Mac Mini

Unlike RBT, when I saw the Mac Mini and was impressed. Yes, expandability is limited. Yes, the specs don't "wow" me. Yes, you can get an equivalent PC cheaper. But, this is the cheapest way to get a box that will run Mac OS-X.

Let's say you get a cheap PC with Windows. It still needs an antivirus program, multiple antispyware apps, and a lot of ongoing maintenance to ensure it doesn't get rooted by viruses, trojans, and other assorted crap out there. And while Linux has made huge strides in usability (in many ways it's better than Windows), many specialized commericial apps won't run on it but are available for Mac. Also, Linux printing often remains a real bitch and a half to get running.

A Mac Mini, on the other hand, basically allows you to unbox the unit, hook everything up, and it all just works. The form factor of the Mini gives greater flexibility in where you stuff it, and compared with an eMac or iMac, you won't be tossing a perfectly good display when you replace the box in a few years. For a power user a Mini Mac isn't the right solution but as a second computer or a computer for a kid's room it looks like it would do nicely.

Clueless

Shortly after I transferred into my current position I sent out requests for info to various vendors of content filtering, domain registration, and web hosting serivces. I did so either by sending an email to an address given on the respective vendors' web site, or by filling out an online "contact me" form.

The other day I got into work and there was a message in my inbox which just floored me. It was a reply to an online RFI form that I filled out on 7/27/04. This vendor replied to me nearly six months after I clicked the submit button on his website. I was just floored. How clueless can you be?

One of my coworkers had a great idea. I should save his email and reply to this moron sometime in June or July.

Multiple updates to The Shooters Bar(SM)

While home, I took advantage of the time to post multiple updates to The Shooters Bar(SM), my list of pro-RKBA attorneys.

Additionally, I've started a Yahoo! Groups mailing list for TSB. To subscribe visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theshootersbar/.

Blecchhh Part 2

I made it into work this morning but only lasted until about 1130. I hate head colds.

Blecchhh

Between a nasty head cold and Amanda waking up at 0330 this morning, I didn't get much sleep last night. So, I called in sick and spent most of the day sitting in front of Bagend reading THR and AR15.com.

I did get to install the new Eagle rosewood grip panels on my Springfield M1911 which I got from Cabela's. The Pachymar rubber grips which the gun came with were functional, but oogly. The Eagle grips needed a little fitting, for which I used my Dremel with a sanding drum set on 1,000 RPM. One of these days I'll post a pic, since the Springer much nicer looking now.

Along with the 1911 grips, I also got an Otis "Tactical" (I hate that marketing term) cleaning kit. It's a pretty neat concept. Instead of a rigid cleaning rod, it's basically a pull-through system using nylon-coated stainless steel cables. You can attach to the pull-through a slotted tip to hold Otis's special cleaning patches , or a bore brush. The cable is rigid enough to be used for clearing obstructions from the bore, something you can't do with a BoreSnake. I don't view the Otis kit as a replacement for a proper cleaning rod, but it's a good kit for field use.

Blogroll

You may have noticed the beginnings of a Blogroll down on the right. I'll add more as time permits.

Meanwhile, any reciprocal links are of course most welcome.

PC install

This morning I went down to a client's office in Wynnewood to install two PCs he picked up during the week. This is the same client I visited last Monday.

The PCs are HP Pavilions running XP Home. Yeah, they're consumer-grade but he's had very good luck with Pavillions in his small office for several years. The new boxes have P4/3GHz CPUs, 512 MB of RAM, a DVD+RW and CD-ROM drives, and 200 GB hard disks. He got them for about $800 each.

After he physically installed them, I got them on the LAN, removed a lot of the crap HP loads on the hard disks, and installed stuff like MS Office, antispyware apps, and created limited user accounts for the two girls working for him.

I also setup a Maxtor One-Touch 200 GB USB hard drive on one of his existing PCs. It's going to be used for offsite backups of the data on his e-Smith 5.5 Linux fileserver. For backup software we're using SyncBack, a nifty, free program I found last year and which I have running every night at another client.

A couple of the PCs needed updated to their antivirus software as well as Windows, so after taking care of that I automated much of that with the AVG and Windows Update schedulers.

While we worked, I mentioned to my client -- who's company does commerical property management -- that along with a partner I do network cabling. So he may be able to use us for jobs on sites he's renovating. A few cabling jobs each year the size of the one we did last Fall would be a nice supplement.

Had my lawyer hat on

One of the projects I'm involved with at work is reviewing the contract to renew our outsourced email service. Although my boss asked me to review the contract from a business standpoint, it's be wasteful to ignore my legal background. So, yesterday afternoon and this morning I put on my lawyer hat.

We are getting closer to an acceptable contract, but let me tell you, this thing started out as a real POS. I know that had I drafted such a contract back when I was practicing law, my boss would've torn me a new one. For example, the section of the contract dealing with material breach was some of the worst, unintelligible legalese I've had the misfortune to read. It was a paragraph consisting of two or three run-on sentences which ran for about a third of a page. Ugh. So, I broke it down into a couple of subsections and used sentences which wouldn't have resulted in a big red "F" in 10th grade English class.

Hard work, but actually pretty interesting.

I'm being quoted

After asking me if it was OK and getting approval from his boss, reader Geoff Timm, who is a geek for Uncle Sam, emailed out a document to his colleagues based on my previous posts, 10 Steps for Securing Your MS Windows PC and Secure That Wireless Network. On top of my contributions, Geoff added a listing of assorted residential gateways from NewEgg.com. The general idea is to get it into the hands of end users who are experiencing problems on their home computers.

Thanks, Geoff. It's good to be recognized. I hope the piece does some good for you.

More laptop fun

I got my new Dell D600 setup as a dual-boot XP Pro/SuSE 9.2 Pro box today. When I first tried this, YaST was able to resize the disk's single NTFS partition fine, but after creating the partitions to be used under Linux it bombed while trying to format them. It may or may not have been something I did. So, I rebooted into XP, deleted the Linux partitions, and rebooted into the SuSE installer. It was then able to create my swap and / partitions.

The rest of the installation went smoothly, including the setup of GRUB to default to SuSE, but with an option for booting Windows. (And yes, I made sure it works. XP comes right up after you select it.)

YaST pretty much automagically set things up so that I have read only access to the NTFS partition. I was able to set my home page in Firefox to my portal page saved under My Documents on the NTFS partition.

The onboard 802.11g wireless NIC was also properly recognized and after installing KWiFiManager, it's easy to setup the adapter to access different WLANs.

Based on this experience I don't hesitate to recommend SuSE 9.2 if you're looking to dip your toes in the Linux waters but aren't ready to discard Windows entirely.

New AOL IM Name

For anyone who cares, I'm now using dmarkowitz527 when I login to AOL Instant Messenger. My Yahoo! Messenger ID will remain the same at dave_markowitz.

Back to the grind

The longest vacation I've taken in years ended today. Nobody likes to return from vacaction, but today was a pretty good day.

First off, I had my annual performance review, which went quite well.

Secondly, the Dell Latitude D600 laptop which we ordered for use as a test box came in while I was on vacation. w00t! It's basically an upgrade version of my daily use machine. Same CPU (P4M @ 1.4 GHz) but with 1 GB of RAM, an 80 GB hard disk, and a DVD-ROM drive. It was supposed to have a DVD burner but our purchasing department fouled up. (We got a second, identical unit for my co-worker, and his also came with the DVD-ROM, so I don't think it's a Dell SNAFU.)

The only software that came on the Dell aside from XP Pro was WinDVD, so I spent the afternoon installing stuff like antivirus, antispyware, IM clients, Ethereal, and various other utilities. Since I'll eventually need something on the box for taking notes, I decided to give Abiword a try, since it's so lightweight. I've putzed around a little bit with it on Linux, but not in quite some time. I'll probably load it onto Bagend at home.

I'll add some more stuff on the Dell tomorrow, as well as turning into a dual boot machine with SuSE 9.2 Pro.

Countries I've visited

Found this morning via a link from Ramble On!, Dave T.'s blog, is a site (link below) which will make a map showing which countries you've visited. Pretty neat. Here's where I've been:



create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Edited to correct the link to Dave T.'s blog.

Updates to The Shooter's Bar(SM)

Today is a company holiday, so I get one more day for my vacation. Back to the grind tomorrow.

This morning I added J. Michael McCormick of PA to The Shooter's Bar(SM). I currently have close to 40 pro-gun rights attorneys listed on TSB. It's one of the (possibly the) biggest online lists of pro-gun lawyers, but I'm always looking to add more.

While I had Mozilla Composer open, I also did some long overdue cleanup of the index page for my Shooting & RKBA pages, as well as the Building-tux.com home page.

A rodent for the iBook

I shot down to Microcenter this afternoon and picked up a Logitech optical mouse to use with my iBook. It didn't come with a mouse, and I don't care for Apple's one button mice, so I got another Logitech. There are a couple reasons I don't like Apple mice: they're only one button and they don't have a scroll wheel.

I've always had very good luck with their mice, this is probably the fourth or fifth one I've bought. None has ever worn out, I've just moved on to newer and better models every few years.

Tsunami relief

I haven't mentioned the tsunami that's taken so many lives (135,000 as of now according to CNN.com) What could I say?

However, there is something you can do. A monetary donation, no matter how small, to a relief organization like the Red Cross can help.

Amazon.com has made it easy for you to donate to the Red Cross using your Amazon account.

Give a little, if you can.

So much for doing it yourself to get it right

It turns out that I needed to call my plumber to complete the dryer install after all.

A few hours after running the second load of wash I smelled some gas. After getting Judith to confirm that I wasn't having olfactory hallucinations I shut off the supply via the cutoff. This morning I called my plumber, who luckily, was able to make it out today.

It turns out that the source of the leak was the old gascock itself. If it had been left alone it would've been fine but by using it, we caused a leak. So, he wound up replacing the gascock and also added another extension pipe to get the rigid gas line closer to the dryer. While he was here I also had him replace the water shutoff valves and the lines to the washer. We also shut off the supply of gas to the fireplace in our den, since it provides next to no heat and we haven't used it this winter. Since it is old enough to have a pilot light, that'll be a little less gas we have to pay for each month.

I'm happy to give my plumber an unsolicited plug, btw. His name is Lawrence Pizzico and he can be reached at 610-279-8111. He works out of Norristown in SE PA.

Changes

In contrast to the Sears experience, we had a good one with Sleepy's, a bed retailer. The deliverymen just left after having brought in and assembled a new bed for Alexandra. Tonight she'll be sleeping in a bed for the first time. It's going to be interesting to see her reaction.

When you want something done right...

... you often need to do it yourself.

Sears came back this morning to finish the dryer install. They couldn't do it because they didn't have a long enough gas line. This despite the fact that it was the same guys who delivered the thing. At this point I said "fuck it" and decided to do it myself.

So after Dumb and Dumber left I went to Lowe's and bought a two foot black iron gas pipe, a coupler to join it to my existing gas pipe, a can of pipe joint compund (I looked at several and bought one which mentioned use on gas lines), and a four foot flexible gas line, which I wound up not needing and will return.

After getting home I slathered all the threads with pipe joint compound and screwed everything together, using the section of flexible line Sears had left me. I turned the gas cutoff on this line back on and waited about 20 minutes. Not smelling any gas, I gave Judith the OK to put in a load of wash.

Tomorrow I'll call Sears customer service and give them an earful.

Monday update

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas. Being Jewish, Saturday was pretty much just another day for us, although we did induldge in what's become a tradition for a lot of Jewish folks on that day: have Chinese food for dinner. Around here, if you go to a Chinese place on Christmas it'll be packed with us Hebes. Since we have two small kids, we had takeout, which is a lot easier than sitting in the restaurant.

Yesterday after breakfast Judith and I took the girls up to the Plymouth Meeting Mall to look for Alexandra's first bed (didn't buy anything) and to kill some time before their naps. Alexandra really likes the water fountain. She also likes the merry go 'round, but apparently only if Mommy rides it with her. I took her on it and she flipped out. Luckily, nobody else was on the ride so they were able to stop it early. Oh well.

We got about an inch of snow last night and it's largely melted by now. All the snow I should be clearing with my new snow blower is getting dumped elsewhere.

Both Judith and I are on vacation this week, so after dropping the kids off at daycare we were able to enjoy a nice breakfast by ourselves at the local Cracker Barrel. Since everything they serve is pretty much a heart attack on a plate, we don't go very often.

At about 1100 our new Sears clothes dryer -- replacing the one which died a couple weeks ago -- was delivered. Unfortunately, they couldn't complete the hookup because they didn't have the correct male/female coupling for the gas line. They left it up to me to get the right coupling and call back to schedule completion of the job. I was able to find the right coupler at Lowe's and schedule an installer to come out but not before Wednesday. (I could probably do it myself now, but there are certain things I don't do around the house, preferring a professional to handle them. These include anything to do with A/C current, plumbing, or gas lines. IOW, stuff that can get me killed if I foul up.)

And you can bet Sears is going to hear from me about putting the onus on me for getting the right coupler.

Secure that wireless LAN

One of the prks of my job is that vendors send us equipment to play around with. They often send us several copies of the same unit, so we can take one home and use it on a daily basis to wring it out. Hence the new Netgear WG602 wireless access point I installed this morning. Setup was pretty straightforward, although you do need to connect to the box with an Ethernet cable to login and configure the wireless settings before you can connect wirelessly.

This brings me to the main point of this post: Secure that wireless LAN!

When my iBook booted up, it detected a wireless LAN belonging to one of my neighbors. It is wide open. I was not only able to get an IP and get onto the Internet, I was able to login to his wireless router because it still had the factory default settings.

Tips for securing a wireless network:

1. When setting it up, change the default administrative password.
2. After you have your clients associated with the access point, disable SSID broadcast.
3. Enable WPA or WEP encryption.
4. Enable MAC filtering, which limits what wireless cards can associate, using their hardware addresses.
5. Disable DHCP and manually configure the IP settings of your wireless clients.
   

A wireless network by its very nature won't be as secure as a wired Ethernet, but you can make things a lot more difficult for would-be interlopers.

Optics shuffle

I had a $50 gift certificate to Cabela's and a $30 coupon good on orders for $100 or more, so last week I ordered a Bushnell Trophy red dot sight, which arrived today. The regular price was about $110, but with the gift cert and the coupon I wound up paying only about $40 after shipping.

The Bushnell sight has four different reticles: a 3 MOA dot, a 10 MOA dot, crosshairs, and a 3 MOA dot surrounded by a 65 MOA circle. So far I'm liking that last option. It looks like it'll give me a relatively recise aiming point for smaller or more distant targets, while giving me something large for fast acquistion on close-in targets.

Aside from the sight itself, the Bushnell box contained a set of vertically split 30mm rings, a sun shade extension, a lens cleaning cloth, and a polarizing filter for the objective lens. I have the sun shade on, but not the polarizer.

I decided to mount the Bushnell on my ArmaLite AR-180B and move the PK-01V over to my Bulgarian SLR-101. Since the range was closed the one time I took it out to sight it in, it's not like I'm losing a good-to-go setup.

Hopefully I'll get both rifles out to the range during next week. I'm on vacation and with the exceptions of Monday and Wednesday, I don't have anything planned yet.

More pistol packin'

To continue the packin' heat theme of this week, I found a new site of interest via Geeks With Guns. Check out OpenCarry.org for information on which states allow open (i.e., not concealed) carry of a firearm.

10 Steps for Securing Your MS Windows PC

On an email list to which I subscribe we're having a disucssion about spyware. I contributed a post with ten things you can do to prevent your PC from getting infected with malicious software. Here's the meat of that post:

1. Run Windows Update regularly; if your version of Windows support automatic update checking, make sure it's enabled.
2. 2. Do not use Internet Explorer as your browser, unless you are viewing a site which requires it. Use Mozilla, Firefox, or Opera instead. I use Firefox. By not using IE, you'll prevent most spyware and web-borned viruses from getting onto your system.
3. Install the Google Toolbar for IE, because it includes an excellent pop-up blocker, for when you must use IE.
4. Run an antivirus program and keep it updated. I use and recommend the free personal version of AVG Antivirus.
5. Use a hosts file to prevent your PC from loading spyware sites.
6. If you are on broadband use a hardware firewall. Routers that sit between your PC and a cable modem or DSL connection can do a lot to protect your machine. I've had good luck with Netgear equipment.
7. Don't use Outlook Express for email. It's a virus trap. Use something else -- Mozilla Mail, Thunderbird, or Eudora.
8. Don't open unexpected file attachments which you receive in email.
9. Install and run Spybot Search & Destroy and Lavasoft Ad-Aware to clean up spyware. Spybot includes an "immunize" feature which can prevent known spyware from getting installed in the first place. Both can be downloaded from download.com.
10. If you are using a PC with Windows NT, 2000, or XP, your regular user account should not be a "computer administrator." Rather, setup a separate account as a "limited user." That way if malicious software does get onto your computer its impact will be minimized.
    

Top States in Absolute Numbers of CCW Permits

We've done percentages, now let's do actual numbers. The top 5 states for number of adults with licenses to carry a concealed firearm are:

1. Pennsylvania: 525,600
2. Florida: 332,400
3. Indiana: 302,000
4. Washington: 225,200
5. Tennessee: 160,000

Source.

Go PA!

If you think a 12 gauge pump isn't enough...

...check out this:



To paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson, "When you absolutely, positively need to kill every MFer in the room, accept no substitute!"

Supposed Amazon.com/Million Moms Link

There's a rumour floating around that Amazon.com has somehow "joined" with the Milliom Mom March this holiday season and is supporting the MMM's goals. The origin of this appears to be an Amazon.com affiliate link on the MMM's home page (which I won't deign to link to).

The Amazon affiliate program is open to any person or organization that signs up for it and places the links to whatever they're selling on their web page. It's a big part of Amazon's business model. I can do it, pro-gun groups can do it, and so can anti-gun groups.

If Amazon was "joining" with MMM, then certainly there would be a press release to that effect on Amazon's site. There isn't one; I checked.

Examples of pro-RKBA sites who participate in the Amazon.com affiliate program:

http://www.lneilsmith.com/

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/

http://www.keepandbeararms.com/

So does this mean that Amazon is "joining" with pro-RKBA forces?

Unless someone can point me to something more concrete, I'm calling B.S. on this one.

Edit: Doh! I forgot I already posted about this. Oh well. I'll leave this up since I go into more detail in this post. I plead too much Knob Creek tonight.

Follow up on CCW %s

Here's a follow up post by Ken, breaking the figures down by "red" and "blue" states.

Here's a Red and Blue assessment of those numbers.

7.45% - Red - South Dakota
6.79% - Red - Indiana
6.76% - Blue - Pennsylvania
5.23% - Blue - Connecticut
x.xx% - Red - Georgia (guessed in)
x.xx% - Blue - New Hampshire (guessed in)
5.12% - Blue - Washington
4.34% - Red - Idaho
4.10% - Red - Utah
3.86% - Blue - Oregon
3.45% - Red - Tennessee
3.15% - Red - Alabama
2.72% - Red - Florida
2.71% - Red - Kentucky
2.67% - Red - Wyoming
2.41% - Blue - Maine
2.18% - Red - Arkansas
2.11% - Red - Virginia
1.94% - Red - West Virginia
1.76% - Red - Arizona
1.75% - Red - Oklahoma
1.70% - Red - Montana
1.70% - Blue - Michigan
1.62% - Red - Texas
1.39% - Red - South Carolina
1.34% - Red - North Dakota
1.00% - Red - North Carolina
0.86% - Red - Mississippi
0.62% - Red - Louisiana
0.58% - Red - Nevada
0.45% - Blue - Minnesota
0.36% - Red - Missouri
0.33% - Red - Ohio
0.20% - Red - Colorado
0.17% - Red - New Mexico

Now the REALLY interesting stuff.

Red States

Total licensees among the Shall Issue states:
1,870,368

Total population living in True Right To Carry states:
648,818 (0.22 percent)

Total population living in Shall Issue states:
141,766,564 (48.84 percent)

Total population living in May Issue states:
2,944,062 (1.01 percent)

Total population living in No Issue states:
4,462,798 (1.54 percent)

Blue States

Total licensees among the Shall Issue states:
1,208,878

Total population living in True Right To Carry states:
619,107 (0.21 percent)

Total population living in Shall Issue states:
43,272,643 (14.91 percent)

Total population living in May Issue states:
78,406,558 (27.01 percent)

Total population living in No Issue states:
18,125,843 (6.24 percent)

Ken Grubb
Bellevue, WA

Bogus Amazon.com/Million Moms Rumor

Earlier today I was forwarded an alert from the "US Sportsmen's Alliance" containing the statement that Amazon.com has "joined forces with the Million Mom March" for the holiday season. This didn't pass my smell test, so I checked both Amazon's and the Million Misguided Mommie's websites and found no reference to Amazon "joining" with the MMM. The Amazon link on the MMM site is an affiliate link.

Among other organizations which I've seen with an Amazon affiliate link is JPFO.

Spreading rumors like this one does our cause no good whatsoever.

Welcome InstaPundit Readers

w00t! I got Instalanched!

Welcome InstaPundit readers. I hope you poke around some more and come back.

Percentage of Adults With Carry Permits in "Shall Issue" States

I am reproducing in its entirety a post by Ken Grubb which appeared this morning on the PA-CCW mailing list. This ranks each of the "shall issue" CCW states by the percentage of adults who have a permit to carry a concealed firearm.

After crunching through the 2000 Census and 2003 Census estimates, the numbers in Chris Bird's Fourth Edition "The Concealed Handgun Manual", some official sources online which are a little more current, and filling in a few gaps from a 1998 CCRKBA report, the winners are:

Percent of Adults with a License to Carry in each Shall Issue State

7.45% South Dakota
6.79% Indiana
6.76% Pennsylvania
5.23% Connecticut
5.12% Washington
4.34% Idaho
4.10% Utah
3.86% Oregon
3.45% Tennessee
3.15% Alabama
2.72% Florida
2.71% Kentucky
2.67% Wyoming
2.41% Maine
2.18% Arkansas
2.11% Virginia
1.94% West Virginia
1.76% Arizona
1.75% Oklahoma
1.70% Montana
1.70% Michigan
1.62% Texas
1.39% South Carolina
1.34% North Dakota
1.00% North Carolina
0.86% Mississippi
0.62% Louisiana
0.58% Nevada
0.45% Minnesota
0.36% Missouri
0.33% Ohio
0.20% Colorado
0.17% New Mexico <-- Slight correction 12/22/04, per Ken Grubb

Honorable mentions go to Georgia and New Hampshire. These are "old wave" Shall Issue states--IOW, pre Florida. Because issuance is scattered among many local agencies, no one in either Georgia or New Hampshire is collecting statewide numbers on how many folks are packing. Seems reasonable to place 'em somewhere between the two statistical extremes among the other "old wave" states (South and North Dakota). However, if I were a bettin' man I'd put 'em near the top, and probably above Washington.

Total licensees among the Shall Issue states (excluding Georgia and New
Hampshire):
3,079,246

Total population living in True Right To Carry states (Alaska and Vermont):
1,267,925 (0.44 percent)

Total population living in Shall Issue states:
185,039,207 (63.75 percent)

Total population living in May Issue states:
81,350,620 (28.03 percent)

Total population living in No Issue states:
22,588,641 (7.78 percent)

Ken Grubb
Bellevue, WA

Edit: Welcome to new readers coming in via Instapundit (and thanks to Mike for suggesting I edit this post). If you liked this post, you may also find these older posts interesting:

• Happy Chanukah
• Five days to go ....

Also, I'd like to draw your attention to The Shooter's Bar(SM), my online list of pro-RKBA attorneys. I hope you enjoy your time here and stop back again.

Static IP Back Online

Whatever routing problem I experienced on Sunday appears to have worked itself out for now. Last night I reconfigured the SMC to use the static IP and got back online.

I ran some ping tests from my iBook and saw some packet loss and the occasional duplicate packet. The latter is an indication of hardware problems. When I re-ran the ping tests from Mail, which is on 10/100BaseT, I had no packet loss or dupes. I'm willing to bet a chocolate chip cookie that the cause of the packet loss and duplication is the craptacular Linksys Wireless-B router which I use as a WAP. (I'll keep it until is croaks, then get either an Apple AirPort or a Netgear 802.11g unit.)

10 more Gmail Invites

I got 10 more Gmail invites to give away. Previous batches of invites came in blocks of 6, perhaps the completely public debut of Gmail is in the wings. Anyhoo, if you want one, drop me a line at davemarkowitz at gmail.com.

Static IP Problems

Yesterday at about 1430 my Internet connection dumped. The modem appeared to be online -- the cable light was solid green -- but I couldn't get out. I rebooted my SMC gateway (which has the modem built-in) but this made no change.

My next step was to do a factory reset on the gateway, which changed the config from my static IP to looking for a public IP via DHCP. Once it rebooted and the changes took effect, I was able to pull a DHCP IP and get back online.

Another tester in my department experienced major packet loss on his SMC on Friday night/Sat. morning, but only when using his static IP config. When set to pull an IP via DHCP it worked fine.

Apparently, some kinks in our network still need to be hammered out.

Tonight I'll try reconfiguring my unit with the static IP config to see if I can get back online. Hopefully, whatever was causing the problem will have been resolved by then.

Valley Forge Gun Show

After the kids went down for their afternoon naps this afternoon, I snuck out to the Valley Forge Convention Center, where a fun, err, gun show was being held.

The last show I attended was a week or two after the Assault Weapons Ban sunset, and I noticed a lot more rifles with all the evil features (flash hiders, folding stocks, etc.) there today. Some vendors are still smoking dope when it comes to prices, though. For example, I saw a stainless Mini-14 GB with a $975 price tag, and another selling beat-to-hell Colt AR-15 20 round mags for $25.

I limited my purchases to some accessories:

• A pair of 1945-dated GI shoulder strap pads for my musette bag. I don't think they are repros even though they look new. They don't smell new, if you know what I mean. I wish I'd had these when I was using a musette bag as my book bag in grade school, because the unpadded straps are not too comfortable.
  
• A pair of GI M1965 trigger finger mitten shells. They should be nice and toasty this winter (I already have liners).
  
• A pair of GI 20-round M-16 mag pouches; they hold 3 each and I currently have 6 20 round M-16/AR-15 mags.
• Two NHTMG AR-15 mags dated 9/04, right after the sunset. NHTMG is the company which OEMs AR-15 mags for Colt. They were $16 each.
  
• Two boxes of American Eagle .45 ACP ball.

I was tempted by some $85 Mosins but kept my desire for more new/old rifles under control.

SMC Wireless Access Points

Yesterday and today I spent some time testing out a pair of SMC 2586W-G wireless access points. These are WAPs, not wireless routers. The main reason we're looking at them is for use with our commercial MDU product as a way to extend Ethernet coverage.

The SMCs include bridge functionality. I.e., you can create a wireless link between a pair of them in order to extend the size of a WLAN. My setup wass follows:

(Router) - (Patch cord) - (WAP) - (~75' through a couple walls) - (WAP) ---- (Laptop)

I first established the range of a single WAP then placed the second unit near the periphery of it's coverage. I then connected my laptop wirelessly to the LAN created, hopping on using the second unit. To test how robust the link would be I slammed it with traffic: SMTP; IMAP, HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP. It handled the load pretty well but I found that the units overheat easily if placed near warm equipment. When they overheat, they lock up.

If deployed with their environmental limitations kept in mind, they seem like pretty decent little boxen.

A Nation of Wimps

From Psychology Today:

Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they're breaking down in record numbers.

It's a long article but well worth reading.

Bill of Rights Day

Today, December 15th, is the anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Many folks today don't realize that without the BoR, the US Constitution would never have been ratified. During the debates over the ratification of the Constitution, opponents of a strong Federal government (the Antifederalists) were concerned that without some written declaration of rights, the Federal governement's power would grow to an oppressive extent. In contrast, the Federalists worried that by enumerating specific rights, other unenumerated rights would be seen as free to trample upon.

I'd say the Antifederalists were optimistic. Even with the safeguards enshrined in the BoR, the Federal government has morphed into something the Framers would probably rebel against, largely due to Congress's abuse of its power under the Commerce Clause, and the Federal judiciary's acquiesence. So much for a government of "limited and enumerated powers."

With that rant out of the way, I present to you the text of the Bill of Rights, including the oft-overlooked preamble:

THE PREAMBLE TO THE BILL OF RIGHTS

Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

Amendment I - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II - A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III - No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV - The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V - No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI - In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII - In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII - Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX - The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Some days you're the windshield...

...and other days you're the bug. I feel like the bug today.

It started at about 0230 when Amanda -- who generally sleeps through the night -- decided she was hungry. Although Judith got up and fed her I didn't get back to sleep for over an hour.

When my alarm clock went off at 0600 I had to drag my butt out of bed. I didn't bother shaving as I got ready for work (maybe it's time for a beard again, anyway).

As I was driving up my street to take Alexandra to daycare, I realized that I'd left my wallet at home. (Insert long string of expletives here.) So, I turned around and went back to the house to get it. I left the truck running while I went inside.

After coming back out to the truck I found that I had locked myself out, with Alexandra still inside. (Insert really long string of foul language here.)

I called Judith, who was at the daycare having just dropped off Amanda. She got home in about three minutes (the daycare is around the corner) and unlocked the truck. I was then able to drop off Alexandra and get to work without further incident.

This is the first time I ever locked myself out of a car. And yes, I'm going to get a spare key to put in my wallet.

iChat Audio Chat

iChat is the AIM-compatible IM client included with Mac OS/X. It includes an audio chat feature which I just got done using. My boss, who is a big Mac fan, saw that I was logged on and "called me." The sound quality is very good, as good as a regular phone, although I had headphones on because I'd been listening to some Allman Brothers MP3s when he called; the sound from my iBook's onboard speakers wouldn't have been as good.

"'It looks like the end of the world. Hell has come to earth"

The endgame of the Nazi soldiers in Warsaw was brutally clear: "By 1945, there will not be one Jew left in Europe." Yet, as the residents of the city's Jewish Ghetto began their desperate, doomed 27-day uprising against systematic slaugher, one young woman hiding in a lice-infested, bomb-blasted bunker bagan to record a diary of the last days.

Written from her underground hideout, while fighting raged all around, the six-page journal has only just been unearthed from archives in an Israeli museum. It is now being put on display for the first time at the Ghetto Fighters' House in western Gaililee as the sole surviving contemporary chronicle of life during the 1943 urban insurrection. It begins five days into the revolt and describes in harrowing detail how she and 45 fellow Jews in the shelter are starving, terrified and awaiting certain death.

Read the rest here.

Never Again.

It followed me home

Honest, I just followed me home.

My Compaq laptop has been having problems charging its battery lately. I need a laptop when I do my side consulting work. So ... I picked up an Apple G4 iBook today at Microcenter, where they were running some good deals.

The iBook that followed me home has these features:

• 12.1" screen
• 256 megs of RAM, upgradeable to 1.25 GB
• 1.2GHz G4 CPU
  
• 30 GB HDD
• DVD-ROM/CD-R drive
• Airport Extreme 802.11g wireless NIC
• 10/100 Ethernet
• 56k modem
• Mac OS 10.2.3 Panther

It's nice and light and the keyboard is pretty good. The layout is taking some getting used to, as is the UI. But it's extremely nice to have the killer Mac OS GUI but still be able to drop to a Bash prompt.

So far, I've installed several familiar apps: Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org 1.1.3, Gimp, and X11 (upon which OO.o and the Gimp rely). The Mac came with AppleWorks and a 30 day demo of MS Office for Mac which I'll probably delete, plus the various Apple iThings like iTunes, iPhoto, etc.

Since the Compaq is still useful as long as there's an AC outlet handy, it will be re-purposed as Judith's "upstairs PC." I just need to clean some stuff off it first. And Bagend will remain used as my desktop but I'm thinking of also making it my mail and file server. It has plenty of horsepower for the server job and can be kept secure, since it's running SuSE Linux.

Limiting the tenure of Federal judges

Federal judges receive lifetime appointments to the bench. The rationale behind this is that once they are confirmed they will be no longer beholden to political influence, since they don't have to worry about impressing either their appointors or the electorate.

The down side to lifetime tenure is that it's damn near impossible to get rid of a bad judge. The sole remedy for doing so is impeachment. When was the last time you heard of a Federal judge getting impeached? I thought so.

Also, because judges naturally want to be replaced with someone ideologically similar when they retire, they often stay on the job longer than they should, hoping for a president who shares their political philosophy to be elected and who can then appoint a successor.

So, this morning on Findlaw, I read with interest the article "Life Tenure for Federal Judges: Should It Be Abolished?," by Edward Lazarus. He discussed this issue in more detail than I have here, and proposes a Constitutional amendment to replace lifetime appointments with terms lasting 18 years, which cannot be renewed. If you have the slightest interest in this, check it out.

Penn State recommends against IE

Wow. Penn State's IT department is now recommending that you use something other than Internet Explorer, due to the unending flow of IE vulnerabilities. When a major university is telling its students to not use a Microsoft product, you can tell there is a real backlash brewing.

Babylon5 Theatrical Movie

I just saw this courtesy of /. The first B5 theatrical movie begins filming in April.

Best. Sci-fi. Series. Ever.

Happy Chanukah

Today is the first full day of Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, commemorating the successful rebellion of the Jews against their Hellenic overlords and the subsequent miracle in which the Temple's one day supply of oil lasted for eight days. (There's a good overview here.)

At least in the US, Chanukah has largely become the "Jewish Christmas," a commercialized holiday devoted to giving and receiving gifts. But there is a much deeper significance to the story, even if you don't believe in the miracle of the oil lasting for eight days.

The Maccabees -- the Jewish rebels who tossed the Greeks out on their posteriors -- didn't win with pleas for tolerance or even harsh language. It was an armed rebellion. Too many Jewish Americans gloss over this fact during all the holiday shopping, menorah lighting, and wolfing down potato pancakes.

The point that American Jews need to take to heart from Chanukah is that sometimes the government is not here to help and the only way left to preserve our freedom is through force. That means the willingness and means to use force. In 2004, the means of force are firearms and that's why it pisses me off to no end that so many Jewish Americans support gun control, especially in light of the most blatant act of antisemitism in history -- the Shoah (Holocaust) -- being a mere 59 years ago.

Obviously not all Jews in the US support gun control (me being an obvious example) but I'd say the majority of us do, and that kind of historical blindness will only serve to come back and bite us in the rear end.

Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 Available

The hackers at Mozilla.org released Thunderbird 1.0 to the world today. Since Mozilla.org wasn't as bogged down as it was when Firefox 1.0 was released, I downloaded and installed it on my Dell Latitude this afternoon. If I run into anything funky I'll make note of it here.

Remember Pearl Harbor

Never forget.

Feedback on 1&1

Reader Brett E. sent me the following email:

Hi Dave,

I have had a vanity site up for a few weeks on their Linux Hosting - Home package. I was primarily attracted to cheap too. $5/month and it included a domain registration. So far, no problems.

Hope this helps a little.

Brett E.

Thanks! Anybody else? Post a comment here and share your experiences.

It was only a matter of time

I noticed the other day that I'm starting to receive a bit of spam in my Gmail account. So far, Google's filters are catching them all and dumping them into the spam folder. Hopefully, it won't become the torrent that I get in my other accounts at Yahoo!, building-tux.com, and davemarkowitz.net.

Speaking of Gmail, I have one invite left. If you want it send a message to me at davemarkowitz at gmail.com.

Blocking ads and parasites with a HOSTS file

My friend Todd sent me a copy of the HOSTS file that you can download here. In the creators' words:

The Hosts file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. This file is loaded into memory at startup, then Windows checks the Hosts file before it queries any DNS servers, which enables it to override addresses in the DNS. This prevents access to the listed sites by redirecting any connection attempts back to the local machine. Another feature of the HOSTS file is it's ability to block other applications from connecting to the Internet, as long the the entry exists.

I loaded it onto my work laptop and will use it for a little while, then see what Spybot and Ad Aware turn up. But it looks promising.

1And1 Internet?

Anybody out there use 1And1 Internet for their web hosting? I'm happy with Pair but 1And1 is cheap. A guy at work has some stuff hosted with 1And1 and is happy, but I'm looking for a larger sample.

Rats, foiled again

Not only was I less successful last night that I'd hoped for, today I got screwed out of a good time at the range. I called up the place where I shoot and got their ansering machine. It said their winter hours were Friday, Saturday, and Sunday 9:00 - 4:30. So, I expected they'd be open.

Wrong. I got there only to find a sign on the door to the range house indicating that they are closed during the week during buck season. I.e., today and next week. (Insert long string of expletives here.)

I figured that since I was already halfway there, I might as well take a ride up to Cabela's in Hamburg, since I knew there'd be things I need that I could pick up. I walked out of the store with:

• A spare magazine for my Savage 93GL .22 Mag.
• A .30 caliber Bore Snake
• Two .50 caliber ammo cans
• Two boxes of Ultramax .223 55 grain FMJ remanufactured ammo
• A Cabela's teddy bear for Amanda
• A chocolate bar

So the day wasn't a complete waste.

Forget Lysol, get out the Raid

After much dicking about last night with Spybot, Ad Aware, Norton Antivirus, and even Knoppix, we would up using the HP system restore option to clear up my neighbor's PC.

I'd had high hopes for Knoppix using the captive-NTFS option to give me r/w access to the hard disk, which would've allowed me to delete the corrupted Temporary Internet Files, but I couldn't get it to work. I need to experiment with it on my own hardware and see what I need to do to get it running, because it's potentially a very valuable tool.

Time to break out the Lysol

After dinner tonight I'm going over to a neighbor's house to disinfect his PC. It's been infected with Download.Trojan and who knows what else. Apparently, NAV has detected it but can't delete it. So today I updated my PC Toolkit USB flash drive with the latest versions of Spybot, Ad Aware, Trend Micro's system disinfection tool, among other things. I'll also bring over my Knoppix 3.6 CD to run f-prot, in case the box is really fouled up. This should be interesting.

Coincidentally, Slashdot is running a couple of pertinent articles today, here and here. In light of some of the comments posted to the second article, I think I need to print up some flyers and do some advertizing. I can always use a few more bucks.

Time off

The end of the year is rapidly approaching and I have five and a half vacation days that I need to use or I'll lose them. So, I'm starting off by taking off on Friday, seeing as the weather forecast looks decent. Naturally, I intend to go to the range.

I have several guns that need shooting:

• The Ruger Police Service Six revolver which I bought a few months ago but still haven't put a single round through.
• The AR-180B and its newly installed brass deflector and red dot sight.
• My Savage Mark IIGL .22 LR and 93GL .22 Mag bolt actions, both with newly-mounted scopes.
• The Bulgarian AK.

I'll probably limit myself to the Ruger, AR, and AK this range trip. I'll try to fit in another trip later in the month so I can sight in the rimfires. It looks like my load of choice for the .22 Mag will be CCI Maxi-Mag JHPs. They shoot accurately in my rifle, are readily available, and should work well on varmints; I'm hoping to take the rifle woodchucking sometime. (A friend's in-laws have a farm where they need to keep the 'chucks under control and he said I can come help.)

For the Mark IIGL, I bought a couple boxes of CCI .22 LR subsonic HPs which I'm hoping shoot well. If they do shoot accurately, they will make nice, quiet small game loads, should I ever get back into hunting.

Uh oh

I tried to make a backup of my mail server last night using e-Smith's built-in "backup to desktop" utility. It's supposed to backup all your data in a .tgz file that gets downloaded onto the desktop machine you're logged into the admin interface from. Well, it didn't work. I have about 7 GB of data on the box and after running for a few hours, the utility crapped out on me.

So, it looks like I'll need to build a replacement mail server sooner rather than later. My initial plans are to setup another machine running a fairly stripped-down SuSE 9.2 Pro with Postfix as the MTA and an as-yet-to-be-chosen IMAP implementation. As I mentioned recently, I'm considering running a Citadel BBS on the new box, but that will probably come later, after I had more time to experiment with it.

Still, mail's current uptime as of this writing is 312 days, 17 hours, and 45 minutes. The box has been quietly humming along since the last power failure we had that outlasted my UPS.

Jonatahn Hassell Posting Again

Fellow Daynoter and author of neat computer books, Jonathan Hassell, is posting. I noticed he has a Blogspot blog when going through my referral links.

Check out his blog here.

Lycos Anti-Spam Screensaver

This is an interesting approach, especially for an established Internet business like Lycos. It seems that Lycos is planning to make available a screen saver which when active, will flood websites linked to in spam emails with data requests, in order to suck up their bandwidth, and hopefully dissuade the site owners' from hiring spammers to promote their wares. In other words, it's a corporate-sponsored DDOS attack against spammers and their backers.

I have to wonder about the wisdom of this. Unintended consequences and all that. But, you wouldn't see this kind of measure if otherwise legit ISPs weren't desperate to stem the flow of spam.

It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

Citadel BBS

I started playing around with the Citadel BBS package today. One of the mailing lists to which I subscribe is hosted on Yahoo! Groups. Periodically, we get dissatisfied with the way they handle things. In the past, I've created shell accounts on my mail server as a primitive backup to the YG listserv, but hadn't installed anything like a real mailing list manager.

Citadel may be a viable alternative, especilly since the list in question is a continuation of a Fidonet echo. Citadel offers not only an old-school BBS experience, but also provides POP, IMAP and authenticated SMTP service. The SMTP service can be integrated with Spamassassin, too. Even if we decide not to migrate the list over to Citadel running on one of my boxes, I may use it for my mail server software when I build a new box for that purpose.

MS Using Pirated Software In House?

I found this one via Mad Ogre:

Chicago (IL) - Members of a former software cracking group have discovered that audio files created with one of its cracked programs are distributed with each copy of the Windows XP operating system, possibly exposing Microsoft to a large-scale copyright infringement lawsuit.

Oops.

If true, somebody is in for a world of shit.

Weekend recap

Yes, I've been lax about posting for the past few days, so I may as well include updates for several things I've written about recently.

I now have a brass deflector on my AR-180B. Instead of the piece of PVC I mentioned in my last post on the topic, I wound up using a rubber stopper as the raw material. Aside from matching the receiver better, it was easier to work and the base shape was closer to what I needed. I'd wanted to get to the range today but the weather was crummy.

Thursday we went down to Aberdeen, MD for Turkey Day. I managed to not stuff myself to the point where I couldn't move. I used to do that on Thanksgiving but I've gotten away from that the past few years.

On Black Friday I made an impulse purchase of a Green Rifle. An Arsenal, Inc. SLR-101SG1, to be precise. (I made the mistake of going over to Surplus City and not leaving my Master Card home.) It's a Bulgarian-made semiauto Kalashnikov with US-made green synthetic furniture, and a milled receiver. Most AKs have receivers made from stamped sheet steel. However, the first mass-produced AKs had receivers milled from solid billets of steel. My new toy is of this type. The SLR-101s were originally imported with thumbhole stocks and could take only single-stack magazines, not regular AK mags. However, Arsenal, Inc. modifies them to a proper configuration by replacing enough of the imported parts with US parts to meet the requirements of 18 USC 922(r). As such, my rifle was also modified to accept standard AK magazines. It came with a single Bulgarian made 5 round plastic "waffle" mag, but I have a bunch of 20 and 30 rounders, plus a 75 round drum.

By all accounts, the Bulgarian rifles are top-notch. The fit and finish on mine is head and shoulders above any Chinese AK or the Century Arms Romanian hack jobs that are most common in the US. The Bulgarian rifles are also supposed to be among the most accurate AKs. Compared with the 4 MOA that you can expect from most Kalashnikov sporters, the Bulgarians can be expected to halve that. (I sure hope so.) A report will follow when I get it out to the range. I have some vacation days to be used by the end of the year so I may blow off a day or two in the near future with the intent of going shooting.

Aside from the SLR-101, I also picked up four OEM Ruger Mini-14 2o round magazines at Surplus City. Ever since the now-defunct Assault Weapons Ban was enacted, civlian-legal factory Mini-14 mags holding more than 5 rounds have been as scarce as hen's teeth. The cheapest I saw Ruger mags for since I got my Mini-14 last year was $75 for one mag. Even with the sunset of the AWB, Ruger is sticking to its policy of selling them only to government agencies. However, as departments sell off older rifles and mags, they make their way onto the market. And so, I was able to get four mags that while not new-in-wrap, look almost unused, for $25 each.

With my acquisitions I was presented with a problem, though. That is, how to pay for it all. I'd resigned myself to putting my Saiga AK up for sale on THR and TFL, but was able to get a better deal. Basically, I swapped it, along with four mags (I have plenty more) and 120 rounds of 7.62x39 for carpentry work at the house by a friend. Since I'd otherwise be paying him money, bartering the rifle for his work in effect paid for my new rifle, and I got some much-needed work done back at the house.

Happy Thanksgiving...

...to all my American readers, and anyone else who wants to join in.

A brief list of things for which I'm thankful this year:

• I'm thankful for my second daughter, who was born in July.
• I'm thankful for the love and support of my family.
• I'm thankful I live in the greatest country which has ever existed.
• I'm thankful I was able to transfer into a better job with the same company, also back in July.
• I'm thankful that the PTB allowed our men and women to finally take off their gloves and kick some butt in Fallujah.
• I'm thankful that we were able to get the AWB to sunset. (My wallet isn't, though. :-0 )
• I'm thankful that prospects for a gun industry lawsuit protection law are brighter now after the results of this November's elections.
• I'm thankful we flushed the Johns.

Memo to the Left

I got this tonight in email. I wish I had written it:

To Michael Moore: Sit down and shut up... And do something about
your hair. And the ball cap.

To Jimmy Carter: big mistake to sit down and shut up next to
Michael Moore at the convention. Spend more time with drywall and
the glue gun.

To Tom Daschle: If you lean too far to the left, voters will tend to
lean right for a while, but will eventually push you out of the
boat.

To Al Gore: Please, sir, before it's too late ... Seek an
experienced mental health professional. You're beginning to make
Christopher Lloyd in "Back To The Future" look downright Rotarian-
like.

To Dan Rather: Enjoy your early retirement. The next memo you get
will be real.

To the DNC: Your platform must not have lurched far enough to the
left. Keep it tilting southpaw. Read more Marx. P.S. Keep
insulting the voters with your moral and intellectual condescension
too. It goes well with that warp speed registering of folks in
plaid wool blankets pushing shopping carts. Lovely constituency.

To Bill Clinton: Thanks for hitting the campaign trail for Kerry.
Some of us needed a reminder of what we were trying to avoid.

To Hillary Clinton: PLEASE run in '08. The Heartland will be hungry
for more hors d'oeuvres by then.

To the MTV Kidz: Vote or die - or not. Like, whatever, dude.

To John "Breck Girl" Edwards: Can you help Michael Moore and Whoopi
Goldberg with a little basic grooming?

To Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Bono, etc.: We still like your
music, but if you ever want to sell another record, just sing and
don't go where you don't know. We don't pay to hear Colin Powell or
Condie Rice do air guitar either.

To George Soros: Want to buy an election? Not in *MY* America, you
monomaniacal, socialistic buffoon.

To the Mainstream Media: Congratulations on getting Kerry at least
thirty more electoral votes than he would have gotten without your
covert support. Imagine how badly he would have lost if you were
actually unbiased.

To the United Nations: Your worst nightmare will continue for
another four years. Deal with it.

To Howard "I Have A Scream" Dean: stick with something you
understand; like proctology for instance.

To Richard Holbrooke: learn to tell a joke. Learn to laugh at one.
Gawd.

To John Zogby: monster.com will post your resume.

To Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Robert Scheer, and your minor league
imitators, Greg Plast and Mark Morford: you have no red states
readers.

To Teddy Kennedy: sigh, it's still the blonde in the pond that
leads your highlight reel.

To Ron Reagan "Junior:" Do you have talent for anything?
Nexxxxxxxxxxxxxxt ...?

To the Exit Pollsters: As long as you keep skewing the results in an
attempt to influence the election, we'll keep lying to you. If you
quit, so will we. Deal?

To Osama bin Laden: Bring it on, you sonofabitch, What's that? The
only attack you can muster now is on videotape? Hmm... No surprise
there, I guess.

To Teresa HEINZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Kerry: teaching is a real job.
The Teachers Union, who supported your husband, can clarify any
continuing confusion. Oh, and it's not a "real job" to sleep with a
third generation ketchup heir and then cash the plane crash check.

To the European Union: See message for Michael Moore.

To Terry McAuliffe: See message for Dan Rather. And pay a little
attention to what Zell Miller reminds us of: 20 Democratic senators
from the south in 1960 and only six from the GOP. Today, 22
Republicans and four Dems.

To MoveOn.org: See message for George Soros

To James Carville: you're the only guy who seems to get it; and
you're very smart. Good luck finding an audience that's neither
medicated nor mendacious.

And finally, to John Kerry: Thank you for reporting for duty. You
are hereby dismissed.

Bwahahahahahaaa!!!!!!!!

Let it snow

The snowblower I ordered a week and a half ago came today. That's pretty fast service from Troy-Bilt. Now I hope we get a ton of snow this year, but of course Murphy's Law dictates that we'll get zip.

I should go do a snow dance.

Roll over, Amanda. And other stuff.

The big news in the Markowitz household is that Amanda is now able to roll over onto her back from her stomach. She'll be five months old on December 6th (Alexandra's second birthday).

It's interesting to see how each kid is developing differently. Alexandra had to be delivered 3 weeks early, and it shows. Developmentally, she's a bit behind most other kids her age. In contrast, I won't be surprised if Amanda is walking by the time she's one year old.

Otherwise, not much else is exciting. Alexandra, Amanda, and I all had colds over the weekend but they seem to be going away now. And my back was acting up again on Saturday, which prevented me from doing much.

I did finally find something to make a brass deflector for my AR-180B, though. I was at Lowe's yesterday picking up a few things and noticed an end plug for PVC pipes in the plumbing aisle. It's basically a threaded cylinder with a square nub on the end. There's sufficient material in it to allow me to machine a hump like on an M16-A2 receiver out of it. I'll then epoxy it to the AR-180B's receiver behind the ejection port. After it's on and tested I'll paint it black or grey to match the metal. This should keep hot brass out of my face.

Oh, I think I forgot to mention about ordering and receiving a scope mount for the AR-180B. One of my friends has an AR-180B and has a red dot sight mounted on it using a B-Square mount. It's a slick setup and something I've been thinking about for some time. MSRP on the B-Square mount is ~$150, which has been the major reason I hadn't bought one. Well, I found it on sale at MidwayUSA for $99 after I saw my friend's rifle, so I ordered one.

As with previous Midway orders, it came fast. I got a set of 30mm medium height scope rings, which place the centerline of the optics a little bit higher than the iron sights. I put my PK-01V, previously resident on my AK, on the ArmaLite. It is a nice setup which hopefully I'll get to try out soon.

Aside from the B-Square mount, I also picked up two sets of high rings for 1" scope, to be used to mount optics on my two Savage rimfire rifles. (Also made by B-Square, and also on sale.) With low mounts, the objective bell of a scope is fouled by the rear sight on these rifles, and the scope winds up being mounted too far forward. The high mounts should allow me to set them up with correct eye relief.

Linux Printing, Again

I've ranted in the past about the sorry state of Linux printing. Sure, if I plug an HP DeskJet into a parallel port, setting up printing is going to be pretty easy. But USB printers seem to give difficulties. I finally got my Samsung ML-1710 working on Bagend but had to resort to the same hack I used last time. Namely, using a the ppd file (driver) for the older ML-1210.

This is especially annoying since YaST auto-detected the printer as an ML-1710 and set it up using the ML-1710 ppd file. When testing the connection to the printer, everything came up ok. But trying to actually get any output was an exercise in frustration. Doing a tail -f /var/log/cups/error_log wasn't illuminating, either.

I tried using the setup program downloaded from Samsung's website and struck out with that as well. Finally, I decided to try setting it up in YaST and manually selecting the ML-1210 ppd, and it worked.

Grrrr.

Ammo Day Purchase

I just did my part for Ammo Day and placed an order with Natchez Shooters Supply for the following:

• 200 rounds of CCI .22 WMR Mini Mags
• 200 rounds of CCI .22 LR Subsonic HPs
• 50 rounds of S&B .357 158 grain JSPs
• 1 Butler Creek Hotlips 25 round mag for my Ruger 10/22

Fun times ahead!

National Ammo Day

Neat feature in Konsole

I just discovered the feature "Send input to all sessions" in Konsole, the KDE terminal app. Konsole is a tabbed terminal app -- a replacement for xterm -- that's part of KDE. It allows you to open more than one terminal session in the same window, much like Firefox allows you to open multiple tabs in your browser.

Well, if you open more than one terminal session withing Konsole and then go to View > Send Input to All Sessions, you can type a command in one terminal and have it entered in all the terminals you have open within that Konsole window.

A scenario where this could be useful is if you are using Konsole to ssh into multiple servers to check out log files. E.g., supposed you're maintaining three different mail servers. You could ssh into each one of them, each in it's own tab, activate the Send Input to All Sessions feature, then in one tab enter the command "tail -f /var/log/mail". This would allow you to easily switch back and forth between tabs and see what's going on. Likewise, if you needed to apply a patch to multiple boxes, you could login to them and issue a command to fetch the patch from a repository and install it.

Neat stuff!

New version of AVG Antivirus

I mentioned the free AVG Antivirus program the other day but didn't make it clear that version 7 of the free, personal edition of AVG Antivirus is out now. Updates for version 6 are going to be discontinued by the end of the year. Version 7 can be downloaded at:

http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

If you are running AVG6, I suggest uninstalling it then installing v7, then running the update to ensure that the signature files are up to date.

This just in!

NEW BRA

Dr. Calvin Rickson, a scientist from Texas A&M University has invented a bra that keeps women's breasts from jiggling and prevents the nipples from pushing through the fabric when cold weather sets in.

At a news conference announcing the invention, a large group of men took Dr. Rickson outside and beat the shit out of him.

An Easy Way to Disable/Enable Windows Scripting Host

Windows Scripting Host is a component of MS Windows 9x, 2K and XP that allows Visual Basic Script programs to run. VBS files can be used to automate tasks in Windows, but they most commonly encountered by home users as viruses. So, by disabling WSH when it's unneed you can help secure your PC.

Symantec now has a free program called "noscript.exe" which you can download to your PC and which allows you to disable or reenable WSH with a couple of mouse clicks. Grab it here (and read Symantec's article for some background).

Note that Windows Update won't work with WSH disabled, so you'll need to turn it back on when you patch your PC.

I'm So Glad

A number of classic rock and roll groups have announced reunion tours in recent years, but none is more surprising or potentially more exciting to fans than the news that legendary power rock trio Cream is getting back together for a series of concerts.

British newspapers are reporting the trio will reunite for a string of shows next year at London's Royal Albert Hall, the first time they have played together since the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony in 1993.

Original story here.

Wow. This is HUGE. I've been a huge Clapton fan since the mid-80s and naturally got into Cream. If their reuniting for a series of dates in London, is it too much to ask that they'll see how well they're received and actually do a tour? I've seen Clapton live twice and wore out Live Cream Volume 2 on tape. To actually be able to see them live ... DAMN!

Don't be shy...

...post a comment! I appreciate comments to my posts and feel that input from my readers can help make this site better. If you have something pertinent to say, sound off!

Learning Bash scripting

One area of knowledge that I am deficient in is programming. I had a year of BASIC in high school and a term of COBOL in college, but haven't done any real programming since then. There have been times when the ability to create a script to automate a task would've come in handy, e.g., when I've had to reconfigure a large number of routers in advance of a deadline.

I therefore have been working my way through the Bash Guide for Beginners, one of the longer "guides" published by the Linux Documentation Project. So far, I'm quite impressed with it. It's well-written and generally pretty clear. I downloaded the Bash Guide in PDF format and found it put together very professionally -- with bookmarks, links, etc.

Check it out.

POP access to Gmail

Google is rolling out pop access to Gmail. I just noticed that I have it. If you have a Gmail account, once you're given POP access you'll see a "New Features" link at the top of the page. First, you'll need to enable POP access in your Gmail account settings. Then you'll need to configure your POP client appropriately -- Google is using non-standard ports and is requiring SSL connections. The server settings you'll need are:

Incoming Mail (POP3) Server – requires SSL:	pop.gmail.com Use SSL: Yes Port: 995
Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server – requires TLS:	smtp.gmail.com (use authentication) Use Authentication: Yes Use STARTTLS: Yes (some clients call this SSL) Port: 465 or 587
Account Name:	your Gmail username (including '@gmail.com')
Email Address:	your full Gmail email address (username@gmail.com)
Password:	your Gmail password

Combat video from Fallujah

The source of this video is "The Mac Allan," a member at AR15.com. It's a Windows Media file and about 4 megs. It's loud, so turn down your speakers if you're at work. (Lot's of shooting and cussing, but no visible gore.)

Saving my back this winter

My long-time readers (all 3 of you) will know that I have a bad back, which was exacerbated when I injured it on the job back in April. So, with winter coming up and the prospect of shoveling snow, I felt it was high time that I got a snow blower, even though putting another $600 on my Master Card wasn't something I really wanted to do. I therefore ordered a Troy-Bilt Storm 524 today. I chose a Troy-Bilt based on the experience of a friend's parents. They had a couple different pieces of equipment made by T-B (tillers, etc.) and never had any problems. Hopefully, it'll get here before our first snowfall.

I vacillated between getting a single stage unit, which would've been cheaper, and a two stage unit. I went with the latter because we sometimes do get dumped on and I wanted something which would handle deeper snow. A couple nice features of the Storm 524 are electric start and the four-cycle engine, which means I don't have to worry about a fuel/oil mixture.

Another Wireless Network Install

I installed a wireless network at the home of one of my clients this morning. I had her order the equipment -- Netgear's 802.11g wireless router/PC card NIC combo -- then after it came in scheduled the install.

It went smoothly. As expected her Compaq desktop had no problems getting online through the router. I then installed the NIC in her IBM Thinkpad 600 which runs Win98. That took a bit of fiddling but it worked fine after a little tinkering and the connection speed was fast.

I also got the chance to employ for the first time my Sandisk Cruzer Mini USB flash drive for its intended use, as a replacement for my "PC Toolkit" CD. Her Compaq desktop was exhibiting some flakiness, so I plugged the Sandisk into a front USB port on the box and installed Spybot Search & Destroy from the "antispy" folder on it. Read speed was quite fast, definitely faster than reading from a CD. Very handy.

Free Antivirus Program

If you're running Windows, you better be using an antivirus program. The one I've been using for a couple of years now with good results is the free version of Grisoft's AVG, licensed for noncommercial use. The download page is at

http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

In my experience, AVG causes less of a performance hit than Norton Antivirus or McAfee Antivirus. In combination with using something other than Outlook or Outlook Express, you'll be pretty well protected.

Configuring Outlook 2002 to display all messages as plain text

If like me, you're stuck using Microsoft Outlook XP (AKA Outlook 2002 or Outlook 10) at work, you can reduce your vulnerability to HTML-borne malware by setting it up to display all messages as plain ASCII text.

Unfortunately, doing so requires either a third-party utility or manually adding a value to the Registry. First close Outlook and make a backu of your registry. Then do (this works for Outlook XP SR1 or later):

1. Open regedit.
2. Go to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Options\Mail
3. Create a new Value Name of DWORD type called ReadAsPlain.
4. Setting the DWORD value to 1 will force all messages to be read as plain ASCII, while setting the value to 0 will allow HTML to be rendered.

G-ddamn French do it again

Foxnews is running a story here about Yasser Arafat's death, which includes a picture of his coffin being borne by a French military honor guard. By doing so, the French are literally honoring the man who has been reasonably described as the father of modern terrorism.

I think we can tell where France's sympathies lie. {spit}

Veteran's Day

To all US veterans, past and present, thank you for your service. It's appreciated.

Gmail POP access

Gmail is phasing in POP3 access. Some accounts already have it but I'm still waiting. As users are added, the "New Features" blurb will appear at the top of their browser screen.

I still have two Gmail invites left. First-come first-serve. If you want one, send me a request via email to davemarkowitz at gmail.com.

SUSE 9.2 Professional on Low End Hardware

As an experiment, I'm redoing Slacktop with SUSE 9.2 Professional. It'll be interesting to see how it runs on low end hardware (P2/366, 128 MB RAM).

More details to follow.

That blast of heat you felt ...

...was the gates of Hell opening up to give Yasser Arafat a nice, warm welcome.

May he spend all of eternity boiling in a bit vat of pig fat.

SUSE 9.2 Professional

My order of SUSE 9.2 Professional Update edition from Amazon arrived yesterday. Damn that was fast.

The box included the OS on both CDs and DVD, a nice thick system administration manual, and a SUSE sticker. The discs came in a nice plastic storage case, an improvement over the cardboard sleeve thing prior versions of SUSE came in.

After reading the fine manual's section on system upgrades, I popped in DVD1 (DVD2 contains source code and wasn't needed for the upgrade) and rebooted Bagend. On reboot it loaded from the DVD, and I selected to do an install, then a system upgrade based on the already-installed packages.

A few mouse clicks later the YaST installer started the upgrade, first by deleting the installed software and then installing the new version. Because it first had to delete all the old stuff the whole process took significantly longer than a clean install, over an hour AAMOF.

The final step of the install was to verify Internet connectivity and download any patches released since 9.2 went gold. The default mirror that SUSE YOU chose was a server located in Los Angeles. I switched this to one in Georgia, which is closer to me. This was a mistake, as YOU couldn't retrieve the list of patches from the server. After hitting the Abort button about a hundred times, it finally gave up and let me try an FTP server in Chicago, which worked fine.

Upon booting into SUSE 9.2 for the first time I noticed that it had a somewhat updated version of the Liquid theme. It's flat-out gorgeous and makes the box very Mac-like in appearance. The mechanics of the UI remain standard KDE, however. (Which is fine by me.)

SUSE detected my Samsung ML-1710 USB printer and loaded the correct PPD file. I'd tried to get it running under 9.0 after I installed it on Bagend, but couldn't get the printer to work. Now, it's installed and shows up as accepting jobs, but I'm still not getting any output. Getting the thing to work under 9.0 on Gondor was a real mofo so I'm not surprised, although I'd hoped the damn thing would work easily under 9.2 with the right PPD file. I'll get it working eventually although I may resort to using a driver and setup package I downloaded from Samsung on Monday.

Just once, I'd like to see a Linux box setup printing as easily as a Windows machine.

After the printer episode, one of the first things I noticed was that instead of separate icons on the desktop for each drive, SUSE now configures KDE with an icon labeled "My Computer." (No doubt this is intended for newbies coming over from Windows.) Clicking on My Computer opens Konqueror in file manager mode, with icons for the various drives.

As I use the system some more I'll post reports.

Firefox via BitTorrent

I was able to grab Firefox 1.0 by using BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer file distribution system. The official torrents are here.

If you don't have a BitTorrent client installed (as I didn't until this morning) you can grap the official clients here, or the Java client Azureus here.

I'm going to play some more with BitTorrent for sure. The ~5 meg Firefox download took under 10 seconds using BT. Slackware and some other Linux distros are using it to distribute ISO images install CDs. Very, very neat.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Released

The guys over at Mozilla met their release date. Firefox 1.0 is finally out!

You can get it here although the site is currently being slammed. I plan to wait until later today or maybe tomorrow before downloading it.

Wheel mouse in Slackware Current

This morning I brought in my old Logitech FirstMouse+ from home and connected it to Slacktop. As expected, Slack recognized the PS/2 mouse and I was able to use its basic functions upon logging into X. However, the mouse wheel didn't work; Slackware still requires you to manually tweak the system's config to get the wheel running.

Doing so is quite simple, though. Become root and open in /etc/X11/xorg.conf in your preferred editor. Then find the section labeled "Core Pointer" and make it look like this:

Section "InputDevice"

# Identifier and driver

Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Buttons" "5"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"

I had to had the last four lines above. The reason the option for "Buttons" is 5 is that the wheel is seen as 3 buttons -- one for each way it rotates and one for when you press it as a button.

If you have X already running you'll need to exit and restart the X server for the change to take effect.

Monday update

Yesterday morning we took the girls to the playground in Miles Park, over in Whitemarsh. Small as she is, Amanda likes being outside, and Alexandra loves running around and playing on the slides and going fast in a swing. Afterwards, she's so tired out that she takes a four-hour nap.

After getting back from the park and putting the girls down for their naps, I spent some time outside with the leaf blower and rake. We have a few trees that dump a ton of leaves on the property so it takes awhile to tidy up. Even though my leaf blower is also a vac that mulches the leaves, I put them all out for collection, rather than saving them for compost. There were a lot of pine needles mixed in and I'm concerned that using the resulting mix for mulch would kill more than just weeds.

I still haven't found my wedding band. What a PITA.

Home today

Alexandra got a cold the other day and I had to pick her up from the daycare at noon yesterday. We took her to the pediatrician later and she confirmed it seems to be a bad cold, but nothing worse. So, she needed to stay home today, something she was not at all happy about. She really enjoys going to daycare, which is run like a pre-nursery school (we refer to it as "school").

In other annoying news, my wedding band has gone AWOL. This is more than a little strange, since I generally never take it off. I noticed this morning it was gone. I'm hoping that it somehow came off in my sleep and I find it soon.

What a wonderful day.

New cable modem

We will soon be rolling out a new option for our commercial cable modem customer -- static IPs. As a member of the new product deployment group, I get to be one of the guinea pigs to beta test the product. So, tonight I brought home one of our SMC 8013s, a cable modem & router.

I was given config file to upload to the box. After doing so and connecting it in place of my Motorola SB4101, I was online with my new static IP. I have a /30 subnet, which gives me 1 IP for the WAN side, 1 for the LAN's gateway, and 2 for hosts. Not wanting to putz with my LAN's config just yet, I'm still using NAT.

Sometime next week my boss and I are going to swap modems to simulate a node move. Basically, we want to make sure that what's currently my modem will come online at his house with the same IP I'm getting here, and vice-versa for the modem he now has.

As an aside, I want to note that dyndns.org continues to give great DNS service. With a new public IP, I needed to update the "A" record for mail.building-tux.com. After logging into dyndns.org and changing the IP, the record propagated very quickly. I was able to send test emails to myself from my Gmail and Yahoo! Mail accounts within about 15 minutes.

All Your White House Are Belong To Us!

In A.D. 2004 Re-election was beginning:

John Kerry: What happen?

Theresa Heinz-Kerry: Somebody set up us the re-election.

John Edwards: We get signal.

John Kerry: What!

John Edwards: CNN turn on.

John Kerry: It's You!!

Bush: How are you gentlemen!!

Bush: ALL YOUR WHITE HOUSE ARE BELONG TO US

Bush: You are on the way to unemployment.

John Kerry: What you say!!

Bush: You have no chance to survive make your time.

Bush: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....


---Courtesy of Skunkabilly at THR.

Fifty Reasons Why...

Just go see them.

Election Day -- Finally

Finally Election Day is here and we can put this campaign behind us. Except for the inevitable legal wranglings. (frump)

I voted before work, after Judith and I dropped of the girls at daycare. I got to my polling place at about 0710 and there was already a line. My MIL works the polls at another polling site nearby and she told me that turnout was heavy.

Now there's nothing to do but wait and see how it turns out.

Computer time

If you run any kind of a server having the correct time set on the box is helpful for ensuring that items like log entries and emails are dated correctly. Even on a workstation, it's preferable to have the correct time. Often, a computer's clock will gain or lose time and you need to keep resetting it, which is a pain in the neck.

Thankfully, it's easy to automate this. Network Time Protocol provides a way to have your computer automatically keep its clock in sync with an authoritative clock, by polling an NTP server. Here in the US there are a number of publicly-accessible NTP servers. I have my machines set to access a server run by NIST, the National Institute for Standards and Technology. The page for the NIST Internet Time Service is here. On that page, NIST gives you info about NTP and links to NTP clients for Windows machines. It also provides info about how to use NTP from a Mac.

Pretty much all Unix and Unix-like OSes include an NTP client. For example, SUSE Linux includes xntp, which can be configured through YaST to start at bootup and poll an NTP server.