The life and times of a geek

jeremehall@gmail.com (Jereme Hall) — Fri, 7 Sep 2012 11:07:00 -0700

Cool video
http://youtu.be/hxmbbtuRszA

Open Letter to the US Census Bureau

jeremehall@gmail.com (Jereme Hall) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:36:00 -0800

I just learned that my family and I were randomly chosen to fill out the Census' American Community Survey or ACS. I am now under legal obligation to fill it out completely or break federal law.

Let me restate that, I have been randomly chosen to give up my personal information, in depth, or face legal action. How, in this great nation, did I get randomly chosen to submit to a law that does not apply to all?
I wrote to President Obama, Governor Kitzhaber, Sentors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkly, the ACLU and KATU 12's Shellie Bailey-Shah. I may even write NBC's Dateline.

Please read my message to the Census Bureau and call Robert M Grove, Bureau Director. The mailing address that they offer is: Paperwork Project 0607-0810, US Census Bureau, 4600 Silver Hill Road, AMSD 3K13A, Washington DC 20233.

Thank you for reading this far. What follows is the text that I emailed to paperwork@census.gov
----------------------------------------------------
"My name is Jereme Hall, resident homeowner in Oregon.

We filled out the general census survey willingly, with enthusiasm, and on time.
Now we've received the The American Community Survey (Form ACS-1 2011 KFI), specific ACS code 256 036 422 01 111 1103 03.

The questions are tedious, insulting and take considerably more time than the stated approximate 38 minutes to complete.
While I am NOT stating that I refuse to comply (be clear on this, I am not refusing to comply), I do not wish to fill out this form.

I called the help line at 1-800-354-7271 to ask to be removed from this survey.
I was told that it was mandatory and passed to a supervisor.

The supervisor was very helpful, but her hands were tied.
She could only repeat the helpline phone number, this email address (paperwork@census.gov) and a mailing address.
When asked what my deadline is, she had no resources or training to allow her to answer.

If I do not comply, I am breaking the law. When do you decide that I am not in compliance? Tomorrow? Yesterday?
What are the penalties? Will I face imprisonment or fines? A first time criminal record starting with a felony?

I am a hard working man whose wages have been cut by the recession with a loving wife and two children at home. She does not work because we can't afford day care.

Our time is valuable to us and so is our personal information.
I am shocked and dismayed to be dragged into a bureaucratic paperwork shuffle backed by the force of law.
As a citizen of this nation and a proud and voting resident of Oregon, I seek release from the random choice that put me in this position.

Clearly stated, please release me from the American Community Survey.

Sincerely, Jereme Charles Hall"

NTS and wall clocks... why not?

jeremehall@gmail.com (Jereme Hall) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:21:00 -0800

When you want to know the time, where do you look? At your wristwatch or a wall clock?...No. You look at your cellphone. Your cellphone, besides being the lifeline to work, family and friends, is also the most accurate clock around.

Calls require exquisite timing to allow signal modulation and hand-off between towers. So the clock is constantly being updated. Computers also benefits from time updates... its called NTS (Network Time Service).

So, I'm tired of adjusting my plain old battery driven wall clock. Why can't I find a wall clock that connects to my WiFi and sets itself by NTP to the correct time. Just once a week is good enough to make me love my wall clock again. Sure, my battery will get eaten up faster... but once a month is a pretty small power drain.

How about that digital alarm clock that makes you either too late or too early for work twice a year (in places that enjoy the insanity of Daylight Savings Time)? With WiFi and NTP, you'll forget that DST even happens.

I'm talking about a clock that has a USB port, client software for the operating system of your choice to allow configuration (loading the wireless SID and password, choosing the relevant time zone and NTP server), and a stripped down WiFi client that listens on UDP port 123 for 10 seconds and then sleeps for 7 days. In a face clock, there will need to be a weak motor to advance the hands.

Does anyone feel that we are pretty silly not to have clocks like this already?

Egypt turned off Internet. "Experts" say it shouldn't be possible.

jeremehall@gmail.com (Jereme Hall) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 13:45:00 -0800

In the last couple of weeks, the former Egyptian government was under siege by protesters organized via social media. Prior to Mubarek's dethronement, the Egyptian government was desperate enough to cripple access to the Internet within the country's borders. Some are mystified by how this was done, but I have a simple hypothesis to explain it.

Egypt has a state-owned communication backbone with very few legs to the Internet. DNS is centralized at the telco. Turn off DNS and the Internet apparently goes down. Network administrators the world over know how frustrating a DNS failure is. The general Internet using populace doesn't have a clue that a DNS outage is not a true Internet outage. The difference is such that there is no difference to the general user. They can't get to Internet based sites and services.

DNS (Domain Name Service) uses names to find publicly routed IP addresses. If you know these number addresses, you can crudely navigate the Internet without knowing or using the names. For example DNS will take "google.com" and use IP address 74.125.227.51 to get to one of Google's many search servers. Go ahead and copy the IP address above into your browser's address field.... you'll get the familiar search page.

The problem with a DNS outage is that no one can remember all of the IP addresses, links between sites rely upon DNS, and dynamically generated sites are also name dependent. So, even a tech-savvy web surfer will have limited success with browsing the Internet without DNS.

With the Internet so important to communication and commerce, how do you protect yourself from the simple yet destructive act of turning off DNS at the backbone; as Egypt apparently did for their populace? The easy answer is, get a VPN connection.

Those who had VPN's to localize their connection outside of Egypt's borders will not have experienced the outage.

Another answer is to attach by IP to a web proxy that browses by IP instead of domain name. I haven't seen such a proxy, but it seems trivial to make an adaption of Squid that will do so.

If Egypt can pull the Internet plug, can other countries do it also? The answer is, it depends.

In the US, the answer is "no" for several reasons. A majority of the the DNS backbone servers... the root servers that control it all... are in the US. Also, the major telecoms are not state-owned. Turning off DNS in the US would mean "turning off" the Internet for most of the world and losing billions in commerce. The US government would be incredibly stupid to do so.

The only nations that can "pull the plug" are those that match Egypt's infrastructure. State-owned with very few (or tightly-controlled) wire or fiber bundles that cross the borders. But don't bet on it, protect yourself. It's cheap and easy to get a VPN connection and fun. As always with services on the Internet, watch out for scammers when you go searching for your own VPN.

Happy browsing while you thumb your nose at your local dictator!

Stiquito introduced me to memory materials

jeremehall@gmail.com (Jereme Hall) — Tue, 3 Aug 2010 20:52:00 -0700

Many years ago, I was browsing Powell's Books in the robotics section. I saw a book with the Stiqito robot. Where were all the geegaws? No servos, chips, pulleys, pistons, springs... looks like a stick with wires.

I thought that this had to be some kind of trick. A fake robot. I knew what a robot looked like. From Robot Wars to Battletech, robots have chunky bits all over them. Why not on the Stiqito? The answer and the holy grail... Nitinol.

Nitiniol is nickel-titantium alloy wire. At certain temperatures, it will deform. At another temperature, it will resume it's original dimensions. Repeatedly and forcefully. This is the "myomer" muscle of the mighty Battletech robots!

I say with shame that I didn't buy the book (Sorry, Powell's) and didn't think about it except to amuse myself for several years. Then my cousin had a motorcycle accident and became an amputee. I won't pretend to know what she went through, but it was clear that being an amputee is difficult and traumatic.

What if there had been a prosthetic utilizing Nitinol wires? Low weight, low profile, strong... it seems that a prosthetic actuated by Nitinol wires could be made to approximate a lost limb with some higher degree of success than current examples (and DARPA research projects).

I'd love to hear if anyone knows if something like this is being pursued.

The battle with Briggs

jeremehall@gmail.com (Jereme Hall) — Sun, 1 Aug 2010 20:52:00 -0700

I'm a network/system administrator. Highly trained and experienced with analysis and troubleshooting. I can fix my own lawn mower. Yeah... sure I can.

My 5-year old Briggs & Stratton 4.75 HP Weedeater (actually Poulson Pro) brand mower.
A delight to fire up and race lightly over my grass up to two times per week.

It won't start now.
Two weeks ago, it wouldn't start. I put in new spark plug and it fired right up!

I've opened up the carbeurator and cleaned it. It's the membrane type (membrane looks good).
I've removed the spark plug and pull tested it for a pretty bright blue spark (and alarming tingle in my hand).
I've cleaned the air filter.
I changed the gas.
I even pulled the nut off of the flywheel and looked at the shear pin/key. Looks good.
I changed the magneto-coil (that's 50 bucks right there).

Still won't start. The most common problems for Briggs & Stratton small engines are carbeurator and shear pin. Repeat endlessly: carbeurator and shear pin. Check it out on the web.

Okay, Briggs. You win! I can do most repairs on a 6-cylinder small block, but I can't get a small engine to burn. So, I go to a local small engine repair shop.

Now these people are normally really helpful.
I walk in the repair shop door and find Mr. Helpful sitting at his computer.
He stares at me, I wave.
He asks what I want and keeps looking at his computer screen.
I say, somewhat dryly, "I've got a mower that needs repair." What was he expecting?

We stared a bit more.

With a sigh, Mr. Helpful dragged himself away from an incredibly fascinating web page and asked what was wrong with my mower.
I detailed issues of spark, air, fuel and timing. I didn't get far before he said "Your carbeurator is shot".
I said "How is it shot?" to which he replied "It's shot".
"What makes it shot?", the reply "It's plastic, it's shot".
I hopped off of this mindless merry-go-round and proceeded to negotiate.

"How much?", he answered "For what?"
You see what I was dealing with, people. Sigh.

It finally boiled down to about $70 for parts and labor or I could buy his new mower for $399. Yay.
I went to Wal-Mart and bought their new mower for $133

jeremehall@gmail.com (Jereme Hall) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:51:00 -0700

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