I just signed up with DShield so that I can submit my firewall logs for analysis. DShield is a clearing house for firewall logs to track trends in intrusion and attacks. My firewall allows automated submissions, so now I’m just waiting for the first one to show up over there.
Monthly Archives: May 2005
FIOS At One Month
It’s been about a month since I switched from DSL to Verizon‘s FIOS service. The service has been rock solid, the data rates as advertised, and after a little telephone tag I even got them to do reverse DNS for the one IP I’m using. I’m thinking that cable’s in a little bit of trouble and unless they come up with something a lot better, they’re going to start looking a lot like dialup does compared to cable or DSL. They’ll be the low cost alternative to the “real” services.
A Good Scotch and a Good Cigar
After the week from hell I needed to unwind a little so I spent most of the evening sitting in my back yard drinking a well deserved Glenmorangie Port Wood Finish scotch. A couple friends of mine turned me on to this at a biker gathering a couple years ago. It’s a lot smoother than the Laphroaig that I usually drink, but the port wood finish really makes this a smooth drinker. The flavors were an excellent match for the medium sized El Credito Apprentice cigar that I picked out of the humidor. It’s a little smaller than my preferred size, but the draw was smooth, the smoke was thick, and it burned evenly and smoothly. I picked up a few different flavors, including leather and earth.
All in all, a good way to get over a rough week.
Thinking About Kendo
I’ve been thinking about checking out a Kendo class for a while. I used to fence with epees in college and have been thinking about this for a while. So I’m going to go down and check out one of the all levels classes that DFWKIK has to see both if I’m up to it (probably not, but I won’t let that stop me) and whether I really want to do this. More to follow…
Alignment, Rain, Driving Home
Since the skies were so nasty this morning, I worked on getting the front-end alignment done early. Cowtown Jeeps has a great page that shows exactly how to do this, and it’s the method that I used. It worked like a charm and other than the really nasty rain until I got almost to Ellis county, the drive back was uneventful. I’m tired and I’ve still got to work on school stuff so this is staying short.
A Bad Jeep Day
After noticing that my alignment was really badly off, with the driver’s side tire at a completely different angle than the passenger’s side tire when they should have both been straight, I decided to fix it by removing the driver’s side tie rod end, screwing it in a little more, then reconnecting it and redoing an alignment. Easy, right?
Wrong.
I messed up the threads on the tie rod end and spent most of the day making three 20 mile trips to the nearest auto parts store to get the right part to replace it. It turns out that my tie rod was put on backwards which threw everyone for a loop.
I started this at 2:00 this afternoon and got to a stopping point with just the alignment left to do at around 8:30 tonight.
At least I’ll be able to drive home tomorrow.
Mars Polar Lander Found?
Space.com is reporting that the Mars Polar Lander’s crash site may have been found. From the article it sounds like a software glitch caused the lander to crash. I wonder just how they could have tested for this particular case since it is theorized that the jolt from the landing legs extending prematurely cut off the engines.
A New Hamsat!
HAMSAT was launched today and should be operational by June. It’s going to be mode B, but since it’s not showing up on Heavens Above yet, I don’t know if there are going to be any orbital passes over the US.
We Few
I just finished reading We Few, John Ringo and David Weber‘s latest installment in their Prince Roger series. It’s great! I was completely sucked in and couldn’t stop reading it. If you enjoy military sci-fi, give this series a try. Start with March Upcountry.
I’m looking forward to the next book because something tells me the chaos hasn’t quite ended yet. I’m keeping this spoiler free, so it’s a little on the brief side, but it’s a great read!
Referrer Spam Run
Sorry about the poor performance, my poor server’s getting the stuffing beaten out of it by one massive referrer spam run. I’ve got mod_rewrite passing out 301’s to (hopefully) redirect the clients back to the site they’re spamming for, but the router’s still working hard enough that connection times are terrible. This has been going on since about 5:30 Central time on 3 May with no end in sight. I’ll post updates as things develop.