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Much going on

Posted March 11, 2011 By Landis V

My world is eventful at present, and it seems to be preventing me from properly accomplishing much of anything.  Last Saturday my wife and I got new cell phones, finally extricating ourselves from Verizon (don’t get me started…). US Cellular has done well for us thus far – my wife has already had a support issue, and it was handled to resolution in a courteous manner.  My experience with Verizon was always courteous, but never resolved.  As part of this, I finally have an Android phone – very exciting, and I am enjoying it a great deal.  I have loaded the Froyo pre-release ROM, and it’s doing fairly well.  Haven’t had enough time to really play in detail (phone is the Samsung Mesmerize… another good reason to get away from Verizon; no locked down, eFuse Moto’s here :)).  Was hoping to port my old Verizon number to my Google Voice account since they are now allowing porting of mobile numbers, but it appears that BFE Nebraska is not on their list of locations which they can support porting from.  So, I will have to see if US Cell can port it to my new phone post hoc.  Wish me luck :/.

Have also been trying to get the WordPress app for Android to work with my blog, but that doesn’t seem to be happening just yet.  Had some issues with the client on my BlackBerry as well, so I think the finger currently points at the hosting provider configuration and not the phone(s).  Will work on that when (if?) I get the time.  Will also get back to my experimentation and testing of LxC’s hopefully sooner than later.  However, with my wife in Chicago from Saturday through Monday and myself on parent duty, it will probably be later rather than sooner.

Did experiment a little bit with the live disc for Clonezilla recently.  Acquired a bunch of systems, some of which will be finding new homes as soon as I can get them finished.  For the handful that came with drives, I had built a Windows image on one of them and tested replicating it to others.   Since the systems were all of similar-to-near-identical configuration, imaging was surprisingly fantastic and generally fast.  Imaging to a test VirtualBox on my daily driver Ubuntu box didn’t work quite as well, but I suspect there were a number of factors impacting that including 32-vs-64-bit processor config.  Again, something to worry about later since the actual PCs did great.  Kudos to Clonezilla on that one.

Have been looking at some of the descendants of FreeS/WAN recently, specifically StrongSwan (don’t bite me on the case tonight, I’m friggin’ tired!).  Looks neat, and I was hopeful to get a chance to run a test drive with it.  Don’t think that will actually happen unless I can somehow get it done tomorrow night (yeah, right).  May perhaps do so at home if I get the time.  It has pushed me to a somewhat better understanding of IPSec (I think), especially Main Mode vs Quick Mode.  I will continue to look at it and hope to at least make it work in a lab environment in case I ever have need of it in the future.  My current direction, as a result of tight time constraints, is probably going to be the ASR series of Cisco routers if their licensing proves tolerable, and something in the 7206 G2/VSA category if not.  I’m hearing 1.8Gbps throughput on those boys at the low end (though I assume that’s with 1400 byte packets, it’s still quite something).

Anyway, have to call it for tonight and work on some POs.  Just really needed to get some of what was going on out of my head and down on “paper”.  There is something at least mildly therapeutic about writing 🙂

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10/28

Posted October 28, 2010 By Landis V

http://www.davidkinard.com/marketing%20files/personal%20mission%20statement%20workbook.pdf
Interesting idea

In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
–George Orwell

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10/29/0428206/Separating-Cyber-Warfare-Fact-From-Fantasy
Linked article sounds like it might be a good read.  Excellent reference for the journalist in one of the posted comments.

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/CED52Xerlns/story01.htm
Electric car.  375 miles @55mph on a six minute charge.

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2/24

Posted February 24, 2010 By Landis V

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/fyf7PjH9ryc/Hungarian-Electric-Car-Splits-Into-Two-Smaller-Cars Neat idea.  Read.

“Every now and then go away — for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.” — Leonardo DaVinci

“Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.” — Maria Montessori

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/03/03/2048229/Turn-Your-Roomba-Into-a-Household-Google-Bot This looks like fun.  A Roomba remote control home indexing robot.

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Filed in Automotive, Parenting, Quotes | Tagged: ,

2/16

Posted February 16, 2010 By Landis V

http://www.slate.com/id/2244198/pagenum/all/ Neat article looking at the “overwhelming” effect of media, across many years.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592405525?ie=UTF8&tag=geekdad0320&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1592405525 “Geek Dad” book.  Geeky projects and activities for dads and kids to share.

http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ Comparing the value of the US Dollar, 1774 to present.

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.  – George F. Will

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25 Things (many months later)

Posted December 20, 2009 By Landis V

I’ve been tagged a couple of times. It will take approximately six years for me to complete this. During that interval, it will live in my “draft notes” folder.
I’m not tagging anyone. Read them if you want, don’t if you don’t.

1. I find taxes perversely interesting now that I’m (just a little bit) older. I learn something new every year. In 2007 (2006 filing) I learned that you get positively buttraped for “married filing separately.” Last year I filed longform for the first time. This year I discovered a little bit about tax credits for points while refinancing a home. Next year, I’ll learn about dependant deductions and (hopefully) capital gains and losses.

2. I like to publish my music playlists. I’m modestly ecclectic in my tastes and, though I usually have my players set to random, my music will sometimes reflect my mood. I’m quite sure it’s not something that people pay a great deal of attention to, but it’s important enough to me that I seek out audio devices and applications that support it (www.last.fm, www.foobar2000.org, www.rockbox.org).

3. At any given time, the value of my liquor cabinet approximates that of my cars. I don’t like cheap crap, but I like a lot of different things. Reciprocally, I don’t really mind cheap crappy cars 🙂

4. I’m a bit vain. Perhaps not a surprise.

5. I value intelligence, competence, and self-capability more than anything.

6. Re: #5. Except my family. Though I’ve no qualms there.

7. I like quality. Quality clothes, quality booze/beer/wine, quality thought, quality -everything-.

8. I procrastinate. By way of example, when is the last time you remember this survey going around? Yeah, that’s probably close to the time I started it. And it’s iffy whether I’ll finish it tonight even.

9. I am conservative. For the most part. There are two specific examples I can cite that most conservatives would disagree with me upon: abortion and -true- freedom of speech. In regard to abortion, I have no right to decide (as it is a woman’s body and, as such, her right to make that decision – yes, I say this with no qualms after having had a child of my own; I have an undeerstandable bias, but that does not under any circumstances give me the right to profess my will over another person’s body. In regard to freedom of speech, “conservatives” generally need to adopt an atitude of practicing what they preach, especially in regard to speech they disagree with, to avoid hypocrisy. Actions are another story…

10. Ties into “I’m vain”, but I like people to know what I think. How else are they going to form an opinion based upon my ideals? (That’s pseudo-sarcastic.)

11. I believe this country is going straight to hell, just like the EU. Go ahead and ask me why, I could do with a reason to rant.

12. I -love- my family. My daughter amazes me with her curiosity and inquisitiveness, and my wife amazes me with her undsrstanding and true goodness.

13. I like variety. After all, if you keep the same routines for the rest of your life, how are you going to see alll the other things you like? (N.B. Value > variety)

14. I love to better understand what I already know. For example, in #13 I already had an approximate awareness of “N.B.”. Yet it never hurts to further develop context. I looked it up. See here.

15. My daughter can challenge my patience sometimes. It is no fault of hers; it is fault of myself.

16. I feel starved for time. I want to know everything, do everything, and still maintain channels amongst my friends and acquaintances.

17. My wife is, frankly, amazing. She can take me from a near rage to a settled, thoughtful state that reflects my ideal image of myself. In any circumstance.

18. I have weaknesses. Don’t bother asking me about them. If I don’t tell you personally, you’ll never know. Not a big secret, so does everyone, but it’s something. And I’m running out of ideas without resorting to the “I really like spaghetti” style answers. I’m trying to do something deep here, people!

19. Children are exhausting, but perhaps not nearly so much as one might think. At least, mine isn’t 🙂

20. I would like to learn to read and have a workable understanding of Latin. Yes, it’s a dead language. It’s a dead language with vast history and context, however.

21. I can speak a few words of Mandarin. Something I pursued at one time, and something I may get back to at some point in the (distant) future.

22. I’m maybe (more than) a little bit GQ. Big turnaround from high school.

23. I like stout, black coffee. One of the best I’ve ever had was (I believe) a chickory blend from Cafe Du Mond (Du Monde?) in New Orleans.

24. I LOVE to travel. And I finally got my passport this year. Fortunate, considering I have family in Canada and may want to go there again someday soon 🙂

25. I have summed up the complete and total essence of my being in the previous 24 questions. (The real #25: SURPRISE! I have an enormous amount of sarcasm!)

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Filed in Family & Personal, Language, Music, Politics, Rights, Travel

The Unawareness Routine

Posted December 19, 2009 By Landis V

This is something I had published elsewhere a while ago. I read it this evening and thought it worthy of sharing.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

I was watching my dog this evening as he was outside on his very heavy duty cable and equally heavy duty stake. While not suited for constraining an elephant, it definitely leaves no concerns for a 65lb mutt.

There is an ash tree growing in my back yard, which happens to fall within the circumfrence of the area reachable by said dog when attached to said cable. As I watched Flop explore the great outdoors, I became aware of something I had not previously considered. His explorations brought him within the vicinity of the ash tree. Surely you know the near future of the story, as we have all watched in amusement at the canine inability to comprehend cables and trees. He wound around a few times before freeing himself to continue exploring.

It is this few moments of decreasing circle of existence which I now wish to explore. As Flop wrapped and disentangled himself from the ash tree, I considered his lack of understanding, lack of awareness of his environment. A good, relatively intelligent dog, but lacking the comprehension of all characteristics of his environment.

Continuing this to humans, for I believe there are none amongst us with a full comprehension of the myriad aspects, rules, and components that make up the totality of our existence… what, then, are the limitations and/or influences which affect us that we are not aware of simply due to lack of understanding?

I am well aware that this is an open ended question of an epic nature, for if we simply knew and understood… we would understand the effects of these elements upon our daily lives. If we understood them, what more would we be able to accomplish? What obstructions would we remove from our lives? How large would our world become??? I will not attempt to answer it here, only to note that it is something which I will do my best to consider going forward in my life. What more would be possible if we could eliminate the unawareness routine?

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Filed in Musings

Busy week/weekend

Posted June 15, 2009 By Landis V

Got my new Holux M-1000 Bluetooth GPS to use with the BlackBerry (rather than paying Alltel $10/mo to use the built-in one, a straight $45 one-time fee). Seems to work great with software from Blackstar Navigation (http://www.blackstarnavigation.com/), GPSed.com (http://www.gpsed.com), and Google Maps. Did a little bit of geocaching, and it’s far more accurate than my old Garmin eTrex.

Did some cleanup on the baby’s room. It seems to be coming together. Now I just need to get on to the rest of the house! Finally got a few pictures uploaded.

My bank sucks. I’m guessing they’re doing maintenance or batch processing for the night. It would be nice to be able to log in and finish up balancing everything. At least I got through most of my receipts via mint.com.

Target’s return policies suck. I haven’t yet figured out whether the suckiness ends with their policies or whether their backend systems admins are incompetent. Should know that in the relatively near future.

Still no tricycle motor. Looks like she got the stubborn streak and will arrive when she’s good and ready. Still plenty more to do. Certain to be another busy week at work. Life is good, though.

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