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GRAFFITI -- March 10, 2008 thru March 16, 2008>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message. |
 
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March 10, 2008
2111 - Good evening. I've got a crashing headache — it's been with me since I got home around 1645 — maybe it's time to take something for it. Well, in a minute, anyway. Yesterday I went for a speed run...
Speed test courtesy of Speakeasy, on 9 March, 2008:
Last Result:
Download Speed: 15461 kbps (1932.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 4329 kbps (541.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
Not too shabby. I was actually making 571KB/sec upload putting some stuff on the server for Greg, when I decided it was time for a test. I think I'm paying for 15/2, so that's a pretty good test.
Last week, I mentioned KFOG, and my difficulty with streaming their online fare. Help arrived over the weekend:
Subject: KFOG Stream
Brian:
I use VLC for streams and, in general it works for most Internet radio streams (Liquid Compass stations were the most difficult). I have the gstreamer plugins installed and am running ubuntu gutsy and hardy heron. Also I live in the Frozen Tundra (Wisconsin) and have RoadRunner for an ISP.
I did this to listen to KFOG:
Start VLC. Ctrl+N to open up a Network stream, Click on HTTP,HTTPS, etc.
Enter http://www.streamaudio.com/stations/asx/KFOG_FM.asx
This is what appears in the player (bottom)
mms://uni6.susq.streamaudio.com/KFOG_FM so I tried pasting this in the HTTP network stream field and it worked as well.
Hope that helps and thanks for the audio tip! I'm listening to their Acoustic Sunrise program right now.
maurie reed
Thanks! It works precisely as advertised. And VLC has the added capability of saving the stream to file. That'd be handy for recording special events, eh? Ah, but I have to (A) Know about them; and (B) Remember.
Bills are done, trash is out. The backup is run, I've formatted and posted Jerry's mailbag, the column is done, too, and ready for tomorrow morning. Now to login to my UMUC class and see how much trouble I caused over the weekend. Ciao!
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March 11, 2008
2107 - Good evening. Life is getting interesting, we'll have to see how things play out in the next few weeks. In the interim, I can certainly recommend John Scalzi's Old Man's War (here's a review link). I've got nothing else going at the moment. Oh, I'm listening to a lot of Alanis, too.
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March 12, 2008
2126 - Good evening. That was a good effort: I wrote a little over 7000 words in response to a series of questions about a lab exercise I executed in OpNet's IT Guru. It's cool software, deeply complex, which is good — I'd expect complexity from something that purports to help simulate networks, hosts, and traffic. Tonight I built a little simulated botnet and attacked a simulated webserver with it. Then I could observe what the effects of the attack were on both the server and on legitimate clients. Then I dropped a firewall into place, and (following the exercise directions) explicitly blocked the attacking hosts. That'd be a bit more difficult in reality 2.0, with a 100K botnet on the blitz, but it was a good exercise. Then I wrote up the answers to the individual questions, and formulated some rather long-winded contributions to the group response for the gang of four I've been drafted into. Given that I have decades more experience at this stuff than most of my classmates, I try to contribute without ending up the sole driver. And I stand back from doing the final writeup, in hopes that the rewrites and paraphrasing helps my cohort along. Now to relax for a little bit. Ciao!
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March 13, 2008
2120 - Good evening. Last night while I was doing school work, I formatted a new (old, but new to the Mac) 250 G drive, and named the partition Tardis. Any takers? Anyone? Yes, you in the back corner... That's right, it's a OS X Time Machine drive. I've got it in a nasty little external drive carrier that has but one redeeming feature: A firewire connection. It's generally much easier to convince the Mac to boot from an external firewire drive, I'm told. I zero'd the drive in the process of reformatting it, just for the sake of unreasonable paranoia. That took a lot longer (over two hours) than creating the first image, which was a matter of half an hour or so. Now, when I flip the drive on, it takes a snapshot of the system, saving changes. I'll keep track of free space and see how it changes over time. And I'll try to spin it up every night or two. It's rather redundant, since I do my weekly off-site data rotations anyway, to keep my work from getting disastered. But the UI is really elegant, so it's worth giving a shot.
Yay, it's almost Friday! Later this month, I'll be headed out to Columbus, Ohio to do some work on our remote site, installing a couple of new systems, and laying groundwork for refurbishing an older system, installing more interfaces and switches and... and... Driving both ways, work both days some, back home late the second night. Huzzah! And that's all the news there is right now. Ciao!
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March 14, 2008
2130 - Good evening. Well, "good" that it's Friday. But computers still suck. Maybe I ought to send Jerry an abacus.
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March 15, 2008
1151 - Good morning. Progress is. I've got the wallpaper off all the walls in the dining room. What's next?
That's about two weeks worth, not counting the last item. and not couting school. In addition, the weather's warming up, so at least one weekend day a week is going to the garden, pretty soon. For paint, we may go with the same beige on the ceiling as on the upper walls, instead of just a flat white. From that list, I can do the first step today, numbers two and three tomorrow, three again on Wednesday night. Then priming... Ciao!
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March 16, 2008
Dining Room - patching |
1654 - Good afternoon. Busy is. I've heard that wallpaper covers a multitude of sins. When you see the snap linked to at left, you'll agree that these are sinful walls. Since they're mostly small dings and little holes, I'm using joint compound instead of spackle. The deeper stuff starts with spackle then I'll overcoat with compound between first and final sanding. But boy, howdy, what a lot of dings there are. And nail pops. Some paint/primer/wallboard came up with the removal of the wallpaper — that's the worst offender, but the upper walls only had a thin border just above the chair rail. And they've needed a lot of attention, too. Making good progress, though.
School work tonight. I've got a large contribution to make to the group project. While I've been working on it in the background for a long while now, it's time to get enough of it together to post. That's my goal for finishing by Tuesday night.
Another Sunday, and my sad responsibility continues: to list, contemplate, and grieve for our troops lost in Service in the Middle East. My condolences to the families and units of the fallen.
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
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