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Friday, August 29th

LinkSys RV042


So I finally finished some of my home network setup a couple of months back - installing a router that can fail-over cleanly from the Cable Modem to the DSL connection. I went by price and features - I couldn't justify spending a huge amount on something that I only really needed every couple of months - if the cable modem is out for an afternoon, go to the basement and switch over to DSL for a while.

The reviews were really mixed. Lots of people loved it, but lots of people just never got them to work right. Well, I can really understand people having problems - I could get the first port to work great, but the second port seemed to always fail to connect. I fought with that off and on for days. I took extensive notes on what I tried (which I can't find right now), even did tracing over the wire of all the network traffic. Whenever it finally seemed like it would connect, it would drop offline from the DSL by the next day, and refuse to reconnect. There was some really helpful advice from some verizon techs on various bulletin boards, but it just wouldn't keep working.

Finally, I tried one final thing, that no one had mentioned - I set the MAC address of the RV042 to the same value as what the DSL modem showed that it presented to the network (from it's status pages, when just connected to the modem - not what the modem showed to devices that were connected to it over ethernet). That meant that when the DSL modem was effectively in passthrough mode - allowing the RV042 to do the authentication, the RV042 looked like it was still the DSL modem. That finally did it. No mention anywhere of Verizon needing that - they all talked about perhaps waiting a couple of minutes. Instead what I was seeing that you could get a different MAC address to work for a while, but by the next day, something was reset, and you had to be back to the original MAC address of the DSL modem. Very frustrating.

Overall, now that its working, the RV042 is pretty decent. It is a bit slower than directly connected to the cable modem, and it seems to occasionally block outgoing requests with policy violations that I can't figure out, but it does route traffic over both Cable and DSL. It can do lots of filtering, stateful packet inspection and so on, which is useful with kids in the house.

When I can find the notes I took, I'll see if there was anything else that needed to be done - it did take a while before I could get it to work even moderately well - I know that I _HAD_ to do a full reset of the device before the second network port would work - just powering it off and on did not work. Seemed like whatever state they left it in from the factory was screwed up somehow, despite going an configuring everything.
dgc03052 on 08.29.08 @ 11:36 AM EST [link] [No Comments]


vCardDav update


So, just an update on the vCardDav mailing list. I have to laugh, but it's not worth replying on the list... So I make a note in a reply about how a number of people in the IETF do not like using HTML, in a reply to someone who was using HTML - http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/vcarddav/current/msg00601.html. Sure enough, someone has to reply to that - http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/vcarddav/current/msg00603.html - to say that it isn't just the IETF, it includes him, and how he doesn't like the way I replied within the HTML, rather than in plain text.

Now, neglecting the fact that every email I have originated to an IETF mailing list I do in plain text, and that my replies are in the same format as the sender, I just have to find it funny - I complain that the place where people complain the most about not using plain text is in the IETF, so he complains about not using plain text in an IETF mailing list, claiming to not be part of the herd - "It's not just them - there are many other people (including me!)" . Of course he is part of "them" - someone complaining on an IETF mailing list.... Oh well.
dgc03052 on 08.29.08 @ 11:08 AM EST [link] [No Comments]


Flight Update


Just a final update on the flight - before we left, the upgrade standby list was in the upper 40's, with 7 people already having been upgraded. The flight standby list was in the 20s, so clearly lots of people had already checked in, and were trying to take an earlier flight. So of course, every seat was full, which combined with every seat in the President's club being full just made for a wonderful time.

One nice thing - once I got to Newark, I went ahead and went to Terminal A (where my final flight left from), since it listed a President's club as being available. That club was practically empty, just a couple of people, everything looked clean and fresh - what a wonderful change from Chicago.
dgc03052 on 08.29.08 @ 10:54 AM EST [link] [No Comments]

Wednesday, August 20th

Frequent Flyer Upgrades


For all the talk about how frequent flyers are only in it for the upgrades (according to US Airways, anyway - when they trashed all the mileage bonuses), it is rather ridiculous to travel on routes with a large number of frequent flyers - like red-eyes from SFO or San Jose, or my next flight, from Chicago to Newark. The plane is a 737-500 - with only 8 first class seats. On a Sunday flight into Chicago, I got the upgrade. However, outbound on Thursday is pretty hopeless. Currently 7 of the seats are full (5 being upgrades). However the current standby list is 27 people (and I am 5th, which isn't going to happen without a major change).

That means there are 32 Elite flyers on a flight with 8/106 seats - almost a third... Flat out impossible for more than 1 in 4 to get the upgrade, even if no-one was paying for first. As a Platinum, I am still 10th overall, so there are at least 9 other platinums onboard (probably getting what I deserve for going with a cheap fare).

And of course, it is a nearly full flight - currently a total of 5 empty seats...

sigh...
dgc03052 on 08.20.08 @ 10:01 PM EST [link] [No Comments]

Sunday, August 3rd

Ranting


OK, so I am going to break a rule and rant. I'll leave out the actual name, so at least Google won't come up with the association, but it will be trivial to figure it out...

There have been a couple of posts in the vCardDav mailing list recently that just really tick me off, enough to send out a roiling flame - which I really try hard not to do. One of the editors, a young guy, kind of smart, knowledgeable in certain areas (but not sync) just can't handle that if you don't know something, it's OK to say so.

It is painfully obvious that he has never implemented a sync solution in his life, but he keeps taking a very superficial knowledge - which seems to mostly be just what other people have said on the mailing list, and acting like he's the expert. I guess part of it is to keep the distinction of being the editor, in charge of the spec, be an impressive authority, whatever, but it is just _so_ painful.

A couple of months back, there was a long sequence about why you can't just store Diffs, and send those to perform sync. I mean, the overall concept it pretty simple - Sync Metadata, like the Sync anchor - when you did the last sync, and what the state was at that time, can easily get out of sync with the actual address book. You have to store the Metadata separate from the address book, since they are different applications, and you as the sync client just have partial access to the address book info - and generally just to a fixed set of fields, not under your control. In the real world, people can easily use more than one sync client, reinstall the client, reset the device, and so on, and you just have to deal with it. Additionally, you don't get invoked when changes are made in the address book - you just run when it is time to do a sync. Generally you can get access to when an entry last changed, but that is about it. That means you can't just keep updating some diff tree, like a source code control system when things actually change- you would have to keep a copy of the entire address book with your client, to be able to compare all the data just before the sync. Doubling all your storage requirements and doing a lot of extra comparisons is generally a pretty dumb thing to do, especially on a limited, battery powered device, even if it would occasionally get more "accurate" results (but maybe still not what the user really meant)...

Anyway, here we go again - the exact same thing over again - in http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/vcarddav/current/msg00554.html. Argh "Two-party sync is easy: just record diffs as metadata and exchange that in the sync protocol." Just absolutely no clue whatsoever about how things are done, or what is reasonable. Now, if this was a first time post about it, I would try to explain, but it is not - it just keeps on happening, so I just couldn't help it - I flamed him (a little) -http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/vcarddav/current/msg00555.html.

The other time I really flamed him was back at http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/vcarddav/current/msg00402.html. That time I was _really_ pissed off. He took a thread that I started to try and have a clear written explanation of why it was not just a bug in the client that it could not return the exact same vCard as it received in a subsequent sync (but rather a reasonable, and expected behavior), took a piece of what I said completely out of context, claimed that was my only reason, and that I was wrong, and that he was right with a slightly different view - which was _exactly_ what had been in my earlier port. I literally said that because of A, B, and C, thus D, and by the end of the thread he claimed that I said it was only A, and I was wrong, he was right, it was D. It was just so frustrating - I mean I was doing sync software when he started high school - working on the Intellisync SDK with Bob D., which sold incredibly well, did developer conferences on sync (I wasn't a very good speaker for the presentations, but did well in the hands on or 1 on 1 stuff), got sent to China to train people in Sync, all the courses and meetings we did at our site. I didn't mention that in the flame - not much point in being the old fuddy-duddy, and all that, but it was just ridiculous

Note the thread above was was caused from this post: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/vcarddav/current/msg00354.html, where the person just totally misunderstood how sync is done today, but after a couple of back and forth emails, he understood the explanations and revised his opinion. He was rather arrogant at first, but then really backed off when he understood. In a way, that thread was funny in a rather sad kind of way - a guy from Nokia insisting that it was merely a bug in the client to return a different vCard that was previously sent - when ALL Nokia devices map the data into a fixed structure, toss everything they don't understand, and return it all restructured the next time.

Unfortunately, there is also another guy there, incredibly smart, but also not well-versed in sync - an IMAP / Email guy, which is pretty different. His big thing recently was in http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/vcarddav/current/msg00432.html.... He throws in this idea, which on the surface makes sense, but with closer examination it has some major problems - it works for all the cases that already currently work, causes a lot more collisions and extra data to have to be sent back and forth at startup, and fails worse than doing nothing for all the cases that aren't currently handled. It has a big advantage in that it is easy to understand, and has a clear set of rules for implementer's to follow, and looks wonderful, but it still fails terribly. But I try to explain why, and he just picks little pieces out of what I send, and refutes those (most of them incorrectly because we are using different terms), and then ignores things for weeks on end. It is just so frustrating. I'm sure he still thinks he's right, and that in an ideal world both sides will just store the full vCard, and never lose metadata, but that is just so far from any reality it is frustrating.

I'm certain that if we got together with some of the long-time sync people (OMA-DS people), plus the last 2 guys (but NOT the first one), plus some of the other contributors on the list, things could be hammered out and be really good. Instead, we have basically wasted a year. The DS group submitted a proposal way back, which the first guy totally rewrote in a badly broken way in the first draft, spent months arguing back and forth every little thing until it was all the way back to the original, and he still doesn't get it. There was a whole bunch of stuff about why some text was completely the reverse of what it should be, and all he could do (the second or third time around) was suggest a "compromise" to change the MUST to a SHOULD, instead of reversing the logic.

Anyway, it's no wonder my boss thinks the group is a total waste of time - but I just would really like that spec fixed, since I have spent so much time in the past battling with it's flaws...

I should just be smart and unsubscribe, or have the incoming emails automatically marked as read, so I don't see them until I take the time to go review a whole bunch - that way I wouldn't get so irritated at the ignorance and arrogance.... Maybe if there are yet more stupid things posted...

End of Rant (For now)
dgc03052 on 08.03.08 @ 02:02 AM EST [link] [No Comments]


trivia


OK, so I've updated some of the junk lying around. In a sense, it is silly that I bother with this, but it is good to play around with PHP, and keep active. This blog doesn't have any fancy features, RSS, etc., but no-one reads it anyway (other than google & msn), as far as I can tell from the Apache logs. Of course, one still has to be careful - if it's on the internet, it's forever...
dgc03052 on 08.03.08 @ 12:34 AM EST [link] [No Comments]


Travel


Reading other people's blogs recently, I thought again about how I never do that myself. So, to start back up, I'll first cut and paste my input to Charles Stross's (love his books) blog, about worst travel experience:

A 72 hour trip from Manchester (NH, New England), to Beijing. Planned to arrive two days early, actually arrived a day late.

On Friday, bad weather, but no problem, my flight to Newark (NJ, near NY,NY) was early, before it was supposed to hit. Delayed a bit, then board, then sit on the plane for a while. Then they cancelled, so everyone gets in line. Big problem - it was the Friday before all the local schools had a week's vacation, so everything is booked (and cancelled).
Managed to drain the batteries on two phones at the same time (One on hold, then talking with the elite desk, the other online checking for available flights), while in line still in the terminal. Best option I could get, they put me on a flight from Boston the next morning (45 miles, about an hour drive).

OK, so go back home, try to arrange a last minute ride to Boston (since my return was still to MHT) - of course most of the airport shuttles were full. Get to Boston Saturday morning, and of course, the flight is delayed. Fortunately, it was solely because of crew timeout issues, so it took off when they said it would, and I didn't miss the flight from Newark to Beijing (but it was close).

Flight to Beijing was average, some entertainment problems, and seat power broke after about two hours. Up by Greenland, lots of activity in back, someone was sick.
Right as the in-flight display shows us at our closest approach to the North Pole, I feel a long slow gradual bank, oh &*&#..... Sure enough, that sick person was worse, and there are no good hospitals in Northern Siberia (above Beijing), so we are diverting back to Goose Bay Canada, despite already being at the halfway point.
Another couple of hours go by, and we are getting close to Canada, and more announcements - the person felt better, so we were re-dirverting all the way back to Newark. Net result for that trip, a 13 hour flight from Newark, to Newark. Net result for the day, 18 hours from Boston to NY.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a good shot, but here is a fuzzy camera phone display of the inflight display - http://dchampagne.com/photos/SyncML%20Trips/2008%2002%20Beijing/img057.jpg

After an hour and a half, finally have a coupon for a hotel, and am on a shuttle bus to go get 5 hours sleep before trying again the next day (I was rebooked for the next flight - but a lot of people were rerouted all over the place, or delayed several days).

The next day, start the Newark to Beijing trip all over again - same plane, same entertainment problems (the choice of 8, no 4 channels), etc.. I also found out that shortly after I got through the line, the computers crashed (at 2 am), and the majority of the line had an extra half hour of sitting around...

I've also spent 8 hours on the tarmac at Montreal (Not allowed off because we were a diverted Madrid to Newark flight, and customs wouldn't take us), followed by spending the night on the floor in Newark with my 10 year old son (fortunately, he was able to watch all 3 original Star Wars movies, plus several others I had with me on my laptop), too many long delays to count, I was at the conference in Japan that started all the burning Dell laptop news, and having food poisoning all the way from France to NY (including going through passport control and customs trying not to lose it again).

dgc03052 on 08.03.08 @ 12:11 AM EST [link] [No Comments]

Tuesday, August 14th

Transportation Stupidity Agency


Been a while since an update, but since I sent this off in an email, I may as well repeat this here...

Reading an article of Christopher Elliot's articles "Airport security: there's no backing out", made me recall some of my own experiences.

One was about laptops and the TSA:
When I use my computer, and am going to use it again shortly, I generally just put it in standby mode - for example, when I am planning on going to the President's club. Well, I was going through the security line at Newark terminal C, and the X-Ray screener asked one of the other TSA people to send my laptop through again. It goes through again, and then he says "something still isn't right, let's try this," and pops out the battery, and sends the battery and laptop through in separate bins. While this seemed to address whatever problem they were having, they left me with a laptop that had to do a full reboot, and attempt to auto-recovery whatever I could afterwards.

Just something to be aware of - apparently if it's out of your possession, you better assume they can do what they want with it.

Another case was a screener in Bangkok, who took my _empty_ water bottle away from me, saying they weren't allowed, even empty... Apparently I might fill it up with unapproved water from the drinking fountain, rather than buying a new one. razz
dgc03052 on 08.14.07 @ 06:23 PM EST [link] [No Comments]