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  • Framing

    I’d feel guilty not doing anything with all the pictures that I’ve taken and printed these last 7 weeks, so I’ve been trying to get information about framing.  For what I’m wanting to do (a whole wall of framed pictures), custom framing is out of the question, but at the same point, I’d like something that looks half way professional.

    So, tonight I’ve been looking at how exactly you go about framing yourself and different frames.  So far, it doesn’t look too bad.  The hardest part is apparently the mat board, but from what I’ve read, it doesn’t look that hard.  And I figure it’d be a good skill to have if I keep taking pictures.  It be good for gift giving too!

    I’m basically looking for a nice, modern, black frame that’s on the cheap.  I’ve found a few, but it’s so hard to really get an idea of how they look on the web, and I know I most likely won’t get as cheap of a price here in town.  Oh, and then there’s the glass, many of the websites don’t send the glass, for obvious reasons.

    Unfortunately, there are a few things I’d have to buy, and the above website only really talks about how to create the mat board.  What about mounting and the like?  This may require a trip to the library or an Amazon purchase, but I definitely think this is the way to go, especially with the number of prints I, already, have.

  • Photography Classes

    Well, next week is my last week for Photo I Digital up at the Chicago Photography Center.  However, classes for the next session actually start up next week too (week of June 5th).  That’s right kids, if you want to learn how to take better pictures, or just how to use your SLR camera more effectively, you too can take classes.  Heck, if you’re interested, I can even get you 10% off, just contact me for details. 

    The real delimma for me is to take Photo II or not.  I think I’m going to, but the wallet is already feeling the hurt from the first one, plus the camera, plus the supplies.  However, I definitely feel like I’ve improved over the 8 weeks, and I know I’ve learned a lot.  Way more than I would’ve had I just bought a book and tried to do it on my own.

  • Links 5/30

    • 8 Teens in Nissan Sentra Fall 200’

      Eight kids out for a Mulholland drive are lucky to be alive today, after the Nissan Sentra they were traveling in rolled 250’ down a cliff at 2:20am on Friday in Los Angeles, California. You read that correctly, eight teens-two of which had stuffed themselves in the trunk.

    • VW Will Drop Diesels for ‘07

      VW will drop the diesel versions of its Jetta, Golf and Beetle models for the 2007 model year, which begins this fall. The new U.S. limits for nitrogen oxide emissions are among the most stringent in the world.

    • Biodiesel Cleans—Well, duh.
    • Fiji Timeshare

      The goal: to build a sustainable eco-community and keep at bay developers with dreams of massive hotel complexes.

    • Chicago Antique Market

      An indoor and outdoor European-style urban antique market located along the historic and distinctive Randolph Street Market District.

  • Summer is Here

    Summer is most definitely here, and on the correct weekend no less!  As I type this, it is 81 degrees outside with 55% humidity.  Welcome to the midwest.

    To kick off summer right, Erin and I went for a bike ride.  It wasn’t that hard to convince her to go, especially since she just got her new bike.  We started out in Lemont at Waterfall Glen, and then headed down to Lockport and did the I & M Canal trail between Lockport and Joliet.  Grand total, probably ~20 miles.  Not bad, especially since we put in ~20 miles earlier in the week.

    So, I had never taken the I & M Canal trail that far South out of Lockport, which means I had never seen the old steel mill ruins (steel mill closed in the 1930’s) that are down near Joliet either.  Talk about awesome.  I definitely need to get my camera down there.  Certain parts looked like a bombed out town, and the old locks that are still in the old part of the canal are awesome too.  It’s interesting to see what it used to look like through various photographs, because it sure doesn’t look that way now.

    Oh, and for all you Prison Break fans (Aaron), the trail goes right by the old Joliet state prison, which is the one in the show.  Definitely need to get pictures of that too.

  • Links 5/26

    Sorry that some of these are kinda old, but I’ve been busy the last week, and haven’t been able to keep up with news.  Granted, that’s probably not a bad thing, eh?

  • Crappy Day

    I really hope that yesterday isn’t as awful as yesterday.  It wasn’t even like I was that busy, it’s just the things that I was tasked with took about 5 hours too long for various reasons (piss-poor documentation, machine slowness from misc crap installed [production mind you], etc)

    I was getting so angry that I actually had to go out for a walk to blow off steam before 2 late afternoon meetings.

  • Links 5/22

  • A Sad Day

    Today a coworker and I made the trek over to City Food as we have previously done about once a week for the past few months.  We were in search of the elusive Roast Chicken Club (RCC), which is, by far, one of the most delectable sandwiches ever to be found.  It started out as an ordinary visit…

    But what was this?  The regular cashier, the jovial lady who made every visit enjoyable, was no where to be found.  Instead, there was a new, fairly unhappy and very confused new lady.  And the interior.  Where was the TV, the couch, the atmosphere?  It had all been replaced by cold, dark, two person tables.  And the soda machine wasn’t even functioning (unknown reason).

    Thankfully the infamous RCC remained on the menu, and so we were steadfast in our quest.  Once arriving at checkout we ventured to ask, “Has this place changed management?”  “Indeed it has, but nothing has changed.”  We both stared at him blankly, since it was quite obvious things had changed.  Then we questioned, “But will there still be free Big Ass Fridays?”  We were, of course, inquiring about the free large drink Fridays.  The cashier and the man behind the counter looked at each other puzzled, and then sheepishly responded, “Of course.”  I wasn’t sure if they were offended by the language, or that we even bothered to ask.

    The doubts surrounding the fate of City Food and the RCC raced through my mind.  Thankfully, for the time being, the sandwich had remained the same, and we were still only charged the $0.50 for our water (Wednesday specials). 

    Hopefully on future weekly visits I find the same great sandwich at the same price, otherwise City Food will be dead to me.  Dead.

  • Special Olympics

    Erin asked me about two weeks ago if I wanted to volunteer for the Special Olympics.  Now, honestly, I didn’t really want to, but I said yes anyways.  Two days ago was the day, and even before hand, I really wasn’t all the excited. 

    So we get up and head over to Thornwood High School at 9 AM on Saturday.  And then we got there, and it was complete Chaos (yes, with a capital “C”).  We didn’t know where we were going, or what we were doing or anything.  In fact, Erin’s parents who had signed up were initially rejected when they came to the sign-in booth because they didn’t have their IDs.  Both Erin and I thought this was quite strange, seeing as how we weren’t asked for our IDs.

    However, everything was worked out by one of the ladies that Erin has been working with at her clinicals for the past 10 weeks.  Apparently she’s been doing this for quite a few years and everyone knows who she is.  We then watch the opening ceremonies and then head over to the softball throw, which we were helping with.  There are basically 4 areas:

    1. Check-in—Calls out the heat numbers and people in the heats
    2. Escorts #1—Take the athletes from the Check-in area to queueing seats for the heats and put them in the correct order for their heat
    3. Escorts #2—Escorts the athletes from the seats to the actual throwing area and then from there to the awards area
    4. Recorder—Records the distances for each thrower, and then figures out the place standings for the heat
    5. Grunts—The people chasing after the thrown balls

    Erin was a Recorder, because she’s responsible and stuff (and the person handing out jobs was one of her coworkers) and I was an Escort #1 with Erin’s Dad.

    We all had a blast.  Even with the crappy weather, it was crazy fun.  We were all running all over the place and the athletes were great.  I would definitely recommend volunteering at an event like this to anyone. 

  • What I Learned

    This is essentially part two of the post mortem on the server failure.  The first post was basically just me outlining exactly what happened, while this post will be about what I’ve learned.

    1.  System State backups are not the greatest thing in the world.  In fact, they are pretty much useless except for a few key situations.  Basically, in all of the Microsoft Press Books for the MSCE tests (and well, just about any other study material), system state backups are thought of as Gods gift to backups.  In reality this is hardly the case.  In fact, after doing system state backups on all of my servers, the only one that actually worked after a restore is the domain controller.  Granted, this was because there was nothing else on the machine.

    All the other machines had software installed when the backups were taken, and now after restoring the system state, the machines are in a weird state where they have all the registry entries for software that isn’t physically on the machine (registry gets restored).  Now, this would be great if I had backed up the whole machine, but I didn’t.  Oh, and don’t even get me started with a system state restore and IIS.  Put simply, your metabase that is restored from the system state, won’t function on your new server, because your machine crypto key is different.

    2.  The physical network at the apartment is a mess, and it definitely limits our ability to do a lot of things.  It seems to be further limiting my ability to create a perimeter and internal network with ISA.  For an unknown (as of yet) reason, anything not connected to the bridge/switch that my ESX box is connected to, can not ping the 192.168.2.0/24 network which resides as a virtual switch on the ESX box, even with the static routes set.  What’s really making this aggravating is that if I initiate a ping from the 192.168.2.0/24 network to a specific machine in the 192.168.1.0/24 network, then everything works fine until that tunnel through ISA is closed.  However, once that tunnel is closed, nothing even hits the ISAs external interface, so it’s not really a tunnel through ISA, but a mapped route that’s appearing and disappearing.  Annoying to say the least.  If you feel like you want to help, or see a better explanation, feel free to check out my thread over at isaserver.org.

    3.  WinSCP.  I can’t believe I haven’t been using this app with ESX before.  Setting up FTP can be a pain, and is a security hole, so being able to easily upload ISOs or whatever to the ESX box has been unbelievably helpful.

    4.  Linux.  It’s amazing how much easier it is to learn things when you actually have a reason to, like when it’s broken.  Unfortunately, with a lot of the original problems I had I wasn’t able to reference them on google.  However, after thinking about it for a bit, and using basic troubleshooting skills, I’ve been able to solve all the linux problems.  Thankfully.

    5.  The new Perc controller rocks.  The site is noticeably more performant, and it doesn’t take forever to initialize an array.  It’s amazing what a generation later and 112 MB of cache can do for you.