Author Archives: Pat

More Adventures In Home Improvement

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In this chapter we see our intrepid homeowner, three weeks in to being without a stove, finding a steal on a new gas range and microwave oven at Best Buy of all places.  Delivery to take place in about two weeks, so more grilling and microwave cooking is in order, though I’m thinking about picking up a toaster oven to tide me over.

I’ve also got a plumber coming out next week to install the cutoff valve on the newly discovered gas line in preparation for the stove.  And the carpenter is working on a quote to redo the cabinets and countertops as well.  Hopefully in a couple months that work will be done as well.

An Update On The Kitchen

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I finally got the cooktop and oven removed from their nooks in the cabinets and countertop and got a good look behind there.  There is, in fact, a gas line back there, in the middle of a hole the builders helpfully hammered out of the drywall.  So now I’m waiting for a call back from a plumber to schedule him to come out and install a cutoff valve on that line.  After that I’m going to have to remove a couple boards that were used to make the shelf for the oven, cut the countertop (it’s getting replaced anyways), and go out and buy a gas range.  I’m probably going to have the carpenter give me an estimate on installing a new countertop while he’s out here giving me estimates on some other work.

The China+Google Kerfuffle

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So China got caught (again) doing what every country on the planet with more than a 56K dialup connection to the Internet does and now there’s a big stink about espionage and all the hacking attempts coming from there.

Duh!

There’s an easy solution to this issue.  Snag my script and start blocking China (or any other country) in and out of any in/out point of any of your networks that might have things you don’t want shared with Beijing.

What’s that?  You do business or need to be contacted by folks over there?  Great!  Snag my script, protect your real networks, and put a completely isolated web site, mail server, whatever else you need out there in a datacenter that has no connections to your main networks so that even if it gets compromised, who cares.

If you’re not a small fry, you can still use the data provided by the nice folks over at IPDeny to build a rule set for your hardware firewall or other device.

Really people, this isn’t that hard.

IPTables Blocking Of Countries

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I’ve been hacking around with this for a while now and have it in a workable state.  It’s a script that grabs the latest netblocks for the configured countries from IPDeny.com and loads them in to IPTables rules.  It’s perl and depends on you having the IPTables::IPv4 module installed, but it’s fast and just blocking China and Korea has cut way down on my spam and intrusion attempts.

 

 

End Of The Semester

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Sorry for the long gap with no posts.  It’s been a little hectic around here.  The semester’s over and my final grades are in.  I got As in both classes, which is nice.  Five more semesters to go.  All kind of crazy, but hopefully things are calming down and there will be more regular updates from here on out.

The Pogues

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We got down to The House of Blues to see The Pogues tonight.  It was a great show, a little bittersweet though, seeing just how badly Shane’s doing.  If you ever need an example of what long term substance abuse will do to you, picture a 51 year old man with no teeth, shuffling on stage.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s still got it and the rest of the bad was in fine form, it’s just a little sad because there could have been so much more.  I’m still glad I went, but I’d love to have a time machine, seeing them in 1985 would have been great.

Jeep Repairs, Part 2

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I got started again on that sheared off bolt after church.  My first attempt was to cut a notch in the end sticking out to try to use a screwdriver bit to get it out.  That was not to be the case as the tabs just kept shearing off whenever I twisted.  So I took the throttle body off and drilled in a little to get an easy-out in there.  It worked, to an extent, but all that would happen is I’d get a couple tenths of a millimeter at a time and eventually I couldn’t go any deeper, so I just drilled the rest of the bolt out and ran a self tapping metal screw in.  The new sensor’s in and working fine.  Now I’ve got to drive it enough for the ECU to reset the check engine light.

Jeep Repairs, Part 1

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I’ve been having some issues with the Jeep not running right, all traced back to the throttle position sensor going bad, so I pulled it off today to replace it with the shiny new one I picked up yesterday.  Unfortunately, one of the two bolts had a different idea and sheared off, leaving about a 1/4″ nub sticking out of it’s hole in the throttle body.  I could not persuade it to move, so I’m going to take a break and tackle it later.  Thankfully I’ve got a second vehicle to get around on…

Monastery Trip Recap

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I got down to Holy Archangels Monastery later on in the morning on Thursday, got settled in, and found Fr. Michael, who put me to work disassembling some scaffolding on the side of one of the buildings.  After that we worked on installing some electrical conduit and various other odd jobs.  Liturgy was at 6:00 AM so we tended to be asleep early, which was fine by me.  I got some reading in as well, plus plenty of prayer time, before I left on Saturday.  I’m glad I spent some time there, it was just what I needed to recharge.

Replacing The RT’s Battery

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Thanks to an insane weekend I didn’t get to replace the battery on the RT until now.  After removing the tupperware and left side air intake snorkle, it just slid out.  No muss, no fuss.  The connections bolted up to the new one and I got the heated gear pigtail installed while I was at it.  After buttoning everything back up I did the Motronic throttle position sensor reset and turned it over.  It was night and day difference, the starter didn’t sound like it was working hard at all.  Now I’m almost ready for the winter riding season and am definitely ready for the ride down to the monastery…