MSN Censoring???

Ooookay, this is weird: Try IM'img someone with the following URL on MSN: http://2www.007b.com/breast_gallery.php Guess what? It won't go through. Take the b-word out, though, and it does. Or change the domain. Do they have some weird URL censor?? I'm using Adium on the Mac, so I'm pretty sure the censor's not there. My wife has MSN on Windows, though, so it's possible that it's her MSN client (no, we don't have any parental controls on the computer - there's only adults in the house). Very weird. AIM works just fine for the URL, though...

Recent stuff

So, christmas is over. Like I said in my last posting, I got a PDA (HP rx1955, btw). Tonight's the 5th night of Chanukah - we're sitting in the computer room watching the candles and web browsing. and I went to the doctor today to check on our future son - everything's ok and her weight is healthy (neither over nor under). We're going to start looking at childbirth classes soon, as well as getting me into a daddy's class and both of us into some child-care and -safety classes. I've been thinking of buying some tefillin, and to start doing daily prayer in the morning (or daily talk/complaint session, something like that). I think a more structured method may work for me than just assuming that I'll get up in the morning to do it, though, so I'll have to figure something out to "force" myself to actually DO it. still thinks I'm nuts, but that's life.

PDA!!!

I have a new PDA. it's an hp ipaq rx1955. Wireless networking, MP3, video. I can even IM from it

Xmas list

Here's my xmas present list for friends/family: How to love your flute by Mark Shepard ISBN: 0938497103 An HP iPaq RX1955 (or an older iPaq with an 802.11b wireless adapter added) CompUSA http://www.sonnettech.com/product/encore_stg4.html An Encore upgrade CPU for my G4 AGP PowerMac. It's a 450MHz, so anyspeed they sell would do. Any Trevor Wye flute book from Amazon, in particular A Beginner's Book for Flute, Part 1 ISBN: 0853609330 Practice Book for the Flute, Book 1 ISBN: 0853603421 The First Hebrew Primer: The Adult Beginner's Path to Biblical Hebrew ISBN 0939144158

Flute

I got a flute! Okay, I used to play flute in the 6th grade (um... that would be 17 years ago). I remember 4 notes (and 2 of them were wrong anyways...). But got me one (I have to pay her back for it) today at Tuesday Morning. I've brushed up a little, and even made some noise! I remembered how to switch between 1st and 2nd octave, and looked up how to make notes from B up to G in 2nd octave (the one I remember using the most). Now I'll have to play it more.

Mac moved

Ok, just moved my mac to my desk in the office, and got a USB KVM so that I can switch from my mac and my whindoze box quickly now. The living room's coffee table can go back to being a coffee table now. Now maybe I'll actually clean in there.... yeah, maybe later... In other news, AT&T CallVantage now requires you to specify if you've rebooted your TA. This means that every time I fiddle with the settings, even if my IP is the same, it still bugs me to press 1 if my address hasn't changed. And it won't recognize the 1 until it's said it's whole spiel. Argh. And finally, I picked up an old copy of Learning Cocoa, or something like that. It was cheap, and now I can learn Objective C and Apple's Cocoa framework, maybe fiddle around with stuff. P.S. Delicious Library rocks! Very cool program. Found a bug with non-Gregorian calendar years (but not the month or day, weirdly...), and suggested a different beep when something is scanned from the scanner/DV camera but turns up no results. (I'd imagine it'll probably beep when it scans it, and then if it's not found beep again differently to let you know to pay attention to the screen, but it's up to them.)

day Off

Well, after stressing about work way too much, I'm taking tomorrow off as a Mental Health Day. We used to have them at work sometimes if we'd just had too much. Hadn't had one in awhile, and due to the consultants being there, and the questions that they're asking, I was stressing. I like to think that I've done alot of good at Signal, and that the network design is far better than when I started, and that the consultants' review can just be viewed as a peer-review, and I do crave feedback. But with every question, I feel worse about my competence. They seem to expect that every process is documented, that every setting of every server is documented. That's all great and fine, but we're not there, and I just feel like I'm going to be graded on this. And my programming is far better than my network administration (well, I've been programming for 9 years professional, and network admin'ing for only 3.5 years, so...). So, and I are taking a day off tomorrow (well, she already had it off, but anyways). We're going to have a nice brunch, go see Harry Potter (4th movie), and just hang out tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully I'll de-stress, and realize that it's just a peer review. And when they're done, they'll tell me to implement all of this documentation, and process, and create process, and then I'll get work done in the after hours I'll have so much process to work through. Fun fun fun. Edit: Oh, and let it NOT be said that is NOT very nice. She is going with me to the movie on the FIRST day. Usually a no-no with her. (Because people are stupid and talk through movies and kick seats, she says. There is a special Hell for people who talk through movies (assuming [that] you believe in Hell in the first place).)

Quiz results...

Don't take this at face value... Although I could have swung either way, I'm happily married to my wife and quite monogamous.. You scored 44 Heterosexuality, 59 Homosexuality, and 39 Asexuality! You are either gay or bisexual (preferring your own gender) with a moderate to high sex drive. The higher your score in homosexuality, the more you are attracted to your own gender. A higher asexuality score means that you place a bigger emphasis on the emotional aspects of a relationship and less on the physical.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 7% on Heterosexuality You scored higher than 91% on Homosexuality You scored higher than 95% on Asexuality

Link: The 3-Variable Sexuality Spectrum Test written by kitsunechild on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Another shabbes...

Well, another shabbes where I won't be going to shul. Admittedly, it's raining outside, it will be cold tomorrow morning, and my wife is pregnant, so I can understand why she wants me to take her to the bank tomorrow for her work. But I can look forward to the day when she doesn't work there anymore, and then I can go to shul regularly again. I'm also hoping to introduce erev shabbat dinners on friday nights, and actually cook them and all. I also hope to do one Orthodox-compliant shabbes, just to see what it feels like. I got another jewish book, Judaism for Two, I'm interested to see what I has for relationship stuff. Oh, we got Delicious Library for our Mac. Wow. Even with our old 450MHz G4 it still can scan pretty quickly, so we're going to use this to catalog our library. And it's pretty fun, so I think we'll start the hardcovers this Sunday. (Saturday we have my brother Tony over.)

It's a BOY!!!

Well, it's official. The ultrasound showed my son, happily showing off his.. male parts. So, I'll post the scanned images to my flickr account later. Now we're looking at boy clothing, and rethinking the colors for the baby room.

Edit: We've posted the pictures finally.

Mac programming

Okay, started Carbon programming last night. Why? got Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets for our Mac awhile back. But it doesn't use the joystick. So I'm writing a program that the user will launch, it will read the joystick and "type" the appropriate command.

It took me 3 hours to find the HIDManager demo program, hack it up to read our joystick's 10 buttons and have it type 'z' when I press a button on the joystick. This morning I spent about an hour playing with Interface Builder. I've now got an idea of how events work in Carbon, and what's going to be version 1 and version 2 (or really version 0.1 and 0.2...).

Once I have a decent program that I'm willing to let others use and see the code on, I'll release it somewhere on SourceForge. I'm pleasantly surprised on just how quickly I was able to turn out a basic program, although dismayed that Apple's demo programs' source code is barely documented at all - I would have expected a little better. And I still don't see a comprehensive API documentation (like msdn.microsoft.com).

MY NEW MAC!

I am now a Mac owner. Okay, technically I was one already. (I had a Perform 575 from years ago.) I got a used Powermac G4 450MHz. We're going to upgrade it's processor, video card, and install OSX 10.4 - Tiger. I'll probably buy Tiger soon, as OS X 10.0 is pretty well useless.. I'll probably put the video card on my winter gift list, and get the processor upgrade myself (as it's around $200 or more). It's got 256MB, but we're looking to upgrade that as well.

I'll post pictures of it on my Flickr account soon.

(edit)

We got it Saturday, and we're now planning to soup it up. I've just finished installing Tiger on it, and I'll be installing Firefox and all on it. Getting it on the wireless networking isn't working yet, but I'm still tooling away on that. Happy. Happy. Happy.

(edit #2)

I've posted our mac pictures to my Flickr account.

Referenda C and D

I was thinking about Referenda C and D today. I found out that it's not an income-tax issue. It's a sales-tax issue.

I've heard the analogy. It's like a bartender, who charges $3 for a beer, you give him $5 and he says he'll keep the other $2. Except that that's a flawed analogy.

It's really like a bartender charges $3 for a $3 beer, but who's limited to a certain profit limit. The next day you come in, and he has to give you back 30 cents because he made too much profit. The $3 price was legitimate, but too many people bought beer, and so he can't keep the extra money.

The thing is, the state collects these taxes, and legally. But people seem to be spending more money (and therefore paying sales tax on these purchases) than the state is permitted to collect. Those pesky buyers! Referenda C and D would let the state keep those sales taxes, spend them as appropriate, and then report back to the taxpayers on how they spent that money.

Sounds legitimate to me.

Kippot

These kippot are cute. Of course, I don't do suede kippot. But still, very cute.

New TV Centre and stuff

Okay, we got the new TV center setup. Looks nice - I'm sure we'll post pictures at some point, probably to my Flickr account.. Had Noodles & Company tonight, their Mac and Cheese isn't half bad.

I got my wife () Luigi's Mansion for the gamecube, and she's playing that now. Fun fun. got her Yoshi's Topsy-Turvy for the game boy advance. Also quite a bit of fun.

wants a mac laptop. As in, "Chris doesn't get a mac mini, Chris buys me a mac laptop!" :). We'll see, the holidays are in a few months...

I can't wait to get my backpay. I've already allocated most of it, I think about 500-600 is still up in the air, and we'll see what happens to it.

Moving around

Well, and I just got our new TV/stereo holder. Calling it an entertainment centre seems a little weird being as it's pretty small. Anyways, I've just spent about 2 and a half hours shoving things around in the living room to install it (mostly). We had to get it installed soon so that we can get cable on Friday. Just found some cable drop boxes with the coax in them (we knew they were there, but thought that they were empty and hadn't been wired yet). So we might not have to wire the house if that cable actually connects to something useful (which I suspect that it will).

I may post pictures of my new living room once I'm done, assuming that I have the energy.

Mac Mini

I'm tempted to get a Mac mini. Very tempted. I'm getting that backpay (to the tune of ~ $1800), so I'm thinking that taking around 600 or so of it and getting me something mightn't be a bad thing.

Tomorrow's Rosh Hashanah. (Actually, as I write this it is, but tomorrow's when I go to shul for it.) Ought to be interesting to see how the Bnai Havurah and Temple Micah services contrast. I need to get working on re-reading some of the books I had out earlier, this time writing down questions.

Just (re) signed up for cable (analog). I've seen plenty of digital cable installs, I don't want the ugly visual problems, the lack of decent programming, and the larger bill. I actually thought satellite, but the first snowstorn to come through would reveal how bad of an idea that I think that it is (my opinion, here, although my aunt Cathy has it and it goes out when we get snow, so..). Get to move the TV to that corver (as I haven't bought a TV stand for it except for the huge entertainment centre, which is WAY too big for that corner). Get to do this by Friday at 1pm. Fun fun.

Still thinking about getting that Mac mini...

I think it's a little off... I'd have pegged myself as a libertarian..

You are a Social Liberal (66% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (33% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Pay raise and new office

Yay! I got a NICE pay raise. I went from 50k a year (I thought it was 53, but that's another story..) to 61K. I asked for 12K, and got 11 - I'm happy. It'll mean about $600 extra each month.

And I got the old accountant's office. Both my old and new office were real offices (and window ones at that), but this one is bigger, and right between the CEO's and my boss' offices. I'm happy. :) And it's perennially cool in there. Another plus.

So I was moving into my new office today, and that was quite a workout. Two desks, three monitors, three computers (one non-operational, but still dead weight). Haven't moved the bookshelf but I'll do that tomorrow.

Almost finished migrating the site to AJAX (oh, I really like this, it's so CLEAN and organized..), migrated most of the "upload batch" program to pretend it's a web browser and use the AJAX as well. Next month we'll see if it actually works. I've got a bit of code at work that will, from .Net, launch OpenOffice, have it load a file and save it in another format. I plan to rewrite our complex reports to spit out OpenOffice-format files, and then let OO convert it to Word, Excel, or PDF (or whatever I want in the future). It'll be great. Might even just write some reports directly in OpenOffice. Gotta research that more.

Got a couple more books from the library on Jewish topics. I'd post the names, but they're in the car and I'm not. Maybe later. and I have recently been watching Dead Like Me from netflix. I'd recommend it if the following word could, in part, describe you: weird. If that goes in the sentence "I am xxxxx." then you might enjoy it. I've got a DVD here that we really need to get around to watching and sending back... Oh well.

One last thing: I LOVE this weather. Ah. It was 46F this morning, misting in my face. Just wonderful. The ONLY way it could have been better would be snow, and even then, I'm not sure that it really would have been better. Too bad it won't last.

Taken from Crowdog66

10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage is "Wrong"

1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3)
Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy
behaviour. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has
legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4) Straight
marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women
are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is
still illegal.

5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if
gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Brittany Spears' 55-hour
just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6) Straight marriages
are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile
couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our
orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8)
Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours,
the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's
why we have only one religion in America.

9) Children can never
succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we
as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10)
Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never
adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the
service-sector economy, or longer life spans

Please post this in your journal if you are for gay marriage.

Rabbi meeting

I met with the Rabbi wednesday. I'm only blogging about it now because I'm lazy with blogging: something I should correct. Anyways, I'm going to high holy day services there this year instead of Temple Micah; it should be interesting the differences. I forget what he said the differences were likely to be, but I expect them to be different. And that should be good. I'm going to re-read one of the books: God and the Big Bang, writing down questions this time. I also get to read one or two easier A. Heschel books than the one I did read (his last one, published after his death, I believe). That's what I get for just picking up a book by him without first checking with the Rabbi as to whether or not it's at my level.

So, I get to work on my theology that way, and I'm going to be working on my inter-personal / community skills. The fact that I accidentally pissed off both a co-worker and my brother (separate events, thankfully) doesn't help. I need to work on my tact. But anyways.. I do like the people that I interact with at Bnai Havurah, and since I at least recognize the other people, I'm getting comfortable, which is good.

I'm slowly growing my list of people (which isn't a list, per se) that I do my annual teshuva thing with. (sarcam) fun fun (/sarcasm). But I do recognize that it really does help me be a better person, both by being able to get that peer-review aspect of it, but being able to bury my own frustrations and start with a clean slate. Last year I decided to work on lashon hara - gossip. I wasn't too much of a gossip before, and most of it went into my wife's ears if anyone. I'm not sure how much progress I made, however; nor what I want to work on next year. Possibly that again, maybe something else.. Giving/doing tzedakah might be a good one.

Daily Update

A quick post, being as we need to get dressed and go to the Delectable Egg for breakfast. Then we're going to Nan Desu Kan Convention. The only reason we're doing that: free weekend tickets. bought 4 months ago, but two of his friends are no longer in-state, so now we get to enjoy them instead. We went a little yesterday - I felt positively plain there. There were costumes I really wouldn't have dreamed up there...

The Quarrel

Okay, here's my thoughts (not a review) of the movie, The Quarrel. It's based on a play by Joseph Telushkin. At first, it just seems to be two guys, separated when they were 20 because of the Shoah, and one became a Yeshiva rabbi, and the other an atheistic writer. They find each other at a park, and they end up discussing, arguing, debating.

To me, it was really engaging. I loved how they really had depth, emotion. They interacted, and I really felt that the actors really were their characters. They are so passionate about their beliefs. They quarrel. But even when they are angry with one another, they stop just before it is too late, recognize that they are family, calm down, and start discussing again. They discuss Hitler, the future of Klal Yisrael, tolerance, Orthodoxy vs. Reason, even their relationship with each other, even over those years that each thought the other gone or dead.

But I must think: wow.. What a movie. I must show this to my kids when they are old enough. It's subtle weaving, it speaks to the soul of life, real lives, not some perfect lives owned by most characters, but lives filled with mistakes, regrets, and still plenty of mornings. I think I plan to purchase a copy of this (I netflix'ed it). Definitely one to add to my collection.. This movies definitely moves me.

Aha! Reverse proxying OWA (Exchange's web access) and RPC-over-HTTP using Apache 2.

This blog is informative for those of us running Exchange 2003 servers. If you don't, feel free to ignore it.

I finally figured out a way to reverse proxy Exchange's Outlook Web Access (OWA) as well as the RPC-over-HTTP thing that Outlook and Exchange 2003 can do using Apache 2. Some of this came from http://3cx.org/item/46#rpcoverhttp, although that method had more stuff than I needed in my vhost. I've put what I think is the bare minimum here. You put this into a < VirtualHost > area.

Also, note, that your INTERNET facing DNS needs to think that this box resolves as the SAME NAME as the real exchange server. So, let's say you have a server, LEMON.domain.com, which is a real Exchange 2003 server, and BLUE.domain.com, which is an Apache 2 box. You'll setup the internet-facing DNS to resolve LEMON.domain.com to the same IP as BLUE.domain.com. Then, BLUE needs to resolve the REAL LEMON.domain.com correctly (either by having your own internal DNS (which you probably have) or using hosts entries and the like).

Ex:
Internet:
LEMON.domain.com. IN A 1.2.3.4 ; fake lemon, blue is the reverse proxy for lemon
BLUE.domain.com. IN A 1.2.3.4

Inside (or in hosts file on BLUE):
LEMON.domain.com. IN A 1.2.3.156 ; the REAL lemon

Then setup a VHOST with this inside:

SSLEngine on
SSLProxyEngine on

# Server Certificate:
SSLCertificateFile /path/to/public.key

# Server Private Key:
SSLCertificateKeyFile /path/to/private.key

SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown

ProxyPass /Public https://real.exchange.server/public
ProxyPassReverse /Public https://real.exchange.server/public
ProxyPass /public https://real.exchange.server/public
ProxyPassReverse /public https://real.exchange.server/public
ProxyPass /exchange https://real.exchange.server/exchange
ProxyPassReverse /exchange https://real.exchange.server/exchange
ProxyPass /Exchange https://real.exchange.server/exchange
ProxyPassReverse /Exchange https://real.exchange.server/exchange
ProxyPass /Exadmin https://real.exchange.server/exadmin
ProxyPassReverse /Exadmin https://real.exchange.server/exadmin
ProxyPass /exadmin https://real.exchange.server/exadmin
ProxyPassReverse /exadmin https://real.exchange.server/exadmin
ProxyPass /ExchWeb https://real.exchange.server/exchweb
ProxyPassReverse /ExchWeb https://real.exchange.server/exchweb
ProxyPass /exchweb https://real.exchange.server/exchweb
ProxyPassReverse /exchweb https://real.exchange.server/exchweb

# Note: we don't use ProxyPass for /rpc, as it doesn't seem to work right
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)/rpc/(.*) https://real.exchange.server/rpc/$2 [P]

That's what I'm using at my work.

Solaris 10 Note

If you've screwed up your Solaris 10 setup by removing SUNWwbsup and you can't use pkgrm/pkgadd/etc. anymore, try this:

From disk 1, copy Solaris_10\Product\SUNWwbsup\Archive\none.bz2 to a temp directory
bunzip2 none.bz2
mv none.bz2.out none.cpio (ah hah!, file IS useful...)
cd /
cat /tmp/none/bz2.out | cpio -i -d

Then you can now run pkgadd and friends. The exercise is left to the reader on how to convince pkginfo and friends that said package has actually been installed again (I'd love to know, but don't care).

I messed up all of my zones today because I removed all unnecessary packages (and, it seems, at least one necessary one...) I've heard tell that this website has some good ideas on what's safe to remove or not.

ADODB

I hate microsoft. I spent 3 hours this morning trying to figure out why a stored procedure would not execute, and kept blaming one of the parameters as being OUTPUT when it should be INPUT. And it was the wrong one. I finally noticed that my code all uses adoCmd.namedParameters = true, and Dmitriy's didn't. I set it, and it worked. Grrrr... I was ready to throttle someone over that. I mean, ADO could have said, "Hey, this is SQL Server, he's giving me @Names for the procedures, I'll bet he's using named sprocs!". But nooo. Way too much stress over this.

Moose trip

Picture04.jpg
Originally uploaded by ChrisWiegand.

My father-in-law and my brother-in-law () and I went camping up near Granby CO this weekend. The moose (I still say the plural should be meese) came within 10 feet of the camper! But in all it was fun.

What file extension am I? An EXE? Are you nuts?

src="http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2004/10/file_extensions/exe.jpg" width="300" height="90"
border="0" alt="You are .exe When given proper orders, you execute them flawlessly. You're familiar to most, and useful to all.">
Which File Extension are You?




I disagree with this. I'm not an .exe. I'm a .so. A library for non-Windows users..

Baby

Since it seems that I forgot to mention on my blog, , my wife, is pregnant. That's why we were looking at baby stuff. She's at 7 weeks now or there abouts. In 5 more weeks, we get to hear a heartbeat. I'll try to remember to use the baby tag on my posts that involve him/her/them for filtering purposes.

Baby window shopping

Okay, we went baby window shopping today. Took my mom along (who was tickled pink that we were going to look at stuff). Looked at cribs, strollers, car seats, clothing, all sorts of stuff. I certainly hope that I'm able to get this raise that I'm trying to get. I'm sure in the end things'll sort themselves out, but it'd be nice if I could do that just with money (which at this point is the best way to MAKE things sort themselves out). Lots to buy, not alot to do yet. Going to join some LJ communities for pregnancy, although I don't really see one for new fathers / husbands of pregnant women.. Perhaps I should start one. Anyways...

PS. Okay, I just found .

XM Radio

Oooh! I just got XM Radio. Cool. Wow. What did I listen to before this? I always thought those people who said "FM just plays the same songs over and over" were kooks. I've heard more songs that I liked but never stayed on FM than songs that have (for whatever reason) stayed around on FM the 1 hour or so of XM I've played. I'm not going back. So many great songs (like Nadia's Theme, which I remember from my CHILDHOOD, and I haven't heard it in at least a decade). And there's been others. Of course, I do hear some current songs, and they've got a few channels just for hip hop and top 20 and all. But they do have The Decades (I prefer the 70s, 80s, and 90s). Target's got them for only $50 now, and it's only $14 a month or so. It's cheaper than EQ, I think.. And now XM radio subscribers get the online version free. So even at work or home I can still listen to (most of the channels of) XM radio.

Solaris 10 (more)

Okay, FIRST thing you do with Solaris 10: cry. You have left the lush lands of Linux(tm), and entered the hard, cruel Solaris(tm) world. That said, it can be quite nice, but brutally difficult to figure out. This is not like the difference between Spanish and French, this like like the difference between English and Russian. TOTALLY DIFFERENT. Okay, now that that bitter pill's been swallowed, more hints:

a. export PATH=/usr/ucb/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/opt/csw/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH
b. change root's shell to bash (vi /etc/passwd, there is no chsh in Solaris 10)
c. load packages from either Blastwave.org (which I prefer) or sunfreeware.com (which works)
d. READ THE INSTALL files and scripts from those sites, particularly for GNU software - you usually have to execute some commands (like openssh) or run a script (like gcc)
e. Google is your new BEST FRIEND. Trying to compile Apache? I hear ya. Okay, go to Google and search on a few of those errors you got. Boy, was THAT fun....
f. unless the Solaris(tm) box you're working on is running the world, realize that it's not the end of the world if you can't get the Stupid Thing to compile. You'll figure it out in the end.

The *ONLY* thing keeping me working on Solaris 10 is the zones functionality. Xen can't beat it, and for system security purposes it's great (sounding). But boy is it a different world here...

Windows 2003 x64

Okay, for those people using Windows Server 2003 x64 (64-bit edition), and you use ADODB or ADO 2.6 or something similar, and you get "METADATA tag contains a Type Library specification that does not match any Registry entry." in your classic ASP scripts, the fix is this: don't use the UUID. Use the FILE="c:\program files (x86)\Common Files\System\ADO\msado26.tlb" or similar setup. X64 seems to separate the 32 bit and 64 bit registry areas, and since IIS is 64-bit, it looks for 64-bit dlls, and the older adodb's only register in the 32-bit dll area, so it doesn't find it. Using the file="" bit forces it to load that file, and it then notices that it's 32-bit. Took me awhile to find that one.

Stuff at work

I got my rackmounts!! Okay, they're really Signal's, but still. I got to hook them up, install stuff on them, and now I'm configuring them. Ohhh.. feel the power. (Okay, they're not ALL that powerful, only 2.8 x86-64 Xeons with 1G ram and 40G raid1 drives, and there's 3 of them, 2 to replace old servers, but still.) We (that being Signal) is slowly moving towards a more professional network and server setup. We have a real switch at the core now (24-port gigabit switch, that), most of the computers are 2 GHz or better (only one now is below my specs, and that'll be fixed in the new fiscal year at work starting Friday). We're migrating our Exchange (ugh) server to one of the rackmounts, and then two linux boxes (our production and development web servers, to be precise) to the rackmount. And we're ordering a SATA-raid 1 hot swappable bay for our linux file server so that we can move all of our file serving (and not just the "downloads and installers" folder) onto the linux box. Then we'll just be using windows for the bits of our web app that run in ASP/IIS (devel and production), our MS SQL servers (devel and production) and our exchange box. Our linux mold grows. :) (of course, it would help if I had pre-downloaded the x86-64 RPMs for SuSE 9.3, instead I have to wait a day or so for them to download because I only had the i586/i686 folders.)

Visited States Map

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Greylisting

If you run a mailserver: If you're not greylisting yet, you should be. Man, what a difference in spam it makes! We implemented a greylisting addin for postfix, tumgreyspf (sorry, no link, you can Google it), and suddenly we have almost no spam. We were definitely getting more and more spam, I would get ~30 a day, and now I'm getting 1 or 2 a day. Eventually, the spam programs will start to mark domains that appear to be greylisting as doing so, and try again in 5 minutes, but it's an arms race, and for now this really helps.

Life Update

Okay, a few things: one - it's raining again. And this time, not too hard, so I can Blog In The Rain. It's my equivalent of singing in the rain. Okay, you knew I was weird.

Second - I spoke with Rabbi Booth over at Bnei Havurah. So, seems like I should be able to move forward - he gave me a list of books to read and to make another appointment for next month (or at least, that's how I interpreted it!). I'll be attending shabbat services there pretty much from now on (although of course I will occasionally still visit Micah as well as Shabbat Unplugged over at Emanuel). But it's kinda nice to be working towards conversion again. I was ecstatic for a good couple of days afterwards (only now winding down).

Third - ramen is GOOD. I really only like chicken, but still. Okay... I'm now helping to take care of the rose bush - I think I'll survive, we'll see. The cat does NOT appreciate my blogging outside where she can hear me but I can't pet her...

Last - I have to clean the house (which it could use anyways) as grandma's feeling well enough to come over and see the new place (she's the only one who hasn't seen it at all in the family, and half the family hasn't seen it moved-in anyways). So I get to do that, maybe tomorrow night. Tonight I want to relax and eat my dinner. Okay, enough chattering for now.

Oh, one last thing: we got $5K at work to buy our rack mount servers. Yay! We're slowly moving towards a more professional, more serious, network and server configuration. It's only 3 servers (originally the budget called for a fourth server, a dual-3G proc behemoth, but that got cut from the budget, and the $5K won't stretch that far). And things at work are going well, with the PHP migration and all, so I'm happy on that front.

More solaris 10

Okay, more Solaris 10. If you liked apt-get, or aptitude (from Debian), or liked rpm, urpmi, etc.. (from RPM-based distros like Fedora or SuSE), then go to BlastWave, which makes pkg-get for solaris. Oh. Wow. Nice, it's alot like apt-get, and it makes using the CLI on solaris a lot easier..

Zones are nice, but READ THE MAN PAGE for zonecfg. It will tell you how to change a file system so that it's read only, and change the networking, and all. Don't bang your head against the wall trying to do it without reading the man page!

More later. Oh, and OpenSolaris is now out. I may have to poke my nose into there.

Blogging in the rain

I was going to blog in the rain. But it got a little close with the lightning. Anyways, now I get to watch my wife play Mario Kart. Maybe I'll go back out if it passes enough. Get to plant a rose bush tomorrow. Nothing much else to report.

solaris 10 (part 1 of what's sure to be a multi-part thing)

Solaris 10. Oy. Okay, a couple of things:

1. smcwebserver is useless because Sun did not ship any modules for it with Solaris 10. A look through bigadmin will find the article where this is posted. Anyways, smc at least IS usable, but only if you hunt for the toolbox file. Execute this: cd /; find . | grep tbx and you will find a few toolbox files - the one you want is the smc.tbx file - it appears to include the others, and gets you the basic smc experience;

2. X. Where is X? If you loaded Solaris 10 and did not get a GUI when you rebooted, the install program might have decided that your video card isn't good enough. So, from a console, do this: cd /usr/X11R6/bin; ./xorgconfig. When that's done, run gdm. At some point, set gdm to start automatically (I forget where that is, I suspect in smc somewhere).

My travails with solaris 10 continue...

Debian 3.1 and CDROM problems

If you are loading Debian 3.1, and you are having a problem where it's not loading from the CD, try to "Cancel", "Locate CD", and then try again. Sarge has this problem where it doesn't always set the $stage variable. You can validate this by hitting Alt-F4 (log screen) and it'll show that it can't find /cdrom/dists//Release (not, the double slash there, it SHOULD have sarge inside of them). That means that it's not sure what releases are on your CD. Having it re-locate and scan the CD fixes this. Oh, and make sure you're not in a shell in the /cdrom directory when you do this (like I did), as it umount's the folder and then scans, and if you're in it, it can't unmount it, and so it doesn't re-scan it..

Some bad poetry I just made

It binds, and frees
Swirling around in the head
It questions all answers
And answers all questions

It feeds the hunger
and yet causes hunger for more
It is called a Tree of Life
May I build a treehouse?

(if you know me, please don't mention this to me, I'll have to be rather embarrased about it)

Stuff

Okay, got the ATI thing to work. The remote control driver ABSOLUTELY MUST be upgraded with MMC. Don't even complain until you've done that. Of course, it would help if their packaged driver installed - it looked for Remote Wonder 2.msi, and it distributed it without the 2 part. So I had to start it, rename it before continuing, and then it installed okay. Which leads to my next thing: I get better HDTV reception with this thing from inside my house than outside. Even facing the HDTV transmitters. Weird, no? But it works, kinda. Had 9-1 and 9-2 (NBC) for awhile quite reliably (not so much today), 31-1 (FOX) and 2-1 (WB) still quite good. But that's it. Oh,and I lost all 3 12's (PBS #2). Oh well.

Budget was cut at work because the local CTN's node wasn't renewed, or our contract with them, or something. Sadly, it's a good chunk of money. But, we're just going to cut stuff we don't need from next year's budget and I went over the revised budget with my boss on that (which I usually do anyways - I like knowing the budget and what we're going to do in the future).

Fixed the bikes today. Rode it around less than 1/4 of a mile (or 1/3 a klick if you prefer that). I gotta get in shape. Of course, now that I've got the bike up and running I can do that. Gotta get a new helmet, we seem to have lost hers in the move.

At some point I've really got to call up the local Recon. Rabbi and schedule a time to talk with him regarding converting through his movement. I was looking at Temple Micah, but they require associate membership, which is currently $75 a month (and there's no way I'm spending that - a) my budget isn't firm yet, and b) that's by my way of thinking alot of money). Even half that isn't really doable right now. So we'll see. Shawn got a iMac. I want one now. Okay, so I wanted one before. I want one now too.

Oh, and we're moving from Microsoft stuff at work to Open Source stuff. Like Novell/SuSE linux on our servers (one server next year will be OES Linux/Netware), OpenOffice 2.0 (when it comes out), and we're already using Firefox internally. All because a) my boss and I prefer open source WHEN it's equivalent (which is why firefox is ok but open office 1 is NOT (yet)), and b) Microsoft no longer gives non-profit pricing to any organization that has anything to do with healthcare. Even if they don't treat clients themselves. So, we no longer like them either, so nyah!

Okay, enough junk for now.

ATI, MMC, and the HDTV Wonder

Wow.. ATI continues to amaze me at their apparent inability to make a program that actually works. MMC 9.06.1 came out recently, so I upgraded (my MMC had broken installing 9.03 (thanks ATI!) so I wiped it out and then tried MMC 9.06.1. Now, my wife got me this card for Christmas (yeah, yeah). Anyways, it hasn't worked reliably since she bought it. I mean, is it REALLY that hard to make a program that reads the bloody data from the card? Other manufacturers don't seem to have this problem. I can't even get the normal TV functionality to work! Now, I'm a programmer, and I know making programs, particularly for those who are new to the business can be hard, but this is ATI! They've been doing TV cards for YEARS. You'd think they'd have figured out by now how to make an MMC program that doesn't crash and is able to tell you in either english OR tech-ese what's wrong. Just crashing and letting Windows tell me it crashed in mmc71.dll is NOT enough.

In case...

In case Matt finds this blog, yes, it's my blog. HAH! Anyways...

Okay, got my MSDN thing at work today. So now I have the CDs to run all the software (which is pretty cool, I can now run Virtual PC and test out network configs, test the website on Win98 with IE5, etc..)

Still working on Mom's computer - it's a halfbreed Compaq setup. The repair disks? Well, they don't work, somewhere on them is a bad file that verified just fine when I made them but now makes the setup almost worthless. I had to wipe the HD, try the Compaq setup, then, when it reboots, stick the drive in my computer, copy over a retail WinXP setup on top of the compaq winxp folder, then resume setup on her hardware. It's a half breed setup, and it didn't like it - some files are still missing, and I had to call Microsoft and have them give me a new install ID (it's the same hardware, but I think they've got a flag in the WinXP setups for OEMs that is different from retail, so it looked like a compaq but didn't smell like one, or something like that).

At work we're going to deploy Novell - I'm quite happy with them and their Linux direction, and I think my boss will be happy to actually have a support contract we can use (unlike Microsoft). I wouldn't be surprised if I was able to get Microsoft mostly out of the network (except possibly the SQL Server stuff) within 2 years, but things can change - we'll see.

Moved in

We're (mostly) moved in. The living room and kitchen aren't done yet, but our office has most of it's stuff over here somewhere. Moving is HARD work. I'd forgotten how much. So, let's see... I've recently joined a Talmidi jewish list, going to see how they do things, if it clicks with me and all. I keep going to a "not-shul" thing, Stop-N-Shabbat, hosted by Judaism Your Way, which is sort of a post-rabbinic Judaism thing, a "doing things differently from shuls because shuls only get about 30% of the jews out there, we want a cut of the other 70%" kinda thing. It's interesting, and I keep being told that I should talk to Rabbi Brian (just 'cause they seem rather post-rabbinic doesn't mean that they don't hire a rabbi, he's just not authoritative..) about converting under him. I think I may follow up on that, we'll see.

I think, now that I'm at the new place now and all, that I want to try doing the daily prayers, or at least the morning ones. We'll see, but I think that with all of the other changes in, I should be able to affect this one more easily than if everything else was the same..

I think I've slowly changed from really wanting to be part of the Jewish community just to have a community that appeals to me and my basic beliefs (although I think that it a good reason in and of itself) to wanting to have a defined (although not completely defined and limited and all) system that I can use to create/have my own way of connecting to the divine. At first, I could happily of joined Orthodox Judaism, for instance; whereas now I don't feel that I could, really, as it doesn't mesh with my view of the world and the divine. This may sound very confused, I may even be using the wrong words, I'm not a religious studies major (although, for the low price of alot of money, you could sponsor me to be one! hehe...).

Well, off to bed, it's late and I'm sure that my wife would like some sleep tonight.

You Are 40% Normal (Somewhat Normal)

While some of your behavior is quite normal... Other things you do are downright strange You've got a little of your freak going on But you mostly keep your weirdness to yourself

How Normal Are You?

Your Linguistic Profile:

80% General American English

10% Dixie

5% Midwestern

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Yankee

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

PHP 5 and MSSQL not displaying months

If you have a PHP5 site, and you use the MSSQL driver, and your months are all off by one, add this to your ./configure command: --enable-msdblib. That fixes this problem. It really should be the default, IMHO.

Richovia

I have a pretend-nation on Nation States:

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/target=display_nation/nation=richovia

Richovia, a socialist country.. well, it's fun to pretend!

Okay, a few things in my life:

a) spoke with the Rabbi at Micah about converting. Nice, formal program. Also rather expensive: ~ $750 a year for an associate membership, and that's 50% of the normal membership. I'm (hopefully) getting a new place - depending on how the numbers come out, I come... annoyingly close to having no money (I think the smallest I might have would be around 200 a month, but still, that's cutting things a little close, there's always the occasional dinner out night, or ooh-gotta-have-this-book, or lets-put-mezuzahs-on-each-door months...). In addition, the Rabbi really wants to know that we will bring up our kids Jewish. I think that since we're trying to have kids, get a house, etc.., that it's just too much stress to work with right now,

b) we're trying to get a house. Yesterday I was completely depressed, as the processor person from my mortgage company basically told me there's these conditions, and one of them that I hadn't heard from the acceptance officer was that I have to close my two real credit cards. Yeah, and you want my firstborn son?? I mean, they want me to just pay them off and close them. I'm using them to help me build credit (and it's working, my credit score for the last 6 months has been above 720, so I'm prime lending material). I plan to add to one of them soon, I don't want to blow $800 that I don't necessarily have to make them happy. So I thought it would all fall through. Then I find out today that they think that I still have my old car, which got paid off SIX MONTHS AGO. Grrrr... So SST gets a nastygram call from me tomorrow morning when they open. I'll be polite, but damned firm. I mean, if it was just a month or two, I could understand. But SIX MONTHS!! Once that's cleared up, those conditions should go away. And they didn't even read the contract, the seller's putting in $6K, not 5. They basically just threw the money to UPS these worthless papers to me - if they had CALLED me I could have helped them..,

and c) my development work has kinda stalled. I did make a basic NMAP protocol API in PHP - it logged in, got folders and message lists. Could even retrieve the message. But now I'm wondering if it's worthwhile - they (Novell and the Hula Project) seem to like modweb alot, so *shrug*. I'm thinking to playing with Java instead, now. Dunno. When I compare developer communities, .Net is so Microsoft-dominated, it doesn't seem like there's alot of 3rd party or open/shared source libraries or code out there for .Net, whereas Java has LOTS of communities, and lots of non-Sun based development going on...

So, fascinating life, hopefully in 3 months it's a LOT easier on me, whatever way the winds blow..

I saw this on 's journal and so did it myself:

You scored as Judaism. Your views are closest to those of Judaism. If you are not a Jew, do more research on Judaism and possibly consider becoming one; however, realize that conversion to Judaism is difficult. Judaism was the first of the Abrahamic faiths; it precedes both Christianity and Islam. Judaism 75% Islam 71% Buddhism 67% Hinduism 67% agnosticism 54% Paganism 33% Christianity 29% atheism 17% Satanism 8% Which religion is the right one for you? (new version) created with QuizFarm.com

Rabbi and Realty

Okay, we've identified a specific place that we really want for our next place, it's a condo in Mission Viejo (so it meets Kris' criteria of being in Aurora). Just sent over the first offer and contract to the realtor, we'll see how that goes.. Hopefully, we'll end up getting that contract signed and we can move forward.

Also met with the Rabbi today (Rabbi Morris at Temple Micah of Denver, Colorado). and I need to discuss raising the children, but otherwise I think we're a 'go'. So I need to find out when the Intro to Judaism classes are, how much they are, get on the Rabbi's email list, and make an appointment for next month. I plan to bring Kris at least twice during this whole thing, preferrably at least once early on, maybe month after next or something..

It just rained, and that smells great. (Particularly that moisture, sadly I was inside going over my contract instead of out in it enjoying the rain...) But I got a free carwash at least. Well, off to get dinner...

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Advanced You scored 93% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 72% Expert!

You have an extremely good understanding of beginner, intermediate, and advanced level commonly confused English words, getting at least 75% of each of these three levels' questions correct. This is an exceptional score. Remember, these are commonly confused English words, which means most people don't use them properly. You got an extremely respectable score. Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it! For answers to the Beginner section only (the first ten questions), visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/. I will post the answers to the other questions as soon as possible.

Hey! If you liked my test, send the link to your friends. They don't need to be OkCupid members to take it.

The Commonly Confused Words Test
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=14457200288064322170

DWL-122 and linux

If you've got, say, a DWL-122 from dlink, and you want to use it under linux (ubuntu unknown version, or what I've got - SuSE 9.2), here a page that tells you how to get it to work (after months of fiddling with it, it finally works! YES!).

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-4041.html

The pertinent parts are:
FOR USB USERS:

A) Make sure your kernel usb support is running
B) Plug in the Prism2.x USB device
C) Run 'modprobe prism2_usb prism2_doreset=1' to load the driver into memory.
D) Run 'wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_ifstate ifstate=enable' to initialize the
driver+MAC functions.
E) Run 'wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_autojoin ssid= authtype=opensystem'
to enable the MAC in Infrastructure Station mode.
F) Run 'ifconfig wlan0 '

NOTE: they really should add 'rmmod prism2_usb' BEFORE step c. Otherwise, if it's already loaded it won't load it again...

Happy Birthday to Me!

Okay, my mom got me a thingy. It's got metal balls which you pop onto a springy surface, and it's kinda like a skeetball (sp?) thing, you try to get points. I'll probably take it to work for stress/comic relief.

My inlaws got me The West Wing: Season 2 DVDs. All I can say: YES!!!!! I'm watching it now on the DVD player (I would on my computer, but my third present has screwed up my computer's ability to play DVDs).

My best present, however, is from my wife. The ATI HDTV Wonder card. I've been drooling over the box every time I see it. Well... here's my review: (DTV = Digital tv, versus TV mode which is analog)

1. ATI *still* can't make a decent media center! My mother has an ATI TV Wonder LE or VE or somesuch card. Their MMC sucked then, it still sucks. You can't use the TV function when in the full screen "EasyView" or whatever mode - it switches out of that, and you can only use the remote in that mode, so the remote doesn't work for the TV part. The DTV part, however, works great. Good quality, you can switch channels, the full screen interface is rather good in my opinion, at least the parts that they've implemented (ie. no normal TV ability, or DVD playing ability, so most of the remote's buttons seem useless).

2. The antenna which it comes with sucks. There are many antenna amplifiers (well, technically they're signal amplifiers, but still) out there that will help ALOT. I live in East Aurora of the Denver, Colorado area. Thanks to a rather sucky and stupid city of Golden, there isn't a full-power antenna tower. Why? Because they thought it would cause cancer by reducing the number of TV towers from 2 or 3 down to just 1, and with lower-output signals. What are they smoking out there?!! Anyways, because of that, the local stations have to use low-powered transmitters from their studios. Which means that getting a good signal can SUCK. Anyways, with the amp I'm able to get more stations than without.

3. Some channels I can get video and audio (ie. normal operation): Channel 9.2 (9News Weather Plus), Channel 31.1 (Channel 31 from normal tv, in 720p!), and Channels 12.1, 12.2, and 12.3 (local PBS station times three). I like the PBS stations, actually.

4. Some channels I can only get audio on, and only sometimes: Channel 2.1, Channel 4.1 (VERY sporadically), Channel 9.1 (normal channel 9) and Channel 20.1 (Channel 20).

5. And JUST now MMC has decided to start crashing, AGAIN, when I run the DTV app. But the TV works now correctly. I am rather annoyed that ATI STILL can't get this right! Microsoft has made these things work (XP MCE), and they have NOT been in the field of desktop-TV type apps as long. Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition seems to work on my father in law's computer just fine. So now I have to do the reinstall all the apps in the right order dance and see if sacrificing a chicken or perhaps a lamb would work. ARGH!!!

6. Oh, and yes, you can record the HDTV. If you have a computer with a super high speed magic bus that sends the HD data down to your hard drive without killing your CPU. Point: My computer is an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 2.19 GHz (Intel Equiv: 3 GHz according to HP). My computer could not keep up. And at that point, you can't use your computer, not even to open Task Manager to kill the app. Good thing you can always yank the power plug. Grrr.... At least recording normal TV works well and takes very little CPU (~5% for me). But for recording DTV, I have no clue what they want from your computer, but mine just doesn't have it.

*sigh*. Well, when it works, it IS cool. I really don't want to take it back, I've wanted HDTV for awhile. But ATI still needs to learn to make decent software. The hardware's good, no crashes of the OS or anything. But their software makes me want to gag. And while other software can access the normal TV functions (WinDVD creator will record from TV and all), the DTV isn't implented in a way that those programs can use. And in general the DTV parts of the driver seem to suck. I've played with this all last night and then a few hours this evening as well.

In short: I would NOT recommend this card to anyone. Unless you are DYING to get HDTV, you've done the research and know that your area has it, and even then, download everything from ATI, don't use the crap that comes on their packaged CD. And expect to have alot of problems getting it to work. The crashes of atimmc in particular are not something that one can do much about, because the program can't tell you what's actually wrong, just that it's not working. What, are they not checking their pointers in C and all?? I mean, there's no excuse for not giving a meaningful error message. Even just "Windows is telling me the driver's not loading", or somesuch. This is 2004, not 1995 after all.

(And yes, my computer EASILY meets all of the requirements, so that's not the issue.)

But, I plan to keep the card, when it works, it's cool. (Although I can't get in 9.1, 'cause then I could see West Wing in HDTV, which someday I will get working, and that's what's keeping me going on this.)

Marking this happy mood, although I'm also aggravated due to ATI.

I've decided that I like PHP. I knew this before. But we're looking to switch from ASP to PHP, and the syntax is just cleaner.. I got the sproc code working under PHP for MS-SQL - I was putting the php.ini in the wrong place, so safe_mode and other stuff was screwing up the TDS library. I've ported over most of the common code from ASP -> PHP in about 2 hours. Then I got to work on a stupid billing system problem that was $3000 worth and was just 19 records. Grrr...

I setup Solaris 10 on a box today. And when it was done, I had no clue how to add packages, or anything. I had chosen the core distro only, and so no X or any of the X-based admin tools... And I just wanted to reduce the junk programs (and possibly security exploits) by not installing everything. So, I get to go back, reinstall installing just about everything, and try again.

Paper Mario for Gamecube

Okay, gotta get Paper Mario for Gamecube for , she just loves it.

Also gotta start going to shul more often, I hope to tomorrow night. It doesn't help when I never know if it's a Friday night or a Saturday day thing...

I also want to get back into open source programming, but I can't seem to find a project that just grabs me (which it has to, otherwise it won't keep my attention long enough). So I dunno.

(I'm finally going to try posting in my journal more often, hopefully I don't get too pedantic or boring...)

Have I mentioned that I love the internet? Oh, and my laptop. Ah. I can watch play Paper Mario (which she wants - we rented from Blockbuster 'cause Mom got a $50 gift card there, she hates them, and gave it to us). I can order pizza (from Pizza Hut, 'cause they know how to put more than one piece of topping on a pizza, fer ... well... someone's sakes) online, pay for it online, and now I'm just waiting for the delivery. Ah... it feeds the laziness so well.

Went to the doctor today, because I was concerned with some dull chest pain. Seems it's probably just acid coming back up my escophagus (sp?). The doctor did mention that he wanted an ultrasound of my neck, as he thought I might be building up plaque (which usually isn't a concern 'till you're 50 or so, but the sound was a little unusual, so we're going to be sure). Insurance should cover it well enough, so I'll probably call tomorrow. I was happy to hear that it was a stomach problem, though, and not a heart or lung problem..

Need to call the Rabbi. Really need to call and make an appointment. I did the doctor thing, I was a good boy and didn't put it off or just ignore it. Now I need to talk to him about getting back on with conversion. Particularly since we're looking to start having kids soon.

Oh, found out that we'll owe $700 in federal taxes. 's company kept back $60 in federal taxes for last year, but she made over $9,000. Even if the W-4 was screwed up, that's still a little messed up, but we're going to compensate for it for next year. So, I'll be working on budget changes, to make sure that I save up enough.

Well, gotta go help pass some thing in the game.

Okay, so I'm a nerd..

Biblical Bloopers

Biblical Bloopers

[from an article by Richard Lederer in the National Review, December 31, 1995]



These student bloopers are all genuine, authentic, and unretouched. (None, of course, was written by your child - or any youngster in your school district.)

It is truly astonishing what happens to Bible stories when they are retold by young scholars around the world.

In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, God got tired of creating the world, so he took the Sabbath off. Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark. Noah built an ark, which the animals came on to in pears. Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day, but a ball of fire by night.

The Jews were a proud people and throughout history they had trouble with the unsympathetic Genitals. Sampson was a strongman who let himself be led astray by a Jezebel like Delilah. Sampson slayed the Philistines with the axe of the apostles.

Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. The Egyptians were all drowned in the dessert. Afterward, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Amendments. The First Commandment was when Eve told Adam to eat the apple. The Fifth Commandment is humor thy father and mother. The Seventh Commandment is thou shalt not admit adultery.

Moses died before he ever reached Canada. Then, Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle of Geritol. The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still and he obeyed him.

David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Finkelsteins, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.

When Mary heard that she was the Mother of Jesus, she sang the Magna Carta. When the three guys from the East Side arrived, they found Jesus in the manager. Jesus was born because Mary had an immaculate contraption. St. John, the Blacksmith, dumped water on his head.

Jesus enunciated the Golden Rule, which says to do one to others before they do one to you. He also explained, "Man doth not live by sweat alone." It was a miracle when Jesus rose from the dead and managed to get the tomb stone off the entrance.

The people who followed the Lord were called the 12 decibels. The epistles were the wives of the apostles. One of the opossums was St. Matthew, who was by profession a taximan. St. Paul cavorted to Christianity. He preached holy acrimony, which is another name for marriage. A Christian should have only one wife. This is called monotony.

What religion are you?

You scored as Jewish. You are a Jew. You understand that there is something basically missing in the teachings of religion and so-called "spirituality" today. The continuity in time and dedication of the Jewish faith make the most sense to you. You may be drawn to Judaeism out of a jaded opinion of the world today, but hey, it can't be a bad thing to be one the chosen people. Jewish 80% Buddhist 65% Anarchist 65% Christian 60% Cult 60% Catholic 50% Religion created with QuizFarm.com

miniMac and iPod Shuffle.... *drool*

Okay, let's start first with the iPod shuffle. Wow... Apple has made an iPod that anyone can afford, and directly competes with the lower-end of the MP3 players out there (the iPod 10GB and up already dominate the upper-end). Wow... *drool*.

Okay, now the miniMac. I WANT ONE. It's so tiny! And yet, wow.. So affordable. Admittedly it's only a G4, and it only comes with 128MB ram (remember, Mac isn't quite so memory hoggish, but still, I'd bump it up to 256 at least). But it's still great, and I mean GREAT, competition for the lower-end computer market. Dell - watch out, Apple's decided that you're too big for your britches. So it doesn't run Windows, in MY book, that's usually a bonus (although EQ2 doesn't run on the mac, and even at work we'd keep a Windows Terminal Server lying around somewhere). But I'll let everyone else try it out first, and after the reviews start to come back, I'll review putting it in the budget somewhere this summer or something. We'll see.

Apple, it appears, has finally decided that they've got the high end, high price market, and that it's time to start competing with the mid-to-lower end market. I am SOOO drooling. (Okay, not really. But I keep thinking about it.) If Apple keeps this up, well, I was already considering an XServe for work (we need a new file server, and that's about all it needs to do ... for now), I may just re-evaluate them for my work's desktops..

Wireless Router Saga

Okay, so I have a MN-100 Microsoft 802.11b router. Which means that it's ok on the speed, but it's security (WEP only) is out of date, and someone could crack the wep key. So, I wanted to upgrade to a newer 11g router, which would have WPA-PSK, basically MUCH safer in terms of immediate hackability (determined hackers are another thing). So, I bought a Linksys WRT54G. First mistake. The thing kept dropping our connections. I ran NetStumbler on my laptop (see! a GOOD use for a tool that otherwise can be used for hacking... anyways...) and my Microsoft router kept going up to -90dB, which is very good. (Since it's in the room next to the office, and only some drywall is between them, that's to be expected.) Okay, the WRT54G, with it's TWO antennas, was getting -60dB. Noise was around -20dB to -30dB, so I was getting half the usable signal, and it had more errors in the signal by far than the Microsoft one.

So I took it back (got it because my CEO gave me a $50 Best Buy gift card, so I only had to spend ~$25 including tax), and got a Netgear WGT624. It came out at around -50dB. I took it back within 2 hours because I couldn't get it to go higher, and it didn't even have the option to replace/upgrade the antenna! (What is UP with that?! Linksys uses nice standard SMC connectors, and I think DLink has an adapter to use them, so there's no excuse...) When I took it back, I exchanged it for a DLink DI-524. Oh, it's nice. The signal's nice and strong (~ -85dB) and it still supports all the things I want, like UPnP and Port Forwarding (not much, yeah, but still, someone's gonna make a cheap router that doesn't even do one of those someday, I'm sure...).

I'm hoping that it continues to run well, I REALLY want to replace the MN-100 (not because it's not capable, but I want the extra security that WPA will get me, and I have a DSL connection, so..). If Microsoft would upgrade the MN-100 to do WPA, I'd stick with it, it's got a nice powerful little radio.