Ottawa Trucker Convoy Protest - Feb 11 2022

I had two hours to kill between appointments so I went downtown to take some 360 pano's of the visitors staging the occupation of our downtown core. If you click on the full screen icon in each preview, it's easier to rotate the images around and see everything. Taken with an Insta360 One X2 camera.

Wellington and Metcalfe

         

       

Terry Fox Statue

 

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\shutdown.exe has initiated the restart of computer on behalf of user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM Reason Code: 0x800000ff

 

 We had some servers go down unexpectedly after we re-populated some SCCM(MECM) collections. 

EVENT 1074

 The process C:\Windows\SysWOW64\shutdown.exe (<servername>) has initiated the restart of computer <servername> on behalf of user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM for the following reason: No title for this reason could be found

  Reason Code: 0x800000ff

  Shutdown Type: restart

No on behalf of, no reason etc..  A regular SCCM patching reboot looks like this:

The process C:\Windows\CCM\CcmExec.exe (<servername>) has initiated the restart of computer <servername> on behalf of user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM for the following reason: No title for this reason could be found

 Reason Code: 0x80020001

 Shutdown Type: restart

 Comment: Your computer will restart at 2021-02-06 8:46:42 AM to complete the installation of applications and software updates.

 

It turns our after looking in C:\windows\ccm\logs\execmgr.log on one of the servers around the same reboot time we saw that an old pre-reboot job had kicked in we had in place with no maintenance window. 

Executing program as a script     execmgr              2021-02-05 4:07:35 PM   14768 (0x39B0)

Successfully prepared command line "C:\Windows\system32\shutdown.exe" /r /f /t 0  execmgr              2021-02-05 4:07:35 PM          14768 (0x39B0)

So it was SCCM after all. 

Adobe Premiere Elements 2019 crashes on import - in my case it was strange files in the import folders

Adobe support for shit like this is disgraceful. They appear to rely entirely on their user community to figure out why their software crashes. When you go through what everyone says, redo the catalog, turn off auto facial recognition, sacrifice a chicken, etc. everything is still crashy. At the end of the day though, it's usually garbage in garbage out right?

I used PROCMON to try and pinpoint what was going on when the crash happened. You go to Tools\Count Occurrences, set the column to "results" and look for bad things like "Access denied", etc. In this case, nothing..

I went through the adobe logs, but they only log at start up, not on stuff like imports, which is not useful. Never looked into a verbose logging setting, and carried onto the next test.

Step through the folders I was importing one at a time, backing up the catalog when I had success and no crash. The catalogs in WIN10 are in "C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs" and you just make a backup copy of the folder. Keep importing, taking notes and then restore when you have a crash an start looking at the types of files in the folder that gives you the issue.

In my case, it was having non photo files in the folders with my pictures. In my case I had made a slide show and kept the source files for MUVEE reveal  ( *.rvl and .PKF files) in a subfolder off the folder with the photos. It also did not like the AVI files (not sure what flavor I had) I had generated making a raiders of the lost ark type animated travel line. Once the .AVI files were ZIPPED so Elements would not import them, the crashing went away.

No thanks to Adobe...

The Old man in my hospital room and the seat belt debacle 1988.

We were talking about seat belt infractions today and how back in the 80’s they used to pull you over and give you a ticket for not wearing your seatbelt. This triggered an unusual trip down memory lane. When I was 18 I got my leg ripped open one Sunday afternoon playing rugby of all things, a cleat or something tore a 10 inch long gash in my left leg (some of you who knew me back then may remember my “staples”).

My parents were out that afternoon so my freind Mike’s mom offered to drive me to the hospital under the condition that she not be shown the “injury”. At the hospital they cleaned it up, shot me with freezing and tried to stitch it closed but ended up having problems. It was too deep and the skin flaps were not co-operating. The nurse had an idea. Since she also assisted with C-sections she thought they could staple me closed and went off to the delivery floor to get a medical stapler. I waited.. for 30 minutes... I had grabbed The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers at my place so at least I had something to do. Pretty soon another patient came into the room that proved to be far more entertaining than my book.

An old man and his wife were shown into the other half of my hospital room and the nurse pulled the curtain closed between my half of the room and theirs. The guy was in pain, had an ice pack, and very pissed off. The nurse asked him a bunch of medical questions. I heard through the curtain that he was going to be 80 years old in a few weeks but looked much younger and was in great shape. The nurse told him the doctor would be in shortly and left.

I tuned them out but perked up when his wife told him their lawyer said that he should not, under any circumstances ”talk to the police”(I put my book down). An emerge doctor came in. Right away he explained that he would not be the one treating him because he was not the “doctor that goes to court”. They had a special one that did that who would oversee his examination(what the hey?).
In the time it took the other “court” doctor to show up I gathered from eavesdropping that he had been assaulted by the police for a traffic stop, and that he managed to get home somehow where he was arrested with police sirens and flashing lights everywhere, and that he was in so much pain the police had taken him to the hospital from the police station. It sounded like there was a policeman outside the door that brought him there and he did not want him in the room at all and wanted to close the door.

So soon after that the other doctor shows up and the old gentleman asks him “What did they tell you?” And the doctor says “Just assume I know nothing and tell me what happened from the beginning” (me on the other side of the curtain - alright!!!!).

The elderly gentleman did not like seat belts that extend over the shoulder. He somehow clips the waist belt and has the shoulder strap behind him because he doesn’t like it across the front touching his neck. As a result he gets pulled over a lot for not having his seat belt but they let him go when they see he has the waist belt cinched. He explained this thing he does where he opens the car door and tugs the waist belt like an elastic and pulls it out from his body and lets it snap back so the police can see he is wearing it. They then let him go on his way. Until today. Today he and his wife were stopped at a red light and a police car directly behind him turned on the sirens and flashed the lights for him to stop. He gestured at the cop, opened his door, did his trick with the belt and slammed the car door closed. The policeman was out of his car and had walked halfway to the man’s car door when the light turned green and the old man simply drove away :-). This resulted in a very slow “car chase” at 40 km an hour, police sirens blaring while the man drove home.

When he pulled into his driveway he told his wife to “go call the lawyer” and got out of the car slowly and walked up the steps behind her. The policeman chasing him was out of his patrol car yelling at him to freeze and get on the ground and all that. He turned to the policeman from his front porch and shouted that he had been wearing his seatbelt and that there was no need for the officer to be there, etc.. (I don’t remember all of what he said but I remember this next part).

The old guy is half in the door of his house at this point and the policeman is at the foot of the stairs to his porch. I don’t know if there is a legal thing where you can’t go into a house to arrest someone for a traffic stop, but after they exchanged more words the cop said something that pissed the old guy off and the old man said: “If you weren’t wearing glasses I’d come down there and sock you right in the mouth!”. The policemen took his glasses off and laid them on the hood of the guy’s car and smiled at him. This enraged the old guy who came down the stairs at the policeman and the next thing he knew he was on the ground doubled over in pain getting handcuffed.

“The bastard kicked me right in the balls!” Said the old man to the doctor.

His wife nodded. She saw it.

“Take a look!” There was the sound of clothing being removed, a moment of silence and a few “Hmmm’s”. I remember the colour “purple” being mentioned. Tests were going to be done, photographs were going to be taken (???).

“You don’t kick someone in the balls! We didn’t do that back in my day! I was in the war!!” (he was in the war!!!! Of course he was!)

Then my nurse came back, she got pulled off on an emergency but now she was here to staple me. “Sorry for the wait, at least you brought a book!”.

How to program a Noma Outdoor Timer model 052-8873-0 49887

Years ago my wife bought these cool Noma outdoor timers with two plugs from Canadian Tire and when she pulled them out recently, they didn't work. They looked like they were programmed correctly but nada, no dice, nothing. Some of the numbers on the back are 052-8873-0 and 49887. If you search the web for this device, you also get nada, nothing, crap. Noma products are some of the most poorly documented devices out there and their web support presence is non-existent. When you type in these numbers all you get are stupid websites that want to charge you $40 US for a PDF download of some photocopied manual that is not even the same model of the thing you're looking for, or websites where helpful but clueless people post answers like "Your NOMA timer does not exist, but here is a website on water heater timers, just do what they say..."

Yes, the web is chocked full of people willing to give you useless information or trying to make a buck off you in order to program the thing you bought years ago but chucked/recycled the instruction sheet for. So, after an evening of pressing buttons, I present to you, the answer to the question of "How the hell do you program this stupid thing?"

There are six main buttons. Minute, Hour, Day, Clock, Prog, On-Off, and some secondary functions like RDM(random) and DST(daylight savings time). There is also an R(reset) and RCL-CD which I think is recall or reset or something.

To set the clock, hold the Clock button and keep it held down while you manipulate the Minute, Hour, Day(pay attention to the am/pm). When you let go of Clock, it should save the time settings.

When you press "Prog", notice the small "1" on the left for program 1. Each numbered program (there are 20) has an "On" and an "Off" setting and text is shown on the left to display what mode you are in("On" appears first). "On" is what time you want the thing to come on, "Off" is when it will shut off.

Repeatedly pressing Prog skips to program 1 "On" then Program 1 "Off", then program 2 "On", program 2 "Off" etc.. If you want every day of the week, press the Day button several times until all the days of the week are displayed (it will flash by with variants and you stop onb the one you want, mon to fri, Mon, Wed, Fri, etc..).

To set the "On" time for Program 1 , press the Hour and Minute to the desired time. To set the Off time, press Prog once (notice the off text on the left) and press Hour and Minute to the desired shut off times. To get out of Prog mode, press Clock once.

The key to making the device work, and the one point of confusion for me was the On-Off button. It cycles through four modes: On, Off, Auto On, Auto Off and they must be set in a particular way. If it is currently 5pm when you are programming and you are expecting an On time of 6pm and an Off time of 11pm, press On-Off until it says "AUTO Off". This means that it is 5 pm, you want the device to be off, but come on automatically at 6pm and off at 11pm. Setting On-Off to "On" or "Off" just overrides the programming and makes the device look like it is not working. If it was 7pm I guess you'd leave it at "Auto On" and the programmed off time for program 1 would kick in and shut if off.

The RND (random) is if you want to randomize the times you selected by adding a tiny offset so it does not start at 6pm exactly but perhaps 6:13 or something like that. I haven't been able to experiment with this fully but it appears to work along those lines. To use this hold down the Hour button (the one that says RND over it) for five seconds until you see the RND text appear on the right.

DST (Daylight Savings Time) works the same way. Press the Clock button (that says DST under it) and the clock will jump ahead an hour(hold it for five seconds).

And there it is.. no thanks to Noma.. I was about ready to go to Canadian Tire and bust open the box and take a picture with my phone

Stupid Noma.....

Annoying IT Guy #2 - Animal noises, Nose trumpets & Phlegm cloppers

Continuing from Annoying IT Guy #1, without a doubt my biggest annoyance with the guy is the large array of f&%king animal noises his biological operating system makes over the course of a work day.

He clears his throat loudly up to 3 or 4 times a minute, coughing up phlegm in his mouth before swallowing it. He does this when he is by himself in his cubicle, when he is on the phone and especially when he has someone in his office. He talks loud and clears his throat louder. Most folks excuse themselves, step aside, cover their mouth, muffle it, not this guy, he is staring you right in the face, coughs up a phlegm clopper, deals with it and carries on talking like that is the way life is supposed to be... GROSS! If you are talking to him, the chance that you are going to get some on you is two minutes to midnight high.

Then there's the constant ineffective nose blowing. First off buddy, "There's nothing up there in your nasal cavity to come out.You are on empty.. " It sounds like a f%&cking Bach trumpet, this dry high brass trumpeting sound. He could re-use the same kleenex all day if he didn't perforate it with the blast of slotless air. If blowing your nose were an olympic sport this guy would be Bangladesh.

And it's not over.. Then we get treated to 4 or 5 of what we call, the daily Epileptic fits. He stretches - or something - and there's a uber-loud World Series yawn at the same time. Picture the loudest yawn you can possibly imagine combined with a follow up groaning stretch that sounds like a 600 pound Congolese mountain gorilla having an orgasm. Four or five. Every day.. WTF...

And there's some other sounds he makes when he is in transit. When he walks down the hall past my office he sometimes sucks his tongue in and out of his mouth loudly as he walks. Like a piston, except it sounds exactly like the sound Hannibal Lecter's character makes in Silence of the Lambs when he is talking to Starling about eating livers with a fine Chianti. I had a client in my office once and he walked by doing that sound and I had to explain that he's like a five year old and he's exploring the sounds his body can make.

Then we have the OUTBURSTS. These are not as common thankfully but two three times a month is still a bit much. In an office you can sometimes here a cricket in he will do things like shout "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" at the top of his lungs and smash his keyboard. To put this in context, picture a fairly quiet mid-day office, not a lot of noise and then a lightning clap of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" like Kirk shouting "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!" followed by the crash of some equipment being abused. When he does this I get up out of my office and walk over and see him and ask sarcastically if he's ok or do we have to call an ambulance. One time he was so loud I told him to quit that because the last time someone made that sound they were having a medical emergency and they left unconscious in an ambulance. He doesn't even look at me when I say this. When I got back to my office I had a bunch of emails one of which said "Go for it! We're ok with you calling that ambulance!".

I'm really sorry you changed the IP on the remote server and it kicked you off but that's how that shit works ;-)

I'm not alone in being miffed by this. I hear everyone around me going "What the fuck?" quietly under their breath or "Gross" when he coughs something up interesting into a tissue and looks at it(he should definitely stick to hawking up in the tissue, it works way better than through his nose).

Annoying IT guy #1 What's my PAFFWORD?

  For the past 8 months we've had a person in the office on another team and he's annoying the shit out of everyone within earshot. I'm an easy going guy and can take all kinds of shit, especially the stuff beyond my power to control and it rolls off my back. This guy however, is getting to me.

I first became aware of him in the first month of his start because he would do 2 to 3 loud password resets a week over the phone to the help desk. We live in cubicleland and if you talk in a normal voice you don't bug anyone. If you talk at the top of your lungs however, everyone can hear you. The annoying part starts when you hear the same conversation two to three times a week that goes something like this:

"I can't get in"
"I never fill in security questions"
"I've never had to type my login ID like that"
"You're wrong"
"I didn't disable it YOU disabled it!"
"Why does it disable my account just because I type the wrong password in, that's stupid!"
"I don't think you understand how this works"
"I have to support XXXX, it's imperative"
"I support mission critical infrastructure and I need to get access ASAP"
"I demand to talk to your supervisor".
"Potato Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Seven..."

You start to wonder if the people on the other line are doing everyone a favour by locking this guy out (only they're not locking him out, he can't keep his access straight and disables his own accounts).

Not to say he's not entertaining sometimes, one of the best bits we got to hear was when he was giving a help-desk guy shit over the phone recently for supposedly repeating his password to him wrong and he ended up locking himself out again.He called the Help desk back again and started yelling at the guy:

"NO! You're wrong, I distinctly remember you saying "F" as in "FAM!"

What the F*%k is F as in FAM you say? I dunno. Is FAM short for family? The kicker in that exchange was that he thought the guy on the phone told him his password was PAFFWORD. He wrote it down that way...

Now I'm just hearing one side of the conversation but let's see. The Help Desk guy is resetting your PASSWORD. He needs an easy temporary PASSWORD he can tell you over the phone so you can immediately log in and choose a new one. What word could he use for this? Hmm, I dunno maybe PASSWORD? You think?

No.. It was obviously PAFFWORD, stupid help desk guy, he doesn't know what he said, he's obviously wrong.

My god, why did they hire this guy.

(Big thanks to notadroid and TheHappyHippie for those memes ;-)

Hanging out on my roof in the dark circa 1983

  In 1983 I was 14 living in Blackburn Hamlet and all of my best friends lived within a stone's throw of my house, that is to say, if I couldn't hit your house with a rock, you probably weren't my friend.
  One hot summer evening found me on the roof of my parent's house with two of my friends. I used to go up on the roof to read comic books in the summer when I was younger to get away from my little brother, who was an unrelenting annoyance of locust proportions. I'm not sure why we were up there that night, but we were enjoying the unusual vantage point in the hot night summer air. Across the street lived one of my best friends, who oddly enough wasn't with us on the roof that night. Also across the street lived my friend's beautiful older sister, who was worshipped by my group of friends as a minor deity, much to the horror and chagrin of my friend who would tolerate no talk on the subject.
  On this night, as we were sitting up there in the dark, a curious thing happened. A switched on light illuminated a second floor window in the house across the street and a female person walked into the room with a towel on their head and a towel on their body. The towel on the head came off followed by a long haired head shake and then as we sat there in shock and disbelief , the lower towel came off and we saw some bits of bits we should not have seen over the top of the window sill.
  No one said anything. Silence. It got weird. Someone said  "Oh My GAWD!". I agreed. We had just seen half of a bare naked lady after all. It probably lasted 7 seconds. As long as a top notch bull rider can stay on a bucking bull. Then the person put on PJ's and left the room.

It was surreal. We must tell no one we said. No one speak of this to anyone. It's creepy. It's wrong. We all agreed. Not good. Let's not do this again..

The next night there were seven kids on my roof. Everybody had told at least one other person and one of them had told two people. All of the noble second sobre thought from the previous evening  had gone right out the window (in deference to the much more interesting window across the street). I was actually questioning the load-bearing safety ramifications of having this many people up there when my friend from across the street walked over to my place, probably to ring my doorbell which would lead to questions of where I was etc.. so I hissed at him from the roof: "Up here".
"What?" He asked, looking around. .
"Up here" I hissed.

He looked up at me (uh, well, all of us), then across the street and then we were told to get down off the roof or he would come up and toss us all down one by one.

We complied. Besides, it wasn't safe that that many people up there and he was bigger than us.

Suspect in the mysterious gun-wielding Ottawa biker case.

Suspect must have forgotten his fake gun, had to use the finger instead...

So this past week in Ottawa, there was this guy on a motorbike who would speed up behind you on the Queensway, tailgate you and if you did not immediately change lanes and get out of his way, he'd swing around and pass you on the driver's side and point a gun at you. He was driving a red Honda CBR and wearing a black helmet. He did this several times a day during his commute and numerous complaints were received. I saw it on Facebook, his picture was plastered everywhere and I caught it on the news.

Yesterday on Ottawa Kijiji, some guy is selling his Red Honda CBR (actually it was "For Sail") and it happens to have all the same kewl sticky stickers in the same placity places. There's even a shoe in the pic and look it's black and has orange laces? Different brand of shoe but hey, maybe the suspect likes black shoes and orange laces...

Can you say dumb-ass? He turned himself in today after Police tracked down the bike.
When you google his name you get a few tidbits.
in 2014 a man by the same name and age at the time of incident was charged with DUI, impaired operation of a motor vehicle by drug. Not sure what he was handed there, but months later he was stopped by police (they did not say what prompted the stop) and charged with possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, impersonating a peace officer and carrying a concealed weapon. Police seized an imitation hand gun, "blank" ammunition and a bullet proof vest.

A bullet proof vest? WTF? Why do you need a bullet proof vest? Unless you're going to rob a bank reporter in the middle east you don't need a bullet proof vest.

I'll be very interested in seeing what happens to this dude if he is convicted of what they suspect him for. People like him just don't get it, if there's ever a Zombie Apocalypse, this is the type of "don't give a f*ck" guy who is more dangerous than the zombies.


If found guilty, please reserve a space in one of our nice jails for him.

Why does everyone screw up the "Let's Go Crazy" Riff by Prince...

So tonight I want to learn "Lets Go Crazy" by Prince, because I like that song, it's got cool parts, Prince died and that sucks. Maybe I'll get lucky and a fellow Youtubeopian has a guitar lesson and can save me some time. NOPE. I forgot, 90% of youtube guitar lessons SUCK and are wrong unless it's Justin Guitar or Marty whatsisname or the artist themselves, It's gonna suck because Guitar players who give lessons on youtube are lazy and base their lessons on what they recall from memory of the last time it played on their car radio when they were at the McDonald's drive thru, or the last time they were hanging out with Jeff their friend who has it as a ring-tone on their cell. Maybe they check the original recording for the key but it's quite obvious they stop after 5 seconds and start to invent shit after that.

That bugs the shit out of me. If you went to a performance of a Shakespeare play and the guy holds up a skull and goes "Atlas poor Robert Urick, I knowed him well" would you do a double-take? That is what this is like for me, almost disrespectful to the artist, I get offended for them.

Case in point. This guy seems fun, and from Manchester or somewhere like it. 30 seconds in: F# to E? E chord hammer on to A4? What version are you listening to man?

This helpful young man in the pony tail specializes in the Super bowl version from 2007. He is quite enamored about it and yacks for 5 minutes before teaching anything (Sounds like ME eh?). His unique version of the riff starts at 6:20. Special attention paid to wacking.

His interpretation of a cool one-handed move at 8:54 is too hard to play at E12. No one would ever play it like that. He's off by one string and 7 frets. Prince does it at the 17th position. You can tell this by counting the visible frets on Prince's Hofner at 1:51. When there's video of a performance that's this good, it pays to look at it.

I actually like this guy below and he is a great player (I totally learned Purple rain right there although I'm suspicious of "Never take the place of your man"  change up). Three of the other songs seem right but at 8:07, he too slightly murders the riff(well ,maybe manslaughter).  

I shouldn't do this. It's not nice but it bugs me enough so that I stew about it and it comes out in bursts. People comment on these videos and thank the guys because they think they are right. Well, they successfully taught someone how to play it wrong. It's kind of like religion. 3 guys are teaching different interpretations of the same idea. Chances are two out of the three are wrong. In this case, it's three out of three. If they said it was their own take on it, or in the style of it, I'd be ok. This guy is good and he says that. He's still wrong though, it's not a semi-tone slide into the B. It's "inspired" though, so no foul. BONUS, He's stumbled upon the hammer on F# chord which I hear in the original. Good on ya! (pity about that semi-tone slide).

Sorry Prince.. I promise to shut up and do a "lets go Crazy" video lesson to make up for these ones because they bug the shit out of me. People should be able to learn to play your stuff the way you did, out of respect for the genius you were. 

Until the next rant...

First prank call in 25 years - Feb 18th 2016

I'm sitting on my couch tonight playing guitar, badly I might add, the ending tapping section to Joe Satriani's "Satch Boogie" is a bitch rhythm-wise (6-6-4) when I get a call on my work cell from a name I don't recognize. I answer. I'm greeted with some screechy kid's voice on the other line screaming at me because my cat bit their toe and they are bleeding. I put them on speaker-phone.

KID "Your cat bit my toe!"
ME "That's neat, can I get a ride in your time machine because our cat Puffy died when I was 11"
KID "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
ME "Do I owe you any money for that?"
KID "BIT MY TOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEE" (they sound like the kid from the Exorcist now)
ME "Have you ever seen the Exorcist?"

This goes back and forth a bit and I continue to noodle on the guitar as the kid rants about having to go to the hospital for their bleeding toe.
KID "WHY ARE YOU LISTENING TO MUSIC!!!!
ME "I'm making music"
KID "NO YOU'RE NOT!"
Me "I take requests. do you like Metallica?" (plays opening to "Enter Sandman")
KID "I HAVE TO POO!"
Me "I don't know that song".
KID (unintelligible squawking), they hang up...

Wow. A bona fide prank call. I didn't think you could do that anymore what with call display (enters Phone number in Canada411, does reverse lookup). Hmm, Teal Crescent in Orleans. Hey I know where that is, I bought an old Xbox from someone on that street ages ago...

My wife arrives for supper, we sit down to eat, phone rings again, same prankster. I put them on speakerphone so the whole family can enjoy.

KIDS (now there are two of them) "YOUR CAT BIT MY TOE!!!!! ARGGGGHGHGG!"
ME "Hey, I was a kid once, and I used to...
KIDS "BALABALAVBALABALA"
Me ".. make prank calls but then they came out with this thing called Caller ID and Reverse phone number lookups.."
KIDS "POOPY POOPY POOP POOP CAT POOP!"
Me ".. and if I was a bad sort of man I could come to your house and speak to your parents..."
KIDS "POOPY POOPY TOE BITER!!!"
Me "Do you live at (number withheld) Teal crescent in Orleans?"
KIDS ".CLICK.."  dial tone..

Well that was funny...

Then it got funnier, Poopy toe cat biter calls back. This time my wife answers and it's not a kid, it's an apologetic parent. A parent whose two 6 and 7 year old kids are terrified that a bad man who knows where they live is coming to their house. She told my wife, "I'm going to punish them for bothering you on the phone but whatever your husband told them seems to have done the trick.."..

So I have this Jason mask, and an address and a sense of humor....

Hehehehehe...

ASUS RT-AC66U Firmware 378.55 (Merlin) & setting up OpenVPN with Private Internet Access (PIA) and a ROKU Media player

I'm fairly late to the Netflix table but I knew early on that Canada was second to the US in terms of available shows(check out this Toronto Star Article). At the time of it's writing the US had just about double, 7202 titles compared to Canada's 3663.

I'm also a UFC fan and subscribe to UFC fight pass, their online streaming service. Last year UFC Fight Pass changed what I got content-wise from their service because the UFC had just signed a deal with TSN that prohibited Fight Pass from showing Prelims and other UFC TV offerings on the streaming service that were also being shown on television. If it happened to be shown on television, then UFC fight pass got "blacked out" in Canada (so you didn't "cut the cable" to encourage getting/keeping a cable subscription I guess). You needed Fight Pass AND a cable package featuring TSN in order to watch all the "free" TV UFC and Fight Pass events. The UFC was screwing over the paying subscribers of their streaming service by withholding UFC events that were also shown on TSN where "non-paying" UFC fans could watch them.

Thanks a lot. Even when we pay for stuff, we still manage to get screwed by cable companies we may or may not subscribe to.

In any event I had been using a VPN service for years, Private Internet Access(PIA) for my everyday surfing needs and wanted to extend it to my Netflix and UFC viewing to get around the annoying geoblocking. Everyone I know uses some sort of DNS-proxy based anti-geoblocking solution but I did not want to subscribe to a second service when I already had a perfectly good VPN service. The catch was that I do most of my media streaming on the main floor with a ROKU device which has zero OS customization (it has a great little remote, easy for the wife and kids to operate though). So how do you get a dumb closed device to use your VPN service? By telling your router to redirect it's IP to your VPN gateway.

Here's what you do.

You need to set up your router so that the OpenVPN client is known to it and then feed it an IP address of a device to have it go through the VPN and appear to come from somewhere else in the world like the good old U.S. of A. Here is a screen shot of my router's OPENVPN Clients tab.

In the "Server Address and Port" field you enter the location you are spoofing. I used
"us-east.privateinternetaccess.com" (no quotes)
along with port 1194. The port and the address need to match and you can find this info on PIA's site along with a full list of locations under the "Regional gateways" section in the bottom left.

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client-support/

Enter your PIA userid and password as shown and in the "Redirect Internet traffic" section choose "Policy Rules" in the dropdown and this opens up a section where you can enter the IP address of the device you wish to use with the VPN. In the destination IP just put 0.0.0.0. (I'm using a ROKU media player).

I'm using the following in the "Custom Commands" section:

tls-client

remote-cert-tls server

reneg-sec 0

verb 4

comp-lzo

In the "Authorization Mode"  field I have it set to "TLS" and clicking on "Content modification of Keys & Certificates" brings up a page where you can enter the following cert in the "Certificate Authority" section. 

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----

MIID2jCCA0OgAwIBAgIJAOtqMkR2JSXrMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMIGlMQswCQYD

VQQGEwJVUzELMAkGA1UECBMCT0gxETAPBgNVBAcTCENvbHVtYnVzMSAwHgYDVQQK

ExdQcml2YXRlIEludGVybmV0IEFjY2VzczEjMCEGA1UEAxMaUHJpdmF0ZSBJbnRl

cm5ldCBBY2Nlc3MgQ0ExLzAtBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWIHNlY3VyZUBwcml2YXRlaW50

ZXJuZXRhY2Nlc3MuY29tMB4XDTEwMDgyMTE4MjU1NFoXDTIwMDgxODE4MjU1NFow

gaUxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVTMQswCQYDVQQIEwJPSDERMA8GA1UEBxMIQ29sdW1idXMx

IDAeBgNVBAoTF1ByaXZhdGUgSW50ZXJuZXQgQWNjZXNzMSMwIQYDVQQDExpQcml2

YXRlIEludGVybmV0IEFjY2VzcyBDQTEvMC0GCSqGSIb3DQEJARYgc2VjdXJlQHBy

aXZhdGVpbnRlcm5ldGFjY2Vzcy5jb20wgZ8wDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADgY0AMIGJ

AoGBAOlVlkHcxfN5HAswpryG7AN9CvcvVzcXvSEo91qAl/IE8H0knKZkIAhe/z3m

hz0t91dBHh5yfqwrXlGiyilplVB9tfZohvcikGF3G6FFC9j40GKP0/d22JfR2vJt

4/5JKRBlQc9wllswHZGmPVidQbU0YgoZl00bAySvkX/u1005AgMBAAGjggEOMIIB

CjAdBgNVHQ4EFgQUl8qwY2t+GN0pa/wfq+YODsxgVQkwgdoGA1UdIwSB0jCBz4AU

l8qwY2t+GN0pa/wfq+YODsxgVQmhgaukgagwgaUxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVTMQswCQYD

VQQIEwJPSDERMA8GA1UEBxMIQ29sdW1idXMxIDAeBgNVBAoTF1ByaXZhdGUgSW50

ZXJuZXQgQWNjZXNzMSMwIQYDVQQDExpQcml2YXRlIEludGVybmV0IEFjY2VzcyBD

QTEvMC0GCSqGSIb3DQEJARYgc2VjdXJlQHByaXZhdGVpbnRlcm5ldGFjY2Vzcy5j

b22CCQDrajJEdiUl6zAMBgNVHRMEBTADAQH/MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAA4GBAByH

atXgZzjFO6qctQWwV31P4qLelZzYndoZ7olY8ANPxl7jlP3YmbE1RzSnWtID9Gge

fsKHi1jAS9tNP2E+DCZiWcM/5Y7/XKS/6KvrPQT90nM5klK9LfNvS+kFabMmMBe2

llQlzAzFiIfabACTQn84QLeLOActKhK8hFJy2Gy6

-----END CERTIFICATE-----

And that does it. If you are in Canada like I am fire up NETFLIX on the device you just made use the VPN and look for "Sons of Anarchy" or "30 rock" or any of the other 3000 some offerings not available in the great white north to see if it is working.

I don't feel too bad because it's a service we're paying for and it is the same as if you brought your IPAD with a netflix app across the border and fired it up in a Dunkin Donuts in Maccina or something. Plus the UFC Canada crap burns my ass almost enough to vote with my feet and cancel the service. At least this way I feel better about giving them my $10 a month. 

People who watch videos on their phone full blast with no headphones 3 feet away from me are idiots.

Is this a new "I have no self awareness" thing? People watching videos on their phones at full volume when waiting in line at the grocery store, subway, or sitting by themselves at a table in a half empty cafeteria while they are 3-4 feet away from someone like me?

GET HEADPHONES YOU FREAKS!

I'm going to do something embarrassing the next time someone does that near me.

"What are we watching? Ohh. old hockey fights? John Leclair and the Legion of Doom? Fascinating"

"So you missed the Video Music Awards live eh? How awesome. Is Justin Bieber presenting?"

 "So the subway guy that used to be fat's a pedophile? I guess it's important to catch up on current events like that in line at the express lane at the IGA."

"That sounds like a fascinating Japanese Anime. I especially love the pumping Japanese glam metal soundtrack. It's so helping me choose my sub's condiments..."

(To the stranger in the cafeteria after I pull up a chair and sit down beside him)
"Can you turn that shit up? What are we watching?"

The Water Heater Fiasco 2015

Looking at the bright side, at least we have our health and food to eat no one is dropping bombs on us! Problems you can fix by throwing money at them and enduring a minor period of inconvenience
is not the worst thing that can happen to you.

Sometime back in February I was looking at my gas bill and was again bothered by the $25 water heater rental charge. Direct Energy (or whatever they are called now) were certainly getting the better end of that deal because the tank had never caused me any problems and was 17 years old. Thinking that $300 a year might be better spend elsewhere I went about getting a quote on getting my own water heater installed. I researched tank-less and rejected it due to cost and was quoted $1400 (they had to add some new piping to bring stuff up to code) on a 50 gallon old fashioned kind. Since 5 years of rental was $1500 and the new tank after install was $1400 I figured in less than 5 years it will have "been paid", and everything after that was savings.

The guys came on a Sunday with a 60 gallon by mistake (no extra charge). The install did not go well though and the guys ran out of time and had to come back the next day to finish. They took away the old heater as part of the deal to return it to depot. We had no hot water for most of Sunday and Monday. I had no idea what a first world problem pain that was. Clothes washer, dish washer, showers, baths, even washing your face with hot water, not an option.

They came back on Monday, finished up, even knocked $100 off the price for the extra delay and everything was peachy! There was an issue with my Direct Energy bill afterwards though. The water heater rental has yet to come off . There is an order of operations to taking our tank back, you need a number FIRST then you bring it back, my guy brought it back and I got a number later, so,, yeah. They tell me it takes several cycles to catch up. They say the 4th bill should do it so I've paid $100 in rental charges for a tank I don't have ;-)

Fast forward to today when the clothes washer upstairs malfunctioned and decided to drop several gallons of water on the floor which ran down the nearest vent which happened to exit above the water heater in the basement and give it a bath.The water did not seem to do any damage to anything else and quickly found it's way down the drain.

Later that evening when we ran out of hot water it was apparent that the water heater was not working. Upon close inspection the thing looks FRIED! The GAS Control Valve LED's don't light up and the blower assembly took a good douse. There was a ring of water inside the tank and this started to rust the open bottom lip of the tank.

So now I'm at that place I've been too so many times before. Do I pay for trial and error repairs to get the stupid thing fixed and have it break again or just assume the whole thing is suspect and look at replacing it whole. Just like my stupid lemon of a Jandy Pool heater, my crappy Bosch dishwasher, and Fridge which have all eaten $1000 in repairs and just got chucked out soon after. Repair people stink these days and don't even try to find the issue and just replace over-priced parts at random. When's the last time you saw someone get a multi-meter out and try and trace a fault?

Bloody hell. I'm going to call Direct Energy tomorrow and get them to install a new rental tank (again). $1300 down the toilet.

To top it off, the Dishwasher is making chewing sounds, I called up the service guys today. It came off warranty a week and a half ago, end of April 2015. There's usually a third bad thing that happens at times like this, we'll wait to see.

Morale of the story, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. When you try to save money, it sometimes ends up costing more &^$%$#*^^!

test

bla blka

Bring back the Death Penalty for people who code Browser Hijacks and web popups.

This is what we should do to any web developer that spends one millisecond of their time coding web/blog/browser hijack code. I would add a sign under each body saying "I wrote the Media Player Update" popup, or "I wrote the "Possible Privacy Breach" popup, or I wrote the "Talk to a technician in Czechoslovakia" popup. Life imprisonment would be treating them too good. Bring back the Death penalty....

Who's with me? Grab your torch and pitchfork!

The luggage incident...

Last Sunday my wife was away all day Scrap-Booking. My youngest had a play date and later that afternoon, when the other parent came by to pick up their kid, my daughter asks:

"Where's Mom?"
"She's scrapbooking." I said.
"Then why did she have luggage with her?" She asks...
(This is in front of the picking up parent)
"That's not luggage, those are scrapbooking totes, they look like luggage." I explain.
"I know what the other things are, she had luggage!" She insisted.
(The other parent is looking around wondering how quick he can pick up his kid and get out of there)
"They're totes, don't worry about it, say good bye to your Freind.." I say.

They leave and I think, wow, he must think we're getting a divorce (grin).... That's funny, I'll have to tell Julie..

Later on in the week, I see the other parent while we were picking up the kids after school and he looks at me and gives me that thumbs up "Is everything ok?" look but I didn't remember the Sunday thing and had no idea why he was looking at me like that so I gave him a weird look and he kinda nodded at me knowingly.. Dammit, he thinks I have marital problems (grin)..

So today I run into him and he kinda looks away as we pass in the hall (doesn't want to make me feel bad(grin) and it hits me..

Last Saturday night my wife came home with new luggage she had just bought as a gift. It was her best Freind's birthday and she was also booked to go down south and the luggage was a birthday present my wife was going to give her at the scrapbook thing. I helped her figure out how to get into the TSA locking mechanism that night and totally forgot about it. SHE DID HAVE LUGGAGE!

So my kid had it right all along. Now how do I go about explaining this to my kid's freind's parents so  they'll let her come over on future play dates(grin)...

No one wants their kid over at someone's house in the midst of a messy separation.. Oh well.. Let the rumour mill fly.. Damned luggage..

Blogspot www.adcash.com Hijack/Redirect www.freecounterstat.com sucks!

Thought I'd make a post since I was unable to find key words to point me to a quick fix to the problem and had to fix it myself the hard way. A few weeks ago my wife mentioned that visitors to her blogspot/blogger blog had contacted her mentioning that they were getting served random popups to a variety of crap sites. Some sites wanted to install viewer software, others just wanted to sell you crap, make you watch videos. Make you clickity click everywhere.. etc..

It would only do it once per visit per day, which meant when it happened and she told me about it, I asked her to repeat the steps to recreate the behavior and it would not do it again. How annoying is that? I'm used to Personal Computers and servers behaving in my presence because they are deathly afraid of me (as they should be) and flaking out when I leave the room but eventually I actually saw it happen with my own eyes.

Whatever it was wrote a local cookie, same name as the blog itself and deleting/blocking access to these would make the redirect fire each and every time Which made it easier to troubleshoot.

The sites were a multitude random crappy click generators. It was all starting with the site www.adcash.com. It would go here to find the random re-direct of the day:


offer.alibaba.com
lp.freegameszonetab.com
www.roblox.com
lp.bigfarm.goodgamestudios.com
www.binaryoptionsbrands.com
binaryoptionsbrands.com

So many of which it became impossible to research the problem from the back-end, like, "Hey I get re-directed once a day to this site (and this one the next day, and this one, and this one..) so you can't look up any info that way, it's a buckshot of annoying websites and the info is safe in the forest of keyword website crap. Any hits that did come up also only pointed to PC malware cleanups which was not the issue in this case. All the PC's at home are pretty well-protected with MS Security Essentials, Spybot Search and Destroy, etc.. This was a problem with the Blog itself. Had it been hacked? How was that possible? Can clicking on a bad popup while logged into your Google account (which we always are) write malicious code? Unlikely. That's a lot of clicks and not easily scrip-table.

I looked through the Blog template (3000 lines) and found an odd entry in an unimportant place in the layout. It was a 200 character nonsense string with a "Base64" function in front of it. This is handy for turning cleartext into gobbledygook when trying to hide stuff from people. You have some nasty commands you want to hide, you convert the string to base64 and tell the template to decode it on the fly. I popped it into a BASE64 decoder and saw cleartext and that it was calling some binary code. Out it came.

Didn't fix it. Not sure what is was. Next.. Time to get out Wire Shark and start looking at packets or process monitor and look for the needle in the haystack.. But wait!

Turns out the site I found the BASE64 decoder on was chocked full of info. It was http://aw-snap.info/articles/redirects.php. Not only did it go over the BASE64 thing but a host of other nasty tricks. They had a Blogger Tool you could plug your blogspot blog into and it would check it (tried it but no luck).

In fact there was not a lot of issues on the Blogspot/Blogger front apart from some kuno​ichi gadget issues. I figured removing javascript blocks one at a time was a good shortcut to try, so in a fit of brute force and ignorance I backed up the Blog template again, documented the layout and started removing HTML Javascript widgets. Damned if it wasn't the second one causing all the fuss. It was a visit counter from www.freecounterstat.com (counter2.statcounterfree.com to be exact) and this was the thing writing the cookies and calling the ajax random malware page popup generator.

This is a free 3rd party visitor counter java script that my wife found somewhere that looked pretty and she put it on her blog where it counted away for years until a few weeks ago. 

Brute force and ignorance. It was only after I found out it was the culprit and researching www.freecounterstat.com that I stumbled across that website keyword in this article that described the same issue we were having. Crazy thing about that story is that the author contacted the makers of the script and they replied back with "

Hi,

I turn off popup on your account

chris

GREAT! Thanks Chris.. Were they hacked or is this something they randomly turn on for sets of clients to generate click revenue for their free tool? I vote for the latter. 

Don't use scripts from www.freecounterstat.com. Malware sucks. 

Along the way I learned about Scriptsafe, a google chrome extension that stops scripts from running on web pages you can set to trust or distrusted. Worth checking out... 

Fireplace Reno Nov/Dec 2012

  This one has been on the list for a few years and I finally got to it the past few months. I ripped out the old fireplace mantel and tossed it. The old fireplace was flush with the floor and we wanted it raised up about a foot which added all sorts of complications. In order to lift it up we had to relocate the outside venting upwards 12 inches (cutting a new hole in the outside of the house) and get the gas line moved up accordingly.

There was a large metal cover on the outside of the house that the direct vent came out of and we lucked out because it was 2 feet high. We ended up using some of the empty portion for the new placement. The empty top portion was part of a heat shield and we used that area for the new hole and left a small heat deflector in place. We tested the heat after installation (leaving it on for an hour at full blast) and there was no major heat build-up. All my neighbour's houses with the same gas fireplace just have the single 12x12 inch panel. Why ours was 12x24 inches I'll never know (a screw up at build time? It worked out though).

I built a bench to sit it on (it was sitting on unfinished plywood when I opened up the wall so I knew that would be ok), cut up the drywall, hauled the fireplace out and sat it on the bench. We got a natural gas guy to move the gas-line and do the venting to code.
  At this time we took the opportunity to get rid of the tile hearth and just continued the surrounding hardwood right to the wall.

This was great fun (not) because you had to slice up the existing interlocked boards with  a saw, chisel them out and then wack the new ones into place with a hammer and another piece of wood in between to keep them nice and un-dented. When they were in place I just pre-drilled holes and screwed them down as opposed to renting a nail gun. I found some long narrow screws for the job and they worked great.  With the hardwood done it was time for the stone veneer.

I had purchased a wire mesh backing at first, with the intent of screwing it into the studs for re-enforcement but took it back after doing a lot of reading and talking to various people. This types of stone is meant to go directly onto drywall (lick and stick). The stone came in boxes of 24x6 inches so each box did 6 square feet. I calculated the facing area of the fireplace wall, both the 3 inch deep sides, minus the hole for the fireplace, minus the mantel, added 10% for wastage (in the end I had 5 tiles left in case we have an earthquake and some fall off).

It was winter and snowing so what better time to get out the wet saw and start cutting! Tip to other Canadian December do-it yourselfers. Fill the water tray with boiling water. Because the stone sets have interlocking corners, it's easy to lop one off these "ears" off and keep it for use on the far side when need be. Another tip someone gave me was to use pre-mixed mortar bought in a big tub. With the correct mixture every time, you're guaranteed a consistent adhesive all across your project.
I laid a coat of mortar on the wall and scraped with with a notched trowel and back-buttered each tile before tapping it into place with a rubber hammer. When stuff came squiring out the sides I knew I had good adhesion (wipe off the excess with a warm wet cloth). I checked each stone piece with a level before moving on, shimming slightly here and there with sticks to maintain a good level (these stones are not totally level and neither was my floor/wall). I installed a mantel and that made for some interesting cuts around that and the fireplace switch box (I brought this out about half an inch to be flush with the stone). For these cuts and the angled ones on the ceiling I used an angle finder and made paper forms which I then traced onto the stone. If anything, i went a little big, test-fitted and then went back to trim until it fit perfectly. For the sides I just cut a pile of 3 inch wide pieces and stuck them in place. In most cases the front piece stuck out to form an overhang of about a half inch. Due the the variance in the thickness's of the stone it was impossible to be flush everywhere so I didn't really try. It makes for some very interesting adjoining pieces and I actually like it like that.

The stuff was pretty easy to work with if you know your way around a wet-saw and it's hard to make it look bad if you know what I mean. Thank got it's finished so I can go back to killing Zombies on by Xbox and playing guitar....
 

Taylor lake Yurt Gatineau Park 2011-12-18

Tripper, Kenmore and I made our annual winter camping hike into Gatideau park this year a week before Christmas 2011. There wasn't enough snow to ski in so we walked it the old fashioned way. I had finally picked up one of those "Canada Goose" winter coats that make you look like some sort of arctic scientist/explorer (I've been seeing people in the bush with them for the past few years and have been wanting one for awhile) and the darn thing is TOO warm. I was sweating bullets after the first hour.


What I like about it though, is the absolute ubiquitous orgy of pockets and zippers everywhere, not to mention the huge sewn-in strap at the back to make it easy for your buddies to haul your body out of the woods should anything go wrong.


There was a nice sheen of ice on the lakes when we went in. Not strong enough to chance a walk on but strong enough to bounce big rocks off of (see the vid).





I skipped bringing a sleeping back this trip, because I have not ever needed them in past trips, the cottages and huts, etc being so warm you just sleep without one. This trip was the first time we stayed in a YURT though. A thing about YURTS.. They cool down right fast when the fire goes out. A funny by-product of this is that the guy with the lowest Celsius grade sleeping bag (make that no sleeping bag) wakes up cold in the dead of night and is going to be the one who restarts Mr Fire so he doesn't freeze to death while the other two guys (I know they're awake) pretend to be asleep.

The insides are pretty snazzy, plenty of room to get around in. The sides of the thing look like a heavy vinyl material (nothing that would stop a bear or other large mammal intent on gettin' at ya). The main feature is a huge skylight that you could crank open a touch with a long pole. The inner walls are supported with a lattice of old-fashioned baby gates. The bunks were adequate, a 6 foot person just able to fit and brush the bottom of your feet on the metal rails. 

The wood burning stove was plenty warm, just that it needed stoking about 3 times during the night (by Mr No Sleeping Bag here).. There was even a gas stove for us to cook on. After eating way too much food - it's easier to carry it out inside you than in your backpack the next day(  actually depending on how your body works, there might not be all that much to carry back. There's this type of bowel movement called "The $h1t of Life"!)

I had brought my mini Washburn Rover "travel" guitar up and we had a concert to end the evening off. All in all it was a good hike up. I'd do a Yurt again, just remember to pack a sleeping bag. In the cabins, you don't seem to need them. The next day we hiked out over some fresh snow, took in some nice natural ice sculptures, and stumbled into some place they store a pile of extra equipment in the Park, including the BEAR CAGES. This is a towable cage that you stock with some type of attractant (like a poodle or something) and when the bear goes in it slams shut and you can truck him outta there. It must be very disturbing to have one of these show up in the camp site next to you out of the blue.

All in all a good trip. If you join us next year, remember you don't need a sleeping bag (I want someone else to get up in the middle of the night and fix the fire)