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.
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Multiple H1-B Visa Petitions

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Some accuse me of not having enough faith in my fellow man, but I think they’re wrong. I mean, it just never occurred to me that there would be multiple H-1B applications for the same worker! It figures. So the government’s stepping in.

Check this article, Employers Prohibited From Filing Multiple H-1B Visa Petitions For Same Worker, from Information Week. [You can’t, the link died.]

Sort of related, my business has been receiving an increasing number of calls lately from firms interested in helping me with my “H-1B issues”. The callers invariably have heavy Indian accents. My toll-free number reports ANI, and sometimes I’ll reverse lookup the telephone numbers of the callers. It’s interesting how many come from high-density residential housing, according to Google Earth. Hmmm.

Anyway, as a rule, the offers are politely declined…

Blather

“Convenience” Fees

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Way back in the Dark Ages – that’d be 2002 – I began handling my New Jersey motor vehicle registration renewals online. I won’t bore you with the details, but it actually took a tiny bit of the sting out of the exorbitant fees we’re charged here, being able to handle it with a few clicks of the mouse. Once I Started doing it this way I never looked back. Multiply the number of years by the number of vehicles (like everyone else in this oh-so-dense state I’ve got several) and, well, that’s quite a few successful transactions.

And at the conclusion of each was an opportunity to participate in a little survey. In the comment box I always applauded the state for taking this tiny step toward making the process a little easier for us poor slobs – er, citizens.

In yesterdays mail was a notice that a registration was soon due for renewal. And today as I was clearing the desk I began the task. But something stopped me in my tracks.

They had tacked on a $2 Convenience Fee!

Sure, it’s only two bucks. Change, really, you can’t even get a decent cup of coffee for two bucks these days, but it’s the principle of the thing. I checked their FAQ. It was easy enough to find. The couple of lines explained that they were passing along the fee for processing a credit card payment, and the state saw none of it.

I’m sorry, but that’s just too bad! In the course of running my business I also process credit cards. It certainly is more expensive for me to process a customer’s credit card payment, but I treat it as a cost of doing business and I never discriminate against credit card users.

Needless to say, I abandoned the registration transaction. I put a note in the calendar and the papers (along with the envelope I fished from the recycling bin) in the folder for payment closer to the due date. There’s absolutely no sense in paying them early, now! And then, freshly disgruntled, I wrote and told them exactly what I thought of their Convenience Fee.

I’m not expecting a reply.

Blather

Ubuntu Adventure

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I’m not sure what made today different than any other day. Maybe it started yesterday, in the evening, as I fiddled with the bike. I didn’t do much – just some handlebar adjustments and bleed the rear brake. But it felt good to have a wrench in my hand, something I do less of in the winter. I guess the feeling spilled over into today.

So I burned a Ubuntu 7.10 desktop install CD, hauled one of the old laptops – an HP ze5170 – up from the basement and booted XP on it one last time – just to make sure it still worked. It was destined to get a new lease on life!

I began by yanking the rug out from under Windows and booting from the newly burned CD. It liked the display and keyboard as well as the native pointing device, a Synaptics touchpad. I started the installer and went to hunt up an Ethernet cable. I cabled it to the network. I read the Release Notes. No showstoppers there so I pressed on. I was surprised to find the default location selected was acceptable – New York. Had it figured that out from my network or was it coincidence?

Using my personal laptop I logged onto my DHCP server and found that the target box had acquired an IP address and called itself ‘ubuntu’. I saw that a bit of network configuration would be necessary later on. Machines here get named for life, so this one would need its old name and IP. Eventually I would – I hope – configure the old PCMCIA wireless card, but for now the cable would suffice. I turned to the install.

I decided take the guided entire disk option and banish Windows once and for all. I set my name, my login name and password, and chose the machine name. Ooh, what’s this Advanced button on the confirmation screen? Oh, just the boot loader stuff and a survey checkbox. Maybe later. Let’s get the show on the road!

This is a good time to talk a little about what I’d like to ultimately accomplish. I want some kind of Linux running native on the hardware. And some kind of virtual environment – probably VMware – with XP installed, for those times when I need to use Windows. After all, I’ve got quite an investment in good Windows-based software… And run the whole ball of wax with one of those encryption packages that encrypts the entire disk. If I accomplish all that, then I’ll invest in a new battery and use this as my travel laptop for visiting clients and stuff like that. My personal laptop is overkill for that job, the 10 lb desktop replacement that it is. But if this experiment goes well I may just cut over to something like this full-time…

Since presumably laptop would need to boot the new install it seemed like a good time to prepare the network. Ah, I see that there’s a new rev of router software to deal with at some point, too. I thought for a minute that I’d be surprised by a lack of need for a restart. But no, there it was. The elapsed time? Twenty minutes from jamming in the install CD. Not too shabby.

The install CD wouldn’t eject, perhaps because it’s running the OS from the CD now? Yup, that was it. The blank screen during the restart was a little unnerving and seemed to take a while. I checked the network from my personal laptop and watched the DHCP sever hand out its new address. Turning back to the still-blank screen, I poked at the keyboard and the screen came to life.

Holy guacamole! There were 196 updates to be made. I’d be damned if I’d bother to examine each one, just do ’em, dammit. And I went to the kitchen and put on another pot of coffee, the second of the day. The quarter gig of updates downloaded fairly quickly. The updater kicked into the install phase and warned, “[…] this can take some time.” And it did. Another twenty-five minutes in total. And then it wanted another restart, which was a little disappointing. Windows does that when you look crooked at it. I was hoping for more, er, less. Well, there were quite a few updates, and it had been a fresh install.

The blank screen while restarting was still unnerving. And again it took a while. I wondered which boots faster, this or Windows? This was three minutes, clock time, to a login prompt, and another three-quarters of a minute to the desktop.

Thus began a couple of fun hours of messing around with Ubuntu 7.10. I didn’t get very far trying to connect to the network printer. I didn’t get too far configuring the wireless card; driver issues, it looked like. It talked nice to a USB thumb drive collecting dust on my desk, but didn’t play the AVI file on it all the way through without losing audio and getting choppy. It still boots slowly, really, on par with XP on that box if I recall correctly, maybe a little slower. And hibernation, an obvious thing to attempt, made for some really interesting looking (but quite useless) stuff on the screen when it attempted to come back to life. The only sign of life besides that and the running the fan was the caps-lock indicator blinking.

I noted my login credentials for future reference, shut it down properly, stuffed it back into the carry-case, shuttled it back to the stack of stuff in the basement. For a rainy day, I figured. It had been a pleasant diversion, but there was real work yet to do.

Blather

My Day In Court

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Last October I picked up a speeding ticket from a municipal speed trap in central New Jersey. Twenty-three over the limit. For NJ, that’s expensive both in fines and insurance hikes so I decided to fight. My record’s squeaky clean – well, up to then, anyway – so I figured it was worth a shot. And today I had my day in court.

I arrived a good quarter hour before the 9AM listed on the court notice, but the prosecutor didn’t show up until 9:30. We spoke some and arrived at a simple binary choice: plead to a reduced charge (fourteen over) or go to trial. I had been speeding… and I wasn’t feeling that lucky… so I took the reduction.

Half an hour later I found myself at the court entrance, facing two sentries (female police officers) and a metal detector. I emptied my pockets. Change, phone, chained wallet, blade, rings, pen, watch… all went into the tray for inspection. Oops – the blade had to go out to the car, silly me. Load up my stuff, leave and come back, empty out again. The portal still wasn’t happy; it was time to get wanded. Standing there, legs spread, arms oustretched, gazing out the window while everyone looked on… What was left? My earring? Check. What else? Only the rivets in my Levis remained. Can’t be too careful, I always say. I just might remove my jeans and beat the judge with ’em. Finally satisfied with my threat level, my entry was permitted. I loaded up my stuff yet again, went inside and took a seat.

The judge arrived a quarter hour later. We all quietly listened to his spiel and then he began calling the calendar. I was #3. I walked to the front of the courtroom while the judge read the plea I signed earlier. I said all of two words, both “yes”. The judge accepted the plea, pronounced the fine and then I was off to pay. I used a credit card, for the rebates.

It always ends like that in NJ. You pay.

Don’t you forget that, if you decide to come to the Garden State. And if you need to go to court, leave your weapons in the car.

Blather

Taking Basic Precautions

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I’m in the middle of a fairly complex transaction with a well-known financial institution, involving of several different areas of their organization. When I phone them up, using either the general customer service number printed on their statement or a direct line to an agent I’ve worked with subsequent to one of those calls, I feel comfortable with the security of the call. But sometimes it’s necessary for them to reach out to me. Those calls can be tricky.

Unexpected incoming calls carry an inherent risk. You just can’t tell who’s on the other end! (It’s where the word ‘phoney’ came from, by the way.)

My voice mail contained one such message a couple of days ago. When I returned the call and provided a ‘reference number’ from the message, the voice asked for my fax number. There were some documents requiring some additional information along with my signature. And soon my documents arrived.

Yesterday I pulled the PDF into an editor, added the required information and pasted in my signature. It was time to fax them back. Here’s where it got interesting.

Remember, the request was unexpected and came from an untrusted source. The fax-back number was unfamiliar, as was the originating office in a different part of the country. So I phoned up the main customer service number for verification.

The agent was very accommodating and understood why I was calling. But it took the better part of a half-hour before the office and fax number were pronounced to be legitimate. The wait on their toll-free number, made comfortable by my headset (which allowed me to continue with other work) was well-worth the assurance. I learned that calls like mine were rare indeed; my agent, with years of call center experience, had personally never handled a single instance.

It’s no wonder identity theft is so rampant.

Don’t be a victim. Take the time to verify unknown callers before complying with their requests. If you meet with resistance then perhaps you should consider taking your business elsewhere. It just might be an indication of the care they take in caring for the confidential information in their custody.

Blather

Keyboard Decline and Fall

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I type with both fists. Not literally, of course, but I certainly don’t type ‘correctly’. I can, I know how, just not fast enough. So I just pound it out, so to speak.

If you look at a keyboard I’ve used for some length of time you can see definite wear patterns. Most of the wear is on the left side. The tops of some keys, the home keys especially, acquire an unmistakable shine.

My primary personal machine, an HP laptop (named ‘change’ – I bought it with near a hundred and fifty pounds of coins, no joke), seems to be showing the signs of impending doom. The S key is threatening to roll off the top of its support. When it does – and I’m certain it will – it’ll be the third, no, the fourth keyboard to fail in this exact way. And it’s damned near impossible to repair a keyboard. Since it’s a laptop there will be few remedies: replace the laptop or use an external keyboard.

I think it might be emacs. The control-X control-S sequence, which saves the current buffer, is used frequently. And the act of saving, I suppose, has a finality to it, a purposefulness, that must subconsciously lead to an increased stabbing motion at that poor S key. The left pinky curls down to the control key. (Why IBM moved the control key from its place alongside the A, where God intended it to be, remains a mystery to me.) The index briefly touches the X and then the middle finger – the strongest of them all, right? – jabs at the S. So more often than not the S gets more than its fair share of torque as the inertia of the jabbing finger carries it off the keytop to bang into the bottom of the W.

Oh, I already know how it’ll play out. It’ll break. I’ll worry at it and repair it a few times, but it’ll keep breaking off. I’ll call HP to see about replacement parts, but there will be none to be had. I’ll plug in one of the spare keyboards we have around here, but it’ll make the screen placement bad. And eventually I’ll reach the point where it wastes too much time. I’ll pitch the whole thing and replace the machine. Maybe I’ll name the new one mastercard.

All for some bit of Chinese plastic designed with failure in mind.

Blather

emacs in the Oddest of Places

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Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m part of the ol’ ’emacs and make’ camp.

I’ll leave out the gory details. Either you know what I mean or I need to write way too long in order to explain. I discovered emacs when I was regularly working on multiple computing platforms and tired of having to reprogram my fingers each time I set out to do some editing on one or another. Installing an emacs on each allowed me to type the same way no matter where I sat. It didn’t take long for me to realize that if there’s anything at all to do with text, either emacs could already do it or one could teach it how. To this day, while it’s not true emacs, Lugaru‘s epsilon product runs on each machine I touch regularly. In fact, I’ll use it to turn these words, typed in Microsoft word, into words that WordPress will digest and present to your eyes nicely. It’s one of the precious few products for which I’ll buy the latest revision without thinking.

Anyway, when I hear emacs mentioned my ears perk up. This was definitely one of the odder ones.

Before the day before yesterday I never heard of “Emacs.Net”. Apparently, this is something going on inside Microsoft. What, I don’t know. I found a few spots of coverage in the press and, other than that, not much except for this blog entry. [link removed because it died]

Can anyone point me to more information? I’m curious, really curious. I mean, two things I don’t associate naturally are Microsoft and emacs. Go figure. But then, when you’re done,  please come back and tell me what you figure.

Blather

Hosting Changes

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A host is a host,
From coast to coast
And nobody talks to a host that’s close,
Unless the host that isn’t close
Is busy, hung, or dead.

My goodness, that’s so old it farts dust! Well, timeoff.org has changed hosts and it looks like everything’s running okay again. DNS is an odd beast. I can remember, way back in the dark ages, when change propagation actually did take the week or so that they say it could. The last time I made DNS changes, just a couple of weeks ago, my home ISP seemed to pick up on it in a blistering hour and a half. I had asked friends from around the world (what a small village we live in, eh?) to tell me when they noticed the change and, yep, it was prety snappy. But this time it seemed to take some days. So if you’ve noticed some instability lately, that’s why.

Once I get all of the administrivia out of the way and finish mopping up, I plan to write a little about why this latest set of changes was necessary. It was an odd, unexpected set of circumstances, at least to me, and there just might be some lessons to learn.

Motorcycling

You’ve Got Balls

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I was in the parking lot of the local WaWa strapping a jug of milk to the sissy bar of my motorcycle. For a winter day in New Jersey this wasn’t a bad one – temperature around 40 and the rain of the past several days had given way to overcast. Today’s ride was a good one and now I was on my way home.

The old guy diverted from his path to the store and stopped to talk. “You’ve got balls,” he said, “out riding in this weather. I know – when I was younger I did it, too.” I hadn’t thought of the day as particularly cold. I’ve certainly been out in much worse. We talked for several minutes, and he smiled and laughed as he spoke of the past.

I thumbed the starter. The engine came to life and settled into that characteristic V-twin idle as I pulled on my gloves. I think the old guy walked a little taller, a little straighter, as he continued into the store.

Blather

iPod Trouble (follow-up)

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Well, I kept my Monday appointment at the Apple store, where I hoped that a Genius would be able to resurrect Pam’s ailing iPod. It wasn’t to be.

They called my name right on time, seconds after I walked in. The girl smiled pleasantly as I handed over the device and began the tale. As she deftly worked the buttons and cabled it to a Mac laptop we spoke in elevating levels of geek-speak. Finally, she frowned. “It’s not even taking a charge,” she pronounced. We continued, speaking of ports and diagnostics. Continue reading iPod Trouble (follow-up) →

Blather

iPod Trouble

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Over the past few days I’ve learned more about Apple‘s iPod than I ever wanted to know. Pam’s 60 GB Classic, while in the throes of a low battery condition, suddenly became unrecognizable to her Windows laptop. Not limited to her laptop, every PC in the house reacted to the USB attachment of the slick, black box identically: New hardware found! Your new hardware is ready to use! Unrecognized device! The reaction of the Windows XP Device Manager is quite predictable. It reports no driver for the unrecognized device. Other than the fact that it can’t communicate with the rest of the world, the iPod does everything else quite normally.

You might guess that each manufacturer finger-points at the other, and you would be quite correct. Apple suggests doing everything – including re-installing the OS – to the Windows box. And Microsoft suggests replacing the defective device.

So, a troubleshooting we go! Continue reading iPod Trouble →

Blather

Bubble Wrap

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Did you ever stop to think about the air contained within the little plastic orbs of the bubble wrap you’re popping? Where was the stuff made? Do you suppose that if you pop a few under your nose and inhale, that you might be able to determine the origin?

Squeeze. Pop. Sniff. Squeeze. Pop. Sniff.

“Aahhh. Camden, New Jersey. Spring, 2005.”

Motorcycling

Easy

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Carl Merrell “Easy” Wasson died in Florida on the 18th of October, 2007, following a head injury sustained in a motorcycle accident. As I heard the story, he and another rider had stopped but a rider behind could not. They locked handlebars and Easy went down.

I never met the man, but knew of him through r.m.h. Easy wrote this in 1999, pretty much sums up why we do what we do. Ride on, Easy!

i added it up a while back. 12000 on the two sprints, 41000 on the first sportster, 9500 on the second, 55000 on the fxrs, and 72000 on the dresser. all mileage numbers are approximate of course. 34 years in the saddle, not one year, 34 times. what a long strange trip it’s been.� don’t really have any bad memories, just a few people and places i could do without seeing again, and a whole lot i look forward to seeing again.� all those wonderful mind pictures: sundown in the badlands, sunrise in the hills, the beauty of yellowstone, the grand canyon, the change of colors in the painted desert, mesa verde, yosemite, the high desert of nevada, the expanse of the great plains, high in the smokies with just the mountain tops peeking out of the clouds, the california coastline, new mexico, arizona, colorado, utah, wyoming, montana, idaho, the dakotas, nebraska, kansas, oklahoma, texas, arkansas, iowa, missouri, minnesota, the lakes states, the midwest, kentucky, tennessee, the virginias, the carolinas, georgia, alabama, mississippi, louisianna, florida, and the rust belt. maryland, deleware, pennsylvania. canada, and old mexico.still gotta get to the PNW and NE. some day, some day.� and the people, lots of smiles, plenty of friendly talk: where you from, where you going? nice day. nice looking bike. i/my gramp/dad/brother/uncle had one. old men sharing memories, young kids with the shy smiles, the long looks, and the quick grin when you wave.� the pretty girls, and the interesting women. the friends you make and never see again, and the ones you see every year or so, out there. the little roadside places with the best cheeseburgers and coldest beer in the world. camping on the yellowstone/arkansaw/animas river, cooking over an open fire, listening to the water as it runs by. a billion stars at night. burning up in the heat, drowning in the rain, freezing in the cold, and loving every minute of it. sometimes you’ve got somebody to share it with, sometimes it’s just you and the sound of the engine, and either way it’s just fine. i’ve had the opportunity and privilege to see this great country without it being framed by a windshield, meet the finest of people and share the finest of times because i ride a motorcycle. it’s cost me a fair amount, but it would be cheap at twice the price. biker? i don’t know, and i don’t care, but i am a rider, and i am proud of that.

the big easy. waxing philosophic as the calendar makes another turn.
#39

Blather

The Destruction of Aircraft

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I’ve been destroying aircraft lately. Soon I’ll destroy more. It’s sad work. But sometimes you just need to detach and get the job done. Let me explain.

My Dad has been a model aircraft enthusiast since he was a boy. (He holds a 5-digit AMA number!) Control lines were the technology of the day but he went to radio controlled modeling when I was very young. From there he moved to electric-powered aircraft. He designed and built much of his own equipment for forming airfoils and other related tasks. He was quite the expert at the time and held membership with several local clubs. I can recall coaching him as he began to learn to speak before groups effectively, in order to share his knowledge with others.

That was then and this is now. My Dad’s heath hasn’t been good for quite a few years. Nearly all of what he used to do is simply no longer done. But his home and its outbuildings are still fairly overflowing with the results of a lifetime of prolific modelbuilding.

And presently Dad’s garage is falling apart. Years of no maintenance will do that to any structure and it seems unlikely to survive the inevitable winter snow load. At its prime the structure housed a complete wood shop and a damned respectable metal shop, but years of neglect and disuse have taken their toll. Every inch of free space is full of aircraft in various stages of repair, from not yet built to under construction to ready to fly to crash victim – and everything in between. This is the result of uncountable tens of thousands of hours of Dad’s work.

I’ve taken on the task of helping Dad with the problem. The plan, in a nutshell, is to separate the good from the trash, seeing to the good disposition of the former and the carting off of the latter. It’s a pre-emptive move: if the structure falls during a storm then the good stuff – along with everything else – becomes backhoe and dumpster fodder. What a tragedy that would be!

Officers of one of Dad’s clubs, the Somerset Signal Senders, have been helping me with the aircraft. I simply don’t know enough to decide what’s useful and what’s not. You see, exactly like anything else that technology touches, the state of the art of modeling has advanced by leaps and bounds. What used to take several square inches of circuitry now takes a thumbnail. Power storage densities have increased by an order of magnitude or more. Noise and other regulatory concerns have become issues. And so on. The club has been very helpful. And Dad’s donation of dozens and dozens of airframes, most complete with motors and electronics, will provide the club’s members with many hours of enjoyment. I’m told that many will see the air again! Others will provide examples of yesterday’s technology and techniques. It’s all good stuff.

And that brings us around to where we began today’s entry.

Smash! Crash! Thud! The sledgehammer falls again and again.

This is the sad work that Dad cannot see. It would break his heart. Despite best efforts, there are still plenty of airframe pieces that will have no future. A broken or orphaned wing. An unmatched or damaged fuselage. They occupy space needed for the work ahead. They have to go.

There’s silence for a while as I wield the tools to remove a radio, a servo or two or three, motors and/or engines. Some will find new life, I’m thinking, as donations to the local schools’ robotics classes. Or maybe I’m stuffing the compacted debris into bags for disposal.

Crash! Splinter! Rip! The sounds of destruction, of the necessary compaction, continue. I think of the past, the hours spent in creation and construction. I think, too, of the future. A future that will arrive just as surely as the sun rises. A future when today’s work will surely seem easy by comparison. I lift the sledgehammer’s handle again and allow gravity carry it downward.