Camping for Geeks

My wife loves to camp. She loves tents and cook stoves, sleeping bags and camp fires. Myself: not so much.

Zack takes after my wife in loving the outdoors. Given his preference he'd spend most of his time outside with the dogs. My preference is to spend time in front of the TV or the computer. Yes Virginia, I'm a couch potato.

Recently I received some bad news. I'm in the beginning stages of hypertension which is also known as high blood pressure. This means changes to diet and activity levels. Given my desire for a sedentary lifestyle in familiar surroundings it seemed logical the best way to break out of the rut would be to get me out of the familiar surroundings into something a bit more privative without the luxuries of home. But I really don't like camping.

But there are things I enjoy that are camping like. I love sunsets and lakes, I like people watching and I enjoy setting by campfires. I felt there might be a compromise, a camping trailer!

So, off to Craig's list we went to find a nice used RV trailer that would pull comfortably behind our truck. What we found was a Jayco 29 footer that we three years old. In my opinion, the best deals are to be found in an economic downturn. Folks are tightening up and looking to get rid of luxury items.

The couple selling the trailer had kept it up well. The inside was immaculate. The outside was in good shape as well showing only a little wear during its three years of existence.

The camper has a queen size bed up front, a nicely appointed kitchen with a three burner range and oven, microwave oven, refrigerator with freezer, two cable TV connections, a full on bottom single on top bunk bed, a bathtub with shower and vanity sink and, best of all, a toilet. The couch and dining table also make into a bed. All told it could sleep 8 in relative comfort. The side also slide out so when you have the trailer set up the thing is fairly spacious.

So we purchased the trailing with a quick loan from our local credit union. Credit is still easy to come by if you have a good credit score. The process, in my opinion, is almost too easy.

So, deeper in debt but with a happy family we look for a good first location in order to loose our camper virginity. We had several folks recommend Inks Lake and so off to Burnett Texas we went. For anyone interested in Texas State parks, I recommend checking out the Park Finder. There really are parks a short distance from just about anyone in Texas.

Inks lake is very nice. It is one of Texas' a constant level lake kept that way by siphoning off water from lakes further up river. I wonder which politically savvy resident managed to pull that one off.

The facilities were clean and well kept. The park store had lots of goodies and allowed you to rent canoes and paddle boats. The trails were fun and the sunsets were just this side of heaven. This was my first camping experience and it was great.

Zack enjoyed it as well. Below is a picture of Zack blissfully fishing.

Dream Your Dreams

We're full of dreams both good and bad
of things we've missed and things we've had

Reflections of our inner thoughts
Of things so noble and things so not

Yet who we are is in our dreams
Reflect our hopes and livelong themes

So dream you hearts desires and fears
Laugh the laughs and cry the tears

They illuminate the patterns of our soul's dense weave
The underpinnings of who we are and what we believe

Ubuntu 8 and HP Deskjet F4280

My mother passed away recently bequeathed me a large number of old photos. I wish to save these treasures from the ravages of time and share them with others easily. Scanning them is the obvious solution but I"m afraid to use my old HP OfficeJeet K80 for the task. It has a scanner but you load the original like a FAX machine and I'm afraid this would damage the photos so I purchased a brand new HP DeskJet F4280 for the task. I got home with my new technological goody and prepared to scan away.

Note: I love Linux. Its a great operating system that takes a lot less system resources than Windows but there are times I just want to plug in my new piece of hardware and have it work. I you are that sort of person Linux is not necessarily for you.

I plugged the new device into my old home built computer and got an error. It simply would do a thing with it. So, I booted up my old laptop, discovered I had a bad disk drive, installed a new disk drive (we all have a spare laying around, right?), installed Ubuntu 8 on it and tried it. Same problem. Damn!

So, I hit the forums. The problem seemed to be that HP devices are controlled by something called HPLIP. HP decided to sidestep creating a new driver for everything that came out developed a single package which controlled all the HP devices attached to the various flavors of Linux.

The forum gurus stated I needed to upgrade to the latest version of this software if I had any hopes of getting the device working. But, as with everything involving Linux, it just wasn't that simple. I was running hplip 2.8.8 and needed hplip 2.8.10

I downloaded a run file named hplip-2.8.10.run from http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install/install/index.html . Its simply a run file you execute by typing
sh hplip-2.8.10.run

Well, it almost worked. The thing hung up on the first step and would not go any further. I let the thing sit for an hour and still nothing.

I had tried to install Java docs earlier and for some reaons the java docs caused every install to hang afterwards. I'm still not sure why so I went to symantec package manager and unstalled java docs (although it never fully installed) and, for good measure, the existing hplip install.

After that, it installed fine and I saw the new print drivers in my printer setup window.

So now I can scan beauties like this

I can't believe I ever looked that young.

VMWare and Ubuntu Linux 7.10

I wanted to get an install of XP on my Ubuntu box and so downloaded VMWare server (its free) from here and found a howto here which I will quote throughout this post.

The first step is to load some of the Ubuntu modules you'll need to compile the vmserver via aptitude. Run the following command

sudo aptitude install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential (which requires your install cd)

Next install xinetd

sudo aptitude install xinetd

Per the instrustions from hotowforge, I went to the following site and downloaded the latest any-to-any patch. You'll need this patch in the middle of your install. http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=76957&tstart=0

Untar the vmserver tarball you downloaded.

tar -xvzf

Change directory into the resultant directory (there will be only one) and run

sudo vmware-install.pl

I accepted the defaults with the possible exception of the default vmware file location (you'll want it on a partiton with some space) and the following question you show answer NO to.

Before running VMware Server for the first time, you need to configure it by invoking the following command: "/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl". Do you want this program to invoke the command for you now? [yes]

Answer NO. You will then exit the installation script.

Now you'll want to run the patch you downloaded. Untar that file and descend into the resulting directory.

sudo ./runme.pl

Again, accept the defaults. The script modifies the installed vmware software. At the end you will again be asked to run the vmware-config. Answer YES this time.

After that completes, start vmware with the command

vmware

If you did everything right, the vmware console should appear. At this point you'll need to create a new virtual machine. If your machine once ran a microsoft product, you can reinstall on the new virtual machine but you'll need the license code off the old box. Alternately, you can install a new copy of Ubuntu or any other operating system supported by VMWARE.

So, to create a new guest OS you tell the vm server to create it, give it resource such as disk and memory. A note here is to use the defaults the first time you create an instance and, if you us FAT file system as a backup, allow vm server to split the created disk into 2 GB chunks.

After you have the VM created, put your OS install CD in and tell the instance to boot. It should read the CD and install the whatever OS you've selected. Follow the normal install procedure for that OS. The only additional step I recommend is to install vmtools into the new image once its up and running and has all the patches you wish to install.

Vmtools allows you to resize the screen above 460x680 and allows you to cut and paste between host and virtual machine.

All in all it was a fairly painless process outside of the OS install.

Galowwy LIVES!!!

I am happy to report that all is well in the fish tank. All five fish somehow survived the initial three week period of the tank cycle. Galowwy now swims regularly around the tank with the others so all seems well. I also discovered the Galowwy is a Mickey Platy as well. It was hard to spot the mouse markings among the darkly colored scales but its there, sure enough.

My wife took a water sample into the pet store to determine if we could add more, less fragile fish than the indestructible platies. The fish guy stated that our water was too acidic. This is an odd fact since we have well water and that water is known for being too alkaline.

The pet store guy indicated that our addition of shells and the castle might be the cause. NOT THE CASTLE!! That is the single coolest feature ever to grace the inside of any fish tank.

We decided to remove the shells and await the next test. Time will tell whether we are ever ready for fragile fish. Then again, maybe we should just stick with platies.

Update:
Well, it turned out what we had here was a failure to communicate. The fish guy stated our PH is too high which indicates our water is too alkaline not too acidic. Now this makes sense since our water is surrounded by limestone down in the well. I also determined that our castles, is indeed, plaster which add to the alkalinity.

So now our choices are to remove the castle (never!) and remove about a quarter of the water and replace it with bottled water or we can buy fish that actually like a high PH. Unfortunately these fish also eat platies and that's a life lesson I'm not quite ready to teach my four year old.