::::: : the wood : davidrobins.net

My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.

This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site. He has been abducted for 2243 days.

A rainy walk at Mounds State Park

News ·Sunday June 30, 2013 @ 17:34 EDT (link)

I drove out to Mounds State Park today, to get in a little hiking (Honey was resting). The weather did not cooperate; I first went into the visitor center (pointing out an incorrect use of "principle" for "principal" on one of the printed wall panels to one of the rangers) and then Bronnenburg House, hoping the rain would stop. The House is well-preserved—actually mostly rebuilt from having languished by a volunteer society, a member of which gave me the tour. Alas, however, the rain actually got worse; nonetheless I headed out to the boardwalk and then to Trail 1 to the Indian mounds. I did have my Coleman poncho with me, but wished I had rubber boots too. It was a nice enough walk, but I was glad to get back to my car and eat the lunch I brought.

Books finished: Hackers.

Impressions of Indiana

News ·Tuesday June 18, 2013 @ 19:36 EDT (link)

We've been in Indiana—NE of Indianapolis, in the town/city of Fishers in fast-growing Hamilton county—for about two months now, so it's time for some initial impressions.

We haven't had much of a chance to travel around the state and see the scenery, except on driving I-70 to WV and on the drive up, which we plan to remedy—it would be nice to get out to some parks. We did get to go to Lafayette for a gun rally, though.

The area is nice; people are friendly; there's sort of an "Anytown, USA" feel about it; it is distinguished more by its *lack* of distinguishing features that, say, Florida, Boston, or Seattle had. Most construction is fairly recent, so streets are wide and there's plenty of parking. There's some construction nearby on the IN-37/I-69 which slows down getting to/from work sometimes, but it's not a huge deal. It's been warm since we got here; the coldest I've been is when I got up at 0700 back in April for a "Fishers Code and Coffee" meetup.

We've been looking at houses—trying to find something balanced between all of our needs and wants: not too far from work, trees (since it was all cornfields not too long ago, that's not as easy as it sounds), land (enough for a private shooting range, although as flat as it is that might require moving in some earth for berms), a reasonably modern house with a nice kitchen, perhaps a deck and/or pool—the usual things people look for. Our real estate agent has us on an automatic search that sends us new properties and updates periodically. There are some "maybes" but nothing perfect—older or tiny houses tend to go with a lot of land, for example.

Work has been interesting: being a lead for the first time, which really wasn't as strange or difficult as I expected; my two secret weapons (OneNote and Source Insight) have stood me in good stead, and I've made a release of the API on schedule and submitted some changes for a key partner well ahead (which will be part of another release). I have a lot of ideas for improvement (e.g., automated testing) which I will have opportunity to implement (or oversee implementation). And the developer "brown bag" lunch talks that took six months to get set up/approved the last place I worked are starting tomorrow after minimal fuss.

We like the area; the biggest problem so far is that our LTCH (License to Carry Handgun) is expected to take three months (even though the law says we are supposed to get it in 60 days); but the state's protection rackets will be with your alway, even to the end of the earth. (Next up, we need driver's licenses, which hopefully won't be such a miserable process as to merit its own post.)

Books finished: The 50 Best (And Worst) Business Deals of All Time.

Comcast scumbags

News ·Monday June 17, 2013 @ 18:14 EDT (link)

Comcast, either out of massive ignorance or massive incompetence, is charging us for our brief "X-finity" use, even though it was within the 30-day money back guarantee. They also sent us to some collection agency about a week after they sent the bill. Two of their representatives—one online, one when Honey returned the modem (which we have a receipt for, of course) told us we owed nothing on our bill and it was "taken care of". Liars all.

AT&T U-verse has been a much better experience throughout. Avoid Comcast. AT&T surely have their problems too, but not with us.

WV; meeting Eileen and Doug

News ·Monday June 17, 2013 @ 00:36 EDT (link)

Since some unanticipated relatives showed up in WV while Honey was there (cousin Jonathan Edwards, his wife Adair, and aunt Debbie), I came up for the weekend, leaving Friday evening after work; we left after church Sunday at around 1300.

I took the opportunity to contact Eileen about stopping in to visit her and Doug (near Dayton, off the US-35), and we were able to stop in around 1900 (after eating at Wendy's). We brought some Timbits®—Dayton apparently has four! Tim Horton's. (I also stopped at one on the way up and got a cappuccino and sandwich and half dozen donuts.)

We ended up talking in a lot behind their house—we set up some camp chairs by our cars—for about three hours. It was great to meet them and discuss everything from anarchy to theology; Doug prayed before we left (in part that we would escape the attention of the state's enforcers as we drove); we got in shortly after midnight.

Books finished: Know-How.

Indy 500

News, Photography ·Sunday May 26, 2013 @ 15:41 EDT (link)

I bought a couple Indy 500 tickets from a co-worker who couldn't use them, and we went to the race today. I will say it was an experience, and I am happy I did it, taking advantage of being so close to it; but would probably not do it again.

The drive to the track was supposedly about 35 minutes, but we knew that would not be the case, and indeed we encountered the "beginning of sorrows" on the I-465 (we were routed around on the I-465 rather than, say, Binford, so ended up approaching the track from the west even though we're on the east side). There was a huge lineup at the I-465/I-865 split, taking us about 20 minutes to get through, and then again at the Crawfordville Road exit. We had left perhaps around 1000, so we had time—barely. Police were out directing traffic at the exit and along Crawfordville Road (nice to see them doing something useful).

We ended up parking just off West 22nd Street for $20; we may have been able to get closer, but it was such a mess that it didn't seem worthwhile to take the time to drive past and come back as I had originally planned. All told, the walk from there to our seats in stand C was about 1.7 miles; the "paddock" stand seemed to go on forever. First we had to get in, though; the ticket line started as a mob surrounding the gates, and wound back along the outside of the track and then forward again. That took us maybe another half hour to get through, even with only the most cursory bag checks (and I don't see why they bothered; with that level of checking, people could have easily smuggled in a suitcase nuke, the parts for a fighter jet, and enough rocket launchers to outfit a squadron). We brought backpacks and I had a small collapsible cooler; and since I had expected the event to go until 1800 (which is actually just when the track closes), I brought too much food and drink (two water bottles apiece, two soft drinks, three beers, and other assorted snacks).

We got into our seats just in time—1210—for the start, although Sandi Patti sang the US anthem while we were still outside the stands. As a few wise guys said on my Facebook status, the start and end are exciting and the middle is not so much; and the end was a bit of a let down as the cars finished the 200th lap under caution and Kanaan won sort of "by default" although certainly he had to fight for it in the previous laps.

Getting out wasn't too terrible, really. The race finished around 1415. Of course there was the long walk back, but we weren't too snarled up in traffic; I think maybe it took us only about 45 minutes to get back to Fishers. I had taken a few photos, but didn't really have a great viewing platform.

In future, I'll watch it on TV; better viewing angles, and shorter lines.

Books finished: And Thereby Hangs a Tale, Leadership, The One Minute Negotiator.

Fail2ban succeeds

News, Technical ·Friday May 10, 2013 @ 18:40 EDT (link)

Fail2ban is a utility written in Python that scans log files and, if it finds authentication or other failures over a given number of attempts, it will ban the host for a specified time.

Fail2ban comes with a number of filters (files defining regular expressions to match in log files, and how to extract information such as the host name or IP address) and actions (such as sending an email notification or adding a ban via iptables). It works pretty well out of the box; I just had to point it at my log files, and configure it to ban attempts in the Postfix (mail) and SSH logs. It is set to email me when it adds bans (status can also be checked via the command-line fail2ban-status tool).

Fail2ban "just works", with minimal configuration; it does what I needed. We were getting a number of SSH attempts, and someone was relaying mail using an apparently-guessed password, even though it was of reasonable strength. This will make it difficult for (non-distributed) password guessing to guess many before being blocked (currently for an hour). I'm seeing a handful of bans a day at this point. Great utility; two thumbs up.

DEFCAD mega pack 4.2 download

News, Technical, Political, Guns ·Thursday May 9, 2013 @ 18:47 EDT (link)

Sometimes it becomes a moral duty to distribute information, in the name of freedom of speech and in the furtherance, one hopes, of other freedoms. This is such a case, and everyone should be mirroring this file or seeding it. Perhaps those that have no access to defense due to repressive states will gain some measure of freedom.

Defense Distributed's DEFCAD mega pack 4.2: [download no longer available, see below]. Torrents also available (don't kill my server).

Update: Downloads have, indeed, been slowing down our Internet connection quite seriously; so I'll let the ones running finish and then, sorry, you'll have to download via BitTorrent instead (the torrent is very well-seeded). I think I've distributed enough copies to help out with the effort.

Praise where due: Villas at Gateway, Pinellas Park, FL

News ·Wednesday May 8, 2013 @ 20:03 EDT (link)

Far be it from us to withhold praise where due; and perhaps it is rare enough that even though doing the right thing should be expected, it is still worthy of positive mention.

Honey wrote up our experiences with Avalon at Bear Creek apartments in Redmond, WA, which were not good at all: they stiffed us as much as they could when we left, and moving out of the area we were in no condition to fight (nor would it have been worth going to court, I'm sure, anyway, even if we had a hope, or even of getting our credit dinged). They had us over a barrel and took advantage, and I hope people will read about it.

On leaving our apartment at The Villas at Gateway in Pinellas Park, FL, we arranged for a move-out inspection right after the moving truck left. The regular maintenance guy, Tracy, was unwell (when we called later he was better), but they had someone up from one of their (Greystar's) other properties, Ron, who did the inspection. He didn't take long—there wasn't much to inspect—and said we were fine, and left.

We expected normal cleaning costs; due to good credit we hadn't paid a security deposit, but they did have rent to the end of the month which they could have kept, but in fact they charged nothing and refunded a portion from after we left around the 20th. Which makes sense: part of rent, after all, is the cost of normal wear and tear on the place rented, and we hadn't damaged anything.

So if you're in Pinellas Park, you can feel good about renting at The Villas at Gateway. We were there about a year and a half. (It shouldn't need to be said, but we have no financial interests or affiliation with Greystar.)

Samsung Galaxy S4

News, Technical ·Tuesday April 30, 2013 @ 22:15 EDT (link)

My Samsung Galaxy S4 phone arrived today; they really did send it overnight as promised, even though the estimated arrival date was the 6th. So far I am very happy with it, although there was a slight glitch with T-Mobile showing the phone with no data plan at all rather than the unlimited one I had selected; but that was fixed (while at the Wild Ginger on 116th restaurant tonight enjoying the first sushi I've had in a long time). At home I was on WiFi, and it didn't show that I didn't have a data plan until I checked at the restaurant (I wanted to search for Yelp reviews).

Given that the last time I had a cell phone was around 2003, in Memphis (it was stolen and Verizon wouldn't use its GPS to locate it and required me to pay out the contract, souring me on cell phones for a while), and that that one wasn't "smart" at all in comparison, this phone is a wonder… I'd like to experiment writing some apps for it, which apparently is fairly simple to do on Android (one reason I didn't get an iPhone, although I have to suffer with a Mac (Mini) at work for my sins).

When I called the T-Mobile local store yesterday, they didn't expect to have the phone until the 15th, which is another reason I was especially surprised to hear from Honey that it had arrived today. Fun toy, fun times. I need to get a case for it.

Books finished: A Prisoner of Birth.

Bounce, spammer, bounce

Technical ·Thursday April 25, 2013 @ 22:42 EDT (link)

When I was first in Florida—the weekend I interviewed at Freedom Scientific, in fact—I visited and spoke with realtor Charles McCann in downtown St. Petersburg (islandconsultinginc@gmail.com). He was friendly, although it turned out he didn't deal in the type of properties we wanted (acreage) nor location (would be across the "Sunshine Skyway" bridge); but he had signed me up for notification emails for a certain property search criteria, and we got occasional notifications*, which was fine. I even let them continue after we were fairly sure that if we were to buy a house out there, we may still be interested in something in the areas he dealt in. But after moving to Indiana, we were still getting automated mails (which was fine; how could he know), so I replied back to the (above) address, which I think was the same as on his business card, asking to be removed from the list because we had moved, and thought no more of it. But we're still getting what, now, I consider spam.

So I hit it with a big Postfix hammer: smtpd_recipient_restrictions, using check_recipient_access to reject his address via a table created by postmap. Quite convenient, even though it's not per-user. The email will be rejected by the SMTP server:

554 5.7.1 <islandconsultinginc@gmail.com>: Sender address rejected: Access denied

Usually I create a separate email address for everyone that gets my email address, unless I'm fairly confident they won't spam it (it's also good for determining who sells addresses to whom: if an email from spammer X comes from xyzcorp@domain.com, I can be pretty sure XYZCorp sold my address). But this time I didn't, probably because I didn't know if I could create the address before the first mail would arrive.

Hopefully Chuck, or his automated system, will get the message.

* The mails really were only occasional, most of the time, versus now where sometimes we get several updates a day for our Indiana search (from realtor F. C. Tucker), I suppose because prices etc. change a lot in the search we gave our realtor. This is fine: I asked for them, and I trust they will stop if requested.