Lomcevak

Locked in the Rack

Screen Detail

I found these pictures in my phone when I was getting ready for a firmware update. I meant to write about ‘em earlier but I guess I never got around to it.

This hung scanner was stuck in the rack (kind of looks like it’s stuck in a little toilet) and none of the buttons produced any response. I remember getting some funny looks as I knelt to grab the images.

I still like the system because it saves me time, even if I’m only in the store for a few items. I’ve been audited a few times. The audits, at least in my limited experiences, are more of a wave-of-the-hand than anything.

Other stuff about my encounters with Scan-It are here and here.

How many have, like me, been catching themselves saying oh-ten when referring to the current year? I think that I’ve managed to not actually say it out loud, but I’m not absolutely certain.

The shortening made perfect sense in 2009 and even in the 1900s. Speaking the year shortened from twenty-oh-nine to just plain oh-nine was perfectly understandable. And if you mention the sixties then everyone (regardless of whether or not they actually remember the 1960s) knows what exactly you’re talking about.

Would anyone in their right mind say two-oh-ten? Because to say twenty-oh-ten is just wrong. Eighteen thousand years into the future wrong.

Do you think IPv6 will be around in 18,000 years?

As I age, I find that I’ve developed an appreciation for tech history. I was delighted this morning to run across a short piece by Dan Murphy, the creator of TECO, entitled The Beginnings of TECO.

You see, TECO was the editor for which Richard Stallman created a macro package called Emacs (for Editor MACroS). A flavor of Emacs is usually the first program I launch and the last to quit. It’s been that way since the mid eighties, which is around when it became very useful to me to be able to edit text on a variety of different platforms. For Emacs has been ported to just about every computing platform there is. As a matter of fact, I’m writing this piece in an Emacs buffer right now! (Before you ask, the implementation I use these days is from Lugaru Software, LTD. Theirs is a commercial product, but go visit them for a fully capable free trial.)

But I digress – go read The Beginnings of TECO for a fascinating glimpse into the past, when things were more… well, interesting… in some ways than they are today.

[...] TECO was nothing if not terse. Fairly complex loops and other command sequences could be written in TECO, and mostly looked like line noise. TECO was one of the first languages to spawn the practice of handing someone a one-line string of near gibberish and asking with a grin, “tell me what it does.”

NY Times: Listening In on a Pay Phone in Queens

Be sure to check out the photo set as well!

Whuh!

http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi

My son’s recent assignment for driver education class was to research insurance quotes. (I’m not sure how relevant that is to the actual practice of vehicle operation, but there you go.) I didn’t think that you’d be able to obtain actual quotes online; I was wrong.

But what really blew me away was how available certain information has become. With nothing more than my son’s name and street address Geico was happy to hand back a list of our vehicles. My vehicles – NOT the kid’s vehicles – mine. No authentication, no nothing.

I’m thinking of sitting down with the yearbook. It’s easy enough to associate local addresses with names – Google and the Post Office are glad to help with that – unless maybe your name’s Patel. Then do the lookups and compile the vehicle lists – again, easy, as we’ve discovered. In fact, since I’m tech, I’d automate that part. With that humming along it’s time to put on the marketing hat… Who’d be interested in who drives what? How ’bout you?

One thing’s interesting, though. They didn’t list my motorcycles.

This one’s planted firmly in the WTF department. See for yourself.

http://www.vhemt.org/

“May we live long and die out”

Privacy is important to me. Sure, like everyone else I leave a rather wide data trail in my wake, but at least I try to be aware of it.

I was reading about some of the inappropriate uses of telephone records when I ran across this unclassified document from the U.S. Department of Justice entitled A Review of the FBI’s Use of Exigent Letters and Other Informal Requests for Telephone Records.

I’m just throwing it out there, have fun if you care to. Patience, the document’s a little under 6 MB.

Today kicks off the beginning of another FIRST Robotics Competition season.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is the 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit public charity founded by Dean Kamen in 1989 to inspire young  people to become tomorrow’s science and technology leaders.

I spent the morning at Montgomery High School watching the broadcast presentation of this year’s game. It looks like a serious challenge! For the next six weeks, students will be burning the midnight oil designing and building their competition robots – while not letting their studies lapse. If the enthusiasm I witnessed this morning is any indication, this is going to be one hell of a season. I can’t wait!

Science, technology, engineering… these are key to America’s future, the disciplines that will enable America to retake it’s place in the world, as innovators and creators – as we have always done again and again throughout our history. The kids that participate in programs like FIRST are our future!

If you haven’t seen a robot competition, you owe it to yourself to go check it out for yourself. All of the competitions are open to the public. Check the FIRST site for an event near you. Make the time to attend. See what these kids are capable of doing.

Disclosure: My son is a member of the award-winning Team 25 – Raider Robotix. My company is proud to help support the team.

Today was the day. We spent some time going through the fridge, freezer, pantries and so on, pulling everything out, squinting at expiration and sell-by dates.

It’s amazing how much food you accumulate that slowly makes its way to the back, never to be seen again! Some stuff was pretty darned old. A packet of cherry Kool-Aid, for example, had a package so discolored and crumpled, almost leaking, that even I wouldn’t consider drinking it.

Well, it’s all gone now. There’s lots of new space. I guess it’s time to go grocery shopping!

When I stuffed those terabyte Seagate drives into the VM server I just knew that configuring for RAID would be a good idea. After all – that’s a healthy amount of storage and the likelihood that something would go tits-up eventually was too great. At first I simply used the RAID controller on the motherboard but I grew uncomfortable with the software drivers required. They were proprietary, of course. So I opted for a dedicated controller from Silicon Image.

Recently those decisions paid me back.

I never noticed anything amiss. The problem was revealed by a log entry noticed as part of regular maintenance. The RAID configuration console subsequently reported that one drive had become ill and gone offline. This array was configured as a simple mirror, so now the volume was flying without a net.

These are common drives and the local Best Buy has ‘em in stock for under $90. Off I went, in horrible rain and cold, and soon I had the spare.

Swapping it in took almost as long as the short trip. The latest machine builds have been in mid- or full-tower cases but this server, nope, tight quarters in the mini-ATX case. But soon it was done. I restarted all the VMs and set the array to rebuilding.

It took a while – a couple of days. Yes, that’s excessive, I couldn’t agree more. But all things considered… It’s not a particularly powerful box; it’s busy, no less than a half-dozen VMs dedicated to their individual tasks, plus the host OS; the spare drive was added right out of the box – unpartitioned, unformatted. A sector-by-sector block-by-block reconstruction, so it’s no small wonder it took a while. I certainly could have helped it along.

Meanwhile, I’ve been running some tests on the failed drive. Yup, it’s failed alright. It’s also under warranty.

So just as soon as I scrub the data it’s going back to Seagate for replacement.

A happy ending, must be the Spirit of Christmas. There’s a lesson here, too. As we approach 2010, if you don’t already, resolve to apply some discipline to your data protection practices. Make maintenance and recovery plans. Use appropriate technology. Review your logs.

Happy New Year!

Added 1-Jan-2010…

Wouldn’t you know it? Following the secure deletion of all data from the failed disk I decided to run the Seagate diagnostics. It passed all tests.

I’ve repartitioned the thing and it’s formatting now. I’ll use it as scratch workspace for video and other big projects and with luck it’ll fail again soon. Something bothers me about using it for anything important.

This morning brought a little bit of snow. Last night it was said that it was supposed to be a huge honkin’ storm but it turned out to be not much snow at all, just a dusting. Pam went outside to get the newspaper, as she usually does on Saturday morning, but came back inside empty-handed. “There’s no fuckin’ paper,” she muttered disgustedly, partially to me and partially to the Universe.

A little while later I was checking the weather maps to see what had happened to our storm and collecting the morning email. Here was something from the paper:

Good Morning from the Home News Tribune!

We’re experiencing possible delays throughout our delivery area today, December 19, 2009 due to the current weather conditions. We apologize for the inconvenience; however you can access our e-edition immediately by visiting [...]

A couple of years back the paper took the decision to outsource delivery to some faceless fulfillment company. And years earlier than that they stopped the practice of using neighborhood kids on the street. Each change has brought a corresponding drop in service levels.

Anyway, those kids earned their tips. (I wrote about newspapers and delivery gratuities last year, too.) Weather? It just didn’t matter; the newspaper was delivered and that was that. I think our parents called it “responsibility”.

Our e-edition is an exact replica of the printed version that will be delivered to you later today.

And it is, I guess, but the navigation is clunky and you can’t fold it up on the dining room table while you enjoy breakfast and coffee. Also implied is that they intend an eventual delivery, but they’re already four or five hours late.

If you like the Home News Tribune e-edition, you may subscribe by visiting [...]

Extra, or a substitute for pulp delivery? Not sure, as I write.

It happens that I just paid the bill for our subscription. Delivery performance has incremented downward and the paper itself has shrunk – actually become considerably narrower – over the past year. Yet rates had risen again. We already know they’ve outsourced delivery. Apparently they’ve also outsourced billing because my check went to a PO box in Louisville, KY. It used to go to an address down the shore.

Newspapers all over are wringing their hands over their reduced market share. The Internet is kicking their collective asses! Is it any wonder? Maybe they deserve it.

Cablevision, our local cable television and Internet service provider monopoly, gave us a nice gift this Christmas.

New Rates Effective December

When Verizon gets around to bringing FIOS to my neighborhood I will switch in a heartbeat. With Verizon’s aggressive deployment, why isn’t it available here when it’s available as soon as you step out of the neighborhood? That’s a long story. But I’m not holding my breath.

I’m wondering whether law enforcement officials would use deploy this in pursuit of a motorcycle.

http://blutube.policeone.com/Clip.aspx?key=8E7AF35948367905

I tend to pull over when requested, but what if???

You can’t watch the news lately without hearing about credit card fees. Consumers are becoming outraged as banks avail themselves of every opportunity to collect more and more. With the amount of credit card debt that consumers are carrying these days, it’s likely that you’re one of them.

I use credit. In fact, I use it every chance I can. The card I use the most has a rebate program that I actually use and, over the past 8 years or so I’ve collected an average of about $750 per year in rebates. Not bad!

The other day I was clearing the most recent statement while the news was running a credit fee related story – and my bank was the focus. I pointed my browser to their Web site to see what the fuss was about. It took a bit of searching but I found it, buried under a link:

Late Payment Warning

Wow! That’s a hefty fee alright. And a hefty interest rate, too. This must be what the story was about.

There’s really more to the story, though, and the reporter didn’t bother to share it. See, I know the secret already. And I’m going to tell you what it is. There’s no number to call, no login, no registration, no gimmicks at all. Absolutely free. The secret to avoiding those nasty fees. My gift to you.

So, here’s the secret. Ready? Here it comes now.

Pay the bill. On time. Or don’t use the credit line. You know exactly when the next closing date, the statement arrival date and the due date will occur. Plan. Huh? You can’t resist the urge to spend? Then go and put the card in your safe deposit box until you learn some discipline. (Don’t close the account, though, that’s bad for your score.) Then pay the bill. On time.

Simple, isn’t it?