Fred Thompson to Announce September 6

It's official, Fred Thompson will throw his hat into the ring on September 6th.

Counter Protest

Over at The War on Guns, David Codrea is coordinating a counter-protest to Jesse Jackson's 8/28 anti-gun protest. His suggestion: buy a gun or some ammunition tomorrow while the anti-gun extremists are protesting.

Do it for the children.

Marlin 336 .30-30

I put up a post about my Marlin 336 .30-30, over on the Survival and Emergency Preparedness Blog. Please check it out.

Another Use For Parallels

Earlier this week we got a potential issue with our gateways escalated to us. A customer running a Microsoft Windows server as a VPN terminator was experiencing problems with established tunnels getting disconnected.

Unfortunately, I was out of the office when it got sent to us, so I don't yet have sufficient information to properly troubleshoot it. I'm hoping to get further details soon, but in the interim I setup Windows 2003 in a Parallels virtual machine this morning. If the customer gets back to us I can use W2K3 running on my MacBook Pro as my test box.

It's a lot more cost effective creating virtual test boxes than having to keep real servers around for testing. Not to mention, no additional space is required.

Apple's Laptop Market Share at 17.6%

Wow! According to this article on Macworld, Apple's share the of the notebook computer market has climbed to 17.6%. When you consider how many users are moving to laptops as their primary machines, this shows how much the Mac's market share is increasing.

Fred Thomspon on the RKBA

Some great commentary on New York and the Second Amendment, from Fred Thompson:

When I was working in television, I spent quite a bit of time in New York City. There are lots of things about the place I like, but New York gun laws don’t fall in that category.

Anybody who knows me knows I’ve always cared deeply about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. So I’ve always felt sort of relieved when I flew back home to where that particular civil liberty gets as much respect as the rest of the Bill of Rights.

Go read the whole thing.

Back in the office

I'm back in the office today after a vacation day on Monday and attending the PBI's Technology Law Forum yesterday.

We had family visit us over the weekend, arriving Sunday and leaving Monday morning. A good time was had by all.

As with the many other PBI CLE classes I've attended, the Tech Law Forum yesterday was very well done. There was one session which I felt was only so-so, but nothing's perfect. I was able to take care of half of my annual CLE requirement, including the ethics credit. (In PA, lawyers must take 12 hours of CLE per year, including 1 hour of ethics.)

This morning I had to do a quick test in the lab of a new feature on one of our commercial cable modems. We got word from someone testing the new firmware (not yet released to production) that it wasn't working. I tested it in the lab and it worked as expected. Shortly thereafter, we found out that the reason the new feature didn't appear to work was that the person reporting the "problem" had their modem connected to a production network, so it was automatically downgrading the box to the production firmware after a reboot. Duh.

For the past several days it's been rainy but much cooler than it was last week. It's been a nice break but it's supposed to warm up again by Friday. I'm ready for Fall.

Hmmm, need to work on this a bit

63%

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

{Via Tam.}

Changing the Default Terminal in X11.app

By default, Apple's implementation of X11 starts an xterm at launch. I wanted to change this to automatically start mrxvt instead. To do so you need to edit the file /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.

Open a terminal and then open the xinitrc file in your preferred editor, using sudo. E.g.:

$ cd /etc/X11/xinit
$ sudo vi xinitrc

You'll need to enter your password. Once the file is open look for the lines which read:

# start some nice programs

xterm &

Put a hash mark/pound sign in front of the second line above to comment it out. I've installed mrxvt using MacPorts, so to start it with a black background and green text, I entered the following line:

/opt/local/bin/mrxvt -bg black -fg green &

Then, save and quit. If you're using vi like me, you'll need to use save the file using the exclamation point to override the read-only setting on the file, e.g:

:qw!

Now my preferred terminal emulator program starts when I fire up X11 on my MacBook Pro.

mrxvt

I've been spending a fair amount of time lately in a terminal. OS X includes Terminal.app and Apple's implementation of X11 automatically starts an xterm when launched. Terminal.app is OK for working on my Mac but doesn't behave quite the same way as a regular xterm when I'm logged into a Linux box vi SSH. Neither Terminal.app nor xterm have one feature that I find very useful, tabbed windows.

I was using UniTTy for awhile but screen refreshes are slow. Awhile ago, I ran iTerm but ran into problems with how it handled different keystrokes.

So the other day I decided to give MacPorts a try and installed mrxvt, formerly known as materm. It's based on rxvt, a terminal emulator widely used on Linux systems, but adds tabs. Here's a screenshot:


Click on the pic for a larger version.

As you can see, I have it setup with the tab bar at the top using a black background with green characters. I find this color scheme easy on my eyes and is how I prefer to run terminals; the default is black characters on a white background.

So far, mrxvt seems stable and fast. the only disadvantage it has compared with Terminal.app is that I have to run X11 to use it, but otherwise it's very good so far.

Firefly

The other day I bought all fourteen episodes of Firefly from the Apple iTunes store. I've heard a lot of good things about Fireful, but so far I've not watched any of the series, nor seen the movie Serenity. So far, I've watched the first four episodes.

I am convinced that the network executives who canceled it should be fired.

Firefly is damn good. The basic premise is that the Earth got "used up," so another star system was settled, after many of its planets and moons were terraformed. After settlement, some of the core worlds in the form of "The Alliance" wanted to create a centralized government ruling the entire system. Not everyone agreed, so there was a civil war, but The Alliance prevailed. The show is set six years after the end of the war.

One very interesting thing about the show is the western motif, with a mix of high-tech next to people riding horses, and many of the costumes look like they'd fit in at the OK Corral. (This was a theme Robert Heinlein used in Time Enough for Love, by the way.) The soundtrack sounds like a western rather than SF.

A western wouldn't be complete without gunplay. There's in interesting mix of firearms. In one episode I saw side by side shotguns, a Sako TRG sniper rifle (I think that's what it was), wheelguns, and pump shotguns.

What really makes the show work, of course, are the strong characters and interesting plotlines. Technology -- whether 19th C. or 26th C. -- provides a backdrop to the story. It isn't the story itself.

I also find it interesting that the heroes of the show are those who opposed the strong central government. Coming out of Hollywood, a bastion of leftist groupthink, that's quite refreshing.

After I watch all of Firefly's episodes I will be buying Serenity.

Hot Saturday

Well, I wound up not going to the range today. It was already in the mid-80s and humid by 10:00 AM, with the forecast being for mid-90s by the afternoon. Blech. I was planning to go to Wicen's Range but the firing line isn't covered. I didn't want to sit out in the hot sun so I bagged it. Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler so maybe I'll sneak out for a little while.

I did get something accomplished, however. My orders from Brownell's and MidwayUSA arrived on Thursday. The Brownell's order was a Limbsaver recoil pad for my Stoeger Uplander, while the MidwayUSA order was a few different kinds of 20 gauge ammunition. One box each of Federal #8s and #9s, along with four boxes of #3 buck, plus two boxes of Remington #3 buck. All 2-3/4" shells. I also got a two-pack of A-Zoom snap caps and a couple more .50 caliber ammo cans.

I wiped down the ammo cans (they were pretty clean to start with) and put the shotgun ammo in one. I filled the other with 800 rounds of Prvi Partizan 5.56MM M-193 that I got a few weeks ago from AIM Surplus. I have one 200 round sleeve left over, which I think I have room for in one of my other cans. My Brother P-Touch was then used to make labels for the can so I know what's in them.

After getting the ammo squared away I mounted the Limbsaver on the Stoeger. I'd already shortened the stock so I just needed to use the included template to locate the screw holes for the pad, then sand it to fit.

the next time I put a recoil pad on something I will use a dummy block of wood to hold it, because I managed to scrape the stock a few times with my belt sander, even through the masking tape. A professional gunsmith I'm not.

Dinged up stock aside, I'm really looking forward to trying the Stoeger with the new butt pad. With target loads it was pleasant to shoot even with the OEM hard plastic buttplate. The soft, cushy Limbsaver should make it really nice.

Packet Sniffing

I mentioned in my previous post that I've been collecting data for a couple of our vendors to help fix some bugs discovered by our field. One of the problems concerns FTP PASV mode, so the vendor wanted packet traces of the failed and successful connections.

I used Wireshark on my MacBook Pro to get the traces. Unfortunately for my purposes today, traces from on of the FTP servers I was connecting to contained a password that I did not want to disclose (FTP sends passwords in plain text, which is why SFTP or SCP are better options when available).

So, to sanitize the TCPDUMP file before shipping it off to $VENDOR, I used the command line tool editcap to delete from it the packet containing my password. Unfortunately, the binary version of Wireshark I installed on my Mac didn't include editcap.

Parallels to the rescue. I fired up my CentOS 5 virtual machine, installed the complete Wireshark package via "yum install wireshark," and was then able to run:

# editcap foo.pcap sanitized.pcap 10

This took the capture file called foo.pcap, stripped out the 10th packet (which contained my password) and then created a new file called sanitized.pcap.

I could then safely send off the capture file.

TGIF

This week I got to spend more time in the lab than I have in awhile. I was investigating four bug reports for two different products. I was able to replicate two of the bugs but the others eluded me. Hopefully the data I collected will be used by our vendors to fix the problems.

This morning I bade farewell to Judith and the girls. They are going down to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware today and will be returning tomorrow night. This will be the girls' first time at the beach, so I'm hoping that J. remembers to pick up a disposable camera to record the event. (We decided against taking our digital camera to the beach, due to the sand.)

While I love the beach, I haven't been able to enjoy it for several years. About ten years ago I noticed that too much sun exposure causes me to break out in hives. Obviously, the amount of sun you get at the shore exacerbates this. I've tried a variety of sunblock but until about three weeks ago nothing helped. I think I've finally found one that'll allow me to stay in the sun longer -- it's meant for infants with an SPF of 60. We use it on Amanda. I used it a few weeks ago at a pool party and didn't break out, even after three hours in the sun.

With the girls gone I can hang out and do whatever I want. Hookers and blow ain't my thing, so "whatever I want" means that maybe I'll just drink beer, belch out loud, and watch Star Wars tonight. If I feel wild maybe I'll leave the toilet seat up.

Tomorrow I plan to go shooting. I'd like to get my Marlin 336 sighted in with the receiver sight I mounted earlier this year. I've also been thinking of playing musical scopes again. My Savage 93GL .22 magnum currently wears a Bushnell Trophy 6-18x scope, which is really too big. I may move the Nikon 4x32mm Prostaff scope from my 10/22 to the Savage. 4x is plenty of magnification for out to 100 yards or a bit more.

Updates to The Shooter's Bar

I have made some updates to The Shooter's Bar:

• Updated the information for David McCleary of Michigan,
• Added Michael Douglas King of Georgia, and
  
• Added Daniel Stoner of Oklahoma.

The Shooter's Bar remains, as far as I know, the oldest and largest freely-available online list of pro-gun attorneys. I started it as a free public service in 1997 on FidoNet and shortly thereafter migrated it over to the Web. Attorneys who wish to be listed should send me an email with the following information:

• Name
• Firm
• Address
• Phone
• Fax
• Email address
• Website URL
• Bar admissions
• Areas of practice
• The RKBA organizations to which you belong

You do not need to be a firearms lawyer to be listed, you just need to be pro-individual RKBA.

Setting up a Backup Email Server

Tomorrow I'm scheduled to install a mail server at my main client's second office. This will serve as a backup MX to their primary mail server, in case the Internet connection drops at their main office, or the primary MX fails in some way.

For extra redundancy, the second office has a different ISP than the main office, so if their ISP suffers a system-wide outage, the second office shouldn't be affected.

I pretty much duplicated the primary MX's configuration, with the exception of setting the box up as a secondary MX, per the instructions on postfix.org.

For hardware I recycled the HP tc2120 server that I installed at the main office several years ago. It originally ran SuSE (v8, IIRC) plus CommuniGate Pro. (I like CGP, but it's very expensive and doesn't do anything for this client that open source software won't do.) This box was replaced with a Dell SC440 running CentOS 4.4, Postfix, Dovecot, Squirrelmail, and MailScanner last Fall. The reborn HP is running the same software. The only hardware upgrade was to bump the RAM from 256 to 768 by adding a 512 MB DIMM from Crucial.

Once the backup MX is in place I need to take a look see at the office's network infrastructure, so that I can recommend a file server and backup option for the site.

Fun stuff!

A BEST BUY in Chicagoland

Or, making gun grabbing schmucks look stupid.

Over on THR, "Templar223" recounts his tale of gathering up a pile of old, mostly non-functional firearms (including a starter pistol which could only shoot blanks), taking them to a gun "buy back" in Chicago, and getting a $100 pre-paid credit card for each gun.

In the end ...

So, Guns Save Life ended up netting $1700 worth of MasterCards from the event after those who split their donations with the club were “paid” in cards. The club has sold a dozen of its own cards to members for cash.



The last five of the cards are going to be spent at Darrell’s Custom Guns in Cayuga, IN for two CZ bolt-action .22s to be given away to two lucky kids participating in the NRA Youth Shooting Camp coming up over the first weekend in August.



All of the money (and then some) will be spent purchasing ammo for the kids to use during the camp or the rifles. The camp, located in Bloomington at Darnall’s, is the longest running NRA Youth Shooting Camp in the nation.



NRA Youth Shooting Camps teach young people gun safety and safe and responsible firearm use. Kids get a chance to shoot shotguns, rifles, handguns, black powder guns, archery and so much more as instructed by State and/or NRA Certified Instructors (like me) and/or Olympic-level shooting coaches.

The value of training new shooters far exceeds that of the junky, rusty, pot metal that got turned it.

My First eBay Autcion

I am selling a Crucial 1GB SODIMM RAM module on eBay. Please feel free to place a bid. :-)

It is still sealed in the factory antistatic bag, in the original Crucial shipping carton with the installation instructions. When I upgrade my MacBook Pro earlier this year, I ordered two modules when I should have ordered only one. My loss is your gain.

This is the first time I've put something on eBay, although I've bought several items there. I used GarageSale to create the auction page and list it. It's pretty intuitive. I bought it as part of a MacUpdate bundle last week. The main reason for my purchase of the bundle was the inclusion of Tech Tool Pro, which normally goes for $99. The whole bundle cost only $49.95.

My Reintroduction to Scattergunning

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I bought a Stoeger Uplander 20 gauge side-by-side last week. I have always been much more of a rifle and handgun shooter, although I did some dove hunting with an H&R Topper 12, and a Pedersoli percussion 12 bore double many years ago. In the past 10 years I've probably fired less than 30 rounds through shotguns, mostly slugs through a Norinco 1897 trench gun which I subsequently traded off.

Anyway, today I went and did some trap shooting with my dad and brother. Aside from the Stoeger I also brought an H&R Topper 20 gauge. I bought this a year or two ago, mainly because it came with a .22 Hornet barrel. Today was the first time I fired it as a shotgun.

Before going to the range, I went over to Dick's Sporting Goods, where I bought the Stoeger, and picked up a couple boxes of Remington clay pidgeons, along with a box of Remington STS #9 shot target loads. I also had a 100 round value pack of Remington #8s.

We burned through all 125 rounds of 20 gauge ammo and both boxes of pidgeons. I did surprisingly well for someone who hasn't done any wingshooting in a decade or more. I figure I busted around half of the birds I shot at, even managing to bag a double or two.

The Stoeger weights a little over 7 lbs. and with the target loads was pleasant to shoot. I plan to shorten the stock a little to improve the fit, and add a recoil pad, because at some point I will try it with buckshot.

The H&R Topper weighs maybe 6 lbs. and kicked noticeably more, even with the thick factory recoil pad. I did pretty well with it but the Uplander is a lot more fun to shoot. The H&R would make a heck of a backpacking gun, though, since it's so light.

One thing caused some consternation, though. A number of the Remington bulk loads required two hits of the firing pin before going off. This occurred only with the Stoeger, never with the H&R, which really whacks the primer. I didn't experience this with any of the STS loads, only the bulk rounds, so I'm hoping it's the ammo. I plan to try some different ammo before thinking about sending the gun in for warranty service.

One of the reasons for getting the Uplander was as a potential home defense gun. I seem to shoot well with it but I'm reconsidering it for that role, as it has extractors, not ejectors. While I think that 2 rounds of 20 gauge buckshot should handle pretty much any HD situation, having to manually pull empties from the gun significantly slows a reload. I'm pretty sure that I don't want this in a defensive gun.

My brother brought his 870 along with a few boxes of Estate 12 gauge target loads. It was pretty obvious that he's spent more time with a scattergun than I have.

After we exhausted all our ammo we went and picked up enough unbusted clay birds (not just ours) to file 2+ boxes. So the next time we go trap shooting we don't even need to buy targets.

Today was fun. I plan to repeat the experience.

Hornet Follow Up

As it turns out, hornets are not covered by our contract with the exterminator. The call would've cost me about $100. To heck with that!

After getting home from the range and getting the guns inside (story for another thread) this afternoon, I ran out to Lowe's and bought two cans of Ortho Wasp and Hornet killer spray. The nasty foaming stuff.

At about 1700 hornet activity appeared to be low, so I hit the nest with a can. I was concerned that it wasn't getting fully saturated so I got out my pole saw and snipped the branch it was hanging from. As it dropped SPLAT! right into the puddle of Ortho that had dribbled off, I dropped the saw and ran like hell.

A few minutes later I snuck back into the yard, retrieved the spray, and emptied it onto the nest and a few hornets flitting around it.

A little while later I looked outside and saw a bunch of hornets hovering around where the nest used to be. Round two -- ON!

I emptied the second can onto the branches where I saw hornets resting or hovering around.

My backyard is now a chemical warfare zone.

Tomorrow I'll go check on the body count.