Planet #WPIRC

&lt;p&gt;I picked up a book at the beginning of the summer called &lt;a href="http://drbacchus.com/books/081186958X"&gt;Handy Dad&lt;/a&gt;. The idea was to pick a dozen projects that I could do with the kids in the coming year.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We did the &lt;a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/Soda-Bottle-Rocket./"&gt;water rocket&lt;/a&gt; on July fourth. I'm pretty sure there's video of it somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Both kids picked the climbing wall, which is really simple in concept, but the instructions tell you to buy &lt;a href="http://atomikclimbingholds.com/"&gt;preformed climbing handholds&lt;/a&gt;, which, while very cool, are also very expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So I decided to make them myself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbowen/sets/72157624522117106/"&gt;&lt;img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4093/4801863999_3c12bf6356_m.jpg" align="left"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I got a 4 x 4 fence post and I'm cutting 3 or 4 inch pieces from it, and &lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbowen/4801866017/in/set-72157624522117106/"&gt;forming them&lt;/a&gt; with a dremel. It takes anywhere from 2 minutes to a half hour to make one, depending on how elaborate you want to make it. Later today, I hope to attach the first batch of handholds on a tree down at the creek, and will post pictures of that, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is part of a much larger project, including a rope bridge and a tree house. I expect that this will take at least until next summer. I'm really looking forward to how this turns out. I'm completely making it up as I go along, and have no idea what I'm doing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I recommend this book, along with &lt;a href="http://drbacchus.com/books/0984296107"&gt;Fifty Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do&lt;/a&gt; as project starters for you geek dads looking for ways to indoctrinate your not-yet-geek kids.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you haven't seen &lt;a href="howtoons.com"&gt;Howtoons&lt;/a&gt; you should check those out, and you should read the &lt;a href="http://www.wired.com/geekdad/"&gt;Geek Dad&lt;/a&gt; blog every day.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;I mentioned, when Elise was born, that I'd write more later. I wrote something on 750Words.com a while back, but never went back to edit it. Here it is, still largely unedited, because Ruth mentioned that she really wanted to read what I had to say about it:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;-----------------&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Around 9: 45 on Sunday morning, Maria called me in and said that she'd suddenly passed a bunch of liquid that wasn't urine - that is, that her water had broken. Since we were at 35 weeks, too early to deliver at home, we determined that it was time to head to the hospital. We called the midwife, who was on vacation, and her assistant, who didn't respond, and this confirmed our decision.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;(I also missed the opportunity to insert Steve Martin's quote here. "My water broke!" "It's ok, we'll get you another one.")&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We were, of course, very, very disappointed, having decided to do this at home, and quite looking forward to that experience. We had watched several videos of home deliveries, and I was getting quite excited about the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We also called Kriss, our doula, who, amazingly, wasn't away, but was sick. She said that she'd come, and tell them that it was allergies. Kriss is my favorite person in the world now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We took our time getting ready. The kids got a change of clothes, and a few books, and we packed a few things for us and then headed to the hospital. Contractions hadn't started, so there didn't seem to be any immediate hurry.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We arrived at St. Joseph East, and checked in at the Women's Hospital, where we were admitted to a lovely room. The place has only been open for less than month, and everything was brand new, with much still unfinished.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our nurse came in and introduced herself - Kathleen, or Kate, and offered us another room, with a birthing tub, so we picked up everything and moved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Isaiah wanted to go to a friend's house, and they came and got him pretty quickly, but Sarah wanted to stay as long as she could.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kriss showed up and made herself at home.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then, for a long time, nothing much happened.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We told the nurses that we had intended to do this at home, and they assured us that they'd try as much as possible to make this like home. They promised not to offer any medication, and the night nurses, when they came around, put up a sign to that effect on the door.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As evening wore on and very little had happened - contractions had started, but were still pretty mild - Sarah's friends the Franks came and picked her up for the night.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At one point, I heard singing in the hallway, and was pretty sure that it was a bantu African language. I went out to ask who it was, and saw two african women disappearing around the corner. I asked, and found out that they were from Congo/Zaire. Later in the evening, they showed up in our room and sang us a song, in Swahili, about how we live in God's house, and so everything comes to us as a gift from God. It was so very kind of them, and one of the best memories of the whole experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And we waited. We walked around some, and at one point were told that if things didn't progress pretty soon, they would start recommending some medication to induce labor. After walking around a little more, contractions started in earnest, and after a while, they filled up the hot tub.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;While in the hot tub, the contractions were getting very strong. Maria moaned and groaned and made all sorts of other odd cow-like noises. It was fascinating to watch and listen to, but was plainly not a whole lot of fun.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Eventually the nurses came back in and said that they needed to get her on the monitors yet again - they had been doing this every couple of hours the whole time - to see how Elise was faring. They said she could get back in the tub when they were done. However, when they were done, Maria opted to stay on the bed, on her hands and knees, as that was pretty comfortable. She asked me to get behind her, apply pressure to her pelvis, and rub her lower back. I did that for most of the rest of the process, massaging her lower back, and leaning on her rear and pelvis, as this apparently relieved some pressure and pain.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Various people kept asking me if I was tired, if I wanted to take a break, if they could take over. I had no intention of letting anyone take over until it was over. That was what I was there for, and, quite possibly, what I'm here for - in the larger sense - here on earth, for that moment. It was wonderful to be able to participate in that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Throughout all of this, the moaning and mooing got faster and louder. and was quite obviously more and more painful. During this stage, Maria loudly asserted that she couldn't do it, but I don't think I ever once doubted that she could in fact do it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Eventually she ended up on her back, and the doctor and nurses lifted her legs and encouraged her to push, saying that there were just a few pushes left. Sure enough, out came a curly brown haired head, the opening stretching impossibly large, and looking ... quite improbable. How that came out of there, I can't quite imagine. And then, very suddenly, the rest of her came out, and Elise Marguerite came into the world. It was 2:27am on Monday, June 7, 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I went around and cut the umbilical. I thought that this would be stomach-turning, but it seemed very natural, and I'm glad that I got to do that. They then whisked Elise over into the corner, where they started blowing oxygen in her face. I realized that she had been silent so far, and I started to get scared. I went over to where she was, and each breath that she tried to take, her chest sunk very deep. She was having a hard time with each breath, and they were suctioning liquid out of her lungs. After a little while doing this, she started crying, which was the most wonderful sound ever.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;After this, I carried Elise to the NICU, and sat there with her for three hours while they told me every 20 minutes that it would just be 20 minutes and then we could go back to the room. Finally, Maria came in, in a wheelchair, and was able to hold Elise for a little while.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;FINALLY, we headed back to the room. On the way, we had to stop in the nursery so that they could put on the security ankle bracelet. They promised she'd be in the room in five minutes, and shooed me off, despite my obvious unwillingness to leave her there. More than a half hour later, they delivered her to the room, and we were able to sit all together holding her. This was about 6am&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We finally got a little sleep, but around 7:30 they came and wanted to take her away AGAIN. I was getting pretty fed up at this, but it was clear that they weren't giving us an option. Mostly, however, after that, they let us keep her until we came home, with a few brief exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the time there was mostly us asking when we'd be allowed to go home, and not receiving a direct answer, right up until the very last minute. We were particularly impatient to get back home, since we really didn't want to be at the hospital in the first place, and the folks there were clearly used to folks staying as long as they could. So we eventually came home the following morning.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href="http://wilmore.org/"&gt;Wilmore&lt;/a&gt;, the town where I went to first grade and college, there is a barber shop named Clay's. Clay has cut hair there for almost sixty years. He will utter the ancient incantation, "blocked or tapered in the back?", he'll will listen politely while you tell him what kind of hair cut you want, and then he'll give you the same haircut that he's given every man who's come into his store since 1950.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Wilmore, there are also hairdressers. Scads of them. Possibly one for every ten citizens of the town. It's always been a marvel to me that they stay in business.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here in Lexington, I can't find a barber shop, of any description, without driving for fifteen minutes. There are hair dressers. Plenty of them. But I realized this morning, as I approach the time when I can no longer avoid a hair cut any longer, that I have never, not even once, seen a man in the hair dressers that I've gone to around here. And the amount of goop that gets glopped into my hair when I go there makes me wonder whether they have, in fact, ever cut a man's hair.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am *so* tired of going for a simple hair cut, and having some beauty-school graduate think I also want my eyebrows trimmed, and possibly highlights and a perm. And don't even get me started on what they try to do to my beard.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which all leads me to wonder, where do men around here go for their hair cuts? Maybe I just need to start taking the trek across town to the "Old Fashioned Barber Shop." But why is it old fashioned? Doesn't any man just want a hair cut these days?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: Awesome related article: &lt;a href="http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2005/09/10/barber-shops"&gt;Barber Shops&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;Several people reported today that &lt;a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20009642-10391695.html"&gt;the TSA has started filtering its employees' access to the Internet&lt;/a&gt;, including access to sites featuring "controversial opinions".&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many folks were quick to &lt;a href="http://www.infowars.com/tsa-to-block-websites-with-controversial-opinions/"&gt;denounce this as censorship&lt;/a&gt;, demonstrating their lack of understanding of how web filtering works. Lots of comments were posted by readers, asking things like "Who decides what's controversial?" "Will Fox News be blocked while MSNBC is permitted?" and other questions that, similarly, reflected a general misunderstanding of how web filtering software works.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to make several points about the TSA's decision. I find myself in the bizarre position of defending an IT decision by an organization with which I disagree on almost every other point.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;1) A significant percentage of businesses, and most government agencies, monitor, track, and restrict access to the Internet. This is not a curtailment of your rights. On the contrary, they are paying you to work for them, and every moment you spend at work reading Facebook could very well be considered theft of company resources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;2) When you install web filtering software, you're given a list of checkboxes describing categories of web content. One of them might be something like "Controversial Opinions", and will likely contain such things as hate sites, sites about gay and lesbian rights, sites about abortion, and sites about vegetarianism. These sites are categorized as such simply because viewing these sites in the work place can result in disruptive arguments among employees, or simply because the conversations that result are detrimental to productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;3) As for the question "Who Decides?!?!?" that keeps getting asked, the answer is pretty darned simple. It's not the TSA. It's not the government. It's not President Obama or his cabinet. It's college students, getting paid minimum wage, at Universities around the country, who look at websites, and categorize them. No conspiracy exists here. They are given criteria by the manufacturers of the web filtering software, and simply categorize according to those criteria. So when the TSA installs software and checks the "Controversial Opinions" checkbox, not only didn't they decide what's in there, they don't even know what's in there. And what's in there changes daily, as those college students update the master list of what sites are porn, what sites are hate sites, and what sites are about fluffy bunnies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So, when I read that the TSA was starting to filter their employees' web access, my first question was, why are they doing it in 2010, when all other responsible agencies implemented policies like this *at least* five years ago? When I saw the ludicrous articles claiming that this proves that the current government hates dissident opinions, and that this is the first step towards government control of the Internet, I chuckled a little. But when I started realizing the number of people who think that this is a conspiracy to control the Internet, and that the President is in on it, I have to say that I find it profoundly irresponsible for folks like InfoWars.com and their ilk to whip people up into anti-government frenzy based on lies, misinformation, and obfuscation of the plain and readily-available facts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get your facts, folks, before you start calling a simple IT policy change, a government conspiracy. You clearly don't understand how IT decision-making works in the real world of corporate America.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;We went to see Karate Kid on Monday night.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was better than the original in every way imaginable. It was way more believable. Jaden Smith is a better actor than everyone in the original put together, and was absolutely believable. And Jackie Chan was not only Jackie Chan, with all the humor and brilliant martial arts that implies, but he was also a completely convincing sad, lonely old man.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We laughed. We cried. We cheered. We gasped. We cowered. It was pretty much brilliant in every way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And the change of setting made the premise all that much better. In the original, a New Jersey kid is displaced to California, which, while disrupting, isn't exactly the end of the world. This was the end of the world. An african-american kid from Detroit is suddenly in Beijing, and so completely out of his element that everything, even turning on the hot water, is an insurmountable hurdle. Most of us can relate to this displacement at some level - if not to that extreme - and we felt each moment with him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you've seen the preview, you've seen most of the best *action* moments, and if you've seen the original there will be no plot surprises. But you should go see this, and you should take your kids. It's the best movie I've seen in a very long time, and was even worth the exorbitant bill at the Movie Tavern.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did I mention that Jaden Smith is an amazing actor? This kid has a brilliant career ahead of him. Let's hope he doesn't go the way of so many other spoiled child stars.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.feistyduck.com/images/modsecurity-handbook-cover.png" alt="mod_security Handbook"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've finally finished reading Ivan Ristic's new book, mod_security handbook, published by Feisty Duck. Ivan is the brain behind mod_security. By the way, if you're not using mod_security on your Apache server, you should be. And this is the book to tell you how to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ivan sent me a few early releases of the book, and about a month ago I received the first print edition.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This book is what you've been waiting for if you use mod_security. (And, as I mentioned, if you're not using it, you should be.) The documentation for mod_security has long been frustrating. Even where it was complete and informative, you just didn't know where to start.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This book is where to start.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first 2/3 of the book is written in tutorial fashion, walking you through tasks from installation to complex scripting. Chapter 6 gives a great description of writing rules, and Chapter 9 gives numerous practical examples which flesh out what goes before. I always learn best by example, so these examples and the accompanying explanations make the earlier academic learning more meaningful to me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 8 is about persistent storage of data. I've long been interested in this area of mod_security, and have had many times when I needed it and didn't understand the docs on it. Ivan makes it much clearer than I've seen it presented before. I'll be looking back at this the next time the need arises to do this kind of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The last third of the book is the reference manual. I'm a big fan of having the reference manual in printed format, although it does run the risk of being out of date quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This book is constantly updated, so you can always obtain the latest version. However, it's unlikely that I'll be buying a new paper book each time there's a new release of mod_security. This book is also available in electronic format, and if you buy the ebook, you get updates to it as part of your purchase price. That's pretty cool.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the whole, this book is a long-awaited resource, and is very well written, by the person who knows the topic best. Highly recommended. You should &lt;a href="https://www.feistyduck.com/books/modsecurity-handbook/index.html"&gt;go get a copy right away&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;Through a rather odd series of events, someone thought that we'd like &lt;a href="http://drbacchus.com/books/1594743347"&gt;Pride and Prejudice and Zombies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can't honestly say I enjoyed Jane Austen's original. It was one of those books that I read because it's a classic, and everyone should read it. Much like War and Peace, and Anna Karenina, both of which I slogged through, and finished, although it was mostly work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well, I think that I may have discovered a way to enjoy Jane Austen, although I seriously question whether it would make any sense to anyone who hadn't read the original. I *might* even consider reading some of the &lt;a href="http://drbacchus.com/books/1594744424"&gt;others&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The books were clearly written by taking a copy of the original, and going through it replacing various boring sections with zombie attacks and discussions of the Bennet sisters' skills with the oriental arts of killing. While there are indeed many hundreds of boring parts, there are also lengthy parts that are left almost untouched, with the occasional mention of trips to China, training with zen masters, and Japanese food.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In all, very odd.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was very hard to get into, but once I caught the cadence, it was a quick read, and mostly enjoyable if you can put aside the fact that it's exceedingly silly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Recommended. A little. If you like that sort of thing.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;I've been using beta.bloglines.com for several years now - since Paul worked there. It's a great product, but remains designated "Beta" despite being vastly better than their main product. Why? I can't imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But lately, I've been seeing &lt;a href="http://rbowen.posterous.com/bloglines-500"&gt;500 Internal Server Errors&lt;/a&gt; more often than I've seen the actual UI. And they're still running Apache 2.2.9, which seems to indicate to me that they haven't touched those servers since Paul left.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So I've finally moved over to &lt;a href="http://www.google.com/"&gt;Google Reader&lt;/a&gt;, which is vastly improved over the last time I looked at it, apparently borrowing ideas from beta.bloglines. And there's a wide variety of iPhone apps for it, so that I don't have to mark things read two different places. That's pretty sweet.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;For several weeks before Elise was born, I had been writing her short letters, and compiling them in a book for her to have when she is old enough to appreciate it. This one is a response to the &lt;a href="http://sundayscribblings.blogspot.com/2010/05/217-mantra.html"&gt;Sunday Scribblings post from a few weeks, ago&lt;/a&gt;, "Mantra".&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Letters to Elise&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;June 12, 2010&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;XV. Don&#x2019;t Postpone Joy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;(&#x201C;Mantra&#x201D; - SundayScribblings.blogspot.com)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your great aunt,&lt;br&gt;for whom you were named,&lt;br&gt;my beloved daisy,&lt;br&gt;adjured us daily&lt;br&gt;by her actions and her smile:&lt;br&gt;Don&#x2019;t postpone joy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And so I pass on to you&lt;br&gt;this wisdom,&lt;br&gt;and will show you every day:&lt;br&gt;Don&#x2019;t postpone joy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is joy in everything,&lt;br&gt;if you just look, expecting to find.&lt;br&gt;Not that we close our eyes&lt;br&gt;to suffering and sorrow,&lt;br&gt;but that even there, we search&lt;br&gt;for the joy.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;I just read &lt;a href="http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/06/karate-kid/"&gt;GeekDad's review of the new Karate Kid&lt;/a&gt;. We're looking forward to seeing it, and in preparation, we FORCED the kids to see the original, which they declared to be a waste of their precious time. The Gril, in particular, claimed that she just couldn't relate to a movie that was set *SO LONG AGO*.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Speaking of not being able to relate, last night we watched War Games on NetFlix. Everything about it is outdated, from the technology, to the political situation, to the lack of security at NORAD, where folks can crash a Jeep through the front gate, run into the facility, and not be immediately either shot or thrown into custody, and then permitted to take the reins of a major international crisis. Nice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I remember seeing this movie in the theater when it came out and being absolutely horrified by the language. I believe I was 12 at the time, and I believe it was the first or second movie that I had seen in a theater in the USA. I went with my parents. I can just imagine, in retrospect, how they must have wanted to crawl out of their skin as I was exposed to foul language that I had probably never heard before outside of whispered giggled conversations in the dorm room late at night.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The notion that a teenager could simply dial a phone number and enter a single-word password, and get into NORAD is ... well, actually pretty plausible. Except now it's even easier, since you don't need a modem, and you don't need to spend all day test-dialing numbers. It's really a marvel that nothing of this scale has happened in real life. That we know of.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What I like about War Games, the second time around, is how the hacker aspects of it are presented realistically, and the tools of the trade aren't over-geekified, but just presented as they actually were at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Um. No. I never broke into any computers. At least, not that I'm willing to tell you about. Except that one in Australia. Once.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;Elise Marguerite was born at about 2:30 this morning. She is 6lbs 3oz, 22 inches, and perfect. She had some trouble breathing at first, but that cleared up quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure that I will write more about this event later, since the joy was mixed with a considerable dose of frustrations, but for now I'm trying to get a little sleep and spend some time with her.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Photos forthcoming shortly, I'm sure.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;We had planned to have our baby at home, but this morning my Beloved's water broke, so we're at St. Joe East, in the new Women's Hospital, to have Elise Marguerite.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everything is perfectly fine, we're just here because it's just 35 weeks, and the midwife won't do it before 36 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Updates as we go along.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;My new site &lt;a href="http://vmaware.net"&gt;vmaware.net&lt;/a&gt; has finally gone live. This is my new digital playground for all things virtualization and related topics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not much content yet, but that is due to change pretty quickly. :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;---&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Update: Well, turns out &lt;a href="http://vm-aware.net"&gt;vm-aware.net&lt;/a&gt; was already occupied by someone with very similar interests as myself, so I've renamed the site to &lt;a href="http://vninja.net"&gt;vNinja.net&lt;/a&gt; to avoid confusion. Enjoy!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=vUAckSJu7N0:d0E-yr2WsMY:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=vUAckSJu7N0:d0E-yr2WsMY:7Q72WNTAKBA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/vUAckSJu7N0" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;In an effort to try and clean-up my online presence, I've set up a new site &lt;a href="http://blog.opticalpork.com"&gt;blog.opticalpork.com&lt;/a&gt;. This site will, from now on, be my main photography/portfolio site.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the first of several planned changes in how/where I publish my online content, more stuff to come later on!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=fgBR4WI8HbY:LChMj44C4js:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=fgBR4WI8HbY:LChMj44C4js:7Q72WNTAKBA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/fgBR4WI8HbY" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;A little while ago, disaster struck. What seemed like a normal day at work, suddenly turned into a frenzy I have yet to experience anything similar to.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What happened? We realized something was wrong when we lost contact with one of our non-virtualized servers. &lt;br&gt;I couldn’t contact it at all; it had just vanished from the face of our network.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;My natural reaction was to run into our server room, to check what had happened. I figured it would be a power supply failure, or NIC failure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Boy, was I wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It turns out that a plastic pipe going through the wall, providing shielding for the power cables that provide power for the outdoor unit of the cooling system, led water straight into the server room. When I entered the server room, and heard splish-splashy sounds as soon as my feet hit the floor, I immediately grabbed a bucket and held it under the aforementioned pipe. While I stood there, trying to do some damage control, several other people rushed to my assistance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As soon as there were enough hands on deck trying to get rid of the water, I grabbed the file server and brought it downstairs for some open heart surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It’s a well known fact that water and servers don’t really mix that well. Even less so when the water in question flows down the walls in your server room, right on top of your main file server. &lt;em&gt;That’s right; water meet server.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the very last of our non-rack based servers was located in a straight line below the pipe. Everything else was fine; the rack servers aren’t located directly on the floor, nor is anything else. We did have a good 2cm of water on the floor, but that wasn’t enough to hit the rack servers or UPS’s.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So, what was the end result? One pretty dead server. It did try to get our hopes up, and initially it did.&lt;br&gt;At first, things looked good. I removed the HDDs and the power supplies, opened the cabinet and looked for water damage. The power supplies seemed to have gotten a bit wet, which is probably why the server went MIA in the first place. Other than that, everything looked good. I still had some hope that the data on the HDDs was undamaged. Considering that I had removed the HDDs, I tried powering on the server. Any, yay, it started up, went through the BIOS OK and generally seemed like a happy little server again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I let it run for a while with no apparent errors or hiccups, so I decided to try and boot it with disks in it again. At first, the RAID controller complained that its logical drive(s) was missing, but that was expected after I had started it without the drives in it. I tried setting the logical drive to online, but then it complained about missing information. My next move was to copy the RAID/Logical Drive information from the drives to the controller, and that worked perfectly. The server rebooted, and started without problems. I let it run for a while, no problem what so ever, it seemed we caught a lucky break and could continue running.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sadly that was not the case, as it only lasted a good 20 minutes before the server died completely, breaking the RAID as a result. The drives died, the power supply died, and our inventory is now one physical file server smaller.&lt;br&gt;Next, restore from backup. As most small companies/IT-depts. we do backups to tape. We even have a pretty decent LTO3 based changer, and we run Tivoli Storage Manager as out backup software. As this was a physical server that was due to be replaced with a VM, we decided to restore its data to a new pre-provisioned VM. That should be a breeze, right?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As anyone that has attempted to restore large amounts of data from a tape library will attest to, things can, and will, fail. Tapes can go bad, drives can go nuts and changers can decide that they don’t want to change anymore. We experienced two of the above;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bad Tape&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt; One of the tapes we were going to recover data from was broken, and we could not recover data from it. Thankfully TSM lets us have a copypool of tapes, so we did work around it by collecting the replacement tape from that pool.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nutty Drive&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt; Drive 2 in the changer decided that after the initial restore job, a small subset of critical data, it wouldn’t play ball anymore. Now, TSM only uses one drive at a time to restore data with, but it does use the other drive in the changer to prepare the next tape with. So, we were reduced to all the action happening on one drive, which of course means that the restore time was significantly increased.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the end, we were 100% successful in recovering the data from our latest backup set. We restored nearly 1 000 000 files (which also increased the restore time by a huge amount), but the entire restore process took us close to 56 hours in total. &lt;br&gt;Of course, in hindsight this whole mess could pretty easily have been avoided, on several different levels:&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The pipe should not have been able to lead water directly into the server room.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt; When we do risk assessments, do we identify problems like this? I for one did not see this one coming, and I’ve practically lived in that server room the last few years.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;We should have installed some sort of water detection system in the server room.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt; This might not have prevented the server crash, but we could potentially have identified that water was present and been able to shut down the server before it fried.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why was the server still located on the floor?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt; The fileserver should have been virtualized a long time ago, and plans were in place to do so. In fact, the VM that should replace it was already provisioned and semi-configured.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;The most significant thing we could have done, before disaster struck, was to have a proper disaster recovery site in place. Irony has it that we got the quote on the hardware from HP, and software from Veeam, on Tuesday, two days before “the incident”. We have the DR location in place, and the lease contracts have been signed. We even have 100Mbit direct access to the DR site being installed as we speak. If this had happened a month or two from now, we would have been up and running through the whole ordeal. Of course, it could not have happened at a worse time, but when would something like this be well timed, really?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, we were already in the process of getting a DR site in place, so both IT and Management knew about the need for a secondary location. What surprised us though, was the sheer amount of files we had to restore from tape, and how much time it took. 56 hours is an extremely long time, especially when you are looking at restore jobs...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This means that our DR site setup, won’t be based on tape based backups. We can’t rely on tape medium as a primary medium for restore processes, it simply takes too long and is too error prone for us to base our business on. The fact of the matter is that even small businesses now have so many files and so much critical data floating around, that tape just isn’t feasible anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we had tape backups, as we don’t really have the storage space available to do disk based backups right now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As soon as the DR site is up and running, tape is dead as far as I’m concerned.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I’ll outline our DR site setup later, when we have it in place, but I’m definitely looking into using Virtual Tape Libraries (VTL) with dedup built-in for the new setup. And of course, snapshot based VM backups using &lt;a href="http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup.html"&gt;Veeam Backup and Replication&lt;/a&gt; to the DR location, you know, for those really critical VMs that we can’t live without.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I for one will have backups everywhere from now on.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=ItedRLi-hAc:uZ3l_4bbO38:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=ItedRLi-hAc:uZ3l_4bbO38:7Q72WNTAKBA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/ItedRLi-hAc" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;I initially bought a &lt;a href="http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/15351-15351-241434-241646-3328424-3683705.html"&gt;HP Proliant ML 115&lt;/a&gt; server as a cheap test/lab server for VMware vSphere and miscellaneous rollout projects at work, but all of a sudden I needed it for some other project that required that I install Windows Server 2008 directly on the hardware itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As is the story with most HP Proliant servers, you should install it with the tools that HP provides. In the case of the ML 115, you can't use the normal &lt;a href="http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/smartstart/index.html"&gt;SmartStart&lt;/a&gt; setup, but it's little cousin &lt;a href="http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&amp;cc=us&amp;prodTypeId=15351&amp;prodSeriesId=3683705&amp;prodNameId=3683706&amp;swEnvOID=4024&amp;swLang=8&amp;mode=2&amp;taskId=135&amp;swItem=MTX-8798ab6a2f394487bd07b3f615"&gt;Easy Set-up CD&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The installation started fine, after running through the initial HP wizard, but when the time came to actually get the installation started it went all blue screened on me, complaining about &lt;em&gt;nvstor.sys&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;br&gt;I knew that the Windows 2008 installation medium doesn't include support for the built-in nVidia NFP3400 SATA storage controller in RAID mode, but I wasn't running a RAID based setup on it anyway so that shouldn't cause the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Next I tried installing Windows Server 2008 without using the Easy Set-up CD, in other words just plain old booting of the Windows Server 2008 installation CD and initially it seemed like it was running ok. Thats until it just stopped at 0% progress at the "Expanding files" section of the installation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So, there I was. Using the HP tools, the installation ends in a big old BSOD, using "native" Windows Server 2008 installation it just stops without any indication on what might be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As it turns out, the solution was pretty weird. The HDD shipped with the server causes the problem (160GB NHP SATA). I have no idea how, but replacing it with another SATA drive and starting the installation again, with the Easy Set-up CD, fixed it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The HDD shipped with the server makes the installation of Windows Server 2008 crash, replacing it with a "generic" Western Digital AV-GP 1.5TB SATA drive lets me install without problems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the &lt;em&gt;nvstor.sys&lt;/em&gt; driver shipped with Windows Server 2008 has problems with some drives, but not all. Imagine that a cheap server, that can run VMware ESX/ESXi right out of the box, can't run Windows Server 2008 with the HDD it came shipped with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, how weird is that? Note that that wasn't tested with Windows Server 2008 R2, so the &lt;em&gt;nvstor.sys&lt;/em&gt; file shipped with that version might not have the same problem. Also, I did not try loading newer nVidia drivers during the Windows installation procedure, because a) when using the Easy Setup CD you don't get the option to load third party drivers, and b) because after I figured out that changing the HDD helped I didn't want to try another manual installation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Remind me again, why don't we just virtualize everything? In this instance, it would actually be easier (and quicker!) to install ESXi on the bare metal hardware, create a VM and install Windows Server 2008 in that instead of installing Windows Server 2008 on the hardware directly. How the world has indeed changed.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a name="update"&gt;Update 10. March 2010:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;After finishing the installation, I did run into another problem that quite possibly is also related to the &lt;em&gt;nvstor.sys&lt;/em&gt; driver. Windows would fail in creating partitions, of the amount of space used by the partitions exceeded approximately 1TB in total.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Upgrading the server to Windows Server 2008 R2 fixed this issue, and I was able to utilize the full disk. This leads me to think that had I installed Server 2008 R2 from the get-go I would not have seen the installation issues with the original drive at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=pr6XJr8bTkU:i9J_lA_LZvM:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=pr6XJr8bTkU:i9J_lA_LZvM:7Q72WNTAKBA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/pr6XJr8bTkU" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;Microsoft has re-released the previously revoked &lt;a href="http://wudt.codeplex.com/"&gt;Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool&lt;/a&gt;. This time around, it's &lt;a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html"&gt;GPL&lt;/a&gt; licensed with source-code.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The tool has previously been released and subsequently &lt;a href="http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/11/13/update-on-the-windows-7-download-tool-or-microsoft-to-open-source-the-windows-7-download-tool.aspx"&gt;revoked again&lt;/a&gt; after Microsoft was made aware that the tool, developed by a third party, included GPL licensed code in the compiled binary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Personally I'm happy that the tool is available again, and that Microsoft "did the right thing &amp;reg;" and released it with the proper license.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=4Vy6_vse8vg:r_0EuttBeww:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=4Vy6_vse8vg:r_0EuttBeww:7Q72WNTAKBA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/4Vy6_vse8vg" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;Maish Saidel-Keesing has revisited his previous post "&lt;a href="http://technodrone.blogspot.com/2009/05/hot-add-and-have-have.html"&gt;Hot Add and "Need have have"&lt;/a&gt;" where he (&lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/does-your-esxi-need-have-have"&gt;like I did&lt;/a&gt;) pokes some fun at a rather strange error message in ESXi 4.0. Now that Update 1 is out, Maish tries again, this time with better results.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read the whole post: &lt;a href="http://technodrone.blogspot.com/2009/11/have-have-revisited.html"&gt;"Need have have" - revisited&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm glad to say we don't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; have have any more!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=6aS6c_BqXkc:xgdXiN3hScU:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=6aS6c_BqXkc:xgdXiN3hScU:7Q72WNTAKBA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/6aS6c_BqXkc" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;Yesteday I had to reinstall my home computer due to a botched BIOS flash (don't ask, long story...), and decided that it was time I installed Windows 7 on that computer as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remembering the &lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/got-windows-7-got-usb-device-get-installed"&gt;Microsoft's Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool&lt;/a&gt;, I went looking for the download only to be met by a 404 (page not found) error when I tried to download it. The whole information/documentation section was still available on the Microsoft Store site, but the downloadable file was missing. No information was given, so I assumed it was a glitch on Microsofts behalf and located an alternative download site (CNet) that still had it available.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The tool did it's job, and I got Windows 7 Enterprise installed from a USB pendrive without any problems at all, just as expected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Today, however, all information regarding the tool has been removed. All you get now is a "Sorry, the page you are looking for cannot be found." 404 error when you try to access &lt;a href="http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool"&gt;it's previous location&lt;/a&gt; and no explanation is given.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Turns out, Microsoft has indeed pulled the tool from the site. According to Rafael Rivera Jr. this is because he discovered that the Microsoft tool was using code from "CodePlex-hosted (yikes) GPLv2-licensed ImageMaster"&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clearly a breach of the GPL as the Microsoft tool wasn't GPL'ed itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read all the details in Rafael's post "&lt;a href="http://www.withinwindows.com/2009/11/06/microsoft-lifts-gpl-code-uses-in-microsoft-store-tool/"&gt;Microsoft lifts GPL code, uses in Microsoft Store tool&lt;/a&gt;". I guess that means we are back to using &lt;a href="http://wintoflash.com/home/en/"&gt;Novicorp WinToFlash&lt;/a&gt; again. For more details on WinToFlash, check out my post called "&lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/installing-windows-from-a-usb-stick"&gt;Installing Windows from a USB Stick&lt;/a&gt;".&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;How did this ever slip through Microsofts QA?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3 id="update"&gt;Update:&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;On November 13th Microsoft confirmed that their own internal code review of the tool had uncovered that Rafael Riviera Jr. was indeed right. The tool does contain GPL code. The tool was develped for Microsoft by a third party, but still, this could, and should, have been avoided if Microsoft had conducted a proper code review before releasing the tool into the wild.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So, Microsoft now what? Well, it seems like they indend to do the only thing they can do, release the whole tool as GPL licensed:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockqoute cite="http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/11/13/update-on-the-windows-7-download-tool-or-microsoft-to-open-source-the-windows-7-download-tool.aspx"&gt;As a result, we will be making the source code as well as binaries for this tool available next week under the terms of the General Public License v2 as described &lt;a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and are also taking measures to apply what we have learned from this experience for future code reviews we perform. &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read the whole statement from Microsoft: &lt;a href="http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/11/13/update-on-the-windows-7-download-tool-or-microsoft-to-open-source-the-windows-7-download-tool.aspx"&gt;Update on the Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I must say that even if this shouldn't have happened, Microsoft did the right thing here. Admitting what happened and took the natural consequences. Well played.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=iAs1f9-rjhc:EfP5nrLntN8:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=iAs1f9-rjhc:EfP5nrLntN8:7Q72WNTAKBA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/iAs1f9-rjhc" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;Over time the boot partition on a Windows Server 2003 installation might just turn out to be too small. There can be various reasons for this, but the fact remains that over time you will accumulate data on the boot drive that you didn't take account for when you set it up initially.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Luckily I run almost all of my servers in a VMware based virtualized environment, where it's easy to expand the the virtual disks. The problem is that Windows Server 2003 doesn't let you easily expand the boot volume, at least not without downtime. I've previously talked about using tools like &lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/howto-expand-vm-boot-partition"&gt;GParted to expand the boot volume&lt;/a&gt; but there are easier ways to do it and prevent downtime at the same time!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;All you need is love. No,wait, that's something else entirely! All you need is ExtPart. &lt;a href="http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&amp;cs=19&amp;l=en&amp;s=dhs&amp;releaseid=R64398&amp;formatcnt=2&amp;fileid=83929"&gt;ExtPart&lt;/a&gt; is a lovely little 36KB tool that Dell has provided to expand partitions on Dell based servers and storage systems. It is a little known fact that ExtPart can do the job in any 32 bit Windows Server 2000 or 2003 based install (no 64 bit support, sadly), and in Server 2008 there are other methods of doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Enough talk, lets get down to the business at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt;Download &lt;a href="http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&amp;cs=19&amp;l=en&amp;s=dhs&amp;releaseid=R64398&amp;formatcnt=2&amp;fileid=83929"&gt;ExtPart&lt;/a&gt; from the Dell download site&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Expand your boot volume, either via the Virtual Infrastructure Client or via vmkfstools&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Run ExtPart inside your VM to expand your boot volume to the new size&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thats it. The following screenshots outline the process very well, without having to guide you through each step. Have a look!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul class="gallery"&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51016-2/1.jpg" rel="lightbox-screenshot"&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51015-4/1.jpg" class="gallery"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51020-2/2.jpg" rel="lightbox-screenshot"&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51019-4/2.jpg" class="gallery"&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51023-2/3.jpg" rel="lightbox-screenshot"&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51022-4/3.jpg" class="gallery"&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51026-2/4.jpg" rel="lightbox-screenshot"&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51025-4/4.jpg" class="gallery"&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51029-2/5.jpg" rel="lightbox-screenshot"&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51028-4/5.jpg" class="gallery"&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51032-2/6.jpg" rel="lightbox-screenshot"&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51031-4/6.jpg" class="gallery"&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51035-2/7.jpg" rel="lightbox-screenshot"&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51034-4/7.jpg" class="gallery"&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51038-2/8.jpg" rel="lightbox-screenshot"&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/51037-4/8.jpg" class="gallery"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;It can't get much simpler that this, honestly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=l-RCj4OMCdI:DEZ-kEcLg-0:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=l-RCj4OMCdI:DEZ-kEcLg-0:7Q72WNTAKBA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/l-RCj4OMCdI" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;A little while a go &lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/installing-windows-from-a-usb-stick"&gt;I mentioned&lt;/a&gt; a great little tool called &lt;a href="http://wintoflash.com/home/en/"&gt;Novicorp WinToFlash&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seems like Microsoft figured out that was a great little idea, and in conjunction with todays official Windows 7 release, they've also made the &lt;a href="http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool"&gt;Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool&lt;/a&gt; available.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since you can buy Windows 7 and then download the ISO directly from the new online &lt;a href="http://store.microsoft.com/home.aspx"&gt;Microsoft Store&lt;/a&gt; (Can anyone say Apple?!) it makes sense that they have created their own little tool that enables you to install Windows 7 from an USB stick. The tool makes it easy to copy the ISO to a USB stick, and then use that to boot your computer and install from it. Nothing more, nothing less.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I love utilities like these, you know the ones that do one task and do it well?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=zmD_HDGfcQE:QVqB6r1zXKE:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=zmD_HDGfcQE:QVqB6r1zXKE:7Q72WNTAKBA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/zmD_HDGfcQE" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;Now this is something I don't often do as this is mostly a tech blog, but this is huge. Last night Temple of the Dog reunited when Chris Cornell joined Pearl Jam on stage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_the_Dog"&gt;Temple of the Dog&lt;/a&gt; was Chris Cornell, Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, Matt Cameron, Mike McCready and Eddie Vedder all of which were present at Los Angeles’ Gibson Amphitheatre performing “Hunger Strike” from the self titled album released in 1991.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="center"&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;object width="560" height="340"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yLo5miR0dJY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yLo5miR0dJY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, can Pearl Jam please come play in Bergen, Norway? And, yes, I wouldn't mind it much if Chris Cornell came along for the ride too...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=gOLSKe6_iK4:hQ201FtWbLU:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?a=gOLSKe6_iK4:hQ201FtWbLU:7Q72WNTAKBA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/h0bbel?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/gOLSKe6_iK4" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

I was reading &lt;a href="http://infotrope.net/blog/2009/10/09/looking-for-a-better-twitter-identic-clien/"&gt;this post about a Twitter/identi.ca client&lt;/a&gt; and it got me thinking about what &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; want in a Twitter/Identi.ca client. I want some of the things he wants, such as:&#xD; &lt;ul&gt;&#xD; &lt;li&gt;I want to use a single client to manage all my tweeting and denting without having to login and out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD; &lt;li&gt;I want to be able to tweet/dent in one place and have it show up in both by default&lt;/li&gt;&#xD; &lt;li&gt;&#x2026; but be able to direct it to just one location if appropriate, on a tweet-by-tweet basis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD; But I want the following as well:&#xD; &lt;ul&gt;&#xD; &lt;li&gt;OS X-native app with a standard UI. Please use as few custom widgets as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD; &lt;li&gt;Don't show in the Dock. I want a menu icon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD; &lt;li&gt;Posts from both services mixed in the same list. Some people post to both, I'd like duplicate detection so that I don't see two of the same message (once from each service).&lt;/li&gt;&#xD; &lt;li&gt;I want replies to go only to the service the post came from (but to both services if the post was on both)&lt;/li&gt;&#xD; &lt;/ul&gt;</content>

by Randy at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

If iTunes 9 blinded you with its white background in Grid view, then you'll love iTunes 9.0.2. Apple has added the ability to switch to a dark Grid view. Here's how to enable it.&#xD; &#xD; Go to the iTunes menu and choose the "Preferences..." command (Edit&gt;Preferences... in Windows). Look for the "Grid View" option about two-thirds of the way down the Preferences window (It's on the right-hand side). Change it from "Light" to "Dark" and then press the "OK" button to save these preferences.&#xD; &#xD; &lt;img src="http://randywalker.net/user/files/itunesprefs.png" width="624" height="618"&gt;</content>

by Randy at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

I went to see "The Box" last night with Josh. I don't recommend it. The suspense and thriller parts were great. The plot, however, left something to be desired. Also, there were many questions that were unanswered at the end of the movie. It just kept getting worse and worse until the credits rolled and I was more confused than ever.</content>

by Randy at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

I was at a place called Coffee Talk in Clare, Michigan today and decided to have a salad for lunch. Let me tell you, the Caribbean Salad was delicious, if misnamed. It was romaine lettuce topped with grilled chicken, red onion, pecans, canned peaches, and chevre (goat cheese) with a citrus onion dressing. Fresh peaches would have been better but the salad was still delicious! I want to go back and try all the other stuff on their menu, now!&#xD; </content>

by Randy at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

Today, I turn 26. I have a feeling that this will be a boring birthday. Hooray</content>

by Randy at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

I took my car (1989 Pontiac Bonneville SE) to the mechanic to get a brake job. He called us later that day and said that he lifted the car up, took one look around, and decided not to replace my breaks. He saw that my cradle was rusted through and that it would be unsafe for me to continue driving the car. (The cradle holds the bits and pieces in the car... a rusted cradle could drop the transmission and stuff onto the road while I was driving.)&#xD; &#xD; My parents helped me find a new car. "New." It's a 1994 Oldsmobile 98 Regency. It's a pretty nice car. It's a bit big but not too bad. It's color is called "champagne", I believe, and it it gives off a a little-old-lady vibe, but it runs well and gets me to the places I need to go so it's all good.</content>

by Randy at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;This is going to be totally awesome!I can't wait!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/03/did-i-mention-that-the-tng-episode-of-family-guy-airs-this-sunday.html"&gt;WWdN: In Exile: Did I mention that the TNG episode of Family Guy airs this Sunday?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by Randy at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

&lt;a href="http://polonia-restaurant.net/"&gt;Polonia Restaurant in Hamtramck, Michigan&lt;/a&gt; charges a service fee if you pay your bill with a credit card, in direct violation &lt;a href="http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/rules_for_visa_merchants.pdf"&gt;Visa's merchant agreement&lt;/a&gt; (see page 10, "No Surcharging"). Each check is stamped at the bottom with a message that they'll charge you an extra 3.72% if you pay with a credit card. This is dirty.&#xD; &#xD; Also, the food is not that good.</content>

by Randy at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

I saw the preview for &lt;a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465580/"&gt;"Push"&lt;/a&gt; before &lt;a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1099212/"&gt;"Twilight"&lt;/a&gt; (which I saw twice: once by myself and once with Mary Jo) and thought that it looked pretty good. It seemed to be another super powers movie like "X-Men" or "Jumper", which I happen to like. I decided I would go see "Push" when it opened. I wasn't looking forward to much because I saw that the &lt;a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/push/"&gt;Rotten Tomatoes score was only 26%&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD; &#xD; My new roommate Peter and I went to see it last night. It was surprisingly good. It had a good, unique story and there weren't any dead moments. It was nice and long, too, clocking in at just under two hours. I really liked this movie. If you like the TV shows "Heroes" or &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_4400"&gt;"The 4400"&lt;/a&gt; or movies like those named above, you'll really like "Push".</content>

by Randy at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

It turns out I'm allergic to x-ray dye. I found that out yesterday when I was having an allergic reaction after being injected.</content>

by Randy at July 30, 2010 03:00 AM

This guy was incredible [youtube link]:

Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin, to such extent that you bleach to get like the white man? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose, and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself, from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?

Who taught you to hate your own kind—who taught you to hate the race that you belong to, so much so that you don’t wanna be around each other? No, before you come around asking Mr. Muhammed does he teach hate, you should ask yourself: who taught you to hate being what God gave you?

by Firas at July 15, 2010 05:07 AM

Photo credit: VirtualErn

I had the opportunity yesterday to grill some chicken leg quarters on my gas grill and everybody raved about how moist they were and that the meat just fell off the bone. I figured I’d share a few tips so that you’ll never have to eat dry, overcooked chicken again.

The key to the whole process is temperature. Low and slow, like BBQ. Ok, not quite, but we’re not going to cook them on high either. Somewhere middle of the road, around medium temperature or about 350°F. Chicken skin tends to melt and flare up around 400° leading to black chicken that nobody wants to eat.

Once you get your grill warmed up, I like to wipe some olive oil on the grates to keep things from sticking. You can also use PAM, but only the kind made to be sprayed on a grill. Place your chicken leg quarters bone side down, with the skin up. Cook them for about 20 minutes, keeping an eye out w/ a squirt bottle of water for flare ups. If you keep your temperature around 350°F, flare ups should be rare. After the first 20 minutes, flip them over and coat the now cooked bottom with a BBQ sauce of your choice. I prefer Sweet Baby Ray’s.

After the second 20 min cooking period, flip them back over so that the skin side is up, coat that in BBQ sauce. Cook them this way for 10 minutes, then flip them over for a final 10 minutes. All this does is help cook the BBQ sauce on a bit and finish cooking the chicken. The temperature is low enough that your BBQ sauce will not burn so don’t worry. Pull the leg quarters off the grill and let them rest for a few minutes on a plate then enjoy!

Total cooking time for a 10-14oz chicken leg quarter should be about 60 minutes. You should also double check w/ an instant read thermometer before you pull them off the grill. The meat thermometer should read about 165°F.

by Ryan at July 12, 2010 02:25 PM

I’m sure you’ve heard about the debate with WordPress vs WordPress. There was a patch committed to WordPress 3.0 that automatically converts it to include an uppercase P and follow the WordPress branding. This was added as as an easter egg of sorts to help the WordPress brand, and while I don’t have an issue with it, I do have an issue with the way some in the community reacted to it.

The problem with easter eggs is they’re supposed to be found by those in the community and they’re supposed to be fun. Of course, there was no hiding this one. The revision was committed in the public eye, but without a ticket. I don’t think there was much need for a ticket and public discussion because this has been in play on WordPress.com for a few years now. Of course, some argue that there was no community input because there was no trac ticket.

The one legitimate issue I could find with this patch was the fact that because the way it corrects text, it can possibly break image links and directories. I’m sure this is only in a minor percentage of cases, because as most have learned, their hosting environment is case sensitive and they use all lowercase directory and file names. This has since been fixed for trunk and 3.0.1 in revisions 15377 and 15378.

This begs the question, if this patch worked properly and didn’t break links, would we even be in this situation? Would the few squeaky wheels be complaining about Matt and Automattic doing their will and not respecting the community? Would this issue have been blown out of proportion? Would anything have even been said about it?

As usual, some in the community to complained. I’ve heard all sorts of excuses from editing user’s content (albeit just a spelling correction), to the capital P caused the BP oil spill. Yes, I’m not joking. Conspiracy theories breed conspiracy theories. There have even been parody sites made– capitalp.org and lowercasep.org

This brings about another point– I recently had a discussion with Aaron Brazell regarding the WordPress community and complaining. The point he made was that if it doesn’t affect your bottom line (income) stop complaining about it. All you do is waste your breath, waste your time, and don’t make as much money as you could. By directing your resources to other places, such as your business or contributing patches to WordPress, you can further better yourself and the WordPress community.

As usual though, there’s always a few that want to complain, and while I won’t mention them by name (they know who they are), I hope they take one thing away from this post– focus your time on making WordPress and the WordPress community better instead of complaining about this or that. Please  stop coming up with conspiracy theories about Matt, WordPress and Automattic; they’re rarely true. Its not an issue of principal, Matt, or Automattic; its an issue of making things better. Focus your time on creating a patch to fix the filter and fix the bug. That helps improve the community.

by Ryan at July 10, 2010 08:11 PM

“If there was an old days, we pioneered it.”
— Nas

The lyrical quality of 90s hip hop is astounding in comparison to rap these days; even average MCs were technically proficient, and new kids like Nas came through blazing: “I move swift and uplift your mind, shoot the gift when I riff in rhyme”.

Nas, Live at the BBQ (1991)

Street’s disciple, my raps are trifle
I shoot slugs from my brain just like a rifle
Stampede the stage, I leave the microphone split
Play Mr. Tuffy while I’m on some Pretty Tone shit

Verbal assassin, my architect pleases
When I was twelve, I went to hell for snuffing Jesus!
Nasty Nas is a rebel to America
Police murderer, I’m causing hysteria

My troops roll up with a strange force
I was trapped in a cage and let out by the Main Source
Swimming in women like a lifeguard
Put on a bulletproof nigga I strike hard

Kidnap the President’s wife without a plan
And hanging niggas like the Ku Klux Klan
I melt mics till the soundwave’s over
Before stepping to me you’d rather step to Jehovah

Slamming MCs on cement
Cause verbally, I’m iller than a AIDS patient
I move swift and uplift your mind
Shoot the gift when I riff in rhyme

Rapping sniper, speaking real words
My thoughts react, like Steven Spielberg’s
Poetry attacks, paragraphs punch hard
My brain is insane, I’m out to lunch God

Science is dropped, my raps are toxic
My voicebox locks and excels like a rocket!

by Firas at July 10, 2010 06:19 PM

Common’s feature on Kanye’s ‘Get Em High’, which appeared almost a decade after his diss track smashing Ice Cube, proved again that his being a thoughtful MC doesn’t limit his ability to wreak destruction on wax.

Nas:
“You got some songs, brother that’s violent, without being violent. Without cursing, but you get your point across, you make people stand at attention. There’s times I hear something that Common does that I’m like, ‘I wish I made that song.’ He got a way to approach certain records, like…”
Audience member:
“‘Get Em High!”
Nas:
“Yeah! Get Em High, you know it’s crazy, it’s too many to name actually.”

— 52nd Grammy Weekend

Get Em High (Kanye West ft. Talib Kweli & Common, 2004):

Get ‘em high like noon or the moon,
Or room filled with smoke, a hype filled with dope
Y’all assumed I was doomed, out of tune,
But I still fill the notes with real nigga quotes

Real rappers is hard to find like a remote,
Control rappers out of, used to but still got love,
That’s why I abuse you who are not thugs

Rock clubs like Tiger Woods in the hood,
Should have my own reality show called Soul Survivor
I stole on liver niggas than you,
You’s a bitch, I got ones that are thicker than you

How could I ever let your words affect me,
They say hip hop is dead, I’m here to resurrect me,
Marks is too sexy to even make songs like these
That’s why the raw don’t know your name, like Alicia Keys

To many featured MCs and producers is populer
Twelve thousand spins, nobody got to copping the album,
How come? You the hot garbage of the year,
It’s clear your image is snooped up

Label got you souped up, telling you you sick,
When you a dick with a loose nut
Video hard to watch like Medusa
Even your club record need a booster
Chimped up, with a pimp cup, illiterate nigga!

Read the info/infra-red across your head I’m bread/bred king like Simba
Bo(u)lder then Denver, I ain’t a Madd Rapper just a emcee with a temper
You dancing for money like Honey, I did this my way
So when the industry crash, I survive like Kanye

Spitting through wires and fires, MCs retiring
Got yo hands up? Get them motherfuckers higher then!

by Firas at July 03, 2010 01:27 AM

Ha! Great Right/Left skewering by The Onion.

“Dad’s great, but listening to all that talk radio has put some weird ideas into his head,” said daughter Samantha, a freshman at Reed College in Portland, OR. “He believes the Constitution allows the government to torture people and ban gay marriage, yet he doesn’t even know that it guarantees universal health care.”

via Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be | The Onion.

by Mark at July 01, 2010 04:23 PM

Big surprise. The position Sonia Sotomayor espoused in her Senate confirmation hearing doesn’t jibe with the dissent she joined in McDonald v. Chicago.

I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller.

vs

In sum, the Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self defense.

(via Sonia Sotomayor and the Second Amendment – Hit & Run : Reason Magazine)

by Mark at June 30, 2010 05:20 PM

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they’re never going to be born. The number of people who could be here in my place outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here.

Richard Dawkins

I think about this almost every day. Consequently it irks me that the increasingly clichéd question “what is the meaning of life?” has been epitomized in popular ontology. We are each the winner of the universe’s ultimate lottery, and our response is “It must be a game. Who has some cheat codes?”

by Mark at June 28, 2010 08:02 AM

“Put the CD on your tongue: yeah, that’s pure man.”
— Kanye West

Nas’ verse on ‘Verbal Intercourse’ is one of the greatest in hip hop history:

Through the lights cameras and action, glamour glitters and gold
I unfold the scroll, plant seeds to stampede the globe
When I’m deceased, by then the beast arise like yeast
To conquer peace, leaving savages to roam in the streets

Live on the run, police paying me to give in my gun
Trick my wisdom with the system that imprisoned my son
Smoke a gold leaf I hold heat, nonchalantly
I’m grungy, but things I do is real it never haunts me

It’s like a cycle, niggas come home, some’ll go in
Do a bullet, come back, do the same shit again
From the womb to the tomb, presume the unpredictable
Guns salute life, rapidly, that’s the ritual.

He first recorded this on a demo track called ‘Deja Vu’, a clear version of which was recently unearthed. It continues:

They telling you your state of mind, like you worthless
So he curses, his moms saying bible verses, that’s all she works with
But miracles never leave the churches,
Instead it hits the pockets of the preacher just to purchase
A house with a swimming pool, labels me a sinning fool,
I’m just a nigga who inherited a winning jewel…

Zip of ‘Deja Vu’ (9 mb). [source]

by Firas at June 26, 2010 02:23 AM

By popular request, some more photos of Atticus, ranging from 8 weeks old back to his birth day.

by Mark at June 21, 2010 10:25 PM

My girls wear lipstick while they’re making my beats,
They got guitar picks in their purses, Louboutins on their feet
They got no time for waiting in lines,
They got sex and 808s running through their dirty minds…

by Firas at June 20, 2010 05:12 PM

Notorious B.I.G., Kick in the Door (1997) [youtube link]

Mad I smoke hydro, rock diamonds that’s sick,
Got paid off my flow, rhyme with my own clique
Take trips to Cairo, layin with yo [chick],
I know you praying you was rich, fucking prick
When I see ya I’ma Kick in the Door, waving the .44!

This goes out for those that choose to use
Disrespectful views on the King of NY
Fuck that, why try, throw bleach in your eye
Now ya brailling it, stash that light shit, or scaling it

Ain’t no other king in this rap thing, they siblings,
Nothing but my chil’ren, one shot, they disappearing
It’s ill when, MC’s used to be on cruddy shit
Took home, “Ready to Die,” listened, studied shit

Now they on some money shit, successful out the blue
They light weight, fragilly, my nine milly
Make the white shake, thats why my money never funny
And you still recouping, stupid!

by Firas at June 20, 2010 02:48 PM

The sentence “Keith Olbermann reads James Thurber’s ‘Sex Ex Machina’” was pretty strange to me for a second (the literary angle didn’t fit his typification in my head) but this video is exactly that [youtube link]:

Apparently he’s been reading various Thurber portions on TV for a couple months. Here’s another piece: ‘Nine Needles‘.

by Firas at June 15, 2010 06:16 AM

by Firas at June 11, 2010 10:35 AM

Christopher Blizzard nails what is wrong with Apple’s “HTML5” demos which use browser sniffing and Safari- and Webkit-specific tech to exclude other browsers with good HTML5 support.

The most important aspect of HTML5 isn’t the new stuff like video and canvas (which Safari and Firefox have both been shipping for years) it’s actually the honest-to-god promise of interoperability.

via Christopher Blizzard · intellectual honesty and html5.

Indeed. While the new stuff that HTML5 enables is exciting, the most amazing part is that the spec attempts to describe how a parser should implement these features in enough detail that two different browser vendors can follow the spec and end up with a parser that works the same (for the most part) as one created by another team who also followed the spec.

by Mark at June 06, 2010 01:43 AM

If you haven’t seen the third trailer for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming summer movie Inception, give it a watch.

The movie looks great — part The Matrix, part Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, part Dark Knight, from what I can tell — but the production values of this trailer are sublime. Well-paced, with a healthy “whaa?” factor. Best of all, the music is absolutely epic. The score is called “Mind Heist” by Zack Hemsey.

It has elements of obvious tribute to Hans Zimmer, who composed the score for the film, but seems a bit edgier than Zimmer’s work. I’m rather obsessed with movie trailers and commercials as works of art. They are micro capsules of art and emotion that have to engage and move you in an impossibly small amount of time. Music can play a huge role in that feat.

by Mark at June 04, 2010 06:41 AM

I just received this email with an image attachment. Should I open it?

From: Harold Wagner <aughton@wtpsmercer.k12.nj.us>
Subject: Hello

Hello my the surprised Friend!

I understand, that you are surprised now, when this letter has arrived
to you. BUT I ASK YOU TO SPEND 5 MINUTES, your time and have read it
up to the end then probably it will change your and my life. At first
I wish to tell a little about myself. My name is Mariya. To me of 37
years. I live in a city under name Kirov, it is a small city in
northern part of Russia. I not married and never was. I also do not
have children. I have left school then has finished institute on a
trade of "economist". If it is interesting to you I will necessarily
tell about it, but now not in it the purpose dear friend.
Recently, I watched TV and saw, that in Russia there are 35000000
women who live without men, and there are such agencies of marriage
which have many electronic addresses, and such agency can help to find
for women the suitable man. I have gone to one of such agencies, and
have addressed to them with inquiry that they have found for me the
good man. They have informed at once me, that in Russia I should
search for the good and decent man very long time. Then they have
offered me acquaintance to the man from other country, on what I have
looked from a positive side. As I know, that at us in the country of
the man, do not appreciate women, is possible because women several
times more.
In general, I have agreed to strike up acquaintance to the man from
other country, and they have given me your electronic address. Having
told that you the lonely fair and decent man who searches for the
woman for creation of relations. Then I took your electronic address
and have gone to the cafe Internet to write you the letter. Here now
you can my letter see. I have written you it with hope, that you will
answer to me. I have inserted one my photo that you could see, my
appearance and to solve for you directly completely, you will like to
begin dialogue and relations with me or not. Only I ask, concern my
letter seriously, look my photo, the letter, think and solve,
precisely you would like to have the correspondence with me? I do not
wish to be the friend, it is not necessary, I am ready to serious
relations. It is very necessary to love, give my love to the MAN and
family creation. If you really wish to have serious relations with me
write to me. If you do not want to have a relationship with me, just
do not respond to my letter, I can understand everything myself. And
nevertheless, I wish to tell to you, that my photo is made not
professionally, but you see me, such what I in a life. And you can
precisely define such woman as I am necessary for you or not. Very big
inquiry as wanted if you however interested in me write to me about
your e-mail where we can speak with you and small good photos you.
Like everything, that I wished to tell you, and now I only need to
wait from you for the answer, and I hope you write to me. If I was not
pleasant to you, or serious relations are not necessary for you then
do not write me anything, I will understand!

I hope your new friend, I hope that I can become for you friend
Mariya!

You can send your letter and photo to this email address:  mashaneebet@BonBon.net

The lonely woman from Russia Mariya.

by Ryan at June 03, 2010 11:33 PM

May 31st just happens to be Turn Back the Clock Day. Celebrate by going retro and switching on the oldest blog theme you have.

In my case, it’s Classic by Dave Shea because, well, I’ve been using WordPress for almost 6 years now.

by Ryan at May 31, 2010 11:37 AM

Overview

As some may have heard, we’ll be hosting a BBQ Tweetup at our house this summer. It will be held on Saturday, July 31st at 2PM. Food will be served around 4PM. There will be a $5 cover for adults, because (good) meat is, well, expensive. The party will be held at my house in Goldsboro, PA

Update

50% of all proceeds will be donated to the American Bird Conservancy to assist in oil cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Menu (What I’ll Be Providing)

• Pulled Pork
• Baby Back Ribs
• BBQ Chicken
• Corn on the Cob
• Rolls
• Cornbread Muffins
• Soda (limited quantities, extra requested[Coke, Sprite, Gingerale])
• Water
• Plates, Napkins, Plasticware

Update: My neighbor will be donating a 30 pack of Coors Light, a 24 pack of Yuengling, and a (2)24 packs of Corona.

If you’d like to add to the menu, you can bring a covered dish, desert, chips, soda, etc. Alcohol is more than welcome, but it is BYO.

The Afterparty

As the sun goes down, we’ll get a bonfire started and you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like. We’ll have stuff to make s’mores if you’d like. If you’re coming from further away and wish to stay overnight, there will be an area where you can set up your tent and camp out as well as a few hotels 10-15 min away.

To RSVP

If you plan on attending, please email me at ryanduff [at] gmail [dot] com to let me know how many will be attending. Upon RSVP, I’ll send you the exact street address.

Other Misc Notes

• Seating will be limited, but I’ll try and get as many tables and chairs as I can. If you have folding chairs, please bring them. We’ll need some for the bonfire as well, if you plan on staying.
• I think I have a set of horseshoes, but if you have any other picnic games, feel free to bring them and we’ll find a place to set them up.
• Since BBQ is cooked low and slow, I’ll only be able to make so much of each meat within the time frame. If it looks like we’re not going to have enough, I’ll also plan on cooking some hamburgers and hot dogs. As it stands, I’ll be starting the pulled pork at 7:30PM Friday night so that I have time to cook the ribs and chicken and be done at 4PM Saturday…
• I could use a hand with prep and set up Saturday morning. If anybody would like to volunteer to help out in the kitchen, etc please let me know. As an incentive, there will be no cover charge if you volunteer and help out.
• There will be no rain date. I will have covered areas so hopefully the weather cooperates.

Guest List (local tweeps)

• @dziner
• @imthegirl
• @williamsba / @amber331 – Veggie tray, dip
• @onefinejay – watermelon, salad, dressing
• @hodgepodgery / @mdguzy – Spinach, strawberry, and pecan salad; baked beans
• @mpthomas1
• @privatestorm
• @jgillette
• @tyrannytierny
• @edgrohl
• @alobodig
• @phillip_copley – (2) 12 packs of soda
• @deuscain
• @sandrasarcasm – veggie burgers, cookies
• @rhoadesrage – chips, cheese dip
• @sarah_sherrif / @asg_warlord – chips, guacamole
• @bpolensky / @ljoreo
• @dahcheet – chips
• @mattheyfrey
• @technog33k
• @christinerobyn
• @rycoco
• @kulabk – pasta salad
• @dani_pa – pasta salad
• @kimparsell
• [neighbors / family] – brownies (2x), watermelon, pasta salad, fruit salad, potato salad, baked beans

by Ryan at May 25, 2010 07:23 PM

AZ’s multisyllabic rhymes are effortlessly slick.

Never Change (2005): [youtube link]

I asked was he dabbling, he laughed and said he managing
His Carti frames was as clear as a camera lens,
He hardly changed, I was near in comparison

It was Tuesday when I saw him, figured Friday I could call him
Woke up early Wednesday morning, flew a chick in from New Orleans
Up in Nostrum’s for a fresh pair to floss ‘em
Of course with footwear I be that first nigga that sport ‘em
Debating my destination, lacing, weighing my options
Celly started rocking, I anwsered, “What’s poppin’?”
They anwsered and said, “They shot him, now the hood got a problem.”

by Firas at May 23, 2010 01:32 AM

by Firas at May 20, 2010 08:24 PM

Timothy Sandefur reviews John Yoo’s Crisis and Command in California Lawyer Magazine. Spoiler: it’s a trainwreck.

So are presidents the judges of their own authority, up to the very moment when they are impeached?

For Yoo, the answer seems to be yes.

by Mark at May 17, 2010 09:07 AM

Tax bills in 2009 at lowest level since 1950 – USATODAY.com

Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman’s presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found. Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports.

Uh, that is complete bullshit. Social Security taxes alone are 12.4% (employer pays half) of up to $106,800 of gross income. Medicare is 2.9% (employer pays half) with no ceiling. If I calculate the tax burden that I personally pay (so not including the fact that everything I buy is price-inflated from upstream taxation), I pay at least 35%. In fact, every dollar I’ve earned so far this year is going to be paid to the government… it is only in mid-May that I’m allowed to start keeping any for myself.

by Mark at May 13, 2010 05:48 AM

Our first child, M. Atticus Jaquith (“Atticus”), was born at 4:56pm on April 26th, 2010.

Vitals:

• Boy
• 6 lb, 11.4 oz
• 20 1/4 in
• Dark hair
• Blue eyes
• 2 dimples!

He’ll go by Atticus — named after Atticus Finch, the principled and stoic character from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The “M” stands for Michael, my father’s name. We really liked the name Atticus, and also wanted to work Michael into the mix. We thought Michael Atticus sounded better than Atticus Michael, ergo the call-him-by-his-middle-name business. This will matter years later as we have to “full name” him when he gets in trouble.

Some more shots:

Sarah did great. She was induced three weeks early due to blood pressure worries. Her pressures are coming down, as expected, now that he’s out. He’s very sleepy, but can be roused for temporary bouts of alertness. He doesn’t cry much… so far he’s content to just chill out. We’re both very fond of him, and very excited about all of this!

by Mark at April 27, 2010 04:47 AM

Episode 2 of Put This On is now available, covering the subject of shoes.

by Mark at April 21, 2010 05:00 AM

Saw this in Linda Rhodes’ Our Parents, Ourselves column in today’s Patriot News.

Q: My parents saw an ad for a new health insurance plan as a result of the Health Care Reform law, but it sounded too good to be true. How can they tell?

A: The first red flag is that it’s “too good to be true.” Scam artists are savvy at telling consumers what they want to hear. Insurance fraud experts caution that if the deal seems too good — like you’ll get full coverage, no pre-existing conditions, cheap premiums, no medical exam or detailed questions to answer — then you are likely being scammed.

Now, I’m not sure if it was inadvertant, but it sounds a heck of a lot like what the democrats promised. In short, yes, the American people got fleeced.

I wonder why the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud has not gone after Lord Obama, Commander Pelosi, Count Reid, et al. for this travesty they call “reform.”

by Ryan at April 12, 2010 10:13 PM

Carlos Urreta takes a look at how various people (including me) with what might be called “strong calendar synesthesia” visualize their “mental calendar.” I like the idea of cutting up and rearranging a physical calendar to match! I might do that in a wall of my office.

by Mark at April 10, 2010 04:06 AM

Cory Doctorow wrote a scathing critique of the iPad. Well, not so much a critique of the iPad as a critique of the future of sealed-box, sealed-ecosystem computing that it portends. We should have seen this coming with the iPhone, but somehow we didn’t grasp the impact of making the screen roughly six times bigger. It all seems obvious in retrospect.

Much of what Cory says resonates with me. But I disagree with his conclusions. My reaction to the iPad went in stages: meh, horror, acceptance.

Meh

The iPad announcement was underwhelming. It suffered from vastly inflated expectations, and so much of the device is derivative of the iPhone. It looked like 2007′s state of the art, except that it wouldn’t fit in your pocket.

Horror

Then I “got it.” This is something that people will use in lieu of a computer, and eventually in stead. I spent a solid day in a state of horror. I grew up with computers that you could open, and fix, and build yourself, and write programs for that would run instantly and you could send to your friends and they could run them instantly. I did all of those things. That freedom to tinker helped me discover a lot about myself, and now I’m a Lead Developer on an Open Source web publishing platform used by tens of millions of people to publish content that is viewed by billions of people. The iPad seems like an attack on the cornerstone of my career and my very constitution.

Acceptance

Not everyone needs a computer they can service, and upgrade, and program. Full stop. This was my first breakthrough. My second was this:

There will always be computers for tinkerers.

Cory calls the iPad infantalized, and talks about its “contempt for the user.” That’s one way of looking at it. I suspect that most people without a programming background or who are not expert computer users will just call it “easy” and “intuitive.” We had a nice couple of decades where we thought that the future was a powerful $3,000 expandable, upgradable multi-function machine on everyone’s desk. We were wrong. People don’t want something that is capable of doing anything. They want something that does what they want to do, does it well, does it reliably, at a low price, and makes them feel clever. General purpose computing devices failed them. We were never going to live in a world where everyone is an expert user of traditional general purpose computers.

That may be cynical, but it’s true. This is the part where you start crying and I hug you and tell you that everything is going to be okay. Queue piano crescendos to mark the emotional turning point. But seriously, it’s going to be okay.

The kids are still tinkering, and if I know anything about tinkerers, it is that they find a way to change their world, no matter what hurdles you put in front of them.

You can also take courage in the fact that the main barriers against fusing the user’s paradise that Apple offers and the tinkerer’s paradise about which we wax nostalgic are legal in nature. Software patents and the DMCA are the real enemy. Apple is only playing the game according to the rules of the board. Bring down those travesties, and Cory may avoid having to pay for an expensive and painful Apple tattoo removal.

by Mark at April 03, 2010 08:38 AM