Bagel Rage

I love bagels. I'm not supposed to eat them, mind you, but I love them nonetheless. Especially with butter!

These days we're all supposed to watch what we eat, and not just watch ourselves eat - but hey, most of us are guilty of these crimes against ourselves - it's why the corner burger stop thrives while the vegetarian grocers go out of business. This is also why 7-11 stores sell big bite hot dogs, and bigger bites, and four kinds of "tacquito" rolls, and possibly the reason behind the growth and distortion of portion sizes at all the major food joints out there.

Most kiddies don't realize this, but when I was growing up, the small drink was really small, and yesterdays large is now today's medium. I could rant on this crap for hours, but I digress.

Bread and butter are two of the staples in the vast popular food basket of the American diet. Other staples include soda (part of the sugar group), french fries, apple pie, and the stuffing found in Twinkies.

For those of my few readers who really do enjoy food as I do, you'll realize that I've touched on a few culinary hot spots. When Coka-Cola changed the recipe for Coke and called it New Coke, well, they got slapped for it - and slapped hard. When MacDonald's announced they were changing their fats into healthy fats, we all feared that their french fries would change - and they did, but fortunately, they managed to control the change and the result is a slightly healthier, but still indulgent french fry. Burger King didn't fair as well - they messed with their recipe, and their french fries suck. Twinkies have changed too - I used to like putting mine in the fridge to stiffen up the filling - but now the filling has gone "healthy" and now it's just... well, yuck.

MacDonalds even changed their apple pie, but folks who really liked their old style fried one found that Kentucky Fried Chicken still makes them the right way - deep fried sweet apple perfection. The local KFC near me closed last year, and now it seems the "combo" chains have taken over - I may never again know if the the KFC/TacoBell/PizzaHut place sells the apple pies that I miss, but mostly because it's incomprehensible to me that someplace could make all those foods properly in the space of a single MacDonalds.

But now we come down to the last bastions of gastronomic pleasure - bread and butter. Bagels. With butter! Well, the camels back is now broken. I went to Einstein Brothers Bagels recently and I got my usual - an everything bagel with butter. I then quickly scuttled off to work, got my coffee and sat down to get started on another long day, secure in that I can skip lunch now that I have my forbidden pleasure to carry me through the day.

I managed to down my coffee, start on the second cup and at this point I'd opened 2 tickets, been through a morning conference call and debugged some firewall problems, and I was ready to enjoy my bagel. And boy, was I disappointed! Some idiot at the Einstein's Bagel shop had put some butter substitute on my bagel! It wasn't margarine either - it was something else, something akin to smart balance, but with the flavor removed. This was something even my wife wouldn't eat, and trust me, she prefers the "lite" stuff - even cooks with it too, which at times can be somewhat nasty.

Now, let me take you on a side trip here regarding butter substitutes. Lets start with this - I need to use them because I'm getting old and there's multiple good reasons I shouldn't eat butter, and I have, for the most part, removed it from my mainstream diet. Smart Balance, their 50/50, and some other substitutes have found their place in my home, and I tolerate them. Smart Balance lacks flavor however, and the best flavored substitute I have *ever* experienced is something called Canoleo (I found it at the local Sunflower Grocery here in Colorado) and that stuff is about the only thing I've ever used that can truly substitute for butter in both taste and cook-ability - but it's not nearly as healthy as Smart Balance, so it's been relegated to the "I buy it" category and the wife complains when I do because it's so bad compared to Smart Balance. It is still healthier than butter.

But back to my rage. What REALLY burns me is when someone decides that changing butter into something else is justified. Today I returned to the same Einsteins, mostly because a long phone call on the drive into work left me fewer options than normal, and I asked for my usual -and then I asked the gal at the counter for a bagel with butter - and please use real butter this time. What I got was "I'm sorry sir, but that's all we have." Meh.

I decided that a plain bagel was better, so I went that path - and was fortunate enough to see the assistant manager on the way out, and I let him know that they're going to loose business if they don't put butter back on the menu. I seriously doubt this guy's going to say a thing though - I think people in those jobs have learned not to say anything back to management because the old adage "don't kill the messenger" is lost in modern society - and stores like Starbucks and Einsteins probably don't care enough about people to listen to them, but do remember what is said at review time, and then probably dock their pay based on how much compassion they show to customers and to the company.

So now I'm stuck in a dilemma - I've got only a few bagel shops left in Denver that actually use real butter and sell good bagels, and only one near the path to work. I suppose I'll survive, probably even get thinner, but I think now there's a lesson that I hope corporate America can take from this: Don't mess with bread and butter. Einsteins, saying it's butter, calling it butter, referring to it as butter - and then serving simulated butter is just wrong. I hope others read this and consider better mobile dining options on their way to work. I hope our war veterans return and march in outrage to what you've done to the foods they missed while fighting our wars.

You don't see burger joints replacing the meat in their burgers with tofu, you don't see pizza restaurants using turkey pepperoni in place of real pepperoni (and why I don't know - both are great) or converting to part-skim mozzarella, why on God's name would you take it upon yourselves to stop serving butter, while still calling it butter!

I ask the SEC to audit the person at Einsteins who did this and see if they purchased stock in the simulated butter company that supplies Einsteins before they decided to stop using butter. I ask the National Butter Council to arrange a cow-protest at all Einsteins locations on the next Milk Day. I ask that you Americans, stop shopping at Einsteins - there are better bagel shops out there - now find them!

Some Piratefish Updates for Ubuntu 9

Well, Ubuntu 9 has been out for some time now, and the smoke has cleared - and there's definitely some work to be done on the next version of the Piratefish. I'm going to be developing this on VMware - building a Piratefish this way has some serious promise, but also it offers some nice screen capture abilities as well as advanced scaling options.

Right now as it stands, the old instructions still hold up, however there's indications that Chapter 6 is getting long in the tooth - the permissions structure may have changed quite a bit, so a re-write is in the works. This re-write will be free for all existing users, as usual.

As for the latest updates, instructions on removing AppArmor, correcting ClamAV integration with MailScanner and a little bit about changing where roots email delivers are all included in the latest batch of updates.

As for features in the new version of Piratefish, I'm thinking of including instructions on integrating Splunk into the new Piratefish as a reporting engine and perhaps a dashboard - many of the machines running Piratefish are more powerful than ever, and using this extra power for advanced monitoring and reporting appeals to me.

My experience at the identity management startup Symplified has gotten my brain dipped into the potential of cloud-based computing, and the option of building Piratefish in the cloud is also something to consider - though at Amazon's EC2 pricing, making a Piratefish run there isn't necessarily a feasible way to prevent spam for a network in the long run unless you're a well funded corporate entity. A complete mail server would be an interesting cloud app though - and the EC2 cloud is some pretty cool stuff for new tech.

On a slightly different note, I've also begun work on another book idea - though this will be on an entirely different technical track than the Piratefish, and will hopefully be something more fit for print and binding. More information will be made available when things near completion - right now getting the next Piratefish out for this fall is more important.

iPhone 3.0 to be released on June 19th, 2009

Today marks the start of my third week with my new iPhone, and boy they are addictive. As of late, I've realized that there's something messed up with my ability to use the 3G network for data - it seemed that all attempts for me to use 3G would result in the message "unable to access the 3G network - not subscribed to cellular data network."

When I first encountered this, it was the first Saturday I had the phone - at home I'd been using the Wifi the entire time wituout a second thought. I didn't pursue it then because it was inconvenient for me.

During that first two weeks, I noticed that I was getting email in clumps after driving to and from work, and then I realized that the phone wasn't always connected. Troubleshooting this on Friday resulted in my getting a replacement phone just this last Saturday at Best Buy. That solved the problem, however, it wasn't until Monday that my phone's number routing showed troubles, and I wasn't able to receive calls!

I called ATT, and they looked at the routing issue - troubleshooting it caused the data side on replacement phone to break so that the "unsubscribed" message reappeared. So then I get bumped up to level 2 support - and this gal answers and I can tell that she's also addicted to her iPhone. The first thing she says is "By the way, the new iPhone 3G with OS 3.0 comes out on the 19th."

All smiles on my end after hearing this, she managed to get my number routed, and then rings off with the data issue escalated to ATT engineering - and by the time I'd finished blogging this, my 3G data network started working again!

Cheers to ATT's timely resolution of this problem! And major kudo's on some good news!

Open Source CD/DVD Burning

Burning CD's and DVD's in Windows just isn't a cakewalk if you're relatively new at it - and even when you have experience, there's always the problem of what software to use. Sure, some folks love Nero, and there's the old tried and true Roxio software as well - some folks even trust Windows to do the work and expect things to work every time. Well, it's time I have a rant to set some things out on the table.

1) It should not be necessary for a system to be rebooted when adding CD-ROM burning software.

2) The software should be easy on the "dumbed down" menu's. Folks do get the files/folders anology of disk storage management, but there seems to be a conspiracy against showing this stuff in the fear that folks will be confused - and some folks are, but most arent.

To this end, I have a few programs to present:

First, InfraRecorder. Infrarecorder is similar to Nero and Roxio - it can burn ISO images, make ISO images, and it can work with most CD and DVD records - and no reboot is required, and it's open source. I've been using InfraRecorder for years without problems on multiple systems - and you can try it without even uninstalling those other softwares first.

Second, The only place that InfraRecorder comes up short is mastering DVD's for playing on your living room DVD player. To make up for this, look at DVD Flick - it's also open source, but it's not a simple disk maker - it's designed to perform the transcoding needed to master DVD's and burn them. It has some simple DVD menus and chapters features as well. I've been able to assemble different home videos, build menu's, and put everything together quite nicely with this one. It's an excellent free option compared to paying $60 or more for Nero.

Third, if you're the type of doesn't want to burn ever ISO you download, and can utilize them locally on your computer, there's a program called Daemon Tools that deserves a look-see. Daemon Tools permits you to mount ISO images as additional virtual disk drives, and it's quite the useful tool.

Another item worth mentioning, for a while now I've been enjoying the Cool Iris plugin on my Firefox - it makes image searches into slide shows - complete with 3D, youtube and hulu support, and best of all - it works in Mac OSX, Windows and Linux.

For those of you who are video buffs, and want an alternative video player for your Windows setup, and miss the old style video player (that doesn't tell Microsoft what you're watching) then you might want to look at the K-Lite Codec Pack. This package has some nice add-ins that are worth looking at, including something called Media Player Classic.

If you find these tools helpful, perhaps you'll also find the Piratefish Anti-Spam system helpful as well. It's designed specifically to help non-linux users build an anti-spam gateway using Ubuntu Server.

Cheers to you all!

Bombay Bowl "Fresh Indian Grill"

On the non-tech front, now working in South Denver, I had the misfortune today of eating at Bombay Bowl Fresh Indian Grill.

I had ordered a chicken saag bowl with vegetables and rice with some flatbread and tamarind chutney on the side. With a medium drink the total was $10, and I'll never eat there again.

The chicken was no different than what I get from Chipolte (perhaps they're connected) but with less flavor, and the rice was nothing special - a cheap jasmine variety with the flavor cooked and spiced out, and the vegetables were standard fare - probably Birdseye frozen. The saag, which is supposed to be a creamy, garlicy, spinach dish, was reminiscent of an over-processed baby food with some garlic powder added - and no salt. The tarmarind sauce (it was not a chutney) was also nearly flavorless as well, and lacked the gritty appearance and flavor of real tamarind chutney.

I strongly recommend that folks steer clear of Bombay Bowl - their Indian themed food just doesn't deliver.

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On the technical front, I've just finally converted my most powerful system from Vista to Ubuntu 9.04, and am going to start working more on that base from here on out. Microsoft land will be relegated to being a VM in my world now - getting the wife and kids to switch will be the real challenge in my future.

The next update to the Piratefish is on the radar now - Ubuntu 9.04 definitely adds some new stuff to the arena, so an update is warranted, and I'm wanting to explore new reporting and visualization options as well. One of the new packages included in the new Ubuntu includes a complete mail server as a single package installation - combining Postfix with Dovecot, and if they handle the certificates well, some good could come out if it.

TTFN - The Piratefish is now in it's 4th year and still going strong!

Much ado about NAS things

Well, I posted a while ago about the disaster that is the Netgear ReadyNAS, but I never did post what I finally did! Torn between running a full linux distro and using the various options to share the stuff up, which is tempting but has limits, I decided to go a slightly different course - and instead we built a SuperMicro 1U server (the chassis with motherboard is about $650 on NewEgg) and then add into that four Seagate 1gb disks, a PCI-X adaptec raid controller for SATA disks, and finally, a processor and 2gb of ram. The end result - about $1350 out of pocket, and I've got a fully RAID-5 1U pizza-box server with two gigbit nics, 2gb of ram, and best of all - I installed FreeNAS.

FreeNAS is a BSD variant linux distro that turns any machine into a full blown Network Attached Storage device for your network, and even though it had troubles with the full 2gb of ram (only for installing, works great after installed) and after discovering that it can't handle a single disk partition of any kind larger than 1TB, I did manage to get my setup fully configured and operational - and boy, what a setup. These suckers are fast, work great, store tons of stuff - and best of all, FreeNAS does just about anything you'd need for network-based disk storage - including iSCSI. FreeNAS is great if you need network based storage, and have a machine laying around that has plenty of disk drives. The folks that wrote it need to realize that it needs tuning for larger partitions and such, but perhaps someone will make an Ubuntu-based version instead.

My original design with the SuperMicro chassis was cheaper when I left out the RAID controller - the system came with a built-in Intel ICH7 RAID, and BSD did see it, but there's this one problem - the ICH7 under FreeNAS doesn't know how to handle a disk failure at all - so one disk dies in your raid-5, and you're done. RAID-1 doesn't work in that setup either, so you're either going to run in non-raid with your disks (which works fine) or go RAID-5. Note that with RAID-5, we were able to download files at near-wire speeds with only the speed of the RAID array being the evident bottleneck. The adaptec controller does the trick, but it takes some showhorns to get it all into that 1U case - specifically, the SATA cables that come with the system can't be used and need to be replaced - and those have low-profile connectors on one side, and that makes things difficult. We ended up moving one of the fans in the chassis to get things working, but I'd advise getting some long SATA cables with low-profile ends (right angles) if possible.

Goodbye PC Magazine, you will be missed...

PC Magazine, one of my personal favorite "bathroom readers", has decided to switch to all electronic delivery. This is sad, because a great number of folks will drop their subscriptions to this now all digital publication, and what has been a large name in print, will join into the background noise of the world and may likely never return. And I won't be keeping a laptop, or anything digital for that matter, in my bathroom for any reason.

Notification of this change was in a subscription renewal form that looked cheap - almost like some staffer printed this on their old HP laserjet laser printer and what I got was a third generation copy of the renewal form - offering up in small print the news that the January '09 issue will be the last printed issue, with the remainder being delivered electronically - all for only $24.95 for the next 12 issues.

It's a sad state of affairs to see a publication die like this. If PC Magazine thinks it'll survive, well, I have some bad news - stop smoking the kindbud and really reconsider this decision, but this is a death sentence. Sure, it's a green thing to do - but print is still print. I have a bad feeling that more of this is to come as the recession continues. Hopefully Maximum PC won't do this...