VPN hell

I'm trying to set up a VPN to the office in Boulder. Of course PPTP works just fine (of course it does, it's worthless security). I just can't seem to get L2TP/IPSEC to do anything useful. I've created a CA on the domain controller, installed certificates, no deal. It's really pissing me off.

It's like crack

You always want just one more hit.

One less weekend before winter

I spent a good part of the weekend working on some projects over at Jule C's condo. She was trying to sell it for over a year now, but it looks like for now she'll get a renter in.

I installed a new smoke detector, screen door, garbage disposal, a new sink for a bathroom, plumbing,and 3 new sink drains.

Today was 99F. There was no way I was painting today.

computer junkie / work

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a computer junkie. Luckily for me I don't need the absolute bleeding edge fastest stuff you can buy/build. I just like being up near the front.

I run a couple of digital flat panels from dell and sometimes run multiple game clients. Quite often I'm watching movies while surfing. Anyway, the latest thing has been to ebay the old and put in the new. Lately it's been a power supply, memory, motherboard, and a couple of video cards. Next I'll be ebaying my old processor and more memory. I think I'll be pretty solid until '09. I have a quad core Q9450 coming in and already stuffed in 8G of ram. All indications show that the Q9450 will do 3.2Ghz without any voltage modifications. That puts me at a 1600Mhz FSB, quad core processor, and 8G of ram. I'll run some benchmarks and post the changes.

nehalem is coming out later this year, which will be a huge performance increase for intel platforms. I'm not in any hurry to be the first to run that, though. Maybe in 2009.

Work is going OK. I got proactive and a bit more organized. I've spent a bit of time this week working with the inventors and in-house council on a number of pending applications. I think my work satisfaction is tied pretty directly to what I'm filing. On days when I struggle to get out an application or office action it can be quite frustrating.

The last few days have been pretty good. I feel positive about it all. My workouts are so-so. I think that just is the way it is right now.

truecrypt

Today at the gym while tossing my keys in the locker I thought "mmmm...maybe having a usb flash drive on my keychain with pending/new patents isn't such a good idea". I ended up encrypting my work files using a program called truecrypt. In it's simplest form it allows me to run the cryptographic program right from the usb flash drive. That means my data is still portable -- I don't need to install anything on any target computers.

Fallout 3

What does 2.4 teraflops look like now?

The fastest supercomputer in 1999 was the Intel ASCI Red/9632 at just under 2.4 teraflops (2.4 trillion floating point operations per second).

This is the new 4870 X2 video card from AMD/ATI with 1600 stream processors on one card.

H1-B visa scams

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa in the United States under the Immigration & Nationality Act, section 101(a)(15)(H). It allows U.S. employers to employ foreign guest workers skilled in specialty occupations only when qualified U.S. citizens or residents are not available. [1]

The regulations define a “specialty occupation” as requiring theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor including, but not limited to, architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences, medicine and health, education, law, accounting, business specialties, theology, and the arts, and requiring the attainment of a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent as a minimum. Likewise, the foreign worker must possess at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent and state licensure, if required to practice in that field. H-1B work-authorization is strictly limited to employment by the sponsoring employer - except that many H-1B work for bodyshops who then place them with third party employers.

SENA -- missing you in sunny Iraq

download

The Pirate Bay Wants to Encrypt the Entire Internet

Read about this interesting and long overdue idea here.

at&t's dirty little 3G iphone secret

$199 for new customers, or customers who are eligible for an upgrade. Since I upgraded to that blackjack piece of shit, I'll have to pay $399 for the iphone.

I suppose I could wait until May of 2009, but I think I'll smash it with a hammer instead.

Work sucks lately. I'm really fucking behind, and I've been trying to get an office action out for two days. Basically it's the biggest collection of shit claims you can imagine. My retarded half sister could write better claims with a crayon while on LSD. Luckily for me, I get to clean up that stinky piece of shit.

The damn thing is all math. Some dipshit in New York took a research paper, stuffed in some crappy claims, and filed it. Now it's my job to buff up that turd until it's shiny.

I'm not running the air conditioning unless I'm home on the weekends...surprise retard! It's hot as fuck in here.

Not much to tell. My workouts suck. I changed out some sensors in the truck and wired in a new high current setup for the headlights. Running all the headlight current through a dippy little switch in the cab may have worked 40 years ago when headlights were hardly bright enough to tell what sex the homeless person you just ran over was, but these days HID lights will just burn that thing up.

SENA -- my secret life

download

vista 64 bit

I went to the dark side today. Vista 64 bit. I was running xp64, but XP is no longer an operating system you can buy. Also, I've been seeing vista64 drivers where there are no xp64 drivers, and now that xp is no more...I doubt that will improve.

I have 6GB of ram, which is why I'm on vista64 instead of just vista32 or xp32.

I also have way too many drives in my case: 8. 8 is too many. 8 is a 930GB raid 6 array with a hot spare and a boot drive. Theoretically the house would have to burn down before I'd lose any data. Theoretically.

I was thinking about going to 4 500GB drives in a raid 6 with a boot drive. That would clean things up in there quite a bit.

Another tale of two thermometers

I noticed today that the HVAC thermostat was reading the wrong room temperature. I set a glass of water out with a digital thermometer all day and waited... The thermostat reads 5-15 degrees high...

I bought a new one (another hundred dollar donation to home depot). I'll have to install it tomorrow.

We had today off from work. That doesn't mean that much when you're behind, but it's something...I was going to work today but after getting home late from red rocks (stone temple pilots concert) last night, I wasn't really in the mood. I'll have to swing by the office tomorrow and pick up some work for the weekend.

Maybe it's just my electric personality

I've gotten into a bad habit with electricity lately. Basically I have a portable computer and a regular computer both of which are on all the time. Also, I was running the air conditioner quite a bit. When the air wasn't on I had the furnace fan set to 'always on'. This moved air around the house and helped collect quite a bit of dust on the hepa filters I have in the furnace. I'm guessing that the big motor wasn't too light on the power, though.

This month it came back and bit me in the ass. My electric portion of my utility bill was $277 dollars. Obviously something has to change. Since I'm not home during the day anyway, I turned the air off. I also have been leaving the computers off as well. At night it's cool out (usually 60's or so) and I've been using fans to suck cool air through the house. The house will probably be hot as fuck when I get home tonight, but $277 per month is just a stupid amount to pay for electricity.

I've been looking at a whole house fan. It mounts in your attic and draws air from the house and dumps it into the attic. The one I'm looking at seems pretty quiet and moves about 1700 CFM. I'm not ready to start any new projects until I'm finished with the old ones, so that will have to wait a bit.

There isn't much I can do about the two big fish tank pumps in the basement. The fish tank also has it's own chiller (air conditioner for fish) to help keep the temperatures at a lovely 76F in the tank. I'll just have to live with those.