Jon's blog

Now there's something you don't see every day...

I have a client with a simple Linux-based file server that was set up by someone else about nine years ago. The box has chugged away dutifully with basically no maintenance year after year, a real testament to the operating system. They finally asked me to take a closer look at it today because it was making some noise. 

I could hardly believe what I found when I opened up the server. One of the fans had been literally scotch-taped and rubber-banded in place! I'm not even sure why this was done, as all the necessary parts were there, the plastic mounting bracket just hadn't been snapped into its holes. The tape and rubber bands had actually failed, and the fan was flopping around loose in the case - lucky it didn't cause any damage. I re-installed the fan correctly, cleaned out the dust and debris, including a wad of lint that had wedged itself into the blades of the CPU fan, preventing it from spinning. Everything seems to be behaving now, not really any quieter than before because the fans are just getting old, but I don't think there is any cause for concern about overheating.

I recommended an upgrade/replacement, of course, but for their needs, they can probably get by quite a bit longer on this Linux box.

Wind in the Sails

I love my in-laws. I'm not just saying that because they'll be reading this, they really are great. We flew them out from Ohio to California to visit us for a couple weeks, and it was wonderful to spend time with them.

Among the several fun things we did was a little 90-minute pleasure cruise on the bay with one of the touristy sailing operations at Pier 39. It was a two-mast vessel, maybe 40 feet or so in length. We asked the first mate what sort of keel the boat had, and he said it was full-length, weighs 17 tons, and hangs five feet below the hull. We all enjoyed the peaceful ride and the beautiful views of the bridges and the islands.

My mother-in-law in particular has always been fascinated with sailing -- she collects all kinds of artwork depicting sailboats and full-rig sailing ships. We hadn't even really thought about that when we booked the cruise -- we just thought it would be something fun to do together. The real kicker for me though was when they made the off-hand comment that this was the first time they had actually been on a sailboat -- neither of them had ever sailed on the open water with only the wind powering the boat. It never occurred to me ... they've lived in inland locations most of their lives, somewhat close to the Great Lakes. but still just never had the opportunity. Without realizing what we were doing, we had checked off an item on their "bucket list".

Kinda makes me think that I need to pay more attention to the things that fascinate me, and make sure I'm seeking opportunities to experience things first-hand. What puts the wind in your sails?

small world

An envelope arrived in my mailbox recently with my correct address but a name I didn't recognize. It wasn't any of the most recent previous owners of my home that I knew of. There was no return address, so the only thing that seemed right to do was open it to see if it was important, and if it contained any other information that would help locate the person for whom it was intended.

It turns out that the letter inside was written by a young man six years ago and addressed to himself, probably part of a project for a school class or youth group. It contained reminders of who he was back then, what was important to him, and what were his dreams and goals for the future.

I did a little googling and discovered that not only does the guy have a facebook account, but we even have a couple mutual friends. I scanned the letter and sent it to him. He was very thankful to receive it.

So, there's my warm fuzzies for today. I hope he gets to look back and see that he turned out OK.

Android posterous app

Installed it. Like it so far.

PasswordCoach: A Better Way to Change Passwords

One of the barriers to good password practices is that people get frustrated while trying to choose a password that meets all the requirements of the system. Most password-change dialog boxes don't provide much help. They usually require the password to be entered twice before it can be checked for compliance, and if it fails, there is often no clear indication of what must be changed to comply.

What if the system gave real-time feedback while the new password was being created? I'm working on a project to do exactly that. PasswordCoach watches each character of the new password as you type it, visually checks off each requirement as it is met, and provides interactive hints. When you're typing the password a second time for confirmation, if you mistype a single character the hint text will tell you right away so you can fix it. A graphical password-strength meter shows a rating of how crack-resistant your new password will be.

I hope to use this code as part of a scripted account-migration process during an upcoming server upgrade at my company. If you'd like to check out this work-in-process, I would welcome any feedback. You can download a self-contained demo that allows you to test the interactive features without actually changing any passwords, or you can grab the source code (AutoIt3 script) and modify it for your own purposes. Let me know if you find it useful.

Multimedia message

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first impressions: Google Wave

OK, so I'm sure hundreds of thousands of other bloggers with more insightful comments than me will be posting about this, but I'll still put in a quick shot. Google Wave http://wave.google.com is creating a major buzz following a recent developer demo. The video makes it look pretty good, with the most significant emphasis on the real-time interaction and open extensibility.

Wave promises to re-define the paradigms of email, instant messaging, wiki and other collaboration models by incorporating them all in a unified protocol. The prototype client-side tools run entirely in the web browser but behave much more like a native desktop application. Conversations can occur in character-by-character real time, eliminating standard "Suzie is typing..." lag times. Documents can be edited collaboratively in real time with color-coded highlights as they are typed. Everything is re-play-able in a timeline so you can see how the work progressed.

I think there's a lot of potential here. Will Wave supersede all these other forms of communication? Hard to tell. There's certainly a lot of inertia to overcome, or at least accommodate. With the open APIs, it should be possible to integrate Wave technology and build interfaces to existing systems like SMTP and Jabber. I'll also be interested to hear more about how the new Wave protocol addresses things like trust relationships and spam prevention.

Regardless of whether it revolutionizes the world or not, I have to give props to the google team for taking a shot at innovating and changing the way we think about communication. It's also very commendable that they're pursuing this project with as much openness as they can, taking the extra step to allow interoperability and even direct competition in a way that still encourages connectedness across the entire system. Keep up the good work, guys.

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mapmotive: facebook friends google maps mashup coolness

I just discovered the mapmotive app on facebook ... very cool!

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mini-review: Star Trek

Am I a true trekkie? Probably not, I don't even have the pajamas. :-) But I'll admit to being a long-time fan, from the original TV series through most of the spin-offs and movies. I had a blast at the new Star Trek film last night. It's very well done, intense, clever, campy, with plenty of insider references, but still a fun ride even for the uninitiated. The theater we went too had actually over-shot the number of screens they needed to schedule, so the room was not crowded at all, but that didn't diminish the fun of sharing the experience with others. I was with a group of a half-dozen guys and we all had a good time. Some were long-time fans, others had no frame of reference, and everyone enjoyed the show.

The actors did a great job of portraying the classic characters in their full personality, extrapolated back to their prequel younger selves. The writers deftly avoided any nit-picking quibbles about historical consistency with the other shows and movies by neatly packaging everything in an alternate reality, courtesy of meddling time-travelers. Some might see that as a cop-out, but I found it to be a relief, in that I didn't have to waste energy trying to figure out if everything made sense in context with everything else. The plot wasn't very deep, but it provided enough of a framework to get us from point A to point B with plenty of action along the way.

Definitely a thumbs-up for me.

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long overdue for an update

OK, this blog has sat dormant for too long. Like many, I've been doing a lot more with facebook and twitter lately, and it's great to be able to do more frequent, shorter posts. Still, I need to be doing more substantial writing sometimes too. It's been a wild ride the past several months.

The biggest recent news is that we bought a townhouse, just across town from where we've been the past several years. The market is really in a perfect storm right now for buyers; prices are down, interest rates are down, and as long as you have a decent credit score there are loans to be had.

Plenty more to write about, hopefully I'll get more consistent. Also testing automatic status updates with this post, so it should get linked via pingvine through ping.fm to facebook, twitter, linkedin, identica. We'll see.

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