A week of tweets: 2009-11-29

Sunday, November 29, 2009
  • An unexpected relic of an addict nation: ashtrays between the urinals. Can’t last a pee between tokes! @ PHL RCC. http://pic.gd/7d9652 #
  • FreeBSD 8 is out!!! #
  • Back in LA… For a bit. Sunny, warm; of course. #
  • Another excellent hertz upgrade: infinity FX 35. More details soon. http://pic.gd/b35a2d #
  • On LAX-SFO flight with familiar looking green-haired guy. Screwed up booking so no upgrade, but front row seat to holiday traveler parade! #
  • Yummy sushi at Sushi Bistro with @phragments, @bellastar, & Katya: verry nom. #
  • Off to SNA on a holiday with Katya, @bellastar11, & @phragments. We have row 2. Causing all sorts of trouble. #
  • Von’s OC: southern comfort or OJ? Both on special and refrigerated and ready to drink! http://pic.gd/404e2a #
  • I just voted for http://pic.gd/84be96 Check it out! #TweetPhoto #
  • RuBisCo at Aricibo: Joe Davis sends a 2nd message to space 35 years later: http://bit.ly/7cEDuG http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=10346 #
  • Hola mexico http://pic.gd/67d449 #
  • En la hacienda de la playa. https://gifdb.com/football #
  • Having an excellent coffee at Cafe Zito in Rosarita. #
  • Rainy day in tiuana #
  • After 90 minutes waiting to cross US border (90 second inspection) drive to Irvine for the munchkin, back to SAN for pho, off to PHL. #

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Posted at 02:11:00 GMT-0700

Category: Twitter

Hz Toyota Camry SE

Monday, November 23, 2009

It’s a pretty nice rental car. Pure white seems to be a bird poop magnet, but the car is fast, comfortable, and quiet.

it ranks as one of the better rentals so far; below Volvo, Audi, and (of course) the Mercedes, but still quite nice.

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Posted at 05:02:27 GMT-0700

Category: photoPositiveRental carsReviews

A week of tweets: 2009-11-22

Sunday, November 22, 2009
  • Time to get an electric car: sfo parking 1 green reopens with ev premium spots with outlets. #
  • Phew, they plugged the plane’s hydraulic leak. Yay duct tape! Hope it holds till ORD. #
  • Flight delayed. Guy at SFO didn’t have passport, needed to get to canada: new protocol simplifies: just get red UAL stamp on pass to board #
  • Oh yeah, dinner at the one and only Firepit in Missassagua #
  • 401 westbound closed at 407 split. #
  • It is almost sunny in philadelphia. #
  • Free wireless weekend at PHL!! Free wifi throughout the airport. Come on down! #
  • About to listen to Handel’s Messiah at Swarthmore’s Lang Hall. #
  • Saw my SRV 4s teacher at concert (pre-kg): tapped muscular leg “ride a bike!” “Gave up my car, I’m 90” dad says “she was 92 a few years ago” #

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Posted at 01:11:00 GMT-0700

Category: Twitter

AWstats bugs

Friday, November 13, 2009

I just installed AWstats on a freebsd system from ports, version 6.95 and ran into some issues with the installer.

First, awstats_configure.pl has a mistake that leads to:

Error: Failed to open ‘(your awstats.model.conf’) for read.

This is because $AWSTATS_PATH is prepended to “/wwwroot/” instead of “/” throughout the script. Search and replace config.pl to fix or try this one awstats_configure.pl (no warranties).

Second, there’s an error in the httpd.conf configuration that fails to provide sufficient permissions. Add

Options FollowSymLinks

inside the <directory> directive to get the pages to load right.

Third, the icons dont display (or display as broken images) due to a small typo in the icons directory specification. At line 222 in the yoursite.conf file that awstats_configure.pl generates, use

DirIcons=”/awstatsicons”

and make sure the httpd.conf directive reads

Alias /awstatsicons “/usr/local/www/awstats/icons/”

(not …/icon/”) . I use setup an awstats.conf file in /apache22/Includes (see below) and take the directives out of httpd.conf myself.

#
# Directives to allow use of AWStats as a CGI
#
Alias /awstatsclasses “/usr/local/www/awstats/classes/”
Alias /awstatscss “/usr/local/www/awstats/css/”
Alias /awstatsicons “/usr/local/www/awstats/icons/”
ScriptAlias /awstats “/usr/local/www/awstats/cgi-bin/”

#
# This is to permit URL access to scripts/files in AWStats directory.
#
<Directory “/usr/local/www/awstats/”>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

Posted at 15:20:46 GMT-0700

Category: FreeBSD

1 Hz

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Next Hertz rental: Yaris. Good thing there aren’t any hills in ontario.

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Posted at 05:34:42 GMT-0700

Category: NegativephotoRental carsReviews

DC Morning

Monday, November 9, 2009

Nice of the holiday inn to have early check in. Pleasant enough continuation of a busy fortnight.

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Posted at 06:12:13 GMT-0700

Category: photoPlaces

Mercedes E350 Hertz Rental

Friday, November 6, 2009

Hertz gave me a lovely Mercedes E350 as a free upgrade in LA this trip: definitely the best upgrade so far.IMG00025-20091106-1001.jpg

It is quite a nice car, with plenty of trunk space, and extremely quiet interior, a powerful engine, and excellent handling. The interior is clean and well designed with a nice dash that’s easy to read. In fact the entire system was fairly intuitive. I had my phone paired with the in-car audio system, the voice recognition system figured out, the nav system programmed, climate set, and my favorite Sirius classical station on the radio in the 20 minute drive from LAX to Santa Monica. It was probably the first time I’ve made that trip and arrived a little disappointed it was so brief.

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Most of the interaction with the Car’s computer is through voice prompts and the system is very effective: it never made a mistake in my use. One can also navigate the cars computer options with a fairly nice click wheel, which is reminiscent of the BMW system, but without the force feedback (alas).

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The Nav system in the car is excellent. It works far better than the Hertz NeverLost system (which was, inexplicably, also installed). The Mercedes version is a lot easier to read and understand and is integrated with the audio system in the car (though the announcements were painfully loud and the one thing I didn’t figure out was how to turn them down).

The computer’s visual interface also serves as the backup camera. It seems a bit superfluous on a normal sized car, but it has a good down-view, so one can see if one is about to backup over a child’s favorite toy or limb, which I suppose has merit for people who haven’t realized that most children are the free byproduct of an otherwise pleasurable activity.

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I was very impressed with the iPod integration. The in-glove-box cabling includes an analog headset port (female, for reasons I do not comprehend – it should be male) and an iPod connector.

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The on-screen interface is a nice integration with basic iPod functionality and the click wheel emulates the iPod’s navigation mode in a very intuitive way, unlike the Audi interface.

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Mercedes even manages to push their own logo to the iPod, which is pretty impressive.

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All in all, an excellent rental I’d be glad to get again.

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Posted at 17:09:55 GMT-0700

Category: GeopostphotoPositiveRental carsReviews

E350

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

My standing with Hz LA must be improving…

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Really nice rental car, lovely and comfortable.
Posted at 15:10:54 GMT-0700

Category: photoPositiveRental carsReviews

I knew Windows could be buggy but…

Monday, November 2, 2009

Reminiscent of the apocryphal first “bug” I opened up my old laptop and saw some ants crawling out of it.

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and then more.

and more.

So I got the vacuum and started sucking them up.

And more.

and more.

So I took out the battery and found something that actually startled me. Kind of like the Alien’s den in miniature.

Computer_bugged_02.JPG

Amazingly the computer booted fine.

For the first time in my computer history I used Raid ON my computer rather than configuring RAID in my computer.

Posted at 02:00:10 GMT-0700

Category: FunnyOddphotoTechnology

A week of tweets: 2009-11-09

Sunday, November 1, 2009
  • Having a burrito at La Taqueria La Nueva. Yum. #
  • Flying sfo yyz via ord today. Nice when domestic leaves from international: better rcc. #
  • UAL 777s still not podified. Plus: laptop at my feet; minus: no podness. #
  • Mad emy ord-yyz connection. Nice ual rep waiting on ramp with hotel voucher, but I had plenty of time: tempting-ord hotel nicer than guelph #
  • RT @BayBridgeInfo Bay Bridge is closed. Call 511 or use 511.org for traffic updates. More information coming soon. #
  • RT @BayBridgeInfo The Bay Bridge is closed indefinitely, please call 511 or visit 511.org to plan your morning commute. #
  • Not only is the bay bridge closed indefinitely, but the acceleration slidewalk at yyz was closed too! Coincidence? #
  • near 43.626413, -79.680692 http://tinyurl.com/ykf923z gyro at the one and only firepit. Nom. http://twitpic.com/n8fh9 #
  • Coffee porter: very good at redbrick coffee shop in guelph. http://twitpic.com/nck2r #
  • It isn’t even snowing yet and already my plane is retarded. #
  • Off to ord from yyz to meet @phragments for a flight toghether. Staff at maple leaf club shared their pizza with me. Thanks! #
  • near 37.604166, -122.197872 http://tinyurl.com/yjv3wxe major accident on san mateo bridge. Yay. Bay area fail. #
  • near 37.827964, -122.249959 http://tinyurl.com/yakg7b3 at fentons for a classic kid-owners east bay post-trick or treat halloween. #

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Posted at 01:11:00 GMT-0700

Category: Twitter