ExerBent.com

I have just finished version 1.0 of my new web site: ExerBent.com. This new site is basically an expanded blog on how I've managed to lose 50+ pounds since November 2007, and manage my blood glucose level better. There are tips on lowering sugar intake, eating better, and exercising.

An exerbent is a recumbent stationary exercise bicycle, and has been the heart of my weight loss success. Please visit!

--SDP

Woohoo Barack!

I haven't felt this good about the future of the country ever. Congrats Barack! Congrats all supporters and voters, and congrats to the United States of America! Woohoo!

--SDP

Followup: The Sprint / Cogent Internet backbone traffic debacle of October 2008: A Perspective from the Trenches

[This is a followup to my original post about this here]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh...... someone somewhere did the *right thing*.

The Sprint/Cogent backbone traffic link remained down since Thursday afternoon causing me to not have access to my web sites (+email +ssh login).

But I just now (3:45 PM Mountain Standard Time) have been able to connect once again. Woohoo!

The problem was solved by the link between Cogent and Sprint being re-established (see http://www.internetpulse.net/) as opposed to other possible new route workarounds being set up.

So, to whomever or whatever caused the link to be re-established, THANK YOU! I totally had not expected any action to take place during the weekend and I was working on my list of my own personal workarounds, none of which looked easy, attractive, or cheap. I definitely appreciate the work of the technical, legal, and managerial staff that pushed through the solution.

--SDP

The Sprint / Cogent Internet backbone traffic debacle of October 2008: A Perspective from the Trenches

So yesterday, Thursday 10/30/2008, I'm having a fairly normal day. I'm not feeling so well so I don't plan any exercise today despite the beautiful weather in Laramie.

Around 6 PM I decide to check up on my web sites and download my email as I do periodically throughout the day, and I find that I cannot get to my main web site www.plainsboro.com, nor can I download my email or log into the site via ssh. After checking a few things out (yes, I can get to other sites just fine, etc.), I give my web server ISP--Jumpline--a call. The response: nope, your web server is up and running. OK; fine. Some glitch with my home ISP, Bresnan Communications Cable service, then. Such glitches are not all that uncommon in the connect-to-the-internet-via-cable-modem world. The night wears on and still no connectivity to my web servers so I sleep on it.

The next day (Halloween!), the same thing--I find that I can't get to my web site in any fashion. I also discover that I can't get to Jumpline's tech support web site either, plus several other web sites they host (like www.midwestclosets.com). Hmmmmm. I have one other thought at this point, which is to use a proxy host and try to connect to my web site. In general, I hate using proxy web hosts because you have no idea what they might be doing to you: capturing all your keystrokes trying to find passwords, etc., plus they're often located in foreign coutries like Iran or China. But I eventually find a free public web proxy in the USA where I can just type in a URL. They basically let you do this for free, but they wrap your browsing with advertisements. As it turns out, this works for me. I can connect to my web server via a proxy host just fine. But of course, this doesn't solve my ssh or email needs, and I definitely don't want to use a proxy host for those connections.

But I'm able to get to Bresnan's tech web site and I'm able to chat online with a network support person there. The basic answer I get is that you're either connected to the internet 100% or disconnected 100%, and if you are having problems then it has to do with your computer's configuration or a firewall that is blocking certain sites. Not too helpful. Now, I've been a Unix and TCP/IP network manager for about 24 years and this is definitely a frustrating problem, but I know damn well that I'm not running a filtering firewall that is keeping me from getting to my own web server.

However, I do have a couple thoughts: (1) several months ago, Windows Vista's automatic update ran on my computer and I found that on the first boot after its update install, the internet was broken. At that time I checked my connectivity with my backup computer, a laptop running XP and that computer's connection to the internet seemed OK. So I just rebooted my Vista box again and that seemed to solve the problem. This is amazing, isn't it? Over 20 years ago when Windows first came on the scene, their solution to every problem was to reboot your computer. Here we are in 2008 and rebooting the computer still seems to be the #1 way to fix a problem. Yikes. (2) The Bresnan support technician suggested I try a second computer and to also try bypassing my cablemodem router, both good suggestions.

So I try both of these things. Rebooting Vista doesn't solve the problem. And I gave away my backup computer running XP so I dig deep and try to use a *very* old laptop, a 450 Mhz Acer I bought in 2000. It still runs, but it freezes all the time and isn't too useful for much these days. I fish it out of storage and hook it up in dhcp mode; it manages to connect to my local network and to the internet, but it has the same symptoms as my Vista box--no connectivity to my own web sites. I try the second thing--bypassing my cablemodem router. Luckily, Vista is pretty savvy about dhcp and I don't need to reboot it when I plug my ethernet cable directy into my cable modem instead of my cablemodem router. It just figures out it's on a new network and refreshes dhcp. Interestingly to me, I find that I am assigned a *different* IP address than the external IP of the cablemodem router gets assigned, but as I think about it, it makes sense since the dhcp lease on the cablemodem router is probably still valid, and might even be tied to its MAC address. Alas, bypassing the cablemodem router doesn't fix the problem either.

OK; I also reboot all of my networking equipment--the cablemodem router, my cable modem, and even the little 100Mb switch I use. Interestingly, NONE of these pieces of equipment has an on/off switch. To reboot each of them, I have to unplug their electrical sockets, wait 10 seconds and plug them in again. All of the equipment seems to be functioning normally.

But I still can't get to my web sites, dammit!

So I'm very frustrated by now, and even though I'm a bit under the weather, it's another beautiful day here, mostly sunny with temps around 67 degrees, so I decide to run an errand on my recumbent trike and also take a long-ish ride on the Laramie Green Belt. I end up going about 13.5 miles in 82 minutes with a stop at the Post Office, and during my ride I remember that I also have an iMac computer that I hardly use but which can now become my backup computer. So when I get back from my bike ride, I'm a bit less frustrated and I have another thing to try. I boot the iMac, plug it into my local network and also try bypassing my router, but once again even the iMac can't get to my web sites.

OK; so I've tried three different computers, three different operating systems, both attached to my router and bypassing it. Six configurations total, and all fail. I think about this, then decide that since all the sites I can't get to are at Jumpline, I'll try their customer support line again. They blew me off yesterday, but maybe there's some new information.

Sure enough, there's now a message on their main support hotline explaining that there is a routing issue between Sprint and Cogent. And in fact when I do a search in google news, I find that it's more than just a routing issue--these two internet backbone companies have decided to completely stop talking to each other. Yikes. For more information about this, do a google news search for "Sprint Cogent" and look at the news article results for October 30 and 31 2008.

Now, I know a bit about TCP/IP. It's a very robust set of protocols with sophisticated routing protocols on top of it. When there's a problem, it's generally smart enough to automatically re-route traffic so poor old users like myself don't even notice a problem. Remember 9/11? The World Trade Center towers supported much wireless and wired infrastructure critical to internet and cell phone operations. When the towers fell, lots of cell phone service dropped out, but the internet itself largely stayed up and became an important communications tool during that time period.

Not so today, apparently. It seems that today because Bresnan Communications connects primarily to Sprint and Jumpline connects primarily to Cogent, because these two companies are currently refusing to exchange backbone internet traffic with each other, little old me sitting in Laramie, Wyoming now cannot connect to my web servers. Argggggghhhhhh.

This is truly horse hockey, bull crap, or whatever nastiness you want to call it. Large companies like Bresnan and Jumpline should have backup plans for this type of problem. At the user level where I'm at, I shouldn't have to worry about issues like this myself. What do other folks who don't have internet administration experience do? Do they just say: "oh well, I guess these sites that I usually visit are down and I can't do anything about it"? Apparently so. And with the initial customer support that I got from both Jumpline and Bresnan, the basic reaction by both customer support folks I communicated with was: "Everything looks fine from here; this must be your problem or at least it's certainly beyond our control". That's BS, too. The management teams at both companies should become aware quickly about problems like this and should inform their staff about how to advise their customers. I mean, I actually had to inform Bresnan that this problem existed and might be affecting some significant portion of their customer base. Good grief golly gee.

So now we're at about 35 hours of no Sprint<-->Cogent communication and nobody seems to be doing anything about it except filing lawsuits. And in fact since all of this took place on a Thursday and wasn't fixed by Friday afternoon, I almost certainly can expect the problem to linger at least through the weekend. Great; so next week some time I'll have 9000 spam emails to download to get my 11 actual meaningful emails.

I don't give a crap whose problem it is, who caused it, what contract negotiations are taking place, etc. SOLVE THE PROBLEM Sprint and Cogent. Or better yet, GO AROUND THE PROBLEM, Bresnan and Jumpline! SHEESH!


I'll most certainly post updates as this fiasco continues.

--SDP

Wow CBS 4 Denver paused *again*

As I reported in my previous article about this (here), CBS channel 4 out of Denver once again this evening (early morning of 10/28/2008) displayed nothing but a still image on their channel. In this case, the still image was from the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and it was the image below of Carl Bernstein of Woodward and Bernstein fame. Poor Carl!


The still image broadcast started at about 12:29 AM on 10/28/08, and was still being broadcast as of about 3 AM (at least two and a half hours). Yikes.

I had originally figured that the problem was likely at the cable provider, Bresnan (as opposed to the network or the local station). But now since the problem has occurred again and is on the same channel, I'm leaning toward a problem at the local Denver channel CBS 4 itself. But I'm again assuming some sort of software problem or someone hitting a pause button accidentally. In both cases, this began happening during a network feed, but both times another CBS channel was having no problems.

Strange!

CBS 4 Denver/Bresnan weirdness

UPDATE: Wow! 4:29 AM and the still image below is still being broadcast. Somebody screwed up royally here; 7 hours + of lost advertising and lost viewership. Yikes. Hopefully this will be discovered and repaired by tomorrow sometime.

-----------------------------------

Today, Saturday September 20 2008, there was some weirdness happening on my Bresnan Communications cable service. For at least a couple hours in the evening, channel 4 (CBS 4 out of Denver) was broadcasting just this single paused image:


This occurred at the very least from 9 PM until 10:40 PM. I noticed it because I had set my DVR to record "48 Hours", and this paused image is all that showed up for the entire hour. I have no idea what this image is actually from, other than it's probably not from "48 hours"; perhaps it's from one of the shows from the previous two hours: "NCIS" or "The Unit", but I don't watch either show and thus don't know them well enough to guess.

Now, the question is: who's responsible for this paused image to appear? It's got to be one of three entities: (1) the CBS network; (2) CBS 4 Denver; (3) the local cable provider, Bresnan Communications. I discount that this is a network problem because CBS was broadcasting just fine on another CBS cable channel. So between (2) and (3), I think the likely problem is happening at the cable provider, where someone pressed a "pause" key accidentally, or some piece of software has broken causing this still image to broadcast continuously over their cable channel 4. I suspect Bresnan instead of CBS 4, just because it's my guess that there is someone at CBS 4 always monitoring what they are actually broadcasting. After all, that single broadcast channel is most of their business. However, it wouldn't be difficult to imagine this slipping through unnoticed at Bresnan, where most of the operation is automated and very few folks would likely be constantly monitoring their 100 or 200 channels. Plus, I think I noticed a similar problem on another cable-only channel tonight too.

I thought this might be a glitch in my 7-year-old ReplayTV DVR. Such glitches happen occasionally, where the audio stops being recorded, or some other strange problem. But I rebooted the DVR and the problem didn't go away. So I bypassed the DVR and went to direct cable viewing on the TV and sure enough, there was this still image!

Anyway, the lesson here I think is just that even with all of todays cool technology and automated systems, it's still possible to have a glitch like this happen. I'd be curious to find out if anyone else has seen something like this happen.

Followup on LG VX8600

In April 2008, I reported that my LG VX8600 cell phone had survived a trip through a washing machine. This was true, and after I dried it out for a couple days, it seemed to work fine, except that the power key wasn't working. Later in an addendum I stated that even the power key seemed to be working again. However, I had spoken too soon apparently as the power key stopped working again shortly thereafter. No problem, right? Just leave the phone on all the time, even when recharging, and I wouldn't NEED the power button.

Well, this month (September 2008), in anticipation of an upcoming out of town trip, I purchased a cheap-o spare battery and a car recharger. Before trying to swap the battery out for the new one, I was aware of the possibility that I might not be able to power the phone back on (since the power key was hosed). However, I checked the VX8600's manual, and somehow had gotten the impression that the phone would power up also if I just inserted a charged battery. But I didn't read the remainder of the information that indicated you also needed to press the power key.

So (*sigh*) of course as soon as I swapped the battery out, I was able to charge the replacement battery, but I wasn't able to turn the phone on. Arrgggh. So I looked into getting a new phone. I was just about to order a replacement phone (I was within seconds of pressing the online "order" button), when I decided to try one more thing: taking the entire phone apart to see if I could fix the power key.

So I proceeded to take the phone apart to investigate. It wasn't going to be any good to me if I couldn't power it on anyway. I took the phone out of its protective leather case, and checked out what I needed to do to take the thing apart. This was the process I used:

• With a small knife, I removed four little pieces of plastic that cover the tiny screws on the back of the unit.
• I then unscrewed 6 screws: the four on the back of the unit that I uncovered, and 2 inside the battery compartment. I needed a *tiny* screwdriver to do this; my normal tiny screwdriver that I use with many computer-related screws was too big. Luckily I did have a super-tiny screwdriver that worked great for removing these screws
• Once the screws were out, I was able to remove the back cover. This back cover is essentially there to protect the circuitry and provide a way to lock the battery in place.
• I then found that I could remove the small power/microsd circuit board, and also removed another separate piece of plastic at the bottom of the device near the microphone (perhaps part of the microphone sub-assembly)
• I was then able to remove the main circuit board from the phone. The black plastic cover for the numbers you press came out at this point. I could remove the circuit board to the extent that it was separate from the piece of plastic that covers it, but the circuit board was still attached to the display portion of the phone via a small piece of circuitry encased in plastic (like a small, flat ribbon cable).
• At this point, I snapped back into place the small power circuit board, then I held a charged battery in place with one hand and tried pressing the power button. Nothing :-(
• So the next thing I tried is some further disassembly, peeling back a piece of plastic stuck to the actual circuit board covering all the number and navigation buttons, including the power button
• I then fiddled with the buttons a bit, pressing them with the small screwdriver and with my fingers. After a bit of this fiddling and with the sticky plastic piece still pulled away from the circuit board, I again tried holding the battery in place with one hand and this time pressed the power button. LO AND BEHOLD, the power came on! Wow. I then powered off and on a few times and it kept working (yay).
• Next, I tried slowly re-assembling the phone, checking at each point along the way to make sure the power button continued working. I re-attached the sticky plastic piece over the buttons, put the flat black plastic numbers piece back in place, made sure all the circuit board pieces were properly in place, snapped the back on again, put back the 6 screws, and re-attached the little plastic screw covers. At each step of the re-assembly process, I kept checking to make sure the power button continued to work, and it did!

So, after completely disassembling the phone, fiddling with the power button completely uncovered, and testing, I was able to get the power button working again. There is not one thing that I know I did for sure that fixed the problem; perhaps it was just exposing the button to air that may have caused some deeply buried water to evaporate, or just the fiddling that caused that button's contacts to connect again. But whatever it was, I have ended up with a working power button, and after testing I can report a fully functioning cell phone once again.

I unfortunately didn't think to take pictures along the way during this process, but if I ever have a need to take the phone apart again, I'll be sure to do so.

Yesterday

Yesterday's just a past tomorrow.

Cats

Look into the eyes of a feline,
And tell me she has no soul.

LG VX8600 Cell Phone survives trip through washing machine

This seems like the best place to post this brief story.

A few weeks ago (beginning of March, 2008) I was doing laundry and during my first load of shirts I accidentally left my cell phone, an LG VX8600 in a shirt pocket. I didn't notice that I had done this until the load of shirts was completely finished--the washing cycle was done. And, since I have neither a land line nor a backup cell phone, I was pretty pissed off at myself and the circumstance and was envisioning having to shell out another few hundred bucks for yet another new phone--I'm already on my fourth in four years (three Motorola's and one LG). Arggghhhh.

The phone was in a leather carrying case with a buckle on it to attach to your belt, so the phone was protected somewhat by this, but still, my guess is that it was completely submerged for some large number of minutes and also experienced the agitator knocking it around.

At first it didn't work at all. I searched the internet a bit for other folks who have had a similar experience and found a few successful resuscitation stories. So I took the battery out of the phone and essentially tried to dry out the phone sans battery over the next couple days by letting it sit in a sunny window or over a heating vent.

Long story short, the drying out worked. The battery that went through the wash was completely hosed, but I had a spare battery, and after some fiddling around and some more drying out, the cell phone seems to be working at about 99%, and has been for about three weeks now. I can still make and receive calls, check my voice mail, use the tools like the alarm clock and so forth. The only thing that doesn't yet work is the "Power/End" key. But I've found that I can get by just fine without using that key anyway.

So my kudos go out to LG Electronics, manufacturer of the phone. I'd say that many electronic devices that are fully submerged and put through a wash cycle might very likely not ever work again, so it's a testament to some great manufacturing and some luck that this phone still works. THANK YOU LG ELECTRONICS! I'll very likely choose an LG product for future electronics needs because of this positive experience that saved me real $$.

By the way, I don't work for LG or any other cell phone manufacturer. I'm just a user who had a good/lucky experience.

UPDATE 4/5/2008: After the latest battery charging, the Power/End key now seems to be working again! Woohoo! So now the phone is working exactly as if it were brand new (plus it's CLEAN!).

Just Created This Blog. What's a Blog?

My first post! I might never post another entry! But here's ONE!

Here are some links that will fascinate you, educate you, make you a better person, and help you make the world a better place:

• Plainsboro.com (a portal)
• Pogo Fan Site (tips on pogo.com games)
• Internet Electricity Usage Database
• My Web Design Portfolio
• Interesting Articles on a variety of subjects including games and home networking
• How to Make Your Own State Quarters Display Map
• Dice Odds in the Board Game Risk