Look Ma, I can awk!

Today I was looking at this CD we got from a photographer. She put each picture on it in color and black and white. I want to upload the CD for family to see but if they want black & white I think they can do that easily enough themselves. So for kicks I wanted to know how many MegaBytes this was going to be. Welcome to the world of Linux where there is a way to do this without cut & paste for an hour. I use the following line of code to learn that instead of 199MB for everything, it will be 110MB. I knew it would be more than half because the color photos would use more memory, but I was glad to see that it was close to only half. Mostly I was just happy to have found a new use for awk.
ls -l /media/100526_0814/IMG_8[123][0-9][0-9]\.jpg|awk '{sum+=$5}END{print sum}'

Thoughts on the 2012 election

I remember one of the big reasons I didn't vote for McCain was that he wanted to pass some universal health bill of his own. Some of Obama's biggest supporters didn't even want or expect his health bill to pass. My question is do you think McCain would have ever passed the health bill that he was proposing? It's so hard to perceive what a candidate is saying to get voted for vs what they intend to follow through with.

So my thoughts are that I should vote within the party I align myself with and disregard campaign promises by either party. I still can't imagine Palin as the vice president.

At the moment Mit is the front runner for the GOP in 2012, if he didn't make it passed the primaries, what are his chances of making it as president next election?
If religion didn't play a role in America's decision I think Mit may have stood a good chance against Obama, if he does make it past the primaries I wonder if the Democrats will be more open minded toward a Mormon president.

Too bad Ron Paul will be way way too old to vote for in 2012. :( I still believe what we really need is someone willing to be fiscally conservative.

coolest old person

I feel like the goal for the rest of my life is to prepare to be the coolest old person I can be. Some old people are really cool. I admire the old people with vigor, the ones that AREN'T too old to contribute to the workforce. I admire the old people who refuse to become victims to would be robbers but instead physically detain these thugs until the police arrive to take them away. I also want to have a truck and hair like President Uchtdorf. Maybe I'll learn how to cook a few more things too.

Mac Book

I like my Mac Book Pro, it's pretty sweet. The touch pad is awesome, it's hard to go back to a normal undersized touch pad that doesn't know what to do with two fingers. However they keyboard continuously drives me crazy. It lacks the tactile feel of even a normal laptop keyboard. Aside from that it lacks essential keys such as Insert, backspace, page up/down and printscreen. Like my crazy Lenovo, the Mac mistakenly thinks the function key should bump the control key out of the corner - now I'm used to it. The Mac is however, very sound hardware. It looks and feels solid and beautiful, I just wish there were a few more well placed keys and perhaps a little bit more control over the operating system.

Now China's government on the other hand...

If they said, "We're looking into the incident" I would believe they didn't know what was going on, but because they flat out deny that their country had anything to do with it (as usual), I think it's almost as good as owning up to it. Not like someone else has your range of IP's or that your hacking school has been hacked into by Nigeria.

Cyber attack? Let the government take over!

The government is notorious for being a bunch of Luddites, the military hires contractors to do all their real IT support. So the government decides to do a cyber attack simulation, which apparently was about as technical as a bunch of people standing around talking about different scenarios. They decided that the real problem was that if (the privately owned) infrastructure we rely on was attacked, that the government wouldn't have instant access to meddle with whatever they wanted.

Hmm imagine that, an organization that pays educated people to put together and maintain a system, might not want Senator Ted Stevens (who up until recently was in charge of this sort of thing) randomly unplugging everything when he supposes your service might be the reason he can't get "Wheel of Fortune" on his TV. Let's also remember that he may have decided that the problem was with a company that has nothing to do with the issue. And even if he did get the right company, he is certain to be less qualified to make any suggestions on how to mitigate or remedy any technical issues.

I think it is a noble thought that we might be susceptible to a cyber attack and that we need to be more prepared. But giving the government control of all things technical is not the right first step. Perhaps requiring critical infrastructure to meet a set of security standards would be in everyone's best interest. If the government can pass laws requiring automakers to meet fuel efficiency standards, they can certainly pass laws requiring ISP's and hosting facilities to meet internet security standards. In fact they've already mandated that all .gov sites use DNSSEC.

I like the way ...

It started in primary, positive reinforcement; when it seemed that the kids were losing focus, the one conducting would start singing, "I like the way (name of child) is listening", until the other kids noticed that the new focus was on paying attention. Kristy took it home by singing things like, "I like the way Amber is cleaning", etc. Today Amber was upset about something and was crying on the way home when Julie started singing, "I like the way Amber is crying".

terminal logging

I've been wanting this for a while now. Putty had a built in way of logging each session, but I don't like the linux interface for putty so it's nice to have this solution by Rafał Błaszczyk, it works great!

snow

It usually only snows 9 times a year in Indianapolis. This year it looks like the first snow will happen to be on Thanksgiving, giving us all something to be thankful for...But we'll be in South Bend where it is just suppose to rain :(

someone asked

Do you find Facebook to be a safe network for people to use?
Yes.

Do you know if it is very difficult to hack into Facebook?
No, I don't.
I will assume it has fair security since I don't see too much on the news regarding its security and they are still pretty popular.

I have seen different situations where spam has been sent to me or my friends. How can this be avoided?
I would suggest having two email accounts. Use one for registering for websites, etc, call it your junk email account. Use the other for friends, call it your real email address. The idea here is that if you are registering an account with a website and need to confirm that you are using a valid email address, you can, without giving them the address you use for friends.

Is there a way for hackers to find out your personal information without being your friend?
It depends on how good of a hacker they are and how much personal information you put online.

What advice would you give teens who are using Facebook, in order to keep themselves safer on the Web?
Safe from what? Let's assume you mean physically safe. First you have to ask why would someone want to attack you? Two reasons come to mind, they either want something from you or they are angry with you.
So in these cases the best ways to stay safe are to:
Not let people know you have anything they want
Not to make people angry
It's worth asking yourself questions about these things:
What kind of things might people want that you have? How might they find out that you have them?
What makes people angry? How might you provoke someone?

Now avoid doing any of the things that you listed. Most of the people we socialize with online know who we are and can probably find out where we live. But if they are strangers, then you have a good chance of making it impossible for them to find you by not associating your location with ANY of your online social networks (facebook, twitter, blogs, etc). Some people are clever enough to look for your username on another network to see if they can find more information about you.

A few tips:
I would (as a teen) avoid putting pictures of myself online.

Never ever (even as an adult) say bad things about other people online. Saying bad things about people almost always makes you look like a jerk...and makes other people angry with you (including your parents).

Don't reveal personal information through your username (ie your age, year you were born, sex, location, city, state, school, real name).

Don't spend too much time socializing online.

I just wrote down my thoughts. I'm sure others have put more time and energy into this so if you're serious about being safe, you should probably do some additional research. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=online+safety+for+teens

google voice

Looks like I got my Google Voice invite just in time. I have a legitimate license, but I'd rather not have to bother figuring out what is wrong with this (my old voice mail program), I've never been all that happy with it anyway. By the way, our new number is (317) 758-7018, try it! Also this means no more phone card since long distance is free through Google Voice as well, just have to teach the wife how to use it.

MRTG for Squid

If you ever want to have MRTG monitor your Squid (proxy) server, just remember that cfgmaker won't make your config file :( you have to make it yourself or at the very least use this guys template. I spent most of the day trying to figure out why cfgmaker wasn't working...

Proxy Server

At work recently I have been working a lot with Squid. I set it up at home today, in another few days I should have something like this going on! :)

Kidney

Tonight I was helping Julie say her prayer and said, "we thank thee for Ben's new Kidney" and Julie repeated, "thank thee for Ben's new kitty". Too cute!

shocked

Often times on my lunch break I'll take a walk with a few co-workers. Today I was walking in front of one of these people and slowed down just to mess with him and do you know what he did? He reached up and pinched my butt!

new computer?

I'm tired of thinking my internet is slow and then realizing that my processor is sitting at 100%. It's only slow when I'm looking at online videos like netflix (no DVD-ROM)...but since we don't watch TV, we end up using the computer for that more. The motherboard is too old (5 yrs) to get a processor that will give much more performance - for $9.71 I can go from 1667 MHz to 2 GHz. This computer is a mix of many seasons of my life spaning 10 years - a third of my life!

Asthma

I officially don't have asthma. Next I get a cat scan or something...

Things you don't really want to hear

While playing with plastic toy animals:
Amber (giraffe): I am daddy
Julie (moose): I am daddy
Amber (geraffe): no, I am daddy, see?

North Korea, yeah right

Recently there has been news that North Korea launched a cyber attack against some of the US government websites. All I have to say is, "yeah right". That country is so focused on nuclear military and physical border patrol that I highly doubt they have any resources left over to support any substantial cyber anything if for no other reason than the fact that we embargo against them. What have we done to North Korea to make them hate us so much anyway?

The Crying

I know I've mentioned it before, each time I have a newborn. I really hate hearing them cry. It bothers me to no end. The only solace is the thought that this will be the last.