All posts by Rick

I'm living in rural Florida (USA) with my wife, son, two cats, and quite a few computers. I actively work in several areas of interest but still find time to manage several websites, execute home improvements, ride the Harleys, and play with cool toys. I'm reasonably fit for an Old Guy, equally comfortable wielding a keyboard, torque wrench, or spatula. I've got a scary-low tolerance for bullshit.
Blather

Virtuality

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Well, VMware Server 2’s been out long enough without panic-updates so I finally got around to upgrading one of the servers.

There were only five VMs on the target box; the backups – about 250GB worth – went quick enough, disk-to-disk. The VMware software on the Win2K host also went rather uneventfully. Then the fun began.

There’s no standalone management console now, all that stuff is done through a Web interface. I like the Web as much as the next guy, but let’s face it: it’s slower. I haven’t had any trouble with it – yet – but I’m waiting. Next, the remote consoles to the VMs are implemented as a browser plug-in. Fair enough, but try as I might I’ve been unable to get the plug-in to be called by Chrome. I thought I’d have to use IE (it installs fine on IE7) but then I found that one can generate a shortcut that calls the plug-in exe file (my laptop runs XP). The end result is that I can manage the host with Chrome and call VM consoles up as needed. Well, the Windows VMs, anyway. The Linux VMs are fine, as usual with SSH.

Then there’s the VM updates themselves. It’s a one-way process (another reason to have good backups!) and you get a reasonable warning before you proceed. Of course, when the VM’s OS wakes up quite a bit of the virtualized hardware has changed. That means driver changes and such, it’s as though you changed motherboards or something equally traumatic. In my case it all went okay, with one exception. A Windows Server VM would no longer start SQL Server 2000 for lack of a DLL: msvcp71.dll. As it turns out I had one handy – quite accidentally, I assure you – so I copied it to the VM’s WINNT directly and all was well again.

I generally use the VM Tools, too, so those were next. The updates were intuitive, but different. From the Server management interface, the necessary files are placed on the VM’s CD-R drive. Then, from the VM, you install from there. Now, there’s been one Ubuntu VM that I’ve never been able to install Tools on for some reason. Never could figure out why and it wasn’t important enough to pursue. This time I simply mounted the drive and everything went flawlessly. Go figure.

All the slogging complete it was time for some testing. I’m pleased to report that every VM is showing solid signs of performance increases across the board! Memory management seems significantly improved, as does virtual disk performance. It’s too early to be saying anything about reliability, of course, and I have yet to experiment with other new features. I may even eventually get used to the Web management interface.

So there you have it. Not bad for a couple of hours of work. VMware Server 2.0 is a free download. If you’ve got a spare box hanging around and always wanted to play with virtualization, go give it a try.

Blather

Outstanding BBQ in An Unlikely Place

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I’d been riding by this place for long time and always meant to stop in, and I finally did. You see, Route 18 in East Brunswick is one of those roads that you use because you have to, not because you want to. A divided highway, malls of every size on each side, traffic lights at close intervals, choked with slow-moving stop-and-go most all the time… well, you get the idea.

But if you’re stopped at the Arthur Street intersection most any weekend you can’t help but notice the American Harvest Gourmet Market. Their staff is out there making BBQ beef and pork for the shop, as well as selling sandwiches and sides (and bulk, too). I finally took the time to stop in and sample.

I was not disappointed! My test was the beef brisket while my Pam had a pulled pork sandwich. Both delicious! The sauce was their own, too – a little less hot ‘n spicy than I prefer, which means that most will find it just right. We chose to sit outside to eat (but there are tables inside, too). The ambience out there wasn’t the best in the world: the Route 18 traffic, the stack of cars on the jughandle waiting for the light, the parking lot, and the building’s air conditioner were each annoying. But the BBQ was simply outstanding.

If you’re in the neighborhood – or just stuck in traffic and need a break – stop and check this place out. You won’t regret it.

American Harvest Gourmet Market
629 State Route 18 
East Brunswick, NJ 08816
Google Maps

[2 November 2009: edited the Google Maps link, which seemed to have gone a little sour]

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Virgin Auction

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Natalie Dylan (a pseudonym, of course) hopes to make a cool million auctioning her virginity. And why not? Some are outraged at the prospect, but why shouldn’t she? I’m actually surprised that it took this long for something like this to hit the news, given our capitalist society. Natalie seems to be a smart girl: “Not only does she have a degree in Women’s Studies, she is looking to raise money to continue her education and get her master’s degree in Psychology so she can practice Family Psychology” from the promotional flyer posted at the Bunny Ranch. She just wants some cash. CBS reported a few days ago that the bidding is up to $250K.

So, um, I wonder if there’s a peripheral deal for the video rights?

Blather

Old Documents: Historical or Junk?

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I was clearing out some space downstairs. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a bit of a pack rat. I was in the ‘machine room’ – the space that’s set aside for servers, media, office supplies and so on. Officially I was there to do some work on a server, work that couldn’t be done remotely, involving periods of busy interrupted by periods of not busy. There was nothing better than fill those not busy periods with some cleanup.

I couldn’t believe some of the stuff that I was finding. Some materials were from machines that haven’t been around in any form for decades! That’s about twenty minutes less than forever, in terms of technology. Much went into the shredder, and much more went into the recycling!

But there were some things that might make you smile if you’re a dinosaur like me. Or maybe they’re interesting to a historian. I haven’t got the foggiest, but they seemed too good to throw away. And honestly, these are just the tip of the iceberg; sometimes I feel like I live in a museum.

First up is a third edition copy of Getting the Most Out of the Internet, which was what Earthlink handed out to new subscribers. The think that caught my eye when I saw it was that it was authored by Sky Dayton himself.

Getting the Most Out of the Internet
Getting the Most Out of the Internet

Fascinating. But the next one is even better. There was a printed newsletter called Inside the Internet. I’m not sure when they started and stopped publishing the self-proclaimed ‘rocket science for the rest of us’. Nobody does things like this anymore, it’s far easier to simply publish on the Web. But this is January 1995 we’re talking about, and things were way different back then.

Inside the Internet
Inside the Internet

Notice the holes for storing issues in your binder – they’re stock, I didn’t put them there! There are articles about Gopher and Veronica. And a bit about TIA – remember that beast? With it you could run SLIP over your shell account, enabling you to run things like a graphical browser. I think I used it back around 1993 or so to run the some of the first non-console Internet apps seen within sacred walls of D&B, where I worked at the time. It goes without saying that this long predated D&B’s online presence, which was initally created by my friend Tom Thornbury. In fact, there wasn’t much commercial presence on the Internet back in those days at all, believe it or not! Finally, did you notice the price? $5.95 for a few pages? Hardly buys much more than a gallon of gas these days.

I hoped you liked that little trip down memory lane. Did you smile?

Blather

Wildwood Rules

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We spent some time in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey this summer. It was soon apparent that the sheer number of rules and signs and warnings would make for some fun images.

The effort began in our suite and widened from there. The final image presents an opportunity to learn something about conservation, erosion, and the New Jersey shoreline.

Images are here. Have fun!

Blather

Laptops and Hard Drives

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My wife’s laptop was getting full. NTFS, as you probably already know, begins to suffer performance-wise when it crosses the half-full line. And the default MFT size is kind of small to begin with. Presently that all-important area was about 98% consumed and the drive itself had only 20% or so free space. Her last install of a Sims2 expansion pack brought another round of complaints.

Easy enough to remedy. Head out to Best Buy for a replacement drive. But how to get the new drive installed and set up as pain-free as possible? Usually it’s a fresh IPL, but I was looking for the easy way out.

I have this neat device from CoolMax. The CD-350-COMBO is a multi-headed cable that plugs into a raw IDE or SATA drive and presents to your system as a USB device. When your laptop is your workbench this device is worth its weight in gold. Soon the new drive was partitioned, formatted, and tested. (For good measure, I allocated a much larger MFT as well.)

With that problem solved I turned to the task of cloning the existing drive. I recently read of something called XXCLONE, which promised a file-by-file copy (including all the locked stuff) from a running Windows system, with the ability to make the destination bootable. This would be a good time to try that out.

The install to the wife’s laptop was easy enough: unzip and copy a file. I used the CoolMax adapter to cable up the new drive, the destination for the copy. I set XXCLONE to task and went away. The copy would take a while. When I returned it was finished. I made the new drive bootable with a couple of clicks, uncabled and shut everything down. It took a few more minutes to physically swap the old drive for the new one.

The first boot took a little longer than usual. Windows was a little confused, I guess, because the drive change triggered the New Hardware Wizard. But soon things settled down. Between these two tools, a usually-tedious job was turned simple!

There’s one other thing I should mention. The XXCLONE documentation claim that because it makes a file-by-file copy, it defragments the destination drive automatically. I run Diskeeper on all of our machines, and it reported the drive as heavily fragmented. I needed to run the boot-time defragmentation job before the new drive delivered its expected performance.

Additional stuff, 17 December 2008: There were a couple of nagging issues following the drive cloning. I’m not sure if it’s XXCLONE or if it’s integral to the cloning process itself, but some applications installed with the MS Installer were no longer accessible through Add/Remove Programs. Instead there would appear a dialogue:

“The patch package could not be opened. Verify that the patch package exists and that you can access it, or contact application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer patch package.”

The solution, while a bit of a pain, is to obtain and install the Windows Install Clean Up utility from Microsoft. Run the utility and select the errant application from the list, then clean it up – which amounts to removing it from the installer’s database. Finally, re-install the application.

In my case it was Office 2003, which called for finding the license number and install media as well as a few rounds of patches and service packs. There were a few other applications as well, but that was the most substantial.

Blather

Chrome

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The Internet is absolutely all over itself lately about Google’s new browser, Chrome. It’s only a beta, but when you think about it, what product of Google’s is not beta? When I heard the news my first reaction was one of distrust. After all, nobody really knows what data Google is collecting about their users. But I decided to give the browser a try anyway after reading their comic book, which describes the technical attributes of their new-from-the-ground-up browser design.

Wow is Chrome fast! Page rendering is absolutely blazing! Compared to any other browser I’ve ever used, Chrome is the absolute fastest by far. That alone should compel you to give it a try.

Because of the way Chrome spawns individual processes it clearly uses more system resources than other browsers. On today’s modern systems that shouldn’t be a problem and the benefits of enhanced resource management are clear. [Added later on the same day: It still crashes, though, despite process isolation. See the EvilFingers site for an explanation and demo of the flaw in v0.2.149.27. https://www.evilfingers.com/advisory/Google_Chrome_Browser_0.2.149.27_in_chrome_dll.php

Chrome Crash
Chrome Crash

As usual, the masses are very quick to point out flaws. The first thing that I heard of was Chrome’s vulnerability to drive-by security problems. Downloads occur in the background, and it could be easy to accidentally launch an executable. It shouldn’t be a problem if you’re careful.

There is a phrase that’s been going around lately to describe privacy enhanced browsing, the so-called ‘porn mode’. I object! There are many, many reasons why one might wish to take advantage of enhanced privacy while they browse. Why not use a less antagonistic label, like ‘privacy-enhanced’ or ‘privacy-mode’? (You’re welcome. I’m omitting a rant about how language kills.)

Cookies and pop-ups seem to be handled more intelligently as well, although those that pay for pop-up ads may not agree. Pop-ups are minimally displayed in and the user needs to choose to see it. This can trigger a billable event without the (benefit?) of the user ever seeing the pop-up. As a user I’m pleased with this behavior. As a business owner with Web properties I’m also pleased, because I’ve long believed that using things like pop-ups and cookies to track my customers is poor behavior on my part.

There’s been quite a bit of speculation about which direction Google may take Chrome. Some are even saying that this could be the beginning of the end for desktop operating systems altogether. Can you imagine this thing sitting on a bare metal hypervisor, without the overhead of an operating system? Exciting times are ahead.

Blather

Piss Hat

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I was in Atlantic City, NJ with my family recently. Beautiful city, full of contrast. As we stood on the boardwalk across from the world-famous Steel Pier taking in the sights, Damian looked over the rail into the garbage-strewn alley below and mused, “so what’s that, a piss hat?”

"Piss Hat" - Atlantic City, NJ - 12-July-2008
"Piss Hat" - Atlantic City, NJ - 12-July-2008
Motorcycling

Eye Protection

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When you ride a motorcycle you subject your eyes to all manner of risk. The importance of quality eyewear can’t be understated. It’s astounding how many riders don ordinary sunglasses and think that they’re protected. I guess they’re okay if you wear them beneath a helmet visor that’s never lifted, but I prefer a helmet without a visor and that calls for glasses or goggles designed specifically for bikers.

I’ve had a number of pairs of goggles from Harley-Davidson. They go far to convince you that their apparel and other rider gear – MotorClothesâ„¢ – are second to none. Well, not in my opinion. First, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything in their line that’s made in the USA. But specifically, their goggles didn’t last very long for me. Like most motorcycle eyewear there’s a gasket that fits between the frame and your face. Theirs is foam with a felt-like surface that actually touches your face. After a short time – as little as a month or two – the felt on every single pair peeled back, leaving the foam right on my face, there to absorb sweat and grime. I tried gluing it back on. Contact cement works best but it doesn’t last. As if that isn’t enough, the strap tension adjuster is plastic and when it breaks that’s that. I can’t recommend Harley-Davidson eyewear.

If you’re into goggles, Body Specs makes a quality product. My personal favorite is the BSG line. They fit well and the gasket is both high-quality and replaceable. In fact, their warranty will replace a failed gasket. When I had them replace one under warranty they told me that failures were rare and sent me two for my trouble. I’ve had several sets of BSGs and my biggest complain is that the elastic strap will eventually lose its stretch. The BSG line is convertible; you can snap in regular glasses-style temples in place of the strap but none have ever fit me well enough to use that way.

Today it’s all about convenience. I wear polychromatic riding glasses which self-adjust to light levels so I’m never caught with the wrong lenses installed. For the past year I’ve been using the same pair of Panoptx Diablo. Oh, look, they’re now marketed under the name 7EYE. Not sure what that’s about, but there you go. Anyway, the glasses are a pit pricey but the lenses are bulletproof (not a scratch on ’em in a year), they’re very comfortable, and the gasket is still like new. My complaint about them is the finish of the frames which began to peel. It’s kind of like they had a plastic coating that’s flaking or peeling off. They have an excellent warranty, though, so I’ve sent ’em in for repair. I’ll let you know how that goes once I get ’em back in the next week or two.

In the meantime I’ve picked up a pair of WileyX. My wife picked up a pair and I liked them so I figured I’d try them out myself. So far so good, but it’s only been a few hundred miles. The lenses are polychromatic, the replaceable gasket has a good fit, but the temples don’t loop around the ear like the Panoptx. Instead they’ve got a rubber-like area that just stays put, kind of like Oakley sunglasses. WileyX is pricey, too, but still a good deal less than the Panoptx. (Update – WileyX has a line of H-D branded glasses that are very good. My only complaint is that they change styles often and the gaskets are NOT compatible, making replacements hard to source after a while.)

The quest for the perfect eyewear seems never-ending. What’s your favorite?

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“Type faster, Porky.”

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I’ve had an interest in privacy, data aggregation and stuff like that ever since I got involved in the technology industry. Every now and again I have a brush with the consequences of the breadcrumbs that comprise my own data trail.

This Information Week article called Google Is Watching, Perhaps Soon In Your Home crossed my desk recently. [The link died.] It’s interesting in that it talks both about the Big Brother aspects as well as the utility – and coming necessity (I believe) – of these tools.

Regarding Google specifically, the jury’s still out. Are they good? Evil? Some of their products are very compelling and I use them to help me run and monitor my various Web properties. I refuse to install their desktop products because of their phone-home philosophies. Their mapping products are nothing short of mind-blowing. But their corporate secrecy and double-talk is nauseating. <shrug> You plunks down your quarter and you takes your chances.

New Jersey, despite the well-deserved reputation for corruption and scandal, happens to be one of the states at the forefront of legislatively protecting its citizens from the perils of data aggregation. That’s probably because the legislators want to protect themselves but, hey, I’ll take it wherever I can get it.

Anyway, it’s an interesting article.

Blather

Tagging

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I was talking with some folks the other day about, um, blogs. A meta-discussion, if you will. The upshot of the thing is they convinced me to give tagging a try. It would work especially well for me, they reasoned, because I use so few categories.

So this morning I spent some time going back through the posts and applying tags. My eyes hurt. Did I really write that drivel? [shrug] I grew a ‘tag cloud’ – not the most attractive thing in the world – and lost the original edit dates on the affected posts. So, on the off chance that you’re wondering what changed, the reality is that no text of any substance has changed. Just the tags.

—Added 5-Nov-2008: Okay, so I got tired of seeing the ‘tag cloud’ in the sidebar. It was just too big and intrusive! (I thought so, and others have said as much in email.) Besides, it showed up in a summary of this URL and I’m not so sure that’s good food for the search engines – it looks like spam. So, bye-bye tag cloud – for now at least – although I’ll keep adding tags to the new entries as I write.

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So a singularitarian and a neuroscientist walk into a bar, see…

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One of the more, um, entertaining technology threads is that of the singularity, which some say is coming. Right around the corner, so to speak. Perhaps the most outspoken member of the singularity crowd is Ray Kurzweil – a brilliant man, I use his speech recognition software all the time. Remember the Extropians? You don’t hear much from the transhumanists these days. The neuroscientists’ camp, on the other hand, dismiss all that singularity mumbo-jumbo as “mostly crap”.

An IEEE Spectrum Online article grabbed my attention with it’s clear description of how these two groups see our future. Go read The Consciousness Conundrum by John Horgan.

Be sure to check out the comments following the article, very nearly as entertaining.

As for me, well, as fast as technology is racing ahead, ever accelerating, I’ve got a feeling it’ll be a very long time indeed before human and machine intelligences merge. Not likely I’ll see any of it.

Have you ever heard of Gary ‘Chopit’ Fioto? He builds some very cool custom bikes in down in Florida. Anyway, he said “I’m going to be dead a long time, so I want to have fun now.”

Words to live by, Chopit! Lemme buy you a drink.

Blather

Smart Scanner

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I had a great percent-off coupon from Best Buy that was about to expire, so I used it to buy a new scanner, a Canon 8800F. Once I had it set up I decided to have a little fun. Onto the bed went a $1 bill. No problem. A $5? Again, no problem. $10? Nope. It and a $20 – the largest bill on hand – get part way through before giving up with this informative message.

So much for my career as a counterfeiter, I suppose. Do you suppose the guys with the earpieces and dark suits will be at my doorstep come morning?

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