Scott.Buffington.me

I attended a Rush concert at the Allentown Fair on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010.  TicketMaster asked our ticket purchaser for a review.  Here’s what he entered.  All of us will be surprised if it is approved:

[1 of 5 stars given]

This review isn’t about the show; at least, what I saw of it.  Rush always rocks and they’re my favorite band.  However, this is the first Rush show in 20 years of seeing them where I didn’t have a view of Neil Peart.  Unless you count the times they showed him on the video screen.  When I purchased tickets to this show, I got third row in section A, which was the reserved-seating ground section furthest to the right.  The seating chart didn’t show the stage, so I went ahead on faith that TicketMaster was indeed giving me the best seats available.  They didn’t.  We arrived at the venue and were amazed to find that our seats were nowhere near the stage.  We were at least 30 yards away from stage left’s edge and were at such a bad angle we could just see Geddy and Alex.  Neil’s drumkit and the video screen behind him were completely blocked from our view.  From my point of view, the Allentown Fair and TicketMaster conspired to rip me off.  Everyone around me felt the same way.  It was shameful to charge us the highest ticket price for seats that were worse than the general admission grandstand.  I won’t be coming back to this venue and I’m going to recommend against patronizing the Allentown Fair.

All three of us attending the show and all those around us were so disappointed when we were seated.  We had attended a show just two years ago at Hershey and our third row seats were right in front of Geddy Lee.  The seating we paid for Allentown Fair and the position of said seating would not have been appropriate for any show.  But for Rush it was a particular crime and I hope Rush never plays there again.  We could not even see Neil Peart, I saw a drum stick fly in the air occasionally.  Anyone that has a clue who Rush is knows that Neil is a vital part of seeing Rush, and not being able to see the stage props was also disappointing.  We could not see the time machine, nor the screen behind Neil, obviously since we could not see Neil.  I was so upset I felt like complaining to the ushers, but realized there was no point.  What was particularly disappointing is we paid the same price as those center stage and general admission had a better seat than we did.  We were flat out ripped off.  Here is a picture of our view.  

I could say more, but I think I’ve made my point.  Don’t patronize the Allentown Fair.  They are ripoff artists just like TicketMaster.  Rush, please don’t play there ever again.

I have been mildly interested in Google Go since Google announced the release of the programming language.  I toyed some with Go but had not dove in head first.  This week I decided that I might like to learn Google Go so one of the first exercises is the Fibonacci Number Sequence.  This was not an experiment in using the least amount of code and this may not be the most elegant way to achieve this result in Go, but it works.  

package main

import fmt "fmt"

 

func fiboNacci(n int) (seq int) {

  seq = n

  if n < 2 {

     return seq

  }

  seq = fiboNacci(seq-1) + fiboNacci(seq-2)

  return seq

}

 

func main() {

  for i := 0; i < 15; i++ {

     result := fiboNacci(i)

     fmt.Printf("%d",result)

     fmt.Printf("\n")

  }

}

Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day, celebrated annually on the last Friday of July.  A lot of you that read this blog are sysadmins like myself or you qualify as being recognized for your work on keeping the computer systems at your place of employment running smoothly.  To each of you, Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day!  Here is hoping that today finds you drinking a free quality coffee, feasting on free donuts or better yet, a free lunch with a craft beer for the road.

I do not get serious about baseball cards, mainly because they are a terrible investment.  The cards I have and display with care are for nostalgia and conversation pieces.  The only cards I have that I care about are Jacob's little league cards, my Billy Ripken error card and my Derek Jeter joke card.  Otherwise I have a few boxes full of cards for nostalgia sake.  This season when we went to see the Harrisburg Senators we picked up a couple decks of this years Senators team so that Jake could get to know some of the players.  For those that did not know it, Stephen Strasburg started with the double A Senators this Spring, so I was not too surprised to find a Stephen Strasburg card in the pack of cards.  

Most likely this card will never be worth anything, though I did see it on Ebay today with bids for $25.  This would likely be the time to sell it if I cared about such things.  Instead I will add it to the other cards I have as conversation pieces and if Strasburg ends up putting up a great career it might be an even better conversation piece.  I probably would not have paid much attention to the card except for all the excitement about his Topps rookie card going for big money a few weeks ago.  When I saw the card I told Jacob we will put this one to the side and take good care of it.  

There might not be much interest in the card now, but if Strasburg puts together a great career I have to think this Harrisburg Senator card would be slightly more rare than the Topps card.  At least for the moment, we have an interesting conversation piece to add to our collection.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

For a number of years I have been interested in getting a mountain bike, I had some road bikes that I road alone back in the 1990's, actually one that was really good and really fast.  I sold those aforementioned road bikes because they were strictly for the road and I did not like riding with cars so much.  I also wanted the option of using the bike comfortably as a commuter bike if I chose, riding with the kids and I wanted to be able to at least try some light trail riding if I chose.  Overall the mountain bike format just fits my wants better than a road bike ever did.  After looking at prices I was amazed at how much you could get for your money now, these bikes were a lot more expensive 15 years ago.  I am not sure when the prices fell, but it suffices to say that the price is much more reasonable now.  The quality of the bikes just feels much better also, the bikes seem to me to be higher quality with a reduced price tag.  

Reading reviews and looking at price factors I had decided that I was likely going to get a Trek 3900 Hardtail Mountain Bike, that is until I went to the actual bike shop and found that the prices were far lower than those listed on the Internet.  It turned out that I could not find a Trek 3900 in the local bike shops, but after checking the prices on the very cool looking Trek 4300 I found that it was well within my price range and below what I had set aside to spend on the Trek 3900.  In Gear Cycling & Fitness in Hummelstown, PA were friendly, helpful and threw in discounts on accessories including dropping an additional $30 off the price that was listed on the bicycle.  I tested the bike out, made a beginners mistake in shifting gears and they, including a helpful customer, showed me what I did wrong and why the chain popped from the gears.  The Shimano shifters are far different than what I had on my street bikes and very functional and comfortable to use.  

Other than the ride outside the shop I have only taken it for a short spin around the culdesac after putting the front tire back on following transporting the bike home.  This evening I will take it for a longer ride and maybe before the week is out I can see if my father-in-law wants to take me to some of his Rails to Trails hangouts.  I am also looking forward to taking the bike with us to Kitty Hawk, NC and doing a lot more riding this year.  Last year we rented bicycles and loved it, but those were beach cruisers and with only one gear we were limited on our riding.  

Recently I was looking back over posts from years past and stumbled upon the results of my Internet connection speed test from Speedtest.net.  Not that I have not used Speedtest.net since that post back in 2006, I have used it a few times every year since discovering the tool.  What I did not realize I had, was a history of results dating back that far.  

I found this history interesting so that I could see what, if any progress has been made since 2006.  The results I am displaying here look pretty good, nearly 40MB download and and a nearly 2MB increase in upload speed.  Before anyone gets too excited, this was the best result out of several that I ran.  Mostly my download speed finished below the 2006 result.  Although in Comcast's (or is it Xfinity) defense I noticed each test initially spiked over 30MB download speeds at the start, probably the speed burst they advertised heavily a while back.  I noticed every test initially spiked at the start and then fell to a steady speed sometimes around the 2006 result and other times just below it.  The upload was consistently and always greater than 2MB.  As someone who hosts their own domain from their home I would actually like to see more of an increase on that upload speed, but to be honest my website has been stable and fast loading over the few years I have hosted from my home server.  

It is worth noting that the 2006 result was run from my existing home with my existing cable modem.  Also worth noting is that I ran the test to a Speedtest.net server out of Frederick, MD rather than Washington DC.  I did however run some tests to the Washington DC location as well and experienced the same results, I just so happened to have the best overall result from the Frederick, MD server.  The ping latency was always in the 20ms range, where in 2006 it appeared to be much higher.  

It will be interesting to try and remember to continue testing this in the years to come to get an idea if we are continually getting faster download and upload performance or perhaps slower performance.  

I remedied the issue with slow backups on the iPhone 3G a while back.  It seems if you leave pictures on your iPhone and build up a library your backup during synchronization would begin to run really slow.  In addition I have an application, iCamcorder that allows me to do video on my iPhone 3G.  The not very well documented fix for speeding up the backup was always to migrate the photos and video to your computer and delete it from the iPhone.  While building up a fresh collection of photos I mostly closed the backup procedure during synchronization with iTunes.  The upgrade to iOS 4 requires a backup that if you cancel out of will cancel your upgrade.  Before upgrading I first waited a few days, I usually always do this so the kinks are worked out, I then research the issues people are having.  Surprisingly a lot of iPhone 3G users are having this slow backup issue and no one is providing them the correct fix.  

If you have an iPhone 3G and you are experiencing the slow backup issue, just import all your photos and video if you have video into iPhoto or whatever program you use.  Afterwards, delete all the photos and videos from your iPhone, then synchronize your iPhone with iTunes letting the backup run.  The backup will run much faster and you will need this backup so that the update procedure can restore all your settings.  After the synchronization is complete, initiate the Update of your iPhone 3G.  Once I removed photos and videos the backup ran smoothly and the entire upgrade was completed in about 30 minutes.  

Hopefully this post will help any remaining iPhone 3G users out there with the slow backup issue.  As of the time of this post, I have been running iOS 4 on my iPhone 3G for over 24 hours and everything has been running great!

I have five perfectly functioning Ubuntu releases installed at the moment.  Four LTS servers and a desktop that I wrestle with and complain about sound issues following every new release since 2008.    There has been multiple times where I tell myself that I will not upgrade when the next release comes, but with each release I go ahead and update the desktop.  This time I will be upgrading the servers as well as time permits, though I cannot ever recall having an issue with my server installations and in all likelihood I will be doing new server installs and migrating to the new server installs.  I am admittedly a geek, but mostly I am probably more an operating system geek, so I know I will upgrade my desktop once again and in all likelihood I will be left troubleshooting a sound issue again.  My son will be asking me why the sound does not work again and following a night or two of hacking at the computer I will have him happily computing again.  I hope my existing settings are maintained and all is well, but I am also a realist and this has been the pattern over the past two years.  I hate fixing things more than once, but I do like Ubuntu and usually feel the need to check out any new features.  So, in a couple weeks, you know what I will be doing.

After a few hours of playing with skipfish, the Open Source web application security scanner from Google, you can color me impressed.

The first thing you want to do is download the 1.09 BETA Version.  After just a couple days Google went up several beta versions and 1.09 worked awesomely for me.  I was going to compile Skipfish on Mac OS X, but the requirement of libidn was so easy to meet on Ubuntu that I decided to compile skipfish on Ubuntu.  The primary reason being is that I do not like to use Macports and I read about some folks having issues even after compiling libidn on their Macs.  

Here are the commands (on Ubuntu Linux) to compile skipfish:

wget http://skipfish.googlecode.com/files/skipfish-1.09b.tgz

tar zxvf skipfish-1.09b.tgz

sudo apt-get install libidn11-dev

sudo apt-get install libssl-dev

cd skipfish

make

cp dictionaries/complete.wl skipfish.wl

./skipfish -o skipfish_out http://www.yourdomain.com

(this creates an skipfish_out directory -- and make sure you put a domain to scan that you actually own.)  

My scan ran about 47 minutes, at the conclusion of the scan you will have an index.html file that you can view from your browser within the skipfish_out directory.  This will be the results of your scan nicely formatted.  This is quick and dirty, the README file is quite helpful and there is a very informative wiki as well.