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Autumn Is Here

Published September 17, 2010

While trying out the new chainring and tires at Addison Oaks it was pretty apparent that autumn is now here. I looked past the cool evenings and snuggling under a heavy blanket while sleeping with the windows open, but the new-since-last-weekend red and yellow leaves scattered along the trail cinch it.

For the first time riding Addison on a single speed I was quite happy with how things went. Save for a periodic rear brake chirp which I need to work out the bike worked great, and I had little difficulty with any hills. This really is one of my favorite trails; fast, swoopy, enough technical bits to be fun but smooth enough to enjoy rolling along. Next time I’ll schedule a better single speed ride and also head through Bald Mountain. Perhaps Sunday.

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Network Captures and Windows 7 Firewall

Published September 17, 2010

Windows 7 has a rather capable stateful firewall built into the OS. When troubleshooting network connectivity issues one often needs to determine if the client firewall (or something else) is blocking traffic. Quite commonly this involves acquiring a network capture to see what data is going to the client and comparing that with what is logged by the firewall.

I’ve just confirmed that network captures taken by Microsoft Network Monitor v3.4, WinPcap (used by Wireshark and WinDump), and netsh all capture data before the Windows Firewall has its way with it. Thus, packets which are dropped by the firewall are seen in a network capture. Confirmation of this was made by sending test TCP and UDP data with the firewall on and off, observing a local app set to receive the data (netcat), seeing which traffic hit the port via an external tap, what was captured locally, and what drops were logged by the firewall. In each case all TCP and UDP data seen by the external tap was also captured locally, even when it was dropped by the Windows Firewall. ICMP (and other IP protocols) were not tested.

This is a Very Good Thing from a network troubleshooting perspective.

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Eating Alone

Published September 16, 2010

By lunch time today I was having an off day and not feeling so well, so I wanted a good lunch. I headed over to Kruse and Muer in the Village, one of the restaurants founded (in part) by the late Chuck Muer. I’d never been to this location, but knowing as the restaurants are known for their mid-priced high quality food I figured that I couldn’t go wrong. I ended up having some very tasty coconut encrusted flounder with a sweet corn and dried cherry couscous, prefixed with a wonderful gazpacho and fresh poppy seed covered bread. I’d originally entertained the idea of dessert, but found myself a bit too full and passed on that idea.

As per my quite-frequent desire of having time to sit and think (and relax) I ate alone, enjoying the food and occasionally reading a few blogs via my phone. Unlike some people I have very little problem eating alone, particularly if I’m wanting to disconnect from work and other mentally taxing tasks. There are few things I find as refreshing as spending some time alone doing something enjoyable (like eating and reading), completely forgetting about responsibilities for a while. If I’m able to disconnect and relax for a few minutes I can jump back into work and find it fresh and exciting.

Not long after getting back to work I came across this Metafilter post that simply links to this Tumblr blog, table for one, a photo blog comprised solely of surreptitiously acquired photos of people eating alone.

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Surly Chainring, Tire Swap, etc.

Published September 16, 2010

This rainy Thursday was used for some necessary bike work. I’ve finally resolved my chainring issues by acquiring a new Surly stainless steel chainring, 104mm x 34t. This was fitted with some short alloy chainring bolts, the chainline was tweaked by doing some fancy math and then removing one spacer removed from behind the the cog, and I re-adjusted the chain tension.

I also fitted a Kenda Small Block Eight to the rear of the bike and a beefy 2.4″ wide Schwalbe Racing Ralph to the front. I’ve been liking this exact setup on my Titus so I figure it’ll be good to try here as well. It’s fast rolling but works wonderfully over sand and loose stuff, and should be great until the snow flies. I think I’ll try and test it out tomorrow evening. It’d be nice to try it out at Addison Oaks, but after both working and racing there this past weekend (for which these podiums) I’m not sure I want to ride it so soon.

If you’re interested, here are two photos of me from the race (1, 2) which were taken by Andrea Tucker during the race. I finished 10th out of 14 in my class, which I don’t think was too bad, seeing as I’d never done three solid laps (the length of the race) of this trail before. All of us working the race had also arrived at 7am to set up everything, and then Erik and I set out on a fourth lap afterward to clean up the trail. It was definitely a tiring day.

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LiveJournal Is Dead

Published September 7, 2010

For as long as I’ve been making posts on nuxx.net/blog, since back in March 2008, I’ve been automatically cross-posting things to my LiveJournal account ‘c0nsumer’. In recent years LiveJournal (LJ) has become markedly less interesting as folks move to other social networks and abandon the blogging format. I’m not about to give up a place to post random thoughts, images, and technical info, but I don’t think that I’m going to keep contributing such things to LJ.

I’m currently working on backing up my LJ account so that I can archive it somewhere, but as my account became unpaid this evening I suspect it won’t be long before I abandon LJ entirely and post solely here. I may even consider using Facebook, where I’ve maintained a minor presence so that I could view other people’s pictures. I’ve been a bit hesitant to use it for any real content, but as it reached critical mass a few years ago I really shouldn’t continue to ignore it.

So, I think that’s it. While LJ does offer some benefits such as ACLs to restrict access to posts (which I don’t use) and email notifications of replies to comments, I think it’s time to move on. Within a few days I’ll likely uninstall the LJ crossposter from WordPress, make a final post pointing back here, and bid the online social blogging platform that I’ve used since May 28, 2002 goodbye.

UPDATE: It turns out that the expiration of my LJ account does not remove my ability to automatically cross-post. So while I no longer have much of an interest in using LJ, I may as well continue cross-posting to make it easier for others to read.

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New Tires!

Published September 3, 2010

I’ve been noticing some odd vibration from the rear of my car lately, and on Wednesday it was noted that my rear tire was starting to look a bit low. Today was a good day to take my car into the shop, and it was found that my rear driver’s side tire was super-worn on the inside edge, with intermittent vibration wear, and had a nail in it. With 54,134 on the set of tires they’d also lived their life, so I didn’t mind getting new ones.

My car rides much better now, doesn’t have an odd vibration from 69MPH – 74MPH, and it should be much nicer to go into winter with fresh tread to drive on. I do think I need to rotate my tires a bit more this time around, though.

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MySQL Help (phpBB and aMember)

Published September 2, 2010

As some of you know, I do many of the “webmaster” activities for the Michigan Mountain Biking Association. As part of this, I’m trying to do some MySQL stuff, but I’m really not sure where to start since it seems to be way beyond my abilities. So, I’m going to write it up here and hope that someone can help. Please? Help?

Thank you very much in advance for any help you can provide.

I’ll put it below the fold…

Continue readingMySQL Help (phpBB and aMember)
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Australian Yogurt (Yoghurt?)

Published September 1, 2010

This morning I ate a cup of Wallaby Organic Yogurt which Danielle purchased on clearance at VG’s. While tasty, I was a bit confused by the printing on the lid claiming that it’s inspired by “Australian yogurts”. Prior to this I’d never heard of such a thing, and apparently I’m not the only one confused by this designation.

I figure that this wording is simply a way of making a food sound more interesting by implying that it’s foreign. After all, foreign foods are better; especially those from exotic lands like Australia.

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Bad Avocado!

Published August 31, 2010

The avocado that I purchased yesterday from Whole Foods to eat today for breakfast is bad. It’s weirdly stringy, tastes salty, and is of an overall not-avocado color. Oh well. I guess that’s why they were 10 for $10.

No breakfast avocado for me, I guess. At least the peach that was purchased at the same time is good.

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