolerant but I fear it's a problem with society more than me.

I guess we'll be going shopping for a new home theater set up soon. With the ridiculous price for movie tickets and food plus the rudeness of our fellow man, it seems that buying an elaborate home theater is actually a bargain. Not to mention you can have intermission when nature calls...

Get out and don't come back

2008-01-09T11:56:00.001-06:00

That's what my doctor said to me today when I had my exam to see how the finger was doing. He had me bend my finger, make a fist, hold it out straight while he pressed on it. Everything was good.

He says it'll take about 6 months for the swelling to go down as much of it is due to scar tissue. There was no concern what so ever that I had quit wearing my splint weeks ago. In fact he was quite pleased with my range of motion and said no more therapy was necessary. Then he wished me a safe and healthy 2008 and said "Get out and don't come back". That was music to my ears.

So I still haven't seen all the bills and there's a little confusion with some offices regarding the correct insurance information, but the last time I added it all up the medical bills were over $8,000. And that was all caused by just a few seconds of inattention. Now when I sharpen my knives, Yes I'm sharpening them again! Now when I sharpen knives I pay very close attention because ..... Stupid Hurts!

Insert SmartChip

2008-01-05T15:27:00.001-06:00

That's the message displayed on my dad's phone this morning when I came in from the deer stand on this the final weekend of the 2007-08 deer season.

A little history, 12 years ago coming to the deer camp without a phone wouldn't have been an issue. Cellular service was spotty at best. So if you had a phone and it quit working you would get it fixed on Monday or whenever you got back. Heck 12 years we didn't have hot water for showers and water pressure was created by a little pump someone had to turn on when your were ready to jump under the cold water shower fed by our water tank. Brrrr, it seemed cold. Over time we've gotten smarter and more comfortable. A LP gas water heater was brought up. The water pressure pump motor was fixed so we have pressure throughout the cabin. A full size refrigerator was brought up. And cellular companies added more towers in the area. Today you can talk on the phone from any where on the property.

So back to my dad's phone. Earlier this season he was introduced to texting. This weekend he was trying to learn more about it so he could use it better. Last night while trying to send a message to mom, it was discovered that his contactbook doesn't have her number stored as 10 digits. When he tried sending a message from his contactbook it failed. Send a message with 10 digits and works. Simple, correct the entry in the contactbook.

Well this morning while on the deer stand he's trying to text mom and realizes he hasn't fixed the 10 digit number issue so he goes in there to fix her number. Somewhere along the way he stumbles on the My Number screen and sees his number starting with 1-. Thinking he should try to fix it, he tries to change the number. The phone won't let him. However it let him enter his number sans 1- in the second entry. Upon saving it he's prompted with a message talking about programing the phone. He chooses cancel. Boom, no more phone, just "Insert SmartChip".

So when I see the message I check the chip of course. It's there so next I fire up my Nokia N800 and Google for possible solutions using my phone's bluetooth tethering Internet feature. No luck.. A quick check at Cingular.com shows the nearest store is in Lufkin about 30 minutes away. A call to the store confirms that they can fix/replace the sim card as needed. I get the address from the web site and grab my gps from the jeep. The GPS, another new experience for my dad. We arrive at the store and a few minutes later we are walking out with a new sim chip and he bought a shiny new phone cover too.

By the time we eat lunch and drive back it's 1:30 and too late for a nap. So we take care of a few end of season things and then I head back to the stand. Where of course I'm making this entry using my trusty N800 and cellular internet service. Hmmm, I wonder how technology is going to affect my hunting in another 12 years? One thing is for certain, as things get more high tech and comfy up here I seem to be missing out on more naps.

Better get back to hunting now.

Doubling the odometer

2007-12-18T20:31:00.000-06:00

This post has moved to http://behindthebars.blogspot.com/2007/12/doubling-odometer.html

The finger moves (a little)

2007-12-05T17:23:00.000-06:00

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.

Dell's Open Source computers

2007-11-28T18:51:00.000-06:00

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.

Up on the cutting board

2007-11-27T21:00:00.000-06:00

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!

Time wasted

2007-11-26T17:00:00.000-06:00

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.

Thanksgiving day massacre

2007-11-22T21:00:00.000-06:00

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!

Upgrading my Verizon Treo 700p

2007-11-21T14:38:00.000-06:00

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.

Living with the n800

2007-11-17T07:17:00.000-06:00

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.

The N800 sees day light again

2007-08-01T20:08:00.000-06:00

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.

Bringing home the new bike

2007-06-04T16:00:00.000-06:00

This post has moved to http://behindthebars.blogspot.com/2007/06/bringing-home-new-bike.html

Ft. Stockton for Lunch

2007-05-28T23:00:00.000-06:00

This post has moved to http://behindthebars.blogspot.com/2007/05/ft-stockton-for-lunch.html

Is Home Depot really for the D.I.Y.er?

2007-05-02T17:22:00.000-06:00

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.

Test burn in the barrel pit

2007-04-30T08:18:00.000-06:00

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.

That old generator

2007-04-26T08:23:00.000-06:00

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.

A weekend with the N800

2007-04-17T10:47:00.000-06:00

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:

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!

2 days with my N800

2007-04-13T21:00:00.000-06:00

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!

N800 and the Stowaway BT Keyboard

2007-04-11T17:01:00.000-06:00

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.

Getting mypodder to work with FC6

2007-04-04T12:23:00.000-06:00

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:

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.

It's on fire!

2007-04-02T10:26:00.000-06:00

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.

One weekend closer on the BBQ pit

2007-03-26T09:04:00.000-06:00

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?

Progress on the BBQ pit

2007-03-23T13:35:00.000-06:00

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

Treo700p Bluetooth DUN it!

2007-03-12T02:31:00.000-06:00

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:

More N800 fun

2007-03-08T19:14:00.000-06:00

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.

my n800

2007-03-05T16:28:00.000-06:00

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.

RoadRunner slows me down finally

2007-02-21T09:34:00.000-06:00

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.

IPCop traffic shapping does work

2007-01-31T22:07:00.000-06:00

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.

Getting closer to having a 1&1 server up again!

2007-01-30T09:20:00.000-06:00

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.

Upgrading Plesk, what a nightmare!

2007-01-28T00:25:00.000-06:00

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?

VTBook Video card on a Linux Laptop - FC4

2007-01-25T15:00:00.000-06:00

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.

FC6 on my Toshiba P35-S611 Laptop Freezing

2007-01-22T16:54:00.000-06:00

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!

Living without DSL - Day 2

2007-01-19T10:42:00.000-06:00

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.

Stupid Alltel DSL

2007-01-18T16:51:00.000-06:00

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!

FC6 on my Toshiba P35-S611 Laptop

2007-01-18T11:52:00.000-06:00

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.

5 does in the field

2007-01-07T09:04:00.001-06:00

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....

My treo takes deer hunting hi tech

2007-01-06T19:13:00.000-06:00

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.

broken shower and a trip to town

2007-01-06T15:00:00.000-06:00

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?

2007-01-06T11:29:00.001-06:00

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

2007-01-06T08:23:00.001-06:00

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.

1,2,3,4 Does

2006-12-31T09:18:00.001-06:00

That's probably the largest number of does I've seen moving together around here. They came walking down the south road in single file. It was still pretty dark so they were hard to see. This is the same area where I spooked a deer yesterday morning at about the same time. This has been a good road to watch this year as it's over my left shoulder.

6:45 came and the feeder went off. All 4 were startled but only took a step or two to get out from under the feeder. It was interesting to see they all faced different directions looking for danger. Once the motor stopped they all turned back toward the feeder and began eating again.

By 7:30 they had pretty well cleaned up all the feed and began to gradually move away. In general they were heading down the new shot lane I cleared a month ago behind the feeder. As they meandered down the lane they all took an opportunity to urinate in the lane. It's late enough in the season that I probably won't see any outcome from this but it gives me hope for closing weekend next week.

So 2 more days of the season logged and nothing but Does. That's about par for the time of the season I guess. By now the does are feeling less pressure as their season ended after Thanksgiving while the bucks are still being shot at. The rut seems to have quieted down as well. With 5 mature does seen this weekend you'd expect to see/hear at least a young buck. Nope! I think hot deer love in the woods will have to wait until next year.

a new bike for Christmas?

2006-12-30T11:10:00.000-06:00

So being an instructor at a Harley dealership can be interesting especially when you don't ride a Harley.

Last week the dealership got in a nice black and yellow Vrod. The yellow perl skulls painted into the black stripe are really cool. It would match my yellow GSX-R nicely.

The Vrod seems to really appeal to my wife but now she tells me she doesn't like the seat and the mid controls are too rear set for her but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Last night she stopped by the dealership to visit Tanya, and see the bike. She runs into her uncle and cousins who were looking at glooves to wear in the cold. One thing leads to another and I get this pic sent to my phone. A little later I get a call asking if I've looked at my phone. I see the pic and call her back. Reagan tells me she's bought the Vrod and that I need to bring up her helmet and gear.

- ok this is the first signs of a prank.
1. She has yet to ride her Savage up to the dealership because of traffic
2. It was sort of nasty outside and they would have graciously loaded it up in the truck for her

So I'm just hanging out at the house waiting to see what happens. Oh if she has bought a Vrod I can almost hear the hum of my new Concourse14 in the next few months when it gets to the showroom floor.

Meanwhile the whole dealership is getting into this joke. They get her the welcome letter that all buyers get. She gets an accessory catalog. They even offer to make up a sales receipt all in the name of this joke on me.

Our buddy Ron calls Reagan to see what we are up to for the night. Thinking I put him up to finding out if she really bought the bike, she tells him she bought a Vrod. Now Ron is a serious fan of the Harley. He's got the bike, the Ford Harley edition truck, the pool table, the christmas tree, the clock. I'll bet if you cut him he'd bleed orange. He's a big fan of HD. So telling him she bought an HD got him excited. He in turn called our other friends Chris and Erica. Erica calls Reagan offering words of congratulations and they decide that we are all meeting up at Kona Grill for drinks.

Back to the dealership happenings, Reagan even got one of the sales guys to call and ask me for my address so he could deliver the bike today. It's a mighty sneaky group up there.

So Reagan gets home with catalog in hand and starts looking through it. She shows me the welcome letter that tells about the HOG chapter meeting stuff. So then I tell her to check on insurance for the bike. See how much to add it to our existing policy. She gets the number and I asked how that compared with what she could get through HD since I was pretty sure they had insurance with their fianance program. Uuuuuuuh. She couldn't tell me how it compared. Well how much does the bike cost? She said 35K

- now my suspicions were confirmed.
1. She would not by a $35K at her current riding level.
2. the Vrod lists for 15-19K depending on which model you get. The screaming eagle is more but this wasn't one.

So the joke is foiled. But wait! Our dear friend Ron thinks it's for real.

We get to the bar and meet up with Chris & Erica. He's a little suspicious for many of the same reasons I was. And there was the fact that I wasn't all excite. She fesses up and they get a laugh out of the story. Chris calls Ron to add a little fuel to story and get him to come there.

Ron and Cathy show up and you can tell he's suspicios but hopeful. Finally she fesses up and explains how he got accidentally pulled into the joke.

In reality, if she had told him what was up and got him in on pranking me I probably would have bought into it. Who knows I might have even rushed up to the dealership.

It's a pretty bike and it'll make someone really happy. I'll try to get some photos of it next week.

The bike that almost had a home in our garage.

cops, high water and deer. Oh my!

2006-12-30T07:36:00.000-06:00

That sums up everything I encountered on my way up to the deer camp this morning. One of Cleveland's finest decided he wanted to welcome me to his fine city instead of chatting with one of his fellow city emplyees.. "I clocked you at 78 in a 65, where ya heading to in such a hurry?" he asked. I didn't think it was prudent to tell him I was ONLY doing 77 according to the GPS which I glanced at when I saw him. I handed him my id and stuff and waited patiently. A few minutes later he came back and asked for my autograph and then presented me with a nice yellow slip of paper and told me to contact the court before July 17th, correction January 17th. Guess he's anxious for the summer already.

Learned something about my Garmin Zumo 550 during this. If you turn if off it stops your trip timer altogether, both the overall time and the stopped time. Interesting. Have to remember that when travelling. Want to leave it on during fuel stops so I get more accurate times.

Next came the high water. Even with my early morning visit I still made it to Corrigan by 5:30. Cruising down HWY 352 (according to the GPS, actually it's FM352 though) I notice what looks like a puddle of water up ahead. The closer I get the bigger the puddle gets. I then realize there's a creek in the area of the puddle and I quickly begin stopping. I figured if I locked up the tires it would be better than hitting the high water at 60mph. The tires never lost traction and I managed to come to a stop about 20 feet into the puddle. Good thing too because when I started moving forward again the water got up to the axles. Once through the high water things were back to normal and I was on my way.

Driving down Purvis Rd while marvelling at my GPS's map detail I saw 3 does crossing the road just past the house on the right with the pond next to it. According to the GPS I had just passed Kyle's road. So much for the deer moving later in the morning. They were already moving and it was a good hour before daylight still.

I turned onto Palmerly Parrish road and gosh the GPS still knew where I was. Wow, technology is great. Guess what I found at the creek? If you guessed water you are correct. The bridge itself was high and dry but on the other side there was standind water. I down shifted to 1st and just eased in to it. The further I went the deeper it got so finally I opened the door to check. Water was just under my nerf bars. Thank goodness for the Spring Over Axle conversion I did a few years ago. So when I got to the gate there was still a good foot of water standing so I got out and stayed on the outside of the Jeep. Those nerf bars came in handy as they gave me something to stand on as I crawled onto the hood of the Jeep to get to the gate. I managed to get the gate unlocked and opened without getting into the water. Bravo! Closing the gate was trickier but I stayed dry. I'll go back down later and lock it.

Once on the propety the gps could do nothing except tell me what direction I was going. Maybe I'll drive the whole road around the property to see if I can create a crumb trail that I can convert into a road for the map.

Hunting later in the season is nice because it gets light later. I was on the stand by 6:15. About 5 minutes later moving around in my seat I made a farting sound with the seat cushion (honest it was the cushion). Well apaerently that was enough to spook a deer probably 30' south of my stand because I heard it snort and hussle through the bushes.

The feeder went off promptly @ 6:45 but it was still too dark to see. Just a little after 7 I saw a doe and fawn coming up my right shot lane. They got half way up before she decided she didn't like the situation and turned around. The fawn followed with it's tail up high. It was quite a site as it's tail looked like it was 2 sizes too big for the little fawn. A few minutes later I got a brief glimpse of a deer to the left of my feeder. Just a brief glimpse at best.

So it's now 8:15 and I haven't seen any more deer. There's been an amazing amount of shooting. Almost sounds like opening weekend, of course some of it is waterfowl hunting I reckon. Either that or you've got 10 hunters shooting at the same deer and missing.

More to come...

coldest morning this season

2006-12-08T07:18:00.000-06:00

Those are the words I heard on the local news as I left the camp house this morning, the outside thermometer reading 28 and falling.. The predicted low in Lufkin was a chilly 22 degrees. My best guess is we got to 25 here.

No deer this morning but it's only 7

Texas weather

2006-11-24T09:02:00.000-06:00

1 week since I shot my big buck and I'm back on the stand. It's amazing how the weather changes during this time of year. Last week it was close to 32 degrees and this week we are in the mid 50's at sun rise.

I've heard less shooting today and haven't seen anything yet except a squirrel. There's a cow off in the distance who keeps calling for her calf. It sounds like she's getting a little annoyed.

tread lightly

2006-11-19T07:02:00.000-06:00

I was reminded of this saying this morning on my way to the deer stand. I was just 50 feet away from the stand which I stepped on a small stick.
CRACK!
Then I hear the sound of a spooked deer to my right. Judging from the deep sound of the thumps as it's hoofs hit the ground it was a heavy deer.
Lucky for me I'll probably see the deer later this morning as the deer tend to stay in general area .
Remember tread lightly.

2006-11-17T11:11:00.000-06:00

brrrrr it's cold
it's the 3rd weekend of deer season and this morning started off cold. I drove up instead of coming up last night. I got delayed at the camphouse but got out on the stand @ 6:10. Brrrr it's cold. The moon was just a sliver last nice so I expected to see deer pretty soon after sun up.
So far nothing.....

Ok it's 9am and a doe finally shows up to check out my feeder. She's small and seems nervous.

Oh shit I have to put the phone down I hear a buck....

Nice! It's a 9 point with thick horns. Aim, squeeze, FLLINCH! Reload, fire, MISS? Reload, breathe... He's walkin right towards me with a limp on the rear leg. Breathe...wait for a broadside shoot. No neck shot here... Aim, squeeze, drop.

No more ammo so I load 3 more shells into the gun. It's cold enough he can sit for a bit, who knows there might be a bigger one in a bit.

2006-11-13T14:24:00.000-06:00

First day back

OMG, I'm quickly reminded of what I dislike about taking vacations, the first day back. Found out I gained 10 pounds from my poor food choices and complete lack of exercise. Work is pyling up already. And people just drive too darn aggressively, I don't think I actually made it back to the house yesterday before I was ready to kill another driver.

I'm a statistic

2006-11-11T16:44:00.000-06:00

According to this article I'm one of 100,000 new bloggers starting a new blog every day.

2006-11-11T11:59:00.000-06:00

Post via mo:BlogPost via mo:Blog

well there's no list of current posts for editting but they do seem to be working on the app which is more than I can say for a few other options out there

2006-11-10T14:01:00.000-06:00

8 First Postwell actually this is my second post but my first is stuck on my Treo.

So after living with my Treo as my primary source of Interent connectivity for almost 2 weeks I thought I'd try blogging.