The last several days have been strange and annoying. I have been unable to sleep at night, and unable to remain awake during the days. Very inconvenient when I'm trying to get all of my end-of-semester stuff pulled together.
So last night I just bit the bullet. I stayed up all night, in hopes that at least this way I'll be awake in the morning and at least tired at night.
We'll see how it goes.
It's a bit strange to be reading netnews, shower, and then go back to netnews with coffee.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Spring Break - First Project
I have a rather involved system for dealing with my email. I've got a mail server running my own hybrid filtering system. I access the mailstore on that server using Binc IMAP and mutt. For what I want, it's nearly perfect.
The one gaping hole had been message searching. Mutt does have the idea of setting up a 'limit', and only displaying matching messages. Limiting only works in the current folder. More than that, if you want to limit based on body contents, all messages (and their attachments!) are downloaded to search the bodies. Sometimes this is slow.
I thought it might work to set up MHonArc and ht://Dig and then just access the archive for searching this way. This is what The Mail Archive does.
MHonArc is amazing for mailing list archives, where there's not any folder structure. Trying to impose a folder structure is very much a square peg with round hole of insufficient diameter proposition.
Beyond that, I couldn't find an easy way to get the kind of search excerpts out of ht://Dig that I wanted. Excellent general-purpose search tool. For email, archives, it seemed to be tripping over the headers a lot. I know there's a way around that, but I couldn't figure it out.
After a very late-night learning experience setting up the MHonArc and ht://Dig to get results that still weren't what I wanted, I got some sleep and put in a bit more thought about the mechanics of how this would work.
I'd need to use a browser to read archives. Somewhat annoying not to be able to search from within mutt. I'd also need to set up ssh tunneling to read archives from outside my house. No big deal, but somewhat annoying.
I should also set up an .htpassword to prevent house guests from reading my personal mail. I've got all of my mail stuff authenticating via checkpassword-pam, which gives me a nice single-sign-on system. If there's a way to get apache to use checkpassword-pam, I don't know it. So I'd need to remember to change that password as well to keep it in sync with my other passwords. Also not a big deal, but also annoying.
Becoming less convinced of the cleverness of that setup, I started googling around for other solutions. I stumbled across Mairix after encountering an amusing rant written by someone who appears at least as picky as I am.
Mairix is very cool. After adding: macro index S "!ssh -p PORT localhost mairix " and the appropriate modification to my preconnect to set up this tunnel, it integrates very nicely with mutt. I'm quite happy.
Thus concludes my first work-avoidance project of the week, and also my blog-resurrection.
The one gaping hole had been message searching. Mutt does have the idea of setting up a 'limit', and only displaying matching messages. Limiting only works in the current folder. More than that, if you want to limit based on body contents, all messages (and their attachments!) are downloaded to search the bodies. Sometimes this is slow.
I thought it might work to set up MHonArc and ht://Dig and then just access the archive for searching this way. This is what The Mail Archive does.
MHonArc is amazing for mailing list archives, where there's not any folder structure. Trying to impose a folder structure is very much a square peg with round hole of insufficient diameter proposition.
Beyond that, I couldn't find an easy way to get the kind of search excerpts out of ht://Dig that I wanted. Excellent general-purpose search tool. For email, archives, it seemed to be tripping over the headers a lot. I know there's a way around that, but I couldn't figure it out.
After a very late-night learning experience setting up the MHonArc and ht://Dig to get results that still weren't what I wanted, I got some sleep and put in a bit more thought about the mechanics of how this would work.
I'd need to use a browser to read archives. Somewhat annoying not to be able to search from within mutt. I'd also need to set up ssh tunneling to read archives from outside my house. No big deal, but somewhat annoying.
I should also set up an .htpassword to prevent house guests from reading my personal mail. I've got all of my mail stuff authenticating via checkpassword-pam, which gives me a nice single-sign-on system. If there's a way to get apache to use checkpassword-pam, I don't know it. So I'd need to remember to change that password as well to keep it in sync with my other passwords. Also not a big deal, but also annoying.
Becoming less convinced of the cleverness of that setup, I started googling around for other solutions. I stumbled across Mairix after encountering an amusing rant written by someone who appears at least as picky as I am.
Mairix is very cool. After adding: macro index S "!ssh -p PORT localhost mairix " and the appropriate modification to my preconnect to set up this tunnel, it integrates very nicely with mutt. I'm quite happy.
Thus concludes my first work-avoidance project of the week, and also my blog-resurrection.
Monday, January 02, 2006
Monday, November 07, 2005
Published Author
Service Life Prediction: Challenging the Status Quo. I'm a co-author on Chapter 12 and Chapter 14.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Anniversary
Today was our one-year anniversary. Last night we went out to celebrate.
This was a one-kid weekend. Beth and Laurie watched Will for us. He seemed to really like it, and so did they. Apparently he was really well behaved, too.
We went out to dinner. I wanted to find a nice little cozy little place. Wifey wanted fish though, and there aren't a lot of cozy little seafood places in Madison. I looked at Ocean Grill and The Blue Marlin, but both are on the Capitol Square. That would mean hellish parking and bar-crowds to deal with, which neither of us wanted to put up with. So we just went to Red Lobster. It ended up being really nice, though.
Then we went to see Lord of War. It was good, but not what I expected.
It was so good to get out of the house and get a little time away from the kid(s). We're both so very busy lately, that we don't get to do that very much. Because of that, we're all a bit high strung a bit more often than we should be.
This last year went by very fast. So busy, all of us. But it's been a very good year.
Lily started kindergarten. Her teachers seem to be really impressed with her. She's starting to read and write. A few days ago, I found her spontaneously copying writing from her toys.
Will has started walking, running, climbing. He's started picking up words, and even some phrases.
Melissa has started school. It's something she's not bored out of her skull doing, which is good. The jobs she's tried this last year have been totally unable to hold her interest. She seems to be really enjoying it.
And I'm still doing what I'm doing. I've got about three semesters left on my MS, then I'll probably start in on my PhD. I've picked up another job maintaining the website for my department.
Here's hoping for another year just like this one. And then another. And another.
This was a one-kid weekend. Beth and Laurie watched Will for us. He seemed to really like it, and so did they. Apparently he was really well behaved, too.
We went out to dinner. I wanted to find a nice little cozy little place. Wifey wanted fish though, and there aren't a lot of cozy little seafood places in Madison. I looked at Ocean Grill and The Blue Marlin, but both are on the Capitol Square. That would mean hellish parking and bar-crowds to deal with, which neither of us wanted to put up with. So we just went to Red Lobster. It ended up being really nice, though.
Then we went to see Lord of War. It was good, but not what I expected.
It was so good to get out of the house and get a little time away from the kid(s). We're both so very busy lately, that we don't get to do that very much. Because of that, we're all a bit high strung a bit more often than we should be.
This last year went by very fast. So busy, all of us. But it's been a very good year.
Lily started kindergarten. Her teachers seem to be really impressed with her. She's starting to read and write. A few days ago, I found her spontaneously copying writing from her toys.
Will has started walking, running, climbing. He's started picking up words, and even some phrases.
Melissa has started school. It's something she's not bored out of her skull doing, which is good. The jobs she's tried this last year have been totally unable to hold her interest. She seems to be really enjoying it.
And I'm still doing what I'm doing. I've got about three semesters left on my MS, then I'll probably start in on my PhD. I've picked up another job maintaining the website for my department.
Here's hoping for another year just like this one. And then another. And another.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Karl Rove
There's been quite a bit of buzz in the media about
Karl Rove. Much of this buzz is political in nature, and not that I have no opinions on that front, but another aspect of this has really struck me.
Much of this discussion involves going through email records and electronic memos. This makes me wonder: does the media know nothing about protecting the security of electronic records? Why weren't all of these emails and all of these memos PGP encrypted? Why weren't they stored on a system like StegFs, or even
EFS? Why did they still exist at all? Why hadn't they been wiped in accordance with a document destruction policy?
This isn't just about the news media, though. Anonymous sources should be aware of tools like Invisiblog and anonymous remailers (like mixmaster).
We have phenomenal tools for maintaining the anonymity of sources. Why does nobody use them?
Karl Rove. Much of this buzz is political in nature, and not that I have no opinions on that front, but another aspect of this has really struck me.
Much of this discussion involves going through email records and electronic memos. This makes me wonder: does the media know nothing about protecting the security of electronic records? Why weren't all of these emails and all of these memos PGP encrypted? Why weren't they stored on a system like StegFs, or even
EFS? Why did they still exist at all? Why hadn't they been wiped in accordance with a document destruction policy?
This isn't just about the news media, though. Anonymous sources should be aware of tools like Invisiblog and anonymous remailers (like mixmaster).
We have phenomenal tools for maintaining the anonymity of sources. Why does nobody use them?
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Kitties
Some time ago, my wife convinced to get a kitten. A friend of a friend had a brand new litter, and was giving them away. I've never been a cat person, so I wasn't entirely sure it was a good idea. However we did want a more interesting pet than a fish, and our apartment doesn't allow dogs. So we got Oscar The Cat:
We got him when he was only five weeks old. So he was very hyper. Being a kitten, he likes a bit of rough play now and again. We asked the vet how we might get him not to do that with the children. Her suggestion was to get another cat. I wasn't convinced that having two misbehaving animals would be better than having one. So that idea was nixed.
Since then, we've cat-sit for friends a number of times. And Oscar really was better behaved when he had another cat around to play with. So we started looking for another cat.
As luck would have it, one of Melissa's co-workers had a pair of black cats that needed a new home. Their previous owner was allergic, and none of the cat allergy medications really helped her. We picked them up last Thursday.
So now we have Missy:
She took a while to warm up to the new humans, but when she did it was like flipping a switch. She went from hissing at us to make us go away to hopping onto laps demanding that we pet her.
And here is her brother:
The picture doesn't really show it, but he is a giant cat. He's still not sure that he likes the new people at all. He spent a very long time hiding in our basement, and only came out after we calmed him with catnip. If he's not calmer by Wednesday, we might be going to the vet to get him some kitty drugs.
His previous owner called him "One-Claw" because when he was declawed, there was one claw on his left paw that the vet missed. I'd like to get him a better name than that though. I'm leaning toward Claude, but it needs the approval of the executive committee (ie, my wife).
So that's what we've been doing for entertainment the last few days. We're turning into a bunch of cat-ladies.
We got him when he was only five weeks old. So he was very hyper. Being a kitten, he likes a bit of rough play now and again. We asked the vet how we might get him not to do that with the children. Her suggestion was to get another cat. I wasn't convinced that having two misbehaving animals would be better than having one. So that idea was nixed.
Since then, we've cat-sit for friends a number of times. And Oscar really was better behaved when he had another cat around to play with. So we started looking for another cat.
As luck would have it, one of Melissa's co-workers had a pair of black cats that needed a new home. Their previous owner was allergic, and none of the cat allergy medications really helped her. We picked them up last Thursday.
So now we have Missy:
She took a while to warm up to the new humans, but when she did it was like flipping a switch. She went from hissing at us to make us go away to hopping onto laps demanding that we pet her.
And here is her brother:
The picture doesn't really show it, but he is a giant cat. He's still not sure that he likes the new people at all. He spent a very long time hiding in our basement, and only came out after we calmed him with catnip. If he's not calmer by Wednesday, we might be going to the vet to get him some kitty drugs.
His previous owner called him "One-Claw" because when he was declawed, there was one claw on his left paw that the vet missed. I'd like to get him a better name than that though. I'm leaning toward Claude, but it needs the approval of the executive committee (ie, my wife).
So that's what we've been doing for entertainment the last few days. We're turning into a bunch of cat-ladies.
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