Random Thoughts

Review of the ineo I-NA316N1-R Poseidon 3.5" SATA NAS enclosure

2012-01-09T06:51:00.000-08:00

First of all, you have to remember that this is a low budget NAS. You can't buy it and expect it to do everything a multi-hundred dollar unit would do.

Out of the box I could not connect to the NAS. Since I bought it refurbished, the previous owner must have set a static IP address in the unit. This prevented it from getting an IP address from my router. After about a half hour of frustration I hit the reset button and it immediately hopped on my network and grabbed an IP. If you buy a new one out of the box you should be able to plug it into your network at home and have it pull an IP address from your DHCP server. If you bought it used, you may need to do a reset on it.

I bought this strictly to use as an offsite backup solution over FTP. Being a budget unit it is very limited on what control you have over the FTP settings. You can change the port number to 21 OR 1025 through 65500. When plopping it behind a TrendNet TEW-631BRP all I needed to do was setup a virtual server that forwarded a port that I chose to port 21 of the NAS. The TrendNet is smart enough to recognize the FTP packets and lets the unit run in PASV mode (it translates the IP address of the server but I won't get into the details here). When I was trying to run it behind a Linksys WRT-54G running Tomato firmware I had to put it in the DMZ of the router. The firmware just refused to translate the FTP packets properly.

The web interface is very basic and uses simple HTTP GET requests. If you are the developer type you should be able to easily use this to your advantage to remotely enable/disable features and change settings. This is nice as some companies like to use complex AJAX which makes life more difficult for the homebrew types.

As far as user accounts go you can only give a user write access or read-only access to individual directories. Also, passwords and usernames can only be 12 characters long which is kind of perplexing and disappointing. At least usernames and passwords are case-sensitive. It seems the unit runs a stripped down version of Linux.

Reading the reviews from some other people it seems as though the unit will freeze up after a period of time. I have not had mine in service very long so I don't know if this will happen or not. Power cycling it seems to resolve the issue. If this starts happening I will update my review, and then possibly reboot it on a weekly basis and see what happens.

During setup the quick format did not take long. I would be gentle when installing the hard drive as the circuit board that it plugs in to does not have much structural support.

I can't comment on the SMB, BitTorrent or media server features since I will never use them.

As far as noise goes it is non-existent. There are no fans. Everything is cooled by natural air flow and the metal case. I think I'd prefer a tighter fit between the hard drive chassis and the case to improve the cooling. The only noise comes from the hard drive you install.

Power consumption is always a factor when it comes to hardware that will be running 24/7. Especially, if it is running at someone elses house. The wall wart is rated for 3amps at 12VDC but that is not a good gauge of power use. I used a Kill-A-Watt meter to measure power consumption of the unit under a few different conditions.

While copying a 750MB file over 100 mbps Ethernet using the SMB server feature the power consumption was only 8 watts and occasionally bounced up to 9 watts. This INCLUDES the power draw from the hard drive I installed which is a 2TB Western Digital WD20EARS Green Caviar. With the hard drive turned off (this can be set to occur after 10, 20, 30 or 60 minutes of inactivity, or never) the power draw was ONLY 3 watts. This unit is way more power efficient than I would have expected. If you run a Torrent or media server 24/7 this could pay for itself in a short period of time. As someone else mentioned I unhooked the two wires that plug into the circuit board for the indicator LED's. This made very little difference in power draw (maybe a half watt?) but it makes it less annoying at night as the lights are kind of bright.

For the money, this unit can't be beat.

Review of the 3M Filtrete Wifi thermostat CT-50

2011-12-30T17:40:00.000-08:00

I bought this today from Home Depot for $99. Installation was easy, but in order for the Wifi to work you need to supply a 24 VAC Common to the "C" terminal of the thermostat. Even though my house was built fairly recently, the HVAC installers didn't bother to connect the 5th wire (Blue one) in the thermostat harness to the "C" terminal of my furnace. The Blue wire was left disconnected, so I connected it to the "C" terminal of the furnace and then to the thermostat and I had the 24VAC I needed to power the Wifi card. If your furnace doesn't have the "C" terminal you can use a 24VAC transformer.

Installation of the thermostat was fairly straightforward but I don't like that the thermostat doesn't split in half like my Honeywell one did. It made installation a PITA. Also, the batteries are kind of awkward to install. A little bit of thought by the designers would have made this easier.

I had a hard time connecting to the thermostat over the Ad-Hoc wireless network it creates. I tried two different Windows XP laptops and neither one would connect. Fortunately, my desktop PC has a Linksys PCI Wireles card and I was able to connect to it that way in order to do the initial configuration and attach it to my WPA secured wireless network. I've read that it will not work with WEP which seems strange. From what I've seen the iPhone is the best tool for the job. My HTC Incredible didn't recognize the thermostat's Ad-Hoc network so it wasn't suitable for the initial configuration. Of note, is that the thermostat will reset itself after about 10 minutes and the 5 digit code will change. You'll need to enter this pin when attaching it to your home's wireless network.

One down fall is that there is no direct access to the unit VIA web interface to program it. Everything is done on the radiothermostat.com website. This works fine, but if you're Internet is down you won't be able to change any of the settings through Wifi. Judging by the times that the thermostat checks in with the cloud it seems as though the cycle is every 5 minutes. So, any changes you make shouldn't take longer than 5 minutes to take effect.

That being said the radio thermostat company is very "home brew" friendly and has released the API's for the controller to the public. This means that using simple HTTP GET and POST requests you can re-program the thermostat and query its settings. For instance, to set the target temperature of the thermostat to 68 degrees Fahrenheit and put it into HEAT mode using the cURL command line tool you would use (Thermostat IP address is 10.0.0.6):

curl.exe -d {\"tmode\":1,\"t_heat\":68} http://10.0.0.6

There are a ton of other API's you can access, here is a link to the API PDF document. API Document V1_0R3. This document is uodated often so the link might die. I have this copy shadowed here.

Changes you make directly to the thermostat using the API's take effect immediately unlike the cloud changes. You also do not need to authenticate when connecting to the thermostat.

There is an Android control app which is pretty cool. You can set the thermostat to Away mode, and adjust the temperature, as well as, view the current temp. There are also a couple of other features I probably won't use very often Being able to tweak the schedule with the Android app would be nice.

Overall, this is a really nifty gadget and should help on those days I leave the house and forget to turn the heat/AC down. It will probably take some time to pay for itself, but I love electronic toys.

Menu for New China Garden in Barnegat, NJ

2011-12-29T13:06:00.000-08:00

Since I can never find their menu online when I want to order Chinese food on the go.

Here it is in PDF format.

New China Garden

Police Radio Scanner Feed for Barnegat , Waretown and Stafford (Manahawkin)

2011-09-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

Stuck in traffic in Barnegat, Stafford or Waretown? Cops creeping around your neighborhood looking for someone? I put up a scanner feed for Barnegat, Stafford (Manahawkin) and Waretown (Ocean) police. Anyone can listen for FREE to all the action by visiting http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?feedId=9772 in their web browser.

Archives for this feed are available here. Feeds are broken out into 30 minute intervals.

Have an iPhone, Blackberry or Android? There is an awesome app called Scanner Radio available for the Droid and Blackberry. There are also apps for the iPhone.

Have any suggestions or comments? Let me know!

Menu for China King in Barnegat NJ

2011-09-11T14:21:00.001-07:00

Since I can never find their menu online when I want to order Chinese food on the go.

Here it is in PDF format.

China King Menu

eBay scammer

2011-09-02T13:02:00.001-07:00

Just warning everyone of an eBay scammer Kevin Stevens with email address kkstevens72@comcast.net He took my money and then cut off contact. He also scammed other eBay users. His eBay name was corkythespoiledcat but I'm sure he is no longer using it.

Running sprinkler pipe under a sidewalk.

2011-08-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

Over this past weekend I had the joy of needing to run 3/4" poly sprinkler pipe under my 4ft wide sidewalk on each side of my driveway. I considered buying the Sidewalk Sleever, which is a $100 piece of steel that you slide inside of a PVC pipe and then pound underneath the sidewalk with a sledgehammer. Once through, you slide the metal rod out of the PVC pipe.

$100 seemed a little steep for such a simple tool. My solution was to buy a 5ft long piece of 1" Schedule 40 natural gas pipe from Home Depot. I left the end of the pipe open so it could fill with dirt. I gave it a couple of taps with a 16oz hammer and then used a sledge hammer on it. It worked perfectly.

Once the pipe popped out the other side of the sidewalk I could twist it by hand and pull it back out of the hole. I now had a nice 1" hole going under the sidewalk and I could easily slide my 3/4" poly pipe through it.

I have seen people recommend using a garden hose attached to the other end of the pipe but I worried about washing too much sand out from under the sidewalk and having it crack on my many years down the road.

GreenWorks 26032 vs Snow Joe 622U1

2011-01-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

I bought this unit to replace my Snow Joe 622U1 that blew apart and would not be warrantied by Snow Joe. I just used it to remove 6" of snow this past weekend so I will do a first impression review.

The GreenWorks 26032 carries a 4 year warranty as opposed to the Snow Joe 622U1 which has only a 2 year warranty. Reading the manual of the 26032 I was not able to find any exclusions other than damage due to wear and tear. As stated above Snow Joe informed me that the black housing plastic is not covered under the warranty for the 622U1. Whether this applies to Snow Joe's newer models I'm not sure.

Some people were complaining that the factory wrapped the handles in plastic and then assembled everything. This makes it impossible to remove the plastic unless you unscrew everything. This isn't really a big deal and is merely an aesthetic complaint. I tend to be picky so I loosened a few nuts and screws so I could remove all the plastic wrap.

Others complained about the smell of the snow blower. The smell is actually coming from the rubber wheels and is not unusual. It dissipates after a while and within a few minutes our cats were playfully jumping in and out of the empty box.

The unit appeared to be packaged very well and nothing was damaged during shipping. It was shipped to me in the factory packaging.

Out of the box the entire unit appears to be very sturdy for what it is.

The handle assembly on the GreenWorks is MUCH beefier than the Snow Joe 622U1. It also feels like it is just a tad bit longer which is good for someone 6ft like me. There is a foam grip and time will tell how long this will last. The thing I love most about the handle on the GreenWorks is that all I need to do is loosen the handle bolts and un-clip the auger rod and the entire assembly can be folded forward for transportation. I take the snow blower to my Mother's house in the trunk of my car so this is a big feature to me.

The on/off controls are pretty simple. Someone complained that they wouldn't be able to easily manipulate the handle when wearing gloves. I tried it with winter gloves and didn't have an issue whatsoever. Basically, the way it works is that you slide a switch left and it pushes the handle out of the switch housing so you can squeeze it and activate the auger. When using the blower I tend to keep the handle halfway depressed to save time. My electric lawn mower uses the same type of switch.

The auger is a bit smaller than the 622U1 but it is also combination of steel and rubber so it should be very strong. Like the 622U1 the GreenWorks uses nylock nuts to hold everything together so I would STRONGLY suggest you check them before each and EVERY use. If those bolts let loose the auger will surely punch a hole through the case of the unit. Nylock nuts are notorious for loosening when exposed to freezing temps.

The discharge chute on the GreenWorks isn't quite as good as the 622U1 but seems to be a bit stronger. On the 622U1 you can adjust the angle that snow leaves the chute. The GreenWorks has this ability as well but as soon as snow hits the deflector it goes to the fully upright position. The 622U1 was a little bit better at not doing this. The 622U1 would eventually deflect but not as easy as the GreenWorks. Also out of the box it was very difficult to turn the rod that rotates the discharge chute. I put some petroleum jelly on the mechanism and now it rotates very smoothly. GreenWorks could stand to do a little further R&D on their discharge chute. With the chute facing forward I was easily throwing snow 30ft. However, when turned to either the left or right a lot of the distance is lost. Turned full left or right snow was only throwing about 12ft or so. This is still plenty to clear a driveway.

The GreenWorks has a pigtail for the electrical connection which is critical when you're dealing with heavy gauge extension cords and vibration. On one occasion my extension cord caught fire while using the Snow Joe because the plug is molded into the handle. Combine a heavy cord, cold temps, and vibration and the cord is guaranteed to vibrate itself loose. This causes a voltage drop/current increase which makes things get really hot. The pigtail helps negate the vibration. As long as the cord is tied around the handle you shouldn't have any problems. Also on the handle is the reset button. If the unit overheats you can push the button to reset it. I'd recommend using a heavy gauge extension cord for the snow blower. I use a 10ga 100ft cord. The more you can keep the voltage from dropping, the more power you'll get out of the unit. I run mine off of a 20 amp circuit in my garage.

The wheels on the GreenWorks are very sturdy and much larger than the 622U1. This makes the unit quite a bit more stable and lets me not worry about breaking a wheel. The 622U1 wheels are only about 4" tall and are made of pretty thin plastic. Due to their size as soon as I would run them through heavy snow it would build up on the wheels and keep them from spinning. This makes it more difficult to push the unit. The GreenWorks wheels are a combination of plastic and rubber. I don't expect them to give me any problems.

I find the scraper on the GreenWorks to be a bit better than the 622U1. The GreenWorks unit does a much better job of scraping down to the pavement. Use this thing on rocks or dirt and you will certainly suck a lot of it up.

I took off the access panel and the auger drive pulley is built a lot thicker than on the 622U1. On my 622U1 this pulley shattered into dozens of pieces when the auger blade let loose. Also, the belt tensioner pulley is steel unlike the 622U1 which uses plastic.

The GreenWorks is definitely heavier than the 622U1. Some people might not like this fact but I am of the opposite opinion. The heavier weight is due to the more robust construction.

After my experience with the Snow Joe I will definitely not be buying another one of their products. The GreenWorks 26032 is just a much better built product.

Snow Joe 622U1 review

2011-01-05T06:28:00.000-08:00

This is my informal review of the Snow Joe 622U1 snow thrower/blower.

Last year I bought the Snow Joe 622U1 snow thrower for about $228 shipped. Out of the box assembly was very simple using hand tools. Construction wise the 622U1 seems to be ok for the price. The plug for the electrical cord does not have any sort of retention mechanism to keep the cord from backing off due to vibration. This actually caused my extension cord to briefly catch fire while I was using it. Kind of scary. Wrapping the cord around the handle and tieing it off didn't help too much. Snow Joe should have either provided a clamping cord mechanism like most electric leaf blowers have or used a pigtail for the electrical connection. The best I was able to do was to slightly bend the plugs on the snow blower so they held on to the cord tighter.

After the 3rd use one of the bolts for the auger blade loosened and fell out. This caused the blade to spin around wildly and punch a large 4" hole in the main case of the snow blower (the main black plastic core that holds the unit together). It also shattered the white auger drive pulley inside the housing into hundreds of pieces. When I called Snow Joe to get it covered under warranty I was told that the housing is not covered but the white drive pulley and belt were. So Be careful! While they advertised a 2 year warranty, obviously, this does not include the entire snow blower and this may be true for their newer models as well. Had I known that I would have stayed away. The housing is very thin and apparently very fragile. In the back of the owner's manual there is a short blurb that the auger bolts should be checked for tightness after every 5 uses or so. Even though I read the entire manual front to back I still missed it. This warning should have been written on a large red tag in bold letters and strapped to the snow blower. What Snow Joe did was to use nylock nuts on the auger bolts. They work great when they're warm, but get them cold enough and they loose their grip and spin right off the bolts. From the other complaints I've read I'm not the only one this has happened to. I'd recommend checking them EVERY time you use the snow blower.

The wheels on the snow blower are plastic and very small. They are only about 4" in diameter. They're pretty much useless for anything other than wheeling it through your garage. As soon as they hit snow or slush they get frozen and lock up.

When it was operational the 622U1 moved snow very well. Even the deep stuff could be chugged through if you took your time and didn't force it. The unit is very light but I'm a big guy so my definition of light may be different from everyone elses. As far as noise goes it is definitely quite enough. I used mine without fear of bothering the neighbors.

The unit does have a decent amount of power. The motor is advertised as being 13 amps. I used it with a 12ga 100ft extension cord on a 15 amp circuit and it would trip my breaker pretty often when pushing it through deep snow. I'd definitely recommend running it off of a 20 amp circuit or higher if possible.

I'm 6ft and I would like for the handle to be a bit higher. As it is now I feel like I have to bend over a little.

Throwing distance will never be as good as with a 2 stage snow blower but it is sufficient and even under heavy load will throw it about 6 to 7 ft. One problem I had with the discharge chute is that it was impossible to adjust the angle. No matter how low I set it, as soon as the snow hit it, it would knock it back up into the 45 degree position. This happened no matter how tight I turned the lock knobs.

Since my Snow Joe is basically dead I ordered a GreenWorks 12 amp snow blower and will be trying it out once it arrives and we get some snow. This model has a 4 year warranty and looks like it is quite a bit sturdier than the Snow Joe.

My review of the Curt hitch for the 06 Hyundai Elantra

2010-10-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

I bought the Curt 11220 hitch for my 2006 Hyundai Elantra. The hitch was shipped in a rather weak cardboard box that took a pretty bad beating from UPS. There were two large holes punched through it. Luckily none of the hardware fell out.

The hitch seems to work OK however I had to modify the large carriage bolt that secures the hitch to the car's tow hook. On my car the rear tow hook is bent downward. No amount of pounding with a 16 pound sledge hammer would bend it back to.its normal position. I had to buy a longer carriage bolt from Home Depot and spend a fair.amount of time grinding the steel plate down in order to finish the install. From what I have read elsewhere I'm not the only one that had to do this. The manufacturer needs to take this into account for their design. I'm sure a lot of cars have their hook bent downward from being on the transport carrier. This turned a 5 minute job into an hour job.

Dry fitting Sched 40 PVC

2010-09-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

I've seen a lot of people asking how to dry fit PVC. Because PVC uses an interference fit it isn't truly possible to dry fit the fitting and the pipe. The pipe is designed to be a very tight fit as it bottoms out in the fitting. This creates a very strong bond between the fitting and the pipe once everything cures.

The easiest way I have found to measure out how long of a piece of PVC I need is to follow the steps below.

1) Cut the pipe nice and square and chamfer the edge to 10-15 degrees on one end and measure the overall length of the pipe.

2) Clean the end of the pipe and fitting with rubbing alcohol and make sure it is dry. At this point I put vinyl gloves on to keep everything nice and clean. Make sure the end of the pipe is free of gouges, grooves, etc.

3) Prime the fitting and the pipe.

4) Apply solvent to the fitting and the pipe.

5) Insert the pipe into the fitting and turn 1/4 turn and hold it tight together for 30 seconds. This is necessary to prevent the solvent from pushing the pipe out of the fitting.

6) Measure the pipe from the unfinished end to the edge of the PVC fitting. Subtract this length from the original length of the pipe and that should give you an idea of how deep the fitting's socket is.

In one case, I was using Dura (commonly sold at Home Depot) 1" Sched 40 fittings and the elbow and tee fittings were 1 1/8" deep. However, the couplers weren't as deep. Only about an inch or so.

Pretty simple.

Ber encoding an SNMP Oid

2010-07-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

The following steps will let you encode numbers that are greater than 127 in your SNMP Oid string. For instance in the Oid 1.3.6.1.4.1.19865.1.2.1.6.0 the value 19865 is greater than 127 so it must be Ber encoded. Please refer to this PDF document when following the steps below. Why you need to encode values greater than 127 in this way is beyond the scope of this post. I had a hard time finding information for a dummy like me to understand. I found plenty of RFC's but none of them got it to click in my head. Now that I feel I have a firm grasp on to calculate these values properly I am sharing my knowledge.

For this example I am using the value 19865. You may find it easier to have the flowchart PDF I linked to above open next to your browser window when following the steps below. In my opinion, it's much easier to visualize what is happening.

Step 1. Convert the decimal value into its Hexadecimal format of 4D99

Step 2. Split the value 4D99 "in half" in to two separate values of 4D and 99

Step 3. Convert the Hexadecimal value of 99 into its equivalent binary string format of "10011001"

Step 4. Convert the Hexadecimal value of 4D into its equivalent binary string format of “01001101”

Step 5. Combine these two binary strings into one long 16 character binary string of “0100110110011001”

Step 6. Starting from the far right of the string take 7 characters. You now have a 7 digit string “0011001”

Step 7. Add a “0” to this new string. You now have an 8 digit string “00011001”. This will be the last number of the encoded value.

Step 8. Starting from the 8th number from the right take 7 characters. You now have a 7 digit string “0011011”.

Step 9. Add a “1” to this new string. You now have an 8 digit string “10011011”. This will be the middle number of the encoded value. The 1 at the beginning of the number indicates that more numbers will follow it. This is referred to as the "high bit".

Step 10. Take the remaining 2 numbers from the string. Add six zeros to the front of these two numbers and then a “1” to the front of that. This will now give you the string “10000001”.

Step 11. Convert all three of these new binary strings into their Hexadecimal values of 81 9B 19. These three Hex values are what you will use to represent numbers of more than 127 in your oid string.

The fully encoded Oid that would be sent to the SNMP host would be 2B 06 01 04 01 81 9B 19 01 02 01 06 00

You may have noticed that the start of the Oid is "2B" instead of "01 03". This is because the first two values of the Oid are encoded differently than the rest. Right now I won’t go into the reason why it works this way. I will explain this later.

If this information helps you please take a second to give me a shout out. It'd be nice to know that I didn't waste my time documenting this. If I made a mistake or typo please let me know.

Structure of an SNMP UDP datagram packet

2010-07-10T11:03:00.000-07:00

So, I was searching the web trying to find a good example of how an SNMP datagram is encoded. I found plenty of RFC's but none of it really helped me wrap my brain around it. Then I stumbled upon this site. http://www.rane.com/note161.html

The most helpful bit was a flash graphic you could enlarge for easier reading. A screen capture of it is below.

It gives you a great graphical representation of how the SNMP is really an assortment of objects wrapped up inside of a parent object. I should be able to use this to write code that will let me decode simple SNMP get-responses for the information I need.

I still don't understand 100% how to encode the integer number 2680 in the OID into the correct byte values but at least now I have a grasp of how the SNMP information is encoded. If anyone can show me an example of how to "programmatically" encode the 2680 in the example shown I'd be much appreciative. For now, I use Wireshark to find out what the encoded value should be.

My Carbonite Online Backup thoughts

2010-06-16T07:02:00.000-07:00

So, I'm on about my 2nd week of having the Carbonite online backup service. The concept of the service is great. Backup your important files over the Internet to their servers. Your files are now protected from being lost due to flood, fire, hard disk crashes, etc.

That being said, I'm a bit disappointed in what I'm now discovering. During my initial backup I was seeing upload speeds of around 350KB/sec which is the max that my Comcast connection can muster on the upload side. I got an email from Carbonite congratulating me that my initial backup was complete. In reality it wasn't complete, but because I only back up certain files and I didn't back anything up for a couple of days it assumed I was done. My upload speed has now dropped to a consistent 100KB/sec. I am now trying to backup several gigs of files and it is taking quite a while. After reading their FAQ I found out that once you hit the 35Gb mark it will throttle you back to 512kbps, once you reach the 200GB mark they will again throttle back your upload speed to only 100kbps. If you don't feel like doing the math that roughly translates to twice the speed of dial up, or a bit slower than my AT&T cell phone can download on EDGE. You can read it for yourself here http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1440/kw/speed

I'm REALLY hoping, this is just a misprint. I can understand the need to balance bandwidth between customers but 100kbps makes it almost useless.

The second annoyance is that Carbonite will only backup your files while you are idle at the computer. Not moving the mouse or typing. Since I use my PC quite a bit it takes even longer to backup my files.

I was going to sign up for the 3 year plan since it was a better discount but I decided to only go for the 1 year plan. Kind of glad I did as another company may come along and offer something better. For now this will do but a 100kbps upload limit will never keep up with my file changes on a daily basis.

EDIT: I'm now on day 40 with Carbonite and about a week ago I started receiving emails from Carbonite saying that their list of files did not match what my client software had. I had to reinstall the software. Hopefully, that fixes the problem. if I lose anything I'll be super pissed.

Please ensure that your files are protected.

Dear ******,

We've noticed that in the past week, the files you have been backing up on your computer ****** do not match our records. In order to keep your backup up-to-date, please follow the steps below.

These steps will only take a few minutes and you won't need to restart your computer.

1. Is Carbonite paused or disabled?
If your Carbonite lock icon looks like one pictured here, you wil need to right-click on the lock icon and uncheck "Paused" or "Disable Carbonite". This will ensure your backup is up to date. images of Carbonite Lock in the systems tray
If Carbonite is not paused or disabled, you must complete steps two and three.
2. Uninstall Carbonite
To uninstall Carbonite on a computer running Windows XP, click the Windows Start menu and select Control Panel.

In the Control Panel, click Add or Remove Programs to display a list of programs installed on your computer. Select Carbonite and click on the Remove button. Windows XP Control Panel Add or Remove Programs screenshot
For instructions on uninstalling Carbonite from a computer running Windows Vista or Windows 7, please visit our Knowledge Base.

3. Reinstall Carbonite

To reinstall Carbonite, simply click on the button below and log in to your account.

Reinstall Carbonite Now
Please be aware that until your backup is completely refreshed, we may not have an accurate copy of every one of your files. In the meantime, if you’re concerned about particular files, please make a temporary copy of them on a flash drive or external drive.

After you’ve reinstalled Carbonite, you’ll know that your backup is up-to-date when the backup progress indicator on the Carbonite InfoCenter reads 100%. (To open the InfoCenter, just click on the Carbonite lock icon in your system tray.)

If you have any questions, please contact customer support.

Sincerely,

The Carbonite Team

Sharp XE-A41S XEA41S Programming Software

2010-04-21T07:19:00.000-07:00

I needed this programming software and couldn't find it anywhere on Sharp's website. If you need it I uploaded it here This is technically the manual for the XE-A40S but the programming procedures are identical as far as I can tell.

If you need the programming software so you can plug it into a PC I have that here This is the right software for this register, as this is the CD that came with it.

How to convert text to proper case in an excel sheet

2006-10-06T05:47:00.000-07:00

I was doing a form letter mailing here at work and when we run queries against our database, the result set is pulled into an Excel spreadsheet in all upper case. So, a customer's address would look like this:

JOHN SMITH
1313 MOCKINGBIRD LN
TRANSYLVANIA, PA 11111

Obviously, in a professional letter to a customer addressing them by their full name in upper case just clashes with a letter that is properly puncuated and capitalized. What I needed to do was convert it to this:

John Smith
1313 Mockingbird Ln
Transylvania, PA 11111

Each field is laid out separately in the Excel sheet, so the data was a bit easier to work with. To put it simply the customer's first name, last name, address, city, state, and zip code were all in their own column. I couldn't quite find a simple VBA routine on Google that would do this for me so I wrote my own.

The code below will run against the text that is actively selected in Excel.

'--------------------------Begin Code--------------------------------'
Option Explicit
Private Sub ProperCase()
Dim thisCell As Range
Dim strSoFar As String
Dim strTmp As String
Dim x As Long
Dim tmpArr() As String

For Each thisCell In Selection.Cells
tmpArr = Split(thisCell, " ")
For x = 0 To UBound(tmpArr)
If x = 0 Then
thisCell = UCase(Mid(tmpArr(x), 1, 1)) & LCase(Mid(tmpArr(x), 2, Len(tmpArr(x))))
Else
thisCell = thisCell & " " & UCase(Mid(tmpArr(x), 1, 1)) & LCase(Mid(tmpArr(x), 2, Len(tmpArr(x))))
End If
Next x
Next thisCell
End Sub
'--------------------------End Code--------------------------------'

When run the code will take all of the text in each cell and separate it where this a space. It will then capitalize the first letter of each word and lower case the rest of it. Then each word is rejoined with a space. If you have double spaces in your text it will probably add an extra space or two.

So, anything that looks like jOHN sMITH or JOHN SMITH or john smith will end up looking like John Smith after the macro is run.

Is the CIA scanning Craigslist.org?

2006-10-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

So, I'm an IS Manager with a rather large corporation and in my spare time to try and earn a couple extra bucks I fix PC's on the side. Most of the time I wind up working for friends and family and don't have the heart to demand money since most of them have very little and I'm not destitute. Anyway on to the meat of the story.

To try and ramp up business I posted an ad on Craigslist.org for PC repair. It's just a basic ad to advertise that I do mobile PC repair and tutoring. To find out how effective my advertising is I inserted a small tracking image into the ad that links back to my own personal webserver. So, by viewing my web logs I can see who looked at the ad, when they looked at, and where they came from. Obviously, the few hits I do get come from Verizon or Comcast users. But one of them looked "different". That IP was 198.81.129.194. I did a reverse DNS lookup and it came out to relay2.cia.gov The CIA? What's going on? I can only speculate. As far as I know I'm not near any of the CIA offices so I can't imagine it would be an employee surfing while at work for someone to fix their PC.

Does the CIA think terrorists and spies are advertising on Craigslist?

SQL INSERT statement with a Microsoft Access Database

2006-10-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

I started working on a VB client/server app that uses Winsock to transmit encrypted data to and from my server at home. The server end connects to a simple MS Access database and runs SQL queries against it. The database only has 2 tables. One is named "Users" and the other is named "Accounts". The "Users" table only has two columns. One of them is named "ID" and it is an integer value that auto-increments. The other column is named "User" and just stores a 50 character string value.

One of the more simple queries involves updating the "Users" table by adding a new row to it. This is the code I was using INSERT INTO Users (User) VALUES ('sometext') Every time I ran this SQL query it would crash with an invalid syntax error. I scratched my head and fumbled around for quite a while trying to figure out what in the World was going on. By all accounts my syntax was perfectly fine and sometext did not contain any SQL reserved characters, such as, the apostrophe < ' >.

I even ran the same query against my "Accounts" table after substituting the User column for a column in my Accounts table. The SQL query ran perfectly. Just for kicks I changed the name of the User column in my Users table to "Name", re-ran my query, and it ran PERFECTLY. I guess having a table named "Users" with a column named "User" is unacceptable to Microsoft Access and possibly other database verisons? This is probably documented somewhere I'm sure.

So, the moral of the story is, "Don't give your table coumns names that appear within the name of the table itself."

Rear drum brakes on a 97 Plymouth Neon

2006-09-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

I decided I better check the rear brakes on my Mother's 97 Plymouth Neon. It's a four door automatic with front disk and rear drums. It's already had the front brakes done once and has about 90,000 miles on it.

Every other set of drum brakes I've worked on all you have to do is jack the car up, pull the wheel off, and bang on the drum a few times to break the rust bond it forms with the wheel hub over time. Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth decided to make everyone else's live difficult. The rear bearing is pressed into the drum and then it slides over the rear axle. So, to remove the drum you have to get the steel protective cap off the drum using a thin bladed flat blade screwdriver to pry it away. Once it's off there is a 1 3/16" lock-nut holding the drum to the axle. Once you remove that nut you can probably slide the drum off just by wiggling the drum around with two hands. It worries me that the only thing holding the entire wheel on the car is this nut and it doesn't even have a cotter pin for extra safety.

I knew there was a reason I hated Dodge cars and trucks.

Swollen Uvula

2006-09-18T05:35:00.000-07:00

My friend and I just got back from Hawaii a little while ago. The second night there we grabbed some beers and chilled out on our balcony at the Hale Koa Hotel. I had a 12 pack of Red Stripe and he had some cider beers.

Long story short I drank 10 of the 12 beers in about a 4-5 hour time span, which is a hell of a lot of beer for me . I'm not a big drinker. I ended up throwing up before going to bed and fell asleep on my back. That morning I woke up and could feel my uvula hanging in the back of my throat. It was a bizarre feeling and creeped me out. I was afraid I had an allergic reaction to the sushi the night before or had some sort of viral thing going on. My buddy was making fun of me saying I was snoring like a fat person who can barely breathe. I don't usually snore either.

Since Hale Koa doesn't provide free Internet access I went out on the balcony and managed to jump on someone's free wireless network and do some research. Before I lost the connection I found a site where someone else had the same exact thing happen to them. For them it took about a week to return to normal. Relieved about the situation I decided to just enjoy the rest of my vacation and try not to pay attention to it.

To say my swollen uvula was annoying would be an understatement. It was like having something stuck in the back of my throat 24/7. Sometimes, it would flop forward onto the back of my tongue and I'd have to swallow it to get it back in its proper place. I could reach in my throat and touch it with my finger and it didn't tickle or hurt, but it was beat red. I eventually started getting a sore throat from all the irritation. After a few days I finaltly noticed it getting smaller and after about 10 days it was completly back to normal.

Setting up a passive ftp server behind a firewall or NAT router

2006-08-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

It's hard to find a decent FTP server application that will allow you to specify whether it runs in ACTIVE or PASSIVE mode and as a Windows system service let alone specify the ports it uses. Even the IIS package that comes with most versions of Windows isn't quite up to my task.

I won't get into the specifics of setting up an FTP server in either Active or Passive mode, that's what Google is for. Here is a good link that breaks it down into simple terms. Active vs. Passive FTP

In my situation I had the following problems and requirements.

1) My FTP server is behind a Westell 327w DSL modem with Verizon Internet service. The modem/router supports IP pass through to a single machine, however, I prefer the extra layer of protection it offers in NAT mode. I will want to use the router's port forwarding abilities in my case.

2) I want to be able to connect to my FTP server from behind another "NAT'd" computer. My company's corporate firewall blocks all unsolicited incoming network traffic. Luckily they don't block outgoing ports.

3) I can't use the standard 21 or 20 port (Verizon blocks it)

4) I want my FTP server running whether or not someone is logged on to the machine. There are a lot of basic freeware FTP servers out there, but the majority of them will only run if a user is logged in to the machine. To preserve system resources I'd rather not have a user session running on the machine. Therefore, it needs to run as a Windows system service.

5) I need to connect to the FTP server from both inside my "Nat'd" network, as well as, from outside of it. Verizon does not allow loopback packets (other than ICMP ping requests AFAIK). So, if I try to connect to my FTP server from within my network using my "Internet IP" the packets will go out to Verizon's servers but never get looped back to my Westell router.

6) I don't want to pay for the FTP server software. I'm a big open source/free kind of guy.

I decided the best course of action would be to use an FTP server setup in PASSIVE mode. I can't use active since my company's firewall will just drop/ignore/laugh at the icoming packets from the FTP server rather than forward them to my FTP client. Since I control the port forwarding on my Westell 327w I can recieve unsolicited requests from an FTP client. So, using ACTIVE mode is my only real course of action.

In my Westell I configured it to forward the ports 20,000 - 20,500 my FTP server. Having 500 incoming ports to the ftp server is probably overkill in my case. From what I've read you only need one port per client connection. So, right now I would assume I can support about 500 clients logged in at the same time. I also decided to run my FTP server's main port on 5000 instead of the standard 21. This gets me around Verizon's restrictive nature of blocking incoming port 21 connections. It also aids slightly in avoiding all the little script kiddies out there scanning for open FTP ports.

When it came to choosing an FTP server it became more difficult. I started out with Microsoft Windows IIS 5.1 since it was built into my OS. After doing some research I learned that you can change the passive ports it uses by adding a string value named "PassivePortRange" to the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msftpsvc\ParametersYou can read the details of it here Microsoft KB 555022

For some reason I could NOT get it working from outside my local area network. I would get prompted for a username and password but could not retrieve a directory listing. I've since discovered why. In PASSIVE mode after the client has authenticated and requests a directory listing or file, the FTP server sends a command to the client with what IP address and port it should connect on. However, IIS does not resolve your externally visible IP address. Instead, it sends it the FTP server's local area network IP address. For example, 10.1.1.50 or 192.168.0.50. Neither one of these are accessible to your FTP client so the connection fails right after login. But inside your local area network this would work fine since 10.1.1.50 or 192.168.0.50 would be perfectly normally. What the server needs to do is send the client your "Internet IP" address, such as, 71.245.32.76 along with the port to connect on for data transfer when they are located "outside" your local area network. When a client connects from inside your local area network they need to recieve an ip address, such, as 10.1.1.50.

I was only able to find two FTP clients that had the ability to send different IP addresses to their clients in passive mode depending on where they were connecting from. One of them was edtFTPD which was ported over from the Linux version of proFTPD using the .Net framework. proFTPD is able to perform this tricky task by changing its default config file to use VirtualHost and MasqueradeAddress. I didn't have any luck getting it working and found edtFTPD incredibly difficult to manage users with. You can read more about this program here

Then I tried War Daemon 1.80 by jgga. It took a little while to find the documentation I needed but there is a nat.conf file which can be used to overcome all of my connection problems both from inside the network and outside of it.

Here is the instruction text included in the file. Lines starting with # are ignored by the application.

# Network Adress Translation (NAT) configuration file for
# the War FTP Daemon 1.81
#
# (Lines starting with '#' in this configuration file are treated
# as comments.)
#
# Remote IP range:
# Network address and mask to identify the network
# or interface to set options to.
# The network mask can be in dotted or simple notaion
# i.e. /255.255.255.0 = /24.
#
# Port:
# The port the FTP server binds active (PORT command)
# data connections to. Use 20 for RFC959 compliance,
# -1 for one below the FTP control connection port,
# an exact number or 0 for random numbers.
#
# Host Address:
# The IP address the server reports in the reply to
# the PASV command. If the server is behind a dumb
# NAT router, it can report the IP number to the
# routers external interface, if the router is
# configured to forward TCP/IP traffic on some ports
# to the FTP server.
# The Host address can be one of tree:
#
# 1) An IP number
#
# 2) A host-name. If you specify a host-name, the name
# will be looked up when the server starts, and
# each time nat.conf is reloaded. You can also
# specify that the server should resolve the host-name
# automatically each n minutes, where n can be specified
# by adding a column after the hostname.
#
# Example: ftp.jgaa.com:10
# This will make warftpd resolve ftp.jgaa.com each 10
# minutes in the background, without slowing down the
# server.
#
# 3) A "dynip" declaration. Dynip stands for "Dynamic IP".
# This mode makes warftpd contact a server at
# dynip.jgaa.com each 5 minutes. This sever updates
# your FTP sites IP in DNS (example: yoursite.dynip.jgaa.com)
# and return the actual IP address as it is seen on the
# Internet to warftpd. You can specify another refresh interval,
# by adding a column after the dynip specification.
# The dynip specification consists of an alpha-character,
# a dynip handle ID, a column and a secret password.
# Before you can use this mode, you must register your
# site at http://dynip.jgaa.com. When you register your
# site, it will be assigned a site ID, and you will be
# asked to provide a secret password. The password is
# required to prevent anyone else from "hijacking" your
# site. Please note that the password cannot contain spaces
# or column characters due to the syntax of the nat.conf file.
#
# Example: @1:secret
# This example specifies that you own dynip Site ID 1,
# and that it uses the password "secret".
#
# Example: @1:secret:10
# This example also specify that warftpd should exchange
# updated information with the server at dynip.jgaa.com
# each 10 minutes. The refresh rate should be 60 minutes
# max. If the delay is too long, the DNS information will
# be disabled at dynip.jgaa.com.
#
# Port-range:
# A range (from-to) of port numbers the server can bind
# to during passive (PASV) data transfers. This is
# typically a range the router will forward to the FTP
# server, or a range the firewall is aware of as data-
# ports to the FTP server. A value of 0 means that the
# server will pick random ports.
#
# The rules are matched from top to bottom.
# If a network-number/mask pair match the clients TP address,
# the options are applied. If no rule matches, the default
# options for the server (ftpd_BINDDATA) is applied.
#
# This configuration file is read when the server is started,
# and when changes in the machines IP numbers are detected.
#

# The following sample is meant for a server on the private IP
# address 192.168.0.2, behind a router that forwards IP
# adresses from Internet to the server without changing the
# source address or port number.
#
# Line 1: Use default values for localhost
# Line 2: Use default values for the local network (LAN)
# Line 3: Set options for all other hosts
#
# Remote IP range # Port # Host Address # Port range
#---------------------- ------- --------------- ------------

To the bottom of this file I appended the following

127.0.0.1 2001 0 25000-25500
server/255.255.255.0 2001 server 25000-25500
0/0 -1 ftpserver.no-ip.org 25000-25500

Now I'll explain how this works... to the best of my knowledge.
The line below is used to handle connections made from the FTP server machine itself. I'm not sure if it is needed but someone else added it so I left it alone.
127.0.0.1 2001 0 25000-25500

The line below is used to handle connections that are made from within the local area network or subnet. War FTP Daemon will see the 192.168.1.50/255.255.255.0 part and interpert that it applies to connections coming in on the machine's direct IP.

I'm not sure what the 2001 really does. I believe it specifies the active port, but I don't use it.

The 192.168.1.50 is the IP address that will be sent to the client with the PASV command instructing it to connect back on that IP. The 25000-25500 range is a range of ports the FTP server will use to send along with the IP when issuing the PASV command.
192.168.1.50/255.255.255.0 2001 192.168.1.50 25000-25500

The line below is used for all connections coming in from outside the local area network. When the connection comes in War FTP Daemon will resolve the ftpserver.no-ip.org to it's ip address and send that back to the client. An IP address can also be specified here. However, I'm using the no-ip.org service so this is similiar to what mine looks like.
0/0 -1 ftpserver.no-ip.org 25000-25500

*NOTE* I think these rules are interperted from the top down, if a rule is encountered that matches the criteria it will use that rule and disregard the others. I haven't been able to find any documentation stating this though. If you set it up in the order I have shown above you shouldn't have any problems.

So, there you have it. I hope this helps someone as I know there are a lot of people struggling with this problem.