Actually got this in an email from my grandpa earlier today, and it seemed really cool!

• Fordson Snow Machine - 1929 concept

The video certainly makes it seem to work well. And I liked the emphasis on the reusability of the existing vehicle. Still, I have to wonder how strong and easy to replace/fix those drums would be. Not to mention how well it performs outside video-conditions. It didn't look like it in the video, but I also wonder about whether it gets stuck when stopped because it sinks into the snow too much...

Now playing: Vienna Teng – Waking hour – 12 Lullabye for a Stormy Night

Back in April I headed down to the Bay Area again. Drove this time instead of flying. It's a looooong way down there! But, it was pretty, and now I've at least seen southern Oregon, Mount Shasta, and the Sacramento Valley. Plus driving was cheaper than flying – just two tanks of gas each way, so ~half the cost of flying. Driving down at Christmas should be an even better deal...although then I might need to head down the coast instead of taking I-5...driving through the snowstorm at the end of April was bad enough!

So, here are some pictures (full album here):

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California

Coast Guard ship heading out of San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge. It actually came back an hour or so later escorting a grain freighter/tanker of some sort. And sorry, I did a bit of quick internet searching, but I couldn't find the name!

South side of the Golden Gate, looking out towards what maps say is "Baker Beach".

Now playing: Vienna Teng – Inland Territory – 07 Stray Italian Greyhound

(sorry, couldn't think of anything to draw...but I think the crayon tool in ArtRage came off pretty good :))

Should have gone to the beach this weekend & built sandcastles. That way when the tide came in & the ocean washed away my delusions, dreams & fantasies, I could at least have a clean slate to start again from...

Plus, childish sandcastles are just kinda fun...

Now playing: Thalia Zedek – Been Here and Gone – 01 Excommunications (Everybody Knows)

So, no post last week. Oops. BUT, there are some perfectly reasonable explanations (i.e., excuses):

ReasonExcuse 1:

(no, don't even try to make sense of the perspective in the drawing above...I know I certainly didn’t while doing it...which is probably apparent...hmm...)

See, there was this Holiday thingy, and that holiday got spent hanging out with relatives, chatting, going through pictures, eating, etc. 'Etc.' there does not contain whipping out a Tablet PC and channeling my inner 4-year old to make silly sketches (posting those sketches involves a slightly older age group, say, 14 or so... (what? I didn't have the Internet when I was 4!)).

ReasonExcuse 2:

Yes, Doctor Who is BACK!!! The new season has finally started, and with just 2 episodes in the season so far, I can definitely say I'm loving it :-D. Although yesterday's episode had one little bit that bothered me...see, there's this teeth bit, and there are tubes going into the mouth, and the "overflow" tube in front of the mouth...and then at the end of the episode there's a shot of the entire monster. And for some reason I can't work out the spatial relationship between end shot & teeth shots. Just doesn't make any sense to me...and is thus bothering me. (yes, I know this is stupid...why should that bother me when this is a show episode with 300 year old queens, giant space monsters, the country of Great Britain in a space ship, flying police boxes that are bigger on the inside than on the outside...oh, and that police box happens to be another spaceship AND time machine, and to top it all off, people are running around in their pajamas saving the world!)

Excuse 3:

Umm...so I don't actually remember much else about last weekend now... So I'll just leave this as the Mystery/Fill-in-the-blank/Choose-your-own Excuse.

Now playing: nothing (wait! no! there are cars driving by on the streets outside! I can hear those! and there was just a fire truck!)

This weekend I got rid of the Digital AlphaServer 4000 5/300 that I've had for a number of years. It ended up going a friend, so hopefully some good use will be made of it. Honestly, getting rid of it is probably for the best: it's a pain to move (huge + weighs a third of a ton), and I haven't used it for a while...in fact, it hasn't been plugged in since moving out to Oregon a couple years ago.

Still, I can't help but feel a little bit nostalgic & miss it a little bit...

Between this & the other stuff I've given away over the last 4 months, I'm now down to the fewest number of computers I've owned since December 2002. Huh. Seems odd to realize that.

Anyway, bye Azure the AlphaServer!

Now playing: Lifehouse – Who We Are – 05 Broken

No fun computer stuff this weekend...all my motivation to do stuff like that got destroyed by work on Friday, where I spent the whole day banging my head against the wall trying to get servlet-mapping's to work with WAS 6.1 Feature Pack for Web Services...obviously I'm doing something wrong...just no idea what. At least not thinking about it at all this weekend has given me a few ideas of things to look into on Monday...

No, this weekend was spent cleaning. Saturday involved acquiring cleaning supplies. Today has involved the actual cleaning.

I've had two "DOH!" moments with cleaning, where I just realize that up until that point, I've been doing it all wrong. The first was two years ago when I discovered the vacuum cleaner has a filter, and that filter needs to be Replaced Periodically (this explained the decreasing performance and all the dirt left on the carpet...). Filter not replaced for 3 years: bad performance. Replace filter, and *shock* miraculous improvement! All of a sudden vacuuming actually makes a difference!

Today, I realized I've been cleaning the linoleum floor in my kitchen wrong. For the last three years. I've tried a bunch of different floor cleaners, but in the end it seemed that the floor was always still dirty. In the end, it always came down to having to apply enough elbow grease & spending hours on hands-and-knees to scrub the floor down. What good was a mop? It just didn't work. Today I tried a tile cleaner (it hadn't worked against the soap scum & rust stains in the bathroom, so what the heck? might as well make some use of it...). So I sprayed it on the floor and wiped it up. And all the built up dirt & grime just vanished.

Egats! What is that magical stuff?? What wondrous chemical concoction could achieve such results???

Here's what the bottle says:

• 2.28% chlorine bleach
• 97.72% water

Now playing: Emm Gryner – Stray Bullets – 06 Stray Bullet

Remember that trip I was thinking of taking down to Berkeley? Well, it happened!

Got a flight down after work in the middle of the week (Wednesday) on Southwest, with a direct flight into Oakland (much nicer than those flights into Oakland via SFO & DEN...). I was late heading to the airport, and then the Max broke down en route, so I was worried about missing the flight and got chastised by the security checkpoint people for being in such a hurry (I mandate this was merely because of the contrast of my efficiency with the sloth immediately preceding me...). But I made it with plenty of time to spare. And the flight was only a quarter or third full, so I ended up with no one next to me (nice change of pace from most flights where I seem to be singled out by "larger" individuals as a good seatmate...).

Anyway, landed a bit early and promptly found out Emil (the friend I was going down to visit & stay with) had only just left. And then he got lost because of GPS issues. So, I ended up hanging around curbside for an hour. There's not much to see at an airport at night. Eventually we met up & headed back to Berkeley. Only to end up on Treasure Island. Oops...silly GPS units...but I did get a good view of San Francisco at night, which was cool (sorry; no pics, we were in the car and couldn't really stop to get out the cameras).

The next day was spent walking around the Berkeley campus. I liked how it was hilly and had vegetation. Purdue just seems kind of...flat...in comparison. I think Purdue had better architecture though, and more modern facilities. So maybe all that construction that my tuition paid for was worth it after all...

: Tree on campus (near the Life Science's building)

: Soda Hall, UC Berkeley campus

The next day was supposed to be tourist day in San Francisco. Which started off really well; we got to San Francisco without getting lost again (hehe...). But the weather didn’t really cooperate & it rained. A lot. We still walked around Fisherman's Wharf, which was pretty deserted. On the bright side, parking was really easy! So after grabbing lunch & getting wet, we got back into the car to see the other attraction at the top of my list: the Golden Gate Bridge :

: Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

By the time we got to the view point though, the weather had turned a bit worse. Winds came in and the rain started coming down harder. After grabbing a photo or two, I got the brilliant idea of heading over to the visitor center (50 feet away). Those 50 feet resulted in my rain jacket getting soaked through. The 50 feet back to the car meant that we were both totally soaked. At which point it seemed like a good idea to conclude the site seeing for the day and just head back. For dinner, I met up with a friend from high school (John) that works in the Valley. Which was a lot of fun (even if I don't feel like I helped the conversation much...:( ... meh).

The last full day there consisted of a lot of driving. Headed over to South San Francisco to see where my parent's are going to be living now & hit up a couple of Filipino Bake Shops to get goodies for my coworkers. :-) Got to see the big "South San Francisco" sign, stopped at Red Ribbon & Goldilocks, and then headed out to the coast at Pacifica. Drove down route 1 to Half Moon Bay...the coast there is beautiful!

: Montara Beach (?)

On the way back we swung through Mountain View, Santa Clara, and San Jose. Honestly, that was probably the part of the trip I liked the least. Too many strip malls, suburbs, cars, & people. Which to be honest is kind of what I was expecting from California... Seeing all the tech companies there was sort of interesting, but didn't outweigh the dislike of the environment. On the plus side, I did find out that Skype video conferencing actually works really well over my WWAN connection from AT&T (you still need to come out & see it in person though, Matt!).

So, California...liked San Francisco, liked Berkeley, liked the coast, but didn't really like Silicon Valley all that much (nor the East Bay Area much either...). I'll have to go back sometime & hope for better weather so I can actually do the touristy stuff. Maybe in April...got some time off there...might drive down this time though...

(full picture album)

Now playing: In-Flight Safety – The Coast is Clear – 07 Fear

Okay, better (although less productive) idea than messing around with URL normalization: why not read that Consider Phlebas book that's just laying around?

It's actually the 3rd Iain M. Banks book I've read. Summary: I liked it. It came recommended via a couple of sources, and definitely had parallels to one of the web comics that I read (Schlock Mercenary). Actually, come to think of it, maybe I read that comic because it was recommended by the same people that recommended the book...meh, don't remember now...could be another occurrence of the echo chamber phenomena of the blogosphere.

I think it ranks in between the other two books. I still like Use of Weapons the most...maybe in part because it was the first one I read? Maybe I just liked the way it ended, even if it was obvious to more astute readers. But both stories come out ahead of Matter. I can't really fault the writing of Matter at all; that was excellent, with good pacing of the main storyline, quite a bit of character development, and an interesting overarching plot that integrated the annoying primitive-royalty subplot well (in the end). But I didn't like the book. That subplot & all the characters involved in it were just too...annoying.

There's a similar thing with movies that I've discussed with friends (specifically regarding whether rating of films on Netflix should be based on how much one liked it or how good it was). Maybe this is true of everything...something can be good; interesting; technically very well executed...but there's no lasting emotional connection, just a slightly bad aftertaste, a desire to move on to something better...

Should have figured out how to have IIS redirect requests for things like 'CommentView,guid,8c43204e-2fae-4716-bfba-7c9d3225225d.aspx' to 'CommentView.aspx?guid=8c43204e-2fae-4716-bfba-7c9d3225225d' instead...

Now playing: Basia Bulat – Heart of My Own – 07 If Only You

So it looks like I'm going to be down in the Bay Area February 25-28...not 100% definite yet, since I haven't booked the flights yet or anything, but that's the current thoughts. It'll be fun to see Emil & things when I'm not horribly sick & unable to talk (unlike Christmas back in Indiana...), plus I've never actually been to California (yes! really!), so being all touristy should be cool.

Of course, I first have to get there.

Which might be a bigger issue than originally thought. At least if I fly certain airlines.

Here's how one un-named (although you might figure it out if you look closely at the picture...) airline wants to route me:

Yes, 13 hours. Portland to Oakland.

Soooo, why is that a potential issue? Why is it so utterly insane? Here, maybe a map will help the less geographically inclined:

Black line is the first leg, blue one is the second leg, and burgundy one is the third (final) leg.

Thanks, but I think I'd rather save the time & just hop off the plane in San Francisco and swim across the bay. Or, I don't know...maybe drive down that nice orange live labeled "5"...

Now playing: Jeremy Fisher – Goodbye Blue Monday – 01 Scar That Never Heals
(sorry for the lyrics link...it's the best I could find while being lazy)

Waaaay back, right after graduating from high school, I went to Europe with my French class from high school. Unfortunately, I didn't have a digital camera yet at that point, so all the pictures had to be scanned. While digging around, I found the scans of those pictures, so after a bit of cleaning up, here they are!

• 2003-06 French Trip

Now playing: The Awkward Stage – Slimming Mirrors, Flattering Lights – 07 Only Good Days Caught on Camera
(okay, so that's not actually the song I'm listening too...actually, it's 11 I Hurt the Ones That Love Me, but the title of track 7 seemed more appropriate for a picture post)
(i.e., putting in all (2) the links took longer than I was planning...)

I wish there was a way in Windows Live Photos to let me get an RSS feed of the albums, not just the photos within an album...

• Crabbing at Rockaway Beach
• Motorcycle riding at Bend, Oregon (& the return trip)
• Miscellaneous from November
• Emptied Reservoir #3 in Washington Park, Portland, Oregon
• Christmas in Indiana

(they're in order of date taken, not necessarily date posted...yeah, I need to be better about posting things on time...)

Now playing: You Say Party! We Say Die! – XXXX – 10 Heart of Gold

Happy New Year to everyone! Here's to next year!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

(pictures of food to come later...)

Now playing: Pick a Piper - Rooms

Despite what some people might think, I'm not writing journal entries on Facebook. No, these are blog posts from my one, true web presence: www.ntldr.net (www.ntldr.com…ntldr.net…ntldr.com…whatever, they're all just host headers for a single IIS 7.5 site).

See, there's this nice little part of the web called RSS. It lets content be automatically published in a nifty machine-readable way. I even wrote about it years ago… Anyway, its relevance here is that there's a RSS feed published by www.ntldr.net that some other sites (such as Windows Live Profiles, and notably Facebook) are subscribed to. These two other sites are able to pick up a change I make to the site (add/change/delete blog posts) and inform their users. So everyone stays up to date and everything is happy-fun-unicorn-prancing-in-the-sun times.

Note that I called out 2 sites there. Never wrote anything about the Windows Live addition of syndication. Now, some might say that's because I don't have any Windows Live Network members (fine, I'll say what everyone is thinking "he doesn't have any Friends"), to which I'd reply "ha! But who's got the traffic analysis to show otherwise!". (note that this argument applies to Windows Live Friends; I don't have nearly the resources (or wherewithal!) to stalk everyone in real life…and no, I'm not looking for grants from Homeland Security to change that…) In truth, I just don't have a problem with the way Windows Live implemented the feature. But I do have a few issues & comments regarding how Facebook does it.

One issue is feed refresh speed. I made a post midafternoon Sunday. I log into Facebook to catch up on friends*, go to my profile for some reason (or maybe just look at the Facebook Feeds), and notice that it hasn't picked up the post made hours earlier. Now, this isn't really that big of a problem. I mean, how often do I really make posts? How critical is it that people get these & read it that second? It's not like I'm giving out stock tips or something here.

But Facebook has this weird insistence that the timestamps of the "journal" entries be different from the timestamps on the posted content. So in combination with slow refreshes of the feed, it's possible to get into situations where multiple posts are made, Facebook picks them all up at once, and then totally screws up the order of the posts. So much for being able to carefully lead readers through a series of posts! Just think how much fun it would be to read a mystery novel where the final chapter shows up before the mystery is even presented!** Even more annoying is that the order seems to depend on what view is presented. This happened to me later Sunday evening, after everything finally refreshed, with friends viewing the "oh noes! I goofed up!" post before reading the much more recent "praise of Hyper-V" post that reflected a much better personal mood.

Going in a slightly different direction, Facebook proxies every request to the host website from its users through itself. I can't really take issue with this behavior, because I think the original intent is to protect users from malicious content. Facebook pulls the entire feed content down and presents it as a user journal entry. So if I wanted to be malicious and put things like Web bugs, or perhaps a little bit of script to go do evil, nefarious acts, that trash could gain legitimacy and bypass restrictions because it's now on Facebook's site. Proxying also allows for another level of caching to occur (I suspect I may be seeing this behavior in my servers logs), thus improving performance and maybe letting the source site stay up if something becomes really, really popular (obviously good). However, as a site admin, I get kind of nervous about the blatant way this seems to be occurring, and the lack of control I seem to have over it. Plus, it wouldn't really be necessary if the design were tweaked a bit to not trick users into thinking everything was Facebook & originated on Facebook & that Facebook is the Real Internet.***

Tied to the content proxying is content reformatting. RSS feeds are XML; entries can contain XHTML and all its glorious formatting. As part of "journal-ifying", the original site's CSS and formatting are ignored, and the Facebook styles get applied. In most cases, this is fine, and works well to create a more seamless experience. But on a couple of my entries, the formatting has reacted strangely and the resulting Frankenstein looks horrible. Again, I much prefer the Windows Live route where users get just a headline & a brief snippet to catch their interest. Unfortunately, I doubt that model will ever be picked up by Facebook. They're too focused on keeping people on the site and making money off those people, even if they are misrepresenting the origins of the content that those people are coming to see. Now, I don't really have a problem with a company making money. I just don't like seeing ads next to things I've written. I don't run ads on www.ntldr.net, and I don't plan on ever doing so.

Umm…so…"boo! to these Facebook journal entries!" visit www.ntldr.net! ;-D (I'll conveniently ignore how many, many more people (and better targeted! these people might actually care about this stuff!) have probably read these posts now via Facebook than have ever visited my actual site…)

* this part's hypothetical; despite having an account there since the beginning of 2004, I'm still not really sure why people use Facebook

** not that I'm planning on featuring detective stories at any point, but it'd be nice to have the flexibility for me to make that choice

*** some exaggeration added for dramatic effect…please don't "eliminate" me if I've stumbled across the super-secret plans for world domination!

Now playing: Lifehouse – Who We Are – 02 First Time

Bunch of random thoughts here...kind of like a Link Post only much more commentary than usual, so...

Hmm...maybe I should think about taking a vacation: RP among National Geographic’s 25 travel destinations. Sounds like it would be pretty & relaxing & nice. Or maybe not take a vacation; not sure what I'd do there (yes, there's a reason to go, but I've got this stupid hang-up around needing to be invited over first (and I'm fairly certain at this point that that wont happen)).

Moving pictures of the typhoon disasters in RP (well, I found them moving at least; might be different if you're not sitting warm & dry in a recliner thousands of miles away...).

I'd forgotten about how much I liked Wire in the Blood until both Emil mentioned it, and Leverage-writer-guy blogged about it on the same night. Although for some reason that just made me want to watch Spooks again instead...

Interesting blog post about politics & economics. Not sure I fully agree with the post, but an interesting view nonetheless.

Fascinating reading about the Olson time zone database. No, seriously! It's not that boring! Okay, so given my penchant for regional settings, date formats, & other miscellaneous bits, I might be a bit biased. Go check it out & find out for yourself. (aside: examples of my wierdness: 24 hour clocks, clocks set to UTC, ISO8601 formatting (yes, I may even have multiple editions of the standard!), usage of Celsius, changing of currency formatting so the currency symbol is after the #, usage of the space as a number group separator, etc.)

Cool: instructions on how to get the Active Directory detection of TMG servers to work. Now I just need to upgrade Forefront TMG and implement this client feature...

Haven't watched this video series yet, but it was referred to me as a good introduction to functional programming.

Recommended UEFI-based Disk Partition Configurations : read that if setting up an EFI booting Windows system! It'll make things a lot easier.

And a sign that I've been dealing WAY too much with thermal/power management: first reaction to this comic was total confusion – which plate? the one reinforcing the heatsink mount? there's no thermal sensor/thermocouple there is there? maybe it's referring to part of the chassis? but that doesn't get hot? and why would I be being warned anyway...shouldn’t everything just safely throttle down?

Now playing: Joel Plaskett – Three (Disc 1) – 9 Run, Run, Run

Screwed up a couple things at work last week. Well, found out about the screw ups (yep, there's 2!) at least. The original decisions I made/that were made happened weeks & months ago. The first involved a big upgrade project that I feel like I somehow got to be essentially in charge of (regular readers might be able to figure out what product was involved by going back through previous posts...), and is really just the result of poor communication, although I'm not sure how much clearer things could be than having the scenario in the stupid subject line of the emails... Anyway, it feels kind of like the rug got pulled out from underneath me on this one, and I'm probably taking it a lot harder than I should, with no one really to blame (uh-huh...like that's going to last...the finger pointing has already started; just a matter of seeing how political it gets). The second screw up involved the same product, but a new installation this time. A new server had to be spec'd and built, and there's a hard deadline & tight timeline to get it done. This time my mistake was in specifying the wrong OS to be installed – amd64 instead of i386 like the product's documentation said. Double checked everything, saw the note about supported platforms in the docs, and then spec'd the amd64 version anyway. Not quite sure what I was thinking; maybe that any well-written app wont have a problem with 64-bit? maybe just thinking about the cost & upgradeability of the system instead of the specs? maybe just a total-brain-failure while reading? Not quite sure what's going to happen there...

Huh...that went longer than I intended...guess I'm still fairly upset about it. [what, like writing a blog post trolling for sympathy wasn't already a good enough indication???]

Now playing: Harry Chapin – Legends of the Lost & Found – 16 You Are the Only Song

A couple days ago someone mentioned Pidgin, so I thought "what the heck, I'll see what the commotion is about". And hey! It's come a long way since the Gaim days when I last used it! Support for Jingle and XMPP audio/video is very cool, and it really doesn't look & feel that bad (okay, other than the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons being backwards from the Windows norm on every dialog). Unfortunately I haven't been able to test the Jabber support, since it appears the entire amessage.de server that I used to use is just gone...so I tried using my old FBE28E45 AIM account & what the heck????!!!! it still works!

I mean, it's been years since I used that account! (this is where someone is going to point out that I've actually been logged in this whole time (from some random transport server), and that this explains why I've been such a jerk and not responded to thousands of IM's over the years...)

But yeah, not only did logging into the account still work, all my contacts were still there! A whole bunch of people were online that I haven't talked to since the beginning of college...plus all the defunct accounts from people that have moved on. So I think I'll keep Pidgin around for a bit & see if I can't "reconnect" with some people (translation: Pidgin is going to sit around and run in the background for a while, until I forget about, then get uninstalled once I rediscover that something's using a bunch of resources...hehe...).

Update: hey, it turns out that amessage.de is still there...I'm just an idiot and 1) remembered to add the enabled AIM protocol to the TMG firewall access policy, but 2) forgot to define XMPP, add it to an access rule, and enable the rule. So I'm also reactivating NTSN@amessage.de! Yay! (although, ouch, it turns out people were trying to contact me on that account...sorry Taylor!)

Now playing: Jim Croce – I Got a Name – 11 The Hard Way Every Time

So as a follow on to the Grand Coolie Dam trip back in June, my friends up in Seattle for the summer decided to head up no the North Cascades National Park area and see that. On the whole, the trip wasn’t a whole lot of fun (for a bunch of reasons); but the area was really pretty and get back there sometime. Maybe make it all the way through the park next time…maybe actually hike the trails a bit… Oh well; here’s pictures!

Top of Baker Dam…it creates Baker Lake (to the right). To the left there’s a canyon/gorge that was fairly impressive…too bad none of the pictures turned out.

We stopped at Lake Shannon too & I was able to get a picture of this old abandoned(?) building (house?).

I like the curvature of Diablo Dam…makes it easier to get pictures of the dam face than the straight ones like the one at Baker Lake :).

Decent capture of what North Cascades National Park is like (that’s a little bit of Diablo Lake in the bottom left).

Now playing: Amy Millan – Masters of the Burial – 09 I Will Follow You into the Dark

Windows Live has this cool thing where it reminds you about your contact’s birthdays (the “Birthday Calendar” I think…). And yes, I’ve come to rely on this feature. Unfortunately, I can’t quite bring myself to trust the system completely, so whenever I get the alerts, I also get this nagging doubt that it’s not really that person’s birthday and that I’ve really just misentered their contact info…

Wow Windows XP is showing it’s age…the RTM installation disc I have is reacting badly to the >127GB hard drive I’m trying to install on…(yes, I know the way to correct this is to use SP1…which is why I’m slipstreaming SP3 onto a new installation disc right now…)

Hey! xcopy on Windows 7 seems to have a new option: /J (“Copies using unbuffered I/O. Recommended for very large files.”) Cool!

Command just used to build the Windows XP with SP3 disc: oscdimg -n -b"amd64\boot\ETFSBOOT.COM" -lWXP_VOL_EN_SP3 -t04/14/2008,07:53:59 -g -h -maxsize:4096 "E:\CD Build\windows_xp_sp3" "E:\CD build\windows_xp_sp3.iso". I’m probably a short DVD burn away from finding out just how wrong that was…(much later)…hey, that actually worked!

Oo…coool…Windows XP does have regional settings for Filipino…too bad the timezone stuff doesn’t have one (instead I end up guessing…”it’s close enough to Singapore, right?” note that this results in the timezone being "Malay Peninsula Standard Time")

Who makes & sells a DVD drive that can’t play DVD’s?!?!?! I mean, I could sort of understand a bare OEM drive…but these are boxed retail drives from HP! Grrr…

Now playing: (nothing but the sound of computer fans)

So back at the end of June I headed up to Seattle to hang out with my friends Emil & his girlfriend. First goal: stop by Leavenworth, see the faux-Bavarian-ness, and have Emil's girlfriend eat one of the pig legs (there’s an actual German-ish name for it that I can’t remember…) that had been recommended to her by her coworkers (co-interns?) at Microsoft. It was…larger…than anticipated. Leavenworth was fun in a ludicrously touristy way, complete with the crazy thick crowds. Second goal: get to Grand Coulee Dam and check out that engineering marvel. It’s definitely impressive! And the laser show at night was really cool. Third goal: stop at Lake Chelan and see that “gateway to the North Cascades”. That was less interesting for me, but it was still a nice chance to get out of the car for a bit. Yeah, there was lots of driving on this trip :). And all of this was just on the weekend!

So after that weekend I had another 2 days up in Seattle, so I did touristy stuff around the city. Got to finally the Space Needle, the Experience Music Project (EMP), general downtown (was looking for the SafeCo office, but I couldn’t remember the address at all, so it ended up just being just wandering over dozens of blocks), and the wharf area. Also stopped by Pike Place Market, the University of Washington campus, Gasworks Park, and took the Ride-the-Ducks tour. So lots of stuff, and lots of fun!

And lots of pictures :). But here are a select few; the full photo set can be found in the Seattle, WA Vacation (2009-06) album.

US-2 on the way out to Grand Coulee Dam

Grand Coulee Dam itself, as seen from the top of the extension added to accommodate the third powerhouse

Marion Oliver McCaw Hall screen-thingys at Seattle Center

Space Needle (and a little bit of the Experience Music Project (EMP))

Seattle waterfront, seen from a pier on the wharf

Hill in Gasworks Park, Seattle, plus a bit of the tops of the remains of the gasworks

Now playing: Learn Filipino – Book 1, Disc 1 – 12 Pronunciation-Malumay-03-82*
* Note on now playing: yes, I’m trying to multitask, and no, this probably isn’t a good idea…hehe…but it’s now abundantly clear that my mapping of sounds-to-language needs mountains of work…

So it's cooler here in Portland. Yay! Now, I know I should really follow up the previous link post with a picture post, but here's another link post anyway. And I could probably put more commentary here in the introduction, but meh? why bother?

• Not sure why these little miniature cities amuse me so much, but here's one made from staples.
• Interesting idea regarding meetings. Not sure it really applies to me anymore, since I don’t really "create" stuff anymore, but I still dislike meetings.
• Huh, wonder if there’s any truth to this comic/graph. Of course, I'm probably the wrong person to talk to about verifying the presence/absence of truth there…
• And as a sort of sick, twisted, follow up to that, there's this disturbing link. It's sad (and more than a little scary) what the mind will do to a person. :(
• In more depressing news: see this funny quote & think about its truth/falsity.

Now playing: Emm Gryner – The Original Leap Year – 04 Your Sort of Human Being

So it's kind of hot here in Portland now. Consequently, going outside would be…annoying (I don't care what people say about "dry heat", it's still hot)...which means it's another inside fun day. Unfortunately there's only so much movie/tv watching one can do before becoming bored, I (finally) finished rereading Cryptonomicon again and don't have any other books lined up yet, and I've spent my hour studying (and getting frustrated by) Tagalog, so onto website stuff. The easiest thing of which to do is write another post. So, here are the links:

• Uber cool! (via Bink.nu)
• Having worked in a large organization, ostensibly on a 'large' project, news like this no longer surprises me.
• I like this comic, but have this sneeky suspicion that my liking of it would be misinterpreted if anyone I actually knew visited this site (other than the bots that I'm making friends with...hi search engines/hackers/spammers/content theives!)

Now playing: Josh Ritter – Golden Age of Radio [Bonus CD] – 01 Come and Find Me

• I will was *not* bethis pathetic when I'm on vacation in the middle of no where (thank you cell phones & tethering)
• Oooo...legos...
• Having flown again, I support this
• As a response to Emil's Youtube video, I give you this link
• Pretty…
• umm...interesting?
• Cryto news
• Pretty city...both intact & probably while burning

Now playing: The Consumer Goods – The Terminator Rules

New! Improved! Now with inline hyperlinks!¹

• Thieves!
• For some reason this makes me nervous about spec'ing out anything... (via http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlippert/archive/2009/06/01/bug-psychology.aspx)
• Some people might consider my apartment bad, but this is ridiculous (note: "some people" are wrong in this case; my apartment has its electronic contents nicely organized).
• Apparently all I need to do to shed the whole nerd/geek image & become "cool" is go blow stuff up & walk away. Umm...sure...
• Mmmmm...doughnuts...
• Fun with locks! (yes Emil, you have a long ways to go with your bump keys) (via http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/locks_arent_really_effective/)
• -dsr-'s comment is hilarious (read the post first of course)
• Having this many email accounts actually isn't that impressive if you know a little about Exchange 2007 & Windows PowerShell...such as:
  for($i = 0; $i –lt 6000; $i += 1)
  {
  new-mailbox -UserPrincipalName "Me$i@ntldr.net" -alias "Me$i" -name "Me$i" -database "Storage Group 1\Mailbox Database 1" -OrganizationalUnit 'examples' -DisplayName "Me $i" -ResetPasswordOnNextLogon $true
  }
  (warning: for the kids following along at home, I don't actually have an Exchange Server anymore, so I haven't tested that command. and even if it's error free, why would you want 6000 accounts?!)
• Interested in Bing? Wondering how good the results are? Someone set up an interesting comparison site. (via http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090607/bing-vs-google-vs-yahoo-blind-search-engine-test/)

Extra special bonus feature:

So I got the following email message from my mom last week:

See your Mom on YouTube!!

Extra, extra special bonus feature:

So, there's been a bit of speculation lately about why I blog (& why it's increased lately). The general consensus amongst other people seemed to be that it's because I'm lonely & am seeking attention. LOL! Duh, it's a blog. That's like saying the sky is blue because of light's refraction through the atmosphere. ...err... maybe not quite that metaphor. Whatever...was going more for the whole "that's the way it works because that's what it means to be that" thing... (actually, there was a bunch of additional context around the whole question that makes it interesting, but I'm trying to avoid the whole emo-teen-agnst-livejournal vibe because I'm a mature technology professional maintaining a professional Internet self-marketing presence (haha...okay, so really I'm just too lazy to create & install a black-text-on-black-background DasBlog theme :P))

¹ Rose Festival/Fleet Week 2009 pictures coming later this week...or next...hopefully I'll be more punctual with this year's photos than I've been in previous years.

Now playing: Sebastien Grainger & the Mountains – Sebastien Grainger & the Mountains – 10 American Names

So, apparently there's some confusion about what the picture in the last post was. Something from someone about "dude, why’s there a picture of an airplane crashing into a white tower with a grey skeleton walking by." Ahem.

IT'S A FREAKING WIND TURBINE! See! Here's what they look like when complete! :

Here, maybe it'll help more if I show a bigger panorama (click for large size so the white things sticking up in the background are more visible):

(ignore the car in the picture; it's not really relevant to the windmills/wind turbines (sorry, I still think of them as windmills & have finally gotten tired of correcting myself) that are under construction.)

Also, I'd think that following the link to the XKCD comic would be a bit of a tip-off as to what the picture was off…never mind the direct reference to Don Quixote (the inference of which the comic leaves "as an exercise to the reader"). Whatever. :)

Now playing: Maybe Smith – Animals & Architects – 02 Hearts Like Bears

Thank goodness Don Quixote was here! Knocked the top right off the fearsome turbine-alien.

Now playing: Wintersleep – Welcome to the Night Sky – 04 Weighty Ghost

Cool space stuff! See the shuttle pull away from the Hubble Space Telescope:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2GH5rYf2Ko&fmt=18 (via http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/05/20/bon-voyage-hubble/)

It's interesting to find out a bit about the history of where you live. In my case, there's a cool blog about Portland:
http://www.cafeunknown.com/ (via http://twitter.com/patrickdlogan/statuses/1897082323)

First 1m30s are rather humourous: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfCfPuALS8Y (fortunately this isn't an issue for me, as the people I’m around are either past the whole baby stage, or haven't got there yet (and, let's be honest, probably never will...))

Now playing: Joel Plaskett – Three Disc 2 – 07 Beyond, Beyond, Beyond

Anyone up for a road trip to Greenland? Tibet?
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/04/20/where-is-the-most-remote-location-on-earth/

Interesting study...
http://scienceblogs.com/bioephemera/2009/05/why_has_science_been_neglectin.php

Hopefully I'll not think of this the next time I'm on a ferry
http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/that_didnt_take_long/

This meme spread pretty widely last week, but it’s cool anyway
http://jwz.livejournal.com/1043760.html

Neat subway map comparison
http://scienceblogs.com/bioephemera/2009/05/international_subway_system_th.php

Anyone want to pay money to subscribe to this blog on their Kindle?
http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/blogs_on_a_kindle/

Now playing: Joel Plaskett – Three (Disc 3) – 03 Deny, Deny, Deny

So, from April 5th through the 8th I was in San Antonio, Texas on business for the annual Ratabase conference. I’d been planning on live blogging it again like I did last year (actually, I was planning on doing it better than last year), but things didn’t quite work out that way. So, instead of the latest news on cool new things you can do with an insurance rating calculator (stop laughing!), I’ve got a cautionary tail about relying on new equipment, planning before doing things, and generally about how I do stupid stuff with technology.

Now for a bit of background. Windows Vista & 7 have this cool feature called “BitLocker”. Basically, it encrypts your hard drive so that if the computer/drive is stolen, an attacker would have to go through the OS level security mechanisms (usernames/passwords/smartcards/ACL’s). The attacker wouldn’t be able to circumvent the OS mechanisms by, say, editing the password store to give change the passwords. Or they could go after the EFS keys and just decrypt files that you had encrypted explicitly so that other people wouldn’t be able to read them!

One “mode” of Bitlocker relies on this cool hardware device called a TPM (trusted platform module). The TPM is involved in the key management/access process, and basically serves to ensure that the entire system, starting from the beginning of the boot process, is “trusted”. After all, you wouldn’t want some nefarious person coming in, booting to a different environment that can impersonate the BitLocker process, and then unlocking/decrypting the BitLocker volume and thus bypassing all the security it was supposed to offer. If the TPM/BitLocker (not sure which actually does the checks) detects that the system is under attack (for example, the order of the devices that the system boots from has changed), the system will require that a 56 digit recovery key be entered. Assuming you created a recovery key initially…but everyone does that & keeps that key safe, right?

A week before I was to head to San Antonio, my new Tablet PC (a Lenovo X200T) arrived. Incidentally, it’s a very nice system…fast, light, long battery life, lots of accessories (I bought most of the options…X-Base so I have an optical drive, webcam, fingerprint reader, WiMAX, HSDPA/UMTS, GPS, etc.). And it has a TPM v1.2. Which was cool, because it meant I could use BitLocker!

So I put Windows 7 (beta) on the system, enabled BitLocker, created the recovery key, and used the system successfully for a week. One time while rebooting the system I had to enter the recovery key, which I thought was kind of funny at the time, but didn’t really worry that much about it. So along came Sunday morning, it’s 5:00AM and I need to head out to the airport, so I hibernate my tablet and pull it out of the docking station (X Base). Figured I wouldn’t need the optical drive, and certainly wouldn’t need the extra weight. Thought about putting the recovery key on a flash drive or the external hard drive I was taking, but then thought “nah, I wouldn’t need that”. Besides, the key would be a lot more exposed to compromise if I had it with me and, say, my flash drive got lost/stolen.

Remember how I said the boot order mattered to the TPM? And remember how 1) I installed the OS shortly before this (from a DVD), & 2) how I wasn’t taking the X-Base with the DVD drive with me? And how I ignored the fact that when I’d last attached the X-Base I had to enter the recovery key? And how I wasn’t taking the recovery key with me? (this is where it should become apparent to most people that I am, in fact, an idiot.)

Of course I got all the way to the airport, through security, and was sitting at the gate with 30 minutes until boarding started when I went to use my tablet. And of course it saw that the DVD drive was no longer present and began going “oh noes! I’m under attack!”. Which then caused me to first realize exactly what mistakes I’d made, then freak out (it’s amazing what sorts of brief, complete clarity you can have when a situation goes to crap).

Part of the freak out was calling up a trusted friend and giving him all the details of connecting back to my network via VPN (including user names and passwords). I figured “okay, get connected to the internal network, then the administrator account can be used to login to the online CA and security server to retrieve the recovery key”. Yes, it was a moment of weakness and complete stupidity. Fortunately, years ago when I got the VPN stuff working, I had the foresight to use L2TP and require certificates to connect in addition to passwords. So no VPN connection could be established, giving the passwords did absolutely no good (but no harm either), and the recovery key couldn’t be retrieved. Hurray for defense-in-depth.

I was not totally without my tablet during the trip though. Remember how I brought an external hard drive with me? Well, that drive is the bootable one that I use to make OS recovery images. And I’d used it just a week before to backup the Lenovo factory default config. So I spent the flight down to Texas doing restores until I got the system working again.

Here are some pictures from the trip (more (and higher res ones) can be found on my Windows Live Photos album for the trip):

Westin La Cantera Resort gulf course outbuilding

San Antonio, TX Riverwalk. There’s a boat ride around it that’s kind of cool too (+). Lots of people (-). On the whole, it was a cool area, and made for a good change of pace from the conference.

The Alamo (of course!).

Now playing: Greg Laswell – Three Flights From Alto Nido – 04 Comes & Goes (In Waves)

There have been entirely too few random bits posted here lately, so here's an IM conversation from yesterday...

Jeffrey says (05:34):
you're up kind of late...
Jeffrey says (05:35):
unless your computers are LIEING
Matt says (13:31):
or up early
but more likely is that my computer is full of lies
Matt says (14:10):
but you
are idle
remember Jeffrey...
idle messenger clients are the Devil's beowulf cluster
Matt says (14:11):
Now the devil has a better SETI@home score than Jesus, are you happy now Jeffrey?

Now playing: Stars – In Our Bedroom After the War – 10 Bitches in Tokyo

US Airways flight 1549 (the one that had the forced landing on the Hudson River back in January):
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/ZSjz/~3/SSL89J3Le2M/mallons-salvage-pictures-back-online.html

Opting out of online advertising cookies & their tracking behaviours:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/4mvAgzlGUaI/how-to-opt-out-of-cookie-sniffing-and-trading.html
(not sure I entirely believe that opting out would really do anything)

Doctor Who humour:
http://roflrazzi.com/2009/01/08/celebrity-pictures-tennant-pop-up/

Exception Driven Development (I actually added something along these lines to the app at work that I used to work on…it was quite enlightening to be notified about the crashes/errors and see 1) how alike your users think, & 2) how different that is from what you thought they’d think and the assumptions you implicitly made when building the software)
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001239.html

Now playing: Holy F*ck – Holy F*ck EP – 04 Lovely Allen