My daughter had to do some filming for a class project and the thought of having to transfer her video off of my old Panasonic PV-GS250 miniDV camcorder (in real-time) just wasn’t appealing. I decided it was time to get an HD camcorder. Since I needed it pretty quickly, I did some brief research on Consumer Reports and then purchased the Sony HDR-CX330 at my local Best Buy (online, with in-store pickup).
Trusting in the Trusty Tahr
Yeah, yeah, so it’s getting harder to write these “witty” Ubuntu post titles … 😮
Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) was released today so as usual I upgraded my server immediately. Despite upgrading on the first day the download only took about 30 minutes but then it took a few hours for the “do-release-upgrade” to finish installing all the new packages plus a little more time for me to re-apply my affected configuration changes. This was a pretty smooth upgrade, no issues to speak of yet! I did double-check to make sure the version of OpenSSL included has the Heartbleed patch (which of course it does).
Next up is version 14.10 in October, but it doesn’t appear to have been codenamed yet. The “U” name should be fun, lots of possibility there …
Synology DiskStation DS214
Let’s try this again …
I was having way too many problems with my new Buffalo Linkstation LS420 so I sent it back and decided to give a different brand a try. It was slightly more expensive, but I selected the Synology DiskStation DS214 2-bay NAS, populated with two 3TB Western Digital Red NAS hard drives (purchased separately as the NAS itself comes without drives). Wow, am I impressed!
Back in “jail” (upgraded to iOS 7.1)
I ran into a problem last night where the Reminders app on my iPhone 4S stopped updating with the Reminders in iCloud. Figuring it was just a typical sync issue I turned off the Reminders syncing, planning on just turning it on again to fix the problem. When I turned them off, I let iOS delete the local reminders on my phone (since they were still up in iCloud).
But after turning the sync back on, my Reminders app was completely broken: the default list was missing and I couldn’t add one because the plus (+) button was grayed out! The “Default List” under the Reminders settings was also missing, and Siri couldn’t add new reminders either.
Perusing Google and the Apple support forums, it appeared that of course, a complete reset of the phone might fix the problem. I didn’t want to do that, though, because I would lose my iOS 7.0.6 jailbreak when the phone would update itself to iOS 7.1.
WIJFR: Katabasis
The death of the fearsome Ögedei Khan has brought the Mongol invasion of the West to an abrupt halt. Exhausted, plagued by uncertainty and self-doubt, and reeling from betrayal by one of their own, the surviving Shield-Brethren struggle across a frozen, shattered wasteland to return home after their desperate battle in Mongolia. Their mission is complete—Christendom has been saved—but new and terrible questions haunt each member of the company: Are they heroes or villains? Or just pawns in a larger game, trapped in a world gone mad in the wake of the unspeakable devastation visited upon it by the Mongol horde?
When I started reading “The Mongoliad” last year I thought it was a trilogy, so I was surprised when I reached the end of Book 3 only to find the story hadn’t wrapped up. In fact, this part of the Foreworld Saga is five books and I just finished “Katabasis” by Joseph Brassey, Mark Teppo, Cooper Moo, and Angus Trim (no Neal Stephenson anymore).
Buffalo LinkStation LS420
Back in 2006 I purchased my first NAS, the 250gb Buffalo LinkStation. Three years later I quadrupled my NAS space by replacing the LinkStation with the 1TB Buffalo LinkStation Live. It’s now been five years since my last NAS upgrade and this time I decided to finally go with RAID. Sticking with Buffalo (I have yet to have a problem with Buffalo storage devices), I selected the LinkStation 420.
How Sweet (16) it is!
Incredible!
By beating #3 Syracuse 55-53 in third round of the 2014 NCAA tournament, my #11 Dayton Flyers are in the Sweet 16 for the first time in 30 years (in 1984 they made it to the Elite Eight)! They will face #10 Stanford on Thursday. GO FLYERS!!
Spring Training 2014: Recap
Just like the first day, the last day of trip starts early.
My brother had a 6:30am flight so we got up at 4:45am. The early start was another reason we chose to stay in Tempe, closer to the airport, than further away like we had on previous visits as it gave us more time to “sleep in.” Within 20 minutes we had checked out of the hotel, drove to the airport, and then parted ways at Terminal 4. I dropped my brother off so he could get through security and then I drove the car back to the rental car center and took the shuttle back to the terminal. By the time I had checked my bag at the US Airways counter (lots of people in the wrong long due to codeshare confusion!) and made my way through security, my brother had already boarded his plane. I still had three hours to kill …
Spring Training 2014: Day Three
We got up early this morning (5:45am MST!) so we could get breakfast at the hotel as soon as it opened and then be on our way to Camelback Mountain for our annual hike. This year we decided to do the Cholla Trail, instead of Echo Canyon, since we hadn’t been on that trail since our first trip and didn’t make it to the top.
Spring Training 2014: Day Two
One thing that bugs me about Arizona not following daylight savings time: it gets light early! My brother woke up early to go for a morning run around ASU (alma mater of Indians infielder Jason Kipnis) just down the road from where we were staying. We had breakfast at the hotel (which was surprisingly good) and met some nice older ladies who were also in town for baseball. One was a lifelong Cubs fan (evidenced by every piece of clothing she had on). She said she knew Sandy Alomar personally and had babysat his kids when they were smaller.
After breakfast, we drove over to the Goodyear Ballpark Complex to watch the Indians’ morning practice.