Pro Tools and Admin Accts

ORA blog: The last thing we expected when installing Pro Tools 6 on our multimedia lab computers was that it would require us to give normal users administrative privileges… but that’s exactly what happened. We’re fuming.

Music: XTC :: Love On A Farm Boy’s Wages

Amy in the Fogg

Congratulations to Amy, who was just contacted by Harvard’s Fogg Museum — they want to purchase one of her murals for their permanent collection, and the curator wants another one for her private collection. Between this and Peter Palmquist bequeathing his collection to Yale, this will put Amy’s photos in both Harvard and Yale’s permanent collections. I’m so proud of her!

Music: Brian Eno :: A Secret Life

Domino Theory, Pt. IV

Finally, good news in the saga. Plumber came out. Turns out I don’t have to replace the flange to replace the bolts — the bolts were always replaceable; I just couldn’t see it because rust had obscured their entry points. Plumber Dude chipped away at rust until gateways opened up… old bolts came out and new ones went in. Since he had to charge an hour minimum, had him install the new toilet, even though I had kind of looked forward to it. All groovy, except that the flush handle mechanism had been assembled backwards and thus ineffectual. Could not be disassembled. Toilet shop closed, wanted this to be over, replaced with an Ace version. Pooped promptly. It’s all good.

Much gutter week this weekend – cleaning out, pumping water through, extending downspouts to get water clear of the foundation, re-attaching bits and pieces, scooping gravel from troughs. Miles thinks it’s hilarious when Daddy climbs up a ladder. We don’t know why.

Central heat installed a couple weeks ago, and we’ve had landscapers out the last few days installing a monstro French Drain (oops, “Freedom Drain”) — nearly 80′ of trench 2/3 of the way around the house, tied into downspouts. Right out to the curbs, holes in concrete. They also rototilled and de-rooted the desolate moonscape of a backyard into something workable, ready for planting.

Music: Brian Eno & David Byrne :: Mea Culpa

Domino Theory, Pt. III

Continuing saga of the home repair project that started as a simple leak fix but subsequently yawned out into a miasma of interrelated problems.

Saturday selected a fine turlet to replace the broken one. I joked with the Toilet Dude that we were there to buy a bidet for Miles, but my joke backfired when he took me seriously. “Great idea. I installed one for my little ones as well, and my wife loves it.” Puh-leeze.

Silver lining is that we go from traditional 7-gallon flush to modern 1.6 gallon, awesome. Some of the Japanese toilets we looked at also had buttons for half-flushes, but the French don’t seem willing to go the extra mile for the half flush.

Since new tank is smaller than the original, first had to refinish and paint the wall so the outline of the old tank wouldn’t show.

Remove old bowl, and two of the bolts snapped under light pressure – rusted to the core. Oops. An inch and a half of solid soggy mineral deposits caked on the floor came up easily, but the main retaining bolts spin freely from their mount in the flange, dissolved loose with the years. OK, so I’ll replace the flange as well.

Not so fast, big feller. The flange is inserted 6″ down into the main pipe, which is cast iron. The flange is rusted solid to the pipe. As in, solid. Attempts to wrest it free just damage what remains. To Ace for advice. Ace Dude doesn’t skip a beat: “You need $200 worth of tools you don’t have. Call a plumber.”

The irony is that rust has betrayed us double: It has made soft what we need to be solid, and made solid what we need to be loose. Rust never sleeps.

Music: Mogwai :: I Know You Are But What Am I?

Deduction

deduction.jpgRecently came across this in a drawer at my pop’s house — the announcement of my birth, which my parents sent to their friends and family (10/19/64, 8lbs 14oz). Pictured is the IRS’ 1040 long form as seen through a blue (for boys) filter, with a possibly reasonable facsimile of me superimposed over the top. Inside, the announcement is signed: “The Tax Payers (And Proud Parents), Jim and Avis Hacker.” It’s good to be loved.

Miles just had his first birthday on 9/23, but woke up with a bad headcold, snot bubbles bubbling. His party was cancelled, but he got a little pounding bench and a new pair of shoes anyway :). We’ll have a makeup party soon.

Music: John Oswald :: aria – glenn gould

MX Mystery Licked

When the east coast lost power back in August, birdhouse lost both its primary and secondary DNS servers. For extra insurance, I then set up 3rd and 4th DNS servers through another host. Shortly thereafter, I started getting occasional reports that people couldn’t send mail to birdhouse addresses. We were handling thousands of messages a day, but a few inbound messages were bouncing back to senders undeliverable. birdhouse wasn’t bouncing them, the senders’ mail servers were.

Finally sleuthed the solution. Unlike A records, MX records should always reference domains, not IPs. This enables them to stay linked to A records if machines change IPs. Not knowing this when I set up the 3rd and 4th, I had entered the IP rather than the domain. As it turned out, certain sending mail servers were looking up the backup DNS before the main, and refusing to send to a mail server that wasn’t registered per spec. Tweaking the backup MX records fixed the problem.

Music: Eric Dolphy :: Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise

Drilled

The RIAA is now suing dentists (and chiropractors, and etc.) to get them to license the music they play for their patients. The punch line is that in most cases they’re being asked to pay to play easy listening, adult contemporary… the quiet storm. As if getting drilled wasn’t bad enough.

Music: The Carter Family :: The Lover’s Farewell

Simple Domain Spoof

Just discovered that you can abuse the seldom-used @ syntax for passing user/pass combos into URLs to make your domain look to the untrained eye like it lives elsewhere than it does. e.g.:

http://www.nytimes.com@blog.birdhouse.org/

The browser simply ignores everything prior to the @ sign and carries on. Which means an unscrupulous soul can copy a template from any site, populate it with any content they like, and pass out a URL that will fool many viewers.

I’m not interested in doing this, mind you. Merely a technical curiosity.

Srcmabled Txet

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in what oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but The wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig huh?

Music: Paul Desmond :: Msuic For A Wlhie