# An Ode To On Call

once upon a midnight 'berry
as I awoke from dreams so airy
the screen announced like a sorrowful brute
quoth the kernel, unable to mount root

bleary eyed I thumbed the wheel
that would hold back my sire's steel
as I pondered profanity stronger than, "Shoot"
quoth the kernel, unable to mount root

my fingers dance, ciphers entered
I'm in like flynn and down like bender
meanwhile this server just won't boot
quoth the kernel, unable to mount root

I have a look see, and what do I find?
a botched migration, well yes I do mind 
you have to check your hardware first you ignorant kook
quoth the kernel, unable to mount root

Put it all back, is all I reply,
before slamming my leash down onto my thigh
no problem was fixed, but now it's all moot
quoth the kernel, unable to mount root
 

posted at: 2008 Apr 04 10:36 UTC | category: tech | (story link)

# Peppermint Cocoa

A warm hot chocolate can't be beat. I felt like one tonight so here's the aproximate recipe I threw together. Whips together in under 5 minutes and you only dirty up one cup and one spoon.

Ingrediants:

• Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
• Peppermint Extract
• Honey
• Milk

Fill mug aproximately 1/4 full of chocolate chips. Add a few drops of Peppermint and 1-2tsp of Honey, to taste.

Microwave on HIGH for 10 seconds and stir. Repeat once or twice and then fill mug with milk to halfway point. Microwave 30 seconds, stir, and then microwave an additional 30 seconds.

Finish filling mug with milk until full. Microwave 60-90 seconds on MEDIUM until hot.

posted at: 2008 Apr 03 07:02 UTC | category: recipes | (story link)

# Review: Outback Steakhouse (Don't go there if you value customer service)

Blah blah blah, it's a large chain, blah blah blah, fill in consistant but never excellent food type review here, involving getting a steak that's actually medium rare (instead of medium) when I ordered rare, which is pretty good for a californian restaurant.

With that out of the way, we get to the meat of this review, and the part I wish to "get out there." If my experience causes 2 or 3 others to not eat there I'll feel vindicated.

So I was eating there with friends, and I decided to order a Dr Pepper. The waitress told me they didn't have it. My response was, "That's too bad."

To my surprise, the waitress continued. "It's worse, they got rid of Dr Pepper last week for Coke Zero. Now we have Coke, Diet Coke and Coke Zero."

That got my blood set to a slow boil, so I didn't really realize how upset I was at first. But it ate at me. That was wrong. They replaced a soda that was tasty (if not particularly healthy) with one that contains a known carcinogen. One designed to replace an already successful product (didn't Coke learn anything after that New Coke fiasco?)

I went to outback.com and I sent in the following comment:

   You got rid of Dr Pepper at this restaurant in order to serve coke zero.
   You already have diet coke. Why do you need coke zero? There's no
   difference between the two. They taste the same, they both have
   aspertame, they both suck. That was the last time I go to an outback for
   a while. Hopefully the next time I go to an outback you will have
   regained your senses and I can actually eat there again.
  

I sent that Friday evening, just before midnight. This morning (Tuesday) I got a response from Patrick Kruk. Mr. Kruk's email signature identifies him as a Joint Venture Partner.

   Zach:
   Thank you for your email. We will be reviewing our fountain selection
   after the current promotion we have partnered with Coke Zero that will
   end in April.
   Patrick Kruk
  

Oh dear. Mr. Kruk seems to have forgotten basically every customer service rule that has ever been written. He addresses my main complaint without doing a thing to address my anger, or even acknowledge it. In response, I sent back the following, which pretty much says everything I want to say on the matter.

   Patrick,

   Thank you for your concern over an upset customer. I'm glad you showed 
   me such concern when I sent out an obviously upset email.

   Additionally, thank you for your condolences over my anger. It surely 
   soothes a wounded soul to see such compassion and understanding.

   Finally, thank you for taking the proper time to respond to me. There's 
   nothing worse than someone who takes 15 seconds to dash off an irrelevant 
   and irreverent response to a customer complaint.

   I'm glad I can feel good about eating at an Outback again, instead of 
   feeling like I have the choice between being "that guy" in the social 
   group and eating at an establishment that has disrespected me as a 
   customer and therefore doesn't deserve my business.

   In short, thank you for going above and beyond the call of duty in 
   providing excellent customer service and customer relations.

   -Zach

   PS, if you're as bad at judging the tone of this email as you were on my 
   last email, everything but this PS statement is intended as sarcasm, and 
   I have no intention of stepping foot into any Outback ever again.
  

posted at: 2008 Mar 11 15:06 UTC | category: misc | (story link)

# Beards

Growing a beard is a gradual change. A good beard takes time to grow, months for some men, years for others. Sure, you can have the basic outline there in only a few days, but it takes times for the slow peachfuzz to grow out and help fill it in. Your family, your friends, your coworkers, the people at the coffee shop, they all have a chance to get used to it. Sometimes they don't even notice, one week you don't have a beard, the next week you do.

Shaving a beard, on the other hand, is a drastic and immediate change. You have a beard. Five minutes later you don't. The very first person you run into who knows you, no matter how casual the acquantance, will notice something different about you.

I started growing my current beard about this time of year in 2004. I couldn't tell you exactly when, such is the way with beards.

Sometimes a drastic change is needed.

posted at: 2008 Jan 22 19:41 UTC | category: life | (story link)

# Today is Veterans Day

Go show your support for the troops. http://thisnovember11th.com/.

It's not often that politics compels me to action, but I donated $100 today. You should too.

posted at: 2007 Nov 11 21:32 UTC | category: life | (story link)

# Random Wit

If you're like me, you have a terrific sense of wit but only when it doesn't actually matter.

For example, today I read a 3rd-hand story about a pizza shop employee who was complaining about people on cell phones. Apparantly they'll talk on the phone while waiting in line and then have to decide what they want once they actually get to the cashier, often after taking 30-60 seconds to wrap up their phone call.

My first thought after reading this was, "She needs to send that customer to the Deciding Area, which is, of course, between the door and the other customers in line." It's a pity that I couldn't have been there to deliver a line based on that thought.

Luckily, I can still "blog" it so my readers can sorta chuckle about it (both of you.)

posted at: 2007 Nov 04 23:47 UTC | category: life | (story link)

# To paraphrase Fermi: where are all the viruses?

Apple is known for cultivating a cloud of smug. The users are arrogant and have an inferiority complex. In addition, Apple has been been playing up MacOS X's security in ways that some people find irritating.

David Maynor, for example, was willing to tarnish his reputation and be a laughing stock in order to, as he put it, poke a lit cigarette into the eye of Mac users. Granted, he was quoted saying that while he was supposed to be off the record, but it demonstrates just how much Apple gets under some people's skin.

Given that, you would think that by now someone would have written a self-propagating virus that targets Mac users, but it just hasn't happened.

It's not like it'd be difficult. I can think of 3 or 4 security issues that exist in MacOS today that would allow me to escalate from a normal account to root. Most of them involve exploiting the keychain, which by default is left unlocked while the user is logged in. Others involve getting the user's password from certain locations in memory that are accessible to all programs through various device and swap files.

All of the problems I just mentioned can be fixed by end users, but the point is that by default these are vulnerable points in the system that can easily be used by an attacker.

Getting the virus payload into the system is easy enough, too. Mac users are just as susceptible to dancing babies and love as PC users.

There are millions of Macs out there. More Macs than FreeBSD servers, but FreeBSD servers have been worm targets. Granted, they tend to be on faster connections, but given the low number (in the low hundreds of thousands, at most) of FreeBSD machines on the Internet why have they been targeted by malware when Macs (numbering in the millions) have not?

I'm not sure I have an answer to this. I know the answer is not "Because windows is the biggest target so all the kiddies look there." What better way for an obscure black hat to get his nick out there than to have written the first MacOS X virus that actually spreads? In one fell swoop you earn fame and reputation. You get to embarrass a giant corporation and show that they're not as invulnerable as they claim in their ads.

That seems like a much bigger prize to me than being just another anonymous entry in some antivirus vendor's database.

posted at: 2007 Oct 09 14:52 UTC | category: tech | (story link)

# Emacs Users Need To Stop Holding Back Unix

So for those who don't know, I've been using Ubuntu the last week or so. I've been keeping notes and I may write about it later, but I had to rant about this now.

It is late in the year 2007. The last time I used a unix-like desktop was in 2003, and I had the same problem then: A useless right alt key.

Why is the right alt key useless? Because for some reason it's been assigned the function "Super" instead of "Meta". Why was it assigned Super? What is Super? Why hasn't anyone fixed this minor detail that has existed for the 10 years linux has been a plausible threat to MS?

Super is just another modifier key, like shift or control. Old sun keyboards all have dedicated super keys. Back in the 80s it was used quite a bit, I've been told. These keyboards also had a single alt, a single control, and another modifier key called compose.

Meanwhile, in the real world, IBM came along and make two alt keys standard for the vast majority of computer users. They also put in two control keys and (one of their few bad moves on the keyboard) put capslock next to A, where control had historically been. This has since become the standard keyboard for everyone, even sun and apple.

So why is it that on a standard linux installation, no matter which distro you choose, the right hand alt key has been assigned Super? Emacs.

You see, Emacs is this software that does everything. It handles your email, it will monitor logs, you can play games in it, talk to a virtual psychiatrist, and even edit text files. If you need to perform a command in emacs there is probably a command for the exact situation you're in, assuming you can find it.

Learning emacs requires a harness and a rope, plus good ice shoes and a pickaxe. You will need this equipment to scale the steep and slippery learning curve. It is the only software still used that uses super. It will also use compose, snoz and snorglebutt modifier keys if you happen to have them assigned to your keyboard.

Emacs users are a small but vocal minority in the open source world (much like the religious right.) They command an unusually large amount of mindshare in the open source world (much like the religious right.) The rest of us could really do without emacs users, but they contribute a lot of code back to the community, so we put up with them (s/code/money, and again, much like the religious right.)

<colbert> EMACS USERS! I'm putting you, "On Notice!"</colbert>

Before a distribution like Ubuntu will be popular with the masses (and it's so very close) this default will have to be changed. It is unreasonable to suggest that the majority of users change their configuration or be stuck with a useless key so that the minority of emacs users don't have to change anything. You can do it now or do it later, but sooner or later it will have to be done.

If it's not, someone like my grandmother will never use Ubuntu (at 75 she, on her own, went out and bought a computer, learned what she needed to about it, and called me up and asked me to bring her Firefox and Thunderbird because it was taking too long to download over her dialup.)

posted at: 2007 Sep 24 15:13 UTC | category: tech | (story link)

# Bodyguardz Protective Skins

So I bought a Treo 755p to replace my 2 year old Treo 650. The phone is fine, it's basically my 650 with EVDO, no antenna and miniSD instead of SD.

I never had any sort of protection on my 650, and it held up great. However, it got pretty badly scratched up. I decided I'd see what sort of protector I could get for my 755. After looking at cases and researching for a few days I bought a set of plastic skins from BodyGuardz.

I put the skin on this morning. It hasn't cured for the full 24 hours yet, so this is a review of the installation process only, plus first impressions.

On a technical, "Can I do this" level, the installation was a breeze. Just spray on the solution and apply the piece in the right spot. Lift or slide until it's in position. I found that the skin didn't slide across the rubberized paint of the 755p very well, but peeling and resticking was fine.

However, on a "How hard was the install" level, it's meticulous. You have to clean the treo, then spray your hands, peel the next piece, spray it, then start applying and sticking it. I found I was spending 5-10 minutes per piece to get it on. The squeegee was useless for the body protector, again because of the rubberized paint. Pressing hard with fingers worked perfectly to stick the cover and work out bubbles.

The fit is not perfect, but it's close enough. There are a couple places where it stuck over the edge slightly, but a razor blade was able to cut those bits off (it was right where the battery cover meets the phone, so I had to trim it.)

The screenguard works as expected, although even with the solution getting bubbles out wasn't easy. This is a place where the squeegee helped. If anyone from Bodyguardz is reading this, please keep those in here, they are very useful for this step. :) My screenguard is slightly smaller than the screen, but once placed you don't notice it unless you look for it.

So first impressions? Seems great. By now the solution has dried and I can see how it'll look. I think it'll do a great job, provided it actually stays on the phone.

All is not rosy, however. The most scratched up part of my 650 is the part of the case that frames the screen. The Bodyguardz don't protect most of this area. Also, there are some corners that look like perfect candidates for catching and becoming a removal point, possibly when I don't want it to be removed. I'll keep an eye on those.

So should you buy your own? Well, I like it so far, and would tenatively say yes. At $25 it's cheaper than most cases, and it keeps my treo sleek enough to stay in my pocket.

I'll post another review in a few weeks, when I've had a chance to really put it through the paces.

posted at: 2007 Aug 16 21:36 UTC | category: tech | (story link)

# New Job

Well, I've put off this announcement a while, but I really should say something here. I've taken a new job, and it means moving back to the Bay Area.

I've officially gotten a place to live, a nice 2 bedroom house on Seminary Ave in Oakland. It's actually a duplex, and the other unit is downstairs and only one bedroom. My unit is upstairs and has this really cool spiral staircase leading from the garage to the unit.

I get to move in sometime next week, I'll have the exact date when my landlard emails me.

My new job is with a company that is doing streaming video to mobile devices. We have established relationships with a number of wireless companies in the US and Canada.

I'm doing sysadmin stuff, as usual, and mostly support developers and QA engineers.

In the spirit of keeping a basic (although easily traversed) disconnect between my professional and personal life I will not be publishing the name of the company I work for, but it's not very hard to figure out. Most people who read this know how to contact me anyway. I hang out on the usual network, you need only msg me. Failing that, you can construct my email address from the URL to this page. :)

posted at: 2007 Jul 24 01:41 UTC | category: life | (story link)