Daniel R.

While I'm still in a jet lagged stupor, I am back home. In summary, the trip was phenomenal. The varied Nepal landscape was a lush rich green fed by the first rains of the monsoon season. It made for hiking in cloudy mornings and rainy afternoons but the weather cleared during our summit of Kala Patthar and provided mesmerizing views of Everest along with the other almost countless peaks in every direction. I've got over 700 pictures I need to wade through so it will take some time to get the photos online but I'll try to get a few up in the near future to wet your appetite :)

Tags: nepal trip

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tomorrow I leave for an extended vacation trekking around Nepal. I don't expect to have any connectivity while I'm there so be advised any email or comments will be delayed even worse than usual. See you in July!

Tags: life nepal trek

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

MovableType tells me this is my 500th post. I think only a couple posts never made it out the door so you have that much drivel of mine for your reading pleasure. Should you want to, you can start at the beginning. Many of my early posts were links until I discovered del.icio.us and started using that to capture all my links. Along the way to 500 posts I switched jobs and started writing more technical articles (hint if you only want RSS notifications for technically related stuff try the Flex Feed). Lately I've been more on the personal side, too lazy to setup a separate blog for that, unlike some more motivated bloggers.

Continue reading "500!" »

Tags: blog coins life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I woke up this morning to find over 4,000 messages in my inbox. Seems I was on the receiving end of an email bounce bomb. Basically someone was sending out thousands of spam email messages and forged my email address as the sender/return-path for the messages. Given how these things work I'm sure my address was randomly selected out of some list, but my cynical side makes me wonder who I wronged :) At last count I've gotten over 17,000 messages. The incoming message rate is subsiding but at its peak they were coming in at 40-50 a second. Crazy.

Tags: bomb email spam

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm finally feeling like I'm returning to the real world after a multiple day buildup and long weekend spent watching prodigious amounts of television while battling the worst cold I've had in a long time. I frequently suspect that when I over extend myself too much my body fights back and lets a cold in since it knows that will slow me down. Well it worked. I'm completely off my training schedule as even biking to work brings out coughing fits, but thankfully I've still got over a month to get back into the swing of things. Besides generally being lackadaisical when responding to email my hermit nature over the past week only exacerbated the problem. Very tempting to just hit delete all and try an inbox zero.

Tags: email life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As most of the regular readers of this blog know my big vacation for this year is going to be a trek in Nepal. I've been training for awhile now doing a bunch of different conditioning. I started off with cardiovascular on my bike trainer and doing the stairs at Harvard Stadium. I then rediscovered the beauty of hiking in the Blue Hills after a less than ideal hike up Monadnock. This weekend I returned to Monadnock for a much more enjoyable hike and then ventured up into the White Mountains.

Continue reading "My Kneecaps Hurt" »

Tags: hiking

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lately I've been trying to figure out what my priorities are. This has been prompted by a number of factors one of which is that it is just the phase I'm in. It started off with borrowing the book "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. I started reading it but then "other things" came up and it has been sitting on my desk unopened for some time now.

It isn't that I don't want to read the book or think that it won't help. Almost anything I read I expect to generate some tangential ideas or realizations. My hangup is that reading it would be conforming too much to a pragmatic life, which I already associate myself with. Rash is not a word people typically use to describe me.

Continue reading "Priorities" »

Tags: life priorities

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just flipped the switch and NeoPhi is now running on new hardware. This project started last Friday Jan 25th when the new hardware came in. I ordered everything individually since I had a specific system in mind. In particular I wanted to increase my data redundancy by switch to RAID 6. The hard part is that since I run OpenBSD not that many RAID cards are supported. Thankfully I found one that was built a system up around it.

This was the second such time I'd done a whole hog hardware transfer. The last time was about four years ago and I think I'd forgotten what I nuisance such a migration is. Anyway it's done, seems to be working and boy am I tired right now.

Tags: neophi

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another year gone by, another year of spam filtering. The overall spam percentage for 2007 is almost the same as it was in 2006, but the volume has increased.

In 2007 I received 111,095 emails. Of those 87,623 were spam. Between SpamAssassin and procmail 86,206 (98%) of the spam was automatically filtered while I had to manually flag 1,417 emails (about 4 a day). Overall that means 79% of my incoming email in 2007 was spam, which translates to about 240 spam messages a day. Compared to 2006 that is a 16% increase in total incoming email and an 18% increase in spam.

Continue reading "2007 Spam Statistics" »

Tags: spam

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This post has been over a year in the making. I first got the idea back in November 2006 when I commented on the number of magazines I found myself accumulating. That observation was a continuation of a May 2005 post in which I documented my unread magazine stack. With the short history lesson out of the way I present this post. For all of 2007 I kept the two piles I talked about in 2006. The result, I read about half of the magazines I got by height.

Continue reading "2007 Magazines" »

Tags: life magazine

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I took advantage of the last week's long weekend to fire up the smoker and BBQ some ribs. I also did some chicken but the focus was the ribs. Using the recipe from the Virtual Webber Bullet website I cooked up a lovely batch.

Towards the end I got a little impatient (and hungry) and took them off before they were perfect. The meat wasn't falling off the bone as recommended. From start to finish the ribs took about 7 hours. Since this was the first time I used the smoker, I took some pictures of the process.

Tags: food gilmanmanor

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At my last apartment the kitchen had typical cabinets that didn't go all the way to the ceiling. To fill the space between the top of the cabinet and the ceiling, I started to display finished bottles of sake. I was on a sake kick at the time and displaying the bottles served as a space filler and also as a memory device to track what sake I had tried.

When I moved into Gilman Manor I brought the collection along. Alas, with drop ceilings (evil) in the kitchen and no immediate plans to remove them, I had no place to display the bottles. They sat buried on a bottom shelf in a closet. Being phase driven I've not bought or had much sake over the past couple of years. It seemed like it was time to let go of the collection. Before just throwing them out, I did capture a few pictures.

Continue reading "Sake" »

Tags: sake

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I recently got back from a week of vacation in Maine at my families' camp. It was great to be off the grid and relax with nature as a backdrop. The only real technology I took along was my camera, which I used to capture the beauty. It had been many years since I was last at the camp for a vacation. My last couple of trips were to replace the roof. It was as I remembered it from my youth. Simplicity is good.

Tags: camp life pictures

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since 1999 I've been a devote fan of Cirque du Soleil. However, last night maybe one of the last shows of theirs I see. I took a trip down memory lane and since that first show in 1999 I've seen ten others and have watched them in three countries. For my own posterity (and I still think I'm missing one) I believe these are the shows I've seen:

Continue reading "Cirque du Soleil" »

Tags: cds life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Most of this weekend was spent upgrading NeoPhi to OpenBSD 4.0. I figured since I was going to patch my machine for the timezone fix I might as well just patch everything. Just as last time I did the less recommended upgrading without install media approach. It really isn't that bad. While I did learn a few tricks from the last time, I managed to make some other ones...

Continue reading "NeoPhi Upgrade 2" »

Tags: neophi openbsd

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For 2006 I kept very detailed statistics on spam. Below is a summary of some quick analysis that I did. I have a bunch of other data so if there is something else that you are interested in let me know and I'll see if I can extract that information.

First the high level numbers: 95,706 total emails for 2006 of which 74,458 were spam or roughly 78%. I should consider myself "lucky" since the average usually reported is around 90-95%. This translates to about 204 spam messages a day.

I whipped up some GD images to show these spam numbers in action. The spike in March is due to a high volume mailing list that I temporarily signed up for.

Continue reading "2006 Spam Statistics" »

Tags: spam

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The frequency with which Friday ends with plans that I hope to accomplish over the weekend and the realization Sunday night that few if any of those plans has been completed seems to increase with each week. It isn't that my weekend is filled with activities that prevent me from working on my list, I just seem to default to an almost couch potato state. In some cases other items take up the time I had planned to spend, but in general I think I default to procrastination. I've talked about that in the past, but in this case I think it is all bad procrastination.

Part of my view on it, is that nothing really bad has ever happened to me as a result of procrastination. Or maybe more importantly I've never directly linked procrastination to anything really bad happening to me. It is possible I recharacterized it as apathy, which while related to procrastination in my mind, is different. In either case I continue to procrastinate.

Tags: life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently watched the Matrix trilogy again. It is growing on me. I suspect that the hype around the two movies combined with the fact that they were released so close to each other may have diminished the effect that they had. I still feel the first movie by far has the fewest flaws, but the other two movies aren't as bad as I originally thought. The Wachowski brothers don't do well with intimate love scenes. Action and philosophy are good, but the touching moments really fall flat, at the is true for all of the movies.

Continue reading "Matrix Revisited" »

Tags: matrix

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looking back on what I spend my time and money on, I see a pattern. That pattern is that I am phase driven. I go through phases where I'm fascinated by something or really into something and then some time later that interest wanes and it is replaced by something else. These phases run the gamut of almost anything under the sun.

What I've not quite been able to do is figure out exactly what triggers a new phase to start or one to end. These phases also overlap sometime with the same genre happening at the same time. A few phases that I've gone through include:

Continue reading "Phases" »

Tags: life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It has been a little over two months since I returned my 350Z to the dealership at the end of my three year lease. I really loved that car. Its teardrop profile, smooth handling, fully featured interior, and get-up-and-go made it a joy to drive. Alas, winter in New England did not mix with a rear wheel drive car outfitted with high performance summer tires. Yes, I could have switched tires for the winter months, but the thought of dropping another thousand just to pretend I could drive in winter never really appealed to me.

Continue reading "Two Months" »

Tags: 350z life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Where has this year gone? I know I could look back on posts that I have made to this blog, particularly during the first half of the year when I was making a post every day, but that wouldn't completely fill the gaps. It is the compression of time that bothers me the most. Every day almost goes by at the same pace, but the weeks and months are getting lost in a blur. Maybe it's my thirtieth birthday that is coming up soon that causes me to ponder this moment more than others.

Continue reading "Early Year End Thoughts" »

Tags: life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nothing of substance on here as of late since I've been busy. Or busy in my mind at least. Part of that being busy is procrastinating about what should really be keeping me busy but that I'm not doing. I'm not sure how well that parses. Let me try again. I'm not always doing what I should be doing so I feel like I'm always busy but not everything that is using up my time is productive.

Continue reading "Been Busy" »

Tags: life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For a long time I listened to my collection of music on a random album basis. iTunes was one of the few programs that actually lets you randomize by album instead of track. While trying to find a sample in a song that borrowed from a movie I decided to start listening to my music collection in alphabetical order by album (I never did find the sample I was looking for). This is all based off of listening to music on my computer when I'm working at it. I also listen to a lot of music at work and on CDs. Yes I still listen to CDs since I have a decent enough stereo system that CDs still sound better and don't require me to have cords running all over the place.

While looking for a piece of music today I looked over the last played times of all my music. Turns out 10 months later I've started my second loop. Meaning it's taken me almost 10 months to listen to everything in my music collection. iTunes reports that I have 21.6 days of music. Roughly that means that I'm listening to music on average 1.75 hours per day. That also means that I'm sitting at my computer that much per day. Scary thought.

Tags: life music

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I recently returned from what will be the last great road trip in my 350Z. My lease is almost up and I've decided, despite how much I love the car, that it's best that I hand the keys back in. Part of that is the fact that having leased it new had I really wanted to keep it long term it would have been much more financially sound to just take out a loan from the start to purchase it. I instead went in thinking that around this time, late 2006, I was going to be in a different point in my life and that was about the time to give up the Z.

The original plan hatched back around the turn of the century was that I'd be buying a house now and switching to a more practical and inexpensive car would make life easier on the finances. Turns out I was a year ahead on the house purchase, but the fact remains that the 350Z is an expensive car. Not to mention that all of my traffic transgressions have also occurred in the Z. Now part of that is probably just the fact that I was lucky to not have gotten caught in my Maxima, but I think part of it also an unconscious bias that a sports car emits.

Continue reading "One last trip" »

Tags: 350z life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It has turned out for the past few months I've been on a news diet. The intensity of this diet has varied over that time but I in the past couple of weeks it has been full on. One of the primary triggers of this was switching to a new job. While in the past that has not triggered such a change, the fact that I now ride my bike to work was the primary catalyst. The reason being that I read most if not all of my news while waiting and riding on public transportation. Now that I'm no longer taking public transportation, those guaranteed chunks of time are not there.

As a result I've just not been following the news. I'm not sure why my interest in the world has waned, particularly with everything that other people tell me is going on. I think what I find most interesting is that I can't really place my finger on what has taken the place of that time I used to spend reading the news.

Tags: life news

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I swear my IQ drops in half most of the times that I'm on inline skates. Thankfully this hasn't led to any permanent damage. Oh sure, I've got quite a few nicks and scars from various accidents over the years but they were only temporary with a little bit of humility thrown in. Today was another of those days but with a twist. I thought it would be nice to take a morning blade along the Minute Man Trail starting out in Arlington. After having breakfast and watching a movie I packed things up in my car and drove out to Arlington Center.

Continue reading "I was dumb today" »

Tags: life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today is one of those days where about half way to work a tremendous sense of relief flows through your body when you realize that yes in fact you did remember to put clothes on before leaving the house that morning.

Tags: life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I took a long weekend and drove down to Princeton, New Jersey to attend David and Sharon's wedding. I didn't stay in the Princeton area, instead I decided to camp at Cheesequake State Park over in Matawan, about a 40 minute drive northeast of Princeton. This plan would have worked out well expect for the fact that it decided to rain. Some of you long time readers may remember my last camping adventure and have similar bad flashbacks. One vital piece has changed since last time and that is the fact that I bought a new tent.

A former coworker pointed me at Nikwax as a possible way to restore my old tent. The lack of water proof wasn't the only issue that my old tent had. It also had a couple of patched holes in the floor and the frame poll elastics were shot, not to mention prone to leaving a metallic residue on your hands. Needless to say the tent didn't owe me anything else. A random trip to REI brought me in touch with the Lighting from Sierra Designs. A similar profile free standing two person tent. After this weekend I can safely say that 1) this tent is water proof and 2) it was a great buy. I love the added breathability of the tent and the under cover but outside the tent protected area by the door made a great place for storing my boots (helping keep the sand and muck outside the tent). I got the optional ground mat which I only suspect helped with the overall water withstanding that the tent did.

Continue reading "Adventures in Camping" »

Tags: camping wedding

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Went to a BBQ themed wedding today. It was wonderful. A short and loving ceremony followed by BBQ and lots of playing in the sun. Thank you New England for not raining today. You may now resume your normal wet ways. I should have pictures later this week. Too tired to say much else now.

Tags: gilmanmanor life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I saw the sun today. I saw the sun a lot today. I had almost forgotten what it looked like. It's been so rainy and dreary for most of June I thought it was still April. It even looks like it will be clear and in the 70s all week. I'm not sure I'll know what to do with that much sunshine in a row!

Tags: life sun

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I tried grilling some salmon with a cedar plank for dinner tonight. I didn't have things quite right since the plank really never started smoking. I'm not sure if it was the heat, how long I soaked it or what have you. In any case the salmon still turned out great. The good part is that I just need to try this again another week which just means more yummy grilled fish.

Tags: gilmanmanor grill salmon

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No real morbidity in this, just playing around on the web:

You Will Die at Age 76

You're pretty average when it comes to how you live... And how you'll die as well.

Or the The Death Clock(TM) says that I'll live to be 73. That and my personal day of death is... Sunday, October 16, 2050.

Continue reading "When and How Will I Die?" »

Tags: death quiz

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week has been blurry. Nothing has felt quite right. Maybe sitting through the entire 4400 marathon on Sunday wasn't as good an idea as it seemed. It was great to see all of the episodes again and it got me even more excited about the new season, but 11 hours is a lot of time to spend in front of a TV all at once. Thankfully having them all on DVR let me skip the commercials, but even so that was many more hours than I should have spent in front of the tube. Now I'm paranoid that I've gotten the arrival date/time of my mom's flight messed up. Blah. As a friend recently said, there are too many good things going on in our lives to dwell on the negative.

Tags: 4400 life tv

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: life tv

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Gilman Manor liquor closets are reasonably well stocked. I have tended to go on kicks of certain alcohol types. Last year it was sake. This year it has been gin. Tonight I decided to do a little blind taste testing of the gins that I had. I usually drink gin with tonic but tonight it was all straight gin. I had John randomize the six gins we have into shot glasses from which I sampled. I scored two out six in matching the gins. For the other four I swapped them, in what I consider similar categories of gin. I'm not a super taster by any means but I was happy enough to detect differences in them to make educated guesses. The six gins I tasted were:

• Bombay Sapphire
• Tanqueray
• Van Gogh
• Seagram's Distiller's Reserve
• Hendrick's
• Miller's Reformed

I swapped Bombay with Tanqueray, Van Gogh with Segram's, and got the last two correct. Overall I'm fairly far gone and I still like gin :)

Tags: gilmanmanor gin

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The vein is tapped. I'm all caught up. 4400 seasons one and two are in the bag. I haven't been this excited about a show in awhile. The show has elements of The X-Files and Taken but with a greater focus on the drama and characters versus the science fiction. The second season started off a little slow but boy did it pick up steam fast. A couple of phenomenal episodes thrown in with some great story advancement and enough material to kick off what I can only imagine will be an incredible third season.

I can tell you right now I'll be a couch potato most of this Sunday as USA is running a 4400 marathon of key episodes. If you haven't watched the show, this might not be for you as there are a lot of good episodes they are leaving out. This marathon is timed to kick off the third season which starts June 11th! Awwww yeah!

Tags: 4400 tv

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the last day of May (Thanks Brian). Five months have already slid by this year. Where did the time go? (Well besides by the sink hole that is my crack like TV series addiction...)

Tags: life tv

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm very fortunate that I have the luxury of free time. There are many points during the week were I really don't have to be doing anything. I could sit as a lump in the middle of the room and nothing that bad would come of it. You could maybe argue something about long term health effects but you could also counter that sitting like a lump might be akin to meditation which could be good for you. The point is I'm not putting off something else to just sit like a lump. There are many shades of grey about what one really has to do, but that is getting to philosophical for me.

The point being is I have free time. One could maybe even argue free will but that gets back into philosophy. The end result is that it all comes down to choices. What has got me thinking is what am I doing with that free time? As of late it has been primarily falling into two buckets: leisure and learning. I've already mentioned my crack like addiction to TV series on DVD multiple times which has been the primary leisure outlet. The learning outlet has been that I've finally started reading again since being underemployed.

But to return to yesterday's post, I'm having trouble being happy with this relaxed state of affairs. Maybe it's my constant drive to do more with my life (as I waste a few minutes searching for an old post that I would swear touched on this theme of greatness). Alas, an unfinished thought and time for bed...

Tags: life tv

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I so thought yesterday was Friday. That was part of the reason that I just vegged out in front of the TV watching way too much 4400. Alas it wasn't Friday, because well today was. My time sense this entire week was just off. I think I was looking forward to this long weekend too much and just wishing it would get here quicker. I don't have anything major planned for this weekend, but given how busy I was all last week and weekend I don't mind the rest. If only I could find some happy medium of doldrums and crazy super busy.

Tags: 4400 life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can't get enough of 4400. It's like a drug. Well maybe it's like any TV show I've gotten on DVD. I want some more.

Tags: 4400 life tv

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Growing up in Maine with a mother that liked to garden and try new dishes I got to experience a wide variety of foods. Not all of these culinary experiences ended well. I developed a reflexive hate of eggplant and still don't care for raw tomatoes. I don't think these had anything to with my mother's cooking but more likely my own personal quirks :) In any case I've had scrumptious brussle sprouts, eatable lima beans, and many other vegetables that when done wrong more than earn their stereotype of nobody liking them.

One of the very seasonal items I remember growing up were fiddleheads. They are young coiled fern leaves (about an inch in diameter) of the ostrich fern. The season for them is usually just April and May. Luckily while in one of the local grocery stores over the past couple of weeks, they had a bin of them for sale. I snatched up a bunch and finally got around to cooking them tonight. I did a stir-fry with oil, garlic, chili sauce, and oyster sauce. Very yummy.

For other recipes and facts about fiddleheads swing by the University of Maine Cooperative Extension's page about them.

Tags: fiddleheads food life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went to see The Da Vinci Code tonight. Good movie. They did a good job of translating the book to the screen. Since I had read the book almost two years ago I couldn't really tell if they left that much out. There were some details that had been changed, but overall everything important got translated to the screen. The pacing of the movie didn't feel right though. It all felt a bit off. One of the best parts though was seeing all of the protests outside on the street across from the movie theatre. Nuns, priests, and others all holding up signs and singing.

Tags: davincicode movie

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I met up with some friends at Phoenix Landing to wish yet another friend off to LA. What is it with Boston people heading to LA?! Anyway got to hear some great tunes spun by Circuit Breaker. I was also reminded why I don't usually hit the clubs as I get a wicked case of tinnitus.

Tags: life music tinnitus

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got a nice message today saying "Not all who embark on the Quest can succeed and you have NOT qualified as one of the 10,000 finalists." No prize for me in the Da Vinci Code Quest. I thought I might have had a chance since I completed the final quest in about five minutes, but alas nothing for me. The one bad thing is that the consolation prize is a PC game which I can't use anyway.

Tags: games google

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)