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?

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.

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.

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?

Today I paid my property taxes. Here in New Jersey we enjoy the highest property tax rates in our great nation. Sitting at my desk, thoughtfully writing the checks, was not the most pleasant of tasks.

Among other things, I contemplated the state of our schools, the cost of which is a large portion of our property taxes. We have, what, some 640 school districts in the state? Each is run by its own highly-compensated set of administrators. The NJEA is an all-powerful union hell-bent on perpetuating its bloated self, keeping things fragmented, weak. They’re gathering for their annual convention this week. More days off for the kids. (Don’t let me get going on how Sports is King while STEM languishes with little-to-no funding!) No, with a setup like this there’s absolutely no hope of such proven concepts like ‘economy of scale’ ever taking root here!

Tomorrow my wife and I will ride our motorcycles to the polls. The cost to register a motorcycle more than doubled this year, similarly to many other motor vehicle fees. (I’ll spare you my whining about motor vehicle insurance here in the Garden State. You’re welcome. No, really.)

Tomorrow’s vote will choose our next governor. The way I see it, we will choose between a proven incompetent and a crook. Or we can simply throw a vote away. Tough choice.

Our municipal government is no better.

My family and I have already made the decision to leave New Jersey. It’s not a new decision, either. Enough is enough. We’re definitely joining what’s become a mass exodus, folding our cards, liquidating assets, adiós. Gettin’ out while the gettin’ is good. (Or at least before it gets unbearably worse.) Yeah, that decision is done, the only question remaining is when.

Will we be following the plans, the projects underway, to their logical conclusions? Or something less?

It’s actually kind of comforting to know that, by a bit later than this time tomorrow, we’ll know how we’ll be focusing our efforts.

About a month and a half ago my main personal computer, an (ancient) HP zd8000 laptop, began dropping keystrokes. I traced the problem back to the battery. No longer taking a charge, the interrupts generated as the charging circuitry tried, failed and tried again were interfering with the keyboard interrupt. My typing is bad enough; I pulled the offending battery, scanned the ‘net and ordered a new battery from overstock.com based on – what else? – price.

That was September 3rd, and the replacement battery arrived some days later. Unfortunately it was the wrong one! The order showed the correct number as did the packing list, but the thing that sat on my desk clearly showed a different number. The plastic bag it came in was already open (uh oh, could mean trouble) so I took the opportunity to stick it into the laptop, thinking perhaps it was a substitute. Nope, the computer refused it.

I used the online chat on Overstock’s Web site and explained the situation. The rep thought it best to escalate to a tech person so she told me to expect their call, which came some hours later. I hadn’t expected his call so quick. The tech generated the RMA and return shipping label and said he’d overnight another replacement.

Meanwhile I did a little checking. HP has an excellent online parts lookup tool, and I used it to check the two part numbers in question. They were markedly different. I looked them both up on the Overstock site and found the descriptions to be remarkably similar. Maybe this was the problem?

As it turned out, the next few weeks proved frustrating – for both me and Overstock – as we shipped the same incorrect battery back an forth across the country three times. In the end they said that they didn’t have the correct item. They’d process my refund and I was free to keep the incorrect battery. I sent it back anyway; there’s no sense in recycling a perfectly good battery I couldn’t use.

But that’s not the end of the story. Last Friday evening I took a call from Thomas at Overstock. He explained that my case had made it up to the executive level and that they had spent some time analyzing what went wrong. There were a few things, including a mis-SKUed warehouse bin (aha!) and lapses in communication. The analysis had resulted in some process improvements and Thomas called to tell me about them. We talked for a while about things like quality and customer service. Full disclosure: Thomas offered – and I accepted – compensation for my frustration and understanding: a correct battery and some store credit. He left his email and direct phone number.

(The correct battery arrived this afternoon, shipped overnight from Overstock’s supplier. The number fits several applications; the plastic cover trim isn’t right for my particular laptop, but I have spares from previous replacements so it’s no big deal. Overstock, if you’re reading this, don’t panic – I’m good, and I appreciate all you’ve done. You might want to follow-up with the warehouse, though.)

In my experience, the larger a company becomes the less likely is becomes that a minor customer problem actually results in action. Sure, refunds and credits are common enough, but not the continuous improvement part. To do that, and more importantly, to take the additional step of reaching out to the customer after the transaction is complete is exceptional. More should follow Overstock’s example. I’ll use them again.

I’ve done some traveling this summer and the netbook I wrote about some time back has proved to be a worthy companion. The portability and battery life have more than offset the lower performance and cramped screen real estate. And the HP Mini 1000 has proven to be as reliable as a brick!

When I configured the box I chose the SSD over traditional hard drive. HDs tend not to last very long when transported via Milwaukee Vibrators. Sure, SSDs are considerably more expensive and offer less capacity, but I was looking for reliability and it’s certainly delivered that. Read speeds are fantastic, making for fast boot times even on the slow Atom processor. But small writes – the kind that Windows is famous for doing constantly – really suck.

I wanted to mention FlashFire, an SSD accelerator. According to their site, it’s “especially useful for the system using low-end SSDs.” It works. I haven’t bothered to upgrade the slow stock SSD mainly because FlashFire makes it tolerable.

Before you ask, yes, additional buffering can leave you with an increased risk of data loss if a crash occurs before the flush is complete. But the dirty little secret is that the higher-performance SSDs already use on-board DRAM buffers to boost performance, so is it really all that much different? I guess it depends on your needs. For me, the tradeoff – performance for a little more risk – is worth it.

If you’re grumbling and second-guessing your SSD decision, go give FlashFire a try.

There’s nothing like a trip through airport security to brighten your day. How airport security ties into a story about beer, well, you’ll just have to wait and see!

The laws for alcohol consumption vary greatly by region. For example, quaff your Bud while walking the street in New Jersey and you’re pretty much guaranteed a night in jail. Yet as long as they’re not actually consuming alcohol, a minor can sit at a Jersey bar all day long and suffer only boredom. In Las Vegas, though, things are different. Sin City, they call the place. You can walk down the street with a beer (or anything else!) and no one will bat an eye. But bartenders’ nervousness increases proportional to the time that minors sit anywhere near a bar. Same with the casino games, by the way. They’re serious about their anti-loitering laws. (No matter that I witnessed apparent elementary school aged kids pulling slots, that’s another story. Officially, they care.)

Planter / Bottle Opener

We picked up a six-pack of beer on our way back to the suite. That’s an expensive proposition on Las Vegas Blvd., nearly twice what we’re used to paying. I don’t know if it was the heat of the street or if they were just selling warm beer out of the cooler, but in short order the beer was warm as piss and quite useless. What to do? Stuff it in the fridge (ah, the advantages of a suite with a wet bar!) and find something else to do, knowing it’ll be good to go in the morning.

And it was. Our beer of choice, though, requires an opener and – oops – we were lacking. Now a lack of opener doesn’t necessarily equal a lack of ingenuity, so the search was on. Our opener turned out to be disguised as a potted plant on a wrought iron stand.

You wouldn’t know by just looking, but there’s a remarkable similarity between that plant stand and the rear bumper of a ‘64 Chevy Impala!

Maybe there was just the tiniest bit of spillage but I won’t tell if you won’t! That worked until we remembered to buy an opener; it only took a couple of days. We chose a souvenir opener modeled after a bottle, filled with a viscous liquid, with icons of Las Vegas (chips, dice, etc.) floating within. A magnet on the side would hold it to our fridge, a colorful and happy reminder of this particular adventure.

The second time (but not the first!) that we passed through LAS security Pam got dinged for our souvenir bottle opener. Not because of the metal end, oh no, it was the liquid content of the thing. No matter that she only had one. No matter that we ALL only had one of them between us. No matter that it was clearly a sealed piece of plastic. They must have seen millions of them over the years! No, none of that mattered in the least. The TSA agent was determined.

There were choices, of course. Leave the security area and arrange to mail it back. Leave the security area and return to ticketing, (try to) have the agent retrieve our checked bags to add the contraband. Or surrender the item. And that’s what we chose to do. A four-dollar (plus tax – 8% tax at that) plastic doo-dad just ain’t worth three trips through airport security in less than a day! DOA, that’s what she called it. That dangerous little thing was dutifully tossed into DOA. It looked like a trash bin to me. Black. Rubbermaid.

Dangerous Terrorist Souvenir

Before I left the area I told the agent the story and asked for a picture. Maybe I was hoping she’d change her mind. Maybe hearing the story, holding the thing again, having another look would change her mind. Nope, it didn’t work. She reached into the DOA bin and retrieved the offending trinket, but she wouldn’t let me touch it. I got my picture, but she wouldn’t even allow her hands to appear in the image. She smiled, but firmly held her position.

We boarded the tram to the gates.

It seems absurdly simple. We’re spending money hand over fist. Taxes will, with absolute certainty, soon rise. It seems likely to me that taxes will rise to rates never before seen in this land.

Can anyone tell me a rational reason why churches enjoyed tax-exempt status?

We absolutely need to tax all churches, as we do every other non-profit.

Check out this Web site to learn a little  more (edited 2-Sep-09) to read some more; it was the first hit Google returned when I searched.

Who’s with me on this?

Remember The Jetsons?

The cartoon aired in the early sixties. It painted an image of the future that was just so fantastic, so far-out, that it could only exist in the cartoon world. Certainly, we would never live to see it.

Well, this is the world we do live in today.

Okay, sure, we don’t have flying cars – probably never will – but so much of what they showed is so commonplace today it isn’t funny. Go check out excerpts form some episodes on Hulu. Think about what you see.

I’ll soon need to use the air conditioning in my home. It’s been so cold this spring and summer that I’ve used it exactly once so far this season. And that was only because I had changed out a thermostat and needed to test the system. So the other day I ran it all day and night. I awoke to find it running full-bore, the suction line frozen and little, if any, air moving through the ductwork.

I spend a bit of time with Google and soon learned more than I had ever known about air conditioning systems, more than enough to troubleshoot my system.

It reminded me of that old movie, The Matrix. Remember Neo’s famous line? “Jiu Jitsu? I’m going to learn… Jiu Jitsu?”

“Air conditioning? I’m going to learn about… air conditioning?”

We live in an unparalleled age where most of what you need to know is just a few clicks away. I swear, sometimes I gotta pinch myself.

Don’t take it for granted, my friends. Think and contribute what you can.