I just finished reading the "Daemon" and "Freedom" novels by Daniel Suarez. 

The story line is well done.  The gore is a bit over the top though.  The first half of the first book sucked me in as it was fairly realistic with respect to the technology.  As the story progresses, the tech becomes more fantastic.  Maybe we're only a few years/decades away from the things described, I'm not sure.  Overall, it's a very scary and thought provoking story.  I recommend these highly to anyone who like thrillers or science fiction.

I'm a frugal person.  I admit it.  I've been running a very old thinkpad laptop with Debian Linux in my basement with a salvaged hard drive in an inexpensive usb enclosure.  That was my home file server.  It was slow ( only USB v1.0 supported by the thinkpad ), and unreliable.  The network connection kept dropping for some reason.  Recently I saw that Buy.com had the Pogoplug on sale for $48.  I subscribe to the Cheapskate rss feed in Google reader.  I bought one and have been working to replace the old thinkpad's job with this cool little Linux device.

The designed function of the Pogoplug isn't really what I wanted.  Out of the box it's a private storage cloud device that works in conjunction with a web site ( my.pogoplug.com ).  Once you plug your device into your own network, you can't do anything with it until you log onto the site and activate.  From there, it makes your files available anywhere on the internet.  Special software can then be downloaded to make your local device mount drives onto your local machines.  I'd rather not rely on the web site, or let my data flow outside my network any more than is necessary, even if Pogoplug promises to encrypt it.  So my mission was to disable all the built in features and install Free software to satisfy my own needs.

I expect to find alternative firmware, like the DD-WRT that I use on my inexpensive Asus WL520GU router.  Setting up the router was quite involved, but more than worth it.  With the Pogoplug, what I found was less intrusive, but still time consuming.  I went the safer route and use PlugApps.  Specifically, the usb install option.  I took a micro SD card and plugged it in to the Pogoplug using a tiny card reader device, similar to this one.  Then following the instructions, I prepared the system to install the plugapps.  Once complete, there's a large number of Free software packages that can be installed to the attached usb storage.  The downside of my setup seems to be extremely slow write speed to the micro SD card.  I mean glacially slow.  I recently visited Glacier Bay, so I know what I'm talking about.  Once I got the packages installed, the device runs at good speed.

I needed primarily these packages: Samba (v3), Python, Rsync, Cron, and OpenSSH client.  Pogoplug comes with an SSH server called Dropbear.  I script some Amazon services with Python, so I installed the Boto package.  Some of the time ipkg complained about mismatching md5 checksums.  I'm hoping that doesn't mean the repository has been tampered with.  I went ahead and downloaded the ipkg files and installed them anyway.  This was the slowest phase of the project, just getting all the necessary files and unpacking them to the usb device.

At this point I can declare success.  The 2GB micro SD has about 200MB of additional software from plugapps, so I might try to find a smaller/faster usb drive and swap it in.  I've attached my salvaged drive+enclosure and it's now available all over the house, but not on the internet.  I modified the start up scripts to disable the packaged Pogoplug non-free software.  All of my onsite and offsite backup scripts are scheduled and working, and I can rsync from anywhere over SSH.  The device has been fast and reliable (full USB 2.0 speed, w00t!).  It has 256MB of RAM which is plenty for my needs.  The Pogoplug is a silent, low-power server that is perfect for a home network.  The unfortunate thing is how crippled it is out of the box.  There should be an "apps market" for this class of device, because almost everyone could benefit from a versatile low-power server device on their home network.

Now I'm on the lookout for cheap USB hard drives to add to this thing and expand my backup practices to include more than the irreplaceable personal documents.  The Pogoplug has 4 usb ports and I'm just using 2 of them so far. 

Using an iframe appears to be the only way to get this to show up.

Broken at school on 9/3/09.

Had a good time, talked to several people, and the food was decent.  The music was a too loud most of the time, but that's just me.  I hate trying to shout a conversation to someone standing right next to me.  Bryan McClannahan cracked me up as usual.  That guy was getting two text messages a minute, I swear.  He was my bud on a motorcycle ride from Iowa to Florida back in 1993.  He ended up staying in Florida, so I had to ride back alone.  It was a good reason though, a woman, so it's all good.  Hey, Bryan, the name of city in Ohio we stopped in was Athens.  I'll never forget that baked potato pizza, my motorcycle breaking down in Raleigh and the chiggers we suffered after using the tent that once.

I missed seeing Liz Rubin (now Peck).  I wanted to apologize for how rude I was in 5th grade.  She and I passed notes in 4th grade and I was too immature to handle it I guess and blew her off in 5th.  Screwing that up taught me a life lesson.  I always felt a pang of guilt around Liz through middle and high school.  I should have just been a better friend than that.  Sorry Liz.  Thanks for being my facebook friend now.  When I met Jen (now my wife) we were best friends for a year before dating.  I give Liz credit for teaching me that friendship is the foundation.

I didn't get to chat with Chris Mur much, just said hi.  Here's the story I remember about Chris.  I don't know what year, but it was before high school.  Chris was a catcher on some baseball team and he told me that he loved the song "Another one bites the dust".  For some reason he confided in my that he'd tap out the rhythm of that song on his athletic cup during the games.  Why did you saddle me with that image, Chris?  Now you are a tv and movie star, so I forgive you :)

It was great to see David, Crystal, Michaela, Dan, Amy, Tom, Melanie, Kristin, Todd, Christian, Bill, Scott, Jay, Jason, Jennifer and all the rest.

Invented this recipe myself, and it turned out to be very good.

2 eggs
3/4 C. sugar
1 C. Whipping cream
2 C. Half and Half
1 tsp. Vanilla
1 oz. unsweetened baking chocolate
1 oz. semi sweet baking chocolate
2 *heaping* teaspoons cocoa powder.
1-2 heaping teaspoons of peanut butter.

Melt baking chocolate in a double boiler.  Add 1 C. of Half and Half and mix well.  Add the cocoa and continue to stir over heat.  Add 1 to 2 heaping tsp. of creamy peanut butter and stir until melted in.  When smooth, remove from heat and let stand.  Whisk the eggs well.  Add the sugar to the eggs and whisk fast for a couple minutes.  Add the cream to the eggs and stir.  Add the vanilla and 1 C. of Half and Half.  Stir some more.  Finally, once the chocolate is cooled somewhat, stir that in and whisk well.  Chill the mixture in the refrigerator 3+ hours.   Freeze in an ice cream machine per instructions.  It takes mine about 25 minutes to firm up.  Eat some out of the middle of the freezer right away.  Scrape the remainder (should be fairly stiff) into a container, cover and freeze for later.  Mmmm Mmmm.  Everyone here liked it.  We'll probably polish off the rest after the kids hit the sack.

What great weather.  What a great day!  Woke up and rode down to Grays lake on my bicycle.  Tried to pop in at my Sister's house but she was out picking blueberries.  Can't blame her...  Anyone inside on such a day is daft.  Went to Whitmer park and hit some fly balls with Zach and Jen later, then walked up to Snookies for ice cream.  Next, dropped Jeremy with his Grandparents for the night.  He loves spending the night there because they spoil him and he knows it.  Zach wanted more baseball fun so we went to the diamond at Greenbelt park in Clive and hit some more.  Finally, Jason's deli for dinner and watched Rocky Balboa on FX.

Weather looks good for today too.  Wonder what we'll do...

I received an invite to Google Voice last night. I always like shiny
new tech toys, so I have been playing with it a bit. Click on the link below and the widget that shows up lets you call my voice mail and leave me a
message.
 
Callme widget

I don't think I'll tell everyone to use the new phone number just yet.

My employer, like many others, mandated a 1 week furlough this year.
So we decided to take a vacation to MN and relax for a week. The kids
stayed with their aunt and uncle for a couple nights, which was nice
for Jen and I. We found some nature/hiking areas around the twin
cities while sans kids.
 
I wanted to get some boating time in, but alas my family unit is not
so interested in that sort of thing. Maybe next time.
 
It's back to work tomorrow. I'm happy to have a job to return to,
that's for sure. There's lots to keep me busy these days.

I just finished the last book in the "Ender's Game" series. Highly
recommended. I read the first many years ago, and then looked at the
others now but always passed them over. Don't judge these by the
covers! I think I've read most of Card's work, and I'm never
disappointed.