Current Inbox status jeremy has 788 items in his inbox

Posted by jeremy, at 2009-06-23 20:33:39

Joys of vista wireless
I recently set up WLAN for one of my clients, and everything worked great using WPA2 and my EEE904 running XP. Signal was good throughout the location, DHCP was being passed through the 802.11g access point just fine, so I pronounced it good and left.

No sooner had I gotten on a plane to head to another customer, than I got the call: "Wireless isn't working." It was the damnedest thing. I had configured the Vista64 laptop in question personally, and verified that all the WPA2 settings were correct. Once I got back on the ground and got Internet access, I punched into the Ubuntu server that handles DHCP, and could see that the server was offering leases to the proper MAC. Everything looked right.

To make a long story short, check out this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233 -- basically, Vista does DHCP just a bit differently, and unless you add the registry entries contained in the "more info" section of that document, you aren't going to get Vista working with your commodity router. Just in case that article goes away, here's the nuts-n-bolts of it:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\{GUID} 

Value name: DhcpConnForceBroadcastFlag
Value type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 0

Doing that will square things right away.

Posted by jeremy, at 2008-10-27 23:19:39

AoE on Winders? Free?
I am VERY happy that someone has finally implemented an AoE driver for Windows over at http://winaoe.org/. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet, and with disk at a bit of a premium on the server, it'll be a few weeks.
AoE is _not_ Age of Empires -- it's ATA over Ethernet. Poor man's iSCSI, if you will. I messed around with it some in the Linux3 class, back when I was teaching, and was impressed with how simple it was to set up. I'm looking forward to spinning up some AoE in the house here -- why have big drives in the windows machines when I can have hardware-like speeds out of network shares?
One thing you will want for this, however, is good ethernet hardware (like a REAL gigE card -- Intel, not that Marvell Yukon junk), and fast disk in your server.

Posted by jeremy, at 2008-10-27 22:42:33

Mr. Math
It looks like all of the glucometer checks have had a definite effect -- Thorwald's math skills are a wee bit advanced. He's pretty reliably doing single-digit multiplication now, so we've started him at Kumon schools, where he's working at adding, tracing, drawing lines and bigger addition and subtraction problems than I'd previously challenged him with.
We looked into Kumon and Mathnasium both, but Kumon came away the hands-down winner in my book. Both were run by extremely nice women with advanced educational degrees. The local Kumon school is run by a woman who received her doctorate in Theoretical Physics from the University of Tokyo. She speaks four or five languages. Mathnasium is down in Bloomington, and the proprietor has a master's degree in electrical engineering from, I believe, Mankato state.
Having talked to both proprietors and looked at some of the materials, I came away thinking Kumon was the more solid choice. I like the amount of practice they do, and I like that they have timed tests -- Thor does best when given a limited amount of time to complete a task.
His reading skills are coming together rapidly, as well. He's already picking out a lot of the "sight words" which they will require him to know at the end of the school year. He loves his half-day kindergarten class, and runs happily to the bus every day. School is a lot of fun for him, and I really have to give his teacher credit. Good teachers are hard to come by, but he has ended up with a great one.

Posted by jeremy, at 2008-09-22 18:03:57

thanks
Once again, I upgraded my server (valhalla.angelar.com). This time, I got much better hardware, including a REAL network card (Intel E1000 PCI-Express). Only thing is, when the new server booted, it wouldn't call the E1000 eth0, and it wouldn't call the cheapo, onboard Realtek 8101E eth1, like it should. It wanted the realtek to be eth3, and the Intel to be eth2.
Took me some digging, but I found that Ubuntu likes to stick MAC information in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-net_persistent_names.rules . Edited that, and changed the alias name for my devices back to what they should be. Voila, interfaces are properly named.
My request of almost all OS vendors is this: STOP HELPING ME. Alternately, put a note in the manpage!

Posted by jeremy, at 2008-06-30 08:55:04

backup
So, out there somewhere is a Linux box that I need to backup nightly. Recently, a friend asked how I did it. So, voila here is fullbackup.bash, which backs up the system to the USB drive and unmounts it when it is done. It also emails me a text file if there is an error, so I can fix it right away.
Now, the client also wanted a way to see if the backup drive had been detected when they plugged it into the headless server. So I looked up gnubeep, and made the machine play a neat little tone when the drive came online. The HDonline script runs ever twenty minutes through cron. view it here.
Nothing fancy, but maybe you can make use of it.

Posted by jeremy, at 2008-04-04 22:13:42

Garage Rebuild Status
The garage has been rebuilt. It's still in progress, but it's coming along nicely. You can read about it at garage_rebuild, and you can hear about it on April 5th, at Hacking Habitation. Wish me luck.

Posted by jeremy, at 2007-09-03 23:50:20

so long and thanks for all the fish
It's been nine months since I made an update to my blog. I've failed to note some good stuff: Thorwald is now using the Medtronic constant glucose monitoring system, and insurance is paying for it. I took a class in teaching law enforcement techniques, which was really interesting. I ripped the roof off of my garage and put on a second story (okay, that one is still in progress, and I will get pictures of the whole project up in the future). Gunnar is growing fast, so is Thor. Both boys are thriving. Work is good, though there is the threat of a strike looming. I'd love to say that I'll start blogging again. I don't know that I will. I tend to tell my stories to people I see in person, and then forget about them. When I do find free time, I tend to build things, or threaten people who are selling my Undergraduate thesis with a DMCA lawsuit. It works, too -- something about $500,000 lawsuits seems to convince people that they shouldn't be selling my lone work on serial killers. When work and family, and all my construction projects die down, then I'll write more I guess. Maybe once Thorwald has mastered some prose, I can cut him loose with doing updates. We've done some laser-lightening of moles for him, and that has worked well. Regardless, happy trails. I hope to be back.

Posted by jeremy, at 2006-12-15 01:15:54

verizon learns math
I use Verizon for my cell phone. I do not do anything data related on it. I'm rather glad I don't, because it turns out that Verizon doesn't know the difference between $0.015 and 0.015 cents. That's a difference of TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE. Imagine being told that a car costs $15,000--but the bill comes in for $1,500,000, and the guys at the dealership argue that they never told you anything wrong. I honestly don't know if Verizon is training their CSRs to mislead people, but I suspect they are. Day after day we are given examples of major corporations lying, cheating and stealing--all in the name of a quick buck. There are some audio links at the page above that are simply mindblowing. Basic math skills are apparently dead in corporate America. Maybe _that's_ how we got the Enron fiasco, and the Savings & Loan swindle (as sponsored by Neil Bush, our illustrious president's brother)!

Posted by jeremy, at 2006-12-14 18:10:00

thor went on vacation
From the way Thorwald looks in this picture, I think he's enjoying his 3-day trip to my parents' palatial ranch. From the looks of it, he really _is_ going to be a civil engineer someday.

Posted by jeremy, at 2006-11-16 10:26:56

Aaaaaaaaaaaargh
So much for HealthPartners rubber-stamping constant glucose monitoring systems. We received our letter of refusal last week. I've placed a call into their Medical Appeals Line, at 1-800-331-8643, and am told they are obligated to call me back within 1 business day. I'm looking forward to hearing from them, since their primary reason for refusal was that the sensor is not FDA-approved for Thor's age group. Interestingly, the paradigm pump itself is not FDA-approved for his age group, but they covered it without questions. I would suspect that this will give me a good argument for getting the sensors covered by Healthpartners.

Posted by jeremy, at 2006-10-19 23:00:04

Is google evil?
Is google evil?. This is an interesting article which points out one of the great truths of American business: profit is king. Those gmail accounts that google is giving away? There is no free lunch, people. They're learning from your email, and they may or may not be tracking data specifically on you.

Posted by jeremy, at 2006-10-19 15:01:41

Guardian
It was a day to visit Dr. Voulgaropoulis, and we came away with excellent news. Thor's A1c was 7.4, which is excellent, so there was only one small recommendation towards Thor's basal rate.
The big news is this: The Minimed Guardian Real-time glucose monitoring system is now available. It's still new, it hasn't been FDA-approved for Thor, but Dr. V has tried it on himself and been very happy. Unfortunately, non-approved devices are rarely covered by insurance. The cost for us would be $300/month + the guardian itself.
On a lark, however, I called HealthPartners, and asked. They have a policy that real-time sensors are covered without question. My next call was a message to The endocrinology clinic, asking for an Rx, then a call to Minimed. Minimed was kind enough to ship over an Rx request to Dr. V, and with luck, the paperwork will get rolling today.
Angela and I are overjoyed. This is going to mean we only need to prick Thor's finger 2-4 times per day, and when we do the final check, the one we do before us parents call it a night...we only have to get within six feet of him!
This still will not be an artificial pancreas--human intervention is required to administer insulin and glucose. Also, high and low readings will have to be verified with finger-sticks. Regardless of that, however, we'll now have an accurate picture of what's going on--far better than we could have even with 8-10 checks per day.
It's a good day here. I hope yours is going well, too.

Posted by jeremy, at 2006-10-17 19:49:02

don't forget to write your name on your paper!
I always give my students a two- to three-minute spiel on how they HAVE TO WRITE THEIR NAMES ON THEIR PAPERS, particularly tests. Normally, I just give students a zero when they leave off their names. Why? The more I teach, the more I see the ability to follow simple directions as essential.

In my Linux Admin 2 course, however, I have very few students. I had one student, who is actually very competent, neglect to write his name on the production portion of the test, though he wrote it on the scantron sheet. This is the message I put on his test.

Posted by jeremy, at 2006-10-16 20:33:03

I am a nerd

Posted by jeremy, at 2006-10-14 10:35:17

words of wisdom
The other night, after a few beverages, my wife and I started compiling a list of Thor's choice phrases so far. These span the first three years of his life. We're not making any of these up. These are all things that he has just blurted out at some point or another.

• My pants aren't on right
• I'm just cross with you dada
• My diaper fell down
• Why is it? (to be asked several times in a row, and on a daily basis
• I made poops!
• My finger is in my nose because it itches
• I can't imagine why they closed the corner video store
• F-Bomb!
• Uncle E drops the F-Bomb a lot
• why does he?
• I'm just all worned out
• I have poop on my hand.
• Oh, look, it's [NEIGHBOR], Dada's favorite person
• I want to be the wife like Graham, so I'm in charge
• I like your legs (to the 12-year-old brunette wearing short shorts in the dentist's office)
• You have beautiful hair (immediately thereafter, and again to the brunette)