WeGoWest.com

6 Months at GSB

Posted by Christopher in Home Stuff, Nerd Stuff, Work Stuff on September 4, 2010

It seemed like a long time but it has finally come to an end. I took a six month contract to sys-admin the Portland office of a high end law firm, Garvey, Schubert and Barer.

The work was challenging at times but mostly focused on helping the Attorneys by making sure they had the computer/electronic tools needed to get done what they needed to get done. Sometimes it was hardware, often software but always customer based, which included training.

Initially, I was intimidated to step into an office with a number of unknown systems (document management, meta data scanners, email based voice mail and others) but the systems we well thought out and I had a great support from the head office in Seattle.

Here is where I spent the last 6 months.

It was more than worth it….and we get to go on vacation!

2010, Portland, sysadmin, Work

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Inflation Adjusted Housing

Posted by Christopher in Cool Stuff, Home Stuff, Nerd Stuff on August 25, 2010

There is a great article about how the true cost of buying a home in the USA right now. It also goes into how people intrinsically don’t understand compound inflation. ($5 today has the same value as$5 , ten years ago….right?)

The part that caught my attention was the inflation adjusted home prices graph.

The pressure that was put on people to buy into the idea that home ownership is a financial smart step has started to wane for the past few years, yet it is making a comeback. I think the Boomers are getting nervous about how to ditch their homes…

Next time someone tells you how they struck it rich by buying a home in the past 10 years, ask them about how much (inflation adjusted mind you) they paid in taxes, maintenance, insurance, fees and upgrades to their home…all on top of the interest and principle. I bet you find that they were lucky to break even at best.

Link to the article here.

costs, house, inflation, Money, ripoff

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Trek in the Park

Posted by Christopher in Home Stuff, Nerd Stuff on August 1, 2010

Portland can be a fun city if you have a bit of a weird streak.

One example is the free “Trek in the Park”; a theater troop’s annual episodic adventure of Star Trek. This year it was the episode “Space Seed” with Khan Noonian Singh. Some great friends of ours came with us and we got there an hour early. The popularity has increased a bit so we had to sit behind the amphitheater but we could still hear well. The park, Woodlawn Park has a couple of amphitheaters but they used the small one. Maybe next year they will use the larger one.

Before it started, we looked around at the audience and wondered aloud if this is what the Internet looks like?

The props were put in place and actors gathered.

Soon it was time to start, the music was amplified but the performers relied on their voices. The Costumes were great and the work was earnest, wholehearted and great fun. The Kirk, did an amazing job.

Stardate 2047……….

Spock had the best voice that could clearly be heard by all around.

Below is a video with the original for fun.

Make a date for next year!

Portland, Star Trek, Trek in the Park

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Muse closes for Silver Sun Pickups

Posted by Christopher in Home Stuff on July 31, 2010

We recently went to a great concert. It reminded me of the “arena rock” in the 90’s. The bands were good but the light show was better. Below are a few snaps and maybe a sound clip.

2010, Concert, Muse, Silver Sun Pickups

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Fueled by Fine Wine

Posted by tamara in Home Stuff on July 27, 2010

A unique title for a unique race. This little half-marathon had a few firsts for me.

First time I’ve ever had a wine tasting at packet pick-up. Mmmm

First time I’ve had an RFID chip on my bib number instead of a chip on my shoe. (I hope all races start doing timing this way- it’s so much easier!)

First time I’ve ever ran, what felt like, half a race uphill.

First time I’ve ever worn a “Team something” shirt. Thank you Lange Winery for the free tech shirt.

First time I’ve ever gotten a glass at the finish line of a race. (It’s a really pretty glass too)

Here is a short slide show of my race day.

A Portland blogger ran (4th place) the race and posted a great review of the Marathon here; http://blog.oregonlive.com/runoregon/2010/07/2010_fueled_by_fine_wine_half_2.html

A shout out to Frank for letting my use his song. Thank you!

Track is Sweet Validation by Old Axis. Available in iTunes.

marathon, Oregon, running, Tamara

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Outlook in the open

Posted by Christopher in Nerd Stuff, Work Stuff on May 27, 2010

Microsoft Outlook has long been the de facto standard for company email clients. Yes, there are many other email clients (Thunderbird, Outlook Express, whatever Apple uses), but Outlook is what is used most and some say most complete.

The downside of M$ Outlook is the locked nature of the file type, .PST. Some have called this a “barrier to exit”.

Just recently, Microsoft has announced that it has opened up the spec. Google will soon allow (already available for Google Apps users) import/export of PST. ( link here)

Thunderbird is looking for a plugin for the PST.

Great news for anyone using Outlook. It also takes Google Apps/gmail one step closer to becoming the new de facto email solution.

gmail, google apps, outlook, pst, thunderbird

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Blog-calypse

Posted by Christopher in Uncategorized on May 8, 2010

My blog had a coding issue in the DB and required a reinstall.

I took the time to move the blog to the new URL www.WeGoWest.com

Hope this doesn’t mess too much up but it had to be done.

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Short passwords FTW

Posted by Christopher in Nerd Stuff, Work Stuff on April 21, 2010

Passwords are a necessary evil. Around this time, everyone has a stack of passwords and has developed ways of dealing with them. Unfortunately, many deal with multiple passwords by making them shorter and easier to remember.

This is not good. Using simple to use “desktop software”, passwords can be cracked in almost no time at all. Below is the time need to crack your password using a single desktop computer.

password crack

The scary part is that most password crackers do not use a single computer but rent out server farms dropping the times down by 10X – 100X.

Need a solution? Check out KeePass. A simple to use free utility that encrypts your passwords into a single file that can be carried/stored. The time you take to learn a real password manager and use pseudo random passwords will pay off in the future when your bank account/hotmail account doesn’t get hacked.

I have two clients who have had their email account hacked. It may not seem like a big deal but the email account had passwords, personal data and was used to send emails to their business clients with links to malware. This caused their clients to become infected with virus’ from their email account….Not a good way to impress your clients.

What do you use for your password managing?

keepass

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Witopia and Windows 7

Posted by Christopher in Nerd Stuff, Work Stuff on March 25, 2010

I use a VPN service to protect my packets from being sniffed, altered or blocked. A VPN service has become a necessary tool these days but most people are unaware of why they should have access to one.

Why use a VPN? Real world examples below;

While in Argentina, I was unable to send email because the ISP in BA blocked all SMTP (port 25) to prevent spam. I would like to send my email but do not want to reconfigure my computer for each city I visit. — Fire up a VPN and I was good to go.
While visiting a coffee shop in Portland, I notice a want-a-be hacker (733T HaX0r!) being not so subtle about sniffing all the traffic. — Fire up the VPN and am safe to read my email.
In a hotel in Southern California, I would like to check my bank account but can see that the hotel has poor tech support allowing me (and everyone else) to see all the other computers in the building. Yep, you got it – Use a VPN service to encrypt my data.

The service I use, is called Witopia (www.Witopia.net)and it works flawlessly in XP but not so with Win7. NASA has a theory about “failing safe”, where if something breaks the critical cargo (people) are still safe or have access to escape. Witopia for Win7 does not fail safe!

witopia_logo Issue;

If you install the program normally in Windows 7, the service will connect up to the remote exit point (Hong Kong/LA/DC/London/ect) and will tell you that it is connected and encrypted. At this point, all your data should be shunted over the VPN only. This may or may not be true as discovered by visiting a IP trace website (http://en.utrace.de/) to see your real exit point.

Solution;

You must run Witopia’s personalVPN in “Administrator Mode” for the data to be sent to the right exit point but it will not warn you of this! Do not trust the program’s communication.

Be sure to follow all the instructions for Witopia personal VPN and not rely on the program to tell you if it worked or not.

You can read more about VPN here.

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Domain ideas

Posted by Christopher in Cool Stuff, Work Stuff on March 21, 2010

To help my Wife’s Sock Monkey company, I picked up a few domains over the past 5 years or so. I sure am glad that I did, because in the past year or so, the Sock Monkey thing has become huge!

I picked up and put placeholder pages on;

So, my idea was not to so much make companies for each of the domains but to keep them from other companies that would (and did) startup after SockMonkey.net

If you have some ideas what to do with the domains, let me know.

Christopher

Here is a snap of Tamara’s Company;

SockMonkey.net