our new pup...

About a week ago we had to say good-bye to our dog Kobi. She was 11yrs old (going to be 12 in Feb) and her health had been declining for more than a year. She was Kim's "first baby" and it was really very sad for all of us to say good-bye, but she's in a better place now.

Of course Kim and I said we were going to wait at least a year before getting another dog, but the house really felt empty without her around. As it turned out, yesterday we went to see a breeder down near A&M and, well, we brought home a new family member, Marley (a.k.a "Ghost of Marley" for his official show name). Man there is NOTHING like puppy energy!

Flock browser trials....

I downloaded Flock 0.4.8 a while back because my Firefox browser was acting a little squirrly on me. The tranistion from Firefox to Flock was smooth since Flock is based on Firefox. Its "Preferences" were simlar enough to Firefox that I was up and running and feeling pretty comfortable with it in no time at all.

However, since it is still a developer's release, I needed something more reliable...so I fixed my Firefox browser. Now that Flock is up to 0.4.10 I'm giving it a go again. I really don't need the distraction, but a techie's gotta do what techie's gotta do...

One thing I've been trying to force myself to do is keep up with my blog and post more frequently. And since Flock integrated a blogging editor in the browser I figured I'd see if that will light a fire under me. So far I'm agnostic about whether I use the built-in editor from blogger or whether I use the editor with Flock. I do like that Flock's blog editor is hooked into my blog host. One less click on the mouse.

halloween in austin

Last night was our first Halloween in Austin and man was it fun. Dylan was a skeleton, Rylie was Ragedy Ann, and I was Michael Miers. Kim's allergies unfortunately got the better of her so our favorite vamp couldn't join us this year.

Halloween was loads of fun. Kim took the kids to a few houses so Rylie could get to see what Halloween was all about. When they got back we all went down to Jim and Merridith's house to take the boys our trick-or-treating. Riley's costume was Robin this year and it was really funny watching a skeleton and Robin run full bore down the street racing to each door.

In the end the boys bagged enough sugar to rot the teeth out of a their heads ten times over. We're all looking forward to the sugar highs to come!

kayaking san marcos

Two weeks ago Jim and I took Dyaln and Riley kayaking down the San Marcos River. What a blast! Of course it took us a while to put in since this was our first trip to the San Marcos, but it was completely worth it. I'm sure it was quite the comedy to see Jim and I drying around San Marcos with our kayaks strapped to our roofs turning down one street only to turn back around and go down another. Eventually we did find a take out spot at the San Marcos River Park. From our put in at Old City Park this was a very fast float down the river. Next time we will definitely find a better take out spot.

Once we dropped off our car at the take out spot we loaded our kayak on Jim's car and the four of us headed back to the put in. The boys were coming out of their skin running around the park, getting too close to the water out of our site...basically being four-year-old boys. So on go the PFDs while we unload the boats.

After we get our kayaks unloaded and gear stoed we're off. The river was amazing. The water was so clear you could see straight to the bottom. Straight off a blue heron flew across the water right in front of us. We saw perch and turtles galore. About 10 minutes down stream we came to a dam. One of those low water dams, but this one had a section cut out for kayakers and canoers to go through. Dylan and I took the lead. Man was it cool! Going over you can't see how far down it is, but you know it's do-able. So over we go...just commit and drop in! The bow hesitates above the falls for a second and then down it drops and water rushes in flooding the boat. What a rush! Dylan and I were ready to shoot it again!

Next came Jim and Riley. Little bit more hesitation in their boat. Jim actually listens to Riley and thinks before they drop in. Me, I just go...no hesitation...one pass to get a feel and whoosh!!! over the falls we go.

We're already making plans for the next river trip!

backyard residents

We have recently had a new visitor in our backyard. What appears to be a ruby throated hummingbird has taken up a permenant dining space outside our window. In the feeder is a simple sugar water solution and we just noticed it feeding on the basil flowers in the garden as well.

Keep Austin Beautiful

this past saturday i took dylan out to the lake travis clean up organized by the keep austin beautiful organization. it was really quite fun. we got out to the meeting place by 8:30a and picked up our stuff and then headed out to the park we volunteered to help clean up.

mostly we picked up bottles, cigarette butts, and food wrappers. but when we were walking across the bridge at the low water crossing park, we found a 20" bmx freestyle bike at the bottom of the lake (really a the lower colorado river but who's paying attention). there were some people who had their canoe and kayak with them that we got to help us try and get the bike out. however, by the time they got their loads of trash out of their boats and back over to the site where the bike was submerged the flood gates had been opened and the current had picked up too much to even find the bike again, let alone get it out of the water.

after we were done with the trash pick up we went back to the satellite building where we picked up our supplies and had a bit of lunch before heading back to the low water crossing to break in our new fishing rods. we lost two lures and didn't get a single bite. doesn't really matter though. it was just fun being outside with dylan. he mainly let his lures "swim" in the water at the shoreline. i figured out how to cast my setup properly. so all in all it was a very fun and productive day.

sustainable datacenter

so i've been reading up on high availablity architectures and strategies for a presetnation i will be giving in august and thought that it would be cool to desgin and research what it would take to create a completely sustainable data center...

from the data side of the equation...you'd have to have fast and secure access to the site from a remote location...you'd want to know your data was not only safe but secure from internal and external prying eyes...

network considerations

• speed of light


• geographic distance to data center


• satellite wifi access

building site considerations

• do you build to suit and completely customized the structure?


• do you search for a pre-existing site that fits most of your requirements?


• do you stay local to the U.S. or do you look for an international site?


• if you do look intl, where do you start?


• what countries are attractive?


• what types of natural disasters are "normal"?

would it be a good idea to attempt to reach out to a third world country such as an african nation to host the data center?? this could potentially be a means to provide training for the local peoples in many areas...such as building design, systems design, solar energy designs, actual hands-on experience with new technologies...

homebrew project requirements 0.0

so i've got a small garden at home that i've been maintaining since this past spring and i'm learning quite a bit about how to water properly...that got me to thinking about what i would like an irrigation system (ISM) to monitor and tell me...

i've found that my garden plants like to be watered less frequently but at greater amounts than shallow waterings on a daily basis...i would like my ISM to monitor and tune watering cycles based on the dryness (or wettness) of the soil...this is a critical feature...so one question i have is how many electrodes should i use in the soil and to what depth should they be to obtain reliable and accurate readings

there is a question of power...how do i power this system??? i am very intrigued by the notion of sustainable living and alternate enery sources...so it would be cool if it was solar powered...there's plenty of sun down here in tx

more to come as the ideas hit me...

homebrew project idea....

so i've been tossing around the idea of developing an automated irrigation system...of course i mean a computer monitored and automated irrigation system...eventually i would like to integrate wireless access maybe even a motion sensor that triggers a "pop-up" to scare off unwanted vistors...i don't know...i'm still brainstorming ideas...

one of my first questions is to figure out what all needs to go into the hardware end of this project...i mean do i go out to radio shack and buy a square of copper and cut it to small pieces connect them to a bread board and design the circuitry myself or do i try and find commodity hardware and hack it together...i have a feeling i will go the "hack it together route"...as i am not in the mood to work in an ee masters degree at the moment....

one suggestion a buddy of mine came up with was to use X10 hardware as it is very general in nature...good place to start, but as he said...those damn pop-up ads are annoying...so i start here with X10 research and hopefully will find something more usable...

chatter

it's the last day of my "recovery" and dylan has not stopped chattering for over a year...i don't know if it's all four-year-olds or just him (i suspect the former), but from the minute his eyes open in the morning until they close again when his head hits the pillow he is constantly chattering...it's hilarious...sometimes annoying...but mostly it's hilarious

i love listening to him talk to his mom...i love watching him play and talk to his toys...could be a raptor carrying the blue ranger into the battle to defeat mezagod or a triceratops charging a giant lizard...it's brings back memories of star wars action figures and hot wheels crash derbys when i was a kid...

...and that's just dylan...rylie is only 14 months old...just starting to walk...and is already trying to get into everything...she also chatters...not quite as incesantly as dylan....she gets so excited when she does something new...she has the most beautiful smile...ok...that's enough of the gushing...

take two...

so it's 12:55 -0600 GMT and i'm sitting here watching "gastineau girls" on cable...yea, i'm bored and there's nothing on tv...this past thrusday i had to have my vasectomy redone...and this is the reason i'm stuck in my recliner watching g-girls...at least i have a (semi) stable internet connection...

i've successfully spent the last three days with my ass planted in this damn chair...watching mindless tv...updating my del.icio.us tags and adding more..."researching" diy projects...playing splinter cell...searching for cool new mp3's...and finding a cool new accessory for my ipod....

my wife has been incredible!!! she's been doing everything around the house...cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids...it's been a nice break and she deserves the message she's getting and more

well at least after a little surfing i settled on meet the barkers ... at least it's funnier than g-girls...

the view out our living room windows is fantastic...i get to watch the squirrels fight with the blue jays over peanuts and bird seed...there are a couple of baby blue jays...both male from the looks of it...and they have definitely found their lungs...the pigeons are seeming to hold their own againsts the jays and squirrels as well...luckily for the smaller birds (warblers, wrens, chickadees, titmice, etc) we've got two feeders with cages around them...we have the coolest house and yard ever!!!

paddle fever

so we bought a new kayak last weekend at rei...and it is the coolest thing EVER! last weekend we took out maiden voyage on lake austin near where we live...it was fun, but too much motorboat traffic...lots of waves...too concerned about being run over by other boaters...still it was worth it...the other side of the lake from where we put in was a cool inlet with a waterfall...

today we went to town lake and put in at auditorium shores...not a bad place to put in, but i think the put in by austin high school will be a better place to launch from...we got to see where the bats live under the congress ave bridge...we found the inlet that leads to zilker park and barton creek...it was tons of fun...much better than lake austin...no motor boat traffic at all...

Using Google to Find mp3's

I was reading some blogs the other day and stumbled across a post on Taking Advantage Of Technology - How To Find MP3's with Google. So I read it and tried it. If you're looking for a napster/morpheus type engine, forget it. If you're looking for those hard-to-find mp3's, you're in for some work. But in the end, it's worth the effort because you are bound to learn how to use Google more efficeintly and possibly find some new artists that you were not aware of before.

happy searching!

damn funny stuff

so i know i'm a bit late on this one...but this is the funniest damn blog i've seen in a long time!!!

my new toy...my zaurus

I finally did it, I purchased a Sharp Zaurus SL - 5500 a couple of weeks ago and have not been able to put it down since it arrived at my doorstep! I had been researching Linux based PDAs for quite some time and discovered that the Sharp Zaurus models were the best on the market and easiest to use straight out of the box (a.k.a no twisted OS removal/re-install hack required). My Zaurus came with the Linux kernel version 2.4.8 for the ARM processor. Sharp labeled this version 2.3.7 of the ROM image. The only problem I had was connecting to my Windows XP laptop using TCP/IP over USB networking. More of a problem with my "instructions??!! we don't need to stinkin' instructions!!!" attitude. Once I removed all the Zaurus PC software and USB drivers a couple of times and actually followed the instructions, all was beautiful in the land of Zaurus.

I purchased my Zaurus on Amazon's Electronics website. I absolutely LOVE the New & Used section Amazon offers. The dealer I used packshipandsell2 had an estimated delivery date of 7 - 14 business days. The acutal turn around time was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 business days. And even though I purchased a "used" model, it was actually new and came in the original box with all manuals and accessories. If you are going to purchase a Zaurus I highly recommend Amazon and packshipandsell2.

Now I am not your standard business or end user type, I am a Linux Admin and Oracle DBA. AND I have this uncontrollable desire to figure out how stuff works. Hence, my reason for purchasing the Zaurus. Leading up to the time I slapped down my CC# on Amazon I did quite a bit of research to determine just what I and how badly I could screw up my new PDA. I found that the Zaurus is the darling of the embedded linux home/garage tinkerers. If you google on the Zaurus an incredible amount of hits come back, however the one that immediately caught my attention was the Open Zaurus Project. This project aims to replace the original Sharp Embeddix ROM image with a custom Linux kernel. I have read pretty much all the documentation available on their site (and several others) about how to install the OZ/Opie image, but I have not moved to it yet. The main reason is that I still need to purchase a CF card. And here in lies my quandry, I want a WiFi card and a CF card but can realistically only afford to purchase one at a time. So which to purchase first...

First, let's start with why I am considering not going with the CF card first. Initially I wanted to hack up my new Zaurus and drop on OpenZaurus (a.k.a. OZ) from the get go, but I changed my mind. To get a feel for the upgrade / ROM flash process, I upgraded to version 3 of the Sharp ROM image. This was fairly straight forward and I did not have to perform the twisted yoga move of hitting the C and D keys while pressing the "Full Reset" button in the lower right hand area of the battery compartment. From all my research, this manuver seems to be the most challenging part of the whole process. I do still plan on migrating to the OZ version soon though. The main reason I opted for v3 was I wanted to get a feel for my new Z before screwing it up. Secondly, with a dial-up connection at the house (I've got 2 kids...so no comment on the dial-up, it's free) I wouldn't be able to quickly google a problem and/or download a patch or new ipkg. What I have done in the interim is to download all the ipkg's I'm interested in to my laptop and burn them off to CD as a backup measure. One of the nicest aspects of going to v3, is that it does not install all the Hancom Mobile apps and all the games (it does install its version of solitare) that eat up storage space. So this leaves you with approximately 27M of free space to play with.

Now why am I considering going with a WiFi card first? Hmmmmm, maybe because it's PHRIKKEN COOL!!! Using the builtin Intel WiFi card in my Centrino laptop and my trusty Windows version of NetStumbler, I have located four hotspots/access points in range of my house. Unfortunately, all the cool WiFi tools work best on Linux. Do you see where I'm going with this??? So in the end it I am going to purchase either the Netgear MA701 802.11b CF card, the Linksys WCF11, or the Linksys WCF12 cards. I am actually leaning towards the Netgear card after reading the customer reviews and researching compatablity with various WiFi tools.

ma nouvelle souris

I'm on a never ending quest to rid myself of as many wires as possible so I went out and bought the Logitech MediaPlay Cordless Mouse. Even though it's only been one day since I purchased it and installed the software, I'm pretty please with it and it's extras so far. One thing that it does that is mildly annoying is the mouse pointer will occasionally jump to the top or side of the screen if you lift it up from the work surface.

I was initially going to purchase the Logitech V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse, but decided to go with the MediaPlay mouse because I listen to music pretty much 24x7 while I'm working on my computer. I have a buddy who's got the V500 and has been very happy with it. Either way, that's one less cord I have to condend with!!

some of my favorite things...

For some time now I've been keeping a journal. Handwritten even. It originally started as a career journal. A place for me to keep an ongoing record of my career goals and how things have actally come together. Recently I was re-reading and updating my journal and came across several entries that I thought would be easier to keep up with if I put them online.

• GIUSEPPE TORELLI (1658-1709)Concerto in D Major for Trumpet


• Mirror Worlds: Or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox : How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean


• Infinity (1996)


• Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267 - 1337)


• Euclid (ca. 325-ca. 270 BC)


• John Conway's Game of Life

It is believed by most that time passes; it stays where it is. This idea of passing may be called time, but it is an incorrect idea, for since one sees it as passing, one cannot understand that it just stays where it is.



-Zen Master Kigen Dogen

some cool morpheus searches

so i was chillin out...dinkin' with my iPod [...damn i love my iPod...] tryin out the iPod Firmware Hack...which is very cool by the way...when i got side tracked in morpheus lookin first for tsunami vids then for U2 remixes [...this returned an uber-cool "where the streets have no name (johnny vicious mix)" mp3...] this lead to searches for european house, etc...

...anyways...so i wouldn't forget what my search strings were i decided to post 'em to my blog so i would have them readily available...so without further adieu, the search strings:

• paris mix


• jeanpaul de paris


• dimitri from paris


• danger mouse & jemini