Jamie Thingelstad

I just initiated a domain transfer of thingelstad.com from Register.com. I finally got fed up with their lackluster service and outrageous prices and am moving away. I’m just posting this because if something goes wrong my site might go off the air temporarily. It shouldn’t, but I always feel a little nervous moving registrars (that’s the main reason I hadn’t done it to this point!).

Top reasons to leave register.com…

1. WAY too expensive!
2. Interface for managing your domain is SLOW and clunky.
3. You cannot create an SPF record using their system! Oi!

Where am I going? GoDaddy! If you watched the Super Bowl you probably saw their ad. 🙂 They are cheap, fast and technically robust.

Now I gotta get out of the house and enjoy this wonderful weather. Taking the camera out to play for the afternoon.

It was patch week from Microsoft this week. This month brought 9 or 10 security updates depending on your version of Windows. I find it really funny how differently Microsoft and Apple release their security patches.

Microsoft

We get a monthly release of all the security updates. They are packaged individually, which is a good thing since it gives the administrator the ability to not have to apply all of them. They generally have scary sounding names and cryptic looking descriptions. Security Patch for WonderBall.dll (KB123456) for example. And it will usually include words like malicious and takeover. Scary stuff! And wow, there sure are a lot of them. The average person would conclude that this software is horrible.

Apple

MacOS X is a totally different experience. Today, while updating my Windows boxes, I also got to update my Mac. Apple takes a different approach. I just got this nice dialog saying MacOS X 10.3.8 was available and did I want to upgrade my software. The funny thing is there was no mention of security, no words like malicious code. In fact it was completely opaque. If you look into the details though there are dozens of security updates. The whole thing is really a security patch to deal with bugs.

I’m not trying to say that Microsoft doesn’t have security problems. They do. But people that say the MacOS X is so extremely secure need to check reality. And I would suggest Microsoft change their wording but if they did they would be skewered for hiding security problems.

Had last morning with hMailServer. This morning it was SquirrelMail’s turn. Decided to use this contrary to my firmly held belief that PHP and Windows just don’t belong together. It actually installed really easily, I even got a fair number of plugins to go with it. SquirrelMail is a very nice webmail client, gotta admit.

I’ve been a longtime user of Xmail for my home email services. Xmail has been stable, reliable, etc. But it lacks IMAP support and configuration is entirely driven on text files. I decided to take the plunge and change over to hMail this morning. So far everything is working great. Configuration was a lot easier. I was able to get all my mail transferred into the IMAP store. If you are looking for an easy to setup windows mail server I would recommend it.

I took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather today to get out on my bike. I realize that you can indeed ride year-round even here in Minnesota, but it takes a fortitude that I do not seem to have. However, today’s 50+ °F temperatures made it a great day to get out on the bike.

I did a quick 17 mile ride down to the lakes and back. I wasn’t the only one with the idea, there were plenty of cyclists on the trails. I should have wore my leg warmers and booties. My bottom half was a bit frigid.

What a great day!

Tammy has been feeling the baby kick for a couple of weeks now. She didn’t know what it was at first, she described it as a “flutter” in her tummy. I’ve been eager to feel it myself but until tonight hadn’t been successful.

I felt just the slightest movement. Tammy described it as a pretty strong kick so I don’t think I have a chance of feeling the softer ones yet.

How exciting!

My frequent visitors (all two of you! :-P) likely noticed that my site has been down since Saturday morning. I took some extra time this weekend to rebuild my terabyte server. When I put the server up the first time I filled the RAID with 6 200G SATA drives and created one RAID5 set with 5 drives and left the last for a hot spare. I put a couple of logical partitions on it and left a spare 200G ATA drive in for generic downloads and other expendable items.

The problem with this is my entire system was on one drive and that led to performance problems and eventually would create maintenance challenges. For example, I couldn’t unmount the big volume to do a chkdsk without causing all sorts of problems. So, I decided to redo it all and suffer the pain involved.

I added two more drives so I now have the Escalade 8506-8 card fully populated. My hot swap carrier only holds 7 drives so I put the 8th hard mounted in the case and designated it as the hot spare (figuring you usually don’t have to change that since it’s only used if your system is degraded). I did a more traditional RAID1 mirror on the first two drives and divided that into boot, app and data volumes. Then I just did one big export volume on the RAID5 set around 800G. Aside from the hours it took to re-initialize the RAID5 set it went smoothly.

I ran into one big problem though. It seems the ASUS PU-DL 1007 BIOS potentially has some problems booting off of the Escalade 8506-8 that only exhibit themselves when there are multiple volumes. The system would lock on boot and had to be hard reset. You could occasionally get it to boot by loaded the Windows rescue shell and accessing the disk then restarting, but not always. I updated the PU-DL BIOS to 1009 (current) which mentions some “zero config boot” issues and haven’t had this problem since. (Knock on wood!)

I’m still cleaning up, need to deal with permissions and security stuff. But the end is clearly in view. Getting ready to put the server back in the laundry room. Man is this thing loud!

I’ve picked up and received a number of books for men who are about to be a dad. I’m pretty amazed at how bad in general these books are. The brilliant advice in these books seem to assume the kind of disconnected, emotionless father figure one can only imagine might have existed. Here’s an example. The brilliant advice contained in one book for expectant fathers included a recommendation to call your wife when you are on a business trip. She may feel lonely and you should let her know you are thinking of her. Huh? I’m only supposed to do this when she’s pregnant? Please… you call your wife when you travel, period.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that these are not really books. It seems when people write for the father-to-be it’s always a list. 101 things you never knew about babies. 57 things you can do to make your wife happy. Top 10 reasons you will be in the dog house. It’s almost as if the publishers of these books assume that men cannot actually read paragraphs and chapters. Our minds can’t possibly follow a single train of thought for more than a paragraph or two.

Luckily, the Internet and specifically blogs come to the rescue of us dads-to-be. Daddy Types is a good blog and links to a lot of other resources. You can quickly find a number of different blogs that cater to the specific kind of thing you are looking for. Including ones you hope to never care about, like Laid-Off Dad. I’ve also went back to the well and am still trying to find some good books. I know there are some out there.

There are some notable exemptions. The Baby Owner’s Manual is a good book for dad’s even though it violates many of the rules above. Somehow I don’t feel like I’m being treated like an idiot when reading it.

Warning, this is a really geeky post. Reading about comparing the performance of two HD TV over-the-air (OTA) UHF antennas may be hazardous to your health.

When I got my HD DirecTV TiVo (HR10-250) two weeks ago I needed a decent outdoor antennae to pick up local HD channels. It was a Saturday and I decided to just pick up the Terk HDTVs Antennae at Best Buy along with my TiVo unit. The unit was extraordinarilly overpriced at $150 but I knew I could return it. I slapped it on a cable and threw it on my deck (no aiming at all) and got pretty good signals. Last week I received my real antennae, the ChannelMaster 4221 (the ChannelMaster 3021 is the same unit FYI). This new antennae was a mere $35 with shipping from a good online retailer. The 4221 looks like a real antennae. Four separate bowties, lots of metal, etc.

I took new signal readings off my receiver with the Terk right before doing this to avoid any comparison to previous readings that could have different atmospheric things going on. I allowed the receiver to tune into the station for five seconds and then I recorded the maximum signal strength received to that point. After getting fresh readings for the Terk I plugged in the ChannelMaster and was ready to be stunned. However, on the first read everything was horrible. Lesson number one is the CM4221 is much more directional than the Terk. I went up and pointed it towards the direction of downtown and got much better readings.

In the end I was stunned with the performance of the Terk more than the CM4221. The Terk did as good as the CM4221 and even better than it on the weak signals. Given the price difference I did stay with the CM4221 and returned the Terk, but I was surprised by the differences. Here are the signal strength measurements. (Note: I included the reading from tuner A and B.)

If you are reading this looking for HD antennae advice these tests were done in the Minneapolis area by highways 494 and 62. One disclaimer I need to add here is that I did not spend a lot of time tuning the direction and the CM4221 is just sitting on my balcony pointed toward downtown. Notably, it is about 1 foot behind the metal railings of my patio and I’m not sure if that causes interference. I intend to have it properly mounted on the roof when I have my DirecTV satellite upgraded to a triple-LNB unit.

We had our second ultrasound appointment yesterday. It was amazing to see how much the baby had grown in the last 8 weeks. In the first ultrasound you could see the whole baby on the screen at once, now you could only see a third at any time. It was moving around a lot and everything looked very healthy! Yeah! It’s amazing how much I worry about all of this – I’m going to be a wreck after it’s born and running around the house! 🙂

We asked to find the out the gender and it looks like we’ll be having a girl! The baby wasn’t in an ideal position for the ultrasound (breached) so it was a little hard to tell, but that is what the Dr. thought. Exciting! Watching the ultrasound was pretty amazing. The last time the heart was just this moving squiggle on the screen. This time you could see each chamber of the heart independently.

Tammy had already decided that the baby’s room is going to be gender neutral. So were not ordering truckloads of girl stuff. However, we are getting ready to order truckloads of stuff. 🙂

If you are a regular reader of my site you may be thinking I’m on a consumer electronics binge at the moment. In truth, I sort of am. I fully expect that in a couple of months everything is going to be baby, baby and more baby! I’m looking forward to that and in preparation am trying to get things like a new TV and HDTV programming out of the way. I figure some time with a new video camera before baby arrives is a good thing.

On Friday I received our new television. We ordered a Sharp Aquos LC-45GD4U. The TV was easy to unpack, a little surprising given it’s size. We are using it purely as a display so didn’t need to bother with putting the detachable speakers on it. I had it up and running in a few minutes. The picture is absolutely stunning. The TV has a native resolution of 1920x1080 and the LCD panel gives crisp detail. I was able to plug my PC into the DVI port and had my home theater PC working quickly as well (however, I’m battling some problems with HDCP and the like so I’m still limited to 1280x1024).

After getting the TV up and running and admiring the detail it was pretty clear that I needed to make a follow-on purchase and really dive into HD programming. I’m a TiVo junkie and can’t stand watching live TV except for sporting events. So, I took the plunge and got the DirecTV HD TiVo unit. At this point I had a rewire project for my theater cabinet so I decided to do it right this time and put in some cable management and rerouted everything. This took a couple hours but I’m very pleased with the results. I also decided to retire my VHS and LaserDisc player. See ya guys, it was nice having you around.

The HD content over DirecTV is simple, it just shows up. But I needed an antennae and the one recommended to me by my friend Chris wasn’t available on the weekend. I’m impulsive and seek immediate gratification so I purchased a high-end Terk HTDVs outdoor antennae for too much money so I could have it right away that another friend Chad had read good things about. I ran a 50’ RG6 cable out of the house and just set the antennae on the balcony upstairs. I’ll mount it for real when winter is gone. So far though I’ve got great results. Here are the signal strengths I’m getting for local OTA (over the air) HD channels. (The strength measurement is done using the antenna test utility in the DVR.)

I’m all set now to enjoy the Vikings/Packers game in full HD! Thepicture is amazing.

I have to withdraw my endorsement of the MacMice 2-button wheel mouse for the Mac. There are two main issues with it. First, it takes it far too long to come out of sleep mode and to wake up the iMac. The Apple mouse does this instantly and the MacMice takes as little as 5 to as long as 20 seconds. Very annoying.

Worse is that occassionally it just operates very poorly. It’s movements become choppy and unpredictable. Too bad, this one button mouse is a drag. I realize I could plug a Microsoft BlueTooth mouse in but it would just be wrong. In the meantime, I’ve got them both on the desk so I can wheel from time to time but use the Apple mouse most of the time.

Today was my birthday. We went out of town to celebrate and spent a couple of days at the Spider Lake Lodge outside of Hayward, WI. It’s a really cool lodge. The rooms are just average but the lodge itself really looks like a “northwoods lodge”. We hoped to XC ski and snowshoe but the lack of any good snow left us playing Boggle and seeing the Lemony Snicket movie.

I got a bunch of fun stuff for my birthday but most notable was a telescope that Tammy gave me. When I was a kid I used to go to the college in Minot and look through the telescope in the obersavotory. I was definitely one of those very geeky “space” kids. I hadn’t really looked at telescopes for years and then someone mentioned some of the new telescopes and how easy they are to use. I picked up a copy of Sky & Telescope and was amazed at how advanced telescopes have gotten.

Tammy got me the Meade LX200GPS 8" telescope. It’s an amazing device just to open up and spin around. The controls are so precise and the lenses and mirrors are amazing. I haven’t had the opportunity to use it for actual stargazing but hope to in the next week or two. I eventually would like to play with some astrophotography but that will require some more knowledge before diving in. Tammy also ordered the model with UHTC, which stands for Ultra-High Transmission Coating and gives about a 20% increase in brightness.

Anyway, I’ve picked up every astronomy magazine I could find and a couple of books and am trying to figure this all out. I can’t wait to check out Saturn this month while it is opposition to the Earth.

Don’t I have a pretty amazing wife!? Lucky me. 🙂

We had a nice stay in Fargo however it is far from being the vacation get away that you may want to visit on a regular basis. I gushed long enough about the hotel in my previous posting, so I wont go on about that any further. Tammy and I divided our two days in Fargo into a suburban day followed by a downtown day.

The first day we drove out to the West Acres Mall, it was absolutely packed. We met my mother and a friend of the family for lunch at a Taste of India, which was fabulous. I asked the owner if it was connected to the one in St. Louis Park and it is not but they know each other. Sadly this one is going out of business. Apparently their business has been poor since 9/11. None of us could figure that out. People, it’s Indian food! Anyway, we explored the suburban areas some more. Had a trip down memory lane with dinner at Happy Joes and spent the evening crawling a Barnes & Noble for books.

The next day, our last, we ditched the car and saw downtown Fargo by foot. They are working on revitalizing their downtown like so many cities and it is working, but it is still a work in progress. We had lunch at a mexican restuarant where Tammy and I were both lured into the taco bar. What were we thinking? The regular food I’m sure would have been better, if only warmer! We visited the Plains Art Museum and then kicked back in Babb’s coffee shop which seems to be the most happening place in downtown Fargo. It had a line both times we went there. I got an extremely tight (read, short) haircut at a local barber and we saw a matinee showing of The Machinist at the Fargo Theatre which shows independent films. After a full day we got dinner at the HoDo Restuarant in the hotel and returned to our room.

It was a nice relaxing two days. I think Fargo would be better for recreation in the summer though.

I haven’t chatted much about the baby since the initial announcement. It seems a little weird that you have this life changing thing going on but there is little in the way of noticeable differences right away. Tammy is just now starting to show so it doesn’t seem real yet.

Tammy and I had our regular appointment with the midwife yesterday. All is well in babyland! This was the first time I was able to hear the heartbeat and it was pounding away! The midwife said that the static occasionally was the baby moving. Little tyke was moving around quite a bit! Tammy and I are bypassing the majority of the screening tests. We decided that we do not want to deal with the high false positive rates.

In a couple of weeks we’ll have the ultrasound done where we get to find out the sex and make sure everything is where it’s supposed to be.

We both have found it amazing how when other people say they are pregnant you just assume that a few months later they’ll have a baby. When it’s us we are sort of on pins and needles that nothing goes wrong. It seems far from a sure thing. However, hearing the heartbeat yesterday and now that Tammy is starting to show sure makes me feel good!

I really don’t think the impact of the earthquake and tsunami have or will hit me. It’s hard to fathom that kind of disaster and it’s so far away. You hear the death tolls and the numbers just seem unreal.

If you are looking for a way to help out in whatever way you can Amazon makes it as simple as one click to donate to the Red Cross. They’ve already raised over $6 million, correction, $7.6 million now, and counting.

That number makes me embarassed at the $35 million that the US government has committed so far. Hopefully it will be raised substantially.

I’ve now entered the world of digital video in addition to the digital photography one I’ve been in for some time. My wife was cool enough to get me the Panasonic PV-GS400 digital camcorder. This is a very slick 3CCD unit with more bells and whistles than I know what to do with at this time. It even takes 4 megapixel stills! I’ve been playing with it over Christmas, taking some really dumb video and realizing that it’s hard to fake your way through video production. 🙂

Now this will of course spark a fury of other things I need to learn and play with including a better disk subsystem for my PC since moving those big video files around will be oh so slow. This is how it always works – fun!

This present signifies my first “Dad Gift”. I am now fully equiped to stand with all the other geeky Dads spinning hours of video of their kids that nobody will ever want to watch other than them. I’m also very okay with this.

Other Christmas gifts this year included a couple of Logitech wireless Xbox controllers (and they are great!), an awesome clay poker chip set, Six Feet Under Season 2, great books and numerous other fun things. Not to mention a lot of great time with friends and family. Can’t really ask for much more!

Like a large percentage of my office mates and I’m guessing the country at large I’m taking this coming week off. Had a personal day that I needed to use before the end of the year and with the combination of holidays it was easy to stretch a couple of days into a big break from the office.

We didn’t want to do anything too exotic so we decided to keep our downtime in line with our holiday plans. This year was a trip back to North Dakota with my family so Tammy started investigating options. We arrived tonight in Fargo, ND where we are going to spend three nights and relax. You might be wondering why Fargo? Well, we built the entire stay in Fargo around a hotel and I have to tell you upon check-in we were not let down.

We are spending the next three nights at the Hotel Donaldson in downtown Fargo. We reserved the “Big Dog” suite (go to the website, click on sleep on the top, click the down arrow by the picture until you see Room #10) and were shown to our new home-away-from-home with big grins on our faces. The space is amazing. Our suite has 17 foot ceilings, hardwood floors, living room with dining area separate from the master bedroom. Huge plasma TV with everything you would want. Even the WiFi is deluxe with 802.11g. The Hotel Donaldson only has 17 rooms and each room is unique with local art and exquisite accommodations.

Do I dare tell you that this room is less than the box with a bed I usually stay in when I travel for business to the coasts? I can honestly say you could build a trip around this hotel. I’ve gushed enough and it’s late. I’m hopeful the rest of Fargo can live up to this hotel.

I’ve been trying to order this Dell 2005FPW monitor for a bit now and there is this (amazingly stupid) Dellf game that Dell has where you can win coupons. One of the coupons is a 25% discount on the monitor I’ve wanted so I’ve been banging on it over and over. I’ve won $50 off a $100 printer more times than I can count but never got the one I wanted.

Then eBay came to the rescue. I’m continually amazed at what people sell on eBay. Turns out there are a plethora of Dell coupon codes for sale on eBay. I punched it up and $2 later I had purchased a coupon code from some guy in California. Placed my order a couple minutes later. $2 to save $200+. Sounds good to me!

Monitor is on the way…