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February 10, 2012 by Sciri

Wi-Fi regulatory domains are a pain

Managing multiple facilities across multiple continents can be a pain especially when Wi-Fi is involved. Different regions use different frequencies depending on regulatory domain. And, depending on your hardware vendor, compliant hardware could be backordered.

In my case, the Cisco Aironet 1140 Series Access Point (AIR-AP1142N-T-K9 802.11a/g/n Standalone AP; Int Ant; Taiwan C) is backordered by 4-6 weeks. I guess our Taipei 101 office is out of luck for a while unless I can find a different piece of compliant hardware.

Here are some miscellaneous regulatory notes for when I need to revisit this in the future:

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January 29, 2012 by Sciri

Pulling the Karakoram out of storage

Since Operation Stop Being a Fatass 2.0 is progressing rather satisfactorily (down 15 pounds this month) I’ll be pulling my trusty 1992 GT Karakoram Full Rigid out of storage so I can give it a proper tuneup and start hitting the trails again. With the exception of racing my nephews up and down the cul-de-sac I haven’t gone riding since Summer of 2004 and the Karakoram desperately needs some TLC since it was ridden hard and put away wet without any end of season maintenance. I got fat and it started rusting.

So I’ve now committed myself financially to getting back behind the bars by picking up the supplies required to finally do a complete overhaul. A Park Tool PCS-10 Home Mechanic Repair Stand and Park Tool Work Tray will keep the bike firmly planted on the workbench while I tickle its naughty bits with a Park Tool AK-37 Advanced Mechanic Tool Kit, Finish Line Speed Degreaser, and Finish Line DRY Teflon Bicycle Chain Lube. My full automotive mechanic tool kit was missing many of the critical tools to properly maintain a bike so I needed the AK-37 kit to fill in the gaps.

Assuming I actually follow through, start riding again, and hit my initial goal weight of 240ish pounds by the end of the Summer I’ll definitely upgrade to a 2012 GT Karakoram 1.0 Hardtail 29er. No way I’m going to drop the coin to go full suspension unless I get under 200 pounds and am doing some serious miles. And if the wife wants to start riding as well then a 2012 GT Palomar Hardtail will probably be in her future.

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January 26, 2012 by Sciri

Operation Stop Being a Fatass 2.0 is well underway

It’s been seven years since I mused about weight loss on this Blog. And in that seven years I’ve embarrassingly regained almost all the weight I so elatedly lost and enthusiastically wrote about. An unfortunate combination of work, stress, and a complete lack of healthful motivation turned those seven years into a crash course of unhinged weight gain.

I saw and felt it happening as I ballooned back up to a 46″ waist and had to dig out my cache of old 2XL geek and hacker t-shirts that had been packed away for nostalgic reasons. But even as I jumped up each size I just didn’t care. And on New Year’s Day of this year I weighed in at 308.6 pounds. Not quite the 330 pounds I weighed at my all-time high in 1998 but a Hell of a lot more than the 220ish pounds I weighed at my last health-related entry in 2004.

So Operation Stop Being a Fatass 1.0 ended in failure but Operation Stop Being a Fatass 2.0 is well underway thanks to some hardy motivation from my lovely wife since we’ve both vowed to get back into shape together. Since the beginning of January I’ve dropped 12.6 pounds and I’m down to 296 pounds. That may seem like a tiny victory but it’s a victory nonetheless.

The Hacker’s Diet is still my primary motivation and going back to Blogging about my fat ass will definitely help but I’ve also added some additional tools to my aresenal:

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January 6, 2010 by Sciri

HP Mini 1000 and 110 batteries on sale

For you mobile geeks out there HP Home currently has 3-cell batteries for the HP Mini 1000 and 110 on sale for 60% off as well as a $15-off coupon you can use (ACY93421). No idea how long this is going to last.

The 6-cell batteries are regular price but the coupon should also work.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/minami/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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September 8, 2009 by Sciri

How to murder a Blog

Short of a server going down, one of the quickest and most effective ways for a Blog to die is for it to drop out of search engines. Sure, you might have a ton of repeat visitors, but no search ranking means no new visitors because, well, no one can find you. What a blinding flash of the obvious.
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September 8, 2009 by Sciri

Upgrading Polycom firmware

If you have a mixed bag of Polycom kit in your office, be sure to check out the VoIP SIP Software Release Matrix to check on compatible versions. In our case, I chose SIP version 3.1.3RevC since it’s compatible with both the IP 430 and the IP 4000. I’ll probably bump up to SIP version 3.2.0 for the IP 430; just not today.

Also pay special attention to the release notes. Just because a Firmware version is on the download page for a particular model doesn’t mean it will work. We had to mix and match with Firmware version 4.1.3 for the IP 4000 and 4.2.0 for the IP 430. This is difficult (but not impossible) since pre-4.0 Firmware versions look for bootrom.ld instead of modelnumber.bootrom.ld in 4.0 and higher versions.
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July 21, 2008 by Sciri

Totally unsupported Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) installer for ServerBeach RapidRescue

The aging Red Hat Enterprise ES4 server I have colocated at ServerBeach was starting to get a bit crufty and I felt kind of dirty running RHEL instead of Ubuntu now that I’m working for Canonical. It was finally time to bring up a shiny new Dell PowerEdge 440 running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Hardy Heron however ServerBeach does not yet officially support Ubuntu and will not do custom OS loads.

No problem. ServerBeach provides a brilliant tool called RapidRescue that allows you to reboot your server into a Linux recovery session and gives remote console access to the disks and hardware. I whipped together an awful hack to take advantage of this tool and automate the process of formatting the hard drives and debootstrapping an Ubuntu install. Not exactly elegant, but it gets the job done. :D

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July 21, 2008 by Sciri

Creating DOS floppies and USB thumbdrives for BIOS flashing

MS-DOS or another DOS derivative is still required for flashing the BIOS on some desktops, servers, notebooks, and mobile devices. These tools automate the creation of boot floppies and USB thumbdrives instead of fighting with tools like MKBT (Make Bootable).

Required Tools

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