January 2008
12 posts
2 tags
Coolest program I've run across today
I spent part of the day reading Wireless Hacks in hopes of building a sweet antenna to score free wireless in Palo Alto (or at least for the BAMF factor). Before the antenna section, they had a list of some software that would be useful: Kismet, Wireshark, aircrack-ng, tcpdump… the standards. Then they showed Driftnet, a simple program that passively listens for traffic, scans for images...
4 tags
Even if Geico can't save you money on car...
For personal reference, this is what I’ve learned over the last month in shopping for auto insurance: 1. If you’ve had violations, check your driving record so you know what you have to report. Personal Plans, a company partnered with IBM, told me I couldn’t get insurance through their two carriers since I wasn’t considered a California Good Driver — which mean,...
2 tags
Palo Alto!
Google Street View Flickr Pictures We’re signing the lease this afternoon — I’m really excited!
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Pics from Pacific Coast Highway
This is the last load of road trip pictures, sorry it took so long to post them. I got lazy. The sets aren’t completely finalized — some pictures need some rotating and cropping, and there are some dupes for some reason. Anyway, I think a lot of the pics still turned out pretty stellar. Driving up PCH Monterey Bay Aquarium Next post: new apartment in Palo Alto!
3 tags
Lake Havasu to Bermuda Dunes
Lake Havasu was a short 200 mile drive to Bermuda Dunes, where Lia’s parents and little brother live. On the highway to I-10, a train track parallels the highway. The train tracks are elevated on little hills, and the entire way is graffitied with messages on the side of that hill written in rocks. As an added attraction, every time there’s a bridge over a dried up creek, there’s...
4 tags
Grand Canyon National Park
After Carlsbad, we drove to Gallup on the New Mexico/Arizona border. As we pulled in, we realized it was a lot colder than we thought: there was snow on the ground. The guy at the front desk said it had been there a couple of weeks and it hadn’t thawed yet. We got to the Grand Canyon at about 2:00pm on the 16th. I decided to buy a season pass for the national parks, hoping that it will...
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Route Recalculation...
17 Wednesday: To the grand canyon! Google map route. Spend rest of morning and day there until the sun goes down. Drive halfway to Palm Springs and camp 18 Thursday: drive to Palm Springs 19 Friday: Drive to San Diego (hour and a half) go to Tijuana 20 Saturday: Drive halfway up PCH 20 Sunday: Finish! Arrive in San Francisco! (early evening) 21 Monday: Lia flies back to Cleveland :(
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Coolest cave pictures you'll see all day
Since we didn’t go out last night, we were able to get on the road by 9:30 this morning. The weather didn’t look to good, but after a couple of hours, we had out run the storm, and also entered New Mexico. We got to White’s City, the nearest city to Carlsbad Cavern, and bought tickets to the Cavern. Tickets are only $6/person! And this is in our country! If you’re in the...
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Texas and Ghost Towns
Charles sent me a link for ghost towns and said that we would be driving through ghost town central, Texas. Knowing that I wanted to end up a couple of hours from Carlsbad Caverns, I chose McCulloch county because it had a handful of ghost towns, including Salt Gap. After a quick lunch at Taco Cabana in Houston, we hit the road on I-10 West, but not for long. When we hit Columbus, we took 71 north...
3 tags
Day 1: Cleveland to Memphis
This trip was the anticipated amount of boring. Lia and I have both driven the Cleveland to Cincinnati stretch, and just extending it down further south isn’t too interesting. We saw the Florence Ya’ll water tower in Kentucky. Our hotel in memphis was right by Beale St., and we met up with Lisa and some of her friends there. Beale St. is really a cool looking place. I’ve heard it...
1 tag
Cross Country Road Trip #4
It’s that time again — time for me to make another cross country road trip in the Nissan, although this will probably be the last one for a while. Here’s the tentative schedule: Day 1 [Jan 12] - Cleveland to Memphis (visiting Lisa Keung) Day 2 [Jan 13] - Memphis to Houston (visiting Charles Larrabee) Day 3 [Jan 14] - Houston to El Paso (for no reason other than the song) Day 4...
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Thinkpad Trackpoint on Xubuntu
After chasing many rabbits down many rabbit holes, I figured out that it’s actually -really- easy to get the Trackpoint working in Xubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) on my Z60t. Open /etc/X11/xorg.conf and look for InputDevice with the Identifier `Configured Mouse`. Add: Option "EmulateWheel" "true" Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2" As an added bonus to make all your Mac friends green, find...