November 2006 Archives

lo, once again I've been bitten by the fun of licenses and debian. My well loved mod_security patch for apache has been removed from debian, as it includes apache headers, which cannot be redistributed by license. Ugh. The project itself is open, but it can't be distributed by Debian's rules.

While I could go and build it myself, I still would much rather have a .deb file available, and made by somebody else. I'm lazy, I'll admit it. Well, thankfully google found one for me today: Mod_security deb's for debian testing

In looking at this issue, I have found another project I am looking at for possible usage too, and will report on it when I can, mod_ifier which tries to do much of what mod_security does. Quite similar overall, and well featured.
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While the cheap half of me cringes with the waste, I can't help but express glee in just how awesome this is.
PS3 smashed on launch day, in front of crowd

Now, they say they'll have the video of it up in a few hours. I can't wait to see kids screaming.
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Well, we just found out, our third (and hopefully final :) ) child will be another girl. Just the inverse of my family growing up.

So this is a link for both the Paintballers and the computer geeks. In tournament paintball, most places require that you operate in a pure semi-auto mode. Now, if you've ever watched some of the speedball tournaments you'll think that's untrue, because of how fast they fire. Well here's why, test your trigger rate

Geeks should think they are good at this, just click away. Now, let's see how fast you can go. I average 15/s, and I have team members doing 17-23. Let's see how you do.

BTW, the gun they are demonstrating, the Ego, is a very nice speedball gun. Very accurate. Very fast. Clicking that link will take you to a friends site, that can get you a great deal on a package for those, or other guns if you are interested.

Sorry for the downtime earlier today, I know everybody was so eager to read the rest of my post. For some reason late last night the switch that this box sits on decided to freak out, and was only allowing a few bytes/s out. Of course openclue people were really missing out because Plug and Joseph's boxes sit on the same switch. Things are back up now though, all is well.. move along..

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Yes, today had one of those nice smack yourself in the forehead because you should have figured something out faster moments.

Today's episode, featuring me of course, relates also to the Perl Mongers meeting last week...
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ok, I need to print a few of these Warning Signs out.

My favorites:
* Motivational Hazard
* Memetic Hazard
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Recently I was playing around with OnyX, a tool that allows you to play around with many hidden settings in OSX. One feature that I hadn't noticed since the last time I ran it (it's been a while) was a radio button that stated:

Safari Page Rendering: [x] Normal [ ] Faster

Well, I just had to try that one out. Faster page loads, that easy, sounds great.

Please, don't do it folks. The past several days I've had countless Safari crashes, pegging the CPU as it seems this starts running javascript well before the total code is loaded. Several times a day Safari would skyrocket, and nearly take out the machine. Switching this feature back to normal made everything work nicely again.
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A last reminder to folks that tonight's Plug meeting is going to be a good one. With Kevin Tew presenting on Cardinal. Language snobs will enjoy this one. Check out plug for details.
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I propose an addition to the next SQL standard, which should be forced into all SQL databases.

There should exist and alias of FORM = FROM.

SELECT foo,bar FORM baz

I don't know how often I do that as a type, but man it get's me a lot.
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Today I, among the others here, had my first in-person experience with the infamous Diebold Voting machines. The machines functioned allright, and the turnover rate was much better than previous machines. I made sure my receipt recorded what I had chosen.

The interface is pretty ugly though. All I could think of was three letters, BGI . Many geeks out there will know what I'm talking about.

In the races I cared most about, I'll be surprised if any of my votes wins, but I voted what I thought best.

I was really surprised at the number of uncontested seats, especially in the Utah County elections.

One of the hardest decisions I had was on the FOR ballot question, normally I would oppose such poorly worded tax hikes, and mostly targeted at the poorly handled UTA system, but at the moment, it's the only way we're getting funding for roads out to where I live. The current legislature has been horrid at getting any new roads in place. Heck, most have been trying to stop new roads towards our city.
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Each morning, I have a basic routine at the start of work. I exercise the limits of my browser by opening a very very large number of tabs. These tabs will be populated by my 'funnies', a very long list of comics that I have been following, some for a very long time.

These tabs will then be perused during the day, between tasks, when I need a laugh, etc. There are also a couple that are so important, well they get read immediately. One of those is Dave Kellett's Sheldon I've been following this one since it was a little webcomic. A while into it, he was a rare artist to actually get syndicated, and moved to United Media. While this was, at the time, probably a good move for him, it kinda sucked for the reader. United Media is like most media companies, very old school. They just don't understand what the web can do for them. Sure, they aren't as bad as King Features, and a couple of other companies, but they still have some very nasty limits for an artist that wants to interact with his fans.

With that, Dave Kellett is moving back out on his own. As part of the Blank Label he will be fighting to get his readers back, and trying to make a living.

If you already follow Sheldon, then note the new site, it starts tomorrow.

If you don't, please start. It's a great, traditional style panel comic, with very geeky, entertaining, family funny!
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At my companies quarterly earnings call, there were several interesting, and major announcements. While I obviously can't comment for my company as a whole, I am somewhat baffled by how some people have reacted to the news we've given.

For several years we have been seemingly penalized for being a 'dial-up isp'. Dial-up is dead, many people claim, and we were thus a dying company, despite being very profitable. I applauded the decision to sit back from the jump into broadband our competitors made, as it completely undercut their profitability. Still, we were penalized by analysts and big investors for not making the jump.

Well this quarter, our company announced how it's diversification had led to sharp increases in numbers from the content and media segments (of which I am a part), and even more important, we announced our first foray into broadband ISP. This was marked by a solid plan for how to be competitive in the marketplace, without nearly the overhead that our competitors have needed to build.

And how does the market react? They didn't even seem to notice the broadband development (as far as I have seen), the very factor that they have been stating as necessary for our growth. Some, such as the Motley Fool at least give some credence to the diversification, but still make no mention of the broadband.

I'll never understand this stuff. At least despite some initial opportunists trying to play the stock, we've remained relatively flat in price.
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While perusing the web with a neighbor that also served an LDS mission in Brasil, we stumbled upon the churches Brasilian mormon site

Using that I was able to verify the locations of some of my old stomping grounds, as well as see some areas that have grown. I attempted to follow up on some of the addresses with google maps/earth, but they don't parse brasilian addresses very well. A few of the issues:

• It requires that you write 'Brazil' as an American would.
• After that, it doesn't seem to parse beyond the city address.
• It doesn't understand state abbreviations, you have to spell them out.
• You can't use accent characters, even though they are correct
• It has no comprehension of Bairro , which is a fundamental part of Brasilian addresses

Still, I was able to find some of what I was looking for, with recent higher-resolution images.

Capella do Curvelo
This one is from a special area for me, nice to see they now have an actual chapel!

Capella das Sete Lagoas : Nova Cidade
My first area, my second 'house' was two street over (R. Madri) behind a members house.

So my brother finally found a reason to start blogging. Ranting on those things that just plain bug us. What's Gotta Go: Life Rants

Go see if anything strikes a nerve, or suggest your own rants.
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