Google Voice on S60, cheap Android plan

Samsung Intercept is sweet, and paying VirginMobile $25/month for 300min, unlimited SMS and data is sweet.  In fact I like the Andriod 2.1 so much I signed up for kickbacks, so you can get 60 free min when you sign up.  Virgins email:

Hey guys, check out Virgin Mobile’s phones & plans at virginmobileusa.com. If you buy one of their phones, make sure you activate it online and enter my Kickbacks Code:

kYQnJLpt. That way WE’LL BOTH GET 60 MINUTES OF BONUS AIRTIME as soon as you add $20 to your account! Thanks!!

I haven't put this out much yet, but got 2 referral bonuses from a coupon site and Twitter so far, so it is working :) so please do use my code: kYQnJLpt for your free 60 min, if you decided to sign up. I wish I had found a working when when I signed up, but the deal is good enough for me, 300 min is plenty, I am usually home anyhow using Google Voice. I was able to make that my phone number, I can now get my outgoing caller ID to match the GV number, something that wasn't possible on S60 N95 before, as I don't have a GV app for that phone, however BDC makes a GV, as well as Google for maps.  After I want to discontinue the phone I realize there are cool apps for the N95, Fring is a must have for IM.



PS: $10 Kickbacks airtime bonus for referring a friend to Virgin Mobile!, 20 Kickbacks airtime bonus for referring a friend to Virgin Mobile!

Happy Holidays and a happy new year!

SEPTEMBER!!! by Earth Wind and Fire

Brilliant, and they got Hundai to make commercials, PomplamooseMusic

Pomplamoose Deck the Halls

I got to try something like this, by the time the commercial shows up at the end I don't even mind it, great performance. Now if only I could write a song about Asterisk, or EC2 lol...

Flash seems to break me Mac when it goes to sleep and comes back with a blank screen.  Then I have to kill Chrome and sleep and wake to get video, but just discoverd this work around.

RoadRunner wins

Interesting wireless on RoadRunner is better then ethernet to AT&T DSL. RR is 3 times the price.

I haven't done much on the job hunting side this week, feel a bit burned out, but ended up finding 3 leads at the LOPSA Chef (mt) talk.  Florian of cloudtrainings.us is going to be giving a Chef training in April, probably a whole day if his last one is any indication.

Sold some WISP access, seems lika fun thing to do to get out of the office and most of all away from the computer, something I have been trying to do to restore some balance in my life.  I need to sign up more people for sales/install as the market is huge and underserved.  I especially need partners in the areas that have no competition, but can be served from a nearby community.

I am incentivized to keep blogging, I am a penny away from this paying out to me.  I probably put ads on my blog about 3 years ago, so as you can see, people who come here don't see the ads, much less click on them.  I would probably do much better with another audience.

I am starting to get an idea of that Linux Mercenaries is a guild of SysAdmins we help each other find work and health insurance, collect 10%, which contributes to your equity in the guild to fund ourselves.

Bandwidth testing AT&T again on 2 WiFi APs: 2.55/.42ping37ms on my 2wire vs. 2.55/.42ping36ms on Meraki on roof, i get 1.95/.41ping53ms while Netflix is doing SD video, which suggest that N uses .6 Mbits. 2.51/.39Mb/s37ms while talking on Skype with Codec SILK_MB_V3, amazing low, I will have to put a machine between my 2wire and the bandwidth users to find a better way to measure this.

Was reading the manual for the Intercept. Seems pretty easy to enter the google account and all your contacts are there :)

I posted a video on YouTube showing me as a cloud computing, EC2 stud, got a call from someone to work on his OFBiz opentaps cool, I met Si Chen years ago, and always wanted to play with this and now I can bill someone to do it, which makes my family happy.

Today I bought a Virgin Mobile Android cellphone, on special until 12/20 for $175, seems like a great deal to get unlimited data, SMS and 300min for $25/month.  More in 3 to 5 days.

Installed Sparrow on my Mac to test.  It only does gMail in Beta 6 right now, can't say that it has any real compelling reasons to use it.

I was hearing about the NYtimes articule about Decor My Eyes and decided to look into nofollow.

I took a long bike ride on Sunday, it is great to exercise, makes your week run better. Did some hacking with AirSnort, just to help out S with his firmware on the card, he seems to want to setup the things with AirSnort.

Years ago I used to read Justin's links and have started to do so again, after all he still keeps it up to date.

life&death

Saturday went to the last LiLAX meeting, HNers and SFVLUG, got home really late after getting a grilling from my partner in Linux Mercenaries.

Today I went north on a 25 mile bike ride and paid a visit to a former room mate, however discovered that the reason I couldn't call him, is he passed away.  I am however glad to see how his website lives on: Richard Ahern's Freighter travel site. No wait, I am not sure that was his, I can only find a reference on another site.

In riding I thought about having a weekly Sunday bicycle ride with geeks along the beach.

Rabbit Ears + Netflix trending?

I can't even remember how long ago it was I was getting a $140/month cable bill, and decided to slash it to $0/month, which it is now, I at first used some WiFi for the internet portion of the bill, until I got the bright idea of working from home, to take care of my family better and at that point signed up for DSL $30/month, however that has also been slashed in half after signing up for commercial WiFi.  I read the NYTimes today and see that many people are moving from cable, which is still 90% of the households out there to rabbit ears.  So I am not the only one.  I also signed up for Netflix to replace the movie channels, which is a great service, especially if the show or movie you want is available in streaming, and you don't have to wait a day for the DVD to arrive, I still have the 1 DVD/month $10 plan, however don't seem to be using DVDs very much at all.  So if I could get CNBC on the internet, I got it all.  I still have to try Uverse from AT&T, which seems to have some interesting features, however I think the main thing I should try is setting up my computer or iPad to get it and not do cable, which is mostly laden with ads.

Shifting European boarders 10000 years

I really hope that this increases the sales of CENTENNIA Historical Atlas, they did a really cool mesh up of the boarders.
12/2010: Update: Video got removed, as I suspected it would, funny how that works, although I suspect that it made more people aware of the cool product they have, so it was in a way free advertising for Centennia.

I went to a 6 hour job interview and just hanging out session yesterday afternoon/night, missed my Coloft pitch session, a bit disappointed by that part of it. Now that I realize there was a $5500 prize for the winner.

Waafa Bilal is raising awareness about the Iraq war by doing some outragous performance art.

Wow, might I see 300GHz graphene nanocircuits processors with racetrack memory which promises to be 100,000 times faster then today's hard drive someday? I guess that is why I need that gigabit to the home. This al seems incredible to me until I think what I started with a Zilog Z80 @ 1.78 MHz with 4K RAM and a cassette interface,25 bytes per second.  Of course this $600 computer in 1977 was certainly in improvement in price and performance over previous models.

http://shaveeverywhere.com is an amazingly well done website; even if it has flash

Android 250 down 25/month

I was waiting for this, would like to know the coverage of Sprint in El Segundo, but it is an awesome deal.

Microsoft undergroundPDC

Went to the Nokia Club last night for the Windows Phone 7 event and Azure, they fed us and gave us open bar, a few Windows phones were raffled off, but only a few, it was a bit boring, to be honest, not the excitement of open source or Apple events.  I was however sorry not to have won a phone, would love to play with one. I guess that sales of 40K show that the rest of the world is also disinterested in WP7. Anyhow it was a good meetup with lots of people, although I find it interesting how few I know from these events. SCALE is far more interesting then these PDC events. I bet if MS got the SCALE organizers on board, they would put up a better show then last night. Dan'l Lewin and Blake from Yahoo had a talk about startups, Daniel Egan was there again to push WP7 and ran into Chao and Woody as usual at MS events.

Skype 5 Beta OS X

I use Skype all the time was excited to hear about a new version. Skype 5 Beta OS X isn't as great as the version numbers would indicate, I had 2.8 OS X and decided to try the newest and I have to say that so far I am disappointed. The old design with searchable contacts and history just worked well for me, I was used to it, smaller space on the screen. The only cool feature, the multi person video seems like it is only free for 30 days and I haven't even been able to find 2 people willing to try it with me, so afraid I might run out of time befoe I even use it. I may just downgrade to 2.8 after the 28 days I have left in the multivideo thing expire.

So after playing with Skype 5 beta OS X for 2 days, I have downgraded to 2.8 again as I miss its better user interface, screen sharing and smaller screen size.  I was never able to get the 28 video conferencing demo working, and besides if it is time limited, it doesn't do me much good anyhow.

Seems bandwidth is stabalizing:

Meraki

I have been testing wireless these days, it is pretty cool what you can do with the Meraki's and the control panels they have. However the back end is strangely unstable as of yet, but we are still working with that part.
2.25/1.56

Meraki

I have been testing wireless these days, it is pretty cool what you can do with the Meraki's and the control panels they have. However the back end is strangely unstable as of yet, but we are still working with that part.

Kettle Baby

10312010013,
originally uploaded by Ralf98x.

Halloween

10312010018,
originally uploaded by Ralf98x.

Download while doing Ubuntu updates

I could see the download go from 15 sec to 6 min while I did this test, so having something going on definitely affects speed.

dead drops

leaving USB drives in a wall to share with all .... oh what fun we will all have, what could possibly go wrong? nothing that isn't happening on the internet, but with faster through put, brilliant.  How long before they are full of SPAM?

Broadnet Wireless

I am at a loss to explain this wild swings in bandwidth. 

AT&T still as slow as it was

I am mostly amazed at how little upload speed it has. The MODEM reports:
• Incoming: 3008 kbps
• Outgoing: 512 kbps
but clearly it is a bit slower, however very consistent.

AT&T still as slow as it was

I am mostly amazed at how little upload speed it has. The MODEM reports: Incoming: 3008 kbps
• Outgoing: 512 kbps, but clearly it is a bit slower, however very consistent.

AT&T still as slow as it was

SpeedTest

10/26 5:16am

5:19am

[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/1005072834.png[/IMG][/URL]
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1005072834.png
http://www.pingtest.net/result/26997181.png [URL=http://www.pingtest.net][IMG]http://www.pingtest.net/result/26997181.png[/IMG][/URL]
http://www.pingtest.net/result/27000289.png
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1009161176.png
BroadnetWireless 10/30 right after the Meraki starts working.

Strange my results differ now at 7:20PM, I get much more bandwidth.

Blogger

I am getting excited about cashing out of my AdSense, I am very close to the first payout :)  I spent some time today looking at an orphan blog with ads, which doesn't give its former owner any revenue, I should have kept my connection to it. I was looking at other blogs, saw some good ones, but forgot to get all the URLs, nice pictures on galaxycounters.

LAMPsig sounded boring, but I went anyhow, learned about tasksel, which helps install task specific servers, in Ubuntu during the Mkahawa talk.

Meanwhile family going to Happy Valley, becaue the happiest place on earth is too far.

I am fixing to get rid of some credit cards, I have been paying interest, don't know why.

Rationing electrical power

I am experimenting with some extreme rationing of electricity at home these days, family is gone and I wonder how low an electrical bill I can make by not using as much power as I used too.  Mind you that the power is so cheap it doesn't matter financially for me, it is more an experiment to know how much I would need in solar panels if I wasn't on the grid.

I thought about the problems back in the island where electricity was also scarce and you couldn't raise the price to make it work out because people would simply steal it, making the electrical company even more fanatically unstable.  However what could the government do, the people who stole electricity lived in shacks with 1 conductor wires that were hot and a return through the ground in the place they dumped the kitchen water as a conductor for the stake they put in the ground, all to save on copper.  Better to do families that could afford a 2 wire system sometimes tampered with meters as well as prices were also high for them.

We always paid for our power, but that wasn't the expensive part, we had to run generators for the time there was no power, and that was big money.  Anyhow been playing with a Kill-a-watt to try to determine exactly the cost of all devices and I found that the one I use the most is only 44W, a 15" MacBookPro, if you close the lid it is 4W, wow really green, I could even power it of a panel directly as it probably runs on DC anyhow.  The fridge is the biggest consumer at 224w, but it doesn't run all the time, only when you open the door it has been a long time since the last run.

I hope your not annoyed by the Amazon items, I just got the Associates thing and am kind of thrilled with how easy it works, besides somebody some day might actuall by these items off my blog, heck I might even buy that fridge when we finally move, as the $30 craigslist Gibson that we currently have, looks to be 20 years old, it has been with us for 10, and it looked very old when we got it. If it had occurred to me to order one online back then, who knows, we might have saved lots of effort moving this thing in a borrowed pickup.

wow a month since my last post, it is so late at night that I get around doing this, geez, need time and more energy, exercise and perhaps to loose some weight.

Have had a great month!  Meetings, starting a business and doing whatever I want these days, my boss is on vacation :)

At LiLAX we had a good meeting, about 15 showed up, 2 speakers and Lox again, wow, I would have invited more of an audience if I knew, but I guess that I can't really grow the group that fast. During lunch I was thinking that with the recent price drops Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6" Display, Graphite - Latest Generation seems like a great buy now that it is $139. It does have the battery life and sunlight advantage over the iPad, which I don't use anymore, mostly because I spend my time on the MBP.

BTW, having tested making money with adsense, I have just put in that link above to try out the Amazon affiliate plan, although I doubt that it will be any better then the previous one, on my low traffic blog.  I have project that I might be able to collect $100 from the ads on this blog in 2012, I wish I would remember when I started ads on here, but rest assured, I am not doing will with this and will have to find employment to live, my blogger dream isn't working.

Watching NSFW in a separate window as I type this, they decided to compliment bomb someone, interesting idea.  BTW, the country in that link is Lybia: bit.ly/complimentbomb3 which then points to the actual website and the articule about babysitting.

Some good talks at Perl Mongers at Rubycon, Randel was there, would be great to get him to talk about Git, which is something I want to learn more about as I consider it an upgrade for our svn, not wanting to use an expensive proprietary product IBM makes.

work

seems my hours at work are growing, and I have less time to blog these days...

Burry the bad stuff in lots of text

One if the most alarming developments I see in taking a corporate job, is the 3 Megs of attachements I should print and sign, FedEx back to the company signing away my right to a court hearing, and all kinds of things that I might otherwise be entitled too. Of course only an insane person spends a day reading the package to see all this alarming stuff in there. Most sign without reading any of it, just like when we buy a house. You have to give this to an attorney if you really want it read, no one has the time. I doubt that they will be malicious, but I guess they have had to part with malicious employees before and are making the case air tight before the lawsuit comes. Startups seem to have a very clear 1 page contract.

Took the job

I will be starting a new position July 12, right here in El Segundo or Rancho Bernardo :)

I wonder how many unwanted iPhone 4 calls will end in bad reception? It is so easy to degrade the signal, or add an external antenna.

I guess my days of playing the market are over, consulting was interesting, but not enough volume to fill the bank account.

Hard choices

I have so much traveling to do, yet I am being offered a good job, which will not allow me to travel as much as I would like. I can go spend time with family or go to the worlds fair. The thing is I could afford not to take a job yet.

c4ffeinetest

Lets see how fast c4ffeinetest is indexed on Google.com

Learning

I want to spend more time with configuration management tools:Chef and scripting languages: Python, Ruby, Perl.

Caffeine test

I am putting a unique string in here and then doing a google search for: eihighnvjnjvn848hhHHjneuhhOIhHJIAJIonjNJnjHuh*h**Huhjhnjnjkn hmmm, that didn't work, wonder if I can't use *
eihighnvjnjvn848hhHHjneuhhOIhHJIAJIonjNJnjHuhhHuhjhnjnjkn

It took 6 minutes for this to show in my search, not bad, used to take days.

AT&T DSL

I lost my internet around noon yesterday, however I still get to pay for it, geez, I need a new provider, perhaps one that is the other way around, hey wait I just found service on one just like that. I would be happier paying for the internet that I am using, I think I might cancel AT&T for starters, together with the landline, although that still works. Tested 2500/856 on RR with a 1.8% packet loss to the router :(

Skype for SIP

I revisited the Skype4SIP Skype Manager Dashboard again today, because I couldn't remember why I hadn't set it up before, and then it hits me, Calling channels cost €4,95 / month per channel. and although I only need one, it isn't worth it for me right now to have my SIP phone answer the Skype calls. However it is a useful thing to add a Skype button to your website, and this makes it possible to answer with your current SIP PBX.

Facebook censorship

I am making a copy of my FB post in the free er internet:

I hear that if I mention Leo LaPorte on Facebook my post will not show. However he is probably making people use FB much more then they did before. My account was fallow before he made an issue of privacy.

Killer at Large

You got to watch Killer at Large: Why Obesity is America's Greatest Threat, we are making wrong choices with food. This is a great documentary that exposes a big problem that we have here. Jay Leno makes fat jokes every night on his show, however it is a serious problem. So watch the documentary, NetFlix has a free trial to boot.

Wide open

I did a short experiment in closing the blog to a list of users, only 1 managed to connect to it, not that I was being really secretive about something, mostly wanted to see if it want any smoother in a more tech savvy group, it didn't. I will try it with a smaller blog that I will create anew to see how that works out.

Skype SPAM

Skype Spam seems to be a problem lately, If you are bothered by it, right click the user and block them, then check report so that you can spare others of this crap.

update.instructions.help:

WINDOWS REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION URGENT SYSTEM SCAN NOTIFICATION ! PLEASE READ CAREFULLY !! http://www.updatezs.org/ For the link to become active, please click on 'Add to contacts' skype button or type it in manually into your web browser ! FULL DETAILS OF SCAN RESULT BELOW **************************************** WINDOWS REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION ATTENTION ! Security Center has detected malware on your computer ! Affected Software: Microsoft Windows Vista Microsoft Windows XP Microsoft Windows 2000 Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Impact of Vulnerability: Remote Code Execution / Virus Infection / Unexpected shutdowns Recommendation: Users running vulnerable version should install a repair utility immediately Your system IS affected, download the patch from the address below ! Failure to do so may result in severe computer malfunction. http://www.updatezs.org/ For the link to become active, please click on 'Add to contacts' skype button or type it in manually into your web browser!

Help the community and keep Skype usable. You can also up your settings in privacy, however for some reason this one ignored that setting, I guess that since the Skype protocol has been broken there might be a way to inject this garbage despite your settings.

I have not been to the site, I assume it has a virus posing as an anti-virus. I am not sure that you can do much with the domain info either, I wonder if the domain info is even real.

whois updatezs.org

Domain ID:D159032843-LROR
Domain Name:UPDATEZS.ORG
Created On:01-May-2010 09:32:13 UTC
Last Updated On:01-May-2010 09:32:15 UTC
Expiration Date:01-May-2011 09:32:13 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:eNom, Inc. (R39-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:ADDPERIOD
Registrant ID:da3afb0ad7215a6f
Registrant Name:Enar Sakovich
Registrant Organization:-
Registrant Street1:Fikaskaya 63a
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:St. Petersburg
Registrant State/Province:RU
Registrant Postal Code:27001
Registrant Country:RU
Registrant Phone:+986.61554974
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:+986.61554974
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:ensakch21@gmail.com
Admin ID:da3afb0ad7215a6f
Admin Name:Enar Sakovich
Admin Organization:-
Admin Street1:Fikaskaya 63a
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:St. Petersburg
Admin State/Province:RU
Admin Postal Code:27001
Admin Country:RU
Admin Phone:+986.61554974
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:+986.61554974
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:ensakch21@gmail.com
Tech ID:da3afb0ad7215a6f
Tech Name:Enar Sakovich
Tech Organization:-
Tech Street1:Fikaskaya 63a
Tech Street2:
Tech Street3:
Tech City:St. Petersburg
Tech State/Province:RU
Tech Postal Code:27001
Tech Country:RU
Tech Phone:+986.61554974
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:+986.61554974
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech Email:ensakch21@gmail.com
Name Server:DNS1.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server:DNS2.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server:DNS3.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server:DNS4.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server:DNS5.NAME-SERVICES.COM
DNSSEC:Unsigned

and another:

Domain ID:D159118485-LROR

Domain Name:UPDATEQP.ORG

Created On:08-May-2010 12:24:10 UTC

Last Updated On:08-May-2010 12:24:11 UTC

Expiration Date:08-May-2011 12:24:10 UTC

Sponsoring Registrar:eNom, Inc. (R39-LROR)

Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED

Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED

Status:ADDPERIOD

Registrant ID:9ab18bc4d4d8a238

Registrant Name:Aret Mastif

Registrant Organization:-

Registrant Street1:Nalipor 41d

Registrant Street2:

Registrant Street3:

Registrant City:Prague

Registrant State/Province:CZ

Registrant Postal Code:21001

Registrant Country:CZ

Registrant Phone:+420.25133254

Registrant Phone Ext.:

Registrant FAX:

Registrant FAX Ext.:

Registrant Email:aretmastf921@gmail.com

Admin ID:9ab18bc4d4d8a238

Admin Name:Aret Mastif

Admin Organization:-

Admin Street1:Nalipor 41d

Admin Street2:

Admin Street3:

Admin City:Prague

Admin State/Province:CZ

Admin Postal Code:21001

Admin Country:CZ

Admin Phone:+420.25133254

Admin Phone Ext.:

Admin FAX:

Admin FAX Ext.:

Admin Email:aretmastf921@gmail.com

Tech ID:9ab18bc4d4d8a238

Tech Name:Aret Mastif

Tech Organization:-

Tech Street1:Nalipor 41d

Tech Street2:

Tech Street3:

Tech City:Prague

Tech State/Province:CZ

Tech Postal Code:21001

Tech Country:CZ

Tech Phone:+420.25133254

Tech Phone Ext.:

Tech FAX:

Tech FAX Ext.:

Tech Email:aretmastf921@gmail.com

Name Server:DNS1.NAME-SERVICES.COM

Name Server:DNS2.NAME-SERVICES.COM

Name Server:DNS3.NAME-SERVICES.COM

Name Server:DNS4.NAME-SERVICES.COM

Name Server:DNS5.NAME-SERVICES.COM

So I have a Cannon MP830 with an empty black(8) ink cartridge, refuses to print although I have a full Black(5) cartridge and I have to get the TV in FedEx:( Very frustrating when you,re in a hurry.

Cloud Computing talk

Last night I gave my cloud computing talk (PPT) at the Perl group hosted at Rubycon, a pretty cool looking startup on the first set of 24. The DVI connector I used was labeled "do not remove from CTU," which was interesting. Couldn't really figure out what CTU meant to them, other then a movie reference. The had WiFi and a pretty good group of 20 people there to listen to this and Cassandra, which I found to be a very interesting talk as well. Perhaps that is what I should do with my Amazon time, run Cassandra in the cloud, just for giggles. Now I need an excuse to do it, some application that needs scalability. Anyone? I will through in my time too for equity.

Bike ride

I finally took a bike ride after finding the neighbor to retrieve my key. Since the tire was a bit flat started out going the wrong way to the gas station that didn't have air, and then took a left down at the beach to go to the other Chevron by the MB parking lot, however on the way ended up just going straight to the pier where some kids gave me some cards vote to save the Roundhouse Aquarium.

Broken broker

I have a broker that can't export a managed account to TurboTax, they really suck.

iPad for our kid

I am sold, if I had $499 to burn, a 16 G WiFi model is on its way for my 2 year old, hmmm, maybe it can be her b'day present. This really works, perhaps a iTouch would be a cheaper safer alternative, perhaps even a used one, since I think that I can pretty much count on loosing a few on the way to responsibility.

Urban Decay art, Braddock PA

I saw a great interview with mayor John Fetterman on PBS 24 last week. Colbert Report, NYTimes, Braddock Homes, all show a decaying industrail town, suburb of PitsBurgh PA which he is trying to revitalize into an artist community. Sounds rather cool. The PBS interview is worth watching.

Apple Keynote exploit?

http://www.apple.com/podcasts/apple_keynotes/apple_keynotes.xml breaks when it plays in iTunes, LJ confirms this, wonder if it is compromised? Maybe just some garbage in the file, wish I had a virus checker to see what is wrong.

spotted in the iPad store

I was spotted at the iPad store on Saturday, surprised that this picture came back to me so fast. I was thinking of taking a picture myself, like many did, there were so many people around the iPad table, it is a cool device. The in store people were learning how to use and trying to demo. But it is pretty intuitive.

iPad shipping

I googled for iPad tracking number and found one:

Location	Date	Local Time	DescriptionWhat's This?
CLEVELAND, OH, US	04/03/2010	6:00 A.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
LOUISVILLE, KY, US	04/03/2010	5:08 A.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
	04/03/2010	12:28 A.M.	IMPORT SCAN
GUANGZHOU, CN	04/02/2010	4:10 A.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
SHENZHEN, CN	03/29/2010	10:28 A.M.	ORIGIN SCAN
CN	04/02/2010	10:52 P.M.	BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

It does ship from China via UPS, interesting....

Ear ethernet inplant

Having the ear infection isn't as bad as it could have been, with modern science and a fair amount of help from the CrashSpace, the nerve endings were connected to a small ethernet enabled transponder and it makes for an inperfect interface to the internet. I am still learning how to "hear" it therefore I am typing this on a keyboard and watching it on a screen and deciphering the new "sounds". However I have 5 wpm going and am confident that with more patience and training I will be able to get a decent throughput going. The main thing that worries me right now is getting the right firewall going and I think I need unplug from the router at night so that I don't get woken on LAN, as my Mac used to be. It is also very scary to think that someone could write a root kit for my brain someday. I haven't figured out how to see images yet, but maybe someday I will figure out something, that doesn't involve loosing an eye.

I am still working on the network stack, studying Linux source code to find the leanest solution. If I had a stroke I guess I would substitute the bad part of the brain for more CPU, however a power source remains the limiting issue. Since I only do I/O right now, I can easily power that on ethernet recharge the battery, while getting a more secure wired connection. It works, but I have to load the code into my brain and execute it, still working hard at optimizing and loading. It is a slow process, but as I start to get bootstrapped and to the alpha level, I will think about open sourcing it, maybe I can get the crowed to help me improve it.

Sat night was earth hour Monday Grunions

I almost turned my power off last night, as in snapped the breakers off, now I see on GMA that it was earth hour, wow, I missed it, what a shame :( Then the first ad after the segment from Energy Tomorrow. What a cool idea, sorry I didn't turn off my power, but then I was already in the dark, so I guess I did it already.

So it came to my attention that Monday 29 the Grunions at 9:30-11:30 are coming ashore, I got to see this, 100s of fish jumping out of the water to spawn, how cool is that.

Ultra local turism

NBC4 just talked about a tour of Downey, $75, this Saturday at noon, cool. I guess with the savings in travel this is a real deal for us around the area.

Carpenter’s Home where Karen lived and died... plus "Close to You" and "Only Just Begun" Apartments
"Space Ship Factory" - cradle of the Apollo Mission
*no host* lunch at oldest McDonald’s on earth (1953)
Downey Historical Society Museum
Downey's great unknown ghost town, 1880’s thru 1920s remains of the LA County "Poor Farm"
Worlds greatest drive-in car Hop coffee shop, (1958) originally Harvey’s Brolier now Bob’s Big Boy Broiler
Meet Miss Downey and much more!

Seems there are many interesting things in that city and he has a good reputation according the NBC4LA so should be a blast.

Parking hassles

So I think I need to sell my car, this morning after being up all night I am trying to make a home movie at breakfest and hear the street cleaner, run down and am about 30 seconds late, the cop could only say want me to mail it to you? Hell no!

Plants Vs. Zombies is Addictive

Leo warned me, it really is addictive. I downloaded it and installed, no money needed, then played for 60 free minutes, I am hooked. As the Wired review says, the game is easy to learn and difficult to master. $20, PopCap

Job prospects

Seems like I might apply to a job right here in town! Yay, finally a chance to do what I do without driving all over Hollywood.

LAX to MAD millage via

MIA 13500

NYC 12080

DFW 12360

Perhaps on April 13.

Chat Roulette

I hate talking about this site, but after Stephan introduced me to it, I have been obsessed by it. Something about 100% growth a day got me to pay attention.

[2/22/10 4:48:17 PM] Stephen: Geez, awesome idea.

Why didn't I come up with it?

http://www.ChatRoulette.com

Lots of freaks out there!

So this 17 year old kid in Russia can't find random people fast enough on Skype, he is in the NY times. I hear about the bubble CD girl, and Sticher; consider moving LiLAX to Google AppEng, to save on free hosting and scaling it, but mostly to learn about their cloud services.

However, after some time, I went on the site and decided I should shave and get a haircut, I was being nexted every second. This site sucks, however it is featured in the NYTimes and has a million dollar valuation on SiteLogr. Even has some imitators: the defunct Polish AnoChat, which is working again, but sparsely populated, I don't get nexted as much, and often will get reconnected to the same people. So I google chat roulette and find that Youtube has many videos including the Chat Roulette: Eye Vagina so I try to put the crack between to fingers up on the site and I don't get nexted as much, people find it entertaining, and don't quite know what they are seeing until they see me through the fingers and of course I get nexted, but not after getting a good laugh. At this point I want to build my own CR using Skype.

[2/28/10 12:19:53 PM] Stephen: I see there is an app in Ubuntu that lets you play video to a loopback driver for use as a fake webcam.

apt-get webcamstudio

it worked for the test

http://oldes.multimedia.cz/swf/mx-webcam.html

but I couldn't get chatroulette's flash app to use it ... maybe they hard-coded to exclude loopback, I don't know.

But thought I would share the alternatives to CamTwist (for Mac) and SplitCam (for Windows).

This skype conversation goes on for weeks. I keep returning to the SiteLogr graph, from Alexa and am stunned. It just keeps going, they now have P2P, the idea I was going to implement on Skype, another idea I didn't have time to complete. WSJ has CR by the numbers.

[3/2/10 2:08:08 PM] Stephen: http://omegle.com/

[3/2/10 2:08:58 PM] RalfX: chatrt without video. hmmm

OK I try Omegle:

You: hi

Stranger: hi

You: chatrt without video. hmmm

Stranger: ?

You: http://www.chatroulette.com/

Stranger: i know that site

Stranger: it is bullshit

You: however it used to grow 100%/day

Stranger: sure

Stranger: evebody shows dick on that site

Isn't as much fun without sound and video, just like the old IRC, how 80s.

[3/2/10 4:53:38 PM] Stephen: http://www.good.is/post/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-chat-roulette-but-were-afraid-to-ask/

[3/8/10 11:15:30 AM] Stephen: Guess what I did with my Sunday:

http://ChatRevolution.Posterous.com

This is the coolest video I found on CR:

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

and I spent some more time trying to engage people to talk:

You: How many oranges would it take to fill up that room?

Stranger: 9000

You: hmmmm

You: are you sure?

Stranger: yes

You: so 30x3x10=900

You: or 10x10x9=900

You: sorry no tits for you

Stranger: are you a man ?

You: u will never know

You: :P

Stranger: lol

Stranger: where ae youy ?

Stranger: are you

You: 6:06 am

Stranger: ouf

You: so if you wait until the sun raises, you could see

Stranger: but where?

You: however you could see another 1000 people until then

Stranger: i dont understand i'm french

You: hmmm, that is no excuse

Stranger: who are you ?!

You: hey I just heard France in http://twit.tv/natn128

You: which is the sound track

Stranger: an you where are you ?

You: in the bedroom

Stranger: but where is your bedroom ?

You: Je habit a Nice un anne et demi

You: 2nd floor

Stranger: on habite a coté de nice

You: wow

Stranger: et ouai the world is small

You: Gambetta 1996-97

Stranger: ok

Stranger: we go

Stranger: good bye !

You: ok

You: bye

Stranger: goog next

and then I went on to other distractions and work.

Ah the memories

SCALE is down to the last day, but I will have the memory to keep :) It has been a great Saturday, the keynote was as always inspiring, and I have to say that I did lots of thinking while there. Jono Bacon talked up a revolution, well not really but he does really do a great job in front of a crowd. The IPV6 talk was really crowded and hot so I decided it was time to spend in the lobby, where I found a stack of router logs to review again. Dru gave a great overview of why she likes BSD better. Made mew want to switch. John Willis gave an, Introduction to Chef slides seemed a bit strange, but he had some good experiences to share. Keith Wright's Troubleshooting Linux was so packed and basic I left, can't say if it got better. A good BOF for cloud computing and a rather big key signing party, looked a bit like speed dating, except everyone was trading government ID and checking people on a list, there has got to be a better way of doing this on computers. The reception was a big givaway, now if I could only find the person who won the mother board and make a complete system out of my memory. I can sure use a good computer to power Ubuntu and all the other distros I got on the floor. Perhaps I can finally enjoy BSD, it really does seem like it is time to play with it more. PC-BSD looks pretty nice.

SCALE is IPV6

I verified that I am using IPV6 at SCALE8x's WiFi network.

$ traceroute6 -n ipv6.google.com
traceroute6 to ipv6.l.google.com (2001:4860:b006::6a) from 2607:ff38:1:8007:21b:63ff:fecd:10b, 30 hops max, 12 byte packets
1 2607:ff38:1:8007::4 1.528 ms 1.107 ms 0.486 ms
2 2607:ff38:1:806c::1 0.773 ms 0.793 ms 0.651 ms
3 2607:ff38:1:80::1 36.182 ms 31.636 ms 69.378 ms
4 2001:470:1f03:11b::1 53.836 ms 31.606 ms 56.792 ms
5 2001:470:0:1f::1 40.289 ms 36.073 ms 29.78 ms
6 2001:470:0:2f::2 48.416 ms 31.635 ms 29.571 ms
7 2001:4860:1:1::1b1b:0:9 38.366 ms 46.895 ms 65.987 ms
8 * * *
9 * * *
10 * * *
11 * * *
12 2001:4860:0:1::3 56.849 ms 2001:4860:0:1::1 63.856 ms 2001:4860:0:1::3 66.803 ms
13 * *sendto: Network is down
traceroute6: wrote ipv6.l.google.com 12 chars, ret=-1
*
14 * * *
15 * * *
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 * * *

Bandwidth

Found a new cool place to measure my ATT DSL bandwidth. Might be useful once I sell some internet to 909 Sepulveda, where I can now offer up to 24 Mb/s.

I can't believe I might get a Gigabit connection to the home for a reasonable price someday. It blows my mind what I could all do, maybe iMax to the home? I know that Cisco TelePresence, which has HD is only 5Mb/screen, so say you have 3 screen which is a typical setup you need 15Mb. But having a whole 1 Gb to my home is more bandwidth then I know what to do with. I asked our cities IT manager to be sure to fill out the form. 1Gb would rock! I however fear that it will just be used for a high def version of ChatRoulette.

Modular connector replacement hook

I started a rather long thread at UUASC because I asked if I could buy a replacement tab for a 8P8C connector. No modular connector replacement hook on google shopping, geez, there has to be an easier way. Life hacker had the best solution, thanks Peter.

I am currently baffled as to how Google Video finds related videos on their site. I got a link yesterday for "Fraud and the Tone at the Top" which had some rather unrelated x-rated videos, didn't even know that GV would carry those, on the side. So my theory is that it must be either a key word thing or that somehow people went to these videos after watching "Fraud and the Tone at the Top."

Linux Mercenary for hire, will do SysAdmin, networking, and Windows if need be

Blogging is getting old for me, I haven't seen the ads make any money so I have been forced to spend my time elsewhere. However every so often I feel like yelling something out the world, but airing dirty laundry is also rather boring to my readers so I guess I won't.

I am currently looking for a job, there seem to be many opportunities available: GN, IB, Yahoo, LW, FuHu, TC, Herbalife and too many others that I can't remember. I wonder if blogging about this hurts y chances, well, given that this blog isn't big in audience, probably not. Although I could see the value of documenting the process for people with similar skills to mine who are in my geography. Maybe they can do the same for me, for my next gig.

I am looking for a Linux Sysadmin job close to El Segundo CA, however for the right position, I will relocate anyhwhere in the world, I would like to live. I am currently interested in EC2 and some of the other cloud schemes. Amazon, would be a great place to work, or anyone building a cloud powered site. I hope to be CTO in 5 years and as such will take managerial positions.

LA Subway

Public transit sucks in Southern California, but it wasn't always so bad, in the 1920s we actually had a pretty comprehensive rail system,


It was interesting to see a fantasy subway map of Los Angeles.