May 2, 2013 Posted by mitch |
life |
Not sure why I haven't been posting really... I got really busy with work and home life towards the end of 2012.. And lost any and all inspiration to write about anything in general. Then I came off that contract and I've been working on getting an OpenStack Install going... VMware Certified and other hosting stuff setup for work. Work has still been super busy... Found a bit of time to play with Salt. Which I like alot better than CFEngine or Puppet that I've used. Anyway... I will make more time to post again.
September 22, 2012 Posted by mitch |
politics |
Came across this on the Trib... well said my good sir... well said.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/54935255-82/american-dream-elected-future.html.csp#disqus_thread
I am a child of the Great Depression who lived the American dream, one far greater than I could imagine. Since I was a veteran of World War II, the GI Bill made it possible for me to finish my university education debt free. It made it possible to get a loan for my first home. While teaching, I completed my doctorate. In 1981, Ronald Reagan was elected president, and in 1986, I was elected Salt Lake County commissioner (Republican). I have long fought for equal rights for all. However, today’s Republican Party is not the same party.At the time I needed help, my country provided the start. With its investment in me, America gained a taxpayer never to be on the "dole." Young people today are about to lose their opportunity to live that American dream. If we want taxpayers tomorrow, we must invest in our young people now. At age 90, I have little to gain personally in this election, but I want others to have the same opportunities I did. That is why I am voting for all Democratic candidates this year. At this crossroad, it is not the time to vote against your own future and the American dream.
William L. Hutchinson North Salt Lake
July 26, 2012 Posted by mitch |
politics |
I'm Sorry, I had to post this... Why is it the Repub's are able to play to the lowest common denominator among them but they all lap it up like puppies? Lie to me once, shame on you, lie to my twice, shame on me.
July 2, 2012 Posted by mitch |
cbr, wrx |
Well... I sold my CBR600RR last month... and as a parting gift to myself... with some of the money from it... I bought a Cobb Stage 2 kit for my WRX. 3" Downpipe and Cat-back. As well as the AccessPort. Overall, I'm loving them on the WRX. But I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a part of me that missed my bike... even tho I hadn't ridden it in several months... Oh well tho... I'm still confident that it was the right decision to make. And atleast I'm enjoying my WRX on a daily basis as a result. Not that I wasn't before mind you... I love my WRX too.. Funnest car I've ever owned, and with the stage 2 mods... its even more fun. I've really had to watch it from opening it up so as to not get a ticket.... that is truely the hard part.
June 16, 2012 Posted by mitch |
life, motogp |
Its been a long time since I've posted anything... been really busy at work...
Which is why, my wife's fathers day gift is the best gift ever! I'm going to MotoGP!! Its at Laguna Seca, and I'm going! I can't tell you how excited I am to go. Thanks for the Best Present Ever hun!
As you will notice from my many posts of the last couple weeks about my reluctance and hate towards the new direction Desktop OS's seem to be taking for the "future". I hate them.... they are horrible in every way shape and form. My Desktop/Laptop is not a tablet/phone/TV/set top box/gadget. I use it because I have real work to do on it. STOP trying to force me into them. They do not work for my desktop. Allow it as an option... ok... but allow me to Turn it off or not use it! Ubuntu, I stopped using you because of it... Linux Mint... while your initial go was great... it wasn't quite there... I don't blame you for it... but its still unusable. I've currently settled on using XFCE at the moment... with Xubuntu, as the XFCE desktop under mint was broken.... for some silly things sure... but maybe its contrary to popular believe... I don't like messing with my linux desktop... it should "just work". Which means all the nice things that have come from Ubuntu which made them my choice up to this point as my desktop... All needs to work. My demands are minimal really... I want my SSH key to be unlocked when I log in. I don't care if its unlocked right at log in, or if it asks me once for my passphrase and then its unlocked for that entire session... but that needs to work. That also implies that the keyring, for all my other apps... NetworkManager, Evolution/Thunderbird need to be unlocked too... XFCE on Mint wasn't doing that... I'm sure I could have spent a couple hours figuring it out with some hacky scripts and init settings... but... why do I have to? again... Ubuntu did all that in the past for me... Xubuntu did... so that is what I will be running for now...
XFCE has its own set of problems... and I find myself launching Gnome apps to make up for the shortfalls of XFCE. The File Manager Thunar... While its quick and for for the most part does what I need... Nautilus had built in SFTP/SMB support, which I use quite a bit... I've found that gigolo is probably the companion to Thunar for it... however it seems quite buggy, and will crash on me. Also... flipping back and forth between my local file system and the remote file system requires two windows... it takes me quite a bit longer to transfer files from my local box to the remote file system doing this than it did in Nautilus.... so... at the moment, I've been running nautilus when I needed to do these tasks.
Then, I've seen another project being worked on by the guys at Mint... Cinnamon. A new desktop environment, built from Gnome3-Shell, but changing code to make it modern, yet still have the feature sets I miss from Gnome2. Not sure if I'll switch... since... thats a lot of reloading in the last month.... but... I should be getting an SSD for my laptop in the near term... maybe I'll switch then... or... maybe I'll wait for the new laptop near the end of the year. Ivy Bridge woot!
So..... If this makes me OCD then so be it... I started using XFCE yesterday on Linux Mint... and it was good... but it wasn't. There were little things that annoyed me about it... I ended up swapping out the screensaver/lock screen for the default Gnome gnome-screensaver, and that was fine... but then... I use a passphrase on my ssh key, a really long passphrase... so typing it in... all the time isn't something I want to do... and I copy it every where...
Gnome would ask me for that passphrase on first logging into a system that requested it after a reboot... I liked that, and I wanted to do that. Kept seeing a bunch of people saying "try this", "add this here"... none of which worked... Come to find that it relates to the gnome-keyring running or not... not sure... cause some were saying it needed to be running others were saying to turn it off... tho, I couldn't tell if that was because they were starting it in some hacked init scripts they were doing or what... either way... thats retarded... My Ubuntu desktops haven't needed any of that crap for years... something like that should *just work*. Which made me think... Xubuntu. So... figured... what the hell... I reinstalled my laptop this morning with the latest beta Xubuntu... since it will be the next release next month... and a long term support release... the beta should be fairly stable right? :) Anyway... Everything is working awesome now! glad I gave Xubuntu a try.
Unity/Gnome 3 still suck :P
I've been running Linux Mint 12 (with Gnome 3 and Mint's shell extensions) for a week now. And... while the extensions, as well as just Gnome 3 shell are more usable than Ubuntu's Unity interface... it still taking me way to long to do much of anything.... And I'm not sure if I should load Mate (gnome2 rebuild) or if I should just go to another desktop environment. At the moment, I'm leaning towards another desktop environment.... simply because who knows really how long Mate will be around... I loved the old Gnome2 interface... but Gnome3 leaves much to be desired. I can't find what I have open half the time... Its just not "more usable" like they claim it should be. I'm open to new interfaces... really I am... it just needs to make things easier tho... not harder.
Honest critique, I use more than one application to do things. For any given task... a term window (or many depending), a web browser... and an other app or two on top of that may be used... and, as I've stated before... I separate tasks based on multiple virtual desktops... gnome3 seems to think I only ever want to have one terminal window open at a time... or one web browser... I don't... I want multiple... one or two on each virtual desktop, with multiple tabs in each. thats what I want, thats how I work... I don't care if you think thats messy, it works for me. And, if you new interface doesn't allow me to work that way... I'm going to something else that will. XFCE4 here I come.
Installed Ice Cream Sandwich this morning on my G2x! Its a first build from Eagles Blood, which is based from CM Source. I've been running their GingerBread roms for a few months and... aside from a bug that locks the phone sometime in the middle of the night and I end up pulling the battery in the morning... I really love the ROM. So... when I saw they had a ICS release... I went for it.
So far, its awesome!
January 30, 2012 Posted by mitch |
cars, Subaru |
A Subie and an Audi Playing in the snow.
Warning: Some NSFW Language...
Rolls Royce sells more cars in 2011 than any other time in their HISTORY.
Need more proof that the top is getting further separated from the rest of us? Yes they introduced a new car in their lineup, at a lower price point... a *paltry* $250,000... instead of the $350,000 Phantom. What really irks me tho, is the battle between Democrats vs Republicans... like one is completely without fault and its all solely the result of the others politics. I know I vote for a lot of alternate party members when I vote. I'm tired of the two party system, its not productive, an hasn't been for much longer than I've been alive.
But, in the end... I don't even think a 3 or 4 party system would fix anything... until the money in politics is fixed. Corporations are not people, and money is not speech. Until then... The Zombie Apocalypse is just a matter of when, not if.
November 29, 2011 Posted by mitch |
BRZ, cars, Subaru |
I will start off with saying that I love my Subaru WRX. Its alot of fun to drive. However, I couldn't really call myself a "car guy" if there wasn't a apart of me that still wants to drive a BMW, or any of the other number of cars out there that... are Real Wheel Drive. The all-wheel drive of the Subie is lots of fun in the snow... but provides little added thrill in the dry. Since, I can only afford one car for myself at the moment... I chose one that will work in all weather here in Utah. I would however remind that, I've always wanted an M3 (and now, more so the 1M). I could do a MX-5, but I just have a hard time seeing it beings much more than a girl car without a roll-cage, and that wide body kit I've seen on a few of them. The S2000 doesn't seem to carry that stigma in my mind for some reason tho? So... I'm actually looking at the BMW as being the only option.
Until the rumor mill produced the Subayota, and the result... the Toyota GT-86/Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ. I would opt for the Subaru release... while more expensive...will come turbo charged. But, ultra light ~2700lbs, RWD, 6 speed manual, small sport coupe.
I honestly... can't wait... I really want to give it a test drive.
In some other universe... I think I'm a Civil Engineer. As its always interested me from when I was little and building my Cities out of Legos. However, One thing that really annoys me is road construction, and my belief that they always do it wrong. It stands to reason that the largest costs in the roads built by cities is in labor... and equipment, not necessarily in supplies for the common 3" asphalt road I see built. But, when the city (or state for that matter) pushes for a longer lasting road... why is it they do it in Cement? If you couldn't tell... I'm kind of a car nut... and as one... I love driving. (In yet another universe... I'm a car racer... and a fourth... i'm racing motorcycles...) Anyway... driving on tarmac/asphalt is much more pleasing of a surface, however I feel its got a bad rap because of these ill conceived 3" thick roads. If you were to make an asphalt road as thick with as much preparation under the road as what they put into cement roads around here... I believe they would get just as much life out of them for a third the cost. Granted... I'm pulling numbers out of my ass... but the Germans build the Autobauhn out of asphalt, but they're doing 12" of asphalt. And they have less maintanance! Anyway... thats been my opinion for years... and its irritating... because of the afore mentioned percevied bias of the only lasting road being cement... just isn't true.... least not for the lower traffic city roads... I think they could double the thickness and see tripple the life expectancy of it. But I know its all comes down to the money now... not what the future will bring. I know both political parties at the moment can't seem to guide the country out of that idiotic mindset... we're like a bunch of 2 year olds... need everything now... to hell with what will come later....
Why American Roads are So Bad
Well... They did it... not sure what their real goal is... but Unity is unusable in my mind. Its not that it doesn't "work"... its that it won't work for what I do. I can't find the 5+ different windows of the same app I'll have open on multiple desktops. I upgrade to 11.10... and after a week of using it... found that I'm more frustrated that ever with it. This is the same reason... I can't work with MacOSX. Windows 7 with my limited uses of it... does seem to actually have a method which might possibly work with this new design for desktops... but I have no way of knowing for sure... since I've yet to see multiple desktops on them. Gnome Shell might not have the same flaws as Unity in this respect... however with Ubuntu going full steam into their Unity desktop. I split the jobs I have at hand between 5 desktops on my current laptop. Work Email + Random simple tasks on desktop 1, development tasks on desktops 2 and 3 (separate projects), Music/entertainment stuff on Desktop 4... and whatever else comes along for desktop 5. This is what works for me... and forcing me to change... means I'll find something else that won't. So... I reinstalled my desktop yesterday to ubuntu 11.04... I will stay there until I find a suitable replacement... which will probably be Straight up Debian again. (I ran Debian Unstable on my desktop back in high school) But... I hate to say it Ubuntu/Cannonical... you probably will loose any and all recommendations from me. My laptop is not a Tablet, nor a Phone, I still have a laptop because I need to really work on it. My phone is NOT a replacement for it, and won't be for the foreseeable future... eventually probably... but not yet. That is all.
October 1, 2011 Posted by mitch |
android, G2x |
I said I was going to write about my experiences with this... and never came back to it. I've been running custom ROM's since my first post about rooting my G2x. However, I honestly was a little unsure about the whole process so I didn't want to write about the other bits. I went back through and upgraded ClockWorkMod Recovery again, this time it was a little less unnerving so, I will write down my steps here.
First... I'm following bits from this xda thread
I downloaded the rar file and pulled out the bits needed for ClockWorkMod (CWM) 5.0.2.0, so I could flash it from linux. I originally had a script that I used to flash this... my appologies I don't remember where, nor do I want to claim it as my own... I will include it however at the bottom of this post. Anyway, here goes. After grabbing the files above and the nvflash bin and a script, I put all of this in a CWM-5.0.2 directory
mitch@kraven:~/g2xroot/CWM-5.0.2$ ls -l
total 5008
-rw-r--r-- 1 mitch mitch 3563520 2011-09-06 20:58 CWM-5020.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 mitch mitch 4080 2011-04-21 00:40 E1108_Hynix_512MB_H8TBR00U0MLR-0DM_300MHz_final_emmc_x8.bct
-rw-r--r-- 1 mitch mitch 1024992 2011-04-21 12:00 fastboot.bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 mitch mitch 125 2011-10-01 15:59 flash-recovery.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 mitch mitch 526131 2011-10-01 15:58 nvflash
Before running the script, you need to connect your phone, follow these steps:
- pull the battery on my phone
- plug USB cable in laptop
- Hold Volume Up AND Volume Down
- *WHILE* holding #3, plug in USB to phone
This should result in a PCI connection to your phone... Your phone will not do anything.
mitch@kraven:~/g2xroot/CWM-5.0.2$ lspci
....
15:00.2 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 21)
15:00.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 11)
15:00.5 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 11)
From there, you run the flash-recovery.sh script.
mitch@kraven:~/g2xroot/CWM-5.0.2$ ./flash-recovery.sh
Nvflash started
rcm version 0X20001
System Information:
chip name: unknown
chip id: 0x20 major: 1 minor: 3
chip sku: 0xf
chip uid: 0x02884207417fe4d7
macrovision: disabled
hdcp: enabled
sbk burned: false
dk burned: false
boot device: emmc
operating mode: 3
device config strap: 0
device config fuse: 17
sdram config strap: 0
downloading bootloader -- load address: 0x108000 entry point: 0x108000
sending file: fastboot.bin
/ 1024992/1024992 bytes sent
fastboot.bin sent successfully
waiting for bootloader to initialize
bootloader downloaded successfully
sending file: CWM-5020.img
| 3563520/3563520 bytes sent
CWM-5020.img sent successfully
At this point... you phone will be showing a "software upgrade is in progress" screen...
even after it completes... the above output took around 15 seconds to play out... and they say you can
unplug right after this.. I left it pluged in for another 30 seconds... cause it makes me nervous... (probably
unfounded...)
Download files here
