Alan's Place

An Early End to My Soccer Season

2009-11-12T10:33:00.000-08:00

I blink my eyes and time seems to sweep by in great bounding leaps covering weeks at a time. Better to be busy than bored, I think, and my family certainly keeps me busy!

I've been playing in my third season of adult soccer, and this season has mostly been injury filled and disappointing. Ever since my ankle injury in January of this year, my right ankle has just not been "right". When one part of your body is injured, you naturally try to reduce the amount of stress placed on that area of the body. Unfortunately, doing this can often times cause problems for the other areas of your body which aren't used to this new stress.

Since my ankle was injured, I haven't felt comfortable out on the field. Rolling an ankle increases the likelihood of doing it again, so it can become a fairly vicious injury-circle. I've tried doing some ankle strengthening exercises, and was beginning to feel better when I was struck down by another injury.

A few people on my team were scrimmaging against some local soccer coaches, and after about an hour and a half of a good scrimmage, I found myself attempting to make up on defense forthe sweeper who muffed getting the ball out of the back. I caught up with the striker and tried sticking a leg out in front to get a touch on the ball, when I suddenly felt my hamstrings go *sproing* (or something like that).

I went down immediately to try and minimize any possible damage beyond what was already done, and made my way home with an ice pack grafted onto my leg. It wasn't a horrible injury in regards to pain, especially compared to my previous calf muscle tears and ankle injury, but it was enough to know that I would not be able to play soccer for a few weeks.

After three weeks, I came back to the pitch to try and give it a go again after running on it a bit during my lunch hour. However, it was not rested enough and after one attempted sprint to close on another player during a game, I knew I was done for the season and took myself out of the game.

So here I am, three weeks from my previous attempt at returning, and now I'm trying a bit of jogging and plan to work my way back up to the sprinting one needs to do during a game. With my season over, I can now focus on taking it one step at a time to try and ensure that when the next season rolls around, I'll be ready.

P.S. Getting old sucks!

Sumatra PDF Viewer

2009-09-02T10:16:00.001-07:00

This will be a very quick blog post, perhaps more appropriately classified as a "shout-out". The PDF format is wonderful for preserving detailed formatting across multiple platforms, and is all over the web. Thus, we need an application to view these files.

Most people are familiar with Adobe Acrobat Viewer, as Adobe was the original creator of the PDF format, and hence had the first authoring and viewing tools for the PDF format. Unfortunately, their viewer application continues to increase is size and decrease in speed with each successive release. The later versions of the application go so far as to auto-run portions of the application at startup, to reduce perceived start up times later on when you actually want to view a PDF file (much like that bloated pig of an office suite - MS Office).

If you are looking for a lighter weight solution to viewing PDF files on the Windows platform, let me recommend the Sumatra PDF Viewer. It is light weight, clean, and functional. It does not contain all of the bells and whistles in Adobe Acrobat Viewer (like form filling), but then again, that is why it is so small and fast.

Give it a try and see if it does what you need - so far, it has exceeded all of my requirements and expectations!

P.S. I was using Foxit for a while, but had problems with it updating under Vista. Plus, all of the ads sort of soured me on the software.

Drupal

2009-08-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

At work this week, I've been looking at upgrading our website from the home-built effort that is looking fairly stale to something a bit more modern and up to date. I created the basic framework of the site many years ago, using Apache with PHP on a linux server.

The site is extremely fast, but it is difficult to edit existing content, or add more. Furthermore, there is no database back end for the site, which means no users with permissions approriate to their need.

In thinking about our site redesign, I realized that I should take a serious look at a well supported content management system (or CMS) which fulfilled the following requirements:

Must support user / password logins and configurable roles for each. As an example, there should be an anonymous user role for random visitors to our site, an authorized user role for people who have successfully registered with the site, and then specialized roles such as "content creator", "administrator", "product user under maintenance", "partner", etc.
For the above mentioned roles, different security levels and options should be available. Only users with the "partner" role should be able to access the "Partner Portal" of our site. Only users with the "product user under maintenance" role should be able to download an update to the product in question.
Non-technical people should be able to create content on the site.
It needs to support different visual styles (or themes), and I need to find one that looks good.
Support for new stories, regular pages, and maybe even book-type formats will be needed.
Allow authorized users to comment upon stories and pages.
It has to be flexible.

After looking around a while, I decided to give Drupal a try. I was vaguely familiar with it in passing, but had not yet really tried to do anything with it, which is usually when the fiddly bits will show up.

I downloaded the Drupal 6 Turnkey Appliance ISO, and installed it on new virtual machine using Sun's VirtualBox (which is a great product). Over the course of the last several days, I have been planning and implementing the new version of our website, and have a few observations on Drupal.

First of all, there are many themes available for Drupal, which may be experienced by visiting the Drupal Theme Garden. I have selected a few that I like, with a definite favorite. If you want to know which one I selected, well you'll just have to wait until we roll out the new site!

I have found Drupal to be extremely flexible. It supports a module system where functionality can be added to the core system, taking it the direction you want to go. I have installed modules which allow for access control mechanisms (requirement #2 above), book style content, and a host of others which improve the look and function of the site.

With all of the options and flexibility, starting out can be a bit daunting. Luckilly, the main Drupal website contains some useful documentation to help you understand, install, and then implement it. In my humble opinion, the investment is well worth it if you are looking at a website similar to the one I've outlined above.

Auto Repair Weekend

2009-07-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

In preperation for my family's upcoming vacation to Cayucos, I decided to give our 2001 Chevy Suburban a tune-up and try to figure out why it was idling low and occassionally stalling at idle. My Saturday was fairly wide open, other than a practice scheduled for my daughter's soccer team that I would need to get her to.

I haven't done much work on the Suburban since we bought it (with 21k miles on the odometer), and now with 90k miles on it, the 'burban was due for some servicing. I installed a K&N air filter at around 30k miles, so it was time to clean and re-charge it. This was a fairly trivial task, once I purchased the recharge kit from the auto parts store.

Next, I decided to change the spark plugs. Most new cars don't need the plugs swapped out until about 100k miles, but since I was experiencing the idling problem, I thought it would be a good first stab at the problem. One thing nice about the Suburban is that the engine is fairly accessible compared to many other cars. I bought 8 new AC Delco Iridium plugs, and took out the old plugs and replaced them with the new ones, only losing around 5 pouds of weight due to sweat during the process.

Next up was a new fuel filter. I have replaced it once before on the Suburban, but it is always fun trying to squirm under the beast and disconnect fuel lines, etc. About an hour after I started and many expletives later, the new fuel filter was in and I could call it a day after I started her back up and gave her a test drive.

Unfortunately, all the work I completed had no effect on the low idle / stalling problem - argh! I was done working on the car for the day.

On Sunday, I decided to research the problem on the internet, and found that this is a somewhat common problem for the Chevy Vortec engines. The most common advice I found was to clean out the throttle body, and this would usually take care of the problem. The procedure couldn't have been easier. Disconnecting the air intake from the throttle body allowed me to take a rag with a bit of acetone on it, and clean some built up carbon deposits around and on the throttle plate. The job (which would have run me in the neighborhood of $50 - $150 at the dealer) took 15 minutes and cost maybe $0.25 in acetone, and the problem was completely solved!

Baseball Season Wrap-Up

2009-06-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

The little league baseball season was wrapped up for my team (AAA division, mostly 9-10 year olds) this Saturday, when closing day ceremonies took place. After the ceremony, I found myself placed in a dunk tank, with my players eagerly lining up to dunk me with a gleam in their eyes.

Our regular season record was 10 wins and 8 losses, good for second place in the league. I had initially hoped for better at the start of the season, but no plan survives contact very long. We played the #1 team very hard on all but a few occassions, so my players can hold their head high and be proud of the progress made this year.

In the Vista City Tournament, we won our first two games convincingly, and then lost two games to finish tied for 5th place. Our first loss was against the eventual 1st place team, and we should have won that game except for the wheels falling off of our defense in one inning. And so it goes...

So now I will have to find something to do with all of the time with which I now find myself. I figured out that during the season, I spent well over 200 hours on meetings, practices, and games. This does not take into account time spent going to/from locations, nor the time spent at work planning lineups and position charts. Yes, I was kept very busy, and yes I will miss it!

Next year, my son will move up to the Major division, and I look forward to the challenges that it will bring, as well as the improved quality of game play. It is so very rewarding to see kids I have coached since tee-ball turn into smart and skillful baseball players!

It's Quiet Around Here... Too Quiet

2009-04-24T09:18:00.000-07:00

What can I say other than, "Life is very busy". I'll try to provide a few updates here, however.

Little League Baseball

The season is well into the second half, and it looks as if our team will finish 2nd place. We only play the #1 team twice in the second half, and have already lost both of those games. Thus, barring some kind of divine intervention, the Angels will have to be happy with a 2nd place finish. However, once the regular season is complete, we get to look forward to the city tournament! So the team is still practicing hard and trying to refine our game with that tournament in our sights.

Soccer

My soccer team is currently undefeated, with 1 win and 5 ties! It seems that all 4 teams in our men's 35+ division are fairly evenly matched, which is good. My ankle injury has still not yet healed completely, which I find irritating. I am guessing that it will not be 100% good for a few more months, but it is good enough to play on now, so I do what I can.

Family

The rest of the family is doing just fine. We camped at San Elijo state beach for 4 nights during the kids' spring break, and the weather cooperated with us fairly well for a majority of the time there. In July we are looking forward to a vacation in the Central Coast as well.

What's Been Happening in My World

2009-02-23T07:53:00.001-08:00

It has been well over a month since I last wrote anything here, and as you may guess, I have been very busy. I'll try to catch up a bit with this post.

Ankle Injury Update

My ankle has healed up fairly well, and is probably back up to 80% of it's original strength after 6 weeks. I've played a bit of soccer over the last two Sunday afternoons, and it just isn't quite right yet. I have also had a large blister form both days on my right instep. I'm not sure if I am doing something awkward to compensate for the weakened ankle, or if it is th new shoes. Next week, I'll be playing back in my old pair of Copa Mundials and see if the situation improves a bit.

Our first soccer game of the new season is on Friday, March 6th. I'd like to be somewhere in the vicinity of "being in good shape" by then.

Little League Baseball

A new baseball season is underway, and I am back at the helm managing my son's AAA baseball team, the Angels. The rain has interfered with practices a bit, so we've done the best we can. Opening day in on Saturday, March 7th, so we have 2 more weeks of practices to get some of the rust off of the ole baseball gears. I'm hoping for a good season - it always seems to come down to the pitching!

New Technology

I picked up a new Toshiba laptop on Saturday from Fry's. At $399, it was too good of a deal to pass up, and our old Dell 700m has been showing signs of aging for quite some time. The new laptop sports an Intel Core Two Duo T3400 CPU (2.16 GHz, 667 MHz FSB), 2 gigabytes of RAM, a decently size 160GB hard drive, and a nice 15.4" wide screen display (1280 x 800).

I've gone through and stripped out most of the crap that came bundled with the notebook (Norton begone!), and installed Firefox, OpenOffice, Notepad++, etc. Windows Vista Home Premium seems to work well on the PC (response is snappy, display is crisp), and it is my first experience with the OS. I actually installed the Windows 7 beta in a Virtualbox VM before ever seeing Windows Vista, and I can't say I see much of an improvement or difference between the two versions.

Windows Vista *is* a bit chatty with the UAC stuff, though, isn't it? Dialog boxes come flying at you during installation of new apps, but I don't mind it too much. I do believe that Windows 7 has improved in that regard. However, I don't see much that would compel anyone to upgrade from Vista to 7.

A Late Christmas Gift - Not Broken!

2009-01-16T07:39:00.000-08:00

Woo-hoo! I received some great news yesterday during my appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. It turns out that the protrusion of bone on my lower fibula is, in the doctor's opinion, from a previous ankle sprain. My ankle is *not* broken - the x-rays were simply misinterpreted by the Urgent Care doctor, which can (and will) happen if they are not experts in the skelto-musculature realm of medicine.

So, the doc said that I should try putting weight on my ankle as I could, first with both crutches, then with a single crutch on the good side, and then with no crutches. When I got back home, I tested out my ankle and was able to put weight on it with two, then one crutch. Later that evening, I discarded the single crutch and was able to hobble around fairly well, even helping out with the preparation for dinner.

To cap off the night, I was able to ascend our stairs to the second story and actually tuck in my kids and sleep in my own bed for the first time in four days.

As far as further recovery is concerned, the doctor said that wearing a brace might be a good idea for the next few weeks, and to work on my range of motion in the ankle. Running is out of the question for about three weeks, but biking would be a good exercise when my ankle feels up to it. I am hoping to be back in soccer shape in fixe to six weeks - we'll see how things go.

I can not express how happy I am to be rid of those crutches! The four days I had to deal with them has given me a small dose of insight into what it must be like to permanently live with a disability. Just being able to walk and use my hands at the same time seems like an amazing gift to me right now.

Torn Calf Muscle

2006-07-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

About 4 weeks ago, the little league baseball season was wrapping up, and we held our end of the season team party at a park close by. Around 6:00 pm, after everyone had eaten their fill, we held a parents vs. kids whiffle ball game. No gloves, no helmets - just one whiffle ball and one big plastic orange bat.

After crushing the ball in my first at bat (batting opposite to try and even the odds a bit), I approached my second at bat with something resembling a smidgen of over confidence. Oh, how the proud are laid low!

I hit the pitch offered, and started down towards first. I am still unsure of the exactly what happened. All I do know is that it felt as if someone with a real baseball bat smashed my right calf muscle, and I gimped up immediately, barely making it to first on one leg, being put out at first.

I could barely walk for the next 24 hours, and things didn't start really improving for another 2 to 3 days. By the end of the week, I noticed my right foot was swollen, so I bit the bullet and made an appointment to see the doctor. After 15 minutes and a $30 co-pay, my doc cheerfully told me that I had described a text-book muscle tear, hitting the nail on the head with the "hit like a bat" description.

He massaged my calf seductively, and said that while he couldn't actually feel the tear (which was a good thing), it seemed to be fairly high up on the muscle (also a good thing). If the tear is lower, where there is less muscle to tear, then at times it is necessary to cast the lower leg. So, he said that like Woody Williams of the San Diego Padres (who tore his left calf muscle running the bases a few weeks before I did), I was on the "DL" for 4 - 6 weeks, and to try to take it easy.

Later that day I took my son to The Wave Waterpark, and stupidly tried to ride the Flow - rider wave machine, and tweaked the hell out of my calf again. Stupid me. After another 5 days of pain, it started getting better.

So here I am, roughly 4 weeks after the injury, and things are looking up. I went surfing last Thursday and today, with not too many issues. I'm taking it easy, while still trying to exercise it a bit to prevent too much muscle atrophy. Hopefully in another 2 weeks I'll be back to 100%.

Torn Calf Muscle Redux

2007-08-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

Could it only be just over a year ago when I first tore my right calf muscle? What I find most interesting is that this article has generated the most search hits on my blog - over 35%. Also of interest is that this spring and early summer, I noticed the frequency of these search hits increasing.

I guess this makes quite a bit of sense, as the weather improves and people get outside more frequently and over-do stuff. So, if you are one of those people who arrive here via a search for "torn calf muscle", welcome! Please leave a comment on how you injured yourself (accident, sporting, shark bite, etc.) and what your recuperation and recovery experience was. Especially helpful would be stretches to loosen up the ole' calf muscle to prevent this from happening a third time.

"Did he say third time?", I hear you mumble? Why, yes I did. However, this time it was the left calf muscle. Thus, it seems as if the universe has balanced out my damaged lower leg muscles once and (hopefully) for all.

We were at opening day for the Vista Soccer Club, and all three of our kids are playing this season. Besides team pictures, there are several booths there for the kids and/or adults who still think they are kids (that would be me).

My son ran a timed sprint, and set the record for his age group at that early hour. He encouraged me to give it a try, and I did so, even though my left calf had been bitching at me for several weeks that something just wasn't right. I didn't stretch, warm up, or do anything to remotely warn my calves what I was about to ask of them.

Two steps into the sprint, and I feel a pop in my left calf muscle, and immediately pull up and hop around like a wounded stork. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I applied ice immediately, went home, and applied R.I.C.E. therapy. Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation.

Comparing the initial discomfort to my previous injury, I knew that the new tear wasn't as bad as the old one. Instead of feeling as if someone hit the back of my leg with an aluminum baseball bat, the new injury felt as if something just popped loose.

So, as of this Monday morning, I am limping around the office like a goon, but relatively pain free. I will be taking it extremely easy over the next 4 weeks, with a goal of returning to the water and surfing gently at some point after that. Wish me luck!

[ Update: Please see this later post about my calf muscle rehabilitation, and add comments there. ]

Calf Muscle Rehabilitation and Soccer

2008-08-20T14:56:00.001-07:00

It has been just over one year since my last calf muscle injury. The blog post I made on the subject is the #1 post for my humble blog, as it pops up as a search result thanks to Google. As regular readers (I have at least 2) may know, I surf quite a bit - working 5 minutes away from the beach lets me use my lunch hour to get some water time in.

While I love surfing, it doesn't do much to stretch out or strengthen my lower body (however, it is very good for the upper body). So, I decided to look around for an adult soccer league to join that would be good exercise for my legs. Luckily, I found a men's over-35 team in Carlsbad that needed a few players, so I signed up.

About 2 weeks ago, I suited up in shin guards and cleats, and went down to a local field to try and get my feet on the ball a bit. I have coached youth soccer for the last 4 years, and look forward to actually playing again.

You can probably guess what happened next... After a workout on Tuesday, my right lower calf muscle felt a little tweaked, but not too bad - just a bit uncomfortable. On Thursday, I laced up and went to jog across the field and back to warm up a bit before stretching, and on the return leg the tweak cranked up a lot, and I had to stop and limp back.

It didn't feel like my previous two incidents, so I think that I did not tear the muscle - maybe just strained it or something like that. I limped for about 24 hours, and then started looking at how to stretch out the calf muscles to try and prevent this in the future.

I have stretched in the past, but I have never focused on the calf muscles. Instead, I'd work the quads, hammys, and groin. I realized that I had been neglecting my calves - pretty stupid of me (especially after two injuries).

Maybe neglecting is the wrong word... I have never been shown how to stretch out the calf, in all the sports I have played and gym classes taken through school and even in college. So, with the theory of "knowing your enemy" in mind, I first did some reading up on the calf muscle, which is actually a pair of muscles: the gastrocnemius and soleus. The article even mentions torn calf muscles, the 'pop' that so many of us feel, and the conditions that triggered it in my cases: sudden acceleration and changes in direction.

Next, I did a search on stretches focusing on the pair of calf muscles, and found these: gastrocnemius stretch and soleus stretch. Since I found these videos, I've been doing both stretches for 90 seconds on each leg, and I do believe that my lower legs are feeling better. I'm not back to 100% yet, but I can make my way around the pitch if I take care to avoid sudden acceleration and changes in direction. I hope to be back up to 95% before the first game of our season, which starts on September 5th.

If you have hurt your calf, please be careful to not stretch it out prematurely. A bad tear can take a long time to heal, so when you start trying to stretch, let common sense be your guide. Stretch slowly and gently, avoiding bouncing. Any pain should be a sign that you are doing too much too fast.

To keep the rest of your lower body in shape, I found that biking was fairly low impact for my most recent injury, so long as I didn't stand up and pedal (pushing on the front portion of the foot as you do to begin a sprint).

If you know of any other good stretches, or want to talk about your calf injury, please feel free to comment below!

Epic Fail - My Broken Ankle

2009-01-15T12:24:00.000-08:00

Ug. Maybe I should rename this blog to Alan's Place Where He Bitches About His Injuries...

Yes, a new year has come, and a new injury along with it. Up until this time in my life, I have been fortunate enough to have never broken a bone in my body. I was pure, as far as my calcified frame is concerned. Sure, the paint on the outside has suffered a few abrasions, burns, and general wear and tear over the years, but the frame on which it all rides was still in decent shape.

On Sunday, I play a pick-up game of soccer at a local park. After about 45 minutes of play, I was chasing down a ball and went up in the air for it. I landed with all of my weight on my right foot, which normally isn't a problem. However, when that right foot in turn lands on some kind of divot, problems can (and did) arise.

My right ankle rolled outwards as all of my weight bore down, and a 'pop' was heard by me and the player closest to me. I went down like a house of cards, to my hands and knees. I managed to crawl on my hands and knees off the field, where one of the other guys gave me some ice in a ziplock bag to ice it down.

After about 10 minutes of icing it down, I experimented with the joint a bit and found that I could move it around without much discomfort at all. I put on my flip-flops, and tested out putting some weight on it, and it seemed ok. Maybe it wasn't too bad after all?

I decided to call it a day, and then walked to my truck without too much difficulty. Some of the guys there asked if I needed any help, and I thanked them but said that it looked like it might not be too bad. One of them urged me to have it x-rayed, lest I wake up in the middle of the night with an ankle the size of a cantaloupe.

I almost dismissed the advice, except for the memory of the 'pop' sound. That was something new. So, I headed off to the local Urgent Care which was blessedly empty. After a few x-rays, the doc came in and said that it looks like there was a bone chip in my right ankle, and asked me if I had broken my ankle in the past? He said that he would consult with a radiologist the following day, and refer me to an orthopedic surgeon if it was a fracture.

The nurse splinted up my foot and calf, handed me a pair of crutches, a prescription for vicodin, and then I was sent on my way home. My wife picked me up, as I can not exert any pressure on the joint, and hence can not drive. Oh boy, this is going to be fun.

On Monday, I got an referral and appointment to see an orthopedic surgeon, which I will go to in a few minutes. More information will be forthcoming as it arrives. I am praying that no surgery will be needed, and that the break is minor.

Back in the Water Again

2006-12-13T15:23:00.000-08:00

For the first time in over four weeks, I went surfing today. My dry dock period began when I injured my left knee at soccer practice. I zigged one way without wearing cleats, and my foot zagged the other way on the wet grass - not good. Note to self: wear cleats, dummy.

I was pretty gimpy for a week, and was feeling almost 100% by the end of the second week. Since the surf was pathetic, I decided to do a bit of jogging to strengthen my legs and knees for the next week and a half. A bit of cardiovascular work always gets the blood pumping (ba-da-bing!).

We had a good amount of rain over the weekend, so it is always a good idea to wait 72 hours for the bacteria washed out of the storm drains to clear up. So, out I went today, completely out paddling shape for the good sized surf we've had since the storm.

Frankly, I was just glad to make it out and into the lineup. My arms had the strength of an over-cooked spaghetti noodle, and it was difficult trying to get my timing back to where it needs to be to catch a wave of decent size. So, let's hope this size holds out as I get back into surf-shape.

Fun with Virtualization

2006-12-15T14:12:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not talking about some aspect of the Matrix, or anything influenced by William Gibson. A few weeks ago, I installed the vmware server on my Ubuntu Linux box to see what was possible. Installation was painless, as vmware is available from the repositories. Thus, installation was only a simple `apt-get' away.

What does vmware allow you to do? In simple terms, it allows you to host one or more different operating systems (OS) while running the host OS. In my case, the host OS is Ubuntu Linux, but it could be Windows system as well. To download the vmware server, visit this page.

Once you install the virtual server software, the next thing to do is to decide exactly what you'd like to run. I decided that creating a Windows XP virtual machine (VM) would be a good first step. To do so, you specify a few options including what type of network interface the virtual machine will use (I chose to give the virtual machine its own specific ip address), hardware availability, and the size of the virtual machine's hard drive.

Once this is done, slip your Windows XP installation media in the CD-ROM drive and `boot' the virtual machine. If you haven't screwed up anything too badly, installation of the OS should proceed as normal.

I then went on to install Apache on the XP VM, and setup an ISAPI application which is normally deployed on IIS to see how it would perform. Everything worked as expected, and the performance of both systems was pretty respectable. My linux box only has 1 gigabyte of RAM, and I think that another gigabyte would be most helpful if I were to leave the VM up and running full time.

Once you are done working with your VM, you can suspend it (like hibernating a laptop) and when you restart the VM next, everything will be as you left it. Pretty slick!

So, what are practical applications for vmware? As in my example above, I could see people installing a VM of a different OS on a host OS to get functionality not currently available without installing another box.

Also, since the VMs are simple files in the filesystem, it makes backups and restores trivial. The VM sees identical hardware, no matter what actual hardware is used in the host OS. Thus, if one server goes down, simply copy a backup VM to another machine, and you would be up and running in no time.

Testing is another area where I can see VMs playing a prominent role. Instead of having 5+ boxes that take up a lot of space, energy costs, and maintenance, you instead have one sysem which hosts the other test environments. Start up one VM, test, and shut it down. Move to the next VM, etc.

Finally, there are already many vmware appliances available. Examples include a Windows 2003 server trial edition, various linux distributions, mail server suites, LAMP stacks, etc. It makes trying a new linux distro trivial, which is another bonus.

Are any of you using them in innovative ways?

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-22T08:02:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, with high hopes for a prosperous new year! I'm taking a couple (much needed) weeks off from work to spend time with the family, surf a bit, and decompress. See you in 2007!

New Year's Eve

2007-01-12T13:38:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm back from vacation and slowly getting back into the rhythm of actually having to work for a living. As I spent those two weeks away from work, I constantly found myself thinking, "I could really get used to this not working thing." Too bad the "no money" thing is more of an issue...

My wonderful wife gave me two tickets for the last regular season game of my San Diego Chargers. It happened to fall on New Year's Eve, so my mom and dad watched the kids while the two of us headed out for a rare day together.

We made it down to the stadium by 10:30, and met up with two of my nephews, my brother-in-law, and a few of his work associates to tailgate before the game. All of us were wearing our Charger jerseys, as one would expect!

We parked outside of the stadium and walked on it ($20 parking fee for stadium parking - le ouch!) as it was a nice day, and we parked close to a nice exit route to avoid stadium traffic when the game ended.

The seats we had were up in the View (aka Nose Bleed) level, but I was surprised that I really enjoyed watching the game from there. It was very easy to see plays develop, holes form in the line, and receivers break free from coverage. The only complaint I had with the seats was that we were in the sun the entire time. If I had brought a hat, it would have been fine.

The Chargers won the game, even though they pulled Rivers and Tomlinson out for the last part of the third and all of the fourth quarter. The Cardinals made a game of it at the end, however the home team prevailed and sixty thousand plus fans went home happy, as did we.

After the game, we picked up our children and headed home. There, we let the kids stay up until 9 o'clock to watch the ball drop in Time Square. After getting the kids to bed (party animals that we are), we shortly crashed thereafter. Happy new year!

Upgrading from Debian Woody to Sarge

2007-01-23T08:01:00.000-08:00

At work, I use Debian linux as the distribution of choice for our file and mail/web servers. In my experience, the stable branch of the the Debian distribution has been very, very stable. When it comes to file and mail servers, that is exactly what I am aiming at - stability!

Each Debain stable release has a code name based upon (so far) one of the characters in Pixar's Toy Story. The current release is Sarge, the previous release was Woody, and the upcoming release is Etch. Sarge has been out for quite a while, with security updates continuing for Woody up and until the first of the new year.

I upgraded our file server from Woody to Sarge sometime last year, and experienced no problems. I was a bit more concerned with our mail/web server, as it serves important public facing functions for my company.

With solid backups prepared and a bit of trepidation in my heart, I began updating the mail and web server. I followed the directions published in the release notes, and experienced only a few minor hiccups along the way.

After about 200MB of downloaded updates and a bit of intervention from me, the system was ready to go. Email worked fine, as did our web server. All in all, a relatively painless upgrade path!

The next release of Debian is due sometime in the near future. However, right now everything seems to be working just fine, so I'm betting that Debian Sarge stays on these servers for the next year or so.

Firebug: Debugging Web Development

2007-01-26T08:53:00.000-08:00

If you do any kind of web development, then you are familiar with how difficult it can be to figure out how a complex web page has gone wrong. When you add in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), another layer of complexity is added, compounding the difficulty. Finally, if you are jumping onto the Web 2.0 bandwagon and looking to add Asynchronous Javascript And XML (AJAX) into the mix, then things can get downright unpleasant.

So, what is the harried web developer to do? Who or what will come to the aid of our intrepid master of all things www?

Firebug to the rescue! Firebug is a Firefox extension which does so many tasks so well, that it is difficult to summarize them in this short blog post. However, I'll do my best to highlight a few.

Firebug lets you explore the structure of any web page in a variety of ways. When Firebug is active, it resides in a window at the bottom of your web page. Alternatively, it can appear in a separate window, although I like the integration with the page I am viewing. Combine this with tabbed browsing and you have separate Firebug windows for each tab.

In HTML mode, Firebug displays the source code of the current page, initially folder for a good overhead view. When you put your mouse cursor over an element in the HTML display, the portion of the web page to which it corresponds is highlighted. There is also functionality to revers this process: hit the 'Inspect' button on firebug, move your mouse over a portion of the web page you are intereted in, and the HTML view will move to that part of the source.

The HTML display is updated in real time as well. As I am typing in this post, I have Firebug open and see it add my text to the web page as I type. The HTML display allows you to edit the source in place as well. This sentence was typed in the Firebug HTML view...

When you select an HTML element in Firebug, another sub-window displays the CSS properties of that element. Now, you will know exactly why an element looks the way it does, and from which CSS rule the look and feel descended. It has a very nice visual representation of the CSS box model for each element, cleanly conveying the offset, margin, border, padding, and size of the element.

There are so many other features to describe: a javascript console, a windows to monitor and time network requests, DOM functionality, and more. The latest issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal (February 2007) has a nice article on Firebug, which is available online. After reading through that article, go download and experiment with Firebug - I bet that it will become an essential tool for your web development needs!

Yet Another Reason to Not Upgrade to Vista

2007-01-29T10:22:00.000-08:00

I've pretty much avoided discussing Windows Vista on this blog as I really haven't found many interesting tidbits about this new OS. I am of the general opinion that Vista is an XP "point" upgrade - like XP.5, or something like that. It isn't adding features with which I am particularly impressed.

High on my list of annoyances are the many different flavors of Vista available (5, I think), and the lack of a clear message detailing what you get (or don't get) with each version. I can see many people looking at the various flavors and saying, "WTF?".

Much of Vista's marketing push seems to focus on the user interface enhancements made to the system. Of course, to make optimal use of these new enhancements, Microsoft recommends a computer with a pretty hefty set of requirements - a list which many non-gaming PCs will fail to meet. So, you could run Vista in a "degraded" mode where many of the UI changes are not present... and end up with a product similar to XP.

Microsoft has also made a fairly draconian change in the usage of the upgrade editions of the new OS. In the past, upgrade editions could either be upgraded over an older version of Windows, or you could do a fresh install on a blank hard drive. This came in handy, as it was common practice for some to reinstall Windows annually to clear out all the cruft that accumulated. Also, it is essential to do a clean install when a system has been infected with a rootkit and/or many viruses.

To reinstall a Vista upgrade edition OS, you will first need to install an older version of Windows, and then do the upgrade all over again. Either that, or you could bend over and fork out a good chunk of change for the "Full" Vista (insert flavor here) Edition.

If you have XP, then I'd recommend not upgrading to Vista. The extra hardware costs needed to receive the full benefits of Vista plus the hose job Microsoft is handing out for their "Upgrade Edition" are just too much to swallow. Stick with XP on those Windows boxes you need, and maybe look at trying out a Linux distribution like Ubuntu for others.

If you need to get Vista, I'd look at buying a new PC and getting it bundled with the system. For the full retail price, you might as well get a system that works well with it at the same time.

My Dog + Rain = Sleep Deprivation

2007-02-01T13:51:00.000-08:00

Our dog, Ace, is now 11+ years old. My wife and I picked him out of a litter of puppies from the San Diego County Animal Shelter, located in Carlsbad. As it turns out, he was the lucky one of the litter, as the others were put down due to illness the Monday after we adopted him. He had is share of health problems when he was young, but he bounced back nicely and he's been with us ever since.

He is a big dog. At around 115 lbs and tall enough to pick stuff off the dinner table, it is challenging keeping food away from this mutt. We had to put a lock on the pantry because he knows how to open up doors and took to browsing through the pantry and devouring a box of cereal or loaf of bread. To say that our dog is food-motivated would be an understatement.

Ace is part chocolate lab and part great dane. We did not know about the great dane portion of his heritage until it became obvious as he grew. About one year after we adopted Ace, our first child was born. 3 kids later, and Ace has been pretty good with all of them although he is a bit grouchier now than he was when he was a puppy.

I'm not sure how old Ace will get - he's got some serious gray around the muzzle, many fatty tumors on his back, chest, legs, etc., and he's definitely not as nimble or energetic as he used to be. From what I understand, the average great danes life expectancy is under 10 years. Since Ace is a mixed breed, I imagine that he is expected to supersede that number.

So, what has this got to do with the title of the post? Well, the last year or so has seen Ace change his behavior under certain circumstances. Now, whenever it rains, he gets extremely scared. He will come upstairs when the rain starts and start knocking stuff down, making a huge racket. He will go into the bathroom and use his nose to life up the toilet seat and then let it come crashing down. When you try and comfort him, you can feel his whole body shaking. When this occurs at night, well now you know where the sleep deprivation fits in.

We talked to the veterinarian, and he gave us two pills to test out. This medication is called Clomicalm, and cost us $6 a pill! Gah! Doing a little detective work, I have found that a generic is available online, which would be significantly less expensive. Let's hope that our vet is willing to prescribe the generic and fax Ace's prescriptions to the online pharmacist - otherwise we are pretty screwed.

If any of you have any other suggestions, I am willing and ready to listen!

DSPAM Installed

2007-02-13T08:19:00.000-08:00

At work, we have a Debian Linux box that serves as our mail and web server. Recently, I upgraded that box from Debian Woody to Sarge. After that upgrade was complete, I decided to try and improve upon the spam filtering implementation.

The mail server runs qmail as the SMTP server, and I have the mail delivered to local users via procmail. Using procmail allows me to do all kinds of neat filtering on the server side. As an example, I automatically place mailing list traffic into separate IMAP folders. Similarly, mail from customer domains is automatically placed in their own company specific IMAP folders, thereby organizing my incoming emails automatically.

One of the filters that I had incoming mail going through was SpamAssassin. When I first installed SpamAssassin 2+ years ago, it did a very good job of detecting and flagging spam. However, the spammers have gotten rather sophisticated over the last two years, and many of them now actually test their spam against SpamAssassin to try and thwart it. While SpamAssassin was still able to detect and flag an ample amount of spam, more and more seemed to slip through as the months went by.

I decided to try out DSPAM after hearing good reports on its performance from a friend, and reading about it on its website. It wasn't available in the Debian repository, so I downloaded the source tarball and then built and installed it.

DSPAM works best if you have a corpus of spam and non-spam (or ham) to train it. If you do not have a good selection (in the thousands), then I would recommend not using it until you do. Once you train DSPAM with emails that are good and bad, then you can put it to work effectively.

DSPAM is not a fire and forget type of spam fighting solution. It requires a certain amount of vigilance on the part of the user to correct falsely flagged spam or ham. I set up three folders in each user's IMAP folder hierarchy for this purpose:

Spam/ - This is the folder where DSPAM sends all emails it detects as spam.
Spam/Missed/ - This folder is where users place emails which DSPAM did not detect as spam, but should have.
Spam/NotSpam/ - This folder is where emails are placed which were detected as spam, but are not.

Every night, cron executes a bash script I wrote which crawls through the Missed/ and NotSpam/ directories, correcting DSPAM's mistakes.

So, how is it working? After about 3 weeks of use, my accuracy rate is up to over 95%, and that is with out as much initial training as I recommended. I expect that over the course of the next month or two that I will be able to get that accuracy up to the triple 9's range - 99.9%.

Over all, I am extremely happy with DSPAM's performance. It is a bit trickier to install and get going, but once it is humming along nicely, it purrs.

Update on my Nervous Dog

2007-02-20T15:10:00.000-08:00

This is a follow-up post to the a previous installment, so read that first if you don't know what I'm talking about...

We talked to our vet (which is located in a large chain of pet stores), and ever since they were bought out a couple of years ago, things have gone down hill. To write a prescription, they want to charge us $13 for each. Ug.

My wife has a friend who is a vet-tech and lives in Colorado. On Friday, she talked with her for the first time in quite a while, and mentioned Ace's problem. She suggested we try giving him one Benedryl tablet, as that will sometimes calm dogs down enough so that they can sleep. Of course, it also might have the opposite reaction, so be ready.

On Sunday evening, the rain started to come down and Ace got real skittish. Figuring that there was no better time than the present, I gave him a generic Benedryl, and he slept like a champ until 6:30 in the morning. No worries, no problems! ;>

What I've Been Reading

2007-03-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

For my birthday and Christmas, I received several books that I've been going through. I just finished Robert Heinlein's A Stranger in a Strange Land. It is my understanding that this is commonly viewed as one of the best Science Fiction books ever written, however I just can't share that opinion.

The first third of the book was interesting, and kept me reading. The remaining 2/3's of the book were a bit more laborious and uninspiring. I don't know why, but I find stories about uber-people who are nigh invulnerable and so much better than everyone at everything to be rather boring. I had the same problem with Frank Herbert's Dune. Some of the ideas in Heinlein's classic are interesting to mull over, however the story just didn't grab me and pull me in.

On the other hand, Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald, is a fantastic short story filled with flavor and character. If you like your Cthulhu mythos blended with a Victorian setting and spiced with a dash of famous literary characters, then you won't be disappointed. The layout of the story, done as a newspaper complete with advertisements, is splendid. At 9 pages, it would be criminal and rather lethargic of you to not read it.

So, what do I have next in the lineup to read? Some old school Greyhawk fiction that escaped my notice when I was younger...

Guitar Hero and Me

2007-03-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

We bought the kids a PS2 for Christmas, and bought two new games that don't involve just sitting on your arse all date long: Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) Supernova and Guitar Hero. I bought DDR plus two dance pads for my wife and daughter, whereas Guitar Hero and the axe that comes with it was for my middle son and I (really).

DDR is fun, and a good work out as well. However, this post is not about DDR. No - this post is an ode to Guitar Hero (GH), one of the best games I've played in quite a while. At it's base, GH is a rhythm game, where you press down 'frets' and strum as the game directs you. The music is divied up into sections which advance in complexity, starting with "Opening Licks" and progressing in difficulty until you get up to the final the "Face Melters".

The selection of songs is outstanding, and each is performed not by the original artists, but it is difficult to tell. Another bonus:I've been exposed to a lot of music which I never heard before, and like most of it. I have now almost completed the game at Medium difficulty, and will probably make the leap to the next level sometime in the near future.

The neat thing is that this has caused me to pull out my Fender Stratocaster and clean it up and play with it a bit. My son is fascinated with it, so maybe I'll try and practice a bit with it. It's been a longgggg time since I last practiced, so it isn't going to be pretty. I'd take lessons if they were'nt so damn expensive...

Anyhow, if you get a chance to play it, give it a shot. I bet you'll enjoy it if you like rock music.

Baseball Season - Week 1 Wrap-up

2007-03-12T14:31:00.000-07:00

I am managing my son's Little League team again this year, and we (the team and I) are having a very good time. The AA Raptors have just completed our first week of games (2 games per week barring any rain outs), and are now 2-0.

The team saw the return of 5 kids from last year's team, along with 5 new recruits. So far, the kids seem to really have a good understanding of the game and have made some tremendous plays for it being so early in the season. I don't know if I am coaching a more effectively than last year (I am sure that I am coaching differently, as I constantly learn as well), or if it is that the kids are just now more capable when it comes to understanding the game. Whatever it is, they are having a great time and I am enjoying watching them play ball.

Game #1 was played Monday evening, without the benefit of a pitching machine. The three legs which form a support tripod for the machinery was missing, so it fell to the managers / coaches to pitch to their own teams. The final score was 19-13 through 6 innings. I figured that I threw about 125 pitches and finished with an ERA of of 28.5! Man, was my shoulder sore the next day. Our lead off batter went 5 for 5, hitting for the cycle. Defensively, we also turned a double play (pop out to P, man on 1st ran to 2nd without tagging up, put-out at first).

Game #2 was played Saturday afternoon, with the pitching machine present and accounted for. I was a bit worried how the kids would deal with the pitching machine, so earlier that day we went to the batting cages and hit off machines for an hour. I think that helped them out greatly, as none of the boy appeared hesitant during their at bats. Winning by a score of 6-19, our defense was again very solid. Offensively, we had 7 more hits than the first game, and 4 fewer strike-outs.

If you click on the thumbnails of the game's scorecards, you can see a larger version of them. I use the Situational Scorekeeping method, which is somewhat different than the dated, standard method.