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Tuesday, March 16, 2010
  Small people, big home

I've determined there must be a midget living in my house. And not just any midget, a rather crafty one at that. I'm sure this is the same conclusion most parents have come to, but you don't hear most of them talking about it, so I figured I would start the discussion.

I have proof, don't look at me like that, I have proof! For example, look at the laundry. I do atleast 3 loads of laundry a day and yet it never seems to end. I have more clothes going into the laundry that I think kids are capable of wearing in a week. So this must mean that a midget is wearing my children's clothes and putting the dirty ones in the laundry room when no one is looking.

And then there's the food! Especially the cookies, trail mix, and other fillers that should are only suppose to be eaten as part of the lunches the kids pack. We can buy enough stuff to last for a month, but if it lasts more than a week or two, that's impressive. So said midget is also eating my food.

And we can't forget about the inexplicable messes that suddenly appear in the house and no one is responsible for. I don't think I need to continue, I'm sure everyone agrees that there must be a stealthy midget living in my house.

So Mr. (or Ms) Stealthy Midget, I'm putting you on warning, either start paying some rent, or get out of my house!

That is all.

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Saturday, August 30, 2008
  Apple a Day

Jen took Caleb in for his physical so he could get into headstart earlier this week. Of course to get the physical done without waiting 2 months to see his physician we had to get a referral to a partner in Eagle who had an appointment 2 weeks out.. That was dumb enough to start with. Anyway, we got the appointment and Jen took him on Wednesday.

So our physician, Dr. Naya Antik from St. Alphonsus Pediatrics Group (formerly Boise Pediatrics), knows our family really well. She's been the kids doctor since shortly after we moved down in 2001. She has seen me and Jenny come in with the kids, and has been there through some of the worst times in our lives, so we like Naya ;-) Plus Naya doesn't give us crap about our kids being too skinny or what not.

So Jen takes Caleb in for his physical. During the course of the physical, the doctor proceeds to tell Jenny how Caleb should still be in a booster seat, technically true because he's still only 4, but when his neck is resting on the top of the booster or the top of the seat I'd rather he have more support behind him in case of an accident, how he should have full protective gear when riding his scooter, bubble wrap doesn't count anymore I guess, and then starts questioning why he's so skinny. Goes something like this:

Doctor: So he's only in the 75th percentile for weight, and about the 90th percentile for height. We really would like him to weigh more. You're pretty tall and skinny though, what about your husband?

Jenny: He's 6'2" and about 155 pounds.

Doctor (to Caleb): Oh, I guess that's why, you just have really good genes huh?

Caleb: Yep! And I got a belt too!

Yippy!

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Monday, June 23, 2008
  Bad Virus, No Mail for You!

I've been using Courier MTA since I first started using Linux almost 9 years ago (a good friend of mine turned me onto it over sendmail.) For about the past 3 years or so I've been using ClamCour with ClamAV to protect my users, and myself, from email viruses and worms. This has been working great, until just recently. Changes in the Debian Courier packages seem to have broken ClamCour for good, while ClamCour is being maintained outside of Debian and has had releases subsequent to the 2.2 release seen on Debian systems, the package has been abandoned. If I were more comfortable with my Linux skills, I'd probably have seen if I could update the ClamCour package with the latest release and compatibility with the newest Courier MTA. But, I'm not that skilled, yet.

So I turned to my trusty sidekick, Google. I quickly turned up an article from 2004 on using Perl, Courier, and ClamAV. For historic reasons I've never had clamd installed, though there have been times that I've realized I should probably switch. So I immediately decided to use Method 2, which was labeled as not requiring clamd. Turns out this isn't true anymore, but it got me started. So without further ado, here's how I setup Courier::Filter on my Debian machine.

First install the necessary Debian packages:

# apt-get install courier-filter-perl libmime-tools-perl libclamav-client-perl clamav-daemon

While libmime-tools-perl and libclamav-client-perl are not required for courier-filter-perl, they are required in order to use Courier::Filter::Module::ClamAVd. Next edit /etc/courier/filters/pureperlfilter.conf and the following line after the Sample declaration:

Courier::Filter::Module::ClamAVd->new(),

Your modules section should look something like this:

    modules     => [

      # Sample declaration:
      #Courier::Filter::Module::Header->new(
      #    fields      => {
      #       'list-id'        => '',
      #        subject         => qr/duell?ing\s+banjoe?s?/i
      #    },
      #    response    => 'Oh no, not those dueling banjos again!',
      #    trusting    => TRUE
      #),


      Courier::Filter::Module::ClamAVd->new(),
  ]

Lastly we need to symlink the pureperlfilter (the Courier::Filter documentation calls this courier-filter-perl) in our /etc/courier/filters/active and restart the Courier filters.

# cd /etc/courier/filters/active
# ln -s /usr/lib/pureperlfilter
# courierfilter restart

That's it, you should now have antivirus protection on incoming and outgoing mail. Hope this helps someone.

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Monday, June 2, 2008
  Only the Strong

So this weekend was amazing! Brett, Espiga, Boi, Doug, Rebecca, and I took a trip to SLC for Salt Lake Capoeira's 7th Batizado. The 6+ hour car trip (had to make a stop through Pocky) blew chunks, but the time we got to spend with other capoeiristas and mestres more than made up for it!

Thursday we got to SLC about 5:15PM, workshops started at ~5:30. As beginners we worked on Au de Frente, Macaco, and some sequences with Professor Omi, Mestre Fran, and other instructors that I don't remember their names.. That lasted till about 8PM, then we had a roda. It was amazing! Watching Mestres and advanced students do backflips, headstands, handstand with a twist, and other complicated movements was astounding. The potential of capoeira really shows in those players and mestres. The roda went non-stop for about an hour and half, and then they switched to Brazillian Samba. First time I had ever seen it and it was so fun to watch. How the different dancers cut in on each other and made jokes about it was comical. It really was a treat for someone like me. After that everyone went to dinner, I didn't get to the place I was staying till almost 2AM!!!

Friday started with a Brazillian barbeque with food that was jaw dropping good. All homemade by our hostess (Christiana) and her family. Some of the more advanced players were practicing flips on a trampoline and were discussing the differences between the difficulty of a front versus a back flip. It's kind of shocking to realize that you really can flip backwards a lot easier than forwards. It just seems illogical, but the momentum is easier to build and your body will naturally pull your through a back flip while you sight the landing. A forward flip need a lot of momentum built up and is completely blind. Anyway, after the barbeque was more training with Contra-mestre Ninja and Professor Mutto Tempo. We did sequences from Meia Lua de Compasso that incorportated all the moves we had worked on the day before. It was tiring, but learning new things is always amazing. Most of the capoeiristas that I spoke with were suprised by their abilities to continiously train for so long.

Saturday was batizado. Workshops started at 9:30AM and went till ~1PM when we broke for lunch. Mestre Fran and Mestre Amen (from the movie Only the Strong) both spoke to the Capoeiristas, their words were astounding and thoughtful. Mestre Fran talked about how Capoeira is so rooted in the past of Brazil, and how the world seems to be losing that past as the old Mestres die. "Everyone wants to teach, no one wants to learn anymore." Mestre Amen talked about the dedication that a Capoeirista needed to really become all that he could. I could have listened to both of them speak forever.

Speaking of lunch, I never would have thought peas, corn, and potato sticks would taste good on a chicken sandwich, but it's actually very delicious. The Mestre's Roda after lunch was just breathtaking. Found out Mestre Fran was 65 and the man is so nimble and sly I wouldn't have figured he was a day over 50!

The only sad thing is that I didn't get to shoot as much video as I had hoped, the battery wasn't holding a charge very well, so I only got 5 minutes the first night before the camera died. And my digi-cam didn't capture movement as well as I had hoped. I'm going to pull all the video tonight though and see what I can do with it. I'm hoping that Salt Lake Capoeira puts out a DVD...

I really want to thank Boise Capoeira for inviting our group to the batizado with them. It really was a great experience that I hope to have many more times. One of them being my batizado. Someday.

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
  Tis the season

Of failing Power Supplies apparently.. I've had 3 power supplies go out on me this week alone. So far I've been able to replace them, but I don't have any more extra power supplies.. In fact I ended up stripping my FreeNAS server down to hard-drives and cd-rom because all I had left was a tiny 200W psu. So to conserve power (cause you never know how much you're actually using, unless you're using too much) I pulled *everything*. In fact if I hadn't of booted and stayed up for the last 12 hours I would have pulled the CD-ROM too :D Luckily that was not needed.

What really kills me though is the Enermax NoiseTaker II that I had. Enermax has a 3 year warranty on their PSUs. It died yesterday with a loud pop, and then everything died. So doing my due dillegence I lookup the RMA info, (which is where I find out about the 3 year warranty.) I knew it had been purchased at NewEgg, so I look up the invoice. I'm not kidding here folks, the fan was bought 28 May 2005. It died almost exactly 3 years to the day after it was purchased! Coinkidink? I say No! This is a global consiparacy! It's just my PSU was defect and died before the warranty expired instead of after. ;)

So wanting to get my full $160US worth of PSU out of Enermax, I filled out an RMA request last night and sent it off. Let's see how that one plays out :D

One a differant note, classes are finally over. My GPA took a pretty good hit this semester. What's interesting is the class I thought I was getting a B in (Teaching Social Studies to Secondary Students) I got a C, and the class I thought I was getting the C in (Educational Literacy) I got a B.. Would have been happier with 2 B's but... One more semester to go...

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008
  Upplus and Bununus

Jen and I attended Elijah and Andrew's music program on Friday. It was all about food, but I can't find the program at the moment so I don't remember the name of the program, I'm sure Elijah will tell me when he reads this in the morning. (Is it wierd that my son reads my blog?) Anyway, I'm putting up a couple videos of the kids.

This first one is of Andrew, singing a song that I learned completely differantly as a child, but that's not the point ;-) He's the 3rd one from the left, top row. We were sitting on the other side of gym and my poor DMC-TZ3 was zoomed in as best it could in order to get Andrew visible. Now that I have a digi-cam, I need a video camera.. It's a never ending cycle!

Elijah seemed to enjoy the song about Pasta. 2nd from the right, top row again. If my kids weren't so tall, maybe they wouldn't need to be in the top row all the time :-D

Enjoy!

Edit: Realized I need a way to crop the video of Andy for it to be visible at all at the resolution blogger uses.. Will do that tomorrow..

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Tuesday, March 18, 2008
  Something New

I decided to try something different for once, instead of me wasting my money, I figured I'd see if someone could use a little of it. I'd heard about Kiva a while back, but never signed up. "I don't have the money," I told myself and to some extent I was right. I never have the money, because it's always spent. McDonalds, Taco Bell, Subway, etc eats money fast. And I can make a ton of excuses about how it's easier/faster/etc but the reality is that it's convenient and I'm lazy. I blow a lot of money on stuff that I have nothing to show for it, so I decide it was time to do something different. Instead I decide I would try and lend some money to someone who could (1) actually use it, and (2) might be able to do something better with it.

My first thought was, well where am I going to get the money? And then I realized I was sitting on some of my old ad revenue. It wasn't much, but I'd probably blow it on fast food anyway. So I committed myself to lending $25. It's not much, but it's a start for someone like me. Then I had to find a place to lend money. NPR had done a story on Kiva a while back, so I went online to do some research. While searching I also found Microplace and Prosper. Each was a little different. I really was excited about Prosper, because it seemed to be the idea of a community supporting each other, and that was awesome! But it's minimum bid is $50 and over my limit for this experiment. Honestly I found Microplace confusing and limited, so after a little more research, poking, prodding, and self-assurance I signed up for Kiva and did my first microloan. Now I just wait and see if everything works out for Victoriano. I wish him the best. Check out Kiva, if I've got $25 I'm sure you do too ;) If you got a little more and want to try and make some money of microlending, try Prosper. For me, I figure either-way someone spends my money, I don't see anything out of it, but maybe they will..

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Location: Boise, Idaho, United States

My borg designation is 2 of 7. My parents raised me LDS, but I'm atheist. My wife loves me, my kids think about it. My dog thinks I abandoned her and sleeps on the couch.

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