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BlackBerry Curve 8320

Published January 14, 2009

Danielle is looking at acquiring a BlackBerry Curve 8320 with service via T-Mobile. When purchased via T-Mobile directly it costs $99 after rebate, but when purchased via Amazon it is -$99 after rebate. Yes, a negative number… Amazon has really low prices on phones, for some reason.

The intention is to sign up for the phone and then cancel the data plan, leaving her with 600 anytime minutes, unlimited nights and weekends, and a 400 text minutes per month for $39.99.

So, that gets to my question… I’m curious if any of you have any opinions about this phone. BlackBerries in general seem to be pretty decent devices, but do any of you have an opinion on this one?

If you are wondering why she would get a phone generally designed for data but without a data plan, the intention is to have something which meets X requirements:

· Doesn’t flip or slide open, as these mechanics and their associated flexible PCBs / cables tend to fail before the rest of the phone.
· Has actual tactile switch / electromechanical buttons, and not touch-surface buttons, as these tend to become less (or overly) responsive over time.
· Has a full keyboard, to facilitate text messaging.

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Tapioca Pudding

Published January 13, 2009

Home-made tapioca pudding. I think I whipped the egg whites a bit too much before folding them in.

As mentioned yesterday I made tapioca pudding. It’s quite good, but as the texture isn’t as smooth as I’d hoped for; I think that I whipped the egg whites a bit much before folding them in. The recipe said that they need to be stiff peaks, which is what I did. Unfortunately this made folding them in akin to stirring shaving cream and warm ice cream.

That said, it tasted very good.

However, if one lets some dry on the inside of a cup, say, while the cup sits on one’s desk all day at work that cup will smell of death. And by death I mean rotting eggs. And not rotting eggs in the good, wholesome sulfur dioxide fart-esque smell. No, just rotting animal parts.

I will definitely be making this again in the future.

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Busy, Busy, Busy…

Published January 12, 2009

A very small owl sitting on a branch outside of the window at Rochester Mills Brewery.

I’ve been really, really busy lately. This isn’t a bad thing, I just haven’t had enough time to get everything done that I’d hoped to. Lately I’ve had the MMBA website move, really bad weather on Saturday, shopping (REI, IKEA, Target, Meijer, etc) on Sunday, work then the MMBA Metro North quarterly meeting today, and now I’m making tapioca pudding.

I still have to find time (hopefully tomorrow) to fix a friend’s NAS, finish up the x0xb0x, and whatever else comes up. For now, though, have some moblog photos:

· A very small owl sitting on a branch outside of the window at Rochester Mills Brewery.
· Bags and carts at Ikea on Ford Road.
· Partially eaten veggie burger from J. Alexanders in Somerset.
· The urinal at J. Alexanders is a nice, old style model.
· After buying gas I bought this very large apple fritter.
· I do wonder why this person doesn’t just disable their touchpad.
· Partially eaten rosemary bread with jalapeno havarti melted on the top.
· Waiting for biyrani at Rangoli Express #1.

Also, this evening’s fortune (6):

Last login: Mon Jan 12 19:55:22 2009 from adsl-75-45-241-
Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994
        The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.

FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE (BANSTYLE) #4: Tue Dec  9 00:07:44 EST 2008
 
Snow Day -- stay home.
 
c0nsumer@banstyle:~>

Funny that, considering the current forecast. A snow day would be rather nice, actually.

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MMBA Site Moved

Published January 9, 2009

Michigan Mountain Biking Association web site (mmba.org) soft launch after moving to nuxx.net for hosting.

Here’s the result of something I’ve been working on for the last couple months. The new Michigan Mountain Biking Association web site has launched, and it is now hosted here on my server. This is the soft launch of the site, as we should have a new unified theme / design across the main site, forum, and other places soon. However, we wanted to get the new site itself up and running because the old one was causing us a few problems.

I’m really, really glad we got this done. Now, time for bed.

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Xbox Live Open NAT Using pf on OpenBSD

Published January 6, 2009

Detailed photo of the word 'Strict.' from the Xbox 360 Network Test which insists that my network setup is restrictive.

It’s done. My Xbox 360 is now working properly via NAT talking through the Trashwall and using WOW! service.

After getting my previously mentioned pf problem on Trashwall sorted out I tested out the Xbox 360 to see if the network test for Xbox Live would pass. Guess what? It didn’t, continuing to insist that my NAT type is strict.

A bit more research (and information which seems to come from this post at Russ’s Blog) indicates that the Xbox Live uses the following classifications for NAT:

Strict: Symmetric NAT.
Moderate: Cone shaped NAT with port filtering or with UPnP turned off.
Open: Cone shaped NAT with no port filtering or with UPnP turned on.

Cone and symmetric NAT descriptions are formalized in RFC3489, and a bit more digging brought up this general how-to for using OpenBSD’s pf, indicating that the static-port directive on a NAT rule (described here in the POOL OPTIONS section of the pf.conf(5) man page) makes OpenBSD do cone-shaped NAT.

So, overall, what did it take to fix it? Well, it was actually three things:

· I switched to Wide Open West for data service, which gave me three IPs.
· While the whole house was NATted through one of the IPs, the Xbox 360 alone has been bidirectionally NATted through another.
·The magic static-port option on the NAT line for the Xbox 360.

Without a second IP I wouldn’t have been able to forward all ports inbound, which without a UPnP daemon (which didn’t go well before) would have resulted only a NAT setting of Moderate.

All of this has been documented in the updated version of the article on the Trashwall, my home’s a firewall / NAT device / switch / whatever built out of an unwanted PowerMac G4.

(In case you didn’t notice, this photo does a good job illustrating the wire in a aperture grill, such as the one here on an Sony KD-34XBR970 CRT HDTV. If you’d like to see the original without the no sign, here’s the small version and here it is at full res.)

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binat on OpenBSD’s pf Confuses Me

Published January 6, 2009

UPDATED: This is fixed. See the bottom of the post.

With the move to Wide Open West for data service at home I now have up to three IPs available, all assigned via DHCP. In order to best use them and work around the Xbox Live problems I was having I wanted to do the following:

– Assign one IP to one interface, and NAT everything through it, like normal.
– Assign a second IP to a second interface, and use binat to have my Xbox 360 to basically have its own public connection. (Sort of like being in the DMZ on a Linksys box.)
– Leave the third IP alone for times when I want a non-firewalled connection.

While I have this set up, it doesn’t seem to be working. Here’s my current configuration. If anyone can tell me what I’m doing wrong or offer suggestions, please do so:

Continue readingbinat on OpenBSD’s pf Confuses Me
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Eviscerated Bear

Published January 4, 2009

Danielle gave Roxie this stuffed bear before she left for Flordia. Roxie spent much of this week playing with it and removing the squeaker and stuffing. This is how it ended up.

One of Roxie’s favorite past times is removing the innards (squeakers, fluff, etc) from stuffed animals. She only plays with those she is given, but once she has one she quickly sets into it. Throughout the week I’d find her taking the toy and pressing it into my hand trying to get me to play with her or watching her lay behind me pulling out hunks of fluff from a new-found inside passage.

Oh, and the crusty look to the fur? Yep, dried dog slobber.

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