Month: September 2007

Motorcycle Quick Fix

Instead of permanently fixing my motorcycle at the shop, they only had to replace the battery to get it up and running again. It’s likely that the battery has gone bad due to the poorly connected ground wire in the front harness [see recall post below]. They told me what the recall notice says: “Don’t ride your bike!” Right. How was I supposed to get it home? Or was I supposed to leave it in the shop for who knows how long waiting for a part? I don’t think so.

So, I had Laura follow me while I rode it home. It’s in the garage now.

Now what was I going to do with it? Leave it in the garage idle? That doesn’t sound right. I researched some things on the Internet and found out the specific wire that causes the problems I’ve been having. I even found an article outlining a fix that will keep me on two wheels until the new wiring harnesses become available. Here is even quite a lengthy discussion about the recall.

So I fixed it. I took a nice little wire and patched that there ground wire. Let’s all hope that it is now fixed… at least until they put the new wiring harness in for the recall.

It’s Official

There’s a recall on my motorcycle. I have a letter from Honda describing exactly the problem I’m having and they say: “Don’t ride until you get it fixed! This could result in your death!” Great. Thanks. Too bad they didn’t mention this BEFORE my bike broke… or before I put over 22,000 miles on it…

Well, it’s at the shop anyway, so I’m hoping that that it will be fixed soon – and permanently, too.

Dive Turkey 6: Falling Apart?

I have been attempting to make some reservations around our upcoming dive trip to the Florida Keys. However: all the rooms in the cheap hotels are booked and going fast. The cheapest rooms are now going for over $220/night. That’s not going to be affordable, what with diving and all.

So – it might be necessary to either 1) re-evaluate the location and possibly chose the old standby [Cozumel] or 2) postpone until next year when we can reserve dates futher in advance.

Postponing will give us a chance to save up some more money for both the trip and the underwater case for the camera [which is expensive], and Cozumel is like … home…

Decisions, decisions…

Lights, Camera…

We’ve already got the cameras, now all we need is some light.

We’ve ordered some new studio lighting for our photography business. We saw these lights demoed by Scott Kelby at a recent seminar about Adobe Lightroom [which was very informative, I must say]. The lights are unlike most studio lights in the sense that they are “always on” and not strobes. This new method of lighting is easier on the photographer and model alike – no squinting in the dark. Of course, this has its disadvantages as well, I’m sure.  I suspect we’ll eventually find out all the limitations.

The good thing about the system, though, is that I can put strobes in as well so it’s very flexible. I ordered the set with two light boxes, stands, flourescent bulbs and their cases. I could have ordered tungsten-halogen or strobe for flashing, but I chose the flourescent since they replicate the color of natural light much better. I will likely expand my collection of bulbs to include the others for specialties – but only once the income picks up.

This is actually a stretch for me as I tend to enjoy the outdoor or candid type shot. These kind of shots will be neither and that will take some getting used to.

A Breather To Work

After working all day Saturday and long hours during the week, I’m finally able to sit down at home and see to some system updates on my own network. I downloaded and installed Exchange 2007 SP1 Beta 2 and have to say that it is a very nice improvement over the RTM version. The full month calendar and public folder access in OWA alone make it worth while. Not only that, you can now use the GUI to manage many things that before had to be done with a command line.

So – the server is up and running and I’m hoping that it’s pretty stable as we all have to wait some months for the official version of SP1 to come out.

A Day In DC

Today, we’re going downtown to learn more about Adobe Lightroom. That’s the application I use to manage my photography library. I’m hoping to learn some tricks and skills and how to better utilize the tool that I bought.

The good part is that I will not be going to my regular job. I’ve been working weekends and late nights, so a break is always welcome – especially when Laura gets to come!

Fred Runs For President

I know I’m a little bit late on this “breaking news”, but Fred Thompson has now officially declared his candidacy after what has to be the longest pre-campaign spin up ever. If you’re interested in a quick overview of some of his views, MSNBC.com has an interesing article. Here is an excerpt:

He recently poked fun at growing worries about climate change, noting that temperatures on uninhabited planets also have been found to be rising. “This has led some people to wonder if Mars and Jupiter… are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle,” he wrote.

That’s funny!

New Wireless Network

In the course of my security training at work, I learned many things about security – especially securing wireless networks. In a previous posting many years ago [quite litterally – Sept. 2004], I talked about securing a Wireless network. I was wrong on one topic though: DON’T disable the broadcasting of the SSID. I read a good article on the microsoft web site that basically says it’s more secure to NOT disable the broadcast. In other words, don’t hide the SSID – there are holes in the way XP processes hidden wireless networks which actually causes them to be exposed by the client anyway. Since then, I have made changes and un-hidden the network, while keeping it WPA and now WPA2.

This week, though, my manager allowed me to expense a new wireless router which supports an additional level of security: WPA-Enterprise using RADIUS. I got this to learn more about how ISA & IAG (MSFT’s version of RADIUS) work in concert with a PKI infrastructure and wireless network security. With the new device [which is also stronger for better signal coverage] I will set up an 802.1X certificate-based RADIUS authenticated wireless LAN that should be the most secure home wireless network ever. Corporations do it, but I’ve never seen one in a home before.

But then, not many people have the fun toys at home that I do…