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XC Skiing in Roscommon

Published December 19, 2010

This Saturday (yesterday) Erik, Kristi, and I headed up to cross country ski on the trails across the street from Cross Country Ski Headquarters. This ended up being a really nice location where we were able to ski ~7 miles on nicely groomed trails. There were even a few bigger (for me) hills where I got to play around with different techniques for climbing, snowplowing, and skiing down hills without tracks. It was really fun and makes me anxious for more skiable snow to fall in this area.

To split up the trip we drove to Kristi’s parents’ place in Frankenmuth on Friday night, stayed there, then drove up to Roscommon and the skiing on Saturday morning. This worked out very nicely, as it was nice to sleep in for a bit, get breakfast, and then go skiing as opposed to simply driving up and back in one day. We then headed back home-ward after eating a nice (but very filling) dinner of pasta-covered pizza (from Tiffany’s Food and Spirits), curry soup, and apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.

Here’s a few more photos from this trip:

· Riding in Kristi’s car (with Erik driving) heading up to Roscommon for XC skiing.
· Kristi and Erik looking at the wooden map for the R and L Trail Network across the street from Cross Country Ski Headquarters in Roscommon.
· Me / Steve on the Manitou loop after taking a photo of Erik and Kristi.
· Kristi showing an icicle that developed on the neoprene sleeve covering her CamelBak hose while skiing.

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Bottom Bracket Failure

Published December 17, 2010

Today I headed out towards River Bends to try out the studded tires on the single speed (VooDoo Dambala), but as the sidewalk was more impassible than I’d thought I ended up riding around the partially-iced roads in local neighborhoods. The Nokian Gazza Extreme W294 studded tires worked out very well, but problems on the sidewalk showed that a geared bike is likely a better choice for deep snow winter riding. (Being able to shift down to a very low gear and slowly push forward through deep snow is rather nice.)

While riding around the neighborhoods I was able to get a bit over 10 miles in and explore some areas I hadn’t been to before. Not long before getting back home I felt like I was having a harder (than normal) time pedaling, but wrote it off as winter riding on super-knobby tires making me tired. It was only once I got home that I noticed an extreme amount of drag when pedaling backward. removing the chain showed that the cranks were rather hard to turn; a sign that the bottom bracket has failed. After sitting and warming slightly things are moving a bit more freely, but I think I’ll be replacing it before the next ride. Unfortunately it’s an Octalink [Edit] ISIS Drive, which may be a little harder to find.

One upside was that the CamelBak Podium Chill bottle that I was given at Iceman did a fine job of keeping my beverage from freezing during the ride. I’m still not convinced that insulated bottles are useful during the summer, but if they keep beverages from freezing in winter I’ll probably keep using them.

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Video Ads in Angry Birds on Android

Published December 17, 2010

Angry Birds (Rovio’s Site), the extremely popular (and quite fun) physics / artillery / puzzle game, is only available in ad-supported format on Android. Initially I didn’t mind this, as the ads started out as simple banners taking up a small portion of the top of the screen. Within the past few days (perhaps after an update?) there are now video ads present in the game. One plays on game launch and then another will play every few levels.

While the video ads can be skipped I find the idea of them terribly irritating. They play sound even if the game itself has been muted and eat up bandwidth. I’d much rather pay for the game than have to see this crap in order to play, so I’ve uninstalled it.

UPDATE: Rovio has responded to the note that I send about this, and apparantly starting some time in 2001 it will be possible to pay to circumvent the ads in Angry Birds.

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Google Talk Doesn’t Like application/x-javascript-config for PAC Files

Published December 16, 2010

After a bunch of frustration I found an interesting quirk in how Google Talk uses Proxy Autoconfiguration (PAC) files (Additional Documentation). There are two MIME types which can be set for PAC files when serving them, application/x-javascript-config and application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig, and both work with most browsers, but only the latter works properly with Google Talk.

It turns out that if the MIME type is application/x-javascript-config for the PAC file and the browser does not look directly to the PAC file itself, Google Talk will fail to connect. Looking deeper at it in a network capture (partially pictured above) I’d see the client closing the connection before it was done downloading the PAC file and thus the client would never receive a complete PAC file. Inspecting the TCP stream via Wireshark would show the data simply ending part-way through the PAC file. This resulted in a mysterious failure to connect with no useful error returned from Google Talk. If I simply changed the MIME type back to application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig for .pac files and restarted Apache, Google Talk would then download the whole PAC file and login fine.

In both of these cases I am serving a typical PAC file off of Apache using RewriteRule ^/$ /internet.pac [R] to ensure that all requests to http://server.local/ go to http://server.local/internet.pac via an HTTP 302. Using a DirectoryIndex directive specifying internet.pac as the index file for the site also resulted in the same issue. In both cases the client was configured to look to http://server.local/ for a PAC file.

Complicating things further I found that if instead of relying on a RewriteRule or DirectoryIndex I instead pointed the config directly to the PAC file itself (in this case http://server.local/internet.pac) then the problem would not occur; Google Talk would download the entire PAC file (confirmed in a network capture) and sign in successfully regardless of MIME type.

For purposes of this testing I used the latest released version of Google Talk, 1.0.0.104, running on Windows 7. Google Talk was also set to Detect proxy automatically which reads the system’s proxy settings. In this case it is the PAC file setting is defined in either Internet Explorer or Control Panel under (Internet Options → Connections → LAN Settings → Use automatic configuration script).

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Pontiac Has Terrible Roads

Published December 14, 2010

Pontiac is the first town in which I’ve worked where I also have to pay a city income tax. It is also the worst city I’ve had to deal with road-wise. Two days after a moderate winter snowfall there is still an inch of ice on all roads making even the most gradual uphill difficult to drive. Pulling away from a stoplight is almost always a matter of frustration involving 10-15 seconds of figuring out how to acquire traction.

Maybe I should just buy myself some snow tires. It’d make driving (all around) much nicer during winter.

(Another road photo, and a view from near my new desk on Monday.)

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XC Skiing from Home

Published December 13, 2010

Having my own cross country skis and with this weekend’s sudden snow fall frozen into hard pack I decided to see how well skiing the field next to my condo would go. Two laps (roughly a mile) later and I can say that I’m now able to have an enjoyable (albeit short and flat) ski from my house. There was even sufficient moonlight to make skiing perfectly fine without a headlight.

The snow is so firmly packed that it could be cut with a saw which allowed me to easily glide along on top of it, only occasionally sinking through recently-drifted powder. It was also deep enough that only once did I run into brush sticking through the snow and have to deviate course. Hopefully this means that the trails at Stony Creek will be open and groomed for skiing this weekend.

(Oh, and the footprints next to the ski tracks? Those are from Roxie heading out to go to the bathroom and then my fetching her deposit from the snow.)

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Free: Computer Stuff

Published December 11, 2010

Here’s some free computer stuff for whoever would like to have it and save it from the landfill or whatever the ‘recyclers’ end up doing with it. The cases also contain lots of useful steel if you’re in need of some epoxy coated (or painted) flat sheet metal.

Stuff is as follows and (to the best of my knowledge) all works fine. Computers are without hard drives, but otherwise (generally) include RAM, etc. I’ve probably got enough spare other parts to get you running as well:

· 2x 17″ CRT Monitors
· 2x enterprise-class switches (1x 10mbit, 1x 100mbit)
· 2x Pizza Box Gateway Computers (Excellent Firewalls)
· 2x PATA drive enclosures. Supports hot swap if your controller does.
· 1x Compaq Deskpro EN (Good Firewall)
· 1x AMD Athlon Computer (Don’t remember specs, decent gaming computer from ~5 years ago.)
· 1x Dell Dimension XPS P90 (real vintage 5V Pentium CPU!)
· 4x ATX Cases (InWin full tower, InWin mid tower, quality generic, Doggy)
· 1x Former Gaming Computer (O/C’d Celeron, metal flake blue case, etc.)

This is all available for pickup at my house in Shelby Township, or I’ll meet you at a local trail or whatnot if you know exactly what you want. Contact me either here via PM here, via email at c0nsumer@nuxx.net, Google Talk at steve.vigneau@gmail.com, or AIM at Iamc0nsumer.

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A New iMac‽‽‽

Published December 10, 2010

 

This past weekend I took my iMac back into the Apple Store to try and get the now-blemished (after another repair) display resolved. Per usual a part was ordered, and on Thursday morning I took the machine in to have the display replaced. Last night when checking on the repair status I noticed that the machine was ready, so I called Apple to see if I could pick it up. Extremely unexpectedly, the person who took my call explained that the data transfer was almost complete and that I should be able to pick it up in the morning. I found this very bizarre, as a data transfer is normally only done when upgrading a machine or replacing the hard disk.

It turns out that something went wrong during the repair and instead of having me wait on another part I was going to be given a new / replacement iMac and the data transfer was to get everything moved over. Talking to the tech when I picked up the machine it sounds as if someone “plugged something in wrong” or somehow made the logic board (motherboard in Apple-speak) fail and instead of waiting for yet another part to arrive Apple instead opted to just give me a new machine. This includes a receipt exchanging my machine for the new one, AppleCare transfer, and all.

The machine returned to me is the Mid 2010 model which has some nice upgrades over my original one (Late 2009), as shown here. Specifically, it has a slightly faster processor (2.96GHz Intel i7-870 vs. 2.80GHz Intel i7-860) and better video (ATI Radeon HD 5750 w/1GB RAM vs. ATI Radeon HD 4850 w/ 512MB RAM) and a comparable hard drive (Western Digital WDC WD1001FALS-40Y6A0 vs. Seagate ST31000528ASQ).

The nicest upgrade was the way the RAM ended up being reconfigured. When I took my Late 2009 27″ iMac in it was fitted with 4x 2GB 1066MHz PC3-8500 SO-DIMMs; two OEM Apple parts and two purchased from Crucial. When returned to me the new / Mid 2010 machine had 2x Apple 4GB 1333MHz PC3-10667 SO-DIMMs. This swap was necessitated by the newer machine’s faster RAM requirements, and it’s really nice to see that Apple replaced things in this way. Before this I had no free slots, which meant that going above 8GB of RAM would have required me to throw out two existing modules. Now there are two free slots, so whenever the next upgrade comes around I won’t have to toss out any parts.

This worked out pretty well, as the new machine has a just-fine display that came wrapped up just like new. There’s a slight small bit of what appears to be plastic on the inside of the glass in the lower right corner, but it’s so small that I don’t really notice it and can probably remove it with a slight puff of air; nothing to complain about at all. There was also a small black smudge on the front bezel, but this came off with a bit of alcohol.

While this whole experience was a bit frustrating overall, I’m content that it worked out this way. I received a newer machine, it appears to work fine, and my inconvenience was offset by a minor, but nice upgrade. And to think it all started with nothing more than a bad optical drive…

(As part of the upgrade I also received the disc set that goes with the machine, and this includes an iLife 11 install disc. This will be quite handy.)

Update on October 21, 2014: When at the Apple store attempting to get the GPU in this iMac fixed for free, I found out what happened to my original 2009 iMac: the LVDS connector on the logic board was damaged. Apple must have then opted to replace the entire machine.

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24.4°F and Emerald Ash Borer

Published December 7, 2010

Had my camera battery not died in the 24.4°F weather (confirmed by my bike computer while leaving the trail) I would have a better photo than this.

This place is exactly where Nick, Erik, and I spent the bulk of our time on Sunday clearing the trail, and there’s now another fallen tree there. Thankfully this one can be ridden under. It appears that this area had a number of ash trees all of which fell victim to Emerald Ash Borer, and this autumn is the time they are all falling. As they are still very solid internally, I hope that we’ll be able to chop them up in the spring and use them to build a few log piles.

Tonight’s ride was quite wonderful. While it was cold outside I was appropriately (and perhaps over) dressed, and this was only a problem when I stopped to use nature as my toilet. Due to recent rains before the cold the trail was packed hard and as grippy as brushed concrete (or slickrock?) which made riding quite fun. Road traffic was surprisingly light, and I had no problems with cars either on the (residential) roads or at intersections.

I’m really looking forward to being able to ride these trails in the winter. I’ll just have to go get that tree sorted out before it actually falls and keep an eye out for others in this area. I suspect that this trail will be outstanding with studded tires once the snow falls and ice is making everything slick. I can’t wait.

(Total ride time today 1:40:37, 18.71 miles, 11.16 MPH average, 21.76 MPH max. Rode up from home, 1x full single track, two-track as return trail, 1x regular loop, 1x backward regular loop, then back home with a loop around the neighborhood.)

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