The Major's HomeSteve's Gripes

Cable Modem Annoyance

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 23:17:00 GMT

It amazes me that a multi-million dollar cable company can't provide a customer a cable modem that won't be overwhelmed because of "too much traffic." At one time or another you've all had to physically power off and on your cable modem to reset your internet connection. I probably have more traffic than most and many a morning I've woken up to a dead internet connection, or worse, it goes out during the day when I'm away. When your home phone depends on your internet connection, this is no longer amusing.

I've been a fan of X10 home control units for awhile, I've also had two of their "Firecracker" computer serial interface modules sitting in a box for at least 10 years. What does this have to do with the above?

I now have an X10 control unit in between the outlet and my cable modem, a USB to Serial interface connecting my Firecracker to my server, and found this python script that easily controls the Firecracker. I put these together with a script on my server that pings a host of my choosing on the internet at regular intervals, and if the host cannot be reached, the script tells the X10 unit to turn off the modem and turn it back on via the Firecracker module and notifies me.

This completely automates the modem reset and keeps things running.

Social Bookmarks :

Do It Yourself

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 23:00:00 GMT

"You no help me now...I say screw you Jobu. I do it myself." That is one of my favorite quotes from the movie Major League. Pedro Cerrano, having stuck up for, prayed to, and even made offerings of rum to his deity in an effort to hit the baseballs pitched to him, finally gives up and does it himself.

In much the same way I've reached the same realization with little widgets I enjoy on my computers and webpages.

First, it started with something called Konfabulator, later purchased by Yahoo! and rechristened Yahoo! Widgets. It would put, well, widgets on your desktop and blend them in with your background. Working in an office without windows, I would constantly be looking at my weather widget to see what the current weather was and what the forecast was so I could plan my day/evening/weekends. Yahoo! abandoned it and the application became fairly broken in the last Windows/Mac OS release. Yes, I'm aware of the Weather Dashboard Widget in OS X, I hate it and truthfully, I really can't be bothered to enter Dashboard and wait for it to refresh.

Next came something called Recent Tunes. Those that have visited this page, my Signat-url page, or have me on your instant messenger list know that I'm a big music fan and like to post what I'm currently listening to. It adds a small amount of flair to these pages/software that I like. Recent Tunes monitors iTunes while it is playing and will send data about the current item to your webserver in various ways and with various options so that you can, in turn, add what you're listening to on your website. Very nice, I think. Naturally something so useful was abandoned years ago, but it still worked with the latest Mac OS, albeit in PowerPC code using OS X's Rosetta. That legacy code is gone in the next version of Mac OS X and Recent Tunes will finally be laid to rest by me.

I'm no master programmer by any strech of the imagination, but I know enough about scripting languages to be clever, even dangerous. So I wrote my own replacements for these. And they have more functionality, too.

My weather widget lives on my desktops, updates automatically, has a day and night mode that activates at the daily sunrise/sunset times throughout the year, it is complete with accurate representations of current moon phases. It has full graphic representation of the current weather and forecasted weather, additional data like humidity, wind speed and direction, UV index (day mode only, obviously), severe weather warnings (in bright red text to get noticed), and forecasts. Plus, my data source of weather data has even more information that I'm not currently using but can add if I wish. In addition, a smaller, more limited version is in use on my websites now too.

My iTunes continues to publish its data to my pages, but with a script I wrote myself that polls iTunes. For now, it mimicks what Recent Tunes did for me, but my options are now limitless since I can really script it any way I want. I can control the data that gets uploaded to my server in virtually any way I want... pure text, html, or graphic images for album covers. I can even have different sets of data to use on different pages to create different looks. If that still isn't enough, I can tweak it even more.

I'm tired of wondering if some coder out there is just going to get bored with the software he or she shared with the world and just walk away. I'm now looking at what other little utilities, widgets, or gizmos I have in my computing life that I can recreate and, most importantly, recreate better for me. Not only that, it's mine and I don't have to be subject to someone's whims about its future. I wrote it, I understand how it works, and I can fix it if it breaks. Like anything else I put my mind to, I'm only going to get better and better at this the more I work with it.

Cerrano had it right, I say to those abandonware programmers, "screw you. I'll do it myself."

Social Bookmarks :

Phish Scams & User Foolishness

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:51:00 GMT

We've had a ton of Phishing Scams at work. These are attempts by people to get your user name and password so that they can, in turn, use your credentials to send out more phishing scams and spam. Usually an official looking email is sent out to users claiming some system maintenance or other "thing" is going on where we need your information to verify "you", and if you don't supply them, there is usually an "or else." Hence phishing, get it? Fishing for user's information?

So, if you're a naive user or just not thinking, preoccupied with doing something else, whatever, I can see where you may and would fall for this scam. My gripe comes in when:

1) We've sent out two emails to our population expressly stating these are scams and that we will never ask for your information over an email.
2) The latter email even includes a website with an annotated sample phishing email, again noting in at least three places that we will never ask for your information over an email.
3) We've pasted a banner in BearMail (or primary student email portal) with the above website, again noting that we will never ask for your information over an email.

A new phishing email started to spread last night and a bunch of people fell for it. I can only conclude:

1) They ignored our emails and warnings.
2) They got our emails and warnings, read it, and promptly deleted it.
3) They got our emails and warnings, read it, and just don't get it.
4) They are ridiculously stupid people.

I'm sure there are defenders of these folks that would say something like, "they are not stupid, they are just not good with technology." I would have to counter that "we will never ask for your information over an email" is pretty clear to me, and since you're reading your email you obviously know what your user name and password are, else how did you get into it to read it? As for not good with technology, I don't need to know how to drive a car to understand that it's a bad idea to step out in front of one on the street.

Social Bookmarks :

Can you chomp-chomp help slurp-smack me?

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:39:00 GMT

This one has been a long time coming for the Gripes list. Exactly what makes people think that I want to hear you eating food while you're speaking to me? At least once a week I answer the phone to someone eating their lunch in my ear. This has to be one of the rudest and disgusting things you can do to a person; it is no different than talking with your mouth full. At this point I just politely ask them to either stop eating while speaking with me or finish their lunch and call me back when they are finished.

Did I mention this is rude? Good.

Social Bookmarks :

Fixed Width Web Pages

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 20:41:00 GMT

Why is it some web pages have fixed width web pages? You know the kind, where it looks like you're looking at a sheet of paper with the margins on each side expanding to fill the width of your display? If you have a smaller monitor, that may not be a bid deal, but I have a couple of wonderful wide screen displays. The result? A strip down the middle with content and a lot of wasted space! It's stupid!

Some web designers think it's cool to make me look at a page as if I'm viewing a 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of paper. Tell you what, if I want to see your site that way I'll print it out and read it. Let my browser scale to my selected screen-width please!

Social Bookmarks :

Clickers of Everything

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:38:00 GMT

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is that after all these years of being exposed to computers, people still fall for the lamest "tricks" to expose them to a virus or spyware. Probably the truly single most jaw dropper for me is the people that have been caught by these tricks, not once, twice, three times, but multiple times and continue to get not only their shorts pulled up over their head, but tied in a knot too. Some advice: Stop. Think. Simple as that.

Here are some examples: From an email: You've received a greeting card from a Neighbor Okay, what's your first clue here? How about "Neighbor"? Why would you get a card "from a Neighbor" and not by their actual name? No service I've ever seen for computer greeting cards lets you specify a locale as a "from". That's silly. Wait! There is more! In the body of this message is a link to click to get your card. http://192.168.0.0/ ... Numbers? In a web address? Well, it's possible, but no company in the 'business' of electronic greeting cards (and I dare say any business!) is going to do that. They'll want something like http://www.hallmark.com to promote their site! Two dead giveaways that something strange is afoot. Don't click it, trash it!

Here is another fun one from the web: You're surfing around the internet and suddenly, in your web browser, you see "YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED! CLICK HERE TO FIX!" Oh no! You must have picked something up! Woah, stop, think. Why would your web browser possibly be scanning your computer for viruses? And, if you have anti-virus/spyware installed, why didn't it catch the bug? These are two good reasons to never trust what you see while surfing the internet. Chances are you're going to click that and really get something bad when you were already fine, or some software is going to get installed and you'll be asked to pay for it since it obviously just fixed something. Stop. Think. Quit Clicking Everything You See.

Social Bookmarks :

Web Sites That Auto Play Things

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 21:19:00 GMT

This has been one of my top gripes since the age of the internet began, I honestly don't know how I didn't include it in the first few gripes! I hate any web page with auto-playing multimedia with sound (auto playing silent video, while annoying, is a little more tolerable.) Just what the hell am I talking about? I'm talking about visiting a web page that has a movie or maybe a song, and the web page author just loves it so damn much they have to start playing it right away. It's annoying. It's stupid. Worse, it's just plain bad netiquette. Give your visitors the option of playing your content.

Social Bookmarks :

Baby Monitors

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 20:21:00 GMT

I don't dislike what these do, they let you hear you child cry easily. What I do hate is the technology: they amplify every little sound and add tremble to it which probably adds 50 decibels to the sound. They crackle for no reason too. What someone really needs to do is build these things to transmit when a certain user-definable sound threshold is reached: (e.g. your kid actually crying!)

Social Bookmarks :

\Ar"ro*gance\

Fri, 26 Nov 2004 21:23:00 GMT

\Ar"ro*gance\, n. [F., fr. L. arrogantia, fr. arrogans. See Arrogant.] The act or habit of arrogating, or making undue claims in an overbearing manner; that species of pride which consists in exorbitant claims of rank, dignity, estimation, or power, or which exalts the worth or importance of the person to an undue degree; proud contempt of others; lordliness; haughtiness; self-assumption; presumption. It's really too bad that most arrogant people don't know that they are and instead define themselves as "ambitious" and able to "take charge" - feh, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Social Bookmarks :

Xbox Controllers

Fri, 26 Nov 2004 21:22:00 GMT

This past Thanksgiving my nephew brought along his XBox and I was looking forward to trying a little Halo 2 having play the pervious one on my PC. I say now and for the record that the XBox controllers are a steaming pile of magical crap. They have no "fine control" at all, the button placement is awkward, and that double thumb control is just stupid. (BTW - Halo 2 is cool!)

Social Bookmarks :

The Major's HomeSteve's Gripes

Cable Modem Annoyance

Do It Yourself

Phish Scams & User Foolishness

Can you *chomp-chomp* help *slurp-smack* me?

Fixed Width Web Pages

Clickers of Everything

Web Sites That Auto Play Things

Baby Monitors

\Ar"ro*gance\

Xbox Controllers

Can you chomp-chomp help slurp-smack me?