I’ve said this to people in the past, but I wanted to put the quote down in writing:
True friends are there to help you celebrate your success, not complain that you have it and they don’t.
Tags: friendship, success, quote
D. J. Bernstein is legendary
October 19, 2009 by Leave a Comment
I’ve been using djbdns and qmail for many years, specifically because after reviewing its code and comparing it to other possible alternatives, I objectively decided that these two pieces of software are superior in all aspects.
Lots of people have cast aspersions on D. J. Bernstein and his software, usually with emotional and irrational claims. Of course, most of these people can’t even read code well enough to understand what it does or how it does it. However, when you encounter the opinions of actual programmers, we all tend to share a similar but different opinion.
Today, Aaron Swartz put this into words better than I could: D. J. Bernstein is the greatest programmer in the history of the world. The money quote:
[…] djb
Fixing a Troy-Bilt TB70SS weed whacker
October 17, 2009 by Leave a Comment
My friend Keith has a Troy-Bilt TB70SS weed whacker that stopped working the other day. Not being one to pass on a good opportunity to do a DIY repair, I took it apart and discovered that the piston arm had broken and the reed spring had gotten mangled.
The best source for parts that I’ve found is, surprisingly, the Home Depot Power Equipment Parts site. They have the exploded parts view in PDF form, which makes ordering really simple.
I wonder if there’s pictures or videos online showing folks how to take apart and re-assemble these things — it’s really pretty simple and can be a lot of fun to repair your own things.
Tags: Troy-Bilt TB70SS, DIY, repair, Home Depot Power Equipment Parts
Snow Leopard: Bring on the pain!
October 10, 2009 by Leave a Comment
MacOS X 10.6.0 Snow Leopard was released over a month ago on August 28, 2009. While everyone jumped at the opportunity to be Apple’s outsourced QA, I followed my rule of “never use a dot-zero (.0) release.” Now, a month and a half later — and after the 10.6.1 update has been released — I’ve decided to install the upgrade.
Many people have suggested the upgrade was smooth and painless for them, and I totally believe this to be the case for probably 98% of Mac users, but I’m a developer and have installed lots of third-party (non-Apple) applications. I was completely expecting a bit of work to get my system running normally again, but my first symptom that something was wrong totally puzzled me: the system would stop performing I/O to disk, causing every process to spin the shiny hypnodisk at me. Basically, I could boot the system, and after about 3 minutes, everything would hang. So, keep this in mind as I describe all the things I fixed, because getting through each step involved several reboots just to make the necessary changes.
Here’s the list of problems I encountered and fixed:
Checkpoint SecureClient VPN
This complained at boot-up that the SecureClient service wasn’t started. A known work-around is to binary edit two files, StartupItemsMgr and SecureClientStarter and replace the string “kextload -s” with “kextload -r“. This worked for me.
MacPorts
The old MacPorts compiled against dependencies that are no longer available on Snow Leopard, including MacPorts.dylib itself. Luckily, I just grabbed the latest MacPorts installer .dmg for Snow Leopard which enabled me to selfupdate and upgrade outdated and get things working again.
Soundflower
Periodically, a dialog box complaining about Soundflower.kext popped up:
I had Soundflower 1.4.3 installed, which was the most recent release before Snow Leopard was released. Now, Soundflower 1.5.1 is available, so I upgraded to it. This appears to be sufficient to get it working again, too.
Oh, the agony …
At this point, my system appeared to be stable enough to use — no spurious errors being logged to /var/log/system.log and no more annoying hangs. I’m sure I’ll discover a few more annoyances next week when I start dealing with work stuff again, but for now I can at least use the machine again.
Was the upgrade worth it? I guess I’ll find out.
Tags: Apple, MacOS X, Snow Leopard
My old alphanumeric pager
September 19, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Ah, the ultimate in retro push technology, my old Motorola 929.8625 MHz alphanumeric pager.
Found this little gem while cleaning out boxes of crap in my home office. I decided to take a pic of it for memory’s sake before I trash it.
Tags: retro, push technology, Motorola, alphanumeric pager
Reorganizing the home office
September 18, 2009 by Leave a Comment
It’s a task I’ve been putting off for years — reorganizing the home office — but I’m finally doing it. The rack and servers that sat behind me for years is now finally in the basement, thanks to my Dad helping me run two 20A circuits for the equipment down there. Here’s what the room looks like mid-reorganization:
Sure, my desk is still a mess, but that’ll also get taken care of once I put up some new shelves to better organize stuff.
The one thing I still can’t get over is how silent the room is, now. The fans from the various computers and the Liebert UPS were loud! Over the years, I just got used to the low level noise and tuned it out, but now with the contrast of the room without the noise, it’s eerie.
Tags: home office
Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still
September 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Optimum WiFi at ETD in Kinnelon NJ
September 11, 2009 by Leave a Comment
As I try to get some work done waiting for car repairs, I discovered that the ETD on Route 23 in Kinnelon, NJ, has Optimum WiFi within range. Being a Optimum Online customer, I get free access to it.
My initial opinion of this particular hotspot is really unpredictable latency and packet loss. Speedtest.net results:
It’s not bad – I’m posting this blog entry from the connection – but the latency and packet loss makes interactive sessions like SSH really painful. Still, it’s usable to get some work done – email, web browsing, etc.
Tags: Optimum WiFi, Kinnelon, NJ
What should I do with old vintage BX cable?
August 4, 2009 by Leave a Comment
I’m doing a bunch of electrical clean-up in the house and have a bunch of scrap vintage BX cable and boxes and switches – I’d hate to just throw these out in the recycling if they’re still worth something, to somebody.
It appears that the going rate for copper/steel BX scrap is around $0.20/pound and I probably only have 20-30 pounds of scrap so far, so it’s really not worth the aggravation of finding a scrap buyer.
Should I just dump this in the recycling bin? Anyone have better ideas?
Tie-dye glasses, I will have them!
July 16, 2009 by Leave a Comment
After a bit of drama with my old pair of glasses, I went out and got myself an eye exam to update my prescription and have ordered myself a pair of tie-dye frames from Zenni Optical for $40! They are made of so much win and awesome:
I know you’re jealous. Don’t feel bad, it’s okay, you should be. These frames even come with 581% more cowbell.
For my own notes, my prescription is now -5.50 OD/OS sph, DS (SPH) cyl, and PD 32/33 (65).
Tags: vision, glasses, Zenni Optical, tie-dye
Programmer, husband, father, singer, guitarist, tinkerer, reverse engineer, strange, and living in New Jersey. 
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