How can you have more pudding if you don’t eat your meat?

Traditions are good… some traditions die because the are no longer needed or are no longer cared for. Others die simply because something better comes along and becomes the new tradition. And sometimes your fucking neighbors are working with large power tools at 7pm on a Sunday night because they are just that annoying!

I can’t wait for the heat to get here to put people in of doors until the fall.

One tradition that has fallen by the way side or me is the blogging/writing/whatever on Sundays. It’s been supplanted by football in the fall and movies on Sunday afternoon for the rest of the year. So just like last month and blatantly ripping off the death-by-blog crew yet again, I give you the return of Sunday night blogging. Since I seem to be doing ok with small changes over the course of the last year or so it seems like the time is right.

In the last week there has been alot of beer drunk, and alot of cars turning left which is to say I’ve been on vacation and on internet hiatus other then my phone. So that basically means I’ve been using the living bejesus out of my phone for the last couple of days. Now what I find interesting is my cell phone billing period starts on the 7th of every month. And since I took off for Nascar on the 7th I thought it would be neat to share some quick numbers on cell usage by one guy sending text messages and emails to people who really don’t care that much about NASCAR. Which is to say my friends.

So from Wed 4/7/2010 to Sunday 4/11/2010
-Voice Minutes — 12 (includes all kinds of minutes)
-Txt/mms — 309 txt / 68 mms (inbound and out on both counts)
– Data used — 15MB

For me this is what I would call “heavy usage” basically I was burning through a full battery charge every 36hours. The blackberry I currently have (9630) is notorious for having poor battery life. So that is one guy, now multiply that by the 20k to 30k that are out there for the week and it add in that there are 5 towers to cover the whole space of the track and affiliated parking/camping. And this all happens for two weeks out of the year (one in the spring and one in the fall) when there is no racing going on the local area has a population of probably less then 200 people.

Kind of makes you have a little bit more sympathy for the kinds of things that wireless engineers have to deal with.

I’m just really happy that the guy next to us had a 3ton floor jack in his camp when I had to replace the tire on my truck.

2000 some odd pictures later…

Once upon a time Cody said… the key to taking a good picture is to take lots and lots and lots and lots of pictures and you will get lucky….

Well I followed this advice… upgraded camera’s and took yet more pictures.   This week I received validation in two places.

#1 An email from these nice people….

Schmap Phoenix Eighth Edition: Photo Inclusion

Hi Catalexiis,

I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo has been selected for inclusion in the newly released eighth edition of our Schmap Phoenix Guide:

Downtown Phoenix
www.schmap.com/phoenix/sights_attractions/p=385394/i=385394_9.jpg
Thanks so much for letting us include your photo – please enjoy the guide!

Best regards,

Emma Williams,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides
www.schmap.me/emma.williams

And #2  This picture… which just happens to be in a collection of 300+ taken over the 4th of July weekend.

You have no idea how much this will only encourage me now.

Things I’ve learned in North Carolina….

–    NASCAR isn’t just popular… it’s a freaking way of life out here…. I thought Arizona drivers were aggressive, we have nothing on drivers from the Carolinas!
–    Rain is not a localized event… or short in duration.   It’s a days long event that is over a very broad area and it doesn’t stop anything.  Not construction nothing!
–    Umbrella’s suck for keeping anything other then your head dry.
–    Your shoes will always be soaked
–    BBQ is a way of life.
–    Banjos sound way better in person, and are easy to play!

Bluetooth War Sitting….

So one of the advantages to bringing your laptop with you to a conference is you can do fun things like bring up your wireless sniffer and see what’s out there like say Bluetooth devices!

So two things stand out to me here…

1. I’m surprised that some phones are still discoverable, since people by and large rarely change the default settings on Bluetooth from off to on. When I took this reading from my laptop there were probably 30 people with in the 30 feet of me which is about the maximum distance I can sniff Bluetooth with my laptop. snapshot-2009-06-05-07-00-05

2. The laptop user is just asking for issues… Windows and Mac by default have Bluetooth discovery turned off so someone out there is just flat being a idiot.

a. So while I was typing #2 I saw another Mac pop up…. And here is what my wireless sniffer had to say about that, and the other Mac is close enough that I can see his entire screen. snapshot-2009-06-05-07-10-23

b. So I guess my question is this… is it rude to go up to someone and say “Excuse me but your Bluetooth is showing” Especially on a MAC since you know most MAC users aren’t security minded like PC users are.

c. Also how wise it to have the “Remote Frame Buffer” (aka VNC) service out and advertising on bonjour? Along with Apple file sharing which at this point is really just SAMBA which is really just the open source version of windows file sharing?

I’m not at a IT security confrence but still these are interesting questions for those security minded people / security professionals that have been known to check around the old blog here.

Yes I know you come here… Google Analytic isn’t just for tracking my parents any more.

Tom… in North Carolina… A Match Made in Heaven?

So I’ve talked at length over the last 10 years or so about my love of participating in all things redneck… you know the little things in life.

Beer Brewing

Hunting

Nascar

And not quite redneck but I’ve also talked about football at various points.  Pretty much everything under the sun.

I’m in Charlotte for a conference and I knew it was NASCAR country  but I had no idea….

I turned on the evening news and about half way through the news cast they talked about a NASCAR driver who’s been suspended and getting his mansion forclosed on.  And when they hit sports the lead story was a NASCAR story, a couple of local sports stories, and another NASCAR story.

And on top of that my hotel room is across the street from NASCAR headquaters!

How cool is that?!?

Oh and I can see the “Bank of America” stadium home of the Carolina Panthers….

And you know what it still smells of defeat at the hands of a team from Arizona.

Of course I would be all to familiar with the smell of defeat and football.