According to the Weather Channel it is currently 22 degrees and with the wind chill it feels like 13 degrees. A local TV station is prophesying the end of the world here tonight with all sorts of snow, ice, cats and dogs falling from the heavens. If that happens and the land is covered in white treacherous stuff then I get to work from home tomorrow (read: play Zelda all day long).


By the way, if you didn’t get the title reference, here it is.

I’ve been in the office this year a total of maybe 8 hours. I was allowed to work from home the day after New Year’s and then we were snowed out of the office for 3 days. Which leaves me to last Friday where I actually took a sick day. Wow! I think that’s the first time since early May that I did that. I would take another sick day today just to gather my strength but last time I did that everyone freaked out about one thing or another. It’s just not worth it might as well get it over with. It’s no wonder I have over 3 weeks of sick time.

I’m going down to Eugene and the fringes of Oregon today (Southern Oregon) to setup up some telecom stuff. Fun for me. I listened to the radio for a little bit this weekend and I keep hearing the ads for My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance and I thought that it was My Big Fat Obnoxious Beyonce (the announcer didn’t enunciate very well). I kept thinking that this celebrity reality TV was getting out of control. Then I figured it out. Silly me.

Security, especially computer and network security, is something that most people don’t understand very well. In fact, I find that there are 2 camps of people when it comes to computer security. The first camp knows that security is necessary but in the overall scheme of things, it is just a hindrance. Something that network administrators/system administrators use to make their lives harder. I have found out that this group is the same one that yells the loudest once security is compromised or fails in some way. The other camp knows that security is necessary and works with the changes offering constructive criticsm where it is needed.


Security, much like other things, is a process not a goal. It’s not something that can be “achieved” and then never looked at again. It is something that continually needs time and attention. Hopefully, people will come to understand that computer security/network security is just as necessary as the locks on your doors and windows.

America is a country obsessed with weight loss, yet it seems that this goal is nigh unattainable by most people. Right now the fad is “low carb” and “Atkins Friendly”. In the past few days my eyes have been assaulted with these phrases more than I can count. For some, a low carb diet might make them lose weight, but I firmly believe that the majority of people out there will start to believe that this is just a panacea and do nothing else, namely exercise. Most people will think that they can skirt by and continue to live their sedentary lifestyle. In order for really heavy people to lose weight, they must make a lifestyle change (this includes healty eating AND exercise). Lifestyle changes are not easy, but nothing that is worth something ever is.

This program will allow you to encrypt your IM conversations. Works with Trillian too (but only one connector at a time). Check it out.

For some reason, people think that the World Wide Web is the Internet (which is not the just in case you weren’t paying attention). It’s funny, because a CNN headline seems to think so. It reads, “Clinton’s gift to Web: only 2 e-mails”. Of course, the punchline here is that the Web has nothing to do with email as they are two (5 if you want to be technically accurate – SMTP, POP3, IMAP4, HTTP, HTTPS) different protocols.

A friend of mine pointed out this comic strip (and this one too) which echoes the insanity of the Low Carb mania.

Back in my alarm dispatch days, it was fun and often informative to listen to what the police using a scanner. I found a link that will allow you to listen to some of the frequencies that the police here use. It’s kinda interesting to listen to some of the stuff that never makes it onto the news. You will need RealPlayer to listen.

I’m sure you all have seen the “Great Moments” at work commercials for the new Microsoft Office “System” (Microsoft Office suite). The ones where they do seemingly vague and amazing things because of the software and then somehow save the day.


I hate these commercials. They don’t say anything about what the software actually does or how it can accomplish these grandiose feats. I guess simply by loading the software, it turns you into some sort of superhero that can leap buildings in a single bound, fly around the office, receive spontaneous high-fives from co-workers and act like a total jackass (a la the commericals) at work. Way to go Microsoft, you made commercials that aren’t funny, aren’t useful, and are stupid. I hope these die quicker than the “Dude, you are getting a Dell” guy commercials (then again, the Dell intern commericals are just as annoying).

Robert sent this to me. This is an actual ad on one of those dating sites. I must have written this subconsciously.

Sugar Daddy seeks . . . hmmm.
I have everything you want and more, honey, so what are you waiting for? Get your sweet behind over here and wait for further instructions; Knee pads will be provided…… Young, flexible, lithe, ready, eager, and willing to learn at the hands of a master.


Which reminds me, I was talking with my mom this weekend because I picked up a book titled Cubans in America and I noticed that Fidel Castro had some help in his revolution by someone named El Comandante Che Guevara and I thought that is why she called me El Che Che. However, she said that is not why she calls me that. El Che Che, is a moniker that in Cuba that means stud, pimpdaddy, etc. I love my mom, one of the funniest people I know.

Well, I’m 31 now. How did this happen? Anyway, Megan outdid herself again by making me a batch of cookies. Yummy! And I get to keep the jar. :)

Oh yeah and I also heard that something called Star Wars is coming to DVD on September 21st.

I’m sure most of you have heard about the Microsoft critical update that was released yesterday (2-10-2004) but if you look at Windows Update today you will see another Critical Update for KB833407. The reason for this “critical update”? The font Bssym7.ttf contains unacceptable symbols, namely, the swastika. As you may or may not know there was an uproar about this font containing this symbol and it was summarily removed from the font because of heat from Jewish special interest groups.


Before, this update was something that you opted to install, but now users are FORCED to remove this symbol from their computer if they want to be compliant with all “critical updates”. Personally, I think that this is bullshit (and others do to). I understand what the swastika represents to most people (especially Jewish people) but the fact of the matter is that for thousands of years the swastika was a commonly used symbol in many cultures around the world before it was used by the Nazi party. It is ridiculous that one religious organization has enough pull with Microsoft. Although I have the option to leave that critical update there forever, most users don’t really look at what updates they are installing. As long as they are critical, then they install them. Microsoft could be seen as infringing on free speech by doing this. I know that if I were a lawyer, I would jump all over that shit.

Just a little note, the ASP.NET Resource Kit is available for download. Also, and I think that this is interesting, Microsoft has released a component called the SQL Server Web Data Administrator which allows you to do the following in a web browser:

• Create and edit databases in SQL Server 2000 or Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000)
  
• Perform ad-hoc queries against databases and save them to your file system
  
• Export and import database schema and data
  
• Manage users and roles
  
• View, create and edit stored procedures

Today I’m going to take home a Cisco 2514 router with 2 ethernet ports. I’m going to do dual firewalls at home and that way I get to learn hands on the Cisco IOS with IP Plus and I’ll be a little more secure because the Cisco’s firewalling rules are more robust.

Tomorrow, I get to take home an ancient but purely capable server for my home needs (Did I say needs? I meant wants). I think I might even upgrade my Exchange Server. Which reminds me, if you have an Exchange Server, don’t install it on your domain controller.


And finally, I got a new alarm clock. Well sorta. I’ve been wanting one of those alarm clocks that will wake you up to a CD gradually and then I thought to myself, “Hey it’s the year 2004, I’m sure that they make some that you can upload MP3’s to”. Well there is no such animal at Best Buy, Target or the like. So I fished out an old laptop that can barely run XP and installed alarm clock software that will play a CD or an MP3 playlist; and the best part, it will play it gradually instead of full volume from the start.

I read Penny Arcade daily even before I read CNN to see if the Eastern Seaboard has been wiped off the map. They are always funny, but this one is one of the funniest ones I have ever read. It applies not only to video games but to tabletop RPG’s as well.

Yesterday, I picked up that old server from work. Man was it heavy. The friend that helped me lift it up the stairs said that it weighed more than a refrigerator! It was back breaking work, but it was worth it. I’m surprised that the security guards at work were kick back about me taking a huge piece of equipment out of the basement (I was on the list though).
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Then I picked up Joss Whedon’s Firefly series on DVD and a CD at Best Buy. The total? 98 cents. Gotta love a Best Buy gift card. After the alarm clock fiasco, that was a good way to spend that card. To top it all off, I found the missing Cisco 2514 that I couldn’t account for at work. It was sitting in my trunk from my Roseburg trip. At the time, I didn’t realize that it was the one that I was looking for because the dual Ethernet ports are AUI ports and you need a TP MAU to convert them to using CAT5/RJ-45 cable. Soon, I’ll have my Cisco network put together.

Megan pointed me over to this article about those singing rats (spongmonkeys) in the Quiznos commericals. I like this part of the article:



You gotta be kidding.
Many of you are repulsed by the spongmonkeys, can’t fathom how they would make you desire a sub, and worry that these ratlike creatures suggest an unsanitary sandwich-prep environment.

Technology is my friend. I don’t hate a lot of tech stuff, but I hate my DVD player and CD player (Kenwood DP-M5570). I also hate the networked copier at my work, but that’s because it’s like a communal toilet. Imagine a toilet that everyone shits at, but when it overflows or breaks, you have to clean it…now you understand why I hate the copier. Anyway, back to the DVD player and CD player. I’m watching the third episode of Firefly a few nights ago and I’m getting really into it when it freezes! If this is the first time that it did this, I wouldn’t care, but it seems to do this often. It freezes then I have to press pause until I see the screen shift a bit and then I hit pause again and then it starts where it left off. Maybe that’s what I get for getting a semi-cheap DVD player. Although from what everyone says on the Internet, it is good stuff. I’ll try a cleaning kit and if that doesn’t work I guess I’ll have to invest in a real one (read expensive DVD unit).

Interestingly enough, my CD player at home sometimes refuses to play CDs. I have tried time and again to play The Last Samurai on that CD player and nothing happens. It’s like it just ingores it. Sometimes it does it to other CDs too. Makes me want to launch both pieces through window, run outside and stomp them both into little pieces of plastic and circuit boards.

My work had this old Proliant 6000 server tucked away in the basement after we decided that it wasn’t worth putting it in a rack so I decided to give it a home lest it be used for Server Wars.

For the last 2 days, I’ve been attempting to install the NIC drivers for this beast on Windows Server 2003. Going to HP’s site, I saw that all models of the 6000 were supported and used the same driver, but naturally it doesn’t work that way. I tried this file, this file, and even this file. Naturally, nothing worked. Finally at this late hour, I noticed that the dual 400Mhz models uses a Netelligent 10/100TX UTP PCI Controller instead of the NC31xx Fast Ethernet. For some reason they don’t have those drivers for Windows Server 2003, but I was able to use the Windows 2000 Server drivers instead. Now I know why people get frustrated with technology. Incredible!

I’ve been devouring the Firefly episodes like a fat kid does to cake. Although I’m a bit depressed because I’m on the last DVD. Just when I was about to lose hope in the divine, it’s been reported (here and here) that the Firefly movie has been given the go ahead. Now if only Sci-Fi or some other network would give the go ahead to bring this show back.

Well I tried starting my Exchange 5.5 to 2003 migration last night and every imaginable step that there was blew up like the Hindenberg. I did what it wanted me to do, run the Active Directory Connector tool, run ForestPrep and then DomainPrep. No matter what I did, bad things would happen. I guess that’s what I get for trying to just go in there and do it and not read up on it beforehand. Oh well, this weekend I’ll be armed with Exchange and Outlook Administrator newsletters that tells you what to do.

Today is the first day in a long time that I haven’t walked outside and cursed the heavens because of the weather. This morning I walked outside fully expecting the chill to hit my bones, when suddenly, it was warm. Not high desert warm but it was warm nonetheless. Right now it is 63 outside and tomorrow it is supposed to hit 65.

Ever since attempting to upgrade/move Exchange from 5.5 to 2003 my mail has blown up. I thought that it was awful strange that I wasn’t getting any email. I don’t know if it has to do with the Active Directory Connector piece or something else but I see error 421 in the SMTP logs on the mail server. When I attempt to send email to myself from another domain, I get “421 Internal error. Connection closing”. So it looks like I haven’t been getting email since Wednesday. Afer I’m done playing outside, I’m gonna sit down and attempt to figure out what went wrong and fix it.

Well, I’m on day three of this Exchange 2003 garbage. Although I did get my old mail server up and running this installation of 2003 is getting ludicrous. I’m starting to think that Exchange 5.5 to 2003 migration is only possible in the land of faeries and pixies and can’t actually be accomplished in the real world.

I’ve actually abandoned all hope of such a foolish little fantasy and have tried installing ES2K3 as the first Exchange Server in the site. All ES2K3 installations begin with the ForestPrep tool which should be titled ForestFucker because that is exactly what it does to your Active Directory. I’m not sure exactly what it is doing in the Active Directory but I think it is the equivalent of having a drunk surgeon performing surgery on your brain in the jungles of southeast Asia with a corkscrew. The log file that it generates, while written in English, requires a PHD to actually unravel and understand.

I have even tried to make another domain controller just in case my first one was fucked-up-beyond-all-recognition. I transferred all of the roles over from the old domain controller to the new one essentially making it The Grand Poobah of domain controllers. However, for some godforsaken reason, all of the servers in my domain are still enamored with the old domain controller and refuse to talk to the new one.

Every time that I think that I am close to a solution, the setup throws up all over itself like a new born baby and proceeds to make my life a living hell. I have a feeling that in order to correct the situation I have to format and reinstall both of my domain controllers with the hope that ForestFucker doesn’t come by and gang-rape it all over again.

I remember the comic book that kicked off this notion. It’s only about 15 years old! I couldn’t even drive back then! Now they finally get off their ass and make a movie out of it.

Well my domain is complete for now. In order to get Exchange working I had to visit the voodoo god Obatala and learn the dark ritual arts which were then performed on the Exchange Server. Actually, I just blew away my domain controller and started over again, but it didn’t sound so interesting saying that. Turns out that the DNA evidence against ForestFucker was not as conclusive as I thought and he was cleared of all charges. The actual prime suspect is the Active Directory Connector which I’ll call The Active Directory Hoser. The things that it did to the Active Directory shall not be spoken of here since it will frighten small children and big children too.

In other news, I got a PPTP VPN server up and running behind my Linksys router with NAT running. All you have to do is forward port 1723 (UDP and TCP) to the VPN server and make sure that you downgrade!? your firmware to 1.44.2. As to why it doesn’t work with a newer firmware is anyone’s guess. Regardless, I’m happy because I get to close off port 3389 (Remote Desktop) to my super-dooper-wonder-workstation.

I found this Windows Networking site and thought it woud be handy to pass along. A lot of good stuff in there.

I saw the trailer for I, Robot last night while I was waiting for <a href =“http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/secretwindow/cms/” target="_blank">Secret Window to start. I, Robot the movie, for those of you that don’t know is loosely based on the Asimov novel by the same name; and when I say loosely based I mean not really at all. The only things that the book and the movie have in common with each other are the title and the 3 laws of robotics; although those have been changed as well. The laws as displayed in the trailer are:

• They Cannot Hurt Us
  
• They Must Do What We Say
  
• They Can Protect Themselves

In actuality the laws, according to Asimov, are:

• A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm
  
• A robot must obey order given it by beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law
  
• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

About every 2 months or so I open my front door and I find that some mysterious stranger (probably dressed in black and very ninja-like) has deposited some little presents for me. I call these little presents PhoneBook SPAM.

Both Verizon and Qwest send me their crap without me asking for it. Isn’t there some list that I can get on to where they don’t keep putting crap on my doorstep every 2 months? I wonder what would happen if I never picked them up? I didn’t ask for them, I didn’t actually take posession of the things, so how could the apartment people get mad at me? It would be like a random stranger just dumping off stuff at your door that you didn’t ask for and you have to be responsible for it…in fact that is exactly what it is! Keep in mind that I don’t have service with either phone company, hell I don’t even have a land line! As to why they think that I need one of these every 2 months is beyond my comprehension; all I do is just throw them away. It seems that it would be easier for them to just send me a CD that I can load instead of wasting all that paper, time and effort on sending me these damn books!

Looks like Scott Kurtz (author of PVP) has discovered the miracle that is Firefly. In his latest comic, Brent Sienna stays up all night watching Firefly and calls in sick to work the next morning. Reminds me of staying up until 2 am watching Firefly and then stumbling into work the next morning.

Here is a funny joke that I lifted off of slashdot.

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts:


“Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?”


The man below says, “Yes, you’re in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field.”


“You must work in information technology” says the balloonist.


“I do,” replies the man. “How did you know?”


“Well,” says the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct, but it’s no use to anyone.”


The man below says, “You must be a corporate manager.”


“I am,” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?”


“Well”, says the man, “you don’t know where you are, or where you’re going, but you expect me to be able to help. You’re in the same position you were before we met, but now it’s my fault.”

Microsoft is working XNA which is a development platform that serves as the foundation for future game stuff with Windows and Xbox. They have video demos (car, noir, xenomorph) of what XNA can do and it’s pretty interesting looking. I just wonder if that is stuff that is actually going to be what interactive video games will look like or just cut-scenes…

I’ve been working on what I call Version 2 of this site for a little while and I’m really getting excited to deploy the changes that I have made. In fact there are so many changes, that I can’t keep track of them. Some of them are minor tweaks some of them are major rebuilds. I’m targeting a month before the new version will be out but hopefully it will be sooner than that. There are still several things that I need work on including a full rebuild of the comments section (I remember throwing that up without much though put into it – as long as it got the job done it worked for me).

Just wanted to pass along a new comic that I have been reading. Good artist and fantastic coloring.

I’m doin’ my daily reading of CNN when I came across this article…I think that the headline (Iraqi cleric: 9/11 was a ‘miracle from God’) was the thing that stood out for me, so I had to delve into the specifics of why he would say that.

Predictably, the mouth-runnin’ was in response for Israel killing wheelchair-bound Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (the founder of Hamas — Hamas being recognized as a known terrorist organization in the US, Israel and the European Union) and seven others. Personally I don’t think that Yassin was all that innocent being the founder of Hamas and all; live by the sword die by the sword ya know? Although I feel sorry for the other people that were killed that day (if they were at all innocent).

I don’t understand how you can believe in a “God” that thinks that it is ok to murder thousands of innocent civilians. I don’t understand what is wrong with these people. Religious zealots, ugh; reminds me of certain Linux zealots.

Looks like Season Two of the Clone Wars cartoon has started. Episode 11 is now online. I’ll have to say for a cartoon short it’s getting pretty good.

Microsoft is attempting to get in the search engine gig, which is really no surprise. I’m sure they see Google making money hand over fist and want to cash in, hell I would. Of course they are going to fall flat on their face with this thinking:


“I want to make sure [a user] can’t get through … an online experience without hitting a Microsoft ad.” CEO Baller said.

Haven’t they learned anything from Google? The one thing that makes them good is the lack of complexity and bullshit on their site. CEOs says the darndest things.

Although the release date for this DVD box set is September 21, 2004 it looks like it is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. The original sticker price is set for $69.98 but you get 40% off ($41.99) from the folks at Amazon. In the spirit of Star Wars news <a href=“http://www.ugo.com/channels/dvd/features/starwarstrilogy/ target=”_blank">here is some leaked audio commentary from the boxed set. Now, whether this is real or not that’s something else.

Keep up on all the of downloads that Microsoft has made available by going to this link. Now if only they would RSS the sucker so that I wouldn’t have to visit the site daily.

I finally decided to update the site to version 2.0. A lot of changes occured on the backend of the site but there are obvious changes even on the main pages. Of course your RSS reader will see nothing new. :) I’ll have some photos up soon of what the backend used to look like that what it looks like now.

Last but not least, I re-did the comments section from the ground up. Hope that there are no bugs in it (I did all the testing that I could).

There are some other features that I want to add but I will wait until version 2.5 to make those changes.

I’m sure everyone knows who William Hung is by now. The laughable guy from the American Idol auditions is laughing all the way to the bank. He is appearing left and right on TV and now his “re-make” of She Bangs is in the top 10 on iTunes! Now why didn’t I think to do something like that…

When I sat down to write the comments for version 2.0 I knew that I wanted the following:

• Stop people from posting HTML willy-nilly into the comments (this stops blog-spam and cross site scripting attacks)
• Automatically convert line feeds to break tags
• Allow people to include links to web sites, SSL sites and ftp sites without having them type in and HTML

I got Godsmack’s cd The Other Side from Amazon the other day, all I can say is that I am impressed. This cd is not your typical Godsmack offering as it is an acoustic version of their songs and not the heavy rip-roaring sound that one usually equates with their stuff.

Some bands with a heavy sound are not all that musically talented and they overcome such weakness by growling instead of singing and playing harder and louder to overcome their inability how to really make music. This cd allows you to see that Godsmack is not one of those bands. This stripped down offering of their sound allows one to see through the heavy riffs and see that the band is talented vocally and instrumentally.

This is one of those cds that you and your girlfriendwife can both enjoy.

Some of the developers at Microsoft put together the Channel 9 website in order for regular people to see an inside view of Microsoft’s developers and projects. Mostly it’s all about attempting to build a community though. Start here and take a peek. I’m sure that this is going to be a big hit among the geek community but only time will tell to see if it is accepted by all people.

One day, out of the blue, it suddenly dawned on me; RSS is poised to be the next killer thing and most people (read companies) don’t realize it yet.

Luke Hutteman stumbled upon this gem when he created his SharpReader RSS aggregator a year ago and now he has hit over 150,000 downloads. Although the RSS aggregator market is expanding no one has come up with the killer interface (although SharpReader comes close).

And just when you thought that that was enough, Chris Sells posts (from Jason Nadal) about a Longhorn RSS aggregator that will read the news to you. The source is available for those developers that want to play in this arena.

Mark my words RSS will be the next big thing.

There are high end server monitoring packages out there that will track almost any type of perfomance counter that you can think of and most of them cost a pretty penny and have some learning curve. I’m not ready to commit to any of those packages at work yet but I still wanted to know when my servers (web servers in particular) started going haywire. Here is a quick, down and dirty way to monitor your Windows 2000 servers(probably works on Windows Server 2003 too but I haven’t tested it – note: I know that this method doesn’t scale well).

This requires 2 little apps. One is a command shell script and the other is a vbs script (in retrospect, I could have made a console C# app to do the same thing, but remember, I wanted, cheap, down and dirty. All of this code can be done in notepad).

All this code does it call the vbs script and pass command line parameters to it. I save this file in c:scripts and call it ActivatePerformanceAlert.cmd:

• Login to your server at the console
• Start the performance monitor
• Expand Performance Logs and Alerts in the MMC
• Right click on Alerts and select New Alert Settings
• Give the new alert a meaningful name like “ASP Requests Queued”, “Web Service Anonymous Connections”, etc. In this instance, I will make one for “Web Service Anonymous Connections”.
• Click the Add button and select a counter from the Performance Object. I’ll select “Web Service”, the site that I want to monitor (this only exists if you have multiple sites on the web server), and then select “Current Anonymous Users”.
• Usually you want to know when Anonymous users have grown past an expected limit so select “Over” in the drop down menu listed “Alert when the value is”
• In the “Limit” box enter the measured value that you want a notification if that number is exceeded. For example, if you want to be notified when your Anonymous Web Users are over 90, place the number 90 in the box
• Select a sample rate interval. You can select in seconds, minutes, hours, days. Select a realistic limit. Too low of a number (2 seconds per se) and your inbox will be flooded with these emails as long as the alert persists (it also may degrade server performance further compounding the issue at hand). For my example, I will select 5 minutes.
• Click on the Action tab
• Select the following, “Log an entry in the application event log”. I do this just in case I want historical information and then select “Run this program”.
• Enter in c:scriptsActivatePerformanceAlert.cmd in the box
• Click the command line arguments button and remove (and this is important) the check mark from “Single Argument String”
• All other boxes are checked except “Text Message”
• Click ok twice and you will be back at the alerts menu
• If the alert has a red icon next to it, right click on the alert and select “Start”

I’ve been into the history of World War II for as long as I can remember; the subject has always been of great interest to me. Imagine my delight when I saw that Band of Brothers  (the HBO series) was going to be aired on the History Channel. I’m sure I’ll pick up the DVD set some time (a jewel like this deserves to be in every history buff’s collection — average rating on Amazon it 5 stars!) but since I don’t have the 90 clams to shell out for it right now, I’ll take what I can get and watch it for free. If you are interested, it airs at 9PM/8PM CST.

Ok, I’m sure everyone is aware that Amazon.com has just released their beta search engine that competes directly with google.com (obviously), although interestingly enough it says that web search results are provided by Google. If you want to know what is cool/different about their site go here. They also have a built in toolbar and a pop-up block in their toolbar.

I spent a good 3 hours attempting to figure out a problem in my asp.net code. Here is the problem.

I have a user control that has a form and a dropdown list on it. That user control is put on a regular .aspx page. When I select something different in the dropdown list, I expected it to do a postback and to fire the OnSelectedIndexChanged event which it was not doing (and yes the AutoPostBack property was set to true). It was just completely ignoring that. I did google search after google search for user controls not posting back, etc. but none of them solved the problem. Finally, I noticed that when it rendered the page it was throwing a Javascript object expected error on the ___doPostBack method. I googled for that error message and sure enough I found that there is a known bug in asp.net 1.0 and 1.1 when rendering the Javascript to the browser and you are using user controls that have the form tag in it. There is a fix; just install the patches (you can call MS and they will give it to you free or just download from one of the links posted here). BTW, the Windows 2000 patch works for Windows XP.

I just came back from my first Portland Nerd Dinner. I can say that the sheer amount of brain power in that group could kill an elephant by just thinking about. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I’ll surely be going to the next one.

I’m an RSS evangelist. I think that it is the next best thing since sliced bread. From the looks of it (here and here), the corporations are starting to notice and trying to figure out a way to make RSS work for them.

Earlier, I posted about season 2 of the Clone Wars cartoon micro-series that was on Cartoon Network.com. On Monday, I sat down to watch the last 2 episodes (19 and 20) and lo and behold, they are GONE!?!? Where the hell did they go? If you go to the Cartoon Network site where they were supposed to be you get their custom 404 error. Anyone know what happened?

UPDATE: Apparently you can watch them on Hyperspace, the official Star Wars fan club; of course this costs 20 bucks per year.

A friend of mine at work was having an issue where he would remote into his Windows XP home machine and it would immediately disconnect him. He asked me if I had ever seen that (which I hadn’t) and that was that. Of course, that was not that as I had to go find out what the hell was causing it. I use Remote Desktop religiously and I think I would wither away without it so I had to find the problem just in case the malady struck my machine.

Fortunately, in this day and age we have Google and I was able to find the solution lickety-split. Turns out that the latest version of the Nvidia drivers cause this issue. Just disable the NVIDIA Display Driver Service and everything should work fine.

Which brings up another interesting point. Google is like an everlasting font of knowledge. I ask it a question and it gives me the answer that I want (sometimes I have to look further than the first page – oh the horror!). Seriously though, I can’t remember what I did to solve tech issues/programming issues without it. I guess in those days we had to buy  lots and lots of books. I think if Google’s goodness went away, I would have to move to Tibet (not that there is anything wrong with that), live in a hut and survive by killing the chickens that walked in front of said hut.

Two weeks ago, we finally updated our Windows 2000 servers to Service Pack 4; all except for one, our main database server. The first time that I tried to install the service pack on that server, I got this nastly little message:

Ok, I’m sure everyone that reads this (all 4 people) reads Slashdot and most of the time I just read the articles, but sometimes it’s fun to read the comments from people. One of today’s headlines reads “Berman Confirms Star Trek Prequel Film Project”. Here are some of the funnier comments:

In related news they announced plans to dig up Gene Roddenberry’s corpse and kick it around in the street. Sources close to the production crew said they were in the market for dead horses and clubs.

I think that’s part of the plot. Gene Roddenberry’s corpse is spinning so fast in his grave that it’s causing frame dragging [discovery.com]. The distortions in space-time open up a wormhole to the future. The Enterprise crew goes to investigate this effect and hilarity ensues.

A Prequel. Egads! Could that mean Scott Bakula meets Kirk? Lots of CGI will be needed to remove 200lbs from the now-flabby Shatner.

Scoble linked this site and it’s so funny I had to do the same. If you haven’t seen these ads, run over there and do it now, then when you are done you too should play with the chicken.

The developers at our work are still using Visual Studio 6 for the majority of their development work and when one of them noticed that there was a Service Pack for Visual Studio we installed it on our development server. Boy was that a mistake. Apparently there is a bug in the Service Pack that will break IIS from being able to load ASP pages (ASP.NET and regular HTML files are ok) on a Windows 2000 Server.

Now I have to say that for the majority, I’ve never had a big problem with Microsoft’s Service Packs, but I wonder how the hell this got past QA?

UPDATE:
I called Microsoft and I have a fix for the problem “Unable to Run ASP Pages After VS SP6 Installation”. This is apparently caused as a result of the permissions on mfc42.dll (located in %systemroot%system32 – on Windows 2000) being changed. The IWAM_MACHINENAME user needs to have Read and Execute permissions to this file. Once this is done, then it should work once again (it has in my environment).

Apparently this is important enough to get on the front page of CNN, so I figured I might as well blog about it. On Wednesday’s American Idol the three best singers (all three of them being black women) were in the bottom three, with one of them being voted off that night. Obvisously something seemed wrong when the people with the best talent were placed in the bottom three. Of course there are allegations flying around about the competition being fixed and racism, but I don’t buy any of that. I think judge Simon Cowell was right when he said ’That’s what you get when America votes". His statement is closely related to this theory.

Somewhere between researching how to do a restore of a Source Safe (I’m moving to SourceGear’s Vault as soon as humanly possible – down with Source Safe!) database and rebuilding a new development server, I managed to scrounge up this interesting write-up on The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions. It’s fairly long and a good interpretation of what the hell the trilogy really meant.

Does this picture look like something out of a Batman movie? Wow, it’s the next Joker.

I found this through Rory’s site and I just had to link it. His blog stats are funny only because they resemble mine (I’m not sure if that makes me want to laugh or cry). From his post: Total Comments – 0, Avg Comments – 0.

I’ve been using the Firefox browser as the main browser at home for a while now and it seems to work really well. There are only a few times when I have needed to open IE for anything. I’ve even switched my sister over to using it at her place since she was plagued by constant popups and other annoyances all of the time. I’ve gotten really used to using the Tabbed Browsing feature and pretty soon I’ll wonder how I ever lived without it.

There is one thing that is missing though. MyIE2 has a feature called Ad Hunter. Supposedly, this feature not only stops popup ads, it also stops Flash ads, floating ads, and gif ads! I really wish that Firefox would get this feature natively.

I originally heard of the open source project SpamBayes from the comic geniuses at Penny Arcade but Jason Olson reminded me about it the other day. This free plugin for Outlook 2000/XP/2003 works wonders at stemming the deluge of spam to your inbox. You “train” it by telling it that email is either spam (that’s bad) or ham (that’s good). Once you “train” it, it will move messages that it tags as spam to a Junk E-mail folder in your Outlook. This software works with Outlook clients that are connected to an Exchange Server too.

There is no excuse, install this product right now!

Oh and if you use Outlook Express you are out of luck it doesn’t work with that program.

Unless you have shunned your car and now use the Ankle Express as your mode of transportation, you most certainly know that gas prices are a bit high. A friend of mine sent me a link to Gasbuddy.com the other day. You can choose from anywhere in the United States and Canada as well. When you pick your state (or province) you can have a list of gas stations that have the highest and lowest gas prices. Have fun. Oh and if you thought this post was about the other type of gas, I suggest Gas-X.

Apparently some bottles of Children’s Motrin might have eight-hour extended release Tylenol in it.

The text on the CNN website reads:

The children’s product is a purple tablet with a grape smell. The adult product is a shiny red-and-white, gelatin-coated tablet. Parents who believe their children may have taken the adult product by mistake should contact their health care provider or a poison control center immediately.

Through the magic of the web, I will remove the Political Correctness Blinders and allow you to view the text through Common Sense Glasses. Here is what that text would look like:

The children’s product is a purple tablet with a grape smell. The adult product is a shiny red-and-white, gelatin-coated tablet. If you let your child take medicine without your supervision you should take your child(ren) to child services and leave them there. Please go and buy a goldfish instead. If you gave your child the pill yourself, you are probably also one of that special kind of stupid that mistakes soap with a knife and mac and cheese with a loaded M-16A rifle. In that case, take your child(ren) to child services and move to a cave in Montana.

I had downloaded some tracks from Iron Maiden’s Brave New World a long time ago (the CD was released in 2000). I never really paid all that much attention to them when I downloaded them, I just kinda glanced over them. Last Friday, my Winamp playlist decided to hit one of the songs (Ghost of the Navigator) when my brain wasn’t full of other crap and I actually listened to it. It was damned good. So I went back and listened to all of the other ones that I had downloaded. They were all new tracks (I have all of their old stuff) from the aformentioned Brave New World, so I decided to pick up that CD and their CD released in 2003 titled Dance of Death.

I’m really impressed with Brave New World but the jury is still out on Dance of Death. There are no surprises with New World, it’s just good old school metal from one of the pioneers in the field (BTW, Bruce Dickinson, the lead man from Iron Maiden in the 80’s is back). I’ll give Dance of Death some more air time when I’m tired of New World.

I’m shocked to learn that Richard Biggs, who played Dr. Stephen Franklin in all of Babylon 5 seasons and the mini-movies has passed away. He was only 44.  According to his website, he died on May 22nd.

I think I caught a virus. No, not one of those that you get from opening an attachment like a nit-wit and not like the ones you get when you stick your wanger where it doesn’t belong. It’s the kind that makes you feel ok some of the time and then at pre-determined times (say night-time or early morning) makes you feel like hell. It’s also the same kind that hangs around for a week or so and makes you wonder if there is something that is seriously wrong, then you spend 10 bucks to see a doctor only for them to tell you “Go home you hypochondriac, and drink lots of fluids”. So that’s why I haven’t been blogging.

I have SharpReader setup at work because that’s where I do most of my blog reading. You must be thinking “When does he work”? We’ll get to that later.

So after being away from work for about a week, I cracked open SharpReader and then immediately closed it again. The horror of it all! Well, I really didn’t do that but it’s more dramatic that way. Regardless, there were about 1500 unread blogs posts, 1300 of which were written by Scoble. As if the information overload through email, TV, radio, etc. wasn’t enough, now you have to add blogs to the mix. Even the aformentioned blogger is having a hard time keeping up with with the deluge of information. I suspect that if he is having a hard time keeping up (I heard that he subscribes to 1400 blogs and wrestles alligators – I heard it on the web so it must be true) I expect mere mortals like myself, with their 50 or so subscriptions, to blow up in a grandiose fashion from all of the information. Now if I can only invent an RSS aggregator that pulls content directly to my brain…I might be able to survive.

If that wasn’t enough, I found a new and hilarious blog via Mark Cuban’s blog. As to when I work…that’s a story for another time.

As I mentioned before, I picked up Iron Maiden’s Dance of Death CD.

It’s been spinning in my CD player for a little while but I’m not all that impressed. Their previous offering was in my opinion much better.

This album seems to suffer from the same affliction that Metallica’s St. Anger suffered from.

It sounds like shit. The sound quality of this CD, for some reason, fell in the gutter. It sounds more like a jam session than a polished studio release. It also suffers from so-so lyrics and uninspired tracks that seem to have no cohesion whatsoever. It’s as if they just showed up at someone’s house and started making up music on the spot.

If you are a Maiden fan then you already have this, if you aren’t and are looking for good hard music pick up Brave New World instead.

I watched TNT’s remake of Stephen King’s novel ’Salem’s Lot and I had to say that it was actually entertaining. I read some negative reviews about it on some blogs but it was an entertaining 4 hours and did what other horror movies haven’t done so far, it actually make me want to read some horror novels. Historically, that’s always been my sister’s gig and I stayed with sci-fi books, I never much got into the Dean Koontz, Stephen King, etc. type of books myself. Now I haven’t read the original book by King so this rendition is perhaps literary blasphemy, but I’m judging the TV show on its on merit not on contrast to the book. Perhaps I will start by reading the original and see how much this rendition deviated.

I think that Ben Stiller seems to be running out of gas. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve liked a lot of stuff that he has been in; including his short lived TV series (The Ben Stiller Show), Meet the Parents, Keeping the Faith, and of course There’s Something About Mary. However, his latest offerings that I have had the stomach to watch (Zoolander and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) seem to be a tad bit uninspired. Really it seems that he is playing the same roles in both movies (a-supposedly-good-looking-guy-with-a-good-body-but-no-brains). I’ll have to admit both of the movies that I didn’t like had their moments. In Zoolander, where the models have a water fight and turn into a gasoline fight and when Zoolander himself is working in a coal mine, paints himself black and hides out in dark part of the cave only to scare his father and Dodgeball’s saving grace is that everyone likes to see someone get hit by big red balls.

Oh and during the previews for Dodgeball, I had the misfortune of watching the trailer for Anchorman – The Legend of Ron Burgandy, Will Ferrell’s latest travesty upon the world. This is the first movie that after watching the previews doesn’t actually seem to contain a coherent plot other than Ferrell running around and acting really stupid. I have to add a disclaimer here, I’ve never really been a fan of Ferrell’s stuff even when he was on Saturday Night Live, so who knows, this movie might attact some people.

While purchasing some books on Amazon.com I was reminded that I watched this movie (Master and Commander – The Far Side of the World) at my parent’s house on my last vacation.

I admit, I’m an action movie buff. I like movies “for guy’s that like movies” (don’t sue me whatever cable station you are for using your catch-phrase). For this movie however, I was thoroughly bored from start to finish. The special effects were ok, and the nautical preciseness of the movie is really un-matched in movies in its class. I recall at one point in the movie there was something wrong with the “”http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=mizzenmast&x=0&y=0" target="_blank">mizzenmast" and I remember telling my sister “For the nautical experts out there, they must have been really jacked up on adrenaline when they found out that X happened to the mizzenmast but for everyday joe watching they really had no idea what was going on”.

I was so bored out of my wits that I had my sister put it on fast-forward throughout most of the movie. The plot was so paper thin that just 2 seconds of dialog (between some little kid and the doctor about camouflaging insects) I figured out they were going to disguise the ship and fool the enemy. After that it was all fast forward until the end battle.

At the end battle, Russell Crowe’s tries to find the captain of the enemy ship. He turns a curtain aside and finds a doctor standing over his patient (supposedly the captain). The doctor tells Crowe’s character that the captain died. I just looked at my sister and told her “That’s not the doctor, it’s the captain”. She looked at me and said “How did you find that out”? I told her that it’s just common sense. They used a similar tactic in Superman II where General Zod comes to the Whitehouse and demands to speak to the leader. Some schmo steps out and Zod instantly figures it out when the “leader of so many kneels so easily”. Perhaps it was a surprise little thing, I don’t know, perhaps some people were fooled, but I wasn’t. Then again, I knew the identity of Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects before the movie ended so maybe I’m some genius when it comes to seeing hidden stuff in movies.

All in all, this movie was like a bad Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

I don’t know if this bug occurs in Linux but it does occur in the Windows version. Firefox will continually prompt you to update to version 0.9.1 although you already have. It’s a known bug, and here is the URL for it. Way down at the bottom it lists how to get rid of this prompt, but I’ll re-print in here for brevity.

Another bug that some of the users may be bitten by, is the fact that Firefox stores update data, so it'll continue to prompt you on startup.. For those of you who have this problem:
1. Go to about:config (in the browser window)
3. filter update.app
2. Right-click and reset each of these back to defaults update.app.AppDescription, update.app.updateURL, update.app.Version, and update.app.UpdatesAvailable 
3. Restart Firefox.
That should clear Firefox from thinking there's an update. and stop the prompt
from appearing on startup.

I have found bug with the download manager in Windows XP Pro and Firefox versions 0.8, 0.9, and 0.9.1. It resembles this bug which is confirmed on Mozilla 1.7b with Windows XP Pro.

If you have the download manager set to show the download manager when a download begins it seems to hang the browser and explorer.exe for a few seconds on any download after the first one. It seems to happen when the download manager is recalculating the percentage and time remaining for each subsequent download. If I turn off auto notification, I don’t see the bug, but then I obviously don’t see my download statuses. This also happens when it recalculates percentage and time after it completes a download and still has one or more to go.

I’ll post my remarks to the bug listed above and see what happens.

I wonder if the U.N. actually serves a real purpose these days. It looks like the U.N. is looking to tackle spam. Spam. Come on! Check this quote out from CNN.com:

Top priority is “pornographic material … that may come to the attention of children,” said Horton, who is running the meeting. “I think it’s time we did something formally about this. We will have to come to some sort of general understanding.”

I found another TV series that I really like on DVD. While at the video store I saw some entertaining box cover art, imagine grim reapers doing normal day-to-day activities, like clocking in at work playing golf etc. So I picked it up and read the back of the first disc, which is the pilot for the show. The back of the box reads: “When smart, cynical, 18-year-old George is crushed to death by an errant toilet seat from space, she joins the ranks of an undead group of grim reapers. As she clumsily learns to adjust to her new role in the afterlife, George haphazardly hurtles toward her first dreaded assignment: to collect the soul of a little girl”. After reading that, how could I say no?

So I picked up the pilot and disc 2 of season 1 which contains the first 5 episodes after the pilot movie. It’s one of the best shows that I have seen in a long time. However, this show is not for everyone. If you don’t like dark comedy, don’t get this because, well you won’t get it. What I don’t understand is why is Showtime hiding this great show? It’s received critical acclaim yet no one really knows about it.

Season 2 of Dead Like Me premieres on 7/25, 10 PM on Showtime. 

I had another lesson in how easy it is to mess with people’s perception of reality. After eating a late lunch I decided to take a nap from 4:30 PM to 5:00 PM or so. I didn’t set the alarm because I wasn’t really thinking that I was going to sleep for very long.

The next thing that I know it’s around 8:45. I remember opening my eyes and thinking to myself, “I’m glad I woke up early, I can get a jump on the day”. Looking out the slits of the closed blinds, I was relieved to notice that the sun wasn’t shining (if it gets too hot outside, it makes the inside a living hell). “Must be an overcast day”, I thought to myself. I figured I would lounge in bed until 9:00 am and then get up. I was startled by the ring of my cell phone and jumped out of bed to locate and silence the offender of aural peace. Looking at the caller ID, I noticed it was my mom. Thinking to myself, “That’s odd, she doesn’t normally call this early”, I picked up the phone and told her that I was still sleeping and that I would call her back in a little while. I put the phone down and noticed that the time read 9:05 PM. At this point, I was disoriented that I didn’t even know what day it was let alone what the real time was. I started back-tracking mentally trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

It’s simple really. I went to sleep at 4:30 and woke up at twilight thinking that it was actually 12 hours forward (or backward) in time. The overcast day was obviously attributed to the darkening sky. As to why I think that I went to sleep on a Sunday and woke up on a Sunday is beyond me. Perhaps I wanted to replay it in my mind the way I thought it ought to have happened. What a mind-job.

Days like this, I’m reminded how easy it is to distort the spatial and temporal reality of humans. I guess shows like Nowhere Man, and The Prisoner aren’t so far fetched sometimes.

Warning, this contains spoilers. I like M. Night Shyamalan’s movies with the exception of one; his latest, which is The Village. Now, undoubtedly people will say that his movies have started on the downward spiral since the sensational movie The Sixth Sense. I agree and disagree. Compared to The Sixth Sense, his other movies aren’t as good and there is no way that they could ever be. The Sixth Sense was a blessing and curse for Night. From now on, all his other movies will be judged to that standard.

With all that being said, I honestly think that The Village is a Class A turd. It’s not a turd compared to The Sixth Sense; it’s a turd all by itself. Billed as a scary movie set in an 1800’s village surrounded by a forest full of monsters it doesn’t deliver. It turns out that the Halloween episode of Charlie Brown is scarier than this.

Some of the characters in the flick shine and some don’t even sparkle. Adrien Brody as the mentally challenged Noah Percy shines as does Bryce Dallas Howard as the blind, love stricken Ivy Walker. Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of Lucius Hunt deserves some praise and at other times you forget that he is even there. William Hurt’s character Edward Walker…yawn, Sigourney Weaver’s character Alice Hunt…yawn. The rest of the cast is pretty much forgettable probably as they were meant to be. 

The story takes place in the village of Covington in 1897. The forest that surrounds the village supposedly has monsters that are called “Those who we do not speak of.” No one from the village ever leaves Covington for fear that the monsters will get them.
From here its a bore-fest of a love triangle between Noah, Ivy, and Lucius. Just when you are about to checkout of the movie mentally, you are given a glimpse of “Those who we do not speak of” which looks like a hunched over person in a red cloak with spines coming out of his back. We go back to a whole bunch of exposition and nonsense only to be awakened from our comas by a sighting of the monster again.

After the last sighting of the monster Ivy and Lucius finally say that they love each other and that makes Noah a pissed off crazy person. What follows is actually one of the best scenes of the entire movie. Noah comes to see Lucius and Lucius lets him in. You can see that Noah is hiding his right hand in his pocket and you cant help wonder what he has in it. Lucius turns his back on him and when Noah doesnt say anything he turns around. The camera pans to a close up of Noahs red, teary eyes and then to Lucius dumbstruck face. For a few seconds you have no idea whats going on the camera slows pans down and you see Noah take the knife out of Lucius’ gut. After that Noah stabs him at least one more time for good measure.
To make a terribly long story short, the town finds Lucius and the town doctor says he can’t do anything without medicine from the mysterious towns that all of the elders came from. Ivy’s father finally breaks down and tells her the truth because he sees how much she is in love with Lucius.

Her father brings her to a shed where there are costumes of “Those who we do not speak of.” Basically the town elders were lying so that no one left Covington. They send Ivy off to “The Towns” to get medicine that will help Lucius. This is preposterous. Why on earth would they send a blind girl when her father could have gone and come back before anyone noticed? Its one of the many times that you will roll your eyes at this movie. It turns out that Noah has actually known about the secret for the longest time since he found one of the costumes under a floorboard. He escapes solitary confinement (which is just a room), gets one of those monster getups and tries to kill Ivy but instead falls into a pit (after she sidesteps him) and dies; more rolling of the eyes.

Ivy makes it to a wall and then climbs over it. There she encounters a…dum dum dum a Hummer and a security guard. He helps her get whatever she needs and she goes back and saves the day.

Basically here is what happened. The town elders lived in present day and they had bad things happen to them. Edward Walker’s father was a billionaire but someone killed him and then hung himself in the closet. Edward inherited his fortune. In therapy he found other people that were similarly traumatized and he made a plan. With all this money, he made a wild life sanctuary that they could live in and pretend it was 19th century. They made up stories about monsters so that no one would leave. Feel cheated? I did.

I’ve become addicted to FX’s drama shows Nip / Tuck and Rescue Me. I was lucky enough to catch Rescue Me on the first episode when it premiered and I’ve been hooked ever since. If you have FX take a peek at these shows.

The Sunday before last I did the Providence Bridge Pedal (also referred to as the Rose Pedal) with my boss Greg. Considering that this was the second moderately long ride that I had gone on since I bought my bike I think I did rather well.

Bridge 1: Hawthorne Bridge

This bridge was the first one that we crossed over and I can honestly say that it was the one that I was most scared riding on. The part that they had us biking on is normally steel grated but they had wood board covering them. However, with that being said you could still see past some cracks and down into the water, that kinda threw me for a loop but it was a short jaunt.

This is also where my boss took off like he was possessed by Lance Armstrong.

Bridge 2: Ross Island Bridge

For some reason, while I was riding on it, I thought that it was the Marquam. I finally realized that I had crossed the Ross Island Bridge when I got to the end of it. I think that I was still trying to pay attention to the people that were EVERYWHERE (15,000 people showed up for this mess). At times I would have to slow down as people got in my way and I was already imagining a huge horrible accident…perhaps a bit of foreshadowing.

Bridge 3: Morrison Bridge

I remember thinking, “My legs hurt” and “I wonder if I should be drinking water right now.” That one went by so quick.

Bridge 4: Marquam Bridge

The trek up the Marquam Bridge (top deck against how traffic usually runs) was pretty brutal. I kept pushing myself to make it and my legs were burning. I was thinking, “Holy shit, this is tough.” There was a band at the summit and all sorts of people hanging out and taking pictures. I would have none of that nonsense as that would put me too close to the edge. People must have gotten downhill crazy because at the bottom of the bridge one person had wrecked and was laid out on his stomach. I remember thinking, “I hope they didnt fall like that.” 100 feet past the first accident there was another man, this one older, laid out on his back. I could see a bloodied bruise on his face. That was a sobering moment. Note to self: don’t fucking go crazy downhill. From here it was a trek on 405 to the next bridge

Bridge 5: The Leviathan…I mean The Fremont Bridge

I stopped for a drink of water right before attempting this monster. I started the ride out ok and then I saw the enormous slope that this thing had. Pedaling from the wrong side of 405 (everything was closed) to the top deck of the Fremont Bridge seemed like a colossal task; and I thought Marquam was bad. I was sure that I would have to get off the bike and walk it because early on my legs were burning like there was no tomorrow. I kept looking at the slope saying to myself “No way man, no fucking way”, but somehow, I managed to take the bull by the horns and make it without stopping and without walking the bike. Of course there was a party up at the top but I would again have none of that because I could totally see myself being knocked over the tiny bars, falling into the river yelling “Thanks asshole” all the way down.

I also remembered thinking “Where the FUCK is Greg?”

Bridge 6: The Steel Bridge

A non-event except for me thinking that the guy dressed like Captain America hauling his kid was amazing. We managed to pass each other several times. Of course, he is hauling like 20-30 pounds of dead weight. After I cut off the head of the Leviathan then I wasn’t afraid of bridges anymore.

I made it to the finish line thinking “Well you did it again, you conquered another task.” Here I finally saw my boss, turns out that he was only waiting around for 5 minutes.

According to this article, money can buy you happiness if you know what to spend it on. I should note that the article that I linked is lengthy but a worthwhile read especially in the consumerist society that we live in. People with long commutes (like myself) are in for an interesting read too…

I’m sure you’ve seen the snake movies on the Stargate channel…er…I mean the Sci-Fi channel. You know what I’m talking about, the really bad B-movies like Python, Python II, Boa, etc. Ugo.com has the funniest reviews of these movies. The best part: “…Then again, you have to stretch a lot of stuff to make this movie work, such as your intelligence and faith in humanity.” Faith in humanity, that’s rich.

You may have noticed that I’m listening to the soundtrack for The Last Samurai…again. This soundtrack, by Hans Zimmer, somehow keeps getting played in my iTunes playlist, my car, and my home stereo. I just can’t get enough of it. The last track, A Small Measure of Peace, is absolutely beautiful. There is no other way to describe it. Just listening to it makes me Zen. If you are a fan of symphonic music you must pick this up.

I recently read a piece recently titled: FAQ about the Meaning of Life. As you can garner from the title, it has lofty ambitions and while interesting and having some thought provoking points, I disagree with the major parts of the fundamental tenet of the FAQ; Singularity. The Singularity is defined as a point in time in which greater than human level intelligence is reached, after such point is reached, we as humans can no longer anticipate or understand what is going to happen after that point. Since we cannot see past that point it has been aptly named Singularity by Vernor Vinge.

Vernor, in 1993, has been quoted as saying “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.” I believe the latter part of his statement. Once superhuman intelligence is created or achieved, the human dominated era as we know it will come to an end. I don’t see this happening in 30 years or in the next 100 years.

After defining Singularity, the author of this FAQ goes into a lengthy dissertation of what life might be like after Singularity but does not once mention that life as we know it could take a turn for the worse or simply be destroyed. Instead, it reads like fairy tales of what happens after Singularity. He’s quoted as saying, “We could become everything we’ve ever dreamed of becoming. That dream – life without bound, without end – is called Apotheosis.” This sounds great, but it sounds almost like a geek re-write of The Second Coming (The Rapture to be specific). Throughout the rest of the text, I kept getting the feeling that Singularity was a religious or spiritual replacement for geeks that cannot believe in traditional religion. If this document gives some people the ability to believe in something greater than themselves thats great, but after a while, parts of this FAQ started reading like cult propaganda.

The author asks classic philosophical questions like “Why should I get up in the morning?”, “What really matters”, and “Is my life significant?” and like most of this text some of the answers and arguments inspire thinking and some parts border on being absurd. Case in point; after asking “Why should I get up in the morning?” the author lists three possible reasons. The first one is “Happiness”. He goes to write, “Even if your life is unhappy now, stick around a few years. Nobody really knows what’s on the other side of the Singularity, but it’ll probably be a lot of fun”. This is a ludicrous statement. Suggesting that whatever happens after the Singularity will “probably be a lot of fun” is tantamount to a 7 year old saying that whatever is behind “door number 1” will probably be a lot of fun, even though as adults we can probably think of things that are behind “door number 1” that aren’t a lot of fun. The author seems convinced that the Singularity will bring him and others, apotheosis, which as defined by Merriam-Websters dictionary as “elevation to divine status” and “deification.” The author almost lost me at this point. Luckily he doesn’t completely devolve into “”http://www.aleph.se/Trans/" target="_blank">transhuman religious rhetoric" and continues to make some points to ponder such as point 2 – “Knowledge” in which he writes, “If you’ve arrived at this page, you’ve probably achieved the self-awareness necessary to realize that you don’t have the vaguest idea of what’s going on, or what it’s all for.” and point 3, “Altruism” where he writes “We ourselves, don’t know what’s right. Or even if you do, you can’t achieve it at all, or as completely as you’d like.”

I could go on about this paper, but hopefully I’ve whet your appetite enough for you to read it for yourselves. If anything, it makes a great conversation topic to discuss with like minded individuals.

By the way, the title of this post is a nod to an episode of Babylon 5 with the same title.

Last night, was our final farewell to our NT Server 4.0 domain. Finally, after years talking about it, we migrated our domain from NT 4.0 to Windows Server 2003 (and therefore Active Directory). The upgrade went pretty much as expected (thank god for that testing network) although it did take a bit longer to upgrade and format some machines than I had anticipated. Now it’s off to plan my next migration, Exchange Server 5.5 to Exchange Server 2003 (hopefully with a bridgehead server configuration).

Robert noticed my Last Samurai post and decided to offer a musical Zen tidbit. The song, Aqueous Transmission from Incubus’ Morning View album, is good Zen stuff despite being on a rock album. If you don’t want the full CD, you can pick up the track on iTunes.

I also watched Hero today and I enjoyed the music in it quite a bit, it might be a nice Zen soundtrack to pick up.

Anyone else out there got more Zen music that they want to share?

I’ve often thought that cooking is more like an art form than a science and I can see why people that have analytical minds might find cooking frustrating. I found a cooking site that’s especially made for the logical mind. It’s interesting to say the least. 

September is almost half way over and I’ve only posted once (well this counts as twice).

Right now, I’m so bored at work to where it’s driving me nuts. We are in the middle of doing a major security audit of our internal systems and I have to analyze Nessus reports for our LAN. The problem is that they are so repetitive and so mind-numbingly boring that I have to stop every once and a while to just stay awake. It feels like I have ADD to where I can’t sit and concentrate on this task for more than 30-45 minutes at a time. So, now to curb boredom I’m blogging.

I might not be bored this weekend. On Saturday, a few of us from work are supposedly going to bike up the trail at Forest Park (unless we get rained out) and then I have a racquetball game scheduled for sometime after that. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to fuel up in between the two.

As to what will occupy my time after that, I’m not really sure. That’s a toss up between re-arranging some stuff in my apartment and seeing if I can create a relatively secure wireless network at home with the help of a Cisco 2500 series router.

Then to round out the weekend, I’m going downtown to participate in the annual Race for the Cure (which I don’t intend to run because of problems with my shins, but I still intend to to the 5k walk).

Last Saturday, a few of us guys were supposed to bike up the main trail of Forest Park. Unfortunately, two of them canceled because they were sick and then the 3rd canceled because the other two canceled. I woke up that Saturday and took a peek outside to see what the weather was like. It didn’t look good, it was completely overcast and threatening to rain but that wouldn’t deter me either.

It sprinkled all the way from my house to the park (which I drove) and then as soon as I got on my bike the torrential downpour started. Figures. I only took that as a challenge to see how far I could get in those conditions. I think I got up more than 3/4 of the way there before I turned back around. By that point I was soaked to my boxers and couldn’t feel my fingers; being soaked on a cold Saturday morning will do that to you.I also encountered one of those optical illusions that you see in horror movies. The one where the path in front of you seems to stretch making it seem longer than it really is. That was kind of intertesting.

On Sunday, I walked (not ran…I still don’t trust my shins) in the annual Race for the Cure. The rain held off that day until the last part of the walk but I had fun regardless. It’s good to see 37,000+ people show up for a good cause.

Although it’s officially fall now, it was rather nice here in Portland today. It actually got up to 74 today. I figured that I wouldn’t see weather like this again until next spring but it appears that summer is hanging on for one last gasp.

Yesterday after work, Megan and I (she was driving) went to the eye specialist so that I could get a chalazion (mine didn’t look that bad) removed from my eye. It’s was in the lower eyelid of the left eye.

The procedure is as follows (those that are squeamish may want to skip the steps):

• Doctor puts in numbing eye drops in
• Doctor sticks in big needle with novocaine into your eyelid (that’s probably the most painful part)
• Doctor places metal clamp over eye so that he can get in there
• Doctor cuts a part of the eyelid open
• Doctor removes the stuff
• Doctor slaps patch on your eye and sends you on your way
  

This is officially my 200th post. I also uploaded code today that gets rid of the static XML that was generated by a C# console application at midnight and have replaced it with aspx pages that render the XML dynamically (using XmlTextWriter in C#). Not only that, but I added in support for wfw:comments and wfw:commentRSS which allows RSS aggregators like SharpReader to enumerate comments without having to go to the site to read them. For those of you that are reading this through an RSS reader, re-point your feed location to http://eddorre.com/rss.aspx.

I also have to give props to this code snippit on CodeProject. Without it, starting the new XML generation process would have taken me a lot longer. I’ve heard CodeProject has bad and terrible code samples, but this one was right up my alley; it really put me on the right track.

Not bad for a non-programmer trying to learn C# and ASP.NET.

A few weeks back, my friend gave me a Linksys wireless router and ever since I’ve been trying to come up with a fairly secure wireless network. My goal was to protect my existing workstations and servers from a cracker that might have gotten access to the wireless network and to all wireless data encrypted so that it would be harder to intercept and decrypt using tools like AirSnort. I think that I’ve succeeded. Here’s what you’ll need:

Equipment Used

• Linksys BEFSR41 wired router.
  
• Linksys WRV54G wireless router (works with a WRT54G router and others I’m sure).
  
• PPTP VPN server (can be a PC with Linux or Windows as long as it has 2 NICs and PPTP VPN software (apparently you can use Windows XP as a PPTP server – it’s possible that you only need one NIC in this case). In my example, I use a P-III 500 with 256 MB RAM, so it’s not a super high quality PC).

• Have the WAN address be set by DHCP from your cable or DSL provider. Note: In most cases, unless you turn your router off for a significant amount of time you will retain the same public IP address.
  
• Set the internal LAN interface address to 192.168.1.1.
  
• Set the router mode to gateway so that you have the use of NAT.
  
• Set the internal DHCP server on the router to hand out IP addresses on the 192.168.1.0/24 LAN. In my scenario, the DHCP server hands out IP addresses starting at 192.168.1.100.

• Note: If you have Windows XP, you might be able to get away with using one NIC. I say “might” because I haven’t tested this.
  
  
• Set the address of NIC1 on the VPN server to 192.168.1.3. This will be considered the “inside” interface.
  
• Set the address of NIC2 on the VPN server to 192.168.1.4. This will be considered the “outside” interface.
  
• I have my VPN server set to hand out DHCP’d addressed from the router but you can have it set to hand out IP addresses from a specific range.

• Set the WAN interface address to 192.168.1.5 and connect the ethernet cable to one of the ports on the back of the Linksys BEFSR41 router.
  
• Set the LAN interface address 192.168.2.1.
  
• Set the DNS servers to public DNS servers that your ISP gave you.
  
  
• Set the internal DHCP server on the router to hand out IP addresses on the 192.168.2.0/24 LAN. In my scenario, the DHCP server hands out IP addresses starting at 192.168.2.100.
  
• Set the router mode to gateway so that you have the use of NAT.
  
• Make sure that the PPTP passthru option is enabled.
  
• Use WPA or WPA2 security with TKIP and a PSK (Pre-Shared Key). If you don’t have an option for WPA or WPA2, then use 128bit WEP.
  
  
• In my example, I don’t use MAC address filtering but feel free to add it if you want.
  
• Change the default administrator password for administrative access.
  
• Change the default SSID to a name of your choosing and set the SSID broadcast to disabled.
  
• Set an outgoing access restriction (deny) filter using the following ports: 1-1722 and then 1724-65535. Here is a screen shot of the access filters that I defined. This blocks any outgoing packet from network B from getting to network A and beyond with the exception of the VPN TCP port which is 1723. The WRT54G router is a bit different to setup for some bizarre reason click here and here for those screens (NOTE: on the last screen shot the IP addresses start with 172.16.1, yours are going to start with 192.168.2.)
  

• Configure a PPTP VPN connectoid and point it to IP address 192.168.1.4.
  
  
• Connect to the VPN server

I’m in Washington right now (Vancouver) at my friends house kickin’ back and hanging out. The trip here was rather interesting.

Now, I grew up in Las Vegas which has to have one of the biggest populations of aggressive drivers that there are, so usually my driving style is pretty aggressive (no I don’t tailgate and commit road rage but slow, dim witted drivers will task my patience greatly). In Oregon where I live, the ratio of drivers that are awake to drivers that seem to be sleeping at the wheel is about 1 to 100. Once you cross the border into Washington that all seems to change. People that once were driving 45 mph in the right lane seem to wake up and figure out that they are being nuisances and get over right away. I don’t know what it is about getting to Washington but it’s like a mystical speed border. You gotta love driving down the freeway at 100 mph.

My friend Jeremy and I were discussing the possibility of hooking up wireless Internet access over large distances to his brother’s house, so I did a some quick research on it. This guy’s site has some pretty impressive information on routers and wireless information. I’ll definitely have to add this to my bookmarks.

UPDATE: Apparently if SQL Server considers you to be dbo on the msdb database the IF (ISNULL, 0) <> 1) function will return false. It was happening to my users, so instead of using the role that I created (db_ChangeDTSOwner) I used the domain group that the user was in using this notation: “domaindomain_group”.

So the code below would read “IF (ISNULL, 0) <> 1)”. If you do not have a domain, then I would make sure that the user(s) are not part of the dbo group and they remain part of the db_ChangeDTSOwner role in the msdb database.

The simple way to do this in SQL Server 2000 is to add the user or group to the System Administrators Server Role but that breaks one of the major security tenets out there; only give a user the tools to do their job and nothing more. So I had to find another alternative. Here is what I came up with:

1. Create a role in the msdb database called db_ChangeDTSOwner and add the users or groups that you want to this role.

When I own a home, I’m going install cameras inside and out so that I can see what’s going on when I’m not there. Call me paranoid or whatever, but after you’ve worked for a security company you know that audible alarms aren’t enough. With the advent of wireless cameras, I’ve been thinking about what it would take to setup a home camera security system. That’s where this article comes in. Apparently this guy (Joe Barr) installed a Home Camera Security System for his neighbor using wireless enabled cameras from D-Link and some open source software called ZoneMinder. It’s definitely a good read for those security buffs out there.

Now I’m just trying to find ouy why the author went through all the trouble to install this system and put in a steel reinforced door for his neighbor Susan. I guess he subscribes to the “love thy neighbor” theory.

No I’m not talking about myself, I’m talking about my network. I came across this site from a blog that I was reading. The site has network designs (large, small, home) for you to look at and rate. I think it’s a great idea to see what other people are doing and have done. I might even post mine.

• Ever wanted to know what is encoded on that barcode on the back of your license? Now you can with the SWIPE toolkit.
  
• View the trailer for the extended edition of The Return of the King (requires quicktime).
• View the E3 trailers for The Battle of Middle Earth RTS video game (requies quicktme).
• View The Ring 2 movie trailer (requires quicktime).
• Want to keep up on the latest gadgets, check out Gizmodo and Engadget (they both have RSS feeds).
  
• Jar-Jar funniness.
• The video of Jon Stewart on Crossfire is tearing up the blogosphere. See what the hype is about. Look for links here.
  

I watched the season finale repeat of FX’s drama show Rescue Me last night. It’s an excellent ending to an excellent season. What I like most about this show is the realistic characters and situations. Watching Denis Leary’s character, Tommy Gavin, try to repair his failing marriage and seeing him get angry and make rash, snap judgements is something that I, and a lot of other men can probably identify with. There are spoilers below, so if you don’t want to know what happens in the episode I would stop reading here.

SPOILER ALERT
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At the end of the show, after the day just seems to shit on Gavin (again something I can completely identify with), he gets the final blow. He goes over to his wife’s house (they are separated) and finds the entire house empty; no furniture, no appliances, no kids (they have 3), nothing. While looking around in a state of disbelief, he opens a closet and finds a baseball bat and a photo of himself, his cousin (he died at 9/11) and his cousin’s widow (the one that Tommy is having an affair with) with scratch marks over Tommy and Sheila (his cousin’s widow). The reality of his loss sinks in and he starts bashing at the walls, lights, windows, etc. with the baseball bat as Rubyhorse‘s song Fell On Bad Days (from the CD Goodbye to All That) plays in the foreground. Powerful scene. You don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to do that same exact thing after I’ve been pushed to the brink of frustration.

Apparently, the song from Rubyhorse has created quite a buzz on the Internet with people wanting to know where to get it. It’s not on iTunes so I had to get it from MSN’s music store (I’ll get into my experience with that later).

As you know, on Monday, I started my online hunt for Rubyhorse‘s Fell On Bad Days ever since I heard it on the season finale of Rescue Me. Usually, my search starts and ends on iTunes but this time I came up empty. My next try was a P2P application (note to musicians: put your shit on iTunes or we’ll download via P2P) but that also came up empty which is not really a big surprise as this is relatively an unknown band. Unrelenting, my next try was the MSN music store. I had heard about it on the blogosphere and wanted to see if they had it, and surprisingly enough, they did! After setting up an account, I downloaded some required DRM software and then I started downloading the track for a buck. From here the frustration level started to go skyward.

I donwloaded the file which was a DRM wma file. I use iTunes now as my primary playlist application and of course, a DRM wma file doesn’t play in iTunes (just as I suspect a DRM aac file doesn’t play in WMP). iTunes automatically converts wma files to mp3 files in order to play them, but it can’t convert a DRM wma file. My only option was to burn the wma file to CD and then convert it back to mp3 using iTunes. So I burn the single file to a CD and then iTunes, for some reason, read it as Gaither & Hall; which is some gospel group (here’s a screenshot) although the file was actually Rubyhorse. I’ve never had a problem burning AAC files to CD and haivng them show up with correct information, for some reason, WMP10 completely messed up the mp3 info and labeled it this Gaither & Hall. Thanks WMP!

During this whole frustrating experience that would have sent an everyday PC user’s rage gauge to red, I asked my friend to see if he could download the track from his P2P application that he uses. Before I was done burning the CD, he emailed the song to me and get this, it sounds BETTER than the version that I bought from the MSN music store.

Overall, the MSN music store isn’t really a bad thing if you live and breathe in the Microsoft world, but as soon as you want to step outside of it, then things start to go bad. In reality though, the bigger problem is DRM’d music. It’s a nightmare for the customer, it locks you into using a proprietary format that you have to have a proprietary application to use. Yet another reason why P2P applications aren’t dead.

Scoble has posted about this before, but I’m going to comment again (not like anyone reads this, but why not?). If you have a blog, use full text syndication! I don’t care whether it’s rss, atom or something else. Here is a perfect example: I’m subscribed to this guy’s blog. His posts are usually long winded and hefty in size and since his feed isn’t full text, I have to go to his website to read all of the text. Eventually this will get annoying to the point that I will delete his blog from my list. I use SharpReader instead of a web browser for a reason.

I use Microsoft products all the time, but it seems that every time that Ballmer opens his mouth he says something stupid. In his latest spoken gaffe, he says that piracy is rampant in developing countries because PCs are too expensive. Too expensive?! PCs have never been cheaper, some coming at 300-400 bucks depending on where you go. So I guess it couldn’t be that Photoshop weighs in at ~$600.00 or that Windows XP Professional itself is ~200.00. Software piracy is rampant software is ridiculously priced, period.

This guy needs to stop ad-libbing and have someone else write his speeches for him.

Microsoft is developing a new shell called Monad or msh. I believe that originally this technology was slated to be deployed with Longhorn but you can actually use the beta now as long as you have Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 and the .NET framework 2.0.

The new msh has power of the *nix shells (bash and k) and much more. A typical *nix command might look like this “ls -a | more”. Where the text output of ls is piped through the more command. In the new msh, when you pipe the output of commands from one to another, you are actually piping .NET objects instead of text. These .NET objects have all their properties exposed to the new command. It’s pretty interesting. Here is a good introductory write up and some introductory videos as well (below).

• Intro video from MSDN.
• Monad explained from Channel 9.
• Monad demonstrated from Channel 9.

I’ve been using Firefox as my primary browser at home for a while now, but I recently just got into installing extensions (plugins) to extend the functionality of the browser. I like how extensible Firefox is; it’s no wonder why Firefox is kicking ass and taking names against Internet Explorer.

Here are some of my favorite extensions:

• Spellbound (spell checker for text boxes – very useful for blogging – for some reason this is not the on Firefox extension web site)
• Adblock (blocks all the annoying ads on a site including those floaty ones that block your view)
  
• Tabbrowser Preferences (allows you to move your tabs around)
• IE View (allows you to open a page in IE just in case it’s IE only – saves time)
• Web Developer Tools (if you are a web developer, you must download this)

Anytime you use the word smite in this day and age it’s probably going to elicit some strange looks and probably some laughs as well (at least from me you will (the laughs not the looks)). I found the list below on Corey Haines’ blog who found it on You’ve Been Haacked. The entire list is brilliant, but I find number 4 and 5 to be the best. Gotta love the line, “Should I smite them?”

Dear President Bush, Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s law. I have learned a great deal from you and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them:

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not to Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states that he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that, even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this? Are there “degrees” of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev. 24:10-16)? Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws (Lev. 20:14)?

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.

I’m into hour 17 of “The Long Night” (database changes and file deployments at work) and I’ve read all of the unread posts in my blog list; well not all of them, if you miss a day or two of reading you’ll have 5,000 posts to read if you subscribe to Gizmodo, Engadget and Scoble).

For tonight’s burnin’ of the midnight oil, our company hooked us up with a room at the Marriot Residence Inn so that we wouldn’t have to drive all the way home after being awake for almost an entire day.

Today at around 5.30 PM, I left the office to make sure that I could get the wireless laptop connected on their WiFi network. First try, no go. I would consistently get poor signal strength and subsequently the bandwidth that I would get would always be at 1 or 2 mbps. Not good. I called their support line and their tech basically encouraged me to get another room. I walked over to the front desk and explained my problem and told her that it usually means that I’m too far from the access point to which she responded “there are routers in each room”.  I wasn’t going to discuss the intricacies of wireless networking with her so I just asked for another room. She gave me the key to a room in the same building which yielded similar results; I would get good signal strength but I could get no more than 1 or 2 mbps sustained and when attempting to ping the gateway it would respond with insane amounts of latency (try response times averaging 4000ms+). I called support (again) and they acknowledged that there was a problem with the access point in that building (great). I walked to the front desk (again) and spoke to another lady; she gave me 3 different room keys to try in 3 different buildings. The first key didn’t open the door so I abandoned that room altogether. My trek finally ended at the 4th room. I finally had acceptable wireless access. Unfortunately I blew an hour walking around the complex and going up and down a combined total of 30 flights of stairs.

Finally, I don’t think I’ve eaten this much in a long time. Dinner consisted of pasta with grilled chicken, a slice of tiramisu and a can of Coke. Then I had about 4 (well so far 4) Krispy Kreme doughnuts and another Coke. Heavy fuel man.

For those well versed in TV Sci-Fi, you’ll have noticed that the title of this post is a nod to the Babylon 5 episode with the same name.

I’m at the Residence Inn Marriott at Lloyd Center in Portland, Oregon and there is no water coming out of any of the faucets. No shower, no brushing my teeth, no cleaning up. {sigh} How come they didn’t do this in the middle of the night? What, people don’t take showers at 11 am? This is the first time I’ve stayed at a lodging place and there hasn’t been water available to me when I want it.

The teaser poster for Revenge of the Sith is online and Robert sent me an email with the release dates for the teaser trailer. I’ll just include it here for everyone to read:

The eagerly awaited teaser trailer for Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith premieres worldwide next week on starwars.com Hyperspace. In the early afternoon of Thursday, November 4 (US time), the trailer will be available for high quality download only to members of starwars.com Hyperspace, in partnership with AOL. Make sure you’re signed up today, and be the first to see completed moving images from the final Star Wars film.

To fully experience this first look at Revenge of the Sith, you’ll have to head to movie theaters starting Friday, November 5. In the US and Canada, the trailer will appear in front of The Incredibles, the latest film from Pixar.

If you haven’t seen it by then, the trailer will be posted on starwars.com for everyone to see starting Monday, November 8.

I read (in the paper no less) that A Perfect Circle is going to release a CD this year that is politically charged (if you love Dubya then this probably isn’t going to be for you). The CD, titled eMOTIVe has 12 tracks on it; 1 of which is new, 1 is a mix of Pet from Thirteenth Step and the other ten are covers of other songs. There is also a flash video for the 10th track available for viewing at their website. The CD is set to drop on election day.

One more thing, I also love the 40’s-50’s propaganda style posters that are on their main page. There are 14 of them and you can see them all (without hitting refresh over and over again on their main page) by going here (I found out that a lot of these have been floating around, and A Perfect Circle just put new words on them, either way, I like them).

Track Listing:
1. Annihilation (Matthew Borruso, Christopher Douglas, Sothira Pheng)
               Crucifix – NOT SO QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1982)
2. Imagine (John Lennon)
               John Lennon – IMAGINE (1971)
3. (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding (Nick Lowe)
               Elvis Costello & the Attractions – ARMED FORCES (1979)
4. What’s Going On (Renaldo Benson, Al Cleveland, Marvin Gaye)
               Marvin Gaye – WHAT’S GOING ON (1971)
5. Passive (TK)
               A Perfect Circle – eMOTIVe (2004)
6. Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie (Greg Ginn)
               Black Flag – EVERYTHING WENT BLACK (1983)
7. People Are People (Martin L. Gore)
               Depeche Mode – PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE (1984)=
8. Freedom Of Choice (Gerald V. Casale, Mark Mothersbaugh)
               Devo – FREEDOM OF CHOICE (1980)
9. Let’s Have A War (Philo Cramer, Lee Ving)
               Fear – THE RECORD (1982)
10. Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm Of the War Drums (Billy
         Howerdel, Maynard James Keenan)
               A Perfect Circle – eMOTIVe (2004)
11. When The Levee Breaks (John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Memphis Minnie,
         Jimmy Page, Robert Plant)
               Led Zeppelin – UNTITLED (1971)
12. Fiddle And The Drum (Joni Mitchell)
               Joni Mitchell – CLOUDS (1969)

I checked out A Perfect Circle‘s website some more and found the video (you’ll something that can play .ram files) and song (Windows Media – Real Media) for the track Imagine (originally done by John Lennon). I’m usually apprehensive when bands I like do covers but this one is very good; of course you can’t really go wrong with Keenan’s voice in my opinion. I’m definitely getting this CD when it comes out.

I was catching up on my blog reading and I found this interesting study (in PDF format) on teleportation. I can’t really vouch for it’s authenticity, but according to the paper, it was commissioned by the US Air Force. The thing that really caught my attention is that the author of a paper, Eric Davis, lives right around the corner from my mom’s house in Las Vegas.

I saw a post by a blogger espousing the movie The Motorcycle Diaries and I just had to comment. In his post, he calls it “perhaps one of the greatest films ever made”. My comment is below:

Whether or not The Motorcycle Diaries is a good film or not I can’t say; I haven’t seen it and I don’t intend to either. The film helps to propel the unmerited iconic status of “El Che Guevara” forward. I’m not sure why the youth of America is intent on making the man into a symbol of freedom when he was anything but. He helped Fidel Castro establish a communist government in Cuba where people suffer to this day. He was also known to have murdered and tortured between 500 – 1700 people in Cuba during his time there.

I suggest that anyone that thinks that El Che is a hero of freedom read the entry for Che Guevara in the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara), the Slate article “The Cult of Che – Don’t Applaud the Motorcycle Diaries” (http://slate.msn.com/id/2107100/) or go speak to a Cuban American that was alive during that time; they’ll tell you what a great man he was.

The youth of America probably thinks its really clever wearing the shirts with El Che’s face on it. They probably think that they are standing up to the corporate mindset in America. Unfortunately, most of these people have no idea of the icon they wear on their shirt. I’d like to ship them off to Cuba to live as the people do to open their eyes to the stupidity of their actions.

Interestingly enough my mom actually had direct contact with Che in Cuba. She recently told me a story about Che’s apparent lack of cleanliness. She was working at a newspaper in Cuba where Che would come in to do whatever it is that he did. There were several times where he would walk past my mom and leave an aromatic trail of “dirty man and ass” behind him. I thought that was a comical anecdote.

My Exchange Server manages email for the 4 domains that I own. It was an easy task to get Exchange to deliver email to one mailbox. The tricky part is allowing Exchange Server to let you send email as one of the non-primary email accounts associated with a user in the Active Directory. Amazingly enough, this has been a problem since Exchange Server 5.5 and still continues to a be a problem in Exchange Server 2003. You’d think that Exchange would look at the email aliases you have set for a user and allow you to send mail as one of them. There are 2 ways to get around this problem.

Option 1

Buy ChooseFrom

Option 2

• Open Active Directory Users and Computers on the Exchange Server. 
  
• Click on View and click on Advanced Features. 
  
• Remove all of the email addresses except for the primary domain from the Email Addresses tab in Active Directory Users and Computers.
• Create an Organizational Unit where you will place new users. I titled mine MailboxShortcuts. You could put them in the Users OU, but I wanted a clear separation between real users and mailbox shortcuts.
• Create a user. I usually name them the users name plus 1. Example: carlos1, carlos2 etc.
• Right click on the new user and go to Properties.
• Fill out the First Name and Last Name how you want them to appear when you send an email to someone. 
  
• In the Description field I put in the user name followed by the domain name followed by the word domain. Example: carlos eddorre domain.
• Click on the Exchange General tab and then click on the Delivery Options button. 
  
• Under Forwarding address, click the Modify button and select the original user in the Active Directory. This will forward all mail to that user. Don’t check the box for “Deliver messages to both forwarding address and mailbox”.
• Click on the E-mail Addresses tab and add a new email address. Usually this is the same name but a different domain. Example: carlos@domain2.com. Set this as the primary address and remove any other SMTP addresses if there are any. 
  
• Click on the Security tab and add the original user giving them the permissions read, receive as, and send as.

After hearing the hype, I decided to give this show a shot to see what the fuss was about. A friend of mine was able to download and burn to DVD the 7 episodes of the show (they are up to 8 as of this writing). My verdict? Besides spotty editing of the downloaded files this show is near flawless. If you aren’t watching this show, you owe it to yourself to download the episodes (get a BitTorrent client and start downloading) to see what the hype is about.

I did some research on this show and found some interesting stuff about it. The pilot was written by J.J. Abrams (among other co-writers) of Alias fame and also has world renowned comic and cartoon writer Paul Dini in its writer lineup. Also, Mira Furlan, from Babylon 5 is scheduled to make an appearance on the show.

The symbolism, mystery, and style of this show rates it as one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time. Get it now!

I biked up the 11 mile trail at Forest Park again this morning and I have to say that it’s the last time I do that for this fall/winter season. The scenery and the challenge remains enjoyable but the quality of the terrain seems to be degrading rapidly. The conditions in the past were enough to give you an off road, trail like ride without being too extreme. Unfortunately when I rode it this time, it felt like I was riding on something that you would find on the Martian landscape. I think that some of the rainfall has eroded the dirt and earth that was compacted over the drier months. This erosion makes it feel like you are riding on old cobblestones and is jarring and irritating; almost feels like what Portland city streets feel like.

I’m done for the season but not done for good.

In a few hours I’ll be sitting at the airport awaiting my flight to take me to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving. Since the flight leaves at 6:30 in the morning and I have to be there 2 hours early, I decided not to go to sleep because if I did I would probably miss my flight. So it’s 2 AM and I’m still awake.

This past weekend I attended my second AppleCup game. This one was in Pullman, Washington instead of Seattle. It was a good time and there are some nice and embarrasing photos of me with my shirt off while wearing a big huge cowboy hat. I’ll have those posted a little later.

Apparently Jennifer Garner had signed up to do an Elektra movie since it’s coming out in January. This is the first that I’ve ever heard of it. While Jennifer Garner is one hot little mama, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the movie will become a box office bomb. 

Serenity, the movie based on Joss Whedon’s Firefly TV series, has been delayed 5 months. Instead of being released in April it will be released in September. The official opening date is now September 30th.

Another bit of Firefly trivia, Jewel Staite, the gal that played Kaylee in the show has a blog. It’s not a traditional blog in the bloggy sense of the word, but it’s sorta like a blog.

I’m at the airport now after a short ride on the MAX and a long wait through the security line. I’ve gone through so many of these that I’m like a pro. Put all my gear in my coat and put it in a bin, take my laptop out and put it in a bin. I’m ready to roll before I get to the metal detector which I can’t say for some people.

Most modern airports should have wireless access points throughout and PDX is no different; so I’m actually blogging at the gate which to me is pretty cool. Now I’m just waiting when airlines actually get Internet access in the air, then I’ll join the mile high club (of blogging that is).

I love buying TV shows on DVD, it’s my new hobby. While working on a document at my mom’s house, I found out that Buck Rogers (the complete series) is coming to DVD.

But wait…there’s more.

• V- The Complete Series
• Battlestar Galactica – The Complete Epic Series
• Battlestar Galactica – 2003 miniseries
• Crusade – The Complete Series

I was looking to find a simple wall shelf to put my DVDs on and I found one that I liked on Ikea’s website. If you look at it, it’s just really a piece of wood with a little mounting kit to go with it.

I was excited to notice that not only could you browse individual items but you could also order from them online as well. I filled out the order opting to have my billing address different from the shipping address. Although I did select that option, their system didn’t prompt me to input another billing address. I kinda shrugged that off. I put in my order and I get this email from them:

Due to a high volume of orders, we will contact you to confirm your order with the details about your delivery and total cost within 5 – 7 business days.

I’m thinking, this is really dumb. This is the year 2004 (almost 2005); online stores are nothing new why can’t they rollout a system that doesn’t suck ass? If it were 1997-1999 I think I would be more understanding, but come on. I have to wait 5-7 business days before they even tell me how much it will cost? With the shipping time, it’s gonna be 2 weeks before I get a piece of wood. By this time I was starting to get that sinking feeling.

Then a few days later I get another email from them:

Subtotal: $12.99
Shipping & Handling: $19.14
Tax: $0.00
Order Total: $32.13

Let’s see 12.99 for piece of wood – check. Shipping and handling comes to 19.14…19.14?! It costs more to ship the piece of wood than the piece of wood is worth! I was floored. This is absurd. I called Ikea and spoke to their customer service rep and I told her that I was ordering a piece of wood and the shipping costs…she cut me off and told me that anything that’s made out of wood goes out freight delivery. If this is true, which it’s not (it clearly states at the bottom of the message that it would be shipped via UPS), it would be the most ludicrous thing ever. After I told her that it would be shipped via UPS she said that it was that much because it was being shipped from Baltimore. I could see that; if it was Baltimore, Mars perhaps. 20 dollars to ship a piece of wood; incredible.

Needless to say, I promptly canceled my order.

I mentioned this lunacy to Megan and she said that I was like Michael Douglas’ character in Falling Down because of my notable fervor on the matter. Interestingly enough, that dude is my hero and I can totally see myself getting fed up with traffic and leaving my car sitting in it.

There is one thing that I like about this time of year and that’s buying stuff for myself that I wouldn’t normally buy. Now, I know what you are thinking, you’re thinking that it’s mighty selfish of me to buy myself Christmas presents and stuff; well you’d be half right. I’ve spent a pretty penny on other people (besides me, myself, and I) and since no one gets me Christmas presents (ok, ok “no one” is an exaggeration but it’s pretty close to accurate) I get them for myself.

So this time, I got a new desk and a new LCD monitor to go with it. The desk is currently priced at 169.99 on their website but I saw the desk in the paper when I was in Las Vegas for 129.99. Now the 129 price was getting close the language that I speak so I went online and serendipity struck. The desk was priced at 99 with free shipping. Now that’s definitely speaking my language! Needless to say, I ordered it right up. Although the monitor stand, to me, is too far away to be able to see (especially with the resolution that I like to run at) what you are typing, so I put the LCD monitor in front of the “digital dock”. It makes the whole “digital dock” thing pointless, but honsetly I don’t really need to get to my computer that often.

The ViewSonic LCD was spendy but it was totally worth it. It’s the same model that I use at work and I’m completely satisfied with the brand. The difference in quality between the new and the old monitor is amazing. I didn’t realize how bad my old CRT really was until I got the new LCD. The old CRT was really blurry around the edges especially when it was first powered on but this one is crisp and clear the second I turn it on. I absolutely love it.

Oh yeah I did get one more thing but I didn’t buy it. A friend of mine gave it to me. I’ve been wanting a set of Japanese swords (katana, wakizashi, and tanto) for a while but I was going to wait until I moved into a house as sort of a self-congratulations thing but when the opportunity to get a set for free came up, I couldn’t pass on it. So now I’m armed. Home offense baby! 

Ever since I got back from Thanksgiving, where I spent 12 days surrounded by goddamned cats, my asthma has been really bad. For those 12 days when I was at my mom’s house, I basically lived off of my inhaler (Albuterol) to keep me alive but I thought it a bit strange that after a while of being back, I was still having symptoms.

After a terrible bout with said asthma last night, I decided to go to the doctor so that he could hook me up to one of those nebulizer things. He did so (which helped a million) and then proceeded to give me a veritable pharmacy in prescriptions; Serevent, Qvar, Imitrex (for migraines – I snuck that one in while talking about the inability to breathe) and finally Prednisone. The last one is funny because while talking about it, he made a funny face when he got the part about the side effects. Interested in why he made a face, I inquired further about the side effects. He said, “It might do funny stuff”. “What kind of funny stuff”? I asked. He explained, “Among other things, it might make you euphoric, in some cases have hallucinations, and in long term use it might cause psychosis”. I almost laughed in his face because the first thing I thought of was The Simpsons episode (El Viaje de Nuestro Jomer) where Homer eats the Guatemalan insanity peppers (at the chili cook off) and proceeds to have hallucinations which involve a coyote spirit guide.

Here is something to get your mental wheels turning. Is it right for parents to lie to their kids about the existence of Santa Claus? Before you rush and say yes, bear with me.

I remember, way back when, that Christmas was my favorite holiday and the days leading to the holiday was my favorite time of the year. I’m sure that most of the draw was the gift getting (when you are a kid, you aren’t really gift giving), but there was something more than that. There was a sense of nervous excitement from the time Thanksgiving was over until the day itself. There was something about not knowing what you are going to get and what Santa brought by surprise. But more than all that, there was a sense of wonder and a sense that on that one day something magical that you couldn’t comprehend would happen.

I also remember the day that I found out that Santa was nothing more than a tricksy hoax. It was in elementary school and our classroom was out for recess. A bunch of kids were playing on the blacktop playground and some of them starting discussing the rumor that Santa was not real. It all started when one kid asked another “Hey do you know that Santa isn’t real”? The other kid replied in the affirmative and then they decided to tell the disbelievers how the flimflam worked. I kept my mouth shut but I remember saying in my head, “Man these kids aren’t going to get any presents, after all, Santa is watching them right now”!

I inconspicuously eavesdropped on their conversation as they continued their slanderous remarks. They proceeded to describe how we had all been hornswoggled for so long — the parents would hide the presents that they bought themselves using the list that we wrote to Santa and then hide them until the night before Christmas. Then they would wait for the unsuspecting little ones to fall asleep and then they would put the presents out as if Santa had done it himself. At this point, their revelations were starting to make sense and I started to unravel years of deceit and hoodwinking. The straw that broke the reindeer’s back was the revelation that the milk and cookies were probably eaten by the parents or just thrown out altogether. I was reeling! It didn’t seem possible that my parents would stoop to this level of chicanery. I had a mental Luke moment where, clutching to my youthful innocence, I cried out (in my head mind you) “No…NO! That’s not true. That’s impossible”! And just like the first time you watched Empire Strikes Back, you didn’t want to believe Vader was Luke’s father, but somehow in the back of your mind you knew that it was true. I remember being asked if I knew the truth by one of the kids, after it had been spread out before me like so much road kill, to which I coolly replied “Oh yeah, I knew”. That night I confronted my parents, with the hope that it might have all been lies, but they admitted their part in the collusion.

After that, Christmas seemed to lose its luster. The sense of wonder faded leaving only the cold reality of crowds, packed malls, and dense traffic. It’s no wonder that I haven’t felt the “Christmas spirit” since about 1983. I wonder, if I had know the truth from the beginning would Christmas still be a “diamond” instead of a “cubic zirconia”.

I could argue this both ways. I could see wanting to keep the illusion alive for your kids. Ignorance is bliss after all. I also could argue that it’s probably not really healthy to outright lie to your kids and then take the rug out from under their feet. Oh well, just something to think about.

I read my fair share of web comics and all of them are in what I call “gag strip” format. The “gag strip” format usually has about 3-4 panels or simplified characters in which a gag or a funny is dropped in the end panel. Some deviate in minor ways from this but the general format remains the same. The artform really doesn’t lend itself to complex story lines and rich, detailed filled art.

I very pleased when I came upon the comic Alpha-Shade (by way of Mac Hall). The story line, in a way, reminds me of the old Antartic Press comic series titled Tigers of Terra or something that you would find in a Gundam anime. It’s very mature in the ways that it deals with warfare and how it affects the characters. The character development is just getting off of the ground (just because there haven’t been that many strips) but you can tell that the writer(s) are headed in the right direction. As well as the art, well, to me is phenomenal but I think you’ll have to take a look at it for yourself. This is the kind of web comic that I want to do.

I installed a pair of new hard drives in my workstation so I backed up everything that I needed and now I’m restoring it. I setup the share to restore to and set Backup Exec 9.0 to restore some files to that share point. I accidentally forgot to set the write flag on the share permissions so the backup software could write files there. That was my fault but what Backup Exec did is even worse. The software started “restoring” files to the directory and it did this for a good 46 minutes. At the end of that time I received an error message stating that “access was denied” to that share. Why the HELL did it wait 46 minutes before telling me that? Backup software is not a new thing, it’s been around for as long as there has been data to backup. I’m baffled as to why Backup Exec 9.0 has this atrocious bug.

The trailer for the new Batman move, Batman Begins is out now. This is the first time in a long time that I’ve seen a Batman movie trailer without throwing up in my mouth. The site is fairly annoying because when you click on trailer it invokes a popup menu. It seems like Liam Neeson decided to train someone worthy instead of that freaking loser Jake Lloyd. Everytime I see the trailer I think Qui-Gon Jin.