The Life and Times of Michael Shadle

As of Chrome 5, it appears that SPNEGO (that seamless sign-on that happens using Kerberos tickets and GSSAPI and all that magical crap) on a Windows-centric network is supported. Thanks to Tim for noticing that today and after upgrading to version 5, I could confirm it.

I have to say that I have been impressed with Chrome, for the most part. I still would like a status bar at the bottom, I'm used to having some sort of "frame" around my windows to know where they end. Also it has a limited amount of things to customize inside of the options. However as far as development goes, it's moving along quite steadily after the initial launch and stagnation. I did expect this version to be noticeably faster but so far it seems the same. I especially expected Gmail and other Google properties to magically perform better... but nothing major to report so far.

When it comes down to it though it's becoming the default browser on almost all of my machines. It's faster on startup and such than Firefox and less prone to large memory usage (but still is a bit bulkier than I'd like...) but it's design is much better than Firefox's due to it's sandboxing. Hopefully development continues at the same rate though!

Once again I have to show praise for this company. In a time where everyone is cutting corners they are giving proactive discounts when they totally could not bother with even notifying me about a delay.

We're Sorry Your DVD Shipment Was Delayed

Dear Michael,

Due to a technical problem, your DVD shipment was delayed and will ship on Wednesday, May 26th.

We pride ourselves in delighting you, and we've let you down. We apologize, and we will issue a 10% credit to your account in the next few days. You don't need to do anything. Your credit will automatically be applied to your next billing statement.

Wow - two headlines in the same amount of weeks worth screaming about.

They're increasing ETF fees on all devices that actually matter and put any strain on their network. They've reduced fees on "basic and quick messaging phones" - which aren't anything that anyone cares about anymore.

"... the ETF will increase to $325, and be reduced by $10 for each month that you remain with us as a customer during the balance of your two-year service agreement."

Do the math: if you ride out your contract until month #23, you still owe them $95. You can never break even until you've gone out of your contract. I bet this will stay in effect for next year's iPhone refresh (assuming the pattern continues) - which means larger ETFs/upgrade costs for people who want to upgrade to the next iPhone after the 4G. All of us folks who plan on getting an iPhone 4G will be agreeing to these new terms (assuming we buy into a contract.) AT&T's got virtual crack with the iPhone (and iPad, I suppose) - they rope you in with two year agreements but release a new device each year... it would be so great if Apple got out of their damn agreement with AT&T.

Will have to weigh the options - I might be out of my contract soon anyway and it might be cheaper to buy the phone without a contract. Assuming I even stay with AT&T.

Ref: http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=17951

Upstart is becoming the de-facto standard for everything in Ubuntu, and I do enjoy it's process management and re-spawning capabilities.

(Actually, before PHP-FPM I used to use upstart jobs to su - $user php-cgi -b $port :))

These are VERY simple but effective scripts, and would actually be beefed up to be more intelligent (chaining nginx to start after PHP-FPM for example. However, if you do not need PHP, then that's a useless chain. So I kept it simple. I suppose you could add a short delay to start nginx then...)

Note: make sure PHP-FPM is set to daemonized = yes.

Second note: this works for PHP 5.2.x w/ the PHP-FPM patch, on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (10.04) - anything else YMMV. I am not using PHP-FPM w/ PHP 5.3 yet since I have no environments that I know will support 5.3 code. When I finally get one, I will look for the same opportunity.

/etc/init/nginx.conf:

description "nginx"

start on (net-device-up and local-filesystems)
stop on runlevel [016]

expect fork
respawn
exec /usr/sbin/nginx

/etc/init/php-fpm.conf:

description "PHP FastCGI Process Manager"

start on (net-device-up and local-filesystems)
stop on runlevel [016]

expect fork
respawn
exec /usr/local/bin/php-cgi --fpm --fpm-config /etc/php-fpm.conf

Once you've done this you can remove all the /etc/init.d/php-fpm, /etc/init.d/nginx and /etc/rc?.d/[K,S]??php-fpm and /etc/rc?.d/[K,S]??nginx symlinks and files. This takes care of all of that.

Feel free to comment and leave better tips, tricks and ideas!

I got a hiring bonus for getting a friend hired. Boy, I was excited for some extra cash. However, when I saw the deposit, I was taken aback. The government took 41.7% of my bonus I got. The bonus I had to fight for to get appealed and wait months to get. What has the government done lately to deserve that? I think that individuals should all be given a "maximum tax amount" or something, and it should be based on a percentage of their income. Or, remove taxes altogether and go with a Flat Tax or a VAT. Seriously. The cycle of taxation on the same dollar is getting insane, now that I am starting to value money more and seeing how easily it is wasted.

The empty promise fairy is here again.

Remember when AT&T didn't have MMS support, and kept delaying it? "Later this summer" - finally delivered September 25th. Over two years since the original iPhone launched on AT&T's network and MMS support was on just about every phone imaginable.

Or when they would have upgraded capacity? I can't tell anything. Lately it seems I get dropped calls almost 100% of the time.

What about tethering support? Still haven't seen that... the Engadget announcement says "soon" back in November 2008. Tethering support was official in iPhone OS 3.0 in June 2009. "Official" carrier support in the US? Still not an option (unless you jailbreak, etc.)

Now, in the midst of a new iPhone launch this summer they've got another announcement that will make everyone think "our problems will be solved!" - but if history is any guide, it's just a properly timed announcement to gain confidence in a competitive market. The iPhone is an extremely extensible product, but the service lately has literally had me thinking about jumping ship. Sprint and Verizon both have a decent array of phones, and their coverage out here is quite good in comparison; Sprint also offers their hybrid 4g/3g options too.

Anyway, time will tell. It's a shame that Apple is so crippled by AT&T.

At work we've got a bit of an annoying proxy setup. It does allow outbound SSH through a SOCKS 5 proxy (no auth), and after a while of Googling (I don't know Capistrano nor Ruby, but the Ruby app developer did) we were able to figure it out.

Assuming you have the Net::SSH::Proxy::SOCKS5 class installed on your system (which may come as part of net-ssh?) it's actually quite simple. Getting the ssh settings right took a while of looking around, but it wound up being quite easy, and since I could not find anything on the net about this, I wanted to post our findings.

It's as simple as adding the following to the applications's config/deploy.rb:

require 'net/ssh/proxy/socks5'

sshproxy = Net::SSH::Proxy::SOCKS5.new('proxy.com', 1080)
set :ssh_options, { :proxy => sshproxy }

Viola.

Obviously there are more options, but we had a hell of a time trying to correlate the options and get them fed into the SSH module (if that's the right term) properly. It'd probably be much simpler if I had known Ruby, or if this problem was in PHP 🙂 Anyway, I try to share what I can when I get it... (this post is only over four months overdue...)

Enjoy!

There may be reports of an economic recovery slowly happening, but those of us back here in the real world are still seeing otherwise.

Remember back in 2000 when ad impressions meant something, people were getting rich out of nowhere, wealth was being spread all around, etc? I remember that time.

What about right now? We've got more people sitting on homes that have negative values, owe more on their homes than they're worth, and we keep paying our mortgages. Only a few of those people who can't are getting help. The idea was great, the execution has been poor, and it should extend to a lot more people than just those that will have to default on their loans...

I go to a restaurant and use a corporate discount program they were part of, which I've used a lot - one reason I go there, actually. This last time I was there they informed us that they're suspending the program due to the "economic down turn" - that's just one example.

Another example? Sites like Ars forcing people to remove their ad blockers to read the content - it was a 12 hour experiment, but it is supporting my point.

The point is - we're stuck in a rut. It seems like we just can't get this machine going on our own. The government has tried - giving handouts to big companies to keep them afloat, loan adjustments to homeowners due to lost property values, things of that nature. But it doesn't seem to be enough. I'm 20% or more at a loss on my property right now. Where's my assistance? I would have to be financially crippled before anyone even thought of helping adjust my loan (sorry, I'm getting a little bit specific...)

The only way I see being able to get out of this rut is to jump start things. At one point, people may say it was bloated or overpriced or whatever, but it -did- happen and it was able to happen for quite some time, there was a large amount of wealth floating around the country. It didn't come out of nowhere - lots of money was on paper, but it was still usable. You could convert it to tangible cash. People were buying and selling things left and right. Companies weren't suspending programs due to the diminishing returns... if anything they were pushing harder. The cycle of money was going at full steam.

Right now? People are being more frugal. Companies are having to drop prices, go out of business (hey, I went to a car wash today, and it was all closed up. Coincidence?) and do anything they can to survive. We've turned into a defensive country, instead of an proactive one. We're spending more money overseas than we are on ourselves. We're getting pissed off at all sorts of things, but when it comes down to it, if we were back in the 1999 economy, we wouldn't be caring. We'd all be happy as hell. Anyone could be a millionaire. Property values went up, not down. Advertising revenue off websites was enough to keep them afloat, due to higher CPM. Everyone wins. Literally everyone. Who was being hurt? Businesses were able to flourish, individuals were able to gain wealth and jobs, afford healthcare themselves easier or get them from their employers, etc.

It seems like everywhere I turn now, a program is being discontinued. A product is being end-of-lifed. A store is having to close down.

Oh and stock prices? How about the huge company I work for with record (or at least way higher than expected) sales and earnings two quarters in a row. What happened to our stock? Not much. Same level it's been for almost 10 years now. Remember back when stock options meant something? I don't. Most of mine will expire without ever being usable. That hiring bonus grant I got? Not much of a bonus at $0.

Back in 1999? Yeah, it would have grown. Everyone put money into the market. Everyone was buying things - properties, food, toys, it didn't matter. That kept the companies alive and running, which in turn kept people employed. It's the circle of capitalism and is currently failing. Part of it -is- something we could try to fix, but it has dragged on so long I am not sure we can now without help.

I would request the government to help out the homeowners who bought and lost their asses - we're the bread and butter of the country, and not the handful of companies who were making excessive amounts of profit and still got federal help. Helping us adjust our loans and giving the banks the money for the difference would restore a lot of people's financial stability, which could start them on a more positive buying trend.

We also need better encouragement for in-country labor. It's sad when skilled individuals can't find a job. There's the carrot approach, which is government subsidizing or encouraging companies to hire Americans (which doesn't seem appropriate to me - that should be an obvious) or the stick approach, where companies have to pay additional taxes or penalties for hiring out of the country when they are given appropriate in-country candidates.

We also need to stop bleeding ourselves with this damn "war" - it wasn't our concern to begin with, and it will never truly be solved. We made our own bed in the 80's when we put Saddam in power. This is why you don't get involved in other people's battles. But alas, that's our foreign policy at work - convert every country to democracy (more like capitalism) so they'll play by our rules. Heaven forbid we do trade with a Communist, Socialist or other "evil" regime (which we do already, and we did with Saddam up until we ousted him...)

Obviously it's pretty cut and dry to me. The country, to me, could be mapped out on one gigantic Simcity-esque type budget planner. Income comes from trade, taxes, etc. Spending is divvied up to programs, trade, all that stuff. It'd be a quite large database of programs and such. I have a lot of ideas floating around in my head, but sadly it's hard to compose them in a decent fashion. That will all come from the "Mike's Country Plan" I lay out some day...

In summation: if we could all band together we could probably start the machine up again. However, it's not simple and it's too scary for most people, understandably. That's why in my head the government would have to step in with it's funny money and write checks against a never-ending deficit (who cares about that anyway?) - maybe then, some faith and courage could be restored to get this capitalist system going again.

Google's usually pretty good about pushing standards and best practices but this is just lame.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=41467

From my understanding, if you type in http://www.foo.com in your browser it will now remove the http:// - not that it matters, the browser auto-prepends if it you leave it out, but it's not intuitive at all now, and it's not like it was a change that needed to be done.

This is just going to make more people copy/paste the wrong URLs into pages, not get autolinked properly, etc. How many <a href="www.foo.com/"> type links will there be if this starts spreading... I like being able to copy/paste directly from the address bar.

I don't care if people don't put it in when you type in "yahoo.com" - the issue here is the output and reuse and the general idea of "this is a legitimate URL" - considering the RFC for URLs does maintain that you need a scheme!

"A URL contains the name of the scheme being used (<scheme>) followed by a colon and then a string (the <scheme-specific-part>) whose interpretation depends on the scheme."

While the new healthcare bill certainly surprised me with things like requiring people to purchase insurance or be fined (I thought the point of this was actual universal healthcare, not universal coverage forced upon people...) and I certainly understand how people would be emotional about that, this whole craze of protesting should really be thought about from a more intelligent angle.

Here in Portland we recently had a couple cop-related shootings, which caused the public to protest. However, they began protesting before the identity of the victim or his issues was even exposed to the public. They were simply protesting for the sake of protesting. Then, a kid threw a bike at police, and wound up getting arrested - makes sense. However, then people started protesting about the kid who was protesting and got arrested. People even had signs saying "I threw the bike" - to me, if they want to take credit for a crime, so be it. You can go to jail too.

Protesting hasn't been an effective tool from what I can tell for decates. It slows down traffic, people come out just to come out and use it as an excuse to create violence or disturbance... has it stopped the war in the Middle East? Or anything? How many thousands of people and hundreds or thousands of protests have occured and what has changed? Nothing.

Anyway this article really pissed me off, it shows how uneducated the public is, and to me, you shouldn't be allowed to protest if you're not even smart enough to put together a phrase that has correct grammar and/or spelling...