text:
President's Message A welcome from Mines President Heather Wilson
University Leadership The academic professionals who lead the way at Mines
Mines Strategic Plan The Pursuit of Excellence: Mines Strategic Plan through 2022
Points of Excellence A Mines education is considered a national Best Buy
Rapid City & the Black Hills An outdoor paradise and a wonderful place to live and learn
Employment Explore employment opportunities at the South Dakota School of Mines
Alumni Association Our strong alumni association helps move the university forward
SDSM&T Foundation Supporting the short-term and long-term vision of the School of Mines
Campus Services HR, ITS, Marketing/PR, Facilities, Business Services and more
Campus Map Find maps and visitor information - available at our Campus Life section
Community ServicesOur many public resources include
Why Mines Begin your legacy in engineering, science, math, computer technology
The Application Process Review the application process then apply online
Admissions Staff Counselors are available to answer all your questions
Find Your Major What will your future look like? There are many options - start planning now
Tuition and Fees Find information on tuition, fees, housing, dining and more
Financial Aid & Scholarships A majority of our students receive financial assistance
Visit With Us Schedule a visit to campus or find a College Fair in your local area
'Go To Mines' Open House A great way to see the campus, meet with faculty, check out facilities
Request Information Can't visit? We'll be happy to send any information that you need
Graduate Student Admissions Advanced degrees prepare our leaders in science and engineering
International Students The Ivanhoe International Center helps with international student admissions
Accepted Students You're in, so now what? Resources to help you get prepared
Academic Catalog A comprehensive online resource for courses & other academic information
Academic Calendar Find important academic dates for the current semester and beyond
Degrees & Programs Many areas of study to choose from in science and engineering
Minors | Certificates Emphasis areas and professional certifications to put you a step ahead
Academic Departments Find out more about SDSM&T departments and programs
Registrar/Course Enrollment Information and resources to help you schedule the classes you need
WebAdvisor Our online system for registering for classes
Graduate Education Assistance & resources for students pursuing advanced degrees
CAMP ( Student Projects) Center of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing and Production
TLC Tutoring Free tutoring for students in all core subjects at the 100 and 200 levels
Study Abroad Experience a broader world, and make a difference doing it
Transcripts Request a transcript from the Registrar's Office
Dean of Students Office Always available to help students, provide resources, answer questions
Student Support Counseling, Disability Services, Pastoral Care, Academic Advising
Student Resources Student Handbook, Student Conduct, Policies, Forms and more
Residence Life (Housing) On- and off- campus living, residence halls, apartments, dining
Student Activities There is a lot to get involved in, including 75+ student organizations
Visit Campus | Campus Map Find your way to, and your way around, the Mines campus
Surbeck Center The campus Student Union, public events are also held at Surbeck
University Bookstore Get your Hardrocker gear and supplies from the store or online
Quick links to a variety of Student Services at Mines:
Emergency Information Be prepared for the unexpected, follow emergency news and updates
Hardrocker Athletics Website for all SDSM&T Hardrocker athletic activities
Men's Sports Football, basketball, track, cross-country, soccer and golf
Women's Sports Basketball, volleyball, track, cross- country, cheerleading and golf
Hardrocker Merchandise Get your gear and show your School of Mines spirit
Hall of Fame The Christensen Hall of Fame recognizes achievements in sports
Camps and Events Improve your skills in soccer, volleyball and basketball
Intramural Sports Many choices - from wiffle ball to basketball. Great fun, good exercise!
Athletic Department Administration, coaches, athletic trainers and coordinators
News Releases The latest news and stories from the School of Mines
The Hardrock Magazine Published by SDSM&T and the Alumni Association
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Publications South Dakota School of Mines & Technology publications and reports
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SDSM&T Calendar Don't miss an important date or event. Filtered for a variety of audiences:
Research at SDSM&T A high-level look at our research plans and capabilities
Research AdministrationResearch planning and direction at the School of Mines
Research AreasFour major research areas are the focus of our strategic planning
Research ReportPublished annually or bi-annually, learn more about current initiatives
Research AwardsResearch awards fund progress, innovation and infrastructure
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Sponsored ProgramsSubmission and administration of grants and sponsored research
Special Programs (NASA)NASA EPSCor and the South Dakota Space Grant Consortium
Labs & Centers
Personnel Directory Looking for someone? We offer a variety of directory views to help you find who or what you need
Departments and Offices Find listings of departments and offices and their associated personnel
University Courses Visit our online catalog for course information
SD Board of Regents Find policies, student information and more at the Board of Regents website
RAPID CITY, S.D. (May 5, 2014) – Howard Peterson, former Dean of Students at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, died Sunday at the age of 85.
Fondly known as "Dean Pete" by students and colleagues alike, Peterson is remembered for his more than five decades of devotion to the School of Mines. A 1950 alumnus, he served at the university from 1957-1992, first as assistant and associate dean, then as dean of students for the last 23 years of his career. Even after his retirement, Peterson remained a fixture around campus and visited students often in the Surbeck Center, the student union at Mines.
Visitation will be 5-7 p.m. Wednesday, May 7, at Osheim & Schmidt Funeral Home. Services will be at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, May 8, at Trinity Lutheran Church, 402 Kansas City St., followed by a lunch. Burial will be at Mountain View Cemetery.
Whether as a scholarship coach, Theta Tau fraternity advisor or in his capacity as dean, Peterson was a beloved mentor to thousands of students over five decades. In 2004, a residence hall was named for Peterson. He also served the School of Mines on both the Foundation and Hardrock Club boards of directors and as a volunteer scholarship coach for 10 years after his official retirement.
"Dean Pete loved the School of Mines and devoted his life to its students. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and his many, many friends," said Mines President Heather Wilson.
Peterson was born June 28, 1928, in Alpena, where he graduated from high school in 1946. He earned a degree in geological engineering from the School of Mines in 1950, worked in oil exploration and then went on to teach at Redfield High School. He earned a master's degree in education from Northern State Teachers College in 1955. Peterson began his career at the School of Mines in 1957 and in 1969 earned a doctorate in psychology from the University of South Dakota.
At the School of Mines, he worked with a dedicated group of alumni to secure funding for a new student center, which would eventually be named the Surbeck Center. Even after his retirement he helped lead a successful first-ever capital campaign called Vision 2000 through the SDSM&T Foundation. In 1987, Peterson received the inaugural Making a Difference Award and in 1992 the prestigious Guy March Medal from the Alumni Association.
Two years ago Peterson was interviewed for a story in The Hardrock magazine observing M Hill's 100th anniversary. He recalled his vivid memories of the climb as a student to the top of the hill and the evolving tradition of whitewashing. "That was a big thing," Peterson said. "We walked all the way. We were told as freshmen to have a gallon bucket and to meet down at what was the old post office at six in the morning. We walked to M Hill, and ... we crossed the creek, dipped a bucket of water and carried it to mix the concrete for the plaque and to whitewash it."
The family has asked that memorial gifts be made to either the Howard C. Peterson Scholarship or the Lenatt Peterson Memorial Scholarship at the School of Mines, c/o SDSM&T Foundation, 306 E. Saint Joseph St., Suit 200, Rapid City, S.D., 57701, or http://foundation.sdsmt.edu.
About SDSM&T
Founded in 1885, the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology is a science and engineering research university located in Rapid City, S.D., offering bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. The university enrolls 2,640 students from 45 states and 37 countries, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 14:1. The average starting salary for graduates is $62,400 with a 98 percent placement rate. Find us online at www.sdsmt.edu, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/sdsmt and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sdsmt.


text: General Manager for the State College Spikes, Jason Dambach, talks some baseball with Cory Giger. The State College Spikes are back affiliated with the Cardinals and seeing their parent club in the World Series is beyond exciting. He said they made great relationships through the process and the partnership as a whole did a terrific job with the 2013 season. Check out what Jason has to say!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Friday morning saw Fernando Alonso reassert himself over McLaren team mate Lewis Hamilton here at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS), in the opening practice session for the US Grand Prix.
At one stage the first six cars - the McLarens, the BMW Saubers and the Ferraris - were only six-tenths of a second apart, but then the Spaniard hit his stride to go clear with a lap of 1m 11.925s. That compares with Michael Schumachers 2006 pole position lap of 1m 10.832s.
This time it was not Hamilton who got closest; that honour fell to Nick Heidfeld who looked very strong in the BMW Sauber on his way to 1m 12.391s. His only drama was a momentary deviation from the grey stuff on one lap. Backing him strongly, new-for-this-race team mate Sebastian Vettel pushed his way up to fourth place on 1m 12.869s, without putting a wheel wrong.
Hamilton split the BMWs with 1m 12.628s on his first run at IMS, and was quite pleased with his progress. Twice he went two-tenths of a second below Alonso when a lap of 1m 12.344s from the Spaniard was the fastest, but each time he lost ground in Turn 6.
It was a tough morning for Ferrari, with Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa both going off course briefly. The Finn was fifth quickest on 1m 12.966s, the Brazilian seventh on 1m 13.040s. Massa was on a lap that should have taken him higher, but got blocked by Spykers Christijan Albers and had to abort it. Right at the end Nico Rosberg squeezed his Williams between them, with 1m 13.020s.
David Coulthard was another late improver, jumping up to eighth for Red Bull with 1m 13.159s to depose his friend Jenson Button, who found the Honda better than of late on his way to 1m 13.597s. Mark Webber also improved near the end, to ninth fastest for Red Bull with 1m 13.682s, ahead of Jarno Trulli on 1m 13.777s in the Toyota.
Kazuki Nakajima stood in at Williams for Alex Wurz this morning, and leapt from last to an eventual 12th with a lap of 1m 13.786s, pushing Ralf Schumachers Toyota down a place after the German had posted 1m 13.819s early in the session. Then came the two Toro Rossos, with Tonio Liuzzi 14th on 1m 13.907s and Scott Speed on his tail with 1m 13.990s.
You had to go down to 16th place to find the first Renault, Giancarlo Fisichella lapping his R27 in 1m 14.000s to pip Takuma Satos 1m 14.037s for Super Aguri. Then came Hondas Rubens Barrichello (1m 14.052s), Renaults Heikki Kovalainen (1m 14.189s), Anthony Davidson (who did 1m 14.632s early on but thereafter did not get back out in the Super Aguri), Albers (1m 14.636s) and Spyker team mate Adrian Sutil (who spoiled his chances of improving on 1m 14.810s with a spin).


text:
Book Review: Sudo Mastery: User Access Control For Real People
Re:sudoedit? visudo! (83 comments)
Yeah, they got the link wrong...not sure what happened there.
Announcing: Slashdot Deals - Explore geek apps, games, gadgets and more. (what is this?)
We are sorry to see you leave - Beta is different and we value the time you took to try it out. Before you decide to go, please take a look at some value-adds for Beta and learn more about it. Thank you for reading Slashdot, and for making the site better!
Re:sudoedit? visudo! (83 comments)
Yeah, they got the link wrong...not sure what happened there.
Correct link for buying the book (83 comments)
Hi all -- I submitted this review, but it looks like something ate the link for the book. Here's where to buy it:
I believe the Amazon link gives the author a few more shekels, but he makes the most money from the first link; details from his website's page on this book.
Tito presenting paper on *crewed* flight in March (97 comments)
From http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/02/21/new-insights-on-that-private-crewed-mars-mission/:
This publication obtained a copy of the paper Tito et al. plan to present at the conference, discussing a crewed free-return Mars mission that would fly by Mars, but not go into orbit around the planet or land on it. This 501-day mission would launch in January 2018, using a modified SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket. According to the paper, existing environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) technologies would allow such a spacecraft to support two people for the mission, although in Spartan condition. âoeCrew comfort is limited to survival needs only. For example, sponge baths are acceptable, with no need for showers,â the paper states.
The IEEE Aerospace Conference is in March -- next month. That's pretty interesting timing.
Re:Sort of past its sell date (40 comments)
I respectfully disagree. I've been to four LISA conferences (sysadmin conference run by USENIX) since 2006, and I see very little that is comparable; there are the various LOPSA conferences (LOPSA-EAST, Cascadia IT Conference), but they're simply not at LISA's scale. Want to hang out with a thousand other sysadmins? Get training from Ted T'so on recovering borked disks? See what Google is up to -- or the small IT shop at the university down the coast with 1/20000th the budget? There's simply nothing else out there that matches it.
As for the rest of the conferences, all I know is the summaries I've read in
I don't have the breadth of experience you do; I concentrate on system administration because I love it, and I've been doing it less than ten years. I'm definitely an interested amateur (at best) when it comes to topics like security, or file systems, or OS design. But I'm always surprised how much of USENIX conference material touches on areas of interest or direct relevance to me, and at the very least browsing their papers is a wonderful introduction to some research and work I'd miss otherwise. I'm sure (with the exception of LISA) there are more focused conferences, or better known ones (DefCon is one that springs to mind). But I can't agree that USENIX is "past its sell date".
(And in passing, thanks very kindly for all the work you've done for the Open Source/Free Software community. Kinda boggles my mind that I'm debating you...)
They use tape! (88 comments)
Ha...I recognize the panel on the tape drive here:
Re:Thank you, Neil Armstrong (480 comments)
I wasn't around then, but I've been reading up on him and all the rest of the Apollo astronauts since. I'm filled with wonder every time I think about it.
Thank you for everything, sir. I hope your eternity is a pleasant one.
Well put. Fare well, Mr. Armstrong.
Re:does it follow similar rules to biological syst (34 comments)
(Whoops, just saw that you said it was part of textual criticism...)
Re:does it follow similar rules to biological syst (34 comments)
Thanks for the term "stemmatics" -- I was familiar w/the concept but knew it as "textual criticism", which I think is probably a great deal more broad than this. What's always bugged me about this concept -- perhaps unfairly -- is whether or not it has any experimental evidence to back it up. My impression is that it's a bunch of heuristics based on a preference for simplicity. Is there any experimental evidence to suggest that texts do grow/change the way these rules say? (I'm not asking for you to chip in (although you're welcome to - hey, your journal
Re:does it follow similar rules to biological syst (34 comments)
Sorry to jump in, but I happened to read a neat paper in Nature about something like this a while back. It was called Rise and fall of political complexity in island South-East Asia and the Pacific. TThe article is behind a paywall, but there's a general summary from Wired magazine here, and another aimed at fellow researchers here.
My half-assed summary: the researchers use phylogenetic methods -- ways of looking at genomes from organisms and estimating how long ago they had common ancestors (I'm sure Samantha could give a better/actually accurate explanation) -- and see if it can be applied to societies to see how they change over time. In this study, they looked at a bunch of different groups in the south Pacific and tested different models about how political organization could change (would people go from loose tribes to highly-organized kingdoms in one step? what about the other way around?). It was interesting stuff.
Re:Some questions about gene expression (34 comments)
Many thanks for the explanations!
The researchers I work with deal with microarray data a lot, and have built a tool to help compare datasets (http://www.chibi.ubc.ca/Gemma). I'm becoming more familiar with the technology as I go along, but the heat maps and the dendrogram legends (is that what they're called?)...man, those are some dense infodumps.
Some questions about gene expression (34 comments)
Heyo -- thanks for the heads-up on Twitter. I'm the sysadmin at a small university department, and I work with scientsts studying gene expression. They're good and patient people, but sometimes I feel a bit like I'm questioning the foundations of their work...which feels either rude or ignorant.
First off, I'd always been under the impression that DNA was only/mainly used during reproduction -- a cell divides under DNA direction, some bit of the cell is the machinery that makes whatever protein is needed during its life, and DNA isn't involved much after that. However, I'm starting to understand (I think...) that I've got it all wrong. My understanding now that gene expression can basically turn on a dime, and that *this* is the usual way a cell makes a protein: something happens to a cell, it says "Whoah, I need protein X", and it starts transcribing the DNA so it can manufacture it (modulo things like gene regulation). This process can take very little time (hours or less). Have I got that right?
Second: one of the things they study is datasets of gene expression in post-mortem brains. (Well, technically I guess I've got that wrong, since genes aren't expressed post-mortem...
What I don't understand:
a) Since time passes between death and sequencing, how much fidelity does/can this have do what was going on at the point of death?
b) Even if it is a good indication of what was going on at death, how does that relate to a long-term illness like schizophrenia when (assuming I've got this bit right) gene expression can turn on and off in a very short time? I realize there are (ahem) ethical problems with doing brain biopsies on living subjects, and that post-mortem is the best that can be done -- but how good can it be?
Many, many thanks for your time. Any questions about system administration, let me know.
Sorry, what? (334 comments)
If there's something to see here, I'm missing it.
Re:Useful Links (105 comments)
I was going to post something similar but you beat me to it. Many thanks!
Radia Perlman's Ephemerizer (209 comments)
I think that what you want is The Ephemerizer, by Radia Perlman (she of OSPF fame). I heard about this a few years ago at the LISA conference, and a bit of digging turned it up. From the abstract:
This paper is about how to keep data for a finite time, and then make it unrecoverable after that. It is difficult to ensure that data is completely destroyed. To be available before expiration it is desirable to create backup copies. Then absolute deletion becomes difficult, because even after explicitly deleting it, copies might remain on backup media, or in swap space, or be forensically recoverable. The obvious solution is to store the data encrypted, and then delete the key after expiration.
Google turns up this copy in PDF.
Hope that helps!
Safety deposit box (402 comments)
You could try something like:
(Alternately, this could be something a lawyer could help with -- something like holding passwords in trust, only to be given up in the event of X, Y, Z...)
Yes, it's a pain in the ass. But it would work, and it would mean your executor/spouse/etc would only have one set of people to convince that you're dead.
That's it. (658 comments)
I'm a Canadian sysadmin. I love -- LOVE -- the LISA conference (http://www.usenix.org/lisa11/). It's wonderful, informative, and fun; I've made great friends there, learned an incredible amount and generally enjoyed myself enormously.
Last year was the third time I went. The conference was in San Jose. I took a bus and a train -- which took over 24 hours -- from Vancouver to San Jose, rather than fly and go through a naked body scanner. I figured if I'm going to talk the talk, I should walk the walk.
I'd already decided to skip this year's conference; it's in Boston, which is a long way to go by train or bus. I didn't want to be away from my family for that long. But I had been thinking about going next year, when it's going to be in San Diego.
I'm not going now. Not if this crap keeps up. I'll watch the video on my workstation, I'll listen to the MP3s on the bus, and I'll stay here in Canada. We have problems of our own -- but random searches and "papers, please" for the crime of taking the goddamned train are not one of them.
I'll miss y'all.
Thanks so much! (1521 comments)
I've enjoyed Slashdot immensely for many years now, and it's still the first page I load every morning at home and every slacking moment at work. Thanks so much for all the work you've put in and the enjoyment you've given me, and the best of luck in all you do.
Such awesome news! (283 comments)
This was always one of the first changes I made in a new Ubuntu install. Evolution was awful, slow, and I hated it.
Re:Well (177 comments)
Peter Millikan is a class act. I'm going to miss him as speaker.
The FSF got it right (259 comments)
Still, I can't help but think: digital rights management, sure! Where are my rights, as a consumer, and who is managing them?"
And that is why the Free Software Foundation insists on calling this technology "Digital Restrictions Management (http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm): it points out that this is meant to keep YOU, the paying customer, from doing useful things with the stuff you buy.
Okay, so you can now run any command as root. Awesome! But not everyone is as careful as you are (or at least, as you like to think you are). If you're a sysadmin, you need to stop people from shooting themselves in the foot. (Might also want to stop yourself from self-inflicted gunshot wounds.) There should be some way of restricting use, right? Just gotta check out the man page.... And that's where I stopped, every time. I've yet to truly understand Extended Backus-Naur Form (sue me), and my eyes would glaze over. And so I'd go back to putting some small number of people in the "wheel" group, and letting them run sudo, and cleaning up the occasional mess afterward.
Fortunately, Michael W. Lucas has written "Sudo Mastery: User Access Control for Real People". If his name sounds familiar, there's a reason for that: he's been cranking out excellent technical books for a long time, on everything from FreeBSD to Cisco routers to DNSSEC. He just, like, does this: he takes deep, involved subjects that you don't even know you need to know more about, and he makes them understandable. It's a good trick, and we're lucky he's turned his attention to sudo.
The book clocks in at 144 pages (print version), and it's packed with information from start to finish. Lucas starts with the why and how of sudo, explaining why you need to know it and how sudo protects you. He moves on to the syntax; it's kind of a bear at first, but Chapter 2, "sudo and sudoers", takes care of that nicely. Have you locked yourself out of sudo with a poor edit? I have; I've even managed to do it on many machines, all at once, by distributing that edit with CFEngine. Lucas covers this in Chapter 3, "Editing and Testing Sudoers", a chapter that would have saved my butt. By the time you've added a few entries, you're probably ready for Chapter 4, "Lists and Aliases".
sudo has lots of ways to avoid repeating yourself, and I picked up a few tricks from this chapter I didn't know about — including that sudo can run commands as users other than root. Need to restart Tomcat as the tomcat user? There's a sudoers line for that. I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't know this.
There is a lot more in this book, too. You can override sudo defaults for different commands or users (you can change the lecture text; maybe sometimes there *is* a technical solution for a social problem...). You can stuff sudo directives into LDAP and stop copying files around. You can edit files with sudoedit. You can record people's sudo commands, and play them back using sudoreplay. The list goes on.
Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? It is. But the book flies by, because Lucas is a good writer: he packs a lot of information into the pages while remaining engaging and funny. The anecdotes are informative, the banter is witty, and there's no dry or boring to be found anywhere.
Shortcomings: Maybe you don't like humour in your tech books; if so, you could pass this up, but man, you'd be missing out. There wasn't an index in the EPUB version I got, which I always miss. Other than that: I'm mad Lucas didn't write this book ten years ago.
Score: 10 out of 10. If you're a Linux or Unix sysadmin, you need this book; it's just that simple.
Where to buy:
Boot: bsd.rd
Automatic network cable selection succeeded : Using TP Ethernet Interface
Using BOOTPARAMS protocol: ip address: 192.168.23.25, hostname: roark
root addr=192.168.23.10 path=/home/aardvark/openbsd-sparc64/chroot
open/sbus@1f,0/ledma@e,8400010/le@e,8c00000/bsd.rd: Unknown error: code 72
tcpdump showed that the machine was trying to contact the NFS server (192.168.23.10) by udp on port 0; the server kept responding with an ICMP port unreachable error. Googling turned up one other person back in '99 (!) who had the same problem, but no fix.
The problem? PEBCAK: I'd symlinked the bsd.net file to the IP address in hex (ie, ln -s bsd.net C0A81719) but had neglected to append the architecture after that. So after I did this:
ln -s bsd.net C0A81719.SUN4
everything worked.
"Last month, my work got a new H.323 video conferencing unit, and today we had our first real test: a lecture given at SFU that was streamed to us. For the most part, it went really well; there were no big screw-ups and everything went as planned. During the second half of the conference, though, the audio was intermittently choppy. I'm not certain, but I think that a local user's Internet radio stream may have caused the problems.
If that's the case and it would surprise me, since I'd assumed we had a pretty damned fast connection to the Internet then I'll need to start adding traffic shaping to our firewall. Working on the firewall is something I've been putting off for a while, since it's a bit obscurelovely pf firewall, littered through with quick rules. But there's a good tool for pf unit testing I've been meaning to try out since I heard about it at LISA. Probably won't be as big a help with the traffic shaping stuff, but at least I'll be reasonably sure I'm not screwing anything else up.
And now I'm wondering just how hard it would be to come up with (handwave) something that would combine automatic form generation, web-based testing code and summary code. We have these multiple conferences that need registration pages; while some of the information is the same (name, email address) some is different (one conference has a banquet, another wants to know if you're going to be attending all three days). Putting all this in a database and using something like Formitable to generate the form seems perfect.
Since I'm already using Perl's WWW::Mechanize and Test::More to test the pages, it'd be nice to have it look at the stuff used to generate the form and use that to test the page. (That's not the clearest way I could put that, but if I don't write this down now I'll never write it down.) And if I could add something that'd automatically generate summary pages for conference organizers, it'd be even better; stuff like email and address is always easy, but being aware of special questions would be nice too. (Though maybe not necessaryhow hard is it to generate summary pages?)
Trouble is, this is a lot of deep thinking that I've never really had to do before. I suspect this sort of thing is a good programmer's bread and butter, but I've never been a programmer (good or otherwise). The more I think about this, the more I can't decide whether this is really hard, possible but too much effort to be worth it, or already done by something I haven't come across yet.
The little things I can handle, though.
This crash
looks like it's happening because of a mixup between rand(3) and
random(3). In Linux, both have a maximum of RAND_MAX, but in
Solaris the latter has a maximum of 2^31. This wreaks havoc with the
let's-shuffle-the-playlist routine in XMMS, and we end up with a
crash. Once I figure out how to program in C, it shouldn't be too
hard to get it fixed.
I installed RT at work a couple days ago using pkgsrc. This was the first time I'd ever used pkgsrc, and I have to say I'm impressed. Yes, it's just like a portable ports tree -- but it's just like a portable ports tree, and I'm starting to think that's a very, very powerful idea.
RT went well except for the final install, where it complained and
died. Fortunately, it turned out to be susceptible to exactly
the sort of one-line patch that I have an affinity for. Not as
cool as correcting Theo de
Raadt's code, mind you
Ah...RT, I've missed you.
Still to come: Why upgrading is the most important thing EVAR.
People have been calling me out on my last post, and that's good; I love a good argument^Wdebate, and doubly so when it comes from people w/more experience than me. So I'm going to start responding to the comments, laying out where I'm wrong and where I still think I'm right.
I said:
OpenSolaris: If I wanted to upgrade everything by hand, I'd stick with Slackware.
Bzzt! As I found on on a recent episode of BSDTalk, NetBSD's pkgsrc is available for over nine hundred thousand operating systems, including Solaris and Slackware Linux. Tha's right, both premises in that statement were wrong.
Not only that, pkgsrc can be tucked out of the way so that it doesn't interfere with the rest of the system...so I could even throw it on Thornhill right now, Slackware and all, and start using it instead of my own half-assed build script for Apache/SSH/PHP/OpenSSL/mod_ssl (which, in my own defence, works pretty darned well).
In fact, tomorrow I'm heading out to The Other University to set up two new X4200 servers, and I'm seriously considering adding pkgsrc to them -- if only to avoid having to compile (and botch) Lapack and Blas. If that goes well, I may start adding it to the main server here so that we can easily get more up-to-date versions of Firefox et al. (Though I could probably get them from Blastwave...this has been a low enough priority for me so far that I haven't really looked into all my options.)
That is not to say it's perfect:
It is possible, and in the case of updating a package with hundreds of dependencies, arguably even likely that the process will fail at some point. One can fix problems and resume the update by typing make update in the original directory, but the system can have unusuable packages for a prolonged period of time. Thus, many people find 'make update' too dangerous, particularly for something like glib on a system using gnome. To use binary packages if available with "make update", use "UPDATE_TARGET=bin-install". If package tarball is not available in ${PACKAGES} locally or at URLs (defined with BINPKG_SITES), it will build a package from source. To enable manual rollback one can keep binary packages. One method is to always use 'make package', and to have "DEPENDS_TARGET=package" in
/etc/mk.conf. Another is to use pkg_tarup to save packages before starting.
From the Swedish NetBSD wiki. Though it's nice that manual rollback is doable; that's always my big paranoia when it comes to source-based upgrades.
That last complaint is not as fair as it could be. I mean, I'm not going to be upgrading Gnome on either Thornhill or the two new Sun machines. And at around 80 packages, it would be damned difficult to try and recompile it all without starting with a clean slate. But this sort of nonsense with Gnome is what put me off the ports tree in FreeBSD.
(I was going to put in something about how Debian doesn't need that sort of thing, but I should research that first.)
First off, a special catch-up entry for my very, very
special Slashdot friends.
I've set up a new blog on my site, using a combination of Perl, ASCIIdoc, Make and email. It's working well, though there are some bugs and missing features. The main things I like about it are that it's plain text and there's no PHP. At last, I can edit things in emacs without using Mozex!
And so, on to today's entry in which I make a fool of myself by denigrating different operating systems based on experiences from three years ago. As always, there are comments both here and on the website...including a FreeBSD committer who cordially invites me to put my money where my mouth is. Fair point, and I'll be responding to that later. (Along with admitting my ignorance about pkg-src on Solaris.)
On with the show!
libpst is a
command-line tool that converts Outlook
In other news, I borked my home machine (Debian testing) by trying to extend a partition w/ReiserFS. That gave me a perfect excuse to upgrade to a bigger disk and reinstall Debian.
Next up is maybe looking at replacing my venerable copy of Slackware 9 with a Debian install, too; the ease of installing and upgrading Debian packages is just too good to pass up.
I did consider other OSs:
FreeBSD: Even after three years, port-upgrade still scares me.
NetBSD: meh, what's exciting about that?
OpenBSD: Secure, yes, and God knows I'd like to use pf. But not easy to upgrade, either ports or releases.
Dragonfly: Not yet.
BSDs in general: I want a journalled FS.
OpenSolaris: If I wanted to upgrade everything by hand, I'd stick with Slackware.
And yes, I realize I'm damned ignorant, and that a server should not be exciting. But I'm convinced that a big part of running a server successfully is ease of upgrading, whether security fixes or new app versions, and Debian is just wonderful.
Here's a fun game: create a large (>1GB) file in your home directory called core and start Firefox. Have a look at this part of run-mozilla.sh:
if [ -x "$crc_prog" ]
if [ "$DEBUG_CORE_FILES" ]
if [ -f core ]
crc_old=`$crc_prog core | awk '{print $1;}' `
## Run the program
"$prog" ${1+"$@"}
if [ "$DEBUG_CORE_FILES" ]
if [ -f core ]
crc_new=`$crc_prog core | awk '{print $1;}' `
if [ "$crc_old" != "$crc_new" ]
printf "\n\nOh no! %s just dumped a core file.\n\n" $prog
printf "Do you want to debug this ? "
printf "You need a lot of memory for this, so watch out ? [y/n] "
Care to guess what'll happen? That's right: Firefox will take 10 seconds to start up because it's busy md5summing a big-ass core file. The user will think that it hasn't launched at all and will click again. Rinse and repeat, with more and more clicking every time. By the time I figured out what was going wrong, the system load was about 200. Fortunately, it's a simple thing to add DEBUG_CORE_FILES= judiciously (not DEBUG_CORE_FILES=0; I keep forgetting that a simple [ $FOO ] simply tests whether $FOO is empty, not whether it's non-zero).
Also: the advantage to being in a small shop is that if you're the only one running Linux on the desktop, you can just go ahead and add things like the latest version of Firefox (now without the amusing bug that makes a search work on some other random tab, instead of the one you're looking at) and the MySQL DBD connector for Perl. It's really incredible how much irritation those two things are gonna save me.
Finally: this is just plain cool. As he did during the Bash scripting BOF, Wout takes me to school. Didn't know about: ssh -t, COLUMNS/LINES environment variables, tput, or just how much Applescript can do.
Memo to myself: Don't eat the Turkey sashimi.
In other news: I don't usually post links to things just to say "go read this". However, I'll make an exception in these cases.
First, I was recently going to use the word "Manichean" to mean "dualistic, good-vs-evil view of the universe, with an implied inevitable battle between the two". However, when I Googled for it to check the spelling, I came across this article explaining why that wasn't a terribly accurate use of the word. Interesting stuff...I certainly didn't know there were any Buddhist-influenced ascetics hanging around Baghdad in the 3rd century.
Second, there's some interesting and contradictory stuff on the procedures for GPG/PGP keysigning parties here and here. Why does publicizing a public key "slightly reduce the security of a key pair"? I don't know. I've had a quick look through my copy of Applied Cryptography (3rd Ed.), donated by the kind man behind Pangolin Systems, but can't find anything from Saint Bruce about this. Anyone?
Third, there's an excellent set of tools for keysigning parties available here. One of the people who signed my key at LISA had used caff to send it back, which is a nice wrapper around the whole procedure (grab the key, sign the key, encrypt the key with itself, email it back to each of the key's email addresses). The lack of understandable (but see next paragraph's self-ass-kicking) documentation for GPG means that a) this automation is very nice, and b) I'm kicking myself for not buying Michael Lucas' book from the No Starch Press booth at LISA.
Fourth, if'n you've got GPG, it's worth reading the documentation, like the FAQ or the GNU Privacy Handbook. Shame on me for not doing that previously. (And shame on me for taking so long to email people's keys back to them.)
Fifth, you can find some pretty stats here, or the trust path from me to Wietse Venema. Geek Pride!
Sixth and finally, there is this handy little page about how to set up a CPAN library in your home directory. Since it took me a while to track this down, I'm throwing it in here so's I can find it quicker next time.
I've just come across AsciiDoc, and this is SO CLOSE to what I want: Ascii-based markup, still intelligible, and rendered into pretty CSS-compliant whatnot.
For a while now I've been toying with the idea of leaving WordPress behind and just writing all my stuff in Emacs, the way RMS intended, and converting it all to pretty HTML through <handwave>some sort of script or Makefile</handwave>. But this...this is perfect. See this? If it were a black monolith orbiting Jupiter, I would say "My God, it's full of stars!" It's clean, it's spare, it looks good, and it does not require verdammnt patching to stop it from throwing in br tags every time it sees a newline. And you know what it requires? Python! That's it!
I know what you're saying: this is like wiki markup without the wiki. EXACTLY! It's easy to write, easy to read, it looks good and it's just static: no PHP remote inclusion waiting to happen, no heavy load, just simple plain text and html. Oh yes.
One of the great things about going to LISA is that you get the proceedings and/or training for everything on CD or dead tree. (Well, nearly everything...I've heard that some people didn't or couldn't make their training materials available (though I've not been motivated to confirm this yet), and some of the talks didn't do this (Tom, where are your slides?)). There is some wonderful stuff to be found in them...
...like WWW::Mechanize, which is just perfect for testing out this conference registration form I'm working on. Only I've run into a bug that comes when trying to specify which button to click on:
$agent->click_button(value => 'Okay to submit');
That li'l chunk gave me this error:
Can't call method "header" on an undefined value at
One guy reported the same trouble, but got no response. And the RT queue is fulla spam.
But aha, I found out how to use the Perl debugger in Emacs (M-x perldb. Shhhh!) and was able to track things down. Turns out there are a couple things going on:
There are a couple subroutines/methods in this module that aren't testing for the right number of arguments. One of 'em is click_button, which has this loop:
my $request;
. . .
elsif ( $args{value} ) {
my $i = 1;
while ( my $input = $form->find_input(undef, 'submit', $i) ) {
if ( $args{value} && ($args{value} eq $input->value) ) {
$request = $input->click( $form, $args{x}, $args{y} );
} # while
} # $args{value}
return $self->request( $request );
No test/case for not finding a button named whatever, so it just blithely returns $self->request( $request ). But of course, request does the same thing:
sub request {
my $self = shift;
my $request = shift;
$request = $self->_modify_request( $request );
if ( $request->method eq "GET" || $request->method eq "POST" ) {
$self->_update_page($request, $self->_make_request( $request, @_ ));
Again, no test for the right number of arguments. And having just read the Test::Tutorial manpage, I'm all about unit testing and such, baby.
Cities and circles drawn perfect, complete
These are the fables on my street, my street, my street
"My Street", The New Pornographers
Okay, my (lawyers, please note) TOTALLY ACCIDENTAL stalking of Tom Limoncelli continues. I met another sysadmin from Boston (who, BTW, is into LISP. Call that accidental? 'Cos I don't) (alsoplus he's the third guy I've met from a small shop, which is damned reassuring in a conference full o'people from multi-continent corporations/teams) who invited me along to the LOPSA hospitality room. I talked to David Parter from LOPSA about why I should join. He also gave me the sad news that the Burritos-as-big-as-your-head place in Madison, WI is closed. Noooooo!
Nice bunch of people, who'll probably be getting a membership fee from me post-haste. Totally unrelated to the free beer. I met a guy from a Scandinavian hosting company that has, like, 300,000 domains (!). We talked about spam for a while, and PHP's ability to include files remotely (he's a big fan. Oh, wait, no) ("When I meet the guy who put that in..." "You'll punch him in the cock?" "Oh, that's just the start of it."), and Perl vs. C vs. LISP vs. Dvorak keyboards vs. I don't know what all.
And who else is in the room AND stared at my badge trying to figure out who the hell I was? That's right, Tom! Still no chance to lean over casually and say, "So I hear Google's trying to figure out what to about TCP scalability bringdown. 'Cos, like, my enterprise-fu PHP taint mode will totally nebbish your gubbins. Scalable. Solution. Moving forward. Come back!"
Also went to the: Free Beer and Ice Cream BOF, PGP/CACert BOF, and
the Bash scripting BOF. Last challenge: using Bash built-ins only,
check to see if a given TCP port on a given host is open. Welp, I did
know about Bash's built-in
And, BTW, I thought I was at least quarter-decent at Bash. Hah! It is to laugh.
What the last ten minutes have taught me:
Bet the hand that your money's on
"Letter From An Occupant", The New Pornographers
Attended my first BOF last night on wikis for sysadmin documentation -- amazingly fun and informative. I even managed to contribute to the conversation. And when I told the war story about recovering my wiki from spammers (that's right! because PHPWiki sucks!) I got a gratifying look of sympathy from the audience.
Today's talk was "Habits of Highly Effective Sysadmins". It was aimed at folks like me who've been mostly self-taught, and I thought they hit the mark extremely well. (I've heard lots of people here say that they'll go see anything put on by Lee Damon or Mike Ciavarella just on principal (principle?).) Very, very informative and great teachers, too.
I found out today that Tom Limoncelli's name is pronounced "li-mon-sell-ee", not "li-mon-chell-ee". W/luck, this will save me embarassment later.
Tonight the BOFs start in earnest, including the one that offers free beer and ice cream. Sadly, I will be attending the one on pet counting instead. I will die a little bit inside.
Two sips from the cup of human kindness, and I'm shit-faced
Just laid to waste
If there's a choice between chance and flight,
Choose it tonight.
"Choose It", The New Pornographers
Just got back from a whirlwind walk from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument to the White House. Beautiful, all of it...though a) the White House is small and b) there was something being filmed/videotaped in the courtyard, which made me think of Vancouver.
Training again. AFrisch was good, convering Cfengine quite well; would've liked to see more info about expect. (Apparently there are Perl/Python bindings...I had no idea.) Afternoon course was "Interviewing For System Administrators" by FIXME, and that was great -- lots of things I didn't know, lots of tips on doing it better next time.
Saw Tom Limoncelli in the hall during a break. Managed to restrain myself. I have the reputation for quiet restraint of a nation to uphold.
Very tired now. Time to go get beer.
As we sift through the bones of an idol<
We dig for the bones of an idol
When the will is gone
'Cause something keeps turning us on
"Bones of an Idol", The New Pornographers
Today was Solaris 10 Administration, an all-day course that introduced all the nifty features of Solaris 10. I've only worked with Solaris since July, but I've been reading so much about Solaris 10 that most of the stuff presented (dtrace, SMF, zones) was familiar to me. OTOH, the course was aimed at admins of older versions of Solaris (2.veryearly through 8 and 9), and so the explanation of the differences assumed a lot more familiarity with Solaris than I had. It was a curious sensation.
Still, though, it was worth going to. Good quote: "Oracle DBAs are the most Kool-Aid drinking people I've ever met." And another: "Zones are the most controversial thing we'll be talking about today, and spending the most time on. I saw someone carrying two cups of coffee -- that's the right attitude." Also, Bill Lefebvre, the man I was going to accuse of stealing my underwear, wrote top(1).
Oh, and it's a good thing I brought a second wireless network card; the onboard one in the laptop kept dying, with an entry in syslog that read "fatal firmware error". Now I've got an Orinoco Gold in here, and it's working just fine.
Met a sysadmin today who works in the VOIP department of a phone company; they've moved most of their stuff from racks and racks of old-style Alcatel equipment to one rack of Solaris machines acting as soft switches. I was curious about the difference in reliability and uptime; my understanding is that the demands on telecom equipment are worlds above anything that can be provided by COTS Unix, and asked him how it worked for them.
He said that, yes, you'd get situations where a phone call would be delayed because of a system crash: instead of taking one second to connect, it might take two or even three. And if that was anything beyond a small fraction of their customers, that would be a big problem. However, the soft switches had much better failover ability than the old stuff; the old stuff would be up much longer, but when it failed everything would cascade and the whole system would come tumbling down, at which point a customer would hear "Your call cannot be completed as dialed."
Met another guy who was very excited about ZFS, because of an app at his work that writes 4 TB of data in individual 4 KB files. The best they've heard from their current storage vendor of choice is a block size of 8 KB...which means doubling their storage requirements just to deal with filesystem overhead.
I had alligator jumbalaya. It's official: it tastes like salty chicken.
Jackie, you yourself said it best when you said
There's been a break in the continuum
The United States used to be lots of fun...
"Jackie", The New Pornographers
10am CST: Welp, I'm in the air on my way to Chicago, and from thence to Washington for LISA. The laptop is running well (stress-tested by Sloan, The New Pornographers and Yo La Tengo), and I'm using my time to skip watching "Lady in the Water" (not how I want to see this film for the first time) and work on AsciiDoc. I think this is going to work pretty well for my plan: to start having my blog in just plain text for source, and plain HTML for output. I like it a lot, and the less PHP I have to audit the happier I am. (Not that I *do* audit PHP. But I feel guilty when I don't.)
Turned out I was rather stupidly cautious at the airport. The flight left at 6.15am PST, and I was there at 3.45am. What I didn't realize is that the ticket counter didn't open til 4.30am, and customs not til *5am*, thank you. But once they got started, everyone moved along pretty quickly.
I did get pulled over for extra searching, but nothing serious: where was I going, could I open the bag, where do I work. Once that was done, the officer was quite friendly; he urged me to take time to go see the sights, since work was paying for this. I expected worse.
But man, I don't know when I'll have the time. Training starts tomorrow with a full day of Solaris 10, and it just keeps going from there. Plus, of course, there's the free beer and ice cream. The time, she flies, no?
I need to get a haircut. I haven't shaved my head in two weeks, so I've got a damned dirty commie hippie head of hair at the moment.
Wow...over somewhere midwestern now, and the patchwork of land is neat to look at. Not half as beautiful as a city at night from 3000 metres, though...man, that's God's own set of Xmas lights.
12.30pm CST: Later...In O'Hare at Chicago, taking advantage of the free electrical outlets for charging laptops. The wifi access is charged-for, though, same as in Vancouver. And me without OzymanDNS...
10.20pm EST: Now in my hotel room. No wireless from USENIX up here, but it does work in the lobby where there's simply an amazing amount of very dressed-up corporate types. I think it's some sort of Xmas party. The contrast between them and the t-shirts-and-jeans crowd (not to mention me typing away alone on my laptop) is stunning. (Incidentally, my grandmother was both shocked and appalled to learn that not only was I not purchasing a new suit for this conference, I would not be wearing a suit at all.)
My luggage, I found out after an hour of waiting, is currently wending its way here from Chicago; I imagine some sort of Die Hard 2-esque leap across the tarmac that failed, but only barely. Allegedly United expected it here at 7pm and will courier it over Real Soon Now. We'll see.
By the time I finally made it to the hotel and checked in, it was 6.30pm . It had been a long time since I'd had anything but Mountain Dew (SPECIAL CAFFEINATED US VERSION!) to eat, so I was just starving enough to go for the -- wait for it -- $13 (US!) cheeseburger in the lobby. That and two Guinesses pretty much blew my budget for the week; at this point, I'm looking into the carb count in a BSSID beacon frame. (Yes, I'm making that term up.) Worth it, though; my roommate and I exchanged war/horror stories with a Sony engineer/sysadmin from San Francisco over the beer. Good times.
I'm pretty sure I saw Aeleen Frisch in the lobby. I think I saw William LeFebvre, the program chair, at the airport picking up baggage from the SAME BAGGAGE CAROUSEL where my stuff was supposed to be. There's this thing called USENIX bingo, where they give you cards with organizers' photos in it and you're supposed to get them to sign it. I think I'm going to tackle LeFebvre and ask him where my underwear is, then get him to sign my card to affirm that he didn't steal it.
I have not yet seem Tom Limoncelli, and I wouldn't recognize Dan Kaminsky if he queried my DNS server via avian carrier, so my plans to see what they've done with my underwear are, as yet, hazy. If my underwear doesn't show up, I may have to go shopping. I think the nearest Wal-Mart is in Tennessee.
Spent half the day trying to figure out why a Sun Directory Server had suddenly lost its ability to replicate over SSL. The logs said:
[21/Nov/2006:00:01:00 -0800] - INFORMATION - NSMMReplicationPlugin - conn=-1 op=-1 msgId=-1 - Replication over SSL FAILED as SSL is not enabled. Check that the attribute nsslapd-security in cn=config is on.
[21/Nov/2006:00:01:00 -0800] - ERROR<8318> - Repl. Transport - conn=-1 op=-1 msgId=-1 - [S] Bind failed with response: SSL configuration error (808).
[21/Nov/2006:00:01:00 -0800] - ERROR<8221> - Incremental Protocol - conn=-1 op=-1 msgId=-1 - Failed and requires administrator action [ldap.example.com:636]
[21/Nov/2006:00:01:00 -0800] - ERROR<8221> - Incremental Protocol - conn=-1 op=-1 msgId=-1 - Failed and requires administrator action [ldap.example.com:636]
Google turned up nada. In the end, it turned out that the last time the directory server had been started, the security token had not been provided. Restarted the server, typed in the token on standard input, and replication works again.
Yes, this is a job for expect -- but this approach has failed for coworkers in the past. I'll have to look into it.
(Note: edited to actually be correct this time.
While trying to get a Sparc machine to boot disklessly so I could install OpenBSD on it, I kept getting these errors:
Boot: bsd.rd
Automatic network cable selection succeeded : Using TP Ethernet Interface
Using BOOTPARAMS protocol: ip address: 192.168.23.25, hostname: roark
root addr=192.168.23.10 path=/home/aardvark/openbsd-sparc64/chroot
open/sbus@1f,0/ledma@e,8400010/le@e,8c00000/bsd.rd: Unknown error: code 72
tcpdump showed that the machine was trying to contact the NFS server (192.168.23.10) by udp on port 0; the server kept responding with an ICMP port unreachable error. Googling turned up one other person back in '99 (!) who had the same problem, but no fix.
What was weird was that this had worked during an earlier install -- only the running of MAKEDEV hadn't completed (don't ask), so I didn't have
I started looking at the traffic in greater detail, and saw that the packet to port 0 was, according to Ethereal^WWireshark, a nicely formed NFS call trying to get the filehandle for the kernel (/bsd). Well, what would make it send it there? After all, mountd was listening on the same port it'd been contacted on a moment ago...
Looking at the call to portmap on port 111, I saw that the client was asking for the port for nfsd, but was being told that there was no such thing -- that the port number was zero. What the...I checked rpcinfo -p and saw that, yep, there was no nfsd...and then realized my mistake: mountd only deals with mount requests; it's nfsd that actually reads/writes files, gives information about their size and modification times, and so on. I'd been starting the NFS stuff by hand since this was a one-off, and had totally forgotten to start nfsd. I did so, and suddenly all went well. PEBCAK.
Thursday: Go to The Other University to do some prep for the move coming up next week. Check in with their computer store (where you pretty much have to buy things) to see how the order on the console server is going. The guy behind the counter looks up the order, frowns, and tells me that it seems their supplier does not have one in any of their three Canadian warehouses. Okay, so how long will it take to get one in? He looks at me earnestly and says that, sometimes, they never come in. I ask at what point I can count on the supplier a) giving up and b) informing me of that fact. He frowns again, and suggests that I check back in a couple weeks (four weeks after I've placed the order) just to be safe.
Friday: Get email from contractor/university liason for new building to say that network and electrical connections will not be ready in time because the requests were received so very late. While The Other Guy was supposed to get them in long ago, I should've been on top of this.
Monday, a stat in Canada: Go to the old building to do a serverectomy on a soon-to-be-formerly shared rack. The Other Guy mentions that the new server room has water on the floor. I go over to look, and it's a rapidly evaporating puddle, irregular in shape and maybe two metres across at its widest. I can't figure out where it's coming from. Turns out there's some other stuff that should become formerly shared as well, so I spend time poring over Sun Enterprise 1 workstations (which I like) and old inkjet cartridges for printers that may no longer be around (which I don't like). Ask The Other Guy, who's been involved with the move a lot longer than I have, what electrical connections he's asked for him and for me (long story) in the new building. He says that he gave them the model number of the Sun rack he's got (which has built-in, and very nice, PDUs) and asked them to figure out what he needs.
Tuesday: Moving day. As expected, network and electrical are not present; we've got 2 x 15A 120V circuits. Also, the leak is back, and we can see that it's coming from a small leak in the concrete roof. I move my rack into another room; The Other Guy spreads a blanket over his rack. The liason promises us that the contractors are on the job to fix the roof. The network connections (two fiber, two Cat5) get terminated, so I call the local network folks to get that taken care of. The university wireless network is not present in the new building.
Wednesday: The contractors show up to start fixing the leak. The network connections have been set up. The contractors have put in a big tube of plastic sheeting, taped to the roof at one end and a 40-gallon recycling barrel at the other. The Other Guy decides things are good enough and starts setting up his rack; I elect to hold off another day.
Thursday: The contractors say the roof is fixed, so I move the rack in and start hooking things up. The new OpenBSD firewall comes up nicely -- thank you, pf developers -- as does the main Sun server. Next up is the SunRays in the lab, only they're not. I take my laptop in and try to verify connectivity. I can't. The Other Guys suggests that the VLANs on my new switch are the problem and suggests just simplifying things. I do and keep testing. Traffic from the laptop's RFC 1918 address just never makes it to the server. In a fit of desperation I try using an address in our routable subnet, and it works. This takes me until 8pm to figure out. I email various bosses explaining how far I've got, and the campus network folks to ask if they're filtering this subnet in some way. (This isn't completely out of the question; this place has a reputation for a pretty locked-down network.)
Friday: I buttonhole the guy at the campus network office and ask him about this. He considers this and realizes that while he's forgotten to unblock DHCP (told you it was pretty locked down), the other behaviour I'm seeing can be explained if I've somehow got my interfaces crossed. I'm doubtful but give it a try, which is a good thing because suddenly everything works. I don't understand it or what I did wrong, but assume that I was simply too tired the previous night and thank him profusely for taking the time to talk to me. I am now where I should have been twenty hours before. Mighty battles emerge with Sun's DHCP and Sunray servers. In the end, I have to delete the Sunray configuration, delete all DHCP configurations, and then add the Sunray configuration back. This works, which annoys me; why are there all these opaque configurations around? Not a single plain-text file in sight. I manage to get a printer working, then another. DHCP is modified so that laptops work as well. I call it a night and head home.
Woot! I managed to install OpenBSD 4.0 on my work laptop this afternoon while Arlo slept in my arms. Not only that, it automagically set up X and I figured out wireless + OpenVPN. Woot! Firefox is running, I've got Mozex and Adblock going...the only thing left is to figure out how to get IceWM to start up automagically.
If your machine has hard drives that are, in theory, removeable because they have a front catch, but in practice require you to open up the case to disconnect the SCSI and power cables, that's not a server.
If your machine's CD drive fails and it takes you fifteen minutes of searching to find the unlabelled holes on the bottom of the case that allow access to the screws that are attached to the bottom of the drive so that you can actually remove the drive, that's not a server.
For $399 US, thank you, for the Academic edition of MathMagic, I expect better goddamned installation instructions than this:
- Windows
- MathMagic Pro Edition Full installer with some old versions of fonts and
(Please run this full installer first.)
[ a url ]
- MathMagic Pro Edition v3.5 (application only. The latest version.)
(Please use this v3.5 application, instead of v3.0 installer by the
installer, after moving it into/Program Files/MathMagic Pro/ folder)
[ another url ]
- new CS & CS2 plugin
(Please use this Plug-in, instead of the Installer installed one. Copy
it into InDesign's Plug-ins/Equations folder.)
[ whee! lookit alla urls! ]
- new fonts for PDF embedding
(If you want to embed MathMagic fonts in your PDF documents on Windows,
please download the new MathMagic TrueType font set, and replace the
preinstalled ones(remove the old MathMagic fonts from Windows Fonts
directory and copy these new fonts into Windows Fonts folder).
[ sale! sale on urls! ]
The email goes on to suggest that installation instructions can be found on their website (but neglect to mention that it only covers the Mac version), or "in User Guide documents that you can find after installation." What a crock.


text:
A recent study in 2011 found that more than 50% of Americans do not have an estate plan. Furthermore, the study found that 92% of adults under 35 do not have one. A favorite saying among estate planning practitioners is, "Everyone has an estate plan. If you don't create it yourself the State of California will create one for you." This simply means that if you don't create your own plan then the State of California will tell your family members where your assets will go upon your death. This is called intestate succession. To avoid this, everyone, young or old, should have a Last Will and Testament. A Durable Power of Attorney and Advance Health Care Directive are two additional necessary documents that every person should possess.
Last Will and Testament
This document outlines who you would like to inherit your assets at your death. You nominate an Executor to administer your estate and you can also nominate a guardian for any minor children you may have at the time of your passing. You can also nominate a pet guardian for any pets that you may leave behind as well. This is the most basic form of estate planning. Having a Last Will and Testament will allow you to have choose who will inherit your assets but it will necessitate a court proceeding called, "probate" in order for these assets to pass to your heirs.
Durable Power of Attorney
A Durable Power of Attorney allows you to choose an individual to act on your behalf regarding your finances. Usually you appoint your spouse and then a trusted friend or advisor to act in this role. This person generally has the ability to pay your bills, can make deposits or withdrawals from bank accounts and can otherwise help you manage your assets.
Advance Health Care Directive
This important document allows you to appoint an individual to make health care decisions for you. Although most young adults will ignore the necessity for this type of planning it is very important. Once a minor turns 18, his or her parents are no longer afforded access to their child's health records. The Advance Health Care Directive allows you to choose an agent to make any and all decisions regarding your health if you are incapacitated and cannot make them yourself. It also gives permission to any doctors, or health care personnel to release your medical records to the individual or individuals you choose.
If you have any questions regarding these documents or would like to create them for yourself, call Julia Burt Law and we would be happy to assist you.


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I'm so excited to finally have a SFG (thank you new baby tax credit), and just wanted to share with y'all... After so easily building my salad table, I was going to build the frame, but decided to let DH do it since he was a little bummed he didn't get to build the salad table... I did the rest (yipeeee).
BEFORE (but after I destroyed the aphid infested roses): http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk83/nonamesleft_momma/gardenweb/sfgpics002.jpg AFTER (pretty, eh?): http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk83/nonamesleft_momma/gardenweb/sfgpics001.jpg It's 2'x8', and currently I have the following:
I think it's too late in the season for the onion & broccoli, so if they don't make it, I'm planning on replacing with more carrots and okra. The next step? Convincing hubby to let me build another 4x4 box on the right side of the yard! HAHAHA Thanks for taking a look. |
Follow-Up Postings:
- Posted by anniesgranny 6b (My Page) on Fri, May 1, 09 at 19:13
I'm impressed! Go for another one! Granny |
Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden
- Posted by kristimama (My Page) on Fri, May 1, 09 at 19:49
What, no tomatoes? LOL Congratulations! Looks great. And definitely go for another one. I'm already in negotiations with the hubs on how we can expand our garden next year. Where can we convert landscaping to food. And some of my boxes are ginormous planter boxes (made from 2x10s with plywood bottom) and on wheels because I have a big concrete patio and not enough open graound. SO there's another idea, too. Cheers, |
- Posted by engineeredgarden 7, nw Alabama (My Page) on Fri, May 1, 09 at 20:13
That is definitely a great improvement of the area! Oh...you'll build more...heh. EG |
Thanks for the kudos, everyone. I've actually gone out and done an impersonation of Tom Hank's character in Castaway where he gets all excited about building fire... "I--I have built a garden!!! Moohahaha!" Just not as fervently as him tho lol. Kristi~I've been tempted to grow a tomato plant because it seems almost sacrilegious not to do so, but I just don't like tomatoes very much... Oh, and *thanks* (sarcasm) for the box on wheels idea... Now I'm going to have to build it! I have to really control myself with altering the yard because we're renting right now. The landlady doesn't mind the sfg I built, but I don't want to go too crazy. But portable? Oh, that's sooo up my alley! Realistically thinking tho, I think the next project will be increasing the height of my salad box for the fall/winter growing. The greens that have survived so far are small, and I think it's because on the 3" soil height. Lovin' the learnin'! |
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Hello, I have a photo tour that I posted on Flickr of our garden in spring color. http://www.flickr.com/photos/japanesemaplegarden/sets/72157632146151331/ Our garden is always changing, with new additions, and shrinking lawn. We like to have four season interest with a balance of Japanese maples, evergreens, and other rare and unusual plants giving the garden year round color and texture. We like to use dwarf plants to give our garden a larger feel. Most of the planting beds are built up to provide proper drainage and an elevated stage for all the plants to shine. I hope you enjoy! |
Here is a link that might be useful: Spring Garden Tour - Flickr
This post was edited by JT-1 on Wed, Mar 27, 13 at 16:04
Follow-Up Postings:
Here is a link to our other galleries on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/japanesemaplegarden/sets |
Here is a link that might be useful: Flickr Photo Galleries ��
This post was edited by JT-1 on Wed, Mar 27, 13 at 16:02
- Posted by stantonjane (My Page) on Tue, Apr 2, 13 at 13:36
Your garden is gorgeous. I'm inspired to add a dwarf red Japanese maple to my backyard garden. |
Beautiful! wow! |
Gotta tell ya, the photos of your garden are inspiring. Mine is in the infant stages, with a long way to go, but your garden is full of great ideas. Of course, I have to deal with a HOA, so we shall see where I can go with it. |
You go! |
- Posted by Mrs.FlowerJunkie 8 (My Page) on Tue, Jun 11, 13 at 22:07
Oh how beautiful!!!!! I am hoping to add some JMs soon. Love your beds. |
Amazing garden..I´m speachless.. |
- Posted by redwolfdoc 5b (My Page) on Mon, Dec 30, 13 at 13:07
I opened this thread hoping for some relief from the winter wonderland outside - and was not disappointed! Beautiful garden! Thank you for sharing! |
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Meal Planning with Your Computer's Calendar
Talking about Shopper (and my compulsion to be ultra-organized about grocery shopping) reminded me of one of my other compulsions: making a menu plan for dinners.
A long time ago, I tried out FlyLady to help organize my life a bit. I failed at a lot of the plan, but one thing that stuck with me was the idea of making a dinner menu for a week, two weeks, or even a month at a time.
I hated when I would get to 5:30 (or later!) and realize that I had no clue what I would feed the family for dinner. Not only that, but I would also realize at that moment that whatever I could feed them was likely frozen and was not going to defrost in time (or well, if I used the microwave) for us to eat before bedtime.
So I started to write a menu for the next week and plan out our meals.
At first, I over-cooked and didn't plan on leftovers often enough, but eventually I got the hang of how often we could eat leftovers to prevent me from doing what I had been tending to do for years: go through the fridge every few weeks, find the food that we'd forgotten was in the fridge and throw it out before it became sentient and attacked us all.
I had a good record of getting to the food before it got to us, but I really hated throwing away what used to be perfectly good food whose only crime was that we forgot about it for a week or two. And it grew hair. And possibly legs, though no one has ever really been able to prove that about those baked beans.
Once I got the hang of doing a menu for one week, I pushed myself to do it for two. I realized that if I wrote activities down on my calendar, I'd remember when we were going to be out late (crockpot night!), when we were going to a banquet (don't cook when we're having pizza with the soccer team!), and when my husband was out of town (cook less often and eat a lot of leftovers).
Then I started getting fancier with my dinner menu calendar: I'd write down the cookbook and page number of the recipe. When I was counting points with Weight Watchers, I'd write down how many points dinner would be so I could budget the rest of my day's points.
Pretty soon, I also noticed that there were way fewer incidents with leftovers that resembled gladiator games, too, because we were eating them before they went bad.
After a while, I was doing five weeks at a time! And I realized something: my grocery budget was cut by around 30% just because I knew what I was going to be cooking that week.
Before I went shopping, I would pull out my cookbooks, check ingredient lists for the week, and add what I needed. Once I got to the store, I'd buy what I needed and little else.
I was no longer buying a bunch of chicken just because it was there and I was pretty sure I'd be able to figure out something to do with it, but I was buying it because I had two chicken dishes I was making this week and I knew how much I needed.
I wasn't starting a recipe for Jambalaya only to realize that I was out of rice and would need to buy that little package around the corner that was three times the price per pound that it is at Sam's.
And, because I was posting the menu on the fridge, when I got the "what's for dinner?" question from everyone two or three times a day, I could just point at the menu and grunt. (This is especially important if I haven't had my coffee yet.)
But pretty soon, I was finding that sitting and writing the menu out again and again was time-consuming and was also giving me writer's cramp. Yuck.
So one day, I decided to use my computer's calendar to keep track of the menu. The Dinner Menu has its own calendar on my computer, and when I'm being really good about it, it can look like this on the desktop:
I've also found that the longer I've been using this method, the less often I have to actually type in the information. I can simply search for a recipe on past calendars and copy/paste it onto the day I'm planning on making it again.
I can even print it out in a list form that will show notes about the menu, including which cookbook it's in and how many WW points I'm using for it. That's actually the one I usually post on the fridge now.
This isn't to say that I'm never moving things or just crossing something off because we wound up with a last-minute change, but by simply having a plan, my grocery list stays organized, I remember to defrost the pork chops in time to make them, and I don't hear "what's for dinner?" nearly as often as I used to.
The biggest benefits happen at the grocery store when I know what I'm buying (less time there) and I stick with my list (less money spent)!
Which all reminds me…it's time to write another menu. Later!
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Copyright 2012 Christine Johnson
About The Author
Christine Johnson
Christine Johnson has been married to Nathan since 1993 and has two daughters whom she homeschools. They live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia, where she tries to fit in as a transplanted Yank. She blogs at Domestic Vocation (http://domesticvocation.wordpress.com) and is more active on Twitter than she probably ought to be (@CatholicMomVA). She's a proud member of Team Coffee, and hopes to write a book someday.
I've been wanting to try and stick with menu planning. Can you give more instructions on finding this program.
thanks -
Erin, I simply use iCal on my Mac, but your computer's calendar will do the trick. I don't use any other program to plan meals. I pull out my cookbooks (or search on the calendar for old menu plans) and pick out what looks good. If you're new to menu planning, I do recommend starting small and just doing next week's menu. Once you have the hang of that, add a second week (usually the time between paychecks). Gradually add on until you get to a length you're comfortable with.
There are programs that help you plan or give you ideas, but when I do the trial period, the meals picked out don't always jive with my family's taste or my abilities. So I gave up on those, and simply started filling in meals I knew my family would eat. Even my cookbooks have gradually piled up to the collection they are today. When I started my first menu venture, I cooked from a lot of boxes and pre-prepped materials. Gradually, I've moved away from that and done more from-scratch cooking (which is easier when I have a plan & pay attention to it).
So if you're on a Mac, just use iCal. If you're on a PC, Outlook has a calendar built in (though it's been so long since I've used Windows, I can't remember if you can make separate calendars for different people/things). Or, if all else fails, I think Google Calendar gives you options for multiple calendars, too.
Good luck!
Much as I am a pencil-and-paper girl when it comes to meal planning, I can see the benefits of using the calendar on your computer and phone. It would be a fast way to double-check that meal plan, especially when you happen to be running to the store for fresh produce. I'm going to give it a shot.
Some time ago I came across a brilliant article that showed how to plan for 30 days, then use the SAME menu each day of each month. She even had an app with a shopping list, as I recall. (If I remember correctly, each day of the week had a theme, such as "Crockpot Day," "Chicken Day," "Sunday Dinner" (that were always recycled later in the week). Is this FlyLady?
I think so, and if I'm not mistaken, it was something like a 5-week rotation. If not Fly Lady, it was someone she recommended for it. For me, I like to pull out different things more often, so except for the tuna-casserole-every-five-weeks-on-Friday part now, I don't use the same thing every month. But that IS a great way to do it, too.
I might also add that if you're nervous about doing a menu, this is an excellent way to start.


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So we've been planning to do this for a little while now. Being long-distance of course means having many late night conversations, and you know, we're still really young so we're taking things one at a time.
What has come out of all these conversations is that our culture is now a big part of both of our lives. It wasn't that way until recently, we both grew up feeling kind of far away and not all that proud of our roots. We hear that continuosly from a lot of youth that we work with, so it means a lot to be at the place that we are now. We are committed to assisting other youth to get to the places they might be trying to get to, using the power of our culture.
This is more than about food. There are health reasons also, but as our talks progressed, it turned into honouring our ancestors, our traditions, and most of all our people. Youth are often left out of the picture of rebuilding community, and what is more, often forgotten in many programming structures of retaining culture. Who do people think is going to carry it on? It is so important to invest in bringing all of our youth back into using our culture, but that means we need to meet youth where THEY are at so they can do it for themselves. It might not always look conventional, it might not even be completely traditional, but at whatever level it happens at, we need to make more of an active effort to ensure the survival of all of this.
We decided the change has to start with us. With our upcoming visit planned in Oneida, we thought, why not only eat traditional foods and do as many cultural/traditional activities as possible? We know that Native people have some of the highest rates of diabetes, blood pressure, and heart disease rates and neither of us are good examples of healthy eating! So we aren't about to go out like that!
It's time to take it back, get in touch with some of the ways our ancestors kept themselves healthy and strong, and fight against oppression.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
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Reviewed By Joseph I (Stanhope, NJ) Reviewed for a 2010 Chevy Silverado —1/27/2015 8:26 PM
I was looking into several different scanners to read and clear trouble codes in my 2010 Silverado. I read the reviews on the Diablo Intune and after shopping around, Autoanything had the best deal on it. I bought it, it worked as promised. I was able to read my trouble codes/check engine light, (have to decipher it online), and clear them. I was able to shut off the active fuel management on the 5.3L motor and did the 87 Octane tune. MPG improved as did performance. Highly recommended!


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When it was first announced that Roger Clemens, at 50-years-old, would pitch for the Sugar Land Skeeters of the independent Atlantic League, it was suggested by some that this was the first step down the path to a Major League return. That seemed implausible to me.
Clemens hasn't pitched competitively in five years, which in and of itself wouldn't be enough to make a comeback seem unreasonable, but the fact that during those five years the right-hander celebrated his 46th, 47th, 48th, 49th, and most recently, his 50th birthday is not something to be glossed over. Yes, we saw 49-year-old Jamie Moyer extend his career to its limits earlier this season, but that example is an outlier. Typically speaking, pitchers at Clemens age are more likely to be broken down old men than contenders to make a Major League Baseball team's active roster.
That's not all. It should be remembered that he's pitching a game in the Atlantic League. While the league may boast that in the last fifteen years over 600 of their players have graduated onto Major League organizations, you're far more likely to see the sad pursuit of former affiliated baseball players chasing the dream in the Atlantic League than you are rising stars.
Even the former Cy Young Winner himself seemed to have a more realistic view than some of his fans, insisting at a press conference on Tuesday that he was pitching just to have fun and help the Skeeters. He claimed to be nowhere near ready to pitch in a Major League Baseball game.
Then, Clemens appeared on CNN to talk about his return to competitive baseball with Piers Morgan, and he dropped one of those coy little hints that could have anywhere between zero meaning at all to all the meaning in the world. He admitted that if Saturday's start goes well, he might have something even better to announce in the future.
Since he retired as a member of the Houston Astros, and that was the only team present at his workout earlier this week, it seems that if a Major League comeback were to ensue it would be with that club. In an interview with a local FOX network, Astros owner Jim Crane was asked about Clemens and his possible comeback. He replied:
If it goes alright and he comes to us, we'll talk to baseball about it at length. The only thing we don't want to do is make it a publicity stunt. If we did it, I want to try and take it and turn it into a positive, which would be Roger's doing it for the good of baseball. The extra proceeds on the game might go to the community charity deal to build fields, do something positive out of it. I think the fans might like it. It might be fun and certainly get a few people in the ballpark. I don't see anything negative about that, but the Astros wouldn't want to do it for the money, the extra gate or anything like that.
The similarities between Clemens and Crane's responses are um … interesting. However, would Major League Baseball be prepared to allow a team to field a player whose place on the team isn't for the sake of talent? I'm far from the type of person to bring up phrases such as the "sanctity of the game," but Crane's response seems disingenuous. He says it wouldn't be for the sake of a publicity stunt, but that's a bit like opening a sentence by saying, "Not to be racist," and then proceeding to say something offensive.
I believe that the owner's intent wouldn't be to use Clemens for the sake of immediate income, but the good will created by a Clemens appearance amongst the fan base of a team that's had a dreadful season and figures to have at least a couple more as they acclimatize themselves to the American League would make such a venture financially worthwhile to Houston. So, while Crane talks about donating proceeds to charity, it's the future money that such a stunt would create that's truly on his mind.
As for Clemens, there's a secret motivation for him as well. His name will appear on ballots for the Baseball Hall of Fame for the first time at the end of this year. With voters still exhibiting a hesitancy to honor former players associated with performance enhancing drugs, Clemens could push back his eligibility by five years with a single big league appearance. Five years down the road, it's entirely possible that younger voters would be more understanding to his plight and less judgmental than the current set.
Only the most cynical among us could be aware of all that Clemens and Crane stand to gain by his playing a game for the Houston Astros, and still want it to happen. At its most basic, baseball is an entertaining distraction, and while seeing The Rocket pitch once again at the highest level possible would certainly be entertaining, it would be a fleeting moment of entertainment. The true source of baseball's ability to keep us interested is found in its competitiveness.
When a team assembles a roster or a lineup or a pitching staff for purposes other than that competitiveness, it lessens the entire sport's legitimacy and authenticity. It reduces the game of baseball to a gimmick. To me, that's a far worse crime than anything any user of banned substances has ever done. This makes baseball about something other than winning and losing.


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Research Topics
Genomes and GenesSpecies | Gloria V CallardSummaryAffiliation: Boston University Country: USA Publications
| Collaborators
Detail Information
- Evolutionary origins of the estrogen signaling system: insights from amphioxusG V Callard
Department of Biology, Boston University, 5 Cummington St, Boston, MA 02215, United States
J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol 127:176-88. 2011..This article is part of a Special Issue entitled 'Marine organisms'... - Estrogen responses in killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) from polluted and unpolluted environments are site- and gene-specificSarah R Greytak
Department of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Aquat Toxicol 99:291-9. 2010..We hypothesize that adaptation of killifish to the estrogenic and polluted environment may be occurring through diverse mechanisms that are gene-, tissue type- and life-stage-specific... - Cloning of three estrogen receptors (ER) from killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus): differences in populations from polluted and reference environmentsSarah R Greytak
Department of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Gen Comp Endocrinol 150:174-88. 2007..We conclude that contaminants in the NBH environment impact molecular components of the estrogen signaling pathways in resident killifish populations. Whether these changes are transient or heritable requires further study... - Characterization of housekeeping genes in zebrafish: male-female differences and effects of tissue type, developmental stage and chemical treatmentAmy T McCurley
Department of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
BMC Mol Biol 9:102. 2008.... - Real-time PCR analysis of cytochrome P450 aromatase expression in zebrafish: gene specific tissue distribution, sex differences, developmental programming, and estrogen regulationSherilyn J Sawyer
Department of Biology, Boston University, MA 02215, USA
Gen Comp Endocrinol 147:108-17. 2006..Application of this real-time PCR assay to measurement of P450aromB and -A in zebrafish embryos has utility for routine screening of chemicals and environmental samples for estrogen-like bioactivity and neural effects... - Isolation and characterization of two cytochrome P450 aromatase forms in killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus): differential expression in fish from polluted and unpolluted environmentsSarah R Greytak
Department of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Aquat Toxicol 71:371-89. 2005..In conclusion, the killifish population at the NBH Superfund site maintains a level of reproductive competence in the face of evidence of exposure to estrogen-like pollutants and endocrine disruption...


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Environmental Educator and Conservation Field Crew Member
I am an avid outdoor adventurer from Duluth, Minnesota. After finishing a degree in Wildlife Ecology I found my way to New Hampshire through the SCA. My time between school and NH was peppered with travel and frivolity. I'm excited to be at Bear Brook-explore all it has to offer and get my hands dirty, helping to restore, maintain and create new trails throughout New Hampshire.


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another beauty! How's the flavor? |
- Posted by leon_edmond z7NM (My Page) on Tue, Jun 28, 11 at 12:32
To be honest, the flavor wasn't that good for this breba fig. The size is impressive and that's why I posted these pics. The main crop figs are better flavored. This is one of the few varieties that survived a record low winter in Albuquerque this year. |
- Posted by loslunasfarms 7 (My Page) on Thu, Jun 30, 11 at 11:27
I agree, about Long dAout. Mine died back this year after our harsh winter, seemingly being a slow grower. Now, it is nearly 3 feet tall with figgy babies showing. Leon, do you think this breba would have done better with more time or did it limp on the tree? |
Leon, There have been a few discussions about the Longue D'Aout being same as the Melanzana Merdascola. 1, What is your take on this? Thanks, |
- Posted by loslunasfarms (My Page) on Thu, Jun 30, 11 at 18:39
Raf. I have both, I should be able to compare them side by side this year! |
Rafed & Jose, they are the same fig. It is also known as Slocan here. Fully agree with Leon on the huge breba size and taste. The main crop fig size is smaller but more productive and very nice flavor. In my opinion it beats many figs in the flavor category like Capelas, Stella, Deanna etc. Its reliable too. Definite keeper for me. Its hardy and its an outdoor tree in my yard. I even had 2 trees in a bucket where I left outside last winter. Only some die backs to the tips. Gave the 2 trees away as I have no plans to keep duplicates. |
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Thu, May 10, 12 at 23:54
All the garden tools I use are long handled, not short with a D- or similar handle. I'm looking for a good quality spade with a long handle, but everything I see is the short handled kind. I don't have much experience with the short kind, but they feel awkward to me. And I've read that they're harder on your back and shoulders.
What's your experience with long vs. short, D-handled tools? All the good ones seem to be European, where they seem only to make the short handled kind. Anyone know of a good, long-handled one? And by spade, I mean a flat headed tool with a squared off bottom, not a point. Thanks in advance. |
Follow-Up Postings:
Usually any garden center or big box store will have them. You could also try Lee Valley Tools on-line. They carry several lines of garden stuff. I've purchased a few thing from them and been quite happy. I often meet up with them at the Rochester Garden Show, but they also have a catalog. Keski |
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