That implies that he thinks it would be harmful to the economy to raise taxes on “the wealthy few.”  If it’s a bad idea in an economic downturn, how is it a good idea any other time?  Someone needs to have a talk with the Messiah about logic and contradiction.

Placed my first Geocache up there: Tall Man of Crane Lake.

Pictures are posted to Flickr.  Here are a few samples:

Mike, Melissa and me at the Crane Lake Voyageur statue

Sand Point Lake, just through the narrows

Look for the face in the rock

I’m sure it pained the Huffington Post to run this story about McCain’s speech not only topping Palin’s in the ratings, but also the messianic Obama’s speech, and every other convention speech in history.  Obama may be largely responsible for the surge in interest this election cycle, but that does not mean he’ll reap all the benefits.

Finally, Michael Barone does a good job of summing up the events and results of the last week at the GOP convention.  Now we’ll have to see how successfully McCain/Palin can execute on the pivot they made towards being maverick reformers, instead of focusing on “experience.”

In the meantime, my favorite line from National Review Online this morning about Joe Biden:

Real people don’t define “experience” as appearing on unwatched Sunday-morning talk shows every week for 35 years and having been around long enough to have got both the War on Terror and the Cold War wrong.

Jim Geraghty on Joe Biden vs. Barack Obama on National Review Online

Michael Barone on the unsustainable nature of Obama’s Narrative on National Review Online

Best line from the Weekly Standard Blog: “We’ll get to dust off Joe Biden’s greatest hits, a pleasurable task that will take weeks.”

I love Warren Buffett, but his politics just don’t match up with the pure capitalism that is Berkshire Hathaway.  This quote from a New York Times Magazine article sums up what Obama would do to us:

“If you talk to Warren, he’ll tell you his preference is not to meddle in the economy at all — let the market work, however way it’s going to work, and then just tax the heck out of people at the end and just redistribute it,” Obama said. “That way you’re not impeding efficiency, and you’re achieving equity on the back end.” He continued by saying that he thought there was some merit in Buffett’s argument.

And of course, the Messiah video is just great:

The idea that 6 terms in the U.S. Senate make him a “foreign policy expert” is really amusing to me.  There’s a big difference between chairing a committee on foreign policy, and being the policy maker and executor of America’s foreign policy.

This goes back to the fact that Senators do not make good presidents.  But then again, that’s just my opinion - I could be wrong.  And yes, I realize that McCain is in the same boat.

My favorite Biden quote (of this presidential campaign) had to do with Rudy Giuliani:

There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11.

Here it is on YouTube:

EO News: Snapshot of Past Climate Reveals No Ice in Antarctica Millions of Years Ago - July 28, 2008

For now, I’ve moved to the K2 theme, which I like a lot so far.  It’s certainly much more powerful than a regular WordPress theme, and I’ve had to re-tool some things that were working fine under my old theme.

Your patience is appreciated as things will probably continue to change for a while.  Please let me know if you encounter anything broken!

In case you’re just joining us, this was a 4 day snowmobiling trip to Michigan’s upper peninsula, with my brother Mike and two friends.

Over the course of the four days, we covered 604 miles on sleds, visited countless warming huts (otherwise known as bars), and bought lots of $10 bottles of two-cycle engine oil.

Here is the overall map that contains the GPS track for each day, color-coded.  The first day is dark green, the second bright blue, the third light blue, and the final day is brown.  There’s some overlap each day, so the individual tracks are down below as well.

Â

Day 1 - 140 Miles - High 18F

We got a late start on the first day, after waiting for the sleds to be delivered.  We headed 15-20 miles to a place called the Parkview Lodge for lunch - this is easily the nicest “warming hut” we encountered.  The trip continued on up to Houghton, and finally looped around Calumet before heading back to the cabin in Greenland.  Below is the track for the first day, highlighted in yellow.

Day 2 - 153 Miles - High 14F

We got out on the trails early enough to make it to Ontonagon for breakfast, which was delicious and nutricious with a variety of meats.  After that we headed to the Lake of the Clouds overlook, which was quite breathtaking, even if it was a bit fogged in.  After some more riding, we ended up back at the Parkview for dinner that night.  I remember being almost too tired to eat.  Almost.  Here’s the track for day 2, highlighted in yellow.

Â

Day 3 - 124 Miles - High 9F, Low -20F

This was an exciting day - the day the drive belt broke on my sled in the middle of nowhere, while traveling at about 60 MPH.  There was no spare on my sled, but luckily one of my compatriots had one.  The only problem was, we had no idea how to put it back on.  So, out came the tow rope, and Mike towed me back to the little bar in Rousseau that we had just left.  An experienced rider who we had been talking to before was able to manhandle the thing on there in about 2 minutes, including doing it twice since it was on backwards the first time.  This was Friday, and the trails were quite rough, probably because there were more snowmobilers out.  It was also by far the coldest day, but we all held up well until the late night ride home, when it was about -21 F.  Here’s the track for day 3.

Day 4 - 187 Miles - High 32F

We finally got around to doing a trail that we had been putting off for 3 days (the loop in the upper-left portion of the map below between B&L’s lodge and the Parkview), because we were always too tired by the time we had to decide.  After that and lunch, we decided to push all the way to the legendary Ojibwa Casino in Baraga.  It was a fun ride, but the indian casino was decidedly un-Vegas like, to say the least.  I lost $20 in a Wheel of Fortune slot machine rather quickly, had a rather good steak sandwich, and we played some pool.  Unfortunately, this was our last day, and the long ride back to the cabin was absolutely punishing in terms of bumpiness.  Some of my bones may have been jarred loose and left out on the trail.  Below is the map for the final day.

It was quite an enjoyable trip, except for the drives to and from Michigan.  We somehow managed to pick the worst days to travel in a 10 day period, with blizzard conditions both directions.  I think it took about twice as long as it should have to do the driving.

My job at VMware is similar - I’m a Senior Systems Engineer, but now focused exclusively on working with Chicago area customers, which is nice.  No more airline or hotel status after this year!

It’s been an interesting transition so far - down to the little things like switching from GroupWise to Outlook and Exchange, which I’ve never used in a company before.  After 3-4 years of running exclusively a Linux desktop, I’m now having to learn how much Windows sucks all over again.  I’m working on that part - I think I’ll either switch back to SLED, or take the Mac plunge.

You’ll probably see my posts focusing more on VMware and virtualization now, and less on Linux, although I’m proud to say I’m still running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 at home.  Of course, it’s now virtuallized by VMware ESX Server 3.5.  More on that later.

It’s pretty interesting that this type of cicada has developed a 17-year lifecycle as a defense against predators. Because 17 is a prime number (as is 13, the other common lifecycle of periodical cicadas), potential predators cannot get in sync with them. Still, it seems sort of pointless to me, as they only live a few weeks once they finally emerge, after all that waiting underground.

I found a cool Google Map where you can pinpoint where you’ve seen these creatures, which might come in handy if you’re hungry. I hear they are delicious.

As always, Google came to the rescue with an answer, albeit not having anything to do with smoke detectors. So, if you are wondering why smoke detectors, Super Nintendo Entertainment Systems, or other plastic items turn yellow, here is your answer.

Here’s a rundown.  You can click the position of each person for the supporting press release or article that I drew the conclusion from.

The folks over at betterimmigration.com have a lot of information on where the candidates stand, as well.

In February of 1976, Monty Python’s Flying Circus became the highest-rated TV show in Japan.  They re-titled it The Gay Boys Dragon Hour, and followed it with an on-air discussion of the program.

As I’ve mentioned before, Japanese TV:  C’est Magnifique!

I used the openSUSE Build Service to create RPMs for SLED 10 and openSUSE 10.2. They are in my home repository here.

My brother also pointed me to Reactable, which is a similar concept with a much different application, equally cool.

Enjoy!

The speed has been quite nice, actually. Supposedly this speed will increase towards the 3.6 Mbps level and beyond as they continue to roll it out and upgrade equipment.

Since my employer uses the former and once again current AT&T Wireless, I looked into the two 3G cards they offer:

• Option GT MAX 3.6
• Sierra Wireless Aircard 875

Both use the UMTS/HSDPA 3G network, as well as the GPRS/EDGE network as a fallback. Of course I was most interested in getting a card that works under Linux, so I found the PHARscape web site most helpful. This site covered getting the Option cards working, and I was not able to find much on the Sierra card, so that decision was easy. Also, the Option card has a nice retractable antenna, so it sticks out less:

As for getting the card to work, it was surprisingly painless.

Note: If you are using SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP1, openSUSE 10.3, or are using a really recent kernel on another distribution (2.6.20-ish or later), step 1 is not necessary, so skip right to step 2, which is configuring the dialup device.  Just point your modem to /dev/ttyUSB0 and off you go.

Step 1. Getting the usbserial driver to recognize the card

Simply modprobe usbserial with the idVendor and idProduct tags. The following are the right tags for the Option GT MAX 3.6 card. You can find the right valued by looking in syslog when you plug the card in. The line will look like this:

Feb 5 12:57:55 hillsuse kernel: usb 7-1: new device found, idVendor=0af0, idProduct=6701

Once you have the right info, modprobe the usbserial driver with them. You may have to unload usbserial if it’s already loaded (I did):

# modprobe -r usbserial

# modprobe usbserial vendor=0x0af0 product=0x6701

If this step is successful, you will see messages in syslog like this: Feb 5 12:57:55 hillsuse kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usbserial
Feb 5 12:57:55 hillsuse kernel: drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for generic
Feb 5 12:57:55 hillsuse kernel: usbserial_generic 7-1:1.0: generic converter detected
Feb 5 12:57:55 hillsuse kernel: usb 7-1: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB0
Feb 5 12:57:55 hillsuse kernel: usbserial_generic 7-1:1.1: generic converter detected
Feb 5 12:57:55 hillsuse kernel: usb 7-1: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB1
Feb 5 12:57:55 hillsuse kernel: usbserial_generic 7-1:1.2: generic converter detected
Feb 5 12:57:55 hillsuse kernel: usb 7-1: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB2

Step 1b. Automating the above with udev

To make the card “just work” when it is plugged in, we need to create a udev rule. To do that, create /etc/udev/rules.d/51-3g-datacards.rules containing the following:

# Rules for hotplugging Cardbus 3G datacards
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0af0", SYSFS{idProduct}=="6701", RUN="/etc/cingularcard.sh"
KERNEL=="ttyUSB0", SYMLINK="modem", GROUP="dialout", MODE="0660"
KERNEL=="ttyUSB2", GROUP="dialout" MODE="0660"

We also need to create /etc/cingularcard.sh, as follows:

#!/bin/bash
/sbin/modprobe -r usbserial
/sbin/modprobe usbserial vendor=0x0af0 product=0x6701


The two files above will automatically load the usbserial driver for the card, and create a symlink to the ttyUSB0 port on /dev/modem.

Step 2. Configuring the modem

The last thing to do is configure the card as a modem so you can actually connect with it. Load up YaST or other favorite tool, and add a new modem using device /dev/modem, as in the following screenshots.

The important thing in the image above is the second intitialization command. For Cingular, it needs to be as follows:

AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","ISP.CINGULAR"

The next step is creating the ISP/provider entry that contains the phone number to dial:

For Cingular, here are the correct details:

Phone number: *99***1#

User name: WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM

Password: cingular1

Step 3. Dial!

I use NetworkManager, which works fine except it doesn’t give you any feedback on modem connection status. I also highly recommend the following tools to use with these cards:

• umtsmon - graphical connection status (signal strength, radio type, etc)
• comgt - command-line management of card (PIN management, network switch, etc)

What really bothered me this morning were all the posts and articles I read that treated this news like an unwelcome religious development. Many in the open source community really do treat their devotion like a religion, instead of thinking about what makes sense from a technology or (God-forbid) business point of view.

Groklaw’s headline was “Novell Sells Out.” The most common reaction on sites like Slashdot and Technocrat was “Guess I better find a new Linux distribution.” Some of these zealots seem to hate the idea of any ties between Linux/open-source and the commercial world. They are living in a dream world, and if they want to dump Novell/SUSE in favor of a more purely communistic distribution, so be it. We won’t miss them.
I can only hope that this does not reflect the view that our customers will have - I have to believe that they will welcome this as a positive. As Novell has said for quite some time, mixed-source environments are the reality in the IT world today. Making that easier on customers is a good thing, right?

Personally, I’m just looking forward to seeing how this pans out. The advantages for projects like Samba, Mono, and OpenOffice are easy to imagine. Michael Meeks at Novell does a good job of describing what’s happening in the OpenOffice space, and answers some questions that community members are already asking. I really liked his perspective on this deal.

Think carefully. Kerry has once again proven that he is unfit to be anything other than a gaseous wind-bag senator.  I bet Democrats just love him out there flapping his gums like this…

A few weeks ago, I finally found the Extended Preferences Plugin, which lets you change the font sizes of the buddy list and conversations. It also gives you the ability to customize which buttons are displayed, whether the buddy list can be shrunk below the normal size constraints, and whether the buddy list shows up in the taskbar. This last one is a nice way to save some valuable taskbar real estate.

I picked up a Logitech MX Revolution mouse, sort of unsure of whether I could get all its functions working under SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10.

The mouse is nice, and lends itself quite well to xgl and compiz. The only portion I haven’t been able to get working yet is the thumb-wheel (xev shows keyboard events o [ and Enter). It looks like an upgrade to X.org 7.1 or 7.2 is required to fix that, as a number of users have reported in the comments below.
In case anyone is interested, here is what I had to do to /etc/X11/xorg.conf to get the rest of it working, including the tilt wheel, the search button, and the two thumb buttons.

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier   "Mouse[1]"
Driver       "evdev"
Option       "Device" "/dev/input/event4"   # cat /proc/bus/input/devices
Option       "Name" "Logitech MX Revolution"
Option       "CorePointer"
EndSection

The “Device” bit may be different for you - type cat /proc/bus/input/devices and look for the two Logitech sections, which will be something like this:

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=046d Product=c51a Version=4101
N: Name="Logitech USB Receiver"
P: Phys=usb-0000:00:1d.0-2/input0
S: Sysfs=/class/input/input4
H: Handlers=mouse2 event4
B: EV=7
B: KEY=ffff0000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: REL=143

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=046d Product=c51a Version=4101
N: Name="Logitech USB Receiver"
P: Phys=usb-0000:00:1d.0-2/input1
S: Sysfs=/class/input/input5
H: Handlers=kbd event5
B: EV=f
B: KEY=c0002 400 0 0 1 f80 78000 6639fa d84157ad 8e0000 0 0 0
B: REL=40
B: ABS=1 0

The line we are interested in is Handlers, but notice the device registers as a keyboard and a mouse. Make sure you choose the one for the mouse, which is “event4″ in this case.

The last thing you need to change in xorg.conf is make sure any of your other pointing devices are still working. I have the Logitech as Mouse[1], and the touchpad and pointing stick on my ThinkPad T60p ast Mouse[2] and Mouse[3] respectively. You should not have to modify those sections except to make sure there are no name conflicts.

Finally, my ServerLayout section looks like this:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier   "Layout[all]”
InputDevice  “Keyboard[0]” “CoreKeyboard”
InputDevice  “Mouse[1]” “CorePointer”
InputDevice  “Mouse[2]” “SendCoreEvents”
InputDevice  “Mouse[3]” “SendCoreEvents”
Option       “Clone” “off”
Option       “Xinerama” “off”
Screen       “Screen[0]”
EndSection

After all these steps, everything should work on the mouse except the Search button. The thumb-wheel is generating keyboard events (the o, [, and Enter keys), which currently makes it useless. I haven’t figured out how to deal with that. The two thumb buttons are mouse buttons 8 and 9, which I have mapped to some things in compiz.
The search button was pretty easy for me, although it works a little differently than it would under Windows. On a Windows machine, you can highlight some text, click the search button, and it will open your favorite search engine and search for that text.

With SLED 10, we have Beagle, which I thought would be a better use of the button anyway. However, clicking the button won’t submit any search terms - just open the search tool.
The search button is actually treated as a keyboard button, with keycode 122. What you need to do is map this to a keysym, so that you can use that symbol to define an action under keyboard shortcuts. The way I did that was to add the following to $HOME/.Xmodmap:

keycode 122 = XF86Search

You also may or may not have to add the following to your Gnome session startup:

/usr/X11R6/bin/xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap

You can see the current key mapping by typing “xmodmap -pk” in a terminal, and looking for keycode 122.
After restarting X, you can run xev in a terminal, and test pushing the search button. You should see the key symbol XF86Search in the output. All that remains is to map that key symbol to your desired action. Since I am using compiz-quinn, I used compiz settings manager (csm) to add a custom command to run /usr/bin/beagle-search. Then I specified the XF86Search key to execute that command.

If anyone knows how to get the thumb wheel working correctly, let me know!

Toilet Prank

What a surprise that Republican Senators Linc Chafee and George Voinovich sided with the Democrats in defeating the total repeal (for now).

After searching Google several times and finding nothing, I finally stumbled across Music Bridge. It does exactly what I need, including:

• Sync playlists
• Sync album covers
• Sync ratings
• Filter syncs based on date
• Has a GUI and a command-line mode
• You can sync from iTunes to WMP, or from WMP to iTunes

Perfect! I can now set up a cron job to perform this sync every night, or whatever.
The link above is to download.com, but there is more information here.

In my case, they blocked over 2,000 IP addresses belonging to Comcastbusiness.net, including my own. They claim that Comcast has not done enough to remove a certain spammer from their network, so they blocked the whole range. Checking their database, there are also many other Comcast ranges being blocked, probably adding up to thousands more addresses.

Now, I understand the battle against spam, but I have to say that this seems capricious and arbitrary. Spamhaus apparently doesn’t care that they are, in effect, falsely accusing thousands of business customers with this approach. For this reason, I find Spamhaus’ business practices abhorrent.

Having said that, I blame Comcast just as much. This should have been resolved as quickly as possible, certainly within a day or two. But we are now going on 2 weeks, which is inexcusable. I have called Comcast a couple times, and they never have any status information on the problem, or information on when it will be resolved. The only option I get is to switch to another block of IP addresses that may or may not also become blocked by Spamhaus.

It is pretty here this time of year, and it got up to about 70 degrees today, which was great.

Basically, you pull a cover off the bottom of the cup and press a button that initiates an exothermic reaction, heating the liquid inside in about 5 minutes.

Update:

Here’s how fast that is, according to the article: you could download 130 DVDs in one minute!

I agree with him that President Bush had a good week - the speech at the Naval Academy was long overdue, as many have said. There was a lot of substance to the speech in terms of the specifics he gave on progress in Iraq, and of course there is even more in the document released by the White House on the same day.

In the days since that speech, I’ve had to kneel down and thank God several times that John F. Kerry is not our Commander-in-Chief. I wonder if his position on Iraq is even clear to him! Several weeks or months ago, he was outraged that not enough troops were in Iraq. Just the other day, he publicly lectured President Bush on the danger of American troop presence pumping up the insurgency. Rush Limbaugh talked about it, and there’s an excerpt here where where he talks about Kerry’s terrible interview on the Today show. There’s an article on FOXNews.com that itself has Kerry flip-flopping. Apparently flip-flopping is not just an election year sport for him, but a way of life. Be sure to remember this, you people, when we come to the 2008 election campaign.

What I ended up with is Comcast Workplace (business class cable internet). I had been paying $50 per month for the wireless, and this is $74.99 per month, but only $54.99 for the first six months. Now, what about a speed comparison?

This is a speed test before the switch. Note that speed tests of the wireless connection were wildly variable. Sometimes I’d get results like this one, and sometimes it would show a couple megabits. Also, the upload channel was consistently faster than the download.

This is a speed test of the Comcast connection:

Wow.

We picked three bushels, including about a half bushel that AJ had his way with. He had never eaten whole apples before, but it didn’t take him long to figure it out. I think he was a bit overwhelmed by so many to choose from, so he nibbled on several at once.

There were three adults there, and we did make one mistake. Keep this formula in mind if you ever take small children to an apple orchard:

n = A - T

where n is the maximum number of bushels, A is the number of adults, and T is the number of toddlers. If you exceed this number, it’s quite difficult to get apples and children back to the car.

• Homer will be called Omar
• He won’t drink beer
• He won’t eat bacon or hot dogs
• He won’t go to Moe’s bar
• The show will be called Al-Shamshoons

Other sites with information on this:
albawaba.com
subzeroblue.com

I’m all for as many people as possible around the world to derive as much enjoyment from the Simpsons as we have here in America for so long. I’m just not so sure how well some of the themes will translate. Hopefully they can pull it off.

This bird flu thing is getting scarier every day. Today I heard on the radio that O’Hare airport has set up a quarantine center for international passengers who arrive with bird-flu symptoms. It seems inevitable that will happen in the not-too-distant future. I came across a column that is both interesting and disturbing from Charles Krauthammer about the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which killed 20-40 million people in about a year: A Flu Hope, Or Horror? Apparently that virus has been brought back into existence by scientists after being absent from the world for 80 years.

The journal Nature has a page dedicated to bird flu, with a timeline of articles over the past several years.

Finally, the news story that is neither news nor story: that the Bush administration “staged” a teleconference with troops in Iraq. Facts:

• Soldiers were not, contrary to insinuations by the mainsteam media, told what to say.
• The soldiers were given the questions that they would be asked in advance, so that they could prepare their own answers, and be comfortable giving them on television, to their Commander-in-Chief, which would be daunting for anyone.
• The media is in the business of staging things, so I’m not so sure why they are so worked-up (actually, I know perfectly well why - Bush is a Republican).

Let’s recall, shall we, a few highlights from the long and sordid history of staged media events. NBC’s Exploding SUVs. Dan Rather’s Faked documents. Reporters clinging to lightpoles during hurricanes. Ring any bells? And let us not forget our illustrious former President Clinton, whose never-ending antics the kind people at the Weekly Standard reminded us of today in their blog:

But then, spying the stones at his feet left by his advance staff to show him where his camera mark was, the President crouched down and began to arrange the stones into a cross. He gathered more stones to finish the cross, and then bent his head as though in silent prayer.

See the full posting here. This is a Clinton Classic^TM.

Stock Quote Tooltip

Stock Quote Sidebar

Give them a try, and let me know how it goes.

I originally found this on evilzenscientist’s blog, and was quite blown away by it. Anyone with an interest in identity-based computing should take a look. Hell, even if you aren’t interested in that - it is still a great presentation style and fun to watch. Not one of those death-by-powerpoint things that lasts for hours.

Only problem is, I wouldn’t be able to get my presentation software to change slides rapidly enough…

Krauthammer mentions that his commentary might be construed as elitism, but then notes that the Supreme Court is an elite institution where high standards are not only desirable, but required.

I’m not sure what to think about this nominee, and frankly, I doubt my opinion will become more informed by her confirmation hearings. After listening to so many fellow conservatives weigh in on this nomination with varying degrees of chagrin, I suppose my take is somewhere in the neighborhood of cautious optimism. Yes, the president could have nominated someone that is more obviously qualified, and that has a more visible or discernible philosophy.

In the end, I am at least slightly comforted by the fact that Bush has known her for quite a long time, and has made it clear what his ideal justice looks like. I just hope he didn’t punt because of his recent decline in approval rating. Sadly, we won’t really know whether Miers is suitable for at least a year, well after she is confirmed, if she is confirmed.

Krauthammer ends with, “For a presidency marked by a courageous willingness to think and do big things, this nomination is a sorry retreat into smallness.” Since this nomination is what it is, and is unlikely to be withdrawn unless something truly unforeseen happens, I hope she can prove him wrong.