Wandering Words

Well, I mean, I knew I had an old blog. Will be interesting to see if this actually generates and updates and all the stuff it needs to do.

Anyway, I was thinking about an old post from 16-years ago, The Omnivore's 100 (woah, think I have to use HTML tags, no markdown, crazy). I've traveled quite a bit more and just otherwise made sure I'm always trying new food, so thought an update was due.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea (1)
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart (in NYC no less)
16. Epoisses (2)
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea (3)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat's milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (4) - can't wait, really need to find a US place or just fly to Japan already
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald's Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S'mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (5) -- umm, mineral possibly containing radioactive materials?!? I'd try it.
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs' legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill - Roadkill Deer Chorizo Queso at a poker game
76. Baijiu (6)
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse - all my trips to Canada and can't remember eating it yet (7)
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

So 7 things I haven't had. It was 21 before, so definitely a large reduction. :) I'm pretty happy with that.

There was one thing that was not on here, that I'd have to add, because other than the radioactive mineral above (and several other non-food things) I've always said I probably couldn't eat. But I don't know, I might eat it. But for now, I'm planning on NOT eating it. :)

101. Balut

Maybe I'll start blogging again. Hmmmm.

Wow! Talk about a pain in the butt!

Hopefully this helps you get your Wouxun WXUSB cable working with your Mac OSX Machine.

Go to http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/downloads.asp?id=31 and you'll see the Mac OSX drivers for the USB cable. Installed those then I was able to use various Mac utilities for programming my Wouxun KG-UV3D.

As mentioned in my new boss's blog ... https://loosebolts.wordpress.com/ ... if you or anyone you happen to know is looking for a new role, would love to hear from them. I have a few openings at the moment in my organization (AOL Network Engineering & Operations).

Technical Security Engineer -- http://bit.ly/techsec -- focused on all things Network Security

Site Reliability Engineer -- http://bit.ly/sre-aol -- have a couple of these openings, focused on CDN, server load balancing (both local and global), and DNS

Application Network Manager -- http://bit.ly/appnetmgr -- managing the 10+ person organization of Site Reliability Engineers across the world

You can apply for any of those at the links above.

Also, if you have any feedback, here is a new take on the Tech Sec Eng job description, would appreciate any feedback you might have... comments welcome!

http://jay.tp.org/techseceng.html

TiVo can drive me batty sometimes. Why? Mainly because it records a Low Definition version of a show that is also being aired in High Definition. How silly is that? Why oh why isn't there a simple option that says Always Record the Hi Def Version of any show you are going to record... suggestions, season pass, whatever.

Also, why doesn't it keep track of which shows it has already recorded? Drives me nuts to find shows we've already seen being recorded somewhere. How hard can that be?

Not sure why these simple things out.

It really annoys me how large the font and icon sizes are for Wireshark in MacOSX. I found someone else who had posted how to adjust the sizes, and for my own reference as well as anyone else who happens to find this page here is the diff:

diff ~/Wireshark-correctfontsize-pre_gtkrc /Applications/Wireshark.app/Contents/Resources/themes/Clearlooks-Quicksilver-OSX/gtk-2.0/pre_gtkrc526c526
< gtk-font-name="Lucida Grande 9"
---
> gtk-font-name="Lucida Grande 12"
528c528
< gtk-icon-sizes = "gtk-menu=16,16:gtk-dialog=24,24:gtk-dnd=32,32:gtk-button=20,20:gtk-large-toolbar=16,16:gtk-small-toolbar=10,10:inkscape-decoration=6,6"
---
> gtk-icon-sizes = "gtk-menu=16,16:gtk-dialog=48,48:gtk-dnd=32,32:gtk-button=20,20:gtk-large-toolbar=24,24:gtk-small-toolbar=16,16:inkscape-decoration=12,12"

I also hacked a quick script to just edit the file since it gets replaced every time you download a new version. You can find the script at: http://tp.org/jay/download/Wireshark_font_fix

Also, if you're having problem with the font characters all coming up as Rectangles on MacOSX 10.6.3 and certain development versions of Wireshark (1.3.5) for example, you may want to check out Wireshark Bug 4697. You can change line 73 of the /Applications/Wireshark.app/Contents/Resources/bin/wireshark script to:

sed 's|${HOME}|'"$HOME|g" "$TOP/etc/pango/pangorc" > "${HOME}/.wireshark-etc/pangorc"

This is mostly notes for myself... however, it was a useful post on NANOG that I wanted to keep track of. So I'm listing some packages to manage systems and devices via SNMP, syslog, daemons on the hosts, etc... and of course including graphing of time series data and such too.

Hyperic - http://www.hyperic.com/
OpenNMS - http://www.opennms.org/wiki/Main_Page
opsview - http://www.opsview.org/
osimius - http://www.osmius.net/en/
PandoraFMS - http://pandorafms.org/
Zabbix - http://www.zabbix.com/
Groundwork - http://www.groundworkopensource.com/
Nagios - http://www.nagios.org
Zenoss - http://zenoss.com
OpManager - http://www.manageengine.com
Orion - http://www.solarwinds.com/products/orion/
BigBrother - http://bb4.com/
Argus - http://argus.tcp4me.com
Munin - http://munin.projects.linpro.no/
Spiceworks - http://www.spiceworks.com/
Cacti - http://www.cacti.net

Some more updates from the ongoing email thread:

Xymon - http://www.xymon.com
ICINGA - http://www.icinga.org

NMIS - http://sins.com.au/nmis/ - http://sourceforge.net/projects/nmis/files/ - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/nmis_users/

http://www.icinga.org/ - a (very current) fork of Nagios
http://software.uninett.no/stager/ - another netflow tool
http://nedi.ch - For those with larger campus networks
http://nipper.titania.co.uk/ - audit tool for different network devices

My wife, dog, family, and my career all make me really happy. The other thing that makes me happy is great food (and from my waistline, I must be very jolly indeed). Before I decided to skip college I wanted to go to NC State. Why? So I could get my BS CS/EE ... and if for some reason I decided that wasn't for me, I could switch to their excellent culinary program. Fortunately I had a talent and enjoyed computers and computer networking enough that I was able to find success in my childhood dream of making computers talk to each other. Though, being a chef still intrigues me.

With that said, I'm still a very amateur cook; but I really like food. Especially great food. One Block West is by far my favorite example of great food, and we're lucky to live close by; though frankly when we eventually move back to Fairfax County... we'll still come back if Ed's is still open. And if we ever move further away to NYC or elsewhere... we'll still come back every once in a while.

I should cook more myself, and really need to start. I find enjoyment in it and wish I was better at it. I need to take the time to do it every night. Of course that is hard when I work (and commute) all day, and know that I need to get to the couch to get more work done and kept on top of it in the evenings as well. I guess I don't NEED to do that, but I WANT to do that, because like I said early, I love my job, and know that if I'm working my ass off at least I get enjoyment and can hopefully keep things going well for an organization that is understaffed for a company (AOL) that I care about as well.

So, Food seems to be a topic that has popped up a lot for me recently. Food, Inc. is a new documentary that has been getting lots of press, and it is in our NetFlix saved list for when if finally ships on DVD/BluRay. Food, Inc. also sounds a bit like a recent documentary called King Corn that I caught last year. You have to watch it, then do if for no other reason that seeing what is inside of a living breathing cow eating way too much corn.

Eating local has also been a hot topic recently too. 100 Mile Diet looks interesting, though I just found that when I was looking for the Eat Local Challenge ... well, I think that was what I was looking for, I definitely knowing eating local has been a hot topic whether there was a specific movement I'm supposed to be into or not, I can't remember. I will say, I certainly agree with the sentiment, especially since I live in the Shenandoah Valley!

Another interesting Food topic just came up from the Business Insider blog that I read mostly because they come up with a lot of the rumors at AOL. It was a post on a Financial Times article entitled The Scandal of Food Waste, which is an excerpt from the book, Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal. The author is from the UK and uncovers the amount of food that is thrown away from supermarkets, restaurants, and other food distributors that could be consumed or at least used as feed in a sustainable way. Really made me think about how much food we end up buying that gets thrown away because I have good intentions to cook more, but fail to make it happen.

Lastly what really got me on this topic today of all days was an interview (Relentless Idealism for Tough Times) from the June 2009 Harvard Business Review with Alice Waters about her restaurant Chez Panisse. I'm sure Ed from One Block West (OBW) knows of, hell, might know her... but for me, it was an introduction to someone who the year I was born opened a restaurant that sounds like everything I seek in a place to delight in a meal. Every bit of the interview reminded me of OBW and just made me salivate thinking about eating there tonight. I also cannot wait till the next time I'm in Berkeley to eat at Chez Panisse... hopefully in September. Mmmmm.

Of course the way food has most popped up for me, is that I eat too much of it and I must stop. Well, at least I eat too much meat/fat, and carbs. It is time to find the vegetables that I actually really like, but have seemed to have forgotten how much I enjoy them. I also know how much I like pasta though... so it is hard to remember the celery, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuces, greens, beans, okra, squashes, onions, and well... everything else I love.

Fortunately I don't like fast food so much. Chik-fil-A is about the only fast food that I'll eat, and fortunately my wife doesn't eat fowl, so we don't eat there. I will have a couple of bean burritos with rice and lettuce at Taco Bell every once in a while, but that is usually when I've stayed at the office way too late and just need a quick bite on the way home. Since I carpool these days, that doesn't seem to happen except for the rare times we drive separately.

So, as with a lot of blogs, there was no specific point to this entry. But I was able to get a lot of things swirling around in my head down in a post and out of my head.

Now it's time to fix my over consumption of fat and carbs, so I will. Also time for some exercise, so I will. At least I don't like fried foods or fast foods, now if I didn't love a filet mignon cooked in butter and served with melted butter overtop, it'd be even easier. Or fish cooked in butter. Or vegetables cooked in butter. Okay... maybe I see the real problem here... I need to not like butter!

PS: For the record my cholesterol is fine thank you. :)
PPS: I also love pinto beans over corn bread, chopped onions, and hot chow-chow relish with no extra butter!
PPPS: I'll post a real chow chow relish recipe like I like later. Should have known it wasn't universal.

Installed Firefox 3.5 Release today and was immediately annoyed at the extra "New Tab" or "Create Tab" button tab that they added to the tab bar. No config option anywhere to turn it off. If you'd like to manually make it go away, you can do so in the userChrome.css file in your Profile directory. You can Google away for Mozilla Profile information and for userChrome.css files if you like. Basically, find your profile directory, add a directory called "chrome" if one doesn't exist and create or edit the userChrome.css file. Insider of it, make sure you have the following:

.tabs-newtab-button {
  display: none;
}

Voila, no more extra tab to create new tabs in Firefox 3.5. Hopefully they add a preference for that, or make it available at least through about:config if no were else.

Have to come back and edit further later...

I was talking to my mom this weekend and she was telling me how my step-dad was planting just a few tomato plants this year for their garden. That lead to the discussion of what you "have to have" in your garden. I realized growing up planting a garden every year was something I was very happy to have done as a kid. We were poor, so it was actually important, more important than I knew then, but looking back on it, it wasn't just a luxury having all of those fresh vegetables, it was a necessity.

So, when I finally find the time (more importantly gumption) to plant a garden as adult what do I want in it? I think we can do most of this in raised beds, so space doesn't seem to be an issue.

Vegetable Garden:
(2) Heirloom Tomato
(2) Cherry Tomato
(2) Cucumber
(2) Yellow Squash
(2) Zucchini
(2) Green Bell Pepper
(2) Okra
(2) Green Beans
(2) Lima Beans
(2) Green Peas
(2) Black Eyed Peas
(2) Watermelon
(2) Cantaloupe
(2) Honey Dew Melon
(6) Celery
(12) Carrots
(12) Romaine Lettuce
(12) Scallions
(12) White Onions
(12) Red Onions
(6) Yukon Gold Potatoes
(6) Red Potatoes
(24) Corn Stalks

Herb Garden:
(2) Basil
(2) Oregano
(2) Thyme
(2) Mint
(6) Garlic