* Played with my Twins… a lot.
* Played with my oldest son.
* Painted my son’s room
* Took my oldest to a movie.
* Did some minor woodworking modifying a stander for my son.
* Worked in the yard
* Cleaned the gutters
* Ran several longer runs
* Took some long walks to clear my head
* Worked on automating some code that I’ve been meaning to automate
* Worked on a migration plan for a CentOS 5 box
* Got the VPN working on my Fedora Laptop.
* Worked on my bot idea.
* Setup a new git server
* Explored a new blog engine backend

Overall, it was a pretty relaxing time. Some of the items on there were pretty easy, several were more work than I wanted. But in the end, I got to spend more time with the family, help out my wife and just get away from it all. It was definitely needed, time to plan the next break!

• Solve a Rubik’s Cube in under 3 minutes – This one may seem silly and it very much is. But its a brain teaser and something that has sparked a bit of competition at the office. I’m all about camaraderie and I enjoy picking on co-workers as I crush their hopes and dreams in friendly competition
• Run 365 miles this year Some could call this run a mile everyday but that just isn’t in the cards for me. My hope is when the calendar goes from ’17 to ’18, I have 365 miles under my belt and hopefully a few less pounds on the body. With the running crew at work, I think I can make this a reality. So far I’m on track with a month in. I already have 51 miles under my belt with a couple of months in and cold ass weather here in the midwest.
• Learn Swift I’ve dipped my toe in learning swift a few times now. But there has always been something that has come up that has distracted me. I’ve recently started the iTunes U course on Developing iOS Apps with Swift. Its been good so far and I’m eager to learn more. Hopefully I can get an app I’ve been wanting to develop off the ground in the process.

3 is a good number of goals given twins, lack of sleep and everything else that seems to crop up. Some are physically challenging, some are mentally challenging, 1 is just dumb. But they’ll give me something to work for along with everything else that happens with life. I’m hopefully a good father, husband, friend and co-worker in the process.

• Learn Swift – FAIL I did some tutorials and the playground activity from the developer portal. I do like what I’ve seen in swift so far. But I’m not proficient in it yet so I consider this one a fail. While I did learn some, the goal was to proficient enough to ship an app or at least attempt an app.
• 26 posts – Not even close. I got 8. Just didn’t have the time to write with everything else that was happening. Not to mention, I kind of enjoyed checking out a bit at night which I don’t think is a bad thing either.
• Run Forest, Run! – FAIL – Didn’t make my 300 number but did put up a respectable 222 miles in 2016. Not bad considering I took close to 10 weeks off from running. I did start a running club at work as I only have time to run over the lunch hours it seems and maybe sneak away for a decent run on the weekends.
• zzzZZZzzz – LOL FAIL FAIL FAIL…I had twins. There have been several nights where an hour of uninterrupted sleep was amazing. Not to mention the several nights I spent at the hospital with Evan during his surgery. Sleep just hasn’t been happening.

0 for 4. An amazing amount of failure. But I learned a lot, the family is growing and striving. The job is good and I’m happy. Overall 2016 was a success.

Now to conquer 2017!

With a triumphant roar, the Patterson boys came into this world on 8/8. Evan Michael lead the way at 10:32am coming in at 5lbs 9oz and measuring 18 inches. His brother Andrew Douglas gave mom a bit more trouble and made a fashionably late appearance at 11:16 after an emergency c-section. Topping his brother in size at 19 and a quarter inches and 5lbs 11 oz. Both are adjusting to all the new found space and momma is recovering well.

Now for the stuff we know about the boys. Specifically Evan. Evan has a few challenges other than being incredibly good looking like his father. We knew going in that he had a heart issue that will eventually need to be repaired surgically. We knew it was also a sign of Down syndrome which he has. He’s being monitored closely and doing good. Evan is surrounded with a loving family and we’re sure he’ll adjust to all the nurses flirting with him. Oh and did we mention they are both absolutely stealing our hearts?

Blair and I are extremely happy and equally exhausted. We appreciate all the love and support we’ve received from family and friends. We look forward to you meeting the twins and I’m sure Nolan will love to show them off.

The good thing about the Fitbit was that it kept me in line to always hit my goal of 10K steps. It made you want to get that little buzz on the wrist knowing that you had accomplished something. But, it also came at a cost. I would find myself going for a walk in the morning when changing up the routine would have been just as effective. Yoga, lifting weights, something else all together. I’m not saying having this goal is a bad thing, its definitely good. But after 2 years, I think I’m ready for a break.

My Fitbit broke in the same fashion as last year around this time. All of a sudden I could see condensation on the screen. Then the strap starting coming apart and it finally ended when I was sitting on the couch and the Fitbit was marking me in and out of a workout ever 1.5 seconds. Then, no more.

RIP Fitbit. You were a good companion but I need to try something new.

Nothing really fancy there and I put this in day 1 so I figured everything would run and the tidy command is pretty straight forward.

Unfortunately, when I checked the machine after it had been recieving the backup files for several months, I found something a bit disturbing…Thousands of files!!! WTF!

The documentation seemed pretty straight forward and I was using this command in other parts of my manifests that worked as expected.

The fix!

The key was at the very end of the documention in the type section.

As you will note, the default is atime. Because the files are being FTP’d in, they are never being read by the system, simply written. So if you ran a command like find . -type f -atime +30, you would get zero results. My fix is pretty simple, change this to mtime and suddenly I have a lot less files on the system. The new code now looks like this:

European media outlets are reporting that the location of a raid conducted on a suspected safe house Wednesday morning was extracted from a cellphone, apparently belonging to one of the attackers, found in the trash outside the Bataclan concert hall massacre. Le Monde reported that investigators were able to access the data on the phone, including a detailed map of the concert hall and an SMS messaging saying “we’re off; we’re starting.” Police were also able to trace the phone’s movements.

Why this matters

I know that there are a lot of people out there that think our government can do no wrong and national security is the most important thing that they can do. But there is a lawful way in which to handle this. The 4th amendment to the constitution should protect us from the massive surveillance systems that the government has put in place since 9/11. Yes, it was horrible what happened on that day and I’m still as pissed about it now as I was then. But I’m more upset at the eroding of our rights as politicians and government officials put in more programs to watch our electronic communications en mass.

Several companies have either released statements or made comments on the current state of encryption and working with the government in these matters. My company has stated this:

We condemn terrorism and have total solidarity with victims of terror. Those who seek to praise, promote, or plan terrorist acts have no place on our services. We also appreciate the difficult and essential work of law enforcement to keep people safe. When we receive lawful requests from these authorities we comply. However, we will continue to fight aggressively against requirements for companies to weaken the security of their systems. These demands would create a chilling precedent and obstruct companies’ efforts to secure their products

Tim Cook and Apple have their letter which ends with:

Opposing this order is not something we take lightly. We feel we must speak up in the face of what we see as an overreach by the U.S. government.

We are challenging the FBI’s demands with the deepest respect for American democracy and a love of our country. We believe it would be in the best interest of everyone to step back and consider the implications.

While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.

So encrypt your backups, use https when ever possible. Set really difficult passwords and use a password manager like LastPass so you don’t forget them. Remember folks, just because you have nothing to hide, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care about this subject. One person in particular that has brought more to light on the intrusions into our lives put it best:

If you think privacy is unimportant for you because you have nothing to hide, you might as well say free speech is unimportant for you because you have nothing useful to say.

–Edward Snowden

It makes me think back to someone that saw something in me when I certainly didn’t see it. That person was Jenny Simmons, Bartlett Hall Coordinator at the University of Northern Iowa. Jenny was in charge of running the residence hall, making sure the monkeys didn’t go completely nuts and finding and hiring resident assistants (RA) to help in all areas of a residents time at UNI.

I’ll be perfectly honest, going into college and even after my first year there, I had zero ambitions of being an RA. My freshman year RA was ok, not the greatest, but ok. I didn’t see much fun in the job. It wasn’t until my second year when I started to see some friends become RAs and I had an RA that was both having fun while keeping the train from coming off the rails. Because let’s face it, there is a lot to college that happens outside of the classroom.

About the time of the hiring orientation and interviewing process I would say one of the more significant events happened in my young life. My long term girlfriend at the time broke it off with me. We had been together 4+ years but she attended a different school and the distance got in the way. Yes, young love comes and goes but when you’re young, things like this do amazingly stupid things to your mind and ego. Needless to say, I was a bit of a mess over the whole thing. So I then did what any sane and rational person would do in a situation like this, I would put myself through relentless and grueling self reflective interviews of coarse.

What was I thinking?!?

The process basically works like this. You submit an application, you have a bunch of pre-interviews with various RAs and Hall coordinators and then you go into the halls to have MUCH more in depth interviews. As in, expect to spend 2-3 hours getting interviewed by the current RA staff of that hall. And not just one residence hall, sometimes multiple. I interviewed at 4 different halls. After all that, the hall coordinators have a 1 on 1 interview with you before they make their selections in what is roughly equivalent to a NFL draft day. I’m serious, trades are made, deals are done.

It was during this time that I probably was the most honest and most raw with my answers. If I blew an interview, who cares, move on. It was honestly pretty refreshing to remove the filter.

I’m not sure what Jenny saw in me during those interviews. Maybe it was a sense of humor. Maybe it was my complete lack of bullshit answers. I really don’t know for sure. But what I can tell you is this, it was one of the best jobs I ever had. I met some amazing people along the way both residents and fellow RAs. Some of which are my closest friends today. This is where I met my wife as she was on staff with me. And she will tell you, she was pretty sure we weren’t going to get along.

I have other people that took a chance on me, who took that chance on you?

Their needs are pretty simple and based on the ranch style of the house, we could get away with 1 access point on the main floor as its a very open concept home. Planning ahead of time essentially meant having the electricians run a cat6 cable from the utility room, where we had other cat6 cables run for for each coax cable that was installed, to a certain location in the ceiling. From there I would do the rest as long as the cable was in an access box of some sort.

Most people will recommend Netgear or Linksys for a decent access point and router solution. While those are just fine, I like to go with something a little higher grade. For an access point, I really like the equipment from Ubiquiti. They come with a new controller software that you can either run on your machine when you need it or if you have a home server, you can install it there and simply hit the web page when you need to make a change. The Access Point (AP) that I recommend for folks is the Ubiquiti UniFi AP Enterprise WiFi System Long Range. Why the long range version? This was going as a single AP in the home. If you are doing multiple APs that you are going to place in several floors, I would go with the 3 pack option of the standard range which is more than you will need in a home. These are not your cheap access points that you get with a $60 Linksys, these are commercial grade that are used in businesses, hospitals, you name it. The controller software makes setting up a mesh of these pretty seamless. And to top it all off, when you install it against a ceiling, it looks like an oversized smoke detector and just blends into the background.

Now, the missing piece in this puzzle is you still need something to serve up DHCP and route your packets to the internet. I personally like the DD-WRT software so I will typically find one of the cheaper wifi / router models that specifically points out DD-WRT support. One of my favorite brands for this is either Buffalo or ASUS. You may not have heard of these but they are good enough for what we need and they save on the pocket book. For this particular install I went with the ASUS (RT-N12/B) Wireless-N 300 Advance wide coverage Home Router: Fast Ethernet, Build-in 5DBi antenna, 3 in 1 switch(Router/Repeater/Access Point) and support upto 4 Guest SSID(Open source DDWRT Support). The name just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it? The thing to remember is, once you get these units, you will need to follow the instructions on how to get DD-WRT on the device. This is not trivial by any means but its do-able if you are comfortable on a computer. My setup from here is pretty simple. I turn off wireless on the DD-WRT router as I have the APs to do that work for me. I then setup a DHCP range of 192.168.1.X with a few reservations for things such as the access point and away I go. The DD-WRT interface is straight forward but there are a few tabs where you can quickly get into the deep end. I recommend finding someone that knows what they are doing to set this part up for you. Overall, I keep my settings pretty basic. I customize the NTP and DNS servers that I want my clients to use and that’s about it. The DD-WRT software is free and its pretty powerful so if you really wanted to have some fun, you can setup guest networks that are separate from your home wifi so people coming to your house can’t see all the machines on your normal network. You know, those unsavory people you invite over like friends and family!

There you have it, my recommendations for a wireless setup in your home. A cheap router running DD-WRT and then your choice of 1 or more Ubiquiti Access Points. If you are curious the exact install configurations that I have, hit me up and I can provide them to you.