Xmas

For all of you who I didn't send a Christmas card this year, don't feel bad, no one got one, happy festivus.  Although I feel bad about it as I have started to get some Christmas cards myself. Note to self, start earlier next year, make a good picture to put on it, then stuff envelops, or at least email them out like I do every year, sometime between Christmas and new years, wait I have time. Too bad I don't have PhotoShop on this Mac :(

Easter Island heads have bodies

They aren't just heads, and the office is in Santa Monica CA.http://seeker401.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/easter-island-heads-have-bodies/

Japan summer 2012

I heard Japan is sponsoring 10000 bloggers, Facebook and Twitter users to visit Japan on a free ride, you pay for your stay.  I googled it and found that it is true, cool, hope I can be choosen.

midnight oil

I got my reward for working until midnight on Monday, I now have more spare time :)

ec2 deployments

I spent most of this week working on automating an EC2 deployment.  I want the servers to be run over and over again in a predictable manner.  Get them running in the 5 min, they can run in, the base AMI is mostly done, has lots of packages and the scripting that remains is trivial, however I haven't found a good way to do it with bash and awk, don't have the time to learn Boto or the inclination to use RightScale.  However I feel a bit like I am rewriting Poolparty, but way behind on this.  I would be very interested in others solutions, experiences, frustrations and successes.  Feel free to comment below.

So far I use a spreadsheet as a starting point for what the servers will be, then export the data as a CSV and have bash/awk turn it into ec2-run-instances commands.

7 Years of gMail

So this is my first gMail message, 7 years ago, I am about to close my Hotmail account, geez, some things have changed for the better.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gmail Team
Date: Mon, Sep 20, 2004 at 9:55 AM
Subject: Gmail is different. Here's what you need to know.
To: Ra


First off, welcome. And thanks for agreeing to help us test Gmail. By now you probably know the key ways in which Gmail differs from traditional webmail services. Searching instead of filing. A free gigabyte of storage. Messages displayed in context as conversations.

So what else is new?

Gmail has many other special features that will become apparent as you use your account. To help you get started, we encourage you to visit our Help Center, there you can browse frequently asked questions, read our Getting Started guide, or contact the Gmail User Support Team. You'll also find information in the Help Center on such topics as:

Importing your contacts from Yahoo! Mail, Outlook, and others to Gmail
Using address auto-complete
Setting up filters for incoming mail
Using advanced search options

You may also have noticed some text ads or related links to the right of this message. They're placed there in the same way that ads are placed alongside Google search results and, through our AdSense program, on content pages across the web. The matching of ads to content in your Gmail messages is performed entirely by computers; never by people. Because the ads and links are matched to information that is of interest to you, we hope you'll find them relevant and useful.

We're working hard during our limited test to improve Gmail and make it the best webmail service around. Thanks for taking the plunge with us. We hope you'll enjoy Google's approach to email.

Thanks,

The Gmail Team

P.S. You can sign in to your account any time by visiting http://gmail.google.com

work work work, no time to blog :(

loving it, my view

Kitesurfing

Been learning kitesurfing the past 2 weekends :) at Belmont Shores.  This is my first time, with a 15m kite.

BitCoin

I haven't used BitCoin yet, but given that it is gaining value vs the USD it is now on my radar and since I have a former neighbor who spends lots of time blogging about BitCoin, I have been learning about it to the point I actually finished the Wikipedia articule last night, after giving a 5 min lightning talk on BitCoin at UUASC and trying to book a speaker to talk about it in Culver City, unconfirmed as of yet.  I won't go into what it is or why it is interesting, however Forbes has taken notice, it got Slash-dotted and has a upward trend right now.  All things that make me interested in learning what this is and how it works and what problem it can solve for me.  Bitcoin.org is the main page, there are some Twitter feeds, Facebook, and 1,320,000 google results for further info.

backup and location

My sister's MBP17 got stolen, I can't really help her, but maybe I could help others by creating a backup/location solution on the cloud. Seems like both things combine very well, now there are many solutions out there already, I myself use Dropbox, Ubuntu 1, Carbonite and mailing DVDs. On the other hand I am reading how Internet entrepreneurs like professional athletes peak around 25, darn.

Google Docs

I am trying to crowd source the UUASC slides. I find that they are a useful tool, since we do have around 30 people in the audience to get through things faster, however they take time to prepare and I want info from more sources on them, collaborators, so Google Docs seems to be the way to go.
Impress in Open Office or Star Office was pretty good, however it isn't PowerPoint or Keynote which would have been slightly easier choices.


View Larger Map

Google Interview

Monday I had my second Google interview for an SRE position. I find some of the things that were done a bit unnatural. I have many years of experience and as such focus on higher level ideas, not so much the low level implementation details that I can easily get from simple fast searches. Yet the test pretty much focuses on the minutia.

memories

Cleaning out an old XP 'puter, memories:
screen
^A:multiuser on
^A:acladd user
screen -x username/

Some time sheets:

26-Mar 1
27-Mar 2
28-Mar 1
29-Mar 1
31-Mar 4
3-Apr 1
4-Apr 2
5-Apr 1
8-Apr 1
12-Apr 1
17-Apr 1
19-Apr 2
21-Apr 0.5
26-Apr 2
29-Apr 1
30-Apr 1
13-May 0.5
2-Jun 0
1-Jun 3
5-Jun 1
6-Jun 0

27
40
1080

Day of Week "Time
In" "Time
Out" Meal "Time
In" "Time
Out" "Total
Hrs" "Regular
Hrs" "Overtime
Hrs" "Sick
Hrs" "Vacation
Hrs"
Sun
Mon
Tue 9:30 AM 1:50 PM 2:35 PM 6:15 PM 8.00 8.00
Wed 9:00 AM 12:30 PM 1:10 PM 6:00 PM 8.33 8.33
Thu 8:45 AM 12:00 PM 12:31 PM 5:45 PM 8.48 8.48
Fri 9:30 AM 3:00 PM 5.50 5.50
Sat 11:20 AM 1:45 PM 2.42 2.42
Total: 32.73

Employee Signature Date

It never rains in Southern California

Albert Hammond - 1973

Open42

Open42 is hiring and put out some contact info:
If you decode our contact info below, we’d love to chat with you!
1YAF7BAV 6A#X WA_01-ADXAD 6_A_7A_ 43A_7AF7BA67DAX5 14A574FUWX6B5A _A78X6LJAW7_AV75AD1_0AF7B#A 88#7 V0A_7A-74C16ZA_01-A8BGG4X

However haven't figured out how to decrypt it, but interested in a company right here in town to work at, would be a short commute.  So I have been trying letter frequencies, Caesar cypher, the 27 characters in this string run from space, 32 to _, 95 on an ASCII table, I have tried an xor with 42 hex and decimal.

Redondo Beach Transit, Beach Cities Transit

I posted about my experience at SCALE9x, trying to use the 109 bus before, but still after many calls and emails I haven't gotten a reply from Redondo Beach CA, except for that failed phone call back, still I try to see the link: 109 and I don't see the bus on it, so they haven't yet entered their info to Google Transit, it is free and easy, or so they say.

yesterday 26 mile bike ride

The day started really early, whole family woke up.
Watched an inspiring interview with Philip Rosedale.
Glympse worked great to meet in Hermosa Beach and go on a long bike ride.

Google Transit

I was without a 109 bus schedule at SCALE trying to remember when that hourly bus might arrive, I had an Android phone that can tell me when MTA busses arrive, but doesn't have any information about BCT, which is a bit of a regular problem for me. It is also hard to find any schedule info on the website, and I hear that the PDF is out dated, not to speak of the obvious problem of it being a PDF on a phone web browser, not friendly. I am trying to take the bus more in LA, but just as in the old days, it is still hard to navigate.  The only bright spot is Google Transit has made it much easier for most cities, but not the Beach Cities. I have tried emailing to the email on the schedule, but it isn't helping, it bounces, and the alternate email that the bounce suggested, well it went unanswered.  Phone messages go unanswered as well. Maybe I can find more people on the web that would like to help get this info into Google Transit, so that they can retrieve it on Google Maps. Anyhow the website shows (310)937-6660 might be the number to call them on, maybe you can find a human there.

NATing Google Voice calls, Dynamic numbers

I had a stupid idea when I called from a gMail account without a number attached to it, by mistake, but anyhow the caller ID ended up being +17607058888, so I tried calling it back but the recording said "we couldn't complete your call, please try again." So I did but with the same result. Wouldn't it be cool if you could call back the gMail account that last called the number that is calling back? I know that this could lead to errors, but the current situation, where you can make calls from gMail, but then you miss the call and call back, isn't as good as it could be. Maybe they could even have a pool of numbers to auto assign as callback numbers, just like DHCP recycles IP addresses once you logout. Anyhow since I do have a Google Voice number, I can make that call again, but if you ever want to make a call that you can't be called back on, use gMail.

Macbook pro 3,1

A bad lid switch, keeps waking up the laptop in the back pack so had to issue a

r$ sudo pmset -a lidwake 0

to keep this thing asleep.


r$ pmset -g
Active Profiles:
Battery Power -1
AC Power -1*
Currently in use:
lidwake 0
autorestart 0
halfdim 1
sms 1
hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage
disksleep 10
sleep 10
hibernatemode 3
ttyskeepawake 1
displaysleep 10
acwake 0
womp 0

SCALE9x

SCALE is on Friday and I am thrilled to be attending, in fact cut my vacation short to get back in time.  What I didn't realize at the time I booked my flights is that I would be speaking on Getting Started with Ubuntu, which is a pretty good topic for me to reintroduce myself to getting start with Ubuntu, coming from OS X. I have started by setting up VirtualBox on my fresh install of Snow Leopard. Downloaded the Desktop 32bit Ubuntu 10.10 and Server. Starting to think about my ouline: Ubuntu.com
Ubuntu Desktop
Ubuntu Server
Cloud Computing. This is getting interesting, sorry I will miss Herding Cat5 during my talk. I would rather talk in DevOps, but alas, I didn't apply.

I still can't find anyone interested in keeping LiLAX going by putting in their own time. The domain expires in March, I don't know if it is worth renewing, it is a good name, but there are so many other tech events in LA, and Linux just works, people don't seem to need the LUGs anymore. Besides we have a thriving SCALE.

laying in bed

the roosters are crowing, and I found 3 bars of WiFi from the Hotel Salinas in the house, so I can actually do somethings, but of course a shared Tricom connection, doesn't go fast. My knee is doing pretty bad, hope it gets better fast, have had really bad experiences with knees in the past and this one does hurt.

I was very close to installing BroadnetWireless Meraki's here, but the hotel owner in the end wanted local support and I couldn't say that I would be all the time, plus his usuall IT guy didn't understand all the advantages that Meraki offers, mostly it came down to price, $200/OD2-PROaccess point just didn't do it for him. Anyhow I would be interested in a cheaper technology that can mesh on Linksys WRT54G routers. I know it won't be as clean or nice as a Meraki, but hey they want cheap. 

Windsurfing

Had a great time windsurfing today, wind is still good, but taking some time to get my email answered and checking on the market. Pretty nice office to work out of, but the bandwidth is a bit constrained.

Salinas Tricom Airspan Easyvoice

I have ben working on the WiFi for Hotel Salinas, so of course I had to figure how good the wireless is.

Twilight Landing At LAX (Cockpit View)

Soon I will be approaching LAX too, but got to make the best of the time on the island, going Windsurfing on Sunday, in Salinas :)

Today we have no water, ah the flashes of the past.

American was a great flight and we are doing well. Now to go explore.

long day

I am tiered and have a new view out my window. But had dinner with an old friend and really excited to revisit some beaches and go windsurfing.

Can't make a living with ads

After putting ads on my blog in June2007 I have finally gotten paid: $103.91Last payment (Jan 25, 2011) at least I trust Google when they say they did this. So close to 4 years for the first payoff. On the plus side, I don't mind sharing my money with them, as they do host the blog for free as well as many really great services like search, email and voice, which I all use. Thanks Google for all you do for us, however don't try to make a living blogging, at least not if you have rubbish content like I do, no one comes here,

I hear that ultra local micro bloggers do make money, I shuold probably walk across the street and ask to see ElSegundo.net's numbers.  He does seem to have more local content that might pop up in a search.

Cheap DSL

Sometimes when I wake up early, I figure what the heck, lets burn some bandwidth, but I never get the advertised 3Mb from AT&T.

Maybe because I didn't have the Chrome window up front?

Thats better.

Unusually low for TWC, but then who knows what else is going on with this connection, I don't control it.

But still TWC beats AT&T DSL, now if only I had WiFi to the AT&T uVerse I could try that, I might install an AP at Walton2.com so I can test this. Wonder if he would give us roof access.

CloudCamp is a blast!

Good dinner, many great talks and about 200 of my peers.  I just tested an EVO on Sprint for my WiFi, really fast, not like my 3G :( on Virgin Mobile, but hey, I only pay $25/month.