What is Reality?

Nice to hear of someone trying it...

2010-03-24T14:47:00.000-04:00

This is a Guest post from Ilise Samolyk following up on some of the work her sister has been doing. Pretty cool to hear about a larger institution implementing energy efficiency measures. Now if we could only get a few more to do it!

I believe our energy concerns didn't just go away because gas prices are down. The current price at the pump hasn't changed anything, eventually prices will go back up.   I'm hopeful that our focus on alternative energy sources and conservation won't fade away with the lower gas prices. I know that the tough economy has kept many of us focused on conservation measures.

Many of my friends are switching to compact florescent lights (CFL) and taking other conservation measures. Some have gone as far as measuring the energy draw on various devices and using that information to determine where to install timers or simply unplug the device. We've installed CFL's and unplugged our extra computers.   Every little bit helps and at least one family has cut their energy bill by $100 a month.

It's also encouraging to see institutions apply these measures. In fact my sister, Dr. Jill Landesberg-Boyle put simple conservation measures at FKCC, which is now yielding a savings of $100K a year. She started the effort through a communication to all employees asking for their help in conservation measures, turn out the lights, turn off computers, etc..   The maintenance team incorporated an energy check into their rounds, timers were incorporated on public TV's, and lighting sensors were installed.

Some conservation measures require more up front investment, even switching from incandescent light to florescent light can be expensive. If you want to upgrade your appliances' that is a larger investment. The same holds true for institutions, so Dr. Jill Landesberg-Boyle actively sought to upgrade to more energy efficient options as the opportunity and budget allowed. This included upgrading to more efficient lighting and new energy efficient equipment. Landscape improvements incorporated shade planning and new building plans were required to be energy efficient.

Any money saved is found money, we all could use that!

VPN Headaches...

2010-02-24T11:48:00.003-05:00

Started a new job, had to get the VPN setup before one of the 2010 snow storms hit. No problem. Brought the CD with the Cisco client (latest) and the PCF file for work. My router didn't have VPN (my bad, didn't need it when I last updated DD-WRT) so I pulled the latest VPN build for DD-WRT and made sure things were enabled. The Cisco VPN client installed fine and the import went flawlessly.

Then the problems began. I couldn't authenticate. Each step of the process would be a nightmare, taking up to 2 minutes to get from step to step - when it should go instantly. Then Authentication would fail with this wonderfully helpful message:

Secure VPN Connection terminated by Perr. Reason 433: (Reason Not Specified
by Peer)

Since half of my company was now having this problem, we started chasing it down. Only people who installed from the CD had the problem. The PCFs in use were identical in content.

My coworker started tracing what the Client did. Interestingly, Cisco's VPN client reads and writes each of the profiles in your \VPN Client\Profiles directory every action. No, that's not an error. Each time you start up, establish a connection, etc. the client reads and writes each PCF file.

When I imported the PCF from the CD it pulled onto my WinXP box as a read only file. The delay I was experiencing was the Client timing out its request for an exclusive lock on the PCF file. I made the file writable and everything worked as expected.

Cygwin & Bind tools: Don't forget /etc/resolv.conf!

2010-01-08T08:06:00.003-05:00

I recently started a new job and was installing all my Windows tools (yup, back in Windows!). Installed Cygwin and added a few tools, specifically I had gotten used to using host & dig during my stint doing linux administration, so I added in the Bind distribution for Cygwin. When I tried to use host or dig I got an error: ;; communications error: connection reset

After some researching I found that although bind works in cygwin the /etc/resolv.conf is not created. You have to do that manually. I created the file (see example below) and the commands now work fine. Figuring out your nameservers is up to you for now.

This was on Windows Server 2003 SP2 using CYGWIN_NT-5.2 forsrayd 1.7.1(0.218/5/3).

My resolv.conf (valid ips removed):

nameserver x.x.x.x
nameserver x.x.x.x

Go Jill Landesberg-Boyle!

2009-12-20T17:53:00.002-05:00

It's always cool to hear of friend's family doing cool things. I can't put it better than the email did:

FKCC to share in 2.24 Mil thanks to Jill Landesberg-Boyle

Dr. Jill Landesberg-Boyle, president of the Florida Keys Community College (FKCC), just found out that FKCC will share in $2.24 million of a special appropriation for Instrumented Underwater Training Systems (IUTS). Dr. Jill Landesberg-Boyle was instrumental in the efforts to have FKCC participate in this program and it is a big win for the college.

The college will take part in 3 areas:
Modeling and simulation of natural subsurface environments
Diver training with simulated real-world scenarios
Creating a training quality-control process in which new technologies, training methods and simulated environments are reviewed for continuous improvement.
Dr. Jill Landesberg-Boyle saw a hidden gem in the dive program at FKCC and this exciting news shows that she was right.

Congrats! Here's hoping FKCC can put the funds, and the program, to good use!

Memorial Day...

2009-05-19T15:42:00.003-04:00

Enough said. Wish I had the original source, this was sent to me in a compilation email.

MySQL, OS X and easy_install MySQL-python...

2009-04-03T11:04:00.004-04:00

I wonder, sometimes, if as developers we find excuses to hack at code. Part of today's chores had me installing MySQL, and the python DB connector, on my Mac Book Pro. It goes very quickly until I found myself today staring at this error:

$ sudo easy_install -Z MySQL-python
...
EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

As always, I started by Googling to see who else had hit this problem. The first few hits were all unanimous, you had to edit the setup_posix.py that ships with MySQL-python and change the path to match your OS X environment.

Yes, I'm sure that would work, but the setup_posix.py isn't doing a "/go/to/this/bad/path/mysql_config ..." it's just doing "mysql_config ...".

In other words you can fix everything, and use easy_install by doing a simple:

$ PATH=/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH
(Make sure to adjust for the shell you're using!)

And then run the easy_install, everything goes fine.

Simple! MySQL 5.1.33 and MySQL-python 1.2.3 on OS X 10.5.

Not helping the blond cause..

2009-03-16T08:17:00.002-04:00

My eldest has blond hair. You need to remember this.

I'm in the kitchen this weekend with my son making Rice Krispie Treats. We're at the stove melting the marshmallows and butter. He's stirring madly. We've decided not to tell anyone what we're making, even though the marshmallows, Rice Krispies and the recipe are all on the counter. My eldest decides to figure out the mystery. She takes a quick look in the bowl.

Daughter: "You're making Rice Krispie Treats!"

Me: "Yep"

Daughter, looking at the box of Rice Krispies, "What are the Rice Krispies for?"

I stared at her for a good 30 seconds figuring she must be kidding - then I couldn't stop laughing. Sorry blonds, she didn't help the cause.

Well said...

2009-03-03T12:01:00.002-05:00

Too bad there wouldn't be a Calvin book along these lines. It'd be an interesting story to see how Calvin's kids turn out.

Diving in...

2009-02-04T12:17:00.004-05:00

Or over the edge, depends on your view. I made the switch a week back and moved all of my contacts, etc. out into GMail. Given my addiction to Blogger, Reader, etc. and my continuous complaints about various IT related mail headaches it was time. Probably past time. How did it go? Easy.

I don't have Gigs of mail or contacts. I was able to open up an IMAP connection to GMail from within Thunderbird (instructions for various clients here) and copied things up. It didn't take too long. I then set up GMail to do POP3 fetching from my ISP and adjusted my email alias forwarder (which may die off, not sure yet) to aim everything at my GMail account.

The result has been positive. Google's spam filters are doing their jobs and the mental switch from "Folders" to "Tags" wasn't as bad as I thought. Setting up filters to automatically tag things is simple enough and helps to quickly eyeball things when at work.

Net result? So far, so good!

It's a very big playground

2009-01-23T12:54:00.003-05:00

I just read How not to be a Key Online Influencer a story that resonates with me. Today, between Twitter and Facebook, blogs and forums, and the ability to google answers on everything, we have the ability to share, find, and regurgitate information at a rate our parents viewed as impossible only a few decades ago. Many, who grew up with this, understand the responsibility we have been given and the risks. Many, who came in later, don't.

When I started this blog it was to do two things; force me to write more and to make sure I qualified for the PokerStars blogger game. It's done both (although I missed this years tournament due to qualifiers conflicting with my schedule *sigh*), and it's made me realize how easy it is to step over virtual lines we wouldn't cross in real life.

Simple example; Would you walk into an auditorium filled with many people you knew, and people they knew, and yell out "I'm going on vacation to Canada the week of [pick a date]!"? Probably not. Why? Because you don't know all the people listening and the potential risk to your property, or person, are too high.

Okay, now how many of you would post that to Facebook? Twitter? Your own personal blog? I'm willing to bet a few. We view these areas as "safe" - as a limited forum to our friends and family only. Which is true, if you've set up the security, none of your friends has been hacked, and you're diligent in checking this.

I know I'm not. It's a reason my Facebook account is locked down, and I only share what I would share here. No names, pictures, or stories without permission. Honestly, it limits what I can write. However, I've stuck to my values and I've not once insulted a friend or family member -- unless they knew it was coming.

It's worth giving your values the once over in the Social media space. Odds are Mom was right, if you don't want it published on the front page NY Times, your friends probably don't want it on the front page of Facebook.

Wires crossed?

2009-01-20T08:15:00.002-05:00

While shoveling out the 13" of snow this past weekend we saw a half dozen Robins, a few Blue Jays, and even a cardinal. Normally, when I see a Robin, it's Spring. This doesn't look like Spring. The heft was more like Winter, even if the temps did peak around 40 yesterday.

The pic is from a shot I took with my iPhone out the "Cat's TV" in my bedroom. There were so many birds that all 3 of our cats had taken to staring out the window. The kitten was trying to puzzle out how she could sit on the 2" sill, mewl at the birds, and not fall down. I don't think she ever puzzled it out.

The birds let me take pics, the cats were more enigmatic.

On tweaking GMail...

2009-01-15T08:43:00.003-05:00

I've been getting more use out of my Gmail account lately (mostly due to creating more Google Groups, but that's another post). With the help of some friends at work, I've been making use of some of the information that my company, and friends, store on the web.

Here's a few things that I had to chase down that may help you out:

In Google Labs (via settings or the beaker) turn on NavBar drag and drop. This will let you reorder the left (or right) set of gadgets.
While your in there:
If you use Google Calendar, pick up the Google Calendar gadget
Same for Google Docs

You'll want to learn about filters and tagging if you haven't used them. Filters let you automatically place things into 'folders' in GMail, similar to your standard email client. Things get interesting as you start tagging things. For example, you could set it up such that email from your family gets tagged as 'family'. Not only can you now search for these posts, but your inbox will show the label 'family' when you receive messages from them.

Impressive Machinma...

2009-01-13T14:52:00.002-05:00

Yes, I know, I like this stuff. Watching the creativity and artistry people use taking a video game that you know is fake, and stiff, and then converting it into pieces of animation where you get interested, curious, even saddened by the story -- damn impressive.

This is one of the best I have seen.

Gone are the clunky movements, funny breathing, etc. of the normal WoW characters and enter in some serious bad ass Rogues, and spell casters. (Damn it! Who keep's rezzing Onyxia!?)

Mac vs. PC... the next stage...

2009-01-13T14:08:00.000-05:00

Neat interview with some cool folks...

2009-01-07T13:12:00.002-05:00

Leo Babauta (of Zen Habits) interviews Merlin Mann (of 43 Folders). These are two blogs I read 95% of their posts. I'd recommend them both for fans of productivity with a mix of Zen and ways to come at things differently.

It's neat to hear them both chatting it up about different ideas, creativity, and various topics. I'm a big fan of Merlin's Inbox Zero (Delete/Archive, Delegate {and follow up}, Respond, Defer or DO NOW) concept and use it at work and at home in dealing with the emails and projects I take on.

There's a lot of information, take a look if your looking for new (or old, heh) ways of taking on "priorities". It's worth the time to read.

iPhone apps...

2009-01-07T10:28:00.004-05:00

Over the holidays a few friends got an iPhone or iTouch and asked me what apps I use the most. Looking at my iPhone now I have four main pages (three full) of apps and links. Unsurprisingly to folks in the audience, they are mostly games. I've grouped them up so you can skip around. All links to apps will open up in iTunes so you can get more info.

Utilities ~
Sportacular - Sports scores. Set your fave teams, etc. one screen. Very nice.
Things - ToDo list manager. I use this on the Mac. Can sync, I don't

Games ~
Quordy - Boggle for the iPhone.
Tris (no longer available)
Sol Free Solitaire - Exactly what it says. A few free Solitaire games.
Texas Hold'Em (Apple version) - Fun, with some flaws.
Enigmo - This is a puzzle game requiring you to solve fluid puzzles. Fun!
Chopper - My first game on the iPhone; Choplifter remake.
Crazy Tanks - Drive around, blow up tanks.
Fieldrunners - Played any of the build-a-maze-with-turret games? Here ya go.
Brothers in Arms: Hour of Heroes - Call of Duty-esque on the iPhone FPS.
Galcon - A fun RTS, including multiplayer!

Weather ~
WeatherBug - Nice weather app, allows for bookmarking of favorite cities.
Who is Hot - Shows the weather at your Contact's location. Can click on their location for more info.

Game Related ~
Warcraft Characters - Play WoW? Keep your characters (or your friends) on your iPhone
Score - Board gaming scoring app. Helps!

Social ~
Geocaching - Yes that. GeoCaching.com's app. Bring your GPS anyway.
Facebook - Not my fault!

Streaming Music ~
Pandora - Streaming music. I've blogged this one to death.

Utility ~
TideApp - Good for when your going to the beach
SoLuna - I had tides, must have Lunar phases too!
Missing Calculator - Programmers calculator; shifts, binary, hex, etc.

Misc ~
myLite Flashlight - Amazingly useful. Lights up a hallway nicely during power outages.
Lightsaber - *cough* For the kids
Easy Wi-Fi - Helps to log in to the AT&T free wi-fi zones.
Google Earth - Not as much fun as I thought, but still there.

Documents ~
Constitution - US Constitution
Declaration - US Declaration of Independence

I'd also check out Meebo for a multi-client web-based IM. Haven't seen an Adium/Trillian clone on the iPhone yet (and not sure I'd want to!). This does well enough if you need access to IM.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-07T10:13:00.002-05:00

Broken all your New Years Resolutions yet? No, I don't do resolutions. I found that I have enough projects between work and home that adding a few more that were spur of the moment didn't gain me anything. Instead, I borrowed an idea from one of my wife's older brothers (and some echo's online) and I look for a few guidelines that I'd like to follow.

Give you an example; instead of "lose 10 pounds" I would rework it to "focus on eating healthier". Instead of "Work sucks, find a new job" I have "Destress by finding the source of the stress" and "Continue professional learning".

They lack the conviction of "GO TO THE GYM MORE" but which of them is easier to achieve and allows the greatest flexibility for growth? I'm unlikely to meet the lose 10lbs goal by going to the gym, it isn't me, I do know that if I cut out snacks and soda I can start dropping weight at a decent clip.

The challenge I put before myself this year is an old Zen adage; Focus on the journey, not the destination. Specifically, I'm going to try doing this with work where there are always deadlines and deliverables, but not much enjoyment on the way there (at least lately for me, thus the other goal about working on destressing). There is so much "Microsoft Project" focus that we lose sight of the things we enjoy doing along the way - I know I have lately.

And you folks? What ya aiming at this year?

Sums it up...

2008-12-19T12:07:00.003-05:00

Goes with;

Q: What do all religions have in common?
A: The belief that they are the only right one

They Didn't Forget!

2008-12-16T15:12:00.001-05:00

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

The WBCOOP is an online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers.

Registration code: 648655

Aw come on Murphy, I've got a cold!

2008-12-15T14:38:00.003-05:00

The family is coming out of having been sick since just before Thanksgiving. Started with my eldest and rippled through the house. Mostly bit the wife and I due to our allowing our guard down when we were stressed out over the holiday and dojo events. What does a sick Dad need while thinking feels like pushing threads through ballistics gel with a needle? A sick computer!

During all this my gaming rig started flaking out. This is my home built NewEgg special that has gone along like a trooper up until, well, it stopped. Close to two years now if the last BIOS update is correct. So much for sitting down and relaxing reading email or gaming. Now I get to finish my work day and see if it boots.

I still get nervous booting it, even though now, it looks like I figured it out. Mostly.

You want to know why there are PC Geeks? Electronics Geeks? etc.? Easy. They have a stubborn streak that even when they are feeling like crud the given technology will not beat them. I spent a few days pulling SATA cables, updating BIOS and chasing configurations. But I did beat it, even with a cold. Looks like the memory may be going, but splitting the chips over the two memory channels fixed things (reseating it could have fixed it) for now.

___________________________________________________
For my fellow Geeks or the morbidly curious...

I was powering up my system, all indicators looked good, when my fans would all go to max power - as if the system was overheated. Even though it was sitting in a cold (60 degree F) room and hadn't been powered on. Initially, doing a few resets would clear it.

Then it wouldn't. Then pulling random SATA cables cleared it, or the act of powering off the PS and doing work did. Then that didn't.

And finally, when I had both Memory chips out and wanted to check something in the BIOS, I had the eureka moment. The system, without memory, went into the "max fan speed" situation. Oh, so this is how you indicate you think you don't have memory? Cute.

ASUS, if your reading, I dislike that your POST will not run when you feel there is no memory. Spinning my fans up to maximum doesn't say squat to me other than "I'm a confused mother board".

After this I tested each chip independently, both showed 1G, as expected. In case it was getting weirded out having the memory chips on the same memory channel, I moved them so that one is on A and one is on B (the motherboard docs don't say anything helpful here, and the original configuration worked for a few years so...). So far, so good. Next will be replacing the memory should things flake again.

A neat twist on dealing with the holidays....

2008-12-10T11:56:00.003-05:00

I've been a fan of Dumb Little Man since I discovered it earlier this year. Today they posted "Used your Management Skills to Build a Stress-Free Christmas". I was skeptical, but it was well worth the read.

Here are a few of my fave's...

A project always takes three times longer than you anticipate. So plan shopping trips, drives to the store, getting the family ready to go to the party. If you build in an extra 15 (or 30!) minutes of lead time, that heavier-than-usual traffic will not tip you over into road rage and ruin your holiday spirit.

Accept less than perfection: You know when you're working on that special report and you reach the point when you say, "OK, that's it. That's all they get." The same thing applies to Christmas presents. Accept that there is no perfect one.

In your heart you know that the odds are whatever you give might be the wrong color. Or not the exact shade of the right color. One size too small. One size too big. If your objective is to be perfect, you set yourself up for failure. Aim for that golden mean, give your gift with a big smile and a hug and enjoy life.

My add to the list would be Schedule time for yourself. At work when you need to get something done, you can go off and schedule a meeting with yourself. My Boss's Boss a few jobs back would do this; Take over a conference room for an hour to get something done. The rule being he was in a meeting, and could only be validly interrupted if you would interrupt a normal meeting. Result? He had time to get stuff done and we all knew to leave him alone.

Given my wife's family (now 36 grandkids, 17 adults, and various friends of family) there are times where you need to get away. Take a walk, hide outside, whatever. If it helps reduce your level of stress or overwhelmedness (god help me when the grammar police see that miscarriage of verbage) will help you enjoy the holidays. Trust me, your family will understand.

And in other news...

2008-12-09T09:15:00.004-05:00

On Saturday my wife and son were up for their next rank at the Dojo. For the adults, this means you've probably been stressing about it, overtly, for at least a few days - possibly longer. For the kids, it's usually a serious amount of excitement. Usually.

This time my son had himself wound up. I'm not sure if he knew it, and we didn't know it, until the day of. For the last week he's been unusually quiet and kept having these odd emotional out bursts. Nothing any of us could pin down. As I drove him to his test it became obvious; he spent the whole trip, and the rest of the weekend, talking. Guess he had a lot of pent up chatter from being quiet!

Both received their new rank! My wife getting her Green belt and my son getting his "Favorite Color" (Blue) belt. I'm very proud of them both - it was a busy day!

And in a surprise twist, I was awarded 2nd degree brown. Eeek. That much closer to the test.

This time, L0L Cats ftw....

2008-12-09T07:55:00.001-05:00

Never forget.

Into the doghouse with you!

2008-12-05T08:12:00.000-05:00

And exactly how do I use this road then...?

2008-12-03T10:18:00.003-05:00

I'm driving to pick up the kids from school yesterday and I end up behind this truck. It's a public road, and we're both stuck at the same set of lights.

How exactly can I not follow him?!

Paradoxical stupidity ftw.