moving parts of the kasper clan

… I shall list the things that I would actually put into a real post if I had the time:

• I would post about the incredibly fun time my little brood and I had down South-Easterly-like in our previous home-town of Harrisburg, PA, visiting the best of friends.
• I might mention the adverse effects that driving for 7 contiguous hours will have on your posterior region.
• I would upload some pictures to my flickr account, showing some of the fun, frivolity, and freakishness from previous weekend, including:
  1. a thorough smashing of one candy-stuffed Dora The Explorer pinata, culminating in my delicate, beautiful eldest daughter, smashing the utter bejeebers out of said beloved cartoon character, in full witness of several of her very young frequent viewers, Tiger-Woods-style.
  2. another outrageously fun all-out Nerf dart gun war, in which all fought valiantly, but none moreso than I, even going up against the infamous Captain Smythe who was armed dangerously with 2 25-shot gatling guns and 2 backup 6-shot semi-automatics tucked into her belt.
  3. proof of the dangerous effect of family driveway fireworks on the middle-aged and younger generation alike!!!
  4. my beautiful daughter, who is now unbelievably 16 years old *sniffle* Dangit, I want to turn back time and hold her delicate little body in my arms, singing “Silent Lucidity” to her through the small hours of the night. Where the crap is Doc Brown and his DeLorean anyway???? =:(
• I would mention how stinking hot it got on Monday and how utterly un-fun it is to have that and also a house that does not have air conditioning of any sort
• I would describe to some level of detail how very much I hate insects. I would also probably note that there is some degree of stupidity involved here, being that I have willingly purchased a home for my family in the middle of a bloody forest, surrounded by a rather large amount of insects and… other… larger… animals.
• I would undoubtedly use some very colorful language, detailing my current level of disdain for carpenter ants, my utter hatred for insects in general who dare to assault my fortress of solitude, and my particular dislike for carpenter ants who have decided to start invading my home as of late. Phaaaaawwww!!! Ick! *shudder* Also, anyone have any suggestions on how to get rid of the disgusting not-so-little varmints without also poisoning my well?
• I might also mention how little I am fond of the family dog at the moment, who has not been content to cost me > $200 to cure her most recent ails, but has decided to add insult to injury by puking and pooping not once but twice in our upstairs living quarters last night, at around 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m.
• I would probably mention that I’ve made a conscious effort to become consciously aware of how little time I’ve been spending keeping my OSS skillz in general and my KDE PIM skillz in particular up to snuff and to finally do something about it.
• I might also mention how a certain Google recruiter is far smarter than me in regards to the following questions:
  1. How to correctly de-allocate an array of memory that has been allocated in C++ with the new operator. (yes, I fully realize it’s kind of a trick question… the correct answer is delete[], not simply delete. I should get partial credit here, I think. =;) )
  2. What kill -QUIT (or kill -3) does to a JVM. (now, having never had to sysadmin a naughty java server, I had no stinking clue about this one. turns out it causes the jvm to print a stack trace and not quit. makes sense now that I think about it (and `man kill`). but seriously, if I ever needed to know this, why should I expect to have it committed to memory? I mean, come on, a quarter of my job includes employing google searches to pull up something I need to know… =;).
  3. What the speed and worst-case scenario of the Quick-Sort algorithm are. okay, this one I really must plead “oh gimme a break” on. though I suppose that there are plenty of uber-geeks out there who delight in this sort of college academia obscureness, I can definitely say that I have managed to do pretty well in the IT field and still don’t know the answer to this question. calculus, trig, linear algebra, and binary arithmetic have definitely come in handy in my life. not knowing the statistics of this recursive sort algorithm has not yet hampered me (other than on a certain phone interview with a certain (very nice!) Google recruiter) yet. I’m the first to admit… I was a Math major, not a CS major. =:(
• I might also mention how amazingly King David (of 1&2 Samuel in the OT) was messed up! His life, children, and family (many wives and children thereof) put today’s “daytime dramas” to shame! I’ve been reading through his life story as of late in The Message and am amazed that God called this man “a man after God’s own heart.” Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s not about how good you can smell, coming through this life. Maybe it’s about the condition of your heart when all is said and done and along the way, in relation to God. Maybe it’s about recognizing that you need to fix things when they’re wrong between you and your Maker.  Maybe it’s about taking His laws serious enough to do something about making sure you  honor and respect them, and making things right in your heart with Him when you don’t.  Maybe I have some chance of being a man after God’s own heart too. =:)

Well, I sure wish I had the time to write properly about all of this, but since it’s 1:30 of the clock already and I have another night of less-than-what-I-need of sleep ahead of me, I just don’t have the time, you see.

Maybe another week…

Shalom.

iPod Nano Skin, M:I:III, originally uploaded by vanRijn.

So, me needed to get me some armor for me iPod nano, matey, since me had one of the little buggers up and get a cracked screen on me in recent days bygone. And me started looking at me options. And me found the iPod Nano iSkins. And me thought they looked all slickey like. And then me saw the special edition, Mission: Impossible III iSkin. And me ordered it. And me got it today. And me am not so sure me likes it.

For starters, the new clothing makes me nano a trifle bit hard to use. Uncovering the bottom hole covers which cover the headphone jack and the cradle/cable port be not a simple thing to do. And turning the wee beastie on be much more difficult a thing to do now that the little switchie be partially covered by the suit. And the navigation wheel be very much not easier to use.

Harumph, says I. And Argggghhh. $40 for this?? Save yer gold, me mateys. Go fer somethin’ else, says I.

Arrrrrrrgh.

Update:  After having had this cover for a couple of weeks now, I can say that I would definitely have gone with another iPod nano cover, had I known better, specifically for these reasons:

• The bottom 2 fold-over port covers (covered the usb port and the headphone jack) are completely worthless.  The first thing I did was cut them off.   Can’t help but thinking that those little bits of cut-off silicone were part of the $40 I paid for this iSkin.
• The holes provided on the bottom for the usb port cover and headphone jack are too bloody small.  I had to cut the silicone iSkin to make the holes big enough to fit a standard headphone jack.  I can’t tell you how many times the headphone jack popped out of my iPod on its own, or with very little encouragement.  Annoying!  And again, more silicone cut off of the iSkin == more money wasted.
• It’s silicone.  This may be stating the obvious, but one of the things that I didn’t think about was that NOTHING sticks to silicone.  That includes the velcro strips that I have always put on the back of my music devices so that I can easily mount them on the dashboard of my car.  Blah.  I’ve still not figured out how I’m going to work around this.  Anyone know how to get velcro to stick to a silicone iSkin?  The iSkin people were of absolutely zero help.
• The see-through plastic screen protector is too small for the screen.  Had they made it just a little bit bigger, you wouldn’t notice at all, but they cut the plastic so that it covers up the outside edge of my nano’s screen and distorts it past recognition.  Just enough so that I can’t tell whether it’s playing a song or not (the play/pause icon is covered up by the edge of the protective plastic).  Blah!  That’s the biggest reason I bought this iSkin.
• The iSkin’s plastic click-wheel cover is absolutely worthless.  I spent a very frustrating couple of days trying to get used to it and came to the conclusion that it is a horrible idea and not worth the price of the plastic that it’s made out of.  Took it out of the cover so that the click-wheel is covered by the bottom piece of silicone and it’s at least usable now.  Blah!

So, again, save your money and buy something else.  I personally wish I would have bought a clear hard plastic cover that protected the whole thing (screen included), didn’t cover up the click wheel, and allowed for easy docking/headphone insertion.

I have had the pleasure(?) of living through the following:

• Getting two problems (ABS light and Airbag light were both stuck on) with our new-to-us 2005 Town & Country fixed only to find another problem (2 radiator fans refused to turn off when car was turned off). Had to disconnect battery overnight to turn off fans and prevent battery drainage. Took said vehicle back into the dealer who promptly and courteously fixed it. Again.
• Finding out that the family dog (who just yesterday started limping–refusing to set any weight on her left, front paw) has Lyme disease. $200+ later and doggie is now feeling much better, apparently.
• Beating head repeatedly against same problem at work for a week now is still not yielding any noticeable results, other than in softness of head.
• Compiled 2.6.17-rc4 kernel from kernel.org in an attempt to prove that same palm-pilot-related kernel crash existed in upstream kernel. After several iterations of fun and frivolity and make-kpkg’s and reboots, discovered that it does not seem to after all, which means that the problem must lie somewhere in either 2.6.15 or in the patches that ubuntu has made to it. Yay! This is, I think, the last major show-stopper from me being able to run Linux on my powerbook. About the only large annoyance now is the lack of Flash. Oh–I’ve decided that manually downloading QIF files and importing them into MoneyDance whenever I need to balance the checkbook is not such a horrible thing (refer to earlier post about MoneyDance, IBM’s PowerPC Java, and the inability to do OFX transactions).
• Started listening to Switchfoot’s Nothing is Sound CD. It’s pretty good. I think my favorite song thus far is the simultaneously deep and also infectiously make-you-want-to-scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs-too track, “Stars”. I will say this, though, and I mean no disrespect to Switchfoot, nor do I know anything of their contractual obligations or personal lives…. But this CD seems on an initial listen to be less hope/God-focused than their previous CD, The Beautiful Letdown, which was REALLY, REALLY good. I’ll not say much more because I’ve honestly not listened too closely, nor have I dug up the lyrics from the new CD yet. But I do hope that the Switchfoot guys are still as focused and passionate about God as they were in previous years. I also sincerely hope that their record label hasn’t pressured them into producing a more commercially-palpable product for the sake of being more commercially-palpable. It is a good CD, though, and I do like it. Here’s to you, Switchfoot, my home (town) boys. =:)
• Finally watched Jet Li’s latest film, Unleashed, and I was REALLY impressed! It was very artfully done, all around. I mean, it had the bad language that my TV-G couldn’t seem to filter out (no closed captioning on the DVD??), but other than that, I think it was a pretty good movie. It was certainly the best all-around martial arts movie I think I’ve ever seen. Morgan Freeman was (as always) excellent in it. His father figure role provided stability, peace, and focus for the entire film. Without him, I don’t think the film could have gone the distance. And Jet Li took some very brave steps in this film to try to grow in his abilities as an actor, and he pulled it off fairly well! I swear, Jet Li is the best martial artist that I have ever seen on film. I know I’m committing heresy here, but I would put my money on him over Bruce Lee (duck), Jackie Chan (sorry Jackie baybee!!!), Steven Segal (pfaw, yeah, like that’s even a challenge), Jean-Claude van Damme in his prime (*twitch*), and anyone else I’ve ever seen (hmmmm, David Carradine???). So, go put the kids to bed early, rent Unleashed, and enjoy some kick-butt fight scenes, a really touching story, some seriously M.Night-esque tense scenes (Victoria taking off his collar, anyone??), and the absolutely best close-combat fight sequence that I’ve ever seen.

So, I was at work today when my beautiful eldest daughter called me and asked me if I knew where the “other Internet stick” was.  I had to think about that one for a second.

Turns out, I have our computers using wireless USB network cards.  The other night, I had taken one of the wireless USB network cards out of the computer downstairs and left it upstairs.  Ah-HAH!  That’s what she was looking for!  The Internet Stick (TM) that I had taken out of the computer and left on my desk.  =:)

*teehee*

I love my kids!!!  =:)

Well, I had to make up for my blah-stricken previous post full of my woes and travails. So, anyway, I once had a nifty little iPod nano. I loved her like a cat and gave her a name and talked in soothing tones to her. Oh, little Beethovina and me were inseparable, yes we were.

*sniffle*

And then one fine day, Beethovina got a crack in her display. I cannot tell you how distraught I was. Ohhhh, I was nigh unconsolable.  Not to mention the fact that a 2-gig iPod shuffle sucks mightily, especially when what you really want is to be able to see the thingeys that you can’t see on the display.
*sniffle*

But I must tell you, dear reader, that this story has a happy ending. Today, I loaded Beethovina up into her original packaging and packed her (and my darling, patient bride and three wonderful children) into the Queen Family Truckster (”Now, I owe it to myself to tell you, Mr. Griswold, that if you are thinking of taking the tribe cross country, this is your automobile. The Wagon Queen Family Truckster. You think you hate it now, but wait till you drive it. “) and drove the required hour to the nearest Apple store… where, much to my surprise, the resident Apple Genius cheerfully replaced the little darling for me for free!!! I was SOOOOO impressed! I’ve never experienced such excellent customer service with anything computer-related in all my days. Wow.

Absolutely excellent service, Apple!!! Way to go, seriously.

And, coming back to my testey little post from days previous…. I suppose that my qualms with Apple aren’t really so much their fault. They are, all things told, a hardware company. And they do a most excellent job with it, truly. That was proved tenfold-over to me today, as I was so taken aback by the excellent customer service from the local Apple store that I luxuriously meandered through all the cool Appley stuff that they had like a kid with a sweet tooth and no money in a candy store.

Now, here’s another interesting piece of information that I didn’t know until just now: apparently, Apple has taken the high road in recent days and has admitted that there is a problem with certain iPod nano devices and has vowed to replace them for their customers:

Display screens crack easily on a small number of iPod nano digital music players, Apple Computer Inc. acknowledged Wednesday, saying it would replace flawed units.

Apple was responding to a flurry of complaints posted to online forums and community sites about faulty screens on the iPod nano, the tiny music player the company launched earlier this month to much fanfare. Most of the complaints revolved around screen scratches that made the displays difficult to read.

Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said Apple had received few complaints and the only real problem was cracked screens, which would be replaced.

So perhaps, just maybe, there was more at work in today’s enthralling replacement of my cracked iPod nano than just excellent customer service by the Apple Genius who was helping me, but still… they really do a very nice job with serving their customers, and the loyalty that they gain as a result is something well-deserved. Way to go, Apple! And, Microsoft, perhaps you should take notice (um, in case you haven’t been paying attention, Microsoft will only provide drive encryption technology called BitLocker with Enterprise-level licensing for Windows Vista)????

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I’ve named my new iPod nano Paganini-nina. *hug* Now… anyone have any recommendations for a really cute, bullet-proof nano case?

My current employer uses Exhange 2003 as its current groupware solution. I have on-and-off-again been beating my head against the proverbial concrete wall in trying to get it to work nicely with LDAP and addressbooks other than Evolution or Outlook, for obvious reasons. Today, my geeky noggin’ has broken through the proverbial concrete wall and I now have both KDE’s kaddressbook and Thunderbird’s address book successfully using the Exchange server here at work.

Yay, me!

Two things I’ve found this morning that have helped my noggin’ and I’ll list them here for future reference for myself as well as in hopes of helping some other poor concrete/geek/proverbial/noggin’-banging soul.

First, I’ve found this post which lists a very helpful step-by-step approach for getting things almost working:

OK, here is how Mozilla/Thunderbird LDAP works with Exchange 2000-2003:

1. The default LDAP port for Active Directory is 3268 (not 389) so make sure you’ve got this port open thru the firewall, and make sure to configure it in your LDAP account settings in Mozilla/Thunderbird.

2. For Base DN, you MUST enter something like dc=yourdomain,dc=com (whereas Outlook Express lets you get away with putting NULL).

3. For Bind DN, you must enter a domain user which has permission to search the directory. You should enter it qualified by the NetBIOS domain name, for example: mydomain\username

4. For some reason, Thunderbird doesn’t always seem to recognize that it needs to log on before querying. The easiest, most reliable way I have found to force it is to go to the Offline tab in the Directory Server Properties and click the Download button. This function seems to “see” that Active Directory wants a logon, so Thunderbird will display the logon dialog to let you enter your domain credentials. For the username, specify exactly the same thing you put into Bind DN.

5. Results are returned asynchronously to the Thunderbird Address Book, so you might see “No matches found” immediately after clicking the Search button. Wait a few seconds, and your results should show up.

6. Mozilla and Thunderbird default to a Search Filter of (objectclass=*) which will return lots of useless (non-email address) entries from Active Directory. You can override this with something like (objectclass=person) on the Advanced tab of Directory Service Properties. Depending on what kinds of addresses are in your Active Directory, you may need to refine this filter more (for example, if you’ve got mail-enabled Public Folders which you want to display).

7. The Address Book UI in Thunderbird is just clumsy. You CANNOT search an LDAP directory by simply selecting it on the left hand side and then entering your search in the “Name or Email contains” textbox. You MUST click the Advanced button to define an LDAP search. After you find your desired address(es) in LDAP, you “should” be able to copy it to your local addresses but the stupid UI only lets you look at the Properties or add it to the recipient list for a new message (by clicking the Write button).

And then there’s this page that helped me finally get it all working:

You can add a new address book with the following properties:

General tab:

Name: …
Hostname:
Base DN: dc=company,dc=com
Port number: 389 (non-secure) or 636 (secure)
Bind DN: YOURWINDOWSLOGONDOMAIN\yourwindowslogonuser

Advanced tab:

Don’t return more than [ 100 ] results
Scope: Subtree
Search filter: (objectClass=person)

If your organisation is large you may have to change the Bind DN so it only returns your unit (e.g. ou=yourdept,dc=company,dc=com) as otherwise Thunderbird may decide to act a bit strange.

You can force a read by clicking the Download Now button on Offline tab, although you won’t see any contacts afterwards, you have to search in the Compose window.

If you still get no joy you can download and install Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Support Tools and run ldp.exe against the exchange server. You don’t even need to install it if you decompress with WinRAR (or possibly WinZip) and look for the executable.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/892777

That way you can find out the Bind DN and search filter. First use Connection > Connect against the server, then Connection > Bind with your user and password then use View > Tree with a blank string and you can find a tree view of your Base DN and go into departments and retrieve user data to find out their objectClass if it’s not person.

Finally in Tools > Options > Composition > Addressing tick Automatically add outgoing e-mail address to my [ Collected Addresses ] as it’s much faster than searching the server.

Granted, these are instructional in getting Thunderbird to work with Exchange, but the same applies to KDE’s kaddressbook.

In general, I think the sticky wicket that really got things working for me was using Microsoft’s ldp.exe tool to browse the Exchange LDAP tree and see its innards. Specifically, I had to do this:

server: [active directory server]
base dn: CN=Users,DC=XXX,DC=XXX,DC=com (important to start with Users for me!!)
port: 389
bind dn: [windows domain]\[username]
search filter: (objectclass=*)
scope: subtree

The trick was, I think, that I had to provide a more specific base dn to the address books.

Hope this helps someone else out there, wherever your geeky proverbial concrete-bashing noggin’ may find you. =:)