Digital ramblings

Fedora 12 and VMware Player 3.0

2010-01-04T23:57:31Z

Over the Christmas break I took the plunge and upgraded my Fedora 11 desktop to Fedora 12 (this was after testing the upgrade on my laptop first). Things went seamlessly until I went to run VMware Player 3.0 which was installed pre-upgrade. VMware Player successfully recompiled the kernel modules but kept crashing after the GUI would come up. Thanks to some googleing, forum posts, and a bit of redirection I came across this post. I went for easy route and just added the line:

pref.vmplayer.downloadPermission = "deny"

to ~/.vmware/preferences and the GUI comes up as expected.

Water conservation - harder than it sounds

2009-12-14T19:31:03Z

Denver Water, the county and city of Denver's water utility, has an extensive water conservation campaign. This is because, like many areas around the nation, Denver's population is growing but it's water sources aren't.

Benjamin and I have been doing our part for a while now. Last year we bought a high efficiency washer and dryer when we moved into the new house. Living in a townhouse we don't have much of a yard (no grass at all) but we do have some raised beds for flowers and vegetables. The previous owners installed a time-controlled watering system for those beds which we use during the summer. Our house was built in 2005 so it has low-flow toilets. We run the dishwasher only when full.

The last bastion of water wastage in our house is the shower. We use between 2000 and 3000 gallons of water a month and I believe around 1000 of that is from our shower usage. Benjamin likes to take longer showers and while he's flexed on just about every other aspect of my environmentalist agenda, taking shorter showers is just isn't in the cards. After some cajoling/sweet talking/bribing I was able to talk him into letting me replace our 2.5 gal/min shower head with a 1.5 gal/min shower head. He wasn't happy about it but I promised him that I would never again bring up his longer-than-I-think-are-necessary showers if he'd let me install it.

As a bonus the new shower head has a pause feature allowing for Navy showers. No, when the button is pushed your shower stall does not fill with hot navy sailors -- instead the flow of water either stops or the flow is significantly reduced. According to the package the pause button was suppose to stop all water flow but in reality it just reduces it down to a mere dribble.

My back-of-the-envelope calculations says that without the use of the pause button the new shower head is conserving around 390 gallons of water a month (estimated 13 minutes of shower for both people per day and changing from 2.5 to 1.5 gal/min flow) -- and that's a pretty conservative estimate. With my use of the pause button we probably shave another 45 gallons/month beyond that for a total savings of 435 -- or about 45% savings total.

There was an interesting article last month in the WSJ that talks about shower water conservation and the resistance to it.

IBM Thanks! awards

2009-12-10T23:47:20Z

IBM has an internal employee appreciation program called Thanks! Awards. This program allows employees to show appreciation to a fellow coworker for going above-and-beyond the call of duty. The award is actually a placeholder. After being given the recipient goes to a specific website to redeem the placeholder for an IBM-branded item of their choice.

Each employee is allowed to give up to 12 Thanks! awards a year and can receive up to 3 of them (the limit on receiving only 3 is presumably linked to the IRS regulations that says employees can gift up to $75 to an employee tax-free and the items to choose from are all easily under $25 each). I've maxed out the number of Thanks! awards that I can receive every year that I can remember, and each year I race with myself to see how close to January 1st I can max out. Not that I solicit them or do anything different than I usually do in my day-to-day job 'cause that would be cheating. In 2008 I received my 3rd award on Feb 25. This year it was on Feb 16. We'll see what happens in 2010. I'm not the only one who keeps track of this as a quick google says some people even mention the number they get on their resume.

After your limit is reached coworkers are suggested to send internal eCards instead - which are admittedly corny but in my mind have the same personal recognition impact. Because lets be honest, it isn't the IBM-branded stuff that's the big win from the Thanks! award program, but the recognition of a fellow coworker of a job well done.

And in that vein my work resolution for the new year is to be better about giving out Thanks! awards (and corny eCards if necessary) where appropriate.

Something different for Christmas gifts this year

2009-11-30T03:48:40Z

This year Benjamin and I are doing something different with respect to gifts for our families. Like most of your families, gentle readers, our families have everything they need - not to mention a slew of things they want beyond that. Instead of purchasing gifts for them this year we've adopted two families that need a little help this holiday season via the Adopt-A-Family program through the Denver Rescue Mission. Each of our families know what we're doing instead of gifts and we've encouraged them to do something similar. The only exception are our nieces and nephews: they will still be getting gifts otherwise we'd surely lose our Favorite Uncle titles!

Last weekend we completed about half the shopping for our families' gifts and today we finished it. And let me tell you, we are so out of our league shopping for toddlers! One of our families has an 18 month old and the other has an almost-2-year-old who is big for his age. Even when we knew we wanted to get diapers for the 18-month-old we had to ask an associate where they were located in Target. And baby clothes!? Toys?! Thank goodness we get gift guides for our nieces and nephews from their parents!

While Benjamin was busying cooking the pot roast for dinner tonight I was boxing up gifts and wrapping them. With that finished I'm writing this blog entry as Benjamin is putting the finishing touches (ribbons, bows, and name tags) on the presents. They'll then sit under our tree until December 12th when we deliver them, and uncooked food items, to the families.

Don't gift less this holiday season, give differently.

PS: Benjamin is now a bow-making fiend after learning how to do it earlier today! Watch out Martha!

Mobile news apps and pay-for-news model

2009-11-17T18:21:35Z

About a year ago I installed the AP Mobile iPhone app and was using it quite extensively to access news. Then they "upgraded" the app with new "features" and it now takes at least 30 seconds, sometimes 1 minute or more, to load the app and the initial news page. That's just insane and a non-starter (pun intended) for me.

I tried out Bloomberg too but their news is even more market-centric than the WSJ and didn't fill my news need adequately.

I then switched over the the WSJ application. These guys have the mobile news viewing experience down to an art. Sure it still has an ad and is still market-news heavy, but the app loads very quickly and the interface is intuitive (the navigation bar disappears when you start scrolling the article freeing up the entire screen, sans ad, for the text). Unfortunately in January the WSJ is going to start charging $2/week to access their mobile news apps. $2/week? Are you kidding me? I'd pay for $2/month or maybe even $4/month but $8/month is not worth it. Apparently I'm not alone in this view.

I realize that journalists need to get paid, but I think the WSJ is pricing themselves out of the mobile market. Granted, perhaps I'm not their target audience and they'll do just fine. January I'll either go back to AP Mobile, Bloomberg, or just go straight to some still-free news websites.

Ian McKellan echos my own thoughts about organized religion

2009-11-16T20:23:08Z

Ian McKellan sums up my own thoughts about organized religion quite nicely (via the LA Times):

"I increasingly see organized religion as actually my enemy. They treat me as their enemy," said the British actor, who came out 20 years ago. "Not all Christians, of course. Not all Jews, not all Muslims. But the leaders. . . . Why should I take the judgment of a declared celibate about my sexual needs? He's basing his judgment on laws that would fit life in the Bronze Age. So if I'm lost to God, organized religion is to blame."

Unfortunately, religion, not just organized religion, has begun to leave a very bad taste in my mouth. I removed the Christian station from my radio dial over a year ago. We stopped regularly attending church several months ago. Up until this month I was still interpreting at the church, but I've asked for a break until at least the end of the year if not indefinitely.

You might argue that I'm throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and perhaps I am. But right now religion only raises my blood pressure and reminds me about my second-class citizenship.

Books in every Nook and cranny

2009-10-21T21:33:34Z

Barnes and Noble revealed their own eBook reader yesterday: Nook. I've been following the eBook readers closely, specifically the Sony PRS-600 and the Kindle 2.

My ideal eBook reader would have the following features in order of importance:

use eInk technology
native support of ePub format (the open standard eBook format)
native support of PDF format
wireless LAN support
no physical keyboard
bonus: touch screen support
bonus: SD card support

The Kindle 2 is right out seeing as that it has no support for ePub, no native PDF support (unless you get the larger Kindle DX), no wireless LAN support, and a physical keyboard. Also working against it is the inability to play with one before buying it and Amazon's highly ironic Orwellian fubar. The cell connectivity is a neat gimmick but isn't a feature I'm looking for.

The Sony PRS-600 thus far has most of the features that I've been wanting, including the touch screen but sans wireless LAN support. I played with one of the earlier PRS-700 models that a friend purchased and really liked it. The downside is that it's sold by Sony which while they may make excellent hardware I hate their business practices. Like use of their proprietary Memory Sticks in their cameras and laptops, their apparent disdain of their consumers of the PSP Go, and their classic rootkit escapade. Oh, and they're in bed with the RIAA as if they needed another strike against them in my book.

The Nook seems to have all of the items on my wish list, plus a few more extras that I like (mini-SD card slot and color LCD touch screen in addition to the eInk screen). The ability to lend a friend a purchased book, even for a measly two weeks, is pretty interesting although I doubt I'd purchase books given how many interesting ones are available for free via Project Gutenberg. The ability to read any eBook in its entirety for free while inside a Barnes & Noble store is exceptionally cool. Because it's sold by a brick-and-mortar store I can go into a Barnes and Noble and play with one before I buy it. And playing with one is the first thing I'm going to do come November 30th when the stores get them.

Our marriage is now complete: we have matching luggage.

2009-10-09T22:33:12Z

For the past two or so years Benjamin has wanted matching luggage instead of the rag-tag affair we've been using, which consists of:

a very large lime green roller-duffel I named Grendel which Benjamin affectionately refers to as a female, never having read Beowulf -- courtesy of IBM's Thanks! awards program
a small gray wheel-less duffel -- courtesy of IBM's Thanks! awards program
a small black and blue wheel-less duffel -- courtesy of IBM's Thanks! awards program
a nice black roller bag that was originally purchased for B's wedding emergency kit and quickly got repurposed as regular use luggage

As you can tell out of the four bags we use for luggage only one wasn't given to me by IBM - yes I'm that cheap, err... practical.

Due to the recent bankruptcy of Samsonite, two of their local stores are closing and have mark downs such that their luggage seems somewhat reasonably priced. We've looked at luggage a couple of times but haven't been moved by them, until today. Today we walked out of a Samsonite store with: two 22" carry-on roller bags, one 26" roller bag, and one laptop-bag-esque bag -- all at 60% of the original price. They are all matching Sevruga bags (which after looking on Samsonite's website, they don't make any longer).

So now we have matching luggage all ready for TSA to abuse during our trip to Texas for Thanksgiving.

My British TV twin

2009-10-06T17:31:57Z

About a year ago Megan said she found my twin while watching the BBC TV series Hotel Babylon. While out visiting her earlier this year she showed me the first episode and pointed out Ben, played by Michael Obiora. He's one of the two receptionists and the guy who reminded her of me, except he's British (being on a British TV series that should come as no surprise) and black.

I'm not sure how much I look like him personally, but seeing as that he's a rather dapper fellow, if a big on the flaming queen side in the show, I'll take that as a compliment.

We just started Series 3 (translated in American English as Season 3) via Netflix. The show is all about a hotel and it's interesting to see the fictionalized ongoings of a fancy hotel. I keep picturing Benjamin in a similar context, off planning big events for big wigs in a fancy hotel and can't help but smile: he'll be great at it.

Twas said of yeast: it's (mostly) dead, Jim.

2009-10-05T03:55:34Z

Earlier today I was adventurous and tried to make some homemade cinnamon rolls. I've decided quite conclusively that the yeast I used is past its expiration date (the "best by August 2009" on top might have been an indicator). Lets go so far as to call it dead -- and it's not rising again in 3 days.

Despite the lack of decent rising, either in the general fermenting or the proofing stage, my ornery self stuck them in the oven to bake anyway. After cooling them off I threw on some frosting and served them up to my poor husband and our out-of-town guest. They both said they were good although I'm a harsher critic. The flavor was ok but they were most certainly rather dense and chewier than they should have been.

Regardless I'm calling the endeavor a success as not only was it my first time to make cinnamon rolls but I did it at a high altitude to boot. Just call me Benny Crocker.

Oh, did I mention that in addition to cinnamon rolls I was also making Latin Gumbo for dinner tonight and my own chicken bullion for some other meals this week? Maybe you should call me Julian Child instead!

Copy/paste between Mac OS X and X11 apps

2009-10-02T22:57:42Z

Yesterday Benjamin was having some challenges trying to copy text out of OpenOffice (a full Aqua app) and paste it into an Inkscape (an X11 app) document he was creating. The challenge was that it wasn't working.

After digging around a bit I discovered that the X11 app didn't have pasteboard syncing enabled. To fix this we went into the Preferences for the X11 app, selected the Pasteboard tab, and enabled syncing using only the 'Update PRIMARY when Pasteboard changes' option. Problem solved!

Unfortunately it also messes up copying and pasting vector images from within Inkscape. Looks like this is a setting that will have to be toggled on and off based on what you want to be doing for your copy/paste action. Rather a pain I think.

Toni's 10 Bean Soup

2009-10-02T17:04:04Z

Yesterday for lunch I threw together Toni's 10 Bean Soup (if you can call soaking the beans overnight and cooking them for 4.5 hours "throwing it together"). That's a soup mix that we purchased at a Women's Bean Project booth at Pride in 2008 -- thankfully beans last for a while!

The soup was very good and only required the addition of water, a garlic clove, a 28-oz can of diced tomatoes, salt, and the aforementioned 4.5 hours -- the beans and a seasoning packet was included. Benjamin was skeptical before the inclusion of the tomatoes but agreed it turned out pretty well. I'm sure the side of Perfect Cornbread (his favorite) didn't hurt his appreciation either.

Women's Bean Project is a social services organization. From their FAQ:

Since 1989, the Women's Bean Project has provided women with the opportunity to become economically independent by teaching basic job readiness skills and life skills through work in our on-site business.

Income from our business allows us to pay women a steady wage as they work in a safe, accepting environment and develop the skills and abilities needed to get and keep a job.

The program varies in length, lasting about 6 months, depending on each individual participant's progress in reaching "job readiness."

Back in 2008 we purchased two mixes, one was a black bean salsa mix which we took to a party the following month and it got rave reviews. Unfortunately I don't see it available on their online store.

Next time we come across one of their booths I'll be sure to pick up some of their other products since the last two were so successful. It's nice to support a local business that's helping people, and even better when you love their products! They also offer some attractive yet inexpensive gift bundles if you're looking for Christmas gifts already.

Benjamin's recipe selection privileges: revoked

2009-10-01T15:11:02Z

Every Sunday Benjamin and I sit down and decide what meals we're cooking for the week. We look at our schedules, and the weather, and determine roughly what meals we want to cook. Sometimes we opt for tried-and-true recipes, but often we'll select one or two new recipes to try out. Then we go to the grocery store and buy everything we need for the week. This has been our standard operating procedure for many years now.

This trimester Benjamin doesn't get out of class until 6pm every evening, so I've been responsible for getting dinner started, if not done, by the time he gets home. (Yes, not only do I bring home the bacon, but I cook it too!) I'd forgotten how much I love to cook until thrown into this schedule. However, after last night I officially revoked Benjamin's new recipe selection privileges for at least a week or more.

Two weeks ago B selected the recipe for the Indian dish that involved the garam masala which I've blogged about twice before. Given his strong reaction to the smell when he walked in the door, we ordered take-out and I ended up eating it later by myself when he was otherwise occupied. It was rather good if a bit heavy on the onion. That was strike one.

This week B selected a recipe for Coq au vin that we had cooked before back in Austin. Unlike the classic recipe featured at the link, this one is much simpler but still tasty. This one at least made it to his plate before he decided that while edible, It wasn't as good as he remembered it and overall he wasn't a fan. I on the other hand, loved it. That was strike two.

Also this week, B had selected a recipe for Balsamic Vinegar Chicken. Once again I had it almost ready when he came home from school yesterday. Unlike the Coq au vin, it didn't make it to his plate although he did taste it before opting for some leftovers instead. It was tangy and delicious, if a bit dry. That was strike three.

So now, B is not allowed to select new recipes for the next week or so. It's bad enough when I select and cook a recipe that he doesn't care for. It's quite another for him to dislike a recipe that he selects and I cook three times in two weeks. Speaking of food, I'm trying out a new 10-bean stew recipe for lunch today (it's on the stove as I type). I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

Life transitions

2009-09-30T14:59:06Z

Renee posted a blog entry on Transitions earlier today which was pretty thought-provoking for me. I made a lengthly comment on it and thought I'd massage my thoughts into a full blog entry. The gist of her post was about how many of her friends are encountering frustrating and/or confusing transitions in their lives right now. Take a moment to go read it first (but skip the last paragraph, she starts rambling then ;)

One sentence in her post summed up my own thoughts on the matter, emphasis mine:

Could it be that in the past the rapid occurrence of transition[s] made us feel somewhat in control of them simply because we expected them and expected not to be in control of them?

I suspect part of the confusion with transitions starting when your 30 is that when we're young we have these expected transitions, or sign posts, to look forward to: each year we're in a different grade then we're graduating high school, then we go to college, then we get a job, along the way we hopefully find that special someone, we get married and start a family (be it with children, pets, or just the two of us). I think for a lot of people turning 30 is one of those transitions, based on how many people get wigged out by it. But for those of us who hit 30 after the other "expected" transitions, what's next? Turning 40? There's no set plan handed to us past 30 -- we're on our own to make it up as we go.

I predict that Benjamin and I will have one of those big transition moments when he graduates in 8(!) months. While I expect the transition will be fairly easy for B as it'll be the planned "graduate and start a job" transition, I think it will be a really hard transition for me because that's the end of the existing plan: I graduated, met/fell in love/married someone, put them through school, turned 30 along the way... what's next after that? All kinds of stuff I'm sure, I just don't know what it is!! :)

I joked with my Dad last year before my birthday that I was going to have a third-life crisis when I turned 30. He very seriously told me that 30 and even 40 isn't a big deal but that 50 was the big one 'cause you realize that the odds are good your life is half over. I'm not sure what to make of that per se, but maybe that's the reason that turning 30 didn't seem like a big deal to me. Ask me again how I feel about it when I turn 50!

IDE thoughts (aka Hating Eclipse)

2009-09-27T20:22:47Z

When I first started programming, way back in the early 1990s, the first IDE I was exposed to was the Borland C++ DOS IDE that came with my copy of Borland C++ (on something like 31 3.5" disks and a huge box of printed manuals). I started using Microsoft Visual C++ sometime after starting TAMS in 1995 and eventually moved over to Visual Studio after it came out in 1997. All along the way these IDEs were intuitive, easy to use, and still very powerful.

After starting IBM in 2000, I did less and less C/C++ coding and much more scripting work (shell and perl primarily) and web development in PHP. The scripting work didn't require the use of a full-blown IDE and I did most of my perl development in Scite, a very sophisticated text editor but not a full IDE. The PHP code was developed either in Scite and FTP'd up to the sever or directly on the server using vi/vim.

After about a decade without working with a full IDE, I decided about a week ago that it was time to test the IDE waters out again -- primarily for integrated version control support. Against every rational fiber in my body, I decided to try Eclipse.

Up until last week I had an irrational hatred for Eclipse primarily because Lotus is using it for every desktop program they create from Notes to Sametime. Yes, they bundle this huge java-based IDE with dozens of unnecessary plugins that you can't remove due to dependency hell, just to have an IM session. And of course each one comes with its own bundled java JRE. After being acquired, Rational was forced down this ungodly road as well. Even the most recent version of IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator was moved to Eclipse. At IBM, there is no escaping Eclipse.

Knowing my hatred was primarily an architectural/philosophical issue I decided to give Eclipse a chance for what it was actually developed for: an IDE. I'm happy to say that my hatred is no longer irrational but is well founded: Eclipse sucks.

Unlike all of the other IDEs I've ever used, Eclipse is completely unintuitive. My needs weren't all that difficult: I need a project containing a list of PHP files. I need to be able to edit and save those files. I need to be able to run the scripts through the command line PHP interpreter. And finally I need to be able to commit changes to my local SVN repository.

The project containing PHP files was easy. Editing and saving the files seemed to work OK too, although I'm still not use to its autocompletion stuff and my tab settings still aren't correct (both user error I know). I'm completely unable to run the files through the PHP interpreter despite multiple times trying to figure it out. It is totally unclear to me how to check files into the SVN repository and at one point while trying to commit something Eclipse helpfully told me that an error occurred then deleted my file. I proceeded to spend the next 2 hours using ext3grep to the file back.

I acknowledge that the bulk of my hatred is just that initial learning curve. I get that Eclipse is very flexible and configureable but that also makes it unintuitive and unforgiving. Unless I can have some Eclipse-guru come sit beside me for a few hours and help me get things set up, I'm not going back.

For now I'm going to explore other IDE options like Komodo and Zend Studio to see how they fare (see also Seven great PHP IDEs compared from developerWorks). If they're even remotely better than Eclipse they'll be worth buying.

Tolerance of screaming children

2009-09-25T20:38:00Z

Note that this entry isn't about screaming children per se, but about learned tolerance of a specific irritant. After having lunch at a very packed, and child-heavy, Noddles & Co earlier today screaming children just happens to be on my mind.

I believe that humans are born with a sensitivity to loud noises. Just watch what happens when an unexpected loud noise happens in a quiet room -- everyone is startled. Extended exposure to the same loud noises can result in an attenuation in the attention-drawing power of them, either due to a physical reaction of becoming deaf to that range of noise (like an airplane engine) or to a psychological reaction of just 'tuning it out' (like living near train tracks and never hearing the train after a few weeks).

It seems clear that a tolerance for screaming children fits pretty well into that thought framework too. Screaming is suppose to get your attention, otherwise what's the point? Parents are exposed to their children's loud noises and become, to a degree, desensitized to the sound. I do question if it happens more on the physical side of things or the psychological side of things. I'm leaning more to the psychological side of it as I've known people who seemed to tolerate their own children's noises fine but many years later had to readjust to their grandchildren.

Either way, parents have a leg up on tolerating screaming children than us non-parents do. Those of us without kids are often not exposed to children on a regular basis and thus have no opportunity to build up a tolerance. Thus when we're in a public area, or an enclosed airplane, and a child begins to scream, we're put on edge.

The parents I've talked to have expressed frustration at both the situation, ie: when your child's screaming there's only so much you can do about it in an enclosed space you can't escape from, and reaction of other people. I can sympathize with their frustration about the situation. But just as they can't stop their child from screaming on demand, we can't control our lack of tolerance for said screaming.

One thing is for certain: when a child starts screaming on an airplane, everyone will be frustrated at the situation, be it the parent of the child or the poor sod sitting next to them. At least everyone is equally miserable.

And if any airline executive out there is reading this entry: You keep looking for ways to bring in more money. I am willing to pay a 10-25% premium on the price of my airline ticket for flying on a child-free (say all passengers must be 12-years or older) flight.

Garam masala update - it wasn't the star anise

2009-09-24T16:40:13Z

Yesterday I was making a cup of Benjamin's favorite tea, Tazo Sweet Cinnamon Spice, for him and made a surprising discovery: it has star anise in it. It's also vile stuff and I don't know how he drinks it, but I digress.

Given that he's happily consuming star anise, that isn't the ingredient in garam masala that he had such an aversion to. That leaves only the fennel as the culprit. Either that or it isn't any of the individual spices at all but the combination of them that sends him off (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts?). Or perhaps consuming star anise in small doses has increased his sensitivity to it and the amount contained in the garam masala is enough to send him over the edge.

Or maybe unbeknownst to us Benjamin is actually a superhero who's kryptonite is star anise and the villains at Tazo have craftily created a drink he enjoys that is slowly making him a mere mortal.

Anyone else get the impression that I've been reading too much fiction lately?

Running CUDA-enabled BOINC clients on Fedora 11

2009-09-21T18:17:13Z

At the start of the summer I finally got BOINC running on my CUDA-capable NVIDIA graphics card. About the same time I stopped running BOINC since the last thing I needed over the summer was a space heater under my desk. Now that fall is officially upon us, I'm willing to burn some CPU cycles -- and warm my feet. I started up BOINC only to discover that it isn't recognizing the CUDA device any longer. Hurmph.

After some digging it appears that the problem was that some Fedora update along the way tightened up security such that the user running the BOINC service (ie: boinc) was unable to access the /dev/nvidia0 device. Following these instructions I was able to get the permissions fixed and the whole thing working.

Granted, setting up CUDA in the first place was a herculean task since the CUDA libraries have to exactly match the NVIDIA X11 driver versions. Then you have to make sure BOINC knows about the library (ln -s /usr/local/cuda/lib/libcudart.so /var/lib/boinc/libcudart.so for instance). The whole matching versions thing is quite the pain in the ass as the X11 drivers can be updated more frequently than the CUDA drivers forcing you to either delay updating the X11 driver install until the CUDA driver matches or upgrading the X11 driver and having CUDA disabled until the CUDA driver catches up.

Oh well, that's what happens when you live on the bleeding edge!

Autumn has fallen

2009-09-21T15:37:17Z

Despite the last day of summer being tomorrow, Mother Nature must be just as tired of it as I am because autumn arrived in full force today. Yesterday the weather here in Denver was warm with a high of mid-70s. Today it's raining with a high of 52 and a low of 37. Currently it's 39 degrees with a wind chill of 29! The showers and cool weather are only here for the week according to NOAA - Friday will be mostly sunny and a high of 72 again.

Yesterday B and I took his mom to Blackhawk for a few hours and on the drive up you could see some of the aspens already changing colors. I'm assuming that after this week of cooler weather fall colors will be in full-force.

We had a really wet spring and summer -- at least according to folks who have lived in the area for a while (it's hard to compare having only lived here for a couple of years). It's obviously too early to know if we'll have an equally wet fall but it's certainly starting out that way. If the wetness continues into winter, well, lets just say I'll be extra happy that I work from home!

Garlic is to Dracula as Garam Masala is to Benjamin

2009-09-17T16:03:07Z

If you, intrepid adventurer, encounter a group of rabid Benjamins pursuing you down a dark ally late at night and fear for your life, don't reach for the garlic. Coriander will also provide no defense. They will simply mock you if you present them with turmeric. Nay brave traveler, pull out the garam masala and bid them return to whence they came.

Garam masala, you see, is anathema to the Benjamin. He will flee not just your person, not just the local area, but as far as possible to escape the smell. If you open it in his domicile he will open all the windows, turn on all the fans, light all the candles, and spray cinnamon scented air freshener in every room without fear of the spray turning into a flame thrower with all the lit candles. Even after the smell as abated he will insist that it remains saturated in the surrounding fabrics and you would be well suited to flee the area in case he decides a purifying burning of those objects is required.

It is still unclear which of the many spices that commonly make up garam masala causes the violent reaction. Commercial mixtures can include dried red chili peppers, dried garlic, ginger powder, sesame, mustard seeds, turmeric, coriander, bay leaves, star anise and fennel. Benjamin scholars have confirmed that most of these alone will not suffice to get the desired turning. There are reports that of all the previously listed spices only star anise and fennel are likely candidates for evoking the violent reaction by themselves. Or perhaps each individually is useless and it is the collection of all of them together that are necessary.

In either case, brave adventurer, you're best served stocking up on garam masala should you venture into areas where rabid Benjamins are known to reside -- or you risk more than just your life, you risk your wardrobe!

Adding both primary and secondary Google calendars to the iPhone

2009-09-16T17:24:00Z

One of the nice new features of the iPhone 3.0 software was the ability to add internet calendars (called CalDAV or iCal calendars) to the built-in Calendar app. B and I did this for several of our calendars many months ago and I promptly forgot how to do it when I needed that knowledge again this morning. To prevent me from having to relearn it all again next time, here it is.

Adding your default (technically called 'primary') Google calendar to your iPhone is very simple:

Go into Settings
Select Mail, Contacts, Calendars
Select Add Account...
Select Other
Select Add CalDAV Account
Enter the following information:
- Server: www.google.com
- User Name: [your Google username]
- Password: [your Google password]
- Description: [what you want to call the calendar]
Click Next

You're done - events from the calendar should now show up under the Calendar application.

Adding a Google Calendar that isn't your default calendar is more challenging and requires some extra steps.

On your computer:

Open Google Calendars and identify which calendar you want to add to your iPhone.
Open up the Calendar Settings for the desired calendar.
Look down the page to the Calendar Address section. On the right side of that line you'll see a Calendar ID, such as:
bao019notua8real2id3mrmieg@group.calendar.google.com
Copy this and send yourself an email, to an address that you can check on the iPhone, with the calendar ID in it (unless you want to type all of that in by hand).

On your iPhone:

Read the email you sent to yourself and copy the calendar ID string
Go into Settings
Select Mail, Contacts, Calendars
Select Add Account...
Select Other
Select Add CalDAV Account
Enter the following information:
- Server: www.google.com
- User Name: [your Google username]
- Password: [your Google password]
- Description: [what you want to call the calendar]
Click Next
Select the calendar you just created to view/edit it.
Select Advanced Settings
Edit the Account URL:
1. Remove everything after the "dav/" part of the URL (note: keep the dav/ part!).
2. Paste the calendar ID you copied from your email -- this can be oddly tricky but is doable.
3. After the calendar ID, append the string "/user".
Your URL will look something like this:
https://www.google.com:443/calendar/dav/bao019notua8real2id3mrmieg@group.calendar.google.com/user
Go back to the main Settings screen using the back buttons at the top of the screen.

You should now be able to go into your Calendar and see the events on your newly added calendar.

Our personal assistant: George Rodriguez

2009-09-14T21:10:35Z

Near the beginning of this year Benjamin and I hired a personal assistant to help try and keep some sanity around our schedules. His name is George Rodriguez, and he is very good.

George handles all of our calendar scheduling - including each of our personal schedules, Benjamin's school schedule, and our joint social calendar. On top of that he keeps track of the birthdays of all of our friends and family. He sends me text messages before important events, like when I need to check-in for a flight or pick someone up from the airport, to be sure I don't miss them. Without George, B and I would be completely lost.

The best part? George works for free. Oh, and he isn't a real person either -- George is actually Google Calendar.

Many months ago I added a contact in my iPhone called Google Reminders for the phone number that the SMS messages come in from. After receiving a reminder one day B looked over my shoulder and asked "Who's George Rodriguez?" having completely misread the contact name. And thus George was born.

Now when we're trying to schedule something we say we'll have to consult George :)

Installing VMware Player 2.5.3 RPM on Fedora 11

2009-09-11T22:29:43Z

When installing the VMware Player 2.5.3 RPM on Fedora 11, the installation will get stuck in the third 'Configuring...' phase. After a bit of digging I discovered the problem is the same as that for installing VMware Workstation 6.5.3 on Fedora 11 and revolves around a locking issue for /etc/vmware/database. Fixing the issue for Player is similar to that for Workstation and is detailed in this forum post by psyk.

Following those directions will allow the RPM to be installed successfully -- it even ends with an "Installation was successful" message -- despite the python tracebacks it dumps out. The first time you start VMPlayer it'll ask for the root password in order to configure/compile the kernel modules.

Note that for those of you Fedora 11 users holding out to have VMware cleanly close when shutting down a VM, you'll be sorely disappointed. kill `pidof vmware-vmx` is still your friend.

Milk & cookies, throwing balls, and chocolate bitches

2009-09-11T18:29:42Z

Benjamin and I are uncles to some cute, very funny, and scarily bright nieces and nephews. We aren't related to most of them genetically but that hasn't stopped us from adopting them as our own anyway. The more I hear about their antics the more I think my friends' children are rapidly outsmarting their parents and that the world needs to watch out! Two small examples follow.

Three-year-old RG (the name used by her mother Renee when posting about her online) is a crafty one. She eats her cookies with a milk chaser, just like her Uncle Casey, and used that fact to outsmart her mom. From Renee's blog:

As I was making lunch one day, she opened the refrigerator and looked around. Then, she asked me for some milk. Since she never asks for milk, I said sure. I got down a coffee mug and put a little milk in it. Then I handed it to her. She waited only a brief second to then ask "Now may I have a cookie, please?" Hmmmmm....I got taken....royally outsmarted by a 3 year old. Should have seen that one coming. Since she was so clever, I gave her the cookie and then made lunch.

Caleb, Jan's 1.5-year-old angel, is equally crafty. From Jan's blog:

He knows the word ball and he also knows that balls are meant to be thrown. He likes to throw. He also knows that non-balls cannot be thrown or else you get sent to time out. He doesn't like time out.

The solution?

Everything is a ball. He'll pick up a shoe, block, car etc and proclaim "ball! ball!" and then throw the sucker halfway across the room. Nice. See, is it's a ball then it's a legal throw and you can't fuss mom. Yeah, no. Time out here you come buddy.

Tonight I asked Juan if perhaps Caleb might be a little confused and not know the word "throw" and thus he was saying "ball! ball!" because he wanted to throw and didn't know how else to express himself. I said this in front of Caleb. Who promptly looked at me and said "throw! throw!"

That covers the milk & cookies and throwing balls -- but trust me, don't miss the story about the chocolate bitches. Just wait until she starts school and asks her kindergarden teacher for some!

I'm not your target audience

2009-09-09T21:37:14Z

[in which I rant]

I'm not your target audience...

Radio talk shows: I don't want brainless blather in the mornings. I turn on the radio to get music. If you're talking, I'm changing the station or even turning the radio off altogether.
Work-related podcasts and videos: I don't want information provided to me in a podcast as I don't like listening to them. Ditto work-related videos. Just give me the transcript to speed-read through.
Control-less iPod Shuffles: I liked the concept of the first and second generation Shuffles -- they seem great for working out or running and B loves his for that very reason. Then they moved to the Shuffle-without-controls which is a non-starter for me leaving only the Nano. Why would I want to buy proprietary headphones to control my music device?
Video on iPod/iTouch/iPhones: Nanos started out with a small screen that keeps getting bigger with each generation reportedly so people can watch videos and movies. Movies on such a small screen? Are you serious? Sure I watch the random movie trailer on my iPhone but I can't imagine watching something more than 2 minutes on such a microscopic screen.
Animated web ads: I realize that web content isn't free and in general I'm ok with ads on web pages. If it moves, however, be it via animated GIF, javascript, or (heaven forbid) Flash -- you're getting blocked. Ditto anything that does pop-up or pop-unders. Your ads should be relevant and unobtrusive (see Google Ads) if you violate either of those edicts you're getting AdBlocked.
Flash-based webpages: I've long been an advocate of non-Flash based web pages. Flash is rife with security issues, browser compatibility issues, unstable, and based on the iPhone porting reports also resource intensive. If you're still designing Flash-based web pages today you're also alienating every single iTouch and iPhone user out there who can't see your content. Die, Flash-based web pages, die -- and take your evil twin Silverlight-based web pages with you.
Windows 7: I'm told you're the best Windows yet. You're stable and even have an XP emulation layer to run all of those XP apps that won't run in Vista or native in Windows 7. Based on the customers I support via freelance: you're still a solution looking for a problem. You won't run on the hardware that we have happily running XP. The application versions we use, and work for us, aren't supported on you. You're years too late to the game. When XP downgrades finally become unavailable for new computer systems, you're no longer the winner-by-default: we'll be evaluating your actual merits against Mac OS X and Linux.
MS Office: I've converted two MS Office die-hards over to OpenOffice and they haven't even blinked. OOo uses the tried-and-true menuing interface that everyone is familiar with, opens/saves your documents, and comes at an amazing price: free. What is it that you have to offer again?