Writing Wrongs

This one is for susandennis

Turns out that my existing Foscam wi-fi cameras can be accessed via my existing port forwarding on http. It just took some research to find the syntax:

http://:/videoStream.cgi?user=&pwd=

A working example - my guest bedroom, aka cat prison

http://71.198.4.73:8080/videoStream.cgi?user=hacker&pwd=Guest666

This is a visitor login, so tilt/swivel commands are not available (you're stuck with whatever view I last used)

Front north side of the house:
http://71.198.4.73:8585/videoStream.cgi?user=hacker&pwd=Guest666

"Rugcam" - center of the livingroom:
http://71.198.4.73:8484/videoStream.cgi?user=hacker&pwd=Guest666

Real Soon Now I'll be updating my web site to use these:
http://howeird.com/webcam.html

In other news the replacement router has been delivered, when I get home tonight I'll set it up and hopefully all 8 webcams will be back online.

And I can return the rtsp-capable camera.

Early this morning, long after I had told myself to go to bed, I did one last search through Seagate's forums and found someone asking exactly my question - how to have two of their Goflex-Home drives on one network. A tech support person answered that the drives were designed to be unique on the network, and support any number of computers. And then gave some instructions of how to fool two drives to each talk to a different computer on the network. Stupid support person didn't see that if one could set up two drives on one network, then his claim that one computer could not use both is bogus.

So I did the simple thing he suggested - after getting addresses assigned by the router, set the drives to no use DHCP anymore, and hard-code those addresses into the drive. Wasy, since each drive has a browser GUI which one gets to just by calling out the IP address. Piece. Of. Cake.

I copied my photos folder to the new drive, standard Windoze dragon drop, and it said at first it would take 21 hours, but when Win7 realize this was a 1GB connection, it change to 6 hours. That was at 2 am. When I checked at 7:30 am, it needed me to click something and after that it was done in 5 minutes. 500GB. Yay!  I think I'll also send it my old Howard directory, which has a lot of my old dox & spreadsheets.

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Work was almost solid writing automation for that new feature. It was a lot more unique procedures than I had expected, but it was done by about 5. Big boss' staff meeting at 3 helped pass the time. It was almost a total waste of time, he had nothing new to tell us.

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Home, picked up a package (I was expecting the VCR) which was the GPS for the camera, the top-of-the-line model, with a nice personal note from their saleslady thanking me for letting her send the still-in-beta (till Saturday) version, with just a quick reference sheet for documentation, and no wireless remote (both of which will come after I'm back from vacation). It's a lovely piece of gear, about the size as a bicycle's speedometer, with a readable LED display. I took it out onto the patio, and after about 20 minutes it got signal, which the camera had no trouble recognizing. I've had it charging, and will set up the few parameters after I write this. We're talking total win here.

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Then off to band rehearsals. Attendance was so surprising the conductor took a picture. Five tubas. We usually only have two, sometimes none. And 5 baritone horns, which is what we had most of last year until our youngest section member went off to school somewhere. New guy plays well, nice guy. My last rehearsal this year will probably be next Thursday, then a concert on the 24th and July 4th, then I'm on vacation and may play in the July 29 concert but will probably miss the July 26 rehearsal.

After that, it depends on Anything Goes. my part may be small enough to let me go to band rehearsals and the August concert. Maybe. But definitely not September.

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Plans for tomorrow:
Work
TGIF

Work: uneventful. Boss was out sick, team meeting was short (no updates from boss on weekly engineering meetings). Lunch was at El Pollo Loco, which I have always wondered why it is not called La Polla Loca, since we don't traditionally eat roosters. I like their roast dark meat chicken, and they have some delicious sides. They insist of a choice of flour or corn tortilla, I don't see how those go with roast chicken. They also don't include a knife - I always have to go back and ask for one. Fried chicken I can eat with my hands, but not roasted.

Discovered there is a Togo's cleverly hidden real close to the apartment, and stopped in to get dinner (meatball sandwich) and tomorrow's lunch (pastrami). It's in a strip mall which can be seen from the expressway, but there's no entry from the expressway. My GPS did not know what to do with the address. When I say it can be seen from the expressway, that's in theory. This particular Togo's has stealth signage, you can hardly tell what it is when you are right there.

Home, the Internet Radio had arrived. Played with that just enough to be frustrated, put it aside after connecting it to my home wi-fi, and watched the Jacksonville Jaguars fall apart after a promising first quarter against San Diego. Jealous of the Floridians in their swim suits.

Meanwhile, the litterboxes are holding up quite well.

Played with the radio some more, and there is a major WTF about the stations it lists. I uploaded new firmware, maybe that will fix things, maybe not. The main reason I got the thing is my apartment is blocking all the AM stations to some degree, and I can't get 560 or 580, which carry Coast To Coast AM at night. I have been using that as falling asleep talk radio, though I have to say I liked it an order of magnitude better when Art Bell was the host, and most of the talk was UFO quackery. They now rotate hosts at random, with George Noory as the main one. Lately there have been far too many guests focusing on angels and other religion-inspired fantasies, and a lack of UFO subjects. Also rare are scientific looks at the measurable paranormal - remote viewing, premonitions, psychokinesis, etc. Used to be a lot of that, mostly presented by believers and neutrally moderated by Bell. But it is still mindless chatter.

After some poking around on my phone's internet radio app, I found that WOR in New York carries the program, and it carries it without the inane survivalist/Geico/credit card debt/tax lawyer ads which the local stations pack in there. It took a while, but I found WOR on the internet radio. And discovered that just about any genre I want is on their NY list. I still would like to get KFJC, KLIV and KCBS, but it's not critical, I can get those on all the other radios in the place.

It has dual programmable alarms, one is set for weekdays the other for weekends. It took a while, but I found how to change the clock from 24 hour to 12 hour time. It uses NTP to sync to internet time, which is a major plus. So I'm mostly happy with it, just need to poke around a bit more. And yeah, it has several Thai stations.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???

Did not sleep as soundly as usual, kept waking up to the sound of heavy rainfall on the apartment roof. Vaulted ceilings and bedroom-side drain pipes make it seem louder. It rained for most of the day, typical east coast cold front, atypical here in the SF Bay Area. Bottom line is new all-time June 4 rainfall records were set.

Did not wake up at 5 as I had planned, but left the happy birthday song on my Baltimore sister's machine a little before 10 her time.

A little before 10 my time, I was in the parking lot of Best Buy. I thought I left the house at 10, but looking at my watch it was only 9:28. There was a massive line of umbrella people in front of the REI next door, but only three of us geeks. The car stuff installer was there, I thought they did not install on Sundays so asked for a Monday appointment. He said they don't install Mondays, the do install Sundays. So I have a 10:30 appointment tomorrow. It will probably still be raining.

Went home, wasted time and had lunch, and wasted time again till 1:30. Headed south to the school in SJ where Lyric Theater was holding HMS Pinafore auditions. My appointment was for 2:30, but they said to get there early. I was there a little after 2. Long drive, much traffic at the 101 exit. Insane drivers - Little Saigon traffic is not much different than real Saigon traffic. Except it's cars instead of scooters.

Saw a few friends, including the regulars. Filled out the form, had my photo taken, and waited. They got to me at about 2:30, I sang my song in the wrong key - the accompanist gave me a starting chord instead of the starting note, and the top note was not my starting note. It was low. G instead of C. Made it real easy to hit the high note at the end.

Music director was the excellent one from Carousel, he had me sing some scales to find out if my high note was as high as the character's high note. I have notes to spare. I read a paragraph from the script - I did this part at Stanford 11 years ago, and remember that line as the most difficult one in the show, possibly for any character. I asked the director if she wanted accent A or accent B, and she said how about Plan C - read it as angry. That's not how I see it as being written, but I suppose it can be read that way so I gave it a shot. Not sure if I succeeded. Stumbled on the bits I always stumbled on. All in all, not a winning audition. Callbacks are the 10th, I don't know when the list will be posted for them. This was the final day of auditions.

After I was done, it was gloomy and rainy and I figured I ought to explore a bit, since I am rarely down that way. Found a Starbucks in a new shopping plaza which was a great place to park for a couple of hours and test the new netbook battery. Tried to sync my phone calendar with the netbook's Outlook calendar, but it duplicated some things and ignored others. Needs more research.

Since I was in Asiatown, and I had not made my Chinese market run yesterday, I looked up the local Lion store, which turned out to be the oldest one there is, narrow aisles, crowded, insane check-out configuration. I was especially looking for fresh water shrimp, picked up two bags of the stuff which the sign said was on sale for $10 each. Checked out, got to the car, and there was no shrimp. It wasn't on my bill either. So I went back to the cashier, and she was all "duh?" but her manager was there, who said the cashier had dropped them behind the counter and did not notice till I was gone, and they were back i the bin already. So I had another 15 minutes in line. Would have been 5 minutes, but two people ahead of me was a man whose wife kept running back into the store and bringing more stuff to the counter. What had been about 10 items ended up as 30 or so. :-(

And when I got home I saw I was charged the non-sale price for the shrimp. :-(

Wanted to take 87 home, to avoid the insanity at the under construction Tully Road 101 ramp, but somehow got turned around and ended up most of the way to Milpitas instead. Recalculated, drove to Story Rd. and took 101 from there.

Home, the music clips to go with the new music stand had arrived. I'd had the higher-amp cell phone battery on charge all day, installed that, and we'll see what happens. Sad news is I don't get 4G or even 3G at the apartment, good thing I have wireless.

Dinner was steamed Ha Gow and dessert was Ngaw (Rambutan). Lion had whole frozen Ngaw (rhymes with paw) for the same price as canned, peeled & pitted. It's fun fruit to tear open and get the good stuff out. Worth trying, but freezing made the bits surrounding the pit too tough to eat. I'll stick to canned, I think.

Something kevin_standlee posted reminded me of a photo I took in 1973 for the Daily Astorian, which was picked up by AP. This time I found it in my string book easily. Cool story: it was one of my first assignments, the Seaside Marathon in February. My job was to take photos of the winner crossing the finish line. I don't recall if I got that shot, I think not. I did get a photo of him a few seconds after he finished the race. I don't know about the runner-up, I'll have to look at those negatives after I get the film scanner. But the race for 3rd place was the big story. With only a few feet to go, #3 was a foot or so ahead of #4. He slowed down, reached over and grabbed the hand of #4, and they crossed the finish line together, hands in the air. The photo is ( behind the cut )

In other news, Monster.com has a bug in their (beta) job search agent. It keeps showing me the same posting, day after day, month after month, for a job which I'm sure was filled ages ago. Often it is the only job found in the search, although a manual search of the same items gives a couple of pages of listings.

Plans for tomorrow:
Best Buy at 10:30
Brunch at one of the cafés across the parking lot
The rest depends on the weather
If it is still raining/cloudy at sundown, I'll cancel my Del Valle camping reservations for Tues/Wed.

Up and out and at work by 9 instead of my usual almost-10 on account of low-ish Hgl levels which got me out of bed when the alarm went off.  At work, had problems getting my test device to connect, thanks to something I have no control over which has been broken for months.

10 am department meeting reveals that we are hiring certification engineers, on contract. If you are Linux literate and can also use either a Mac or Windows computer, and want to mostly run boring server tests all day, let me know and I'll hook you up with a way to apply.

It also reveals that the SortaBoss is all about statistics, and the ones he thinks are useful are not. It's a hot button, he actually got mad when challenged. I didn't sign up to be a bean counter, or to work for one, so this has raised my inclination to find other employment a notch.

It was a short meeting because the department meeting was at 10:30. It started with another bean counter whose black text on  red background slides told me he was not worth listening to. So I took a bathroom break. There was a fairly interesting presentation about how the programming side of things is evolving, from the point of view of the manufacturers as well as us. And some chatter about CES which really didn't tell me anything I hadn't read on Gizmodo. And one other feature I have already tested, but was new to most of the others and I'm pretty sure I can't say anything specific about here.

Back to my desk, figured out a workaround for the device issue and finished my tests. We got the suite completed by 4:30, and though the box worked okay, it will fail because they didn't get our logo right.

Went home an hour later, turned on the TV, made the dumpster run I should have made yesterday, then watched 3/4 of the BCS championship which was boring and disappointing. Auburn had the better team, but they still played dirty. Oregon was phoning it in, and their play calling was lame. I hear they tied things up, then lost to a last-second field goal. Boring. The Stanford game was much better.

Rented a movie on iTunes for the first time, partly to see how the process went, and partly to test the car's alleged ability to play it, as long as the hand brake is engaged. Tried to download an audio book from the library, but they all have a waiting list. WTF? There's a limit to the number of "copies" they can have out at one time? Ridiculous. I thought about going there and checking out the CD, but there are 50 people ahead of me for the one I wanted.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work (I have no idea what I'll be working on)
Hang out for a while before going home