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:

• Cisco Aironet 1140 Series Access Point Ordering Guide [PDF]
• Wireless LAN Compliance Status
• List of WLAN channels
• Channel Deployment Issues for 2.4-GHz 802.11 WLANs

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.

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:

• The Hacker’s Diet Online wasn’t available the first time I did The Hacker’s Diet
• I’ve found /r/loseit and /r/fitmeals
• Lose It! Web site and iPhone/Android app (no relation to /r/loseit) to track calories

• HP 3-cell Battery for Mini 110 Series (BX03) (NY221AA#UUF)
• HP 3-cell Primary Battery for Mini 1000 Series (HA03) (FZ441AA#UUF)

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

• HP 6-cell Extended-Life Battery for Mini 110 Series (BX06) (NY220AA#ABA)
• HP 6-cell Extended-Life Battery for Mini 1000 Series (HA06) (FZ332AA#ABB)

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

How to murder a Blog

Me.

During a server upgrade a few years ago I ran a script to automatically update the code on all of my sites. It just so happened that the script was based on my new site install script which included the above robots.txt line to prevent staging sites from getting indexed before their launch.

So, you guessed it, it took me just long enough to notice my FUBAR that Inert Ramblings had effectively disappeared off the Net over the course of two weeks. Unfortunately, recovery wasn’t as simple as just restoring the original robots.txt and the site instantly reappearing; it still took months for Google and other search engines to reindex the entire site and for traffic to pick back up.

Is there a moral to the story (other than pointing and laughing at me)? Sure. Be absolutely certain that none of your maintenance scripts make unexpected changes to robots.txt or any other config file. Luckily only one site was effected in the long-term but it could have been much worse had it taken longer for me to notice.

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.

The solution was simple; I dropped the following files into place:

• IP 430 4.2.0 Bootrom (Split) 2345-11402-001.bootrom.ld
• IP 430 3.1.3RevC SIP (Split) 2345-11402-001.sip.ld
• IP 4000 4.1.3 Bootrom (Split) 2201-06642-001.bootrom.ld
• IP 4000 3.1.3RevC SIP (Split) 2201-06642-001.sip.ld
• Generic 4.1.3 Bootrom (Combined) bootrom.ld

This way both the IP 430 and the IP 4000 will properly flash themselves with the 4.1.3 Combined image, then the IP 430 will step up to the 4.2.0 Split image on its next reboot.

For even more fun, the new macaddress.cfg files support per-model config files, so I also created phone1-3.1.3C.cfg and sip-3.1.3C.cfg to selectively upgrade a few phones for testing.

Oh, and remember to move bootrom.ld out of the way if you only want to test upgrade a few phones you’ve pre-modified config files for. You really don’t want to brick your whole office, do you?

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.

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

Required Tools

• Unofficial MS-DOS 6.22 boot floppy
  
• Official Dell 32 Bit Diagnostics version CW1337A0 17-Jul-2008

Caveats

• Windows is required to run both installers. I have not tested under Wine or emulation.
• The unofficial MS-DOS 6.22 boot floppy comes from BootDisk.com and not from Microsoft.
• The official Dell 32 Bit Diagnostics utility comes directly from Dell but AUTOEXEC.BAT must be modified for use on a non-Dell system. The info page for version CW1337A0 is available from Dell Support and additional versions are available directly from the Dell Diagnostics Repository.
• Some prototype netbooks and MID devices refuse to boot MS-DOS. You’re on your own.
• These tools are not licensed for redistribution.
• These tools will erase the destination floppy disk or USB thumbdrive before creating bootable media.

MS-DOS 6.22 boot floppy

1. Attach a USB floppy drive and execute BOOT622.EXE.
2. Follow the on-screen instructions to write image to the floppy disk.
3. Remove unneeded files to free up space and copy your custom BIOS image and BIOS flash utilities to the floppy disk.
4. Upon booting, the floppy disk will be drive A:.

Dell 32 Bit Diagnostics

1. Execute CW1337A0.EXE to extract archive contents to a folder.
2. Execute DDDP.EXE and insert a USB thumbdrive.
3. Select Install to a USB Flash Drive.
4. Select the USB Flash Drive to use and click OK.
5. If the USB thumbdrive is too large then a warning will be displayed regarding the maximum size of FAT 16 partitions; click Yes to continue.
6. Click OK when complete then select Finished Creating Diagnostic Media.
7. Modify AUTOEXEC.BAT on the newly-created USB thumbdrive and REM out or delete the DELLDIAG.COM and REBOOT.COM lines at the end of the script. DELLDIAG.COM will only run on approved Dell systems so by default the tool will give an error, exit, and reboot non-Dell systems.
8. Copy your custom BIOS image and BIOS flash utilities to the USB thumbdrive.
9. Upon booting, the USB thumbdrive will be drive C: and the Dell 32 Bit Diagnostics RAMDISK will be drive D:.

Booting Devices

Booting your device should be as simple as simple as Plug and Play; make sure the boot order is configured to see the USB thumbdrive, USB floppy disk, or internal floppy disk before the hard drive. Once MS-DOS loads follow the instructions that came with your BIOS image or BIOS flash utility.