Christmas Eave

This morning about 7:15 am I went out for my first run since the marathon 20 days ago. It wasn't easy and I decided to only run 3 miles and take it easy. I'll have to try and get out 3-4 times a week again to get back up to speed.

Anna wrote her first letter to Santa and is really enjoying the Christmas season. She had fun helping me deliver gifts to several neighbors in our neighborhood. She also helped mom make some craft gifts for her big sisters.

Here is an interesting article on Home Networking

The home network of the future

Thinking like an IT guy will save you money and frustration down the road.

"Hamachi" Rocks!

Check the following podcast / on-line radio style broadcast from GRC.com. This is Steve Gibsons recommendation for travelors who need secure access to remote systems and with either Windows Remote Desktop or RealVNC secure browsing and email access. Plus any other use you can think of where you need secure access to a remote computer.

"Hamachi" Rocks!: "This week Leo and I discuss and describe the brand new, ready to emerge from a its long development beta phase, ultra-secure, lightweight, high-performance, highly-polished, multi-platform, peer-to-peer and FREE! Personal virtual private networking system known as 'Hamachi'. After two solid weeks of testing and intense dialog with Hamachi's lead developer and designer, I have fully vetted the system's security architecture and have it running on many of my systems. While I am traveling to Toronto this week, Hamachi is keeping my roaming laptop securely and directly connected to all of my machines back home. Don't miss this one!

Listen to this week's Security Now! Episode for the details."

California International Marathon

Well, I survived CIM and finished an hour and 10 minutes faster than my first marathon 7 years ago. I think I'll stick to 1/2 marathons and shorter for any future distance races. I'm still a little
stiff but getting better each day. My legs really tightened up on me those last few miles. The weather was great though witch is unusual for this race. I've been a spectator every year for the last 7 years and there has been some very cold and wet conditions most of the time.

My neighbor ran a better race and finished right around our goal time which was only 22 minutes faster than me. Considering he dropped me with 8 miles to go that's not a big difference!

My long time friend from high school was shooting for a Boston qualifier and ran a 3:38:54 missing it by ~18 minutes. So close! Maybe next year!

Florida Wrap Up

The flight home was pretty smooth. We had a short stop in Dallas where nearly everyone got off the plain. So, we stretched and walked around on the plain until the next batch of passengers boarded. I was definitely glad to get home, though I had to pick up Anna right after getting home from the airport, make sure she had some dinner and get ready for my offices Open House party where we mingle with our clients and enjoy catered food and several types of beer we brewed for the party.

Florida Day 4

Today there were several good classes. We learned a lot about Revit and custom member / object creation and data organization to increase performance and allow multiple people to edit the model simultaneously.

The day ended with all the attendees being treated to exclusive access to MGM Disney theme park for 2 1/2 - 3 hours. Tom and I rode the Tower of Terror then ran over to the Rock 'n Roll Aero Smith ride. Then we hit a few of the other shows before they closed down the park. So, that was our reward for attending ~30 hours of classes in 3 days.

We check out at 5:20am to head for the airport. Then one stop in Dallas but we don't change plains, and on to Sacramento. Should be arriving about 1:30pm or so.

Florida Day 3

The first session "Get Up-and-Running on AutoDesk Revit Structure" was long (3 1/2 hours) but interesting. The instructor was all over the place and didn't cover all the material he had on his outline but it was still interesting. Then we broke for lunch.

After lunch AutoDesk and Disney Imagineers put on a huge 2 hour Keynote Presentation to show off their latest software both shipping and in beta / production. Some really cool stuff. CEO Carol Bartz spoke then COO Carl Bass came out and shoed off a senario that showed all their software integrating various disciplines in pulling together a new product and building for a fictitious company. The Disney Imagineers were there to show us how they use the software in real life. This was a one of the events that everyone was scheduled to attend. There were over 5,000 attendees in the room.

immediately following the Keynote we had the Building Solutions industry specific Session. Which was really just a rehash of a lot of the stuff they showed us during the Keynote Presentation with a little more detail.

The final session was creating details in Revit Building 8, which was great. The speaker was an architect from Rancho Cucamunga, CA. and has been using Revit since version 1.0. He has some great ideas on getting our existing AutoCAD drawings into Revit and in some cases just using them as they are. He showed us the parametric power native in Revit and how to assign constraints and dimension variables to parts both 2D and 3D and when it is better to use 2D to save on space and complexity in the model. We will be able to get his whole library of Revit "Families" as well as many others submitted to the AUGI Web site by the many members. Both Tom and I are AUGI members though my membership came over from the old NAUG days before they changed names and went international.

There are people here from all over the world. Lots of people from Europe, England, Australia, as well as from all over the US. The final event this evening they called Industry Receptions which turned out to be another social meet and party with others in your industry. I didn't stay long, even though the music was good, it was impossible to talk and the food choices were limited. Tom stayed until it ended at 10:00.

Florida Day 2

Well Tom and I made it through the first day of classes and we have just returned to the hotel for a brief break before heading back for the social "Beer Bust". I'm not sure yet if I'll go back for that yet.

Lots of interesting info in each session and the food has been pretty good. I was thinking of buying a new laptop bag as a souvenir but this morning at registration they gave us all a new travel bag with AutoDesk logo, wheels, shoulder straps, and retracting handle. So, I'll probably toss my old bag and just use the new one they gave us.

Lots of stuff I had over looked in AutoCad the I want to implement when I get back to work. One thing may even eliminate a programming project I've been slow to start. They gave us all a free copy of DWF Composer and refreshed us on the idea that this is better than PDF when it comes to sharing AutoCAD drawings. Plus DWF's are also device independent plot files with embedded line weights. And they can contain multiple drawing sheets like PDF's and still potentially be much smaller in size.

The Revit Structure sessions have been very interesting. Definitely looking forward to working more in Revit. They have shown us projects where all drafting has been done in Revit including the detailing. I think it can be a great time saver over the old 2D AutoCAD way of drawing.

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Well, we made it back from the vendor Exhibit Hall & Beer Bust. Met some people talked with some product vendors, ate pizza, drank some beer and picked up the freebees and product brochures. The first session tomorrow looks like a long one, 3-1/2 hours but it is on "Getting up and Running on Autodesk Revit - Structure" so it should be interesting. Sofar everything has been at the Dolphin hotel but Tom and I did take a walk over to see the Swan hotel next door during a 1/2 hour break between sessions earlier in the day. The Dolphin is much more interesting. It appears the Dolphin is named after the fish not the mammal.

Florida Day 1

We made it here! The hotel is nice though we won't be spending much time here other than dinner and sleeping. We did have an 1 hour delay on the runway in Dallas while we waited for our flight to be rerouted around some lightning storms between us and Orlando. I sure was glad to get off the plane and walk around. The time spent on the plane with the time on the runway was about 6 1/2 hours. That's enough sitting for me.

One thing I don't get about this hotel is why my wife and I can stay at a Holiday Inn Express and I can get free WiFi, but here at the Hilton in Disney World $$ they charge for internet access from your room! That's bogus.

Well it is after midnight here though on my time it's only 9:30. So, I'd better get some sleep. The shuttle takes us to the Swan & Dolphin where the AU Classes are at 6:30 am.

I hope to find time to try out the hot tub before we leave.

Feeling Better

Well after this mornings final weekend run before the marathon, I think I'm feeling better again. Still battling the congestion but it isn't quite as bad. Now I'm preparing for my flight out to Florida for the training my company is sending me too. I hope to continue to get better since I'll have 3 days after I return before the marathon. I hope I don't catch something else while around all those people on the flight or in the classes and meet and greet sessions in Florida.

Just a quick note

I've updated my post "Wireless Security for the Home Network". Added more to the WPA description and added my current recomendation on what options to use, as well as links to "Perfect Passwords" GRC's Ultra High Security
Password Generator

Down but Not Out

Well Thursday I started feeling ache, sneezing, and congested shortly after I got to work. Which took me out on Friday, so I missed my morning run and I was still under the weather for the Saturdays run. I slept in and skipped that run too. I was planning on resting and recovering to get back to training by Monday. While I'm still going for the morning run tomorrow I didn't get the rest I had planned. I ended up staying up all night to get caught up on some accounting I had to have done for Sunday. I haven't pulled an all nighter in at least 10 years. I'm sure I'll feal wiped out tomorrow. Oh Well!

Clarksburg Photos Uploaded

I finally uploaded some of the photos from the Clarksburg Country Run. I have a few more to upload but I'll have to either wait until next month or upgrade to a paid account. The free accounts have limits on how much data you can upload to flickr per month. The paid account is pretty cheap so I might go for it and pay the $24.95 a year.

Anyway, Julie took the photos and while Matt and I were out on our 20 mile run she did the 1/2 Marathon (13.1 miles) while pushing the baby jogger. Plus she managed to stay on pace and hit her estimated finish time!

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Update!
I went ahead and paid for the flickr account. All the photos are up on flickr and I finally tried their option to order prints. It works well and is easy to do. There are options to have them mailed to you or you can pick them up from a local Target store with 1-hour processing. Cool! Oh yea, they were 15 cents a print for the 4x6 size plus there was a $2 discount. So, this time it only will cost me 80 cents!

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I picked up the photos form Target today. They look great. You can't see any pixels or indication that they are not from film.

Out Too Fast

Race day was fun, though I did my usual "out too fast" thing. I couldn't convince myself to slow down when the pace felt good. Even though it was a good 30 seconds per mile faster than our best training pace. So, I ended up having a great 10 mile race and merely survived the next 10 to finish. I still had fun and enjoyed seeing my wife and daughter cheering me on as I approached the finish line.

Hopefully I will learn something from this and stick to a reasonable pace for the forth coming CIM in December. I'll also have to be better about taking in calories and fluids.

Matt stuck with me through the faster miles then after the turn around at about 10.75 miles he managed to keep going with out slowing as much, so he finished on target at about 3 hours.

My wife did a race-day sign-up for the half marathon and finished on target while pushing the baby jogger the whole way.

Today, and probably for the next few days I'm paying for the race with stiff leg muscles and a sore left knee. Hopefully now that we are officially in the taper part of our training I'll recover quickly and be strong for CIM.

Carbo Load

Tonight we eat! for tomorrow we run.

We are going to dinner to night to load up for the big 20 mile race tomorrow in Clarksburg. We have picked a nice Italian restaurant that Julie and I like called Cafe' Milazzo. If the extra carbs are not enough, we will be reaking of garlic and that may take out some of the competition. ;-)

I have updated two earlier posts, one on Sony and the other on WiFi Security.

Sony / BMG Security Issue

A couple of days ago the news broke about Sony / BMG Compact Disks containing software that, when played on a computer installs it's self at a system level and takes over part of the file handling that Windows usually does inorder to hide it's presence on your computer. Apparently the End User License Agreement (EULA) states that it is easily removable when in reality it can't be uninstalled with out possibly making your computer: unbootable. This happens because it installs it's self as a system level driver and hooks into the Windows file handling system. In addition it appears to be buggy and will slow the responsiveness of your computer due to the fact that it is constantly scanning your file system and connecting with Sony when your on-line to report usage of their Music CD's. The software is so poorly written that once installed any file that is renamed so it starts with $sys$ will disappear from your file system. That means anyone who may have access to you computer, viruses, worms, etc. can place files on your computer and have them be hidden from you and your anti-virus software with out doing anything extra them selves. Recently Sony has claimed that their software does not "phone home" when in reality it has been shown that it does. Can Sony be trusted when they are going to blatently lie about what the software does besides the fact that they install it with out telling you what they are doing.

This is ridiculous! A major media company installing software under false pretenses on peoples computers just because they decide to listen to their music through their computer.

luckily, as with any software on a CD, you can hold down the shift key when you insert the CD and that will stop windows AutoRun from starting the software on the CD. As a standard practice I have disabled the AutoRun on all the computers at home and work.

Microsoft has many useful utilities, that are not offically supported, that are available from their site at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx under the name of Power Toys. Here you can download and install a utility called Tweek UI that will allow you to easily disable the AutoRun feature of Windows.

Survived the 18 Mile Run

Matt and I survived the 18 mile run today! I even felt much better than the 17 miles from last weekend. The main difference, I think, is I ate a Power Bar before the run where last week I didn't eat anything until after the run.

This time I even had enough to push the pace the last half mile along with 2-3 miles during the run where we stepped up the pace significantly.

Next week we run 20 miles but this time in a race setting instead of our usual workout course. Then we get to taper for several weeks easing off on the volume of running until race day on December 4th, California International Marathon (CIM)!

Goof Off Day!

After an easy 5 mile run in the morning, I get to have a goof off day and stay home from work with Anna. I have a long list of things to get done during the day so it's not a total goof off day but at least Anna and I will get to spend the day together while we try to get all the items checked off the Honey Do list. We got to do the same thing last Friday and it was a fun day. I think Anna enjoyed getting to hang out together all day for a change.

More Photos

The rest of the Halloween photos went up on flickr tonight. There is a new service they provide where people who I have invited to join my flickr site can have prints made and delivered to them. Of course you could just download a copy and print it if you have a color printer and good photo paper to print on.

I thought I might use this feature to order extra prints and have them delivered to some of my relatives, who don't have access to the web to view the photos.

Ugh

8 miles tomorrow morning! The only bad thing is I have to get up at 4:50am to get out the door early enough to get the run in and get to work on time.

Lately I feel like I need to add some weight training and situps to my regiment just to round out my fitness. I've been a bit one dimensional for a couple of years (asside from an occassional bike ride pulling the baby trailer with 40+ lbs of weight in it.) and I think it would be good for me, and probably benefit my running if I did some other types of training.

Microsoft Visual Studio Express

I've decided to get back into programming, so I downloaded parts of the Microsoft's Free Visual Studio Express IDE's. I decided to try the C++ and C# (sharp) as well as Visual Basic and Visual Web Developer (the replacement for the sucky FrontPage product). It's only been a couple of days but sofar I am getting into it again. I haven't written any C code since C++ arrived on the scene.

As far as Visual Basic goes I've only done VBA though I've written a fair amount of VBA code, and I've been writing WSH code using Visual Basic Scripting for the desktop and system admin stuff. So the syntax should be pretty similar, or at least not totally unfamiliar.

I have also been writting ASP for several years by hand in a plain text editor. I like the results of coding this way. I've been able to absolutly controle the HTML that is generated so it conforms to World Wide Web Org's standards. I usually choose HTML 4.01 Strict or XHTML 1.1 Strict. Now that I'm using the Web Developer Express IDE I'm kind of forced to get familiar with the ASP.net stuff. Might as well be a whole new language with the difference in Syntax from the original ASP.

The whole point of doing this is to move my offices Project Proposal, Reporting, & Archiving Web Application forward and add more sofisticated annalysis and business reporting and graphs. Currently I've coded the graphing in SVG and am using the Adobe SVG Viewer browser Plug-in for IE to accomplish the job. Maybe I should just keep going with what I have but I wanted to see if the newer ASP.net stuff would make the charting / graphing any easier.

I guess after a few days I'll know if it is worth it.

Halloween Photos are Up!

I've added some Halloween photos (taken with a digital camera) to my flickr site and I'll have more up later after I scan the ones from my SLR Camera.

Anna had a blast and we took her to twice as many homes as last year. We each took turns taking her out to Trick-Or-Treet while the other stayed home to hand out candy.

Of course they are only visable to people I've invited to my flickr site. Except for a few public photos that don't incude people.

Wireless Security for the Home Network

I have been running a wireless network in my home for a couple of years and I have setup wired and wireless networks for other people for several years. In that time I have researched security settings and watched the industry introduce WEP then move on to WPA and WPA2 encryption levels. Along with the position on other router or access point settings that may improve the security of your network. I thought I'd put together a list of the current recommendations based on my reading and experience from real life setups.

(You may think you want to leave your network open for other to use. If so, just keep in mind that anything done on-line by another person will be tracked back to your access point or router. So, if they do something illegal you may be the one that is liable.)

Here are the basic things that should be done:

• Never ever use the default settings or password that the manufacturer provided with the equipment.
  
• Disable remote administration on your router.
  
• Change the default password for accessing the routers configuration page.
  
• Turn off the broadcasting of the SSID. (Not a real security measure but it may help keep the neighbors from accidentally using your wireless)
  
  
• change the default channel. (Not security but reduces interference from all your neighbors on channel 6)
  
  
• Change your default subnet. 

• Reduce your key renewal time limit to be less than 12 minutes.  I use about 10 minutes (600 seconds).

Here are some of the security settings and a description of what each really does or doesn't do for the security of a wireless network.

• MAC Address Filtering - This is the unique identifier that all networking devices have and is assigned by the manufacturer.
  
  On the surface the idea of filtering access to your network by limiting it to your hardware devices seems like a great idea. However it turns out that all the communication between devices sends the MAC and IP address of the source and destination as part of the unencrypted header. So all anyone has to do is use any one of the many freely downloadable network sniffing tools to view the traffic from your wireless network and they have at least 2 MAC addresses and the IP range that is in use based on the 2 IP addresses. If someone is looking for networks to break into they will have one of these sniffer programs. Using this feature will help keep casual or accidental connections from your neighbors or passers buy from happening.
  
• DHCP Server - Most routers and access points have the ability to act as a DHCP server. A DHCP server dynamically assigns IP addresses to each device that announces it's self to your network. Some may think that disabling the DHCP server option and manually assigning addresses to your devices will keep an attacker from being able to guess you r IP range. As noted above this doesn't really even slow down an attacker. This information is broadcast in the unencrypted header of each message block.
  
• SSID Broadcasting - Disabling the broadcasting of your SSID or network name to hide your network really only helps keep casual or accidental connections from happening. An attacker will be able to see this information just like the MAC and IP address info mentioned earlier. Using this feature will help keep casual or accidental connections from your neighbors or passers buy from happening.
  
• WEP Encryption - WEP Encryption was broken from the beginning. It was designed by a group of engineers with out consulting security experts so it has many features that sound good but have been implemented poorly leaving WEP open to easy cracking with in minutes. I could write out everything that is wrong with the implementation but I'll refer you to Gibson Research's web site grc.com where thy provide the audio from a weekly radio show on security that Steve Gibson does with "This Week in Tech" called SecurityNow!. Check out episode 11 "Bad WiFi Security"
  
• WPA Certification - WPA has been designed much better. It uses TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) to manage the keys and RC4 to encrypt the data.  WPA is an early implementation of the 802.11i specification before it has been finalized, AES while offered on most hardware may not be properly implemented in this version of WPA.  Episode #13 from the SecurityNow! show from grc.com "Unbreakable WiFi Security" discusses this in detail. Essentially TKIP uses RC4 encryption the correct way and dynamically rotates the keys based on a master key generated from your pass phrase. On my Linksys router I have the option of TKIP+AES so it can use the AES encryption rather than the RC4 and have the keys dynamically rotated. Either encryption will work and work well. AES is stronger but it also requires more processing power and some older hardware may not support it. WPA is susceptible to a dictionary attack on the passphrase you use, so using a strong passphrase is important. Steve Gibson has created a web page on his site that securely generates very good random strings of characters you can use.
• WPA2 Certification - is the better choice since it is actually based on the finalized 802.11i specification.  In this version AES is officially implemented in a standards based way across hardware.  Do not use TKIP even if it is still an option on your hardware with this version of WPA.
  

So, as of this posting I would recommend using WPA2-PSK with AES using random 63 character string of alpha numeric characters upper and lower case. This should work with hardware from various vendors and older hardware that doesn't support AES yet can use TKIP. If your hardware is newer or you don't need to allow for say a friend visiting with their unknown hardware then use a 63 character string that incorporates special symbols, punctuation, any thing you can type.  Also reduce your key renewal time to under 12 minutes.  I use 10 minutes (600 seconds).

Remember to save the passphrase to a file on your computer or on a memory stick so you can just copy and paste it in when configuring devices. You don't want to have to type it in manually and possibly make mistakes. The first part of Steve Gibsons Security Now! episode #14 "Virtual Private Networks (VPN): Theory" talks about the crackability of WPA passphrases.

I'll update this as things change, as they constantly are, in this industry.  Updates will be indicated in italic.

Also see these articles at ars The ABCs fo securing your wireless network & Wireless Security Blackpaper.

The Long Run

Todays 17 mile run was much harder than the previous weeks 14 and 16 mile runs. My legs fatigued towards the end and our pace slowed quite a bit from previous long runs. I'm sure it was just an off day and nest weeks 18 mile run will be better.

It felt great to get into the warm shower after almost 3 hours of running on a cool overcast morning. Up at 6am and running since 6:30 was actually a sleep in day compared to the mid week runs where we are up at 4:50 to 5:20 depending on the distance.

Flickr Photos

Most of the photos on my Flickr site are marked as private but there are five photos I have made publickly available. I'm sure over time I'll add more photos that are public.

I have another blog that I manage for the Buffalo Chips Running Club. It is mostly workouts, news, and articles the the members have submitted to be sent to the club via my weekly email news letter.

Backup Server

I have an old server that was decommissioned during a systems upgrade at my office. It is old, slow, and has relatively small amount of drive space. However, for my home network it seems like a perfect opportunity for me to set it up as a back-up for the other computers on the network. It has duel power supplies and 4 drives running in Raid 5 on an Adaptec SCSI controller. So, it is redundant and should be pretty reliable. The only thing I need to make setting it up easier is a small monitor. Then I can begin reinstalling the OS. I'm thinking I'll run it from another room so it is out of sight, not to mention it is noisy with the fans from the duel power supplies.

It should be a fun project.

Marathon Training

Matt and I have been advancing through our training as the miles increase with virtually no difficulty. The mileage hasn't been a problem however I have had a couple of things slow me down like some pain around my left knee which I managed to eliminate by stretching better and more frequently. I found a targeted stretch in Runners World that seemed to help greatly. Then as I mentioned in a previous post my heal injury while on vacation. Most recently Matt and I were our for a pre dawn run mid week (just 5 miles) and just before the 2 mile mark I stepped on a Magnolia tree blossom and twisted my ankle on the way down to the ground. I missed last Saturdays long run of 16 miles but I'm going to make it to tomorrows (Saturdays) 17 mile run. We only have 2 long runs left after this an 18 mile and 20 mile before we start our taper!

I'm slightly worried about topping out at 20 miles. I'd prefer if we started earlier and built up to the whole distance or maybe a little longer. Our 20 mile run is going to be the Clarksburg 20 mile race.

Vacation was geat!

We spent a week in La Jolla, CA, just enjoying the beaches, and theam parks. We took Anna to Sea World then Wild Animal Park the following day. Then we took a day off from the parks to play at the beach. Then next day we went to the famous San Diego Zoo (which was much better than the Wild Animal Park). We took a day off the end of the La Jolla part of the vacation to drive to Palm Desert and visit with my dad and mom. They hadn't seen Anna in about a year and a half or two so they were delited to get to see her again.

I tried to keep up with my running while on vacation but I injured my heal in the hotel room and had to stop running for a few days.