04.09.11
Posted in General
at 5:10 pm
I seem to have a hard time with this, and I’m too cheap to buy this tool:
http://www.motionpro.com/motorcycle/partno/08-0048
(I’m also not entirely sure how effective it would be…I’ve heard mixed reviews). Anyway…the best thing I’ve found so far is from this post by user Syscrush on SVRider:
http://forum.svrider.com/showpost.php?p=1147779&postcount=12
What I like to do is tighten the left adjuster first until the chain tension is right, then put a straightedge on the sprocket and tighten the right adjuster until the face of the straightedge that’s against the sprocket lines up with the inside edge of the inner sideplates on the chain.
Seemed to work well for me….better than other methods I’ve tried, anyway.
Permalink
01.18.10
Posted in General
at 2:45 pm
I have been evaluating online backup solutions. Currently I backup to an external hard drive. This has two problems:
1. I backup manually and via a script. I don’t do it very often.
2. All backups are onsite. It’s been years since I burned a DVD and dropped it at my parents’ house.
So, I finally decided that I needed automated and offsite backups. After a week and half of research and testing I decided to purchase Mozy.
Read on if you want a more comprehensive review. There are many offerings out there right now. Wikipedia has a list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_backup_services
I only looked into a handful of these, and looked especially closely at the two major players–Carbonite and Mozy. I should also note I’m running 64-bit Windows 7.
I’ll go over Carbonite and Mozy first, then mention the other services I looked at. Keep in mind that my requirements may not be the same as other users so your mileage may vary. I was looking for a very simple solution–simple because I am lazy and won’t do backups if it takes any effort, and simple because I wanted a product that I could recommend to less technical friends and family.
Carbonite generally had slightly better reviews than Mozy, and seemed the front runner for a while (I had the trial installed for about a week). However…in the course of my research I discovered that it excludes certain file extensions from all backups unless you tell it to include them. Including them is a manual process (there is no “hey please backup everything I tell you” button). To their credit, they do mention this on their website (mostly), and will send you an exhaustive list via email if you ask (I asked and they sent it to me promptly). Here is the help article where they talk about this:
http://cp-carbonite.kb.net/article.aspx?article=1069&p=3
To be fair, the automated backup sets in mozy only back up certain files, similar to what carbonite does. However, if you tell mozy “back up this folder”, it will back up everything in that folder. If you tell Carbonite to backup a specific folder, it will happily exclude a bunch of files by default. Video files are not backed up by default in Carbonite, either, which seems pretty bad to me–how many people have digital camera movies on their computers, or videos from their phones? Here is the default Mozy policy for automated backup sets:
http://support.mozy.com/docs/en-user-home-win/faq/concepts/backup_sets_default_contents.html
Anyway, these exclusions were pretty much a deal killer for Carbonite. Remember how I said I want a simple solution because I’m lazy? That extends to setting it up–if I say “back up this folder”, I don’t want to have to worry about whether or not certain files in that folder are getting backed up. Same thing if I am recommending a backup product to friends or family–I just want them to be able to check a box to make sure the videos of their kids first steps are backed up.
As far as retention of deleted files, Carbonite and Mozy both have deleted files available for 30 days after you remove them from your computer.
Backup with Mozy was much faster than with Carbonite. However, I was on a free trial with Carbonite so that could have affected the speed. And honestly, I’m not terribly concerned with the speed at which the initial backup occurs (I’m backing up about 40GB).
The test restores I did with Mozy (~1.7gb) during the free trial had some issues–about 400 files didn’t make it back. Eventually I got them via a “web restore”. This is a clumsy method but it did get all the files back–and that’s what’s really important in a disaster recovery scenario. I emailed Mozy support about the restore issues and they seemed fairly responsive but also seemed to give mostly “reading from the binder” responses. This was expected considering who their target audience is. UPDATE: I did another restore with mozy on a different computer, this time 2.8GB but a smaller number of files, and didn’t have any problems restoring via the Mozy client.
So there’s the head-to-head. Honestly, if it weren’t for the default file exclusions, it would probably be a toss-up between carbonite and Mozy.
Other services I looked at:
I considered crashplan. They offer unlimited backup at a similar price point to Mozy and Carbonite, but the “free” client is ad supported and it costs $60 for the “pro” version. This was enough that I didn’t even try them.
I installed idrive on one computer. The interface was hideous and complex and I promptly uninstalled it. I would not recommend this to my non-technical friends.
I briefly played around with Jungledisk. You pay per GB for their client to store data with Amazon S3–If you store 20GB or less it is similar in price to Carbonite and Mozy. It seems like a decent system–I decided not to go with them mostly for cost reasons.
SOS online backup had great magazine reviews but awful user reviews. I steered clear. It was also more expensive than other services. One feature SOS touted that other services do not have is unlimited versioning of files (within the limits of your storage space, of course).
Iron Mountain has an online backup service. This is the company we use for off-site tape storage at work. They seem very professional and I expect their online backup service is excellent. I can’t afford it, though; $9/month for 2 GB of backup. If I had mission critical data I would look at Iron Mountain first.
Backup Integrity: From what I’ve been able to ascertain, the online services use RAIDed trays of disks and no off-site backups (I suspect this would not be the case for Iron Mountain, but I haven’t contacted them). If a disaster (earthquake, fire, etc) wiped out the datacenter, and then your local drive crashed, you’d be out of luck. Statistically, the odds of this are pretty low, but it’s something to keep in mind. A backup to an external drive every six months or so isn’t a bad idea, even if you’re using one of the online backup services.
Feel free to post any comments on your own experiences.
Permalink
12.07.09
Posted in Work
at 6:42 pm
I just spent a while tracking down a cert problem while migrating an app to IIS7 on Windows Server 2008.
This app taps into a web service using a client cert. I finally tracked the problem down to a permissions issue with the private key on the client certificate. On Server 2003 and earlier these permissions are managed with the winhttpcertcfg.exe tool, but that’s not available on Server 2008 (or at least not supported, as far as I can tell). Turns out it’s actually pretty simple, though. See screenshot below:
Yeah…just a simple right-click on the cert in the certificates snap-in. Also, for getting SSL traces, this blog had a good system.diagnostics section:
http://blogs.msdn.com/asiatech/archive/2009/04/08/using-system-net-trace-to-troubleshooting-ssl-problem-in-net-2-0-application.aspx
The microsoft documentation, as usual, was lacking, and most of the examples I tried didn’t seem to actually output the trace to a file (at least not where I expected to find it).
keywords: server 2008 client cert certificate permissions winhttpcfg
Permalink
03.10.09
Posted in Friends, Quotes, Social
at 11:20 pm
So my friend Kregg is explaining to our pool opponents that we’re leaving after this game…
Kregg: Yeah, we’re leaving soon, it’s almost our bedtime.
Me: Please don’t refer to it as our bedtime!
Kregg: Our totally separate bedtimes!
Permalink
09.05.08
Posted in Work
at 3:05 pm
so if you have error catching code that logs the error and redirects the user to an error page, guess what happens if you screw up the URL to the error page?
Recursive Errors
Clever, eh?
Permalink
09.04.08
Posted in General
at 12:53 am
OK, no one reads my blog, but I heard a story many years ago and I can’t find it anywhere (I googled as well as I know how). I’m hoping someone else might have heard it, and know where it came from. It went something like this:
There was a rabbi and he always looked terrified when he began to pray. Someone asked him why and he explained thusly; “When I pray I begin with the words ‘Lord, have mercy’, and I am terrified what may happen between the moment that I invoke the Lord’s name, and the moment I ask for mercy”.
Permalink
09.03.08
Posted in Quotes
at 2:29 pm
From a column by Peggy Noonan:
“Religious conservatives know something’s wrong with us, that man’s a mess. They are not left dazed by the latest applications of this fact. “This just in—there’s a lot of sinning going on out there” is not a headline they’d understand to be news.”
Link to full column: http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html
Permalink
08.14.08
Posted in Quotes, WYC
at 12:14 pm
Upon showing up at a WYC meeting wearing a nice shirt, I was accused of being gainfully employed:
“Matt, you’re dressed like you’re gainfully employed!” —Brandon Whitehead
Permalink
08.11.08
Posted in Quotes
at 11:03 am
“I never get in trouble—I’m too good looking and too charming.” —Me
Permalink
08.07.08
Posted in Quotes
at 12:41 am
“I’m hungry—I’m going to eat some strawberries.” —Me
Permalink
07.22.08
Posted in Friends, Quotes, Social
at 1:04 am
[Standing in an alley, my buddy starts making a weird sound while smoking a cigarette]
Me: Dude, what is that? Did your cigarette go out?
Buddy: Uhh…it’s not a cigarette.
Me: Ohhh…is that why we’re standing in this back alley?
Buddy: Yeah…I, uh, thought you figured that out.
Me: I’m a little slow…
So, yes, I am a little slow. I also have a poor sense of smell…
Permalink
07.13.08
Posted in General
at 11:36 pm
So I’ve been trying to figure out how I went from 400 psi to zero so quickly. Did I not check my pressure frequently enough? Was the gauge inaccurate?
Well, I figured it out. I have a gauge that measures pressure in bar, with tape on the face indicating PSI:
Notice the 500 psi mark (leftmost on the tape), which should be about
34 bar, actually lines up with about 12 bar, which is about 175 psi….
The rest of the marks are pretty accurate, but they aren’t the ones that really matter…zero is still zero no matter what units you’re using.
So, I screwed up the scale when I put the tape on there (been using this gauge for about 25 dives). In retrospect this wasn’t the best idea. I should have either gotten a PSI gauge or adjusted to reading the bar scale. I’m planning on buying a PSI gauge ASAP.
Permalink
07.12.08
Posted in Diving, Friends, General, Social
at 8:55 pm
I went crabbing today. My buddy (Adrian) and I both got our limit. This particular day started out fraught with errors:
- We started off later than planned—we were supposed to leave Seattle at 9:30 for Mukilteo, but left closer to 10:45. I also made a couple wrong turns, despite having been to this dive site before.
- Adrian forgot a large portion of his gear. Fortunately the mobile dive shop (i.e. Matt P.) had enough gear to get Adrian in the water. Hurray!
- I lost my dive light ($60) and crab gauge ($2) on the way to the dive site. Went all the way back to the car to look for it. It’s a good thing, too, because I’d left one of my car doors wide open (locked, but open). My shorts with the keys were sitting somewhere in the back, along with a scuba tank. Never found the light or gauge. I’m bummed about the light.
So, we *finally* get out to the dive site after a long surface swim. Adrian and I just barely got our crab limit before having to head back to the surface. We ascended to 15 feet and waited there for 3 minutes for our safety stop (helps off-gas any nitrogen—probably not necessary for a short 40 foot dive, but can’t hurt). I thought I had about 400 psi left when we started going up (plenty for breathing 3 minutes at 15 feet). During our stop Adrian showed me his computer, which indicated his air time as “0″. I didn’t know this, but his computer apparently calculate a 750 psi reserve automatically. So I’m keeping an eye on Adrian since I think he’s pretty close to running out of air.
After we completed our safety stop I gave Adrian the signal to go up, and he signaled OK. I give a few kicks up and…”hmm, that breath felt kind of funny, in fact, I don’t think I got a full lungful out of that one…oh !@#$. I’m out of air.” So I start swimming for the surface (15 feet, no problem). My regulator managed to find another half breath for me or so, and I stopped for a second to look down at Adrian, wondering what he was doing down there, and if he was OK. I finally decided “screw him, I need to breathe” so I swam the rest of the way to the surface.
Since I was out of air, I needed to orally inflate my BCD (surface flotation). This normally wouldn’t be much of a chore but my legs were cramping from the long surface swim and chasing crabs down (they’re fast). So I was briefly kicking my head above the water, taking a breath, inflating my BCD as I sank back (resting my legs), and repeating this process until I had enough air in my BCD to float. Hurray! Disaster averted. But I was a little nervous there for a minute. The legs cramping up and having trouble staying afloat was alarming.
While this wasn’t an emergency along the lines of “I almost died”, it could very easily have gone the other way (sinking/drowning diver or lung expansion injury). This event would have been less of an emergency if my legs hadn’t been cramping up, but then that’s always what gets people killed–multiple things going wrong (the so-called “error chain”).
So, in the grand tradition of, “coulda, woulda, shoulda”, I’m outlining things I could have done different, should have done different, and will try to remember to do different in the future.
What I did wrong:
- Didn’t monitor my air supply well enough. Either I read the gauge wrong at the beginning of my ascent, or it is inaccurate around 400 psi or so. Having air would have avoided this entire scenario.
- I don’t remember breathing out while I was swimming up. Perhaps I was, but I definitely wasn’t thinking about it. If I wasn’t breathing out, this could easily have resulted in a lung expansion injury, which would at best have landed me in the hospital. I may have been saved by having less than a lungful of air on my way up, but I can’t say for sure.
- At the surface, I was having a little bit of trouble establishing buoyancy, but I wasn’t quite sinking yet. Ditching my weights never occurred to me. Maybe it would have if I had been sinking.
Other choices I could have made:
- I could have dropped back down to my buddy and shared air with him. I thought he was out, or nearly out of air, so this didn’t occur to me. It also is couterintuitive to go *down* when you’re out of air.
things to do next time:
- Ascend *with* my buddy, not before him. That way he (and his air) are there for me if I have a problem.
- Make sure I breathe out during an emergency ascent.
- Know my buddy’s equipment…since he showed me his computer saying “0 air time” I thought he was nearly out of air, too.
- Consider dropping weights if I’m having trouble establishing buoyancy.
All in all, I am thankful that, as I am so fond of saying, “God looks out for stupid people”.
Permalink
05.23.08
Posted in Friends, General, Social, WYC
at 11:47 pm
Well now that it’s almost the weekend again, I have a report on my incredibly productive previous weekend.
Saturday:
I was supposed to go to a fish ID class at the Seattle Aquarium. I decided to take the bus—after standing at the bus stop for 20 minutes I realized that the bus wasn’t on the route that day thanks to the University District Street Fair. Every now and then I need to take the bus to remind myself why I never take the bus.
After missing the bus I decided I’d rather not drive downtown, fight parking, and still be late. So, I decided I would run. After getting back from a short run in Ravenna Park I decided that if I was going to have to take a shower anyway, I might as well get some more dirty work done. So I mowed the lawn, weeded the flowerbed, raked some leaves, and edged the lawn along the sidewalk.
After this I decided to go to Home Depot and pick up some stuff I needed—Saturday was scheduled to replace the neck seal on Adrian’s drysuit so I needed some router accessories.
Back from Home Depot and armed with a new router bit (router bits are expensive, I found out), I went to the Waterfront Activities Center and built a circle cutting jig for the router there, and used it to make two neck seal installation rings from a sheet of lexan (lexan is like plexiglas, but stronger).
My primary mission for the day accomplished, Adrian and I sailed the SX-18 in some pretty decent wind. It was a wild ride. No capsizes, but definitely some hull-flying moments to strike the fear of God into us.
Of course, after all this I was hungry, so I went home and made french dip sandwiches (I did not make the dip from a packet, either—onions, garlic, beef broth, oregano, and pepper make a better dip).
After I ate Matt called me and wanted some help working on his boat. I believe his exact words were “I need you to come bang on the starter with a hammer while I turn the key”. Well he didn’t have a hammer, he had a large crescent wrench, and banging on it didn’t really work (at first, anyway), but we did finally get the starter working, and the engine almost started.
After giving up on the boat Matt and I went to Adrian’s apartment and replaced the neck seal on his drysuit.
All in a days’ work…
Although I should note that this is by far the most productive day I have had in *years*.
Sunday:
I was supposed to meet Matt around 11:00, but he didn’t show so I sailed a Hobie Bravo around Union Bay for a little bit. Matt finally showed up and we spent some time screwing around the carburetor on his engine. We did some checks on the ignition system, too, since I thought the spark looked a little weak.
Around 1 or 2 in the afternoon we decided we were hungry so we ordered take-out pizza from Papa John’s. Papa John’s is by my house, and I needed to stop by there anyway to pick up a floor jack and other tools to install a trailer hitch on Adrian’s car. There’s a nice little tree covered area parallel to the north docks at the WAC, and we parked our three cars there (Mine, Matt’s, and Adrian’s) and stood around eating pizza and just generally enjoying the beautiful day.
It turns out that getting some of the bolts installed for a trailer hitch is a real pain. After half an hour of fighting with the bolts, we finally got them in. It turns out a piece of string can sometimes be more effective than telescoping magnetic retrieval tool. Who knew? 
However, Adrian’s car had recently been rear-ended, which pushed the bolts into positions they weren’t supposed to be in. After a little bit of fooling around we came to the conclusion that we weren’t going to get it on until the collision damage had been repaired.
So, failure on that project, but at least the most troublesome bolts are in position, and that’s the hardest part.
Around 4 the batteries for Matt’s boat were charged, so we went back to that project. After a fair amount of fooling around (turns out there was an ignition problem, and we’d mostly been going after fuel), we finally got it to run for about 15 minutes (this thing had been sitting for 6 months). Once the engine had warmed up we tried adjusting the idle speed and ended up stopping the engine. We couldn’t get it to start after that, and there was oil coming out of the ignition coil, so I’m guessing we cooked it.
That’s it for the weekend. If only all my days were that productive…
Permalink
04.08.08
Posted in Quotes
at 8:12 pm
(8:09:00 PM) matt@mattjm.com/Home: I HATE EVERYTHING
(8:09:23 PM) Heather Fuller: nownow. there are plenty of things you like. but i realize you are not to be reasoned with at the moment.
Permalink
03.11.08
Posted in General
at 4:20 pm
Yesterday I received a letter from the Social Security Administration about my estimated benefits that I will receive when or retire or if I become disabled. As an intelligent and thinking person, I of course know that I’ll see few benefits, if any. However, for those that didn’t already know, they spell it out in the fine print:
“Your estimated benefits are based on current law. Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time. the law governing benefits may change because, by 2041, the payroll taxes collected will be enough to pay only about 75 percent of scheduled benefits.”
Translation: “nanner, nanner, we’ve got your money and can do whatever we want with it.”
This is a compelling argument for private accounts. For all the arguments *against* private accounts, they are all favorable compared to the current situation, in which you give your money to a “broker” (the US government in this case) who can change the contract terms anytime he wants (without your consent), and is not even obligated to return your money (or what’s left of it) when he’s finished with it. I believe I just paraphrased an argument I read in a column by Thomas Sowell some years ago.
And when I say “private accounts” I don’t necessarily mean an IRA or a truly private account. I’m perfectly happy to continue to have payroll taxes go into a government controlled account, as long as the contract terms are static (it is, after all, my money) and I *know* what I’ll receive when I retire. I do think folks should have some aspect of control over their accounts, whether it be full control (any combination of stocks or bonds you want) or a range of funds they can choose from to assume more or less risk in their portfolio.
Permalink
02.24.08
Posted in General
at 8:35 pm
Well in the last 48 hours I’ve managed to go from 40 feet beneath the water (scuba diving) to 3000 feet above it (in a glider).
Flying sort of freaks me out. I’m generally pretty unflappable, but one of the few things that can cause me significant anxiety (and sometimes outright panic, more on that later), it’s flying.
Anyway, a friend of mine flies gliders and took me up twice today. I found two little handholds on the console in front of me that I could hold onto for dear life (not unlike the “Jesus Bar” on the passenger side of Volkswagen Bugs). I got to fly a tiny little bit. On the second flight my friend did a little bit of “maneuvering”, one of which involved putting us in near zero-g for a moment. I thought I was going to die. I mean, I don’t usually panic, but I was pretty well paralyzed for a moment.
Anyway, it was a new experience. I don’t think I’d ever flown before except in commercial airlines.
Permalink
02.23.08
Posted in General
at 11:58 pm
I bought a drysuit earlier this week, and went diving with it today. These pics are from suiting up for the drysuit orientation Matt gave me. Diving a drysuit takes a little bit of extra training, mostly in what to do if you start getting air in your feet (because you can end up rocketing to the surface if you don’t take of that problem real quick). I have to say it was slightly amusing popping out of the water fins first looking like the Michelin man.
Permalink
