13 posts from 2008

An excellent adventure: Barack Obama Rally

Oct 26, 2008

Kyle, Greg, Katie and I attended the Barack Obama rally in Fort Collins, CO on October 26, 2008. It was AWESOME.

Karen, Katie and Greg left home a little before 10:00 a.m. We parked at a remote lot in southwest Fort Collins and rode a shuttle bus to campus. After getting in line (the end of the line was about three or four blocks from the entrance to the Oval), we ate our lunches.

Lunch

We were able to watch some college kids play Ultimate Frisbee in their Halloween costumes! That was fun.

It was a LONG wait - we got in the line at 11:30 and it didn't start moving until almost 2:00. It wasn't too bad, though - the crowd was fun and the mood was festive. People ahead of us in line started doing the "wave" and several of the "waves" made it as far as we could see.

We heard that the line extended to Moby Gym, south along Shields, and then wrapped back up on campus along the south-side dorms.

Each one of us saw people we knew! Karen saw two people she knew through work, Greg saw a classmate and a teacher, and Katie saw a classmate as well.

Kyle joined us around 1:00 or so.

Waiting in line

The weather was pretty chilly, and I would say we were a bit cold at times when the wind picked up. I guess it could have been a whole lot worse, though.

We saw one "protester". Some guy rode by on a bike and shouted "Woo-hoo, McCain all the way!" Everyone just laughed at him.

You know, we did not hear one word of anger or frustration all day long. Everyone was so happy and upbeat, no complaining about the line - it was a really neat crowd. Lots of diversity - we saw babies and grandmas and people of all backgrounds and all walks of life. It was cool.

Finally, the line started moving and we made our way to the rally entrance. They had about twenty metal detector stations set up. They moved people through there pretty quick.

We were thrilled to find out that we were in the general admission section that was closest to the podium. By then, it was about 2:30 or so. We heard the District 4 candidate Betsy Markey give a speech, as well as Governor Bill Ritter. As we were waiting, we saw the motorcade arrive on the road to the east of the Oval. This was while Ritter was speaking. Everyone started cheering, and he knew it wasn't for him. He joked about that line not usually getting such a big roar from the crowd! There were no speeches after that, which kind of surprised me.

Happy to be here

Here we are waiting for the rally to start. See the Jesus-rays shining on us? The Oval is pretty well shielded from the wind, so the conditions were just about perfect. The fall color on the trees was just beautiful!

They confiscated our water bottle at the metal detector station, but it was just as well. I think we would have gotten separated had we needed to move toward the porta-potties.

We made a contingency plan if we got separated ("Meet on the steps of the Administration Building!").

At about 3:00, they stopped letting people in - I think so they could secure the area we were standing in. Then about five minutes later, people just started flooding into the Oval - I don't think they had to go through any security at all.

Some guys came to the podium and did some sound checks, and then at 3:25 an announcement came over the public address system to welcome "Barack Obama, the next President of the United States!" Everyone went nuts!

Obama speaks

Katie took this picture, sitting atop Kyle's shoulders. The podium is located right below the break in the trees, and you can see Obama's dark suit right above the top of a blonde girl's head.

Here is a 4-1/2 minute video that Kyle shot for me as the speech ended. It's a little shaky at times, but worth the watch. At the end, Kyle pans the crowd so you can get a sense of how many people were there.

If you've heard his speeches before, this one didn't lay much new ground. Still, it was great to hear it all in person and with the crowd reacting all around.

At one point in his speech, he said something about working toward a health care system where we would eliminate the whole concept of a "pre-existing condition". The little old lady standing next to me turned to her little old lady friend and said with a huge smile, "Wouldn't that be wonderful?".

His speech lasted about 30 or 35 minutes. It took a while before the crowd could get moving toward the exit, but once it loosened up, we were out of there in no time.

We headed toward the bus stop, located across College Avenue at the old Fort Collins High School. We just walked right onto a bus! In about two minutes, it was full and we headed back to the remote lot. We were in our car by about 5:00.

After the rally

We stopped at Red Robin at Centerra on the way home to grab a bite to eat.

After getting home, Katie told me this was "the best weekend ever!" (To be fair, it was her her birthday on Saturday so that contributed somewhat, I'm sure, to the overall impression.) As we were watching the video at home, she started clapping along with the crowd and then giggled when she realized she didn't need to do that at home.

It was an awesome day.

Visit www.barackobama.com to learn more.

greg has his uniform!

Aug 21, 2008

Greg football

Greg got his uniform today!

He will play H-back and right linebacker on the C Team. He won't play JV this week - the kid that he was replacing will be able to play after all.

Scrimmage tomorrow against Fort Collins.

asus eeepc tethered via bluetooth to a palm centro

Jul 14, 2008

I got a new phone, so of course we must modify the Bluetooth settings on the eeepc, right?

First, some recommended posts:

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=9166. The post is for Sprint phones, but steps 3, 4, and 5 are the first steps for the Verizon installation. Key points: (1) Get USBModem software. I'm still in the trial period, but I think for $15, it's not a bad deal. Note that you don't have to install the software on the laptop side, just use HotSync to get the piece that goes on the Centro. (2) Address that connection-dropping problem (the first reply to the post). I didn't realize until reading this post that I'd been having trouble with that on my Motorola. I was attributing the problem to poor signals.
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=14295. This post reviews the necessary coding for /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf (didn't change from the Motorola install) and /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf (change device address and channel).
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothDialup. Seems like the Centro wanted to adopt a new channel pairing each time I fired up the connection. This page suggests 'rfcomm release 0' at the command line to fix the problem. It wasn't clear to me whether this is a one-time fix or an every-time fix. So to be safe, I put that command in my rfcomm.conf file, right ahead of the 'rfcomm0 {' line.

I saw several posts which suggested that with USBModem, you end up with a dial-up connection that's visible on the Network Connecitons dialog. Well, I never saw it. I'm continuing to use wvdial.

Finally, it wasn't clear whether the password for Verizon is 'verizon' or 'vzw'. I changed to password to 'vzw' in the wvdial.conf file - not sure whether the old one would have worked or not.

quick trick for administrator access

May 28, 2008

In xterm:

sudo XandrosFileManager

Sa-weet!

day2: bicycling to mt vernon

Mar 30, 2008

We road the Metro into the City and rented bikes from an outfit near the IRS building. To get from there to the Mt. Vernon trail, we had to go through all the crowds around the Washington Monument and the Tidal Basin. It was quite a scene (the cherry blossoms are in full bloom), but once we got the trail, it was great!

It was about 32 miles round-trip, with not too many hills. We stopped both ways at the end of the runways at Reagan National Airport to watch the planes take off.

Actual quote from Greg "I have a rash."

After it was all done, the kids were pretty wiped out and sore. The younger kids decided to stay in their room and order pizzas while Dale, Karen and Kyle went out for dinner with Julie.

day 1: flight and symphony

Mar 28, 2008

Flights went well. Boys shared toys.

sharing an ipod

Julie got us tickets to hear the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. We sat in the President's Box.

Karen and Katie in the box

Inside the President's Box, there is a little Presidential Pantry with Presidential M&M's and other good stuff. Also, a Presidential Refrigerator stocked with little bottles of Presidential Champagne.

Karen popped the cork on her bottle and it went up to the ceiling and didn't come back down. So now there is a Presidential Cork caught in the Presidential Chandelier, as you can see:

the cork is visible in the corner of the closest light

phone scripts on desktop

Mar 22, 2008

I created some scripts to both dial and then hang up wvdial, and saved them to the desktop.

From xterm:

cd /home/user/Desktop
sudo kwrite Dialer.sh

Type this script and then save and exit:

#!/bin/sh
sudo wvdial

Now, you have to change permissions and make the file executable:

sudo chmod 0755 Dialer.sh

Now you have an icon on your Desktop that you can double-click to dial out the phone. What about hanging up? Here you go:

cd /home/user/Desktop
sudo kwrite Hangup.sh

Type this script and then save and exit:

#!/bin/sh
sudo kill $(pidof wvdial)

Just like before, change permissions:

sudo chmod 0755 Hangup.sh

That's all there is to it! Now I'm going to write a script to execute GCALDaemon from the desktop. I don't want to make it an autostart thing - I want to run it at my convenience.

networked to a windows printer

Mar 9, 2008

Yesssss!

First, set up your printer here: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:addwindowsprinter

If necessary, resolve a bidirectional printing problem here: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=8548.

I had a bunch of junk clogging up the print queue. A couple of the files were real stubborn, so I got out the bazooka:

From the Start menu:

Run
CMD
NET STOP SPOOLER
cd \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\spool\PRINTERS
del *.spl
del *.shd
NET START SPOOLER
exit

Now I will see if I can get the Compaq connected to the printer.

Success at last

Mar 8, 2008
Post a comment

Yay! I can finally get online with my bluetooth dongle and my Motorola W385. (See the previous post for a few details.)

Asus Eee PC, Phone and Mouse

The key was getting a correct wvdial.conf file:

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem =/dev/rfcomm0
Phone = #777
Username = 10digitnumber@vzw3g.com
Password = verizon
New PPPD = yes
Stupid Mode = 1
Idle = 0

To connect to the internet, open a terminal window.

sudo wvdial

Once the connection is made, simply start the browser and it works! You have to leave the terminal window open while you're online. When you're done, close the browser, then type Ctrl+C in the terminal window to disconnect. Works like a charm!

I will probably use this only when a Wi-Fi or hardwire connection is unavailable, and then only to check gmail. So I don't intend to consume a lot of bandwidth or minutes. Just nice to know I have this as a back-up!

I also found a little USB Targus mouse that I had bought a while back. Replaced the battery, plugged it in and it worked, no questions asked.

I now have everything up and running, just in time for vacation later this month.

Linux on my old Compaq Presario

Feb 23, 2008

Long ago, I installed Windows XP onto my old Compaq Presario 12XL510A notebook computer. I shouldn't have - it was way more than the machine could handle. With my exposure to Linux on the Nokia n800, the Asus eee and an application at work, I decided to see if a low-impact Linux installation could bring the old machine back to useful life.

After researching my options, I decided to go for Xubuntu 7.1.

Here's where I downloaded it
Instructions on burning the CD image
How to make sure the image is valid
Software for performing the validation
Hash comparison code
GraphicalInstall instructions

Here are the particulars on the machine:

Compaq Presario
Model 12XL510A
PCMCIA: Texas Instruments PCI-1410 CardBus Controller
Two USBs
CD-ROM
1.44MB Floppy Drive
Intel Pentium III 797MHz
124MB RAM
12GB hard drive
Display: Trident Video Accelerator CyberBlade-i1, 1024x768x60HZ
Modem: generic softK56
Network adapter: RAS Async adapter

The machine was so overtaxed, it could hardly run the installer CD. So I deleted everything in My Documents, uninstalled a bunch of big memory-hogging programs, and then also uninstalled Windows XP. The machine reverted back to Windows ME.

Based on what I've read here, I think I'm just going to dump it completely and have this machine run exclusively on Linux.

Wish me luck.

Update: After repeated attempts, the normal CD installation would not work. So I'm switching to the Alternate CD instead.

Update: The Alternate Install CD is working just great. It even detected my Wireless Card in the PCMCIA slot, then asked for and accepted my wireless home network WEP key. Woo-hoo!