Missing: Elastic Strap for Suunto HR Monitor

Missing: One elastic strap for my Suunto t3 Heart Rate Monitor. It’s black with plastic clips at both ends. I still have the actual monitor / transmitter part, but not the elastic. Lost somewhere in my house (or maybe the Broomfield Paul Derda Recreation Center). If you find it, please return for a modest reward. Thanks.

*UPDATE! Tue 01.May.07*

I went looking for a replacement today after Suunto told me to go to an authorized dealer. REI in Boulder didn’t have one, so I wandered over to Boulder Running Company. They had replacement monitors and straps, but not just straps. But… they had a monitor that was malfunctioning and the guy there just gave me the strap since they were sending the monitor back to Suunto for credit anyway. Kudos to BRC… that type of common sense customer care is the reason why I don’t mind making the drive and paying a little extra to buy my running shoes from them.

Ubuntu in the Basement

I’ve undertaken a new project. I am going to be delivering IP-enabled services out of my basement for fun and hopefully profit. The idea is to build a basic environment in which I can run a couple applications that could be part of some future business ideas Paul and I are working on. Namely, I want to run an instance of Asterisk (an IP-PBX) and MediaWiki (the web / dbase infrastructure supporting Wikipedia). Both of these applications are Open Source and freely available for download and install by those with the will and wherewithal to do so.

However, both of these applications (and some others I am thinking of) operate under the Linux operating system. Since I didn’t have any PCs or servers with this OS, the first thing I needed to do was select a Linux distribution (there are many, many folks out there producing packages) and acquire a PC to go with it. Eventually, I settled on Ubuntu’s distribution because it includes a couple useful items like an easy to use installer, GNOME GUI, integrated LAMP and Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) support. Since Ubuntu is actually based on the Debian GNU/Linux project, it very stable and secure.

But I still didn’t have a computer, so last Friday I dropped $629 on a new HP Pavilion a6000n desktop PC. It has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+ CPU, 1GB PC2-4200 DDR RAM and a 250GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD (cue Tim Allen grunting here). As an aside, I continue to be amazed by Moore’s Law and it’s implicit price compression for perf increases in PCs. Simply astounding what $629 will buy you these days.

So, on Friday night, part of Saturday and part of Sunday, I found myself hiding out in the basement trying to figure out how to install Ubuntu without formatting the entire HDD. The PC came with Windows Vista Home Premium and I didn’t want to just wipe it out in case I ever wanted that OS for something. After a few attempts at partitioning the HDD, I finally got it sorted. I first tried to install the Ubuntu Server version, but it didn’t come with GNOME already installed. After bumbling around trying to get GNOME to come alive, I ended up blowing away the whole partition and starting all over again. Eventually, I got the Ubuntu Desktop version running and have been pretty pleased. Despite Ubuntu’s best efforts, installing this OS on anything other than a naked HDD is still tricky and not for your average PC user.

Nonetheless, I’m now in business. Next up: getting both Asterisk and MediaWiki running on the same machine. Doing MediaWiki will require installing LAMP. I think I will also need to figure out KVM since both of these apps will need their own IP addresses and speaking of IP, since I’m going to use my residential Comcast broadband Internet as the access path for VoIP calls and web pages, I’ll need to figure out how to use a Dyanamic DNS service to work around the DHCP assigned IP address scheme Comcast uses.

I know it sounds like I know what I’m doing, but in fact, I really don’t. This is all an experiment for me. But fun. NOTE: I have tagged this post with Category = Geekery. Go figure.

Maui

Just got back from my best Spring Break trip ever. When I was in college, I didn’t really have the money to go any place too exotic. And I don’t even remember there being Spring Break in high school back in Bismarck. Plus I always seemed to have a girlfriend around Spring Break and, at the time, it wasn’t an especially prudent idea to road trip 20 hours to South Padre or Panama City with two or three other guys, nine cases of beer and a carton of Marlboros. So I usually ended up taking a trip with the girlfriend. Once we drove to Cincinnati to see my mom (super lame). Another time we flew to San Diego and stayed with an aunt of mine (less lame… we did go drinking in TJ).

ANYWAY… this year, I hauled my wife and kids (girls ages 6 and 4) to Maui. We rented a pretty nice condo in Kīhei. Not as touristy as Lahaina / Kāʻanapali, not as blue collar as Kahului, not as hippy as Pāʻia or Makawao, not as upscale as Wailea. In other words, it was perfect for us. When we travel, my wife and I enjoy living like most of the middle class locals do. Kīhei is on South Maui and located within 15 minutes of a dozen world-class beaches. The water is amazingly clear and most of the beaches have snorkeling at one end or the other or both. In order of least to most favorite, we hit Charley Young Beach, Polo Beach, Big Beach and Po’olenalena Beach. We also visited Makena Landing, ‘Ahihi Cove and La Pérouse Bay, but these three aren’t really beaches so much as volcanic lava beds where the ocean flows up over the rocks to create some outstanding snorkeling. On the last day, the winds were up so we visited Ho’okipa Beach on the North Shore and watched surfers try to impale themselves on the rocks in 15-20 foot waves. We also did the Royal Lahaina Luau (the kids were impressed) and the Pacific Whale Foundation snorkel trip to Molokini (the kids were impressed). Had a couple good meals, unbeatable weather, some great sunsets and a very relaxed time.

All in all, Maui no ka oi! A great trip and not what I expected. I figured it would be a lot like Florida, but somehow, it was very different. Plenty of old people, but I think it was the Hawai’ian cultural imprint of language and customs that made it unique. It didn’t hurt that the topography of the island is dramatic with 10,000 foot Haleakalā staring down at you while you soak up the sun and waves on the beach. Very different than some other mountains-meet-the-seas locations like Vancouver or Juneau. It was also a pretty good value (but I won’t say “cheap”). If you can snare a deal on airfare and shop around for a moderately priced condo, the rest didn’t seem any more outrageous than most other vacation destinations (including the ski towns just up the hill from us here in Colorado). The biggest downside was the travel time and time zones. This time of year, Hawai’i is 4 hours behind Mountain Time, 6 hours behind Eastern Time. If you live in the east, you’re probably better off aiming for the Carribean or perhaps the Canary Islands. The time changes wreak havoc on little kids and the flights are set-up to drive people towards red eyes on the way home. If you do want to go, I recommend the following resources:

• VRBO – Hawaii Vacation Rentals: Shop for your own condo
• Maui Revealed – The Ultimate Guidebook: Packed with great maps and useful information (some of which others might wish you didn’t have)

Aloha!

P.S. I failed to note that I am also a bit of a surf shop junkie. But not a surfer. I guess that makes me a poseur, but I really don’t care. I just like the vibe. So, I tend to scout out all the shops when I’m in a beach town. Here’s my Official “Best of Maui” Surf Shop Review:

• Best Apparel-centric Surf Shop: Maui Tropix (exclusive distributor of Maui Built) with at least three locations on the island. Honolua Surf Co and Local Motion also have a couple shops each on the island, but I liked Maui Tropix the best. There were several others like 808 Nalu and Shapers, but those were too poseur even for me.
• Best “Real” Surf Shop: Obviously, I’m no expert, but three shops within about 1/4 mile of one another in Kahului all seemed to have their strengths and were pretty authentic… Second Wind (surf boards and kitesurfing), Hi-Tech Surf Sports (rentals of all sort of boards) and Neil Pryde Maui (wind surf). If you find yourself on Maui in need of some sort of floating board or sail for a water sport, these three ought to have you pretty well covered. But what the hell do I know?
• Best Micro Surf Shop: The Hana Hwy Surf store in Pāʻia was ~400sf. Jammed with a little bit of everything and a friendly gal working the floor. It was also located in an actual surfing town which I suppose should confer it with some street cred despite it being in a newish strip mall. I noticed Hi-Tech Surf Sports also had a small outlet just around the corner, but it was like the Taj Mahal compared to Hana Hwy Surf.

Reminiscing over Ditch Digging

WARNING: This post is rather philosophical. Not sure how it turned out this way, but it did.

A few days ago, I was in San Jose for VON. We stayed downtown at The Fairmont. Nice place. Anyway, as I wandered about on foot, I started recalling other time spent there over a decade ago when after graduating from college I went to work for MFS Network Technologies. My first job (which lasted perhaps 6 months) was as a Point-of-Presence (PoP) Engineer. I was responsible for “designing” PoP rooms for MFS’s network (Inside Plant) as well as figuring out how to connect the PoP to the fiber backbone (Outside Plant). Pretty basic in terms of engineering work when you consider it in the larger context of a telecom network, but I was nonetheless clueless and woefully under trained. I was a Mechanical Engineering major with my only real-world experience coming in the form of some internships in a manufacturing facility and a part-time job as a CAD draftsman. Not exactly construction / project management experience.

Anyway, I asked a lot of questions and faked my way through it until I was rescued via a battlefield promotion (you know, someone departs and you’re lucky enough / stupid enough to take the gig… “I need a corporal. You’re it, until you’re dead or I find someone better.”). But that’s another story. The reason I was reminiscing in San Jose was because of all the buildings I had connected to the network that first summer out of school. 55 S Almaden, 55 S Market, 50 San Fernando and the list goes on. “Big, shiny buildings” were the primary target for MFS. The theory went that if it was a Class A or Class B property, there was probably someone in it that would like to buy some Private Line transport services from someone other than PacBell.

I lost weekends and nights trying to get those buildings on-line because the City wouldn’t let us tear up the street to lay the fiber and impact traffic during the day. At the time, I didn’t really mind the sacrifice and I still work a lot of evenings and weekends, but it’s different now because it’s for ME, not for someone else. And therein lays the value of reminiscing. For the unromantic (like me), reminiscing can be viewed as hindsight, lessons learned, knowledge gained. I appreciate what I did, what I learned and the value created. I wouldn’t really care to do it all over again, but without those experiences, I wouldn’t appreciate the experiences I’m gaining now and perhaps I wouldn’t even be able to do what I’m doing now.