ZFS Server

Obviously I have an interest in OpenSolaris because of who I work for. There have been several recent events that have caused me to have more than a passing interest with OpenSolaris and more specifically ZFS.

I have been in the computer industry for a long time now. While I have seen enterprise disks, ones that are in many different forms of redundant setups fail, I had not personally had a disk failure. I actually have quite a sizable stack of disks from old systems, that I have kept, because you know some day I might need them.

Starting the last 2 years I have started to see my personal disks fail. I have actually had 4 disks fail in the last 2 years. One was 12 months and 3 days old. Yes it had a one year warranty. I am pretty obsessive about my personal backups, so far I have not lost any data, but I need something more to feel comfortable.

First I started with how much back up do I need? I have a sizable collection of songs ripped in from my CD's into iTunes. I have also started downloading songs from iTunes, and based on their DRM, if you loose the file, you have to repurchase the track. Next we have a HDD camcorder. This leads to a lot of digital files for the home videos. Beyond that I have the normal amount of work and personal files. All said and done, I have over 500GB of data that I need to back up. Also this data resides on 3 separate systems, 2 Macs and one windows machine.

I started by looking at on-line backup services. I did quite an extensive search. The services fell into two categories. The first where inexpensive or free, and quite frankly I would not trust them with my data. The second while I would trust my data, where cost prohibitive. In both cases the challenge of getting the initial data load to the system was enormous. Pushing 5000 GB up a 1MB upstream will take a VERY long time. Conclusion is that on-line backup is not right for me.

I then started to research home NAS solutions. Again this left me wanting for a solution. The home NAS's are either ridiculous expensive, or proprietary and not very expandable. I wanted a flexible solution that I knew I could easily upgrade and was not willing to pay $1000's for NAS's that fit this criteria.

Then like Sir Isaac Newton getting hit on the head with an apple it dawned on me. Why not build a ZFS file server? Unlike Newton my idea was not so revolutionary. A quick google search turns up tons of hits of people who have done just this. Another search of blogs.sun.com will turn up many hits of people at Sun who have done this.

When I original sat down to write this entry it was going to be a how to. The how to's are already well documented, so instead I have decide to write about my journey through the process. The links below are the steps that I went through to get my home NAS up and running.

Building the Server

My journey really started with this blog. It has a great overview of why you want to use ZFS and how to build your hardware, how to setup ZFS and how to use it. At first the information might seem daunting, but like most new projects once you get into you realize the project is broken down into pieces that can be easily followed.

The first step of the project is identifing and putting together your hardware. One of our Sun colleagues has documented a spectacular build. I seriously started going down this road. To get the parts in the US you are looking at about $800-$900. While this is still an exceptional value, it is quite frankly still a bit more than I was looking to spend.

My build started in another direction. Cheap. My goal was to build the system for as cheaply as I could. Again it is going to be open, and I can always upgrade the different components as needed. I have a difficult time parting with old gear. I have a Dell 4550 that has long given up the ghost for running Windows. Step one of my build was cracking it open and giving it a good dose of canned air to get the cobwebs out of it. The system only had 512MB of RAM, but a quick exploration through my stock piles found a compatible DIMM to bring the system to 1GB. The system also has P4 running at 2.5 gHz.

Now if you have read about ZFS you will probably asking yourself what was I thinking running on this minimum of specs? Doesn't ZFS need a 64Bit chip? Don't I need more RAM? Well to be honest I had no idea what my performance was going to be like. But again my goal for the system was to be a backup server. I have 2 programs, one for the MAC and one for Windows, that copy files from the systems I run, to the backup server. These programs are all scheduled to run in the middle of the night. It really doesn't matter if they take 30 minutes or an hour. Also after the initial load I would only be moving incremental changes, which is really not a significant amount of data. Therefore I decided to plug ahead with my 7 year old box.

I started by installing OpenSolaris 2008.11 on the box. All of the critical devices in the box where found, and the system was up and running in no time. Now came some interesting architectural decisions. My goal was to have 4 drives for the ZFS pool, and a separate drive for the OS. This leads to the ability to update the OS or replace the OS drive without interfering with the storage pool.

My first thought was to boot the system to a USB drive that was running the OpenSolaris operating system. The 4550 did not allow for boot to USB. I did find I was 8 revisions behind on the bios, and upgraded it, but alas still no way to boot to USB.

At this point my original plan changed. The case has slots for more drives and I decide to leave the IDE interfaces, one for a hard drive and one for the dvd and to add a SATA card to hang the rest of the drives off of. When finished the box has 5 HD's, one IDE and 4 SATA, an IDE DVD, and I decided to leave the floppy in it as well.

I decided that since I have a GigE switch I would upgrade to the the network card as well. After the checking the HCL, I was off to my local computer store to see what parts I could come up with.

Based on the HCL and what was in the store I picked up the following additional components:
DLink DGE-530T GigE network adapter

SIIG SATA 4 channel

3 Seagate 500GB drives

And as often goes with adventures like this my original goal was to buy 4 HD's. I was hoping for 250GB to 300GB to get me to a pool of 750GB or 900GB. The store I went to was having a sale on the 500GB drives, and I was able to pick 3 of them up for less than 4 of the others. I was able to get a 1TB pool and this sets me up for adding another 500GB to my ZFS pool very easily in the future, by simply getting another disk when I am out of space.

Getting to GigE

I have an old computer that I decided to install OpenSolaris on. I have a GigE switch in my lab and decided the onboard, 100MB card was not good enough, and decided to go GigE. The old adage that if ain't broke don't fix it, should have come to mind here, but….

The first thing I did was check the HCL list. With a few models I headed off to MicroCenter. They happened to have a D-Link DGE-530T and since it was on the compatibility list I decided to go for. I installed the card, and followed the instructions on the HCL list. During the installation I got errors and the card does not work.

I went back to the HCL list and looked at the details. The card that is known to work has the following config:
Node 0x00002c

assigned-addresses: 820e0810.00000000.e2000000.00000000.00004000.810e0814.00000000.00002000.00000000.00000100

reg: 000e0800.00000000.00000000.00000000.00000000.020e0810.00000000.00000000.00000000.00004000.010e0814.00000000.00000000.00000000.00000100

compatible: 'pci1186,4b01.1186.4b01.11' + 'pci1186,4b01.1186.4b01' + 'pci1186,4b01' + 'pci1186,4b01.11' + 'pci1186,4b01' + 'pciclass,020000' + 'pciclass,0200'

model: 'Ethernet controller'

power-consumption: 00000001.00000001

66mhz-capable:

fast-back-to-back:

devsel-speed: 00000001

interrupts: 00000001

max-latency: 0000001f

min-grant: 00000017

subsystem-vendor-id: 00001186

subsystem-id: 00004b01

unit-address: '1'

class-code: 00020000

revision-id: 00000011

vendor-id: 00001186

device-id: 00004b01

name: 'pci1186,4b01'


My card has:

Node 0x000010

assigned-addresses: 8100fb20.00000000.0000dc80.00000000.00000020

reg: 0000fb00.00000000.00000000.00000000.00000000.0100fb20.00000000.00000000.00000000.00000020

compatible: 'pci8086,24c3.1028.142.1' + 'pci8086,24c3.1028.142' + 'p model: 'Ethernet controller'

power-consumption: 00000001.00000001

66mhz-capable:

fast-back-to-back:

devsel-speed: 00000001

interrupts: 00000001

max-latency: 0000001f

min-grant: 00000017

subsystem-vendor-id: 00001186

subsystem-id: 00004c00

unit-address: 'c'

class-code: 00020000

revision-id: 00000011

vendor-id: 00001186

device-id: 00004c00

name: 'pci1186,4c00'


Now to be fair I am not a hardware expert, but obviously the names are different. I started googling around and found this blog post. We now know from the blog post that the name defines the Vendor ID and the Product ID. Since the first half is the same, and since they are both DLinks things are adding up.

Now what about the product ID? There is a website that documents all of the unique codes on PCI cards. The websites shows that a 4b01 has a Marvell 88E8001 Chip. The website also shows that the 4c00 has the Marvell 88E8003 Chip. Even though I have a different chipset, I decided to give it whirl and ran the following command:
/usr/sbin/update_drv -a -i “pci1186,4c00” skge

This brought the interface on-line and it seems to be working!

Getting to SATA

I am continuing to experiment with OpenSolaris on an old computer that I have. I decided I wanted to put more disks in the server and begin to research what cards where available. The Hardware Compatibility List lists 2 different PCI based SATA cards that are known to work. Both of the cards have the Silicon Image 3112A chipset in them.

I headed over to my local computer store, MicroCenter, and they had a SIIG 4 channel SATA card with the Silicon Image chipset on it. Knowing it would be a 50/50 chance that it would work I went ahead and picked it up.

I installed the card and hooked up a SATA drive I had available. On boot the card showed up in the boot screens and it detected the drive. Good sign. Once OpenSolaris was up and running, though no luck. Looks like the 50/50 bet had played against me. OpenSolaris did not recognize the card.

I started googling around and found a lot of hits. Some said the cards did not work. Some said that if you ran the update_drv command it would work. I tried running the command but still no luck. Next I hit upon a couple of Windows users who where having issues with the card. Some of the responses hinted at using different firmware on the card. This hint got me to this OpenSolaris bug ID. Seems as if the card ships in a raid configuration which does not work with OpenSolaris. You can go to the original manufacture and get a different bios for the SATA card that presents the disks as JBOD instead of RAID and it will work.

The download page for the chipset can be found here. The next challenge is how to update the bios on the card? There is a DOS based or a Windows based utility in the downloads directly. Obviously since I am running OpenSolaris, the Windows utility was not going to be of much use to me. The computer does have a floppy disk, so DOS boot it was!

This led to probably the most amusing or ironic step of this whole process. I found myself building a DOS boot disk using a USB floppy drive attached to my Mac, passed through to a Windows Virtual Machine.

There are 3 versions of the bios available. One passes the disks through as plain disk, one builds the raid, and one is to be used the chipset built into motherboards. Make sure pick the correct one!

With my SATA card bios flashed to the new version, I rebooted. This time OpenSolaris can see the sata disks.

ZFS File share

Working with ZFS is actually quite easy. If you have done any work with any other type of RAID, NAS, etc, you will truly understand what an amazing file system ZFS is and how easy it is to work with. The first time I built a ZFS filesystem for a customer, they did not believe me because I had done it so quickly, and made me delete it and do it again. No challenge what so ever with ZFS!

The official docs for ZFS can be found here and a good best practice guide can be found here.

So without further ado lets create the ZFS pool. First I run the format command to see a list of my disks.

The disks that I want to use c3d1, c4d0 and c4d1. These are all 500GB disks, that I will put into a raidz1 configuration. raidz1 provides for the ability to have an entire disk fail without data loss. With raidz, your pool will be the size of your disks minus one, so in my case I will wind up with about 1T of space in my pool. (3*500GB - 500GB).

Now you may have noticed that the server I am working on is named ElmerFudd so what better to name the share than shotgun? The command below creates a zfs file. The -m command defines the mount point, raidz1 defines the raid to use, and the list of disks define what disks should go into the pool:
#zpool create -m /export/shotgun shotgun raidz1 c3d1 c4d0 c4d1

Almost instantaneously the raid is created!

We can check the status of the pool with the following command:
#zpool status shotgun

Note with this command we can see that there are 3 drives configured in raidz1.

Great now we have an almost 1TB raidz file system, ready to store all of backup data on it. The next challenge is that my data is on my Macs and Window machine. How to network share the file system so that the other machines can see it? I choose to use SMB, which is the Solaris implementation of CIF, which I knew both my mac and windows box would be able to see.

I again started with google to find the steps necessary to get an SMB sharing out a ZFS filesystem on OpenSolaris. I came across this blog which has the necessary steps, which I have included here as well. More details about SMB shares can be found at the Sun Docs on the subject.

The smb isn’t included in the default kernel, you can install it with:
# pfexec pkg install SUNWsmbs

# pfexec pkg install SUNWsmbskr

You then need to reboot the system

Next you will need to enable the server to start automatically at system boot
# svcadm enable -r smb/server

If you get an error about more than one interface it is okay

Check to see if the smb service is running:
# svcs | grep smb

Next we need to modify our pool to turn on smb sharing the following command does just that:
#zfs set sharesmb=on shotgun

The following command shows us the status of our zfs pool. Notice the smbshare setting is turned on.
#zfs get all shotgun

Next we need to modify the pam.conf file to allow users to authenticate against the share. SMB keeps a separate password file so you need to run the password command for any user who you want to be able to mount the smb share.

Add this line to /etc/pam.conf:
# Seem to need this line for smb / cifs:

other password required pam_smb_passwd.so.1 nowarn

reset the password:
#passwd <user who wants share access>

Now for the real test. Can I see the share from my Mac and Windows machine? On my mac using finder, I went to the Go Menu and then connect to server. In the connect box I typed smb://elmerfudd/shotgun. I was prompted for my username and password and the share mounted.

From my windows system I went to map network drive and entered \elmerfudd\shotgun. Again after providing my credentials the share was mounted.

Building my ZFS Server Journey comes to an end

Building my home NAS was quite and exciting journey for me. Thank you for coming along with me through this entries!

My goal when I set out was to build a home ZFS Fileserver to provide a safe backup point for my data. My other goal was to do it as inexpensive as possible. My total build cost was ~$225 for the purchase of the the Hard Drives, SATA card, and network card. Truly an exceptional value for what I now have!

From a performance standpoint, the file server is extremely responsive. To be fair if there where several users hitting it, it may not perform, but for my home office environment it is spectacular.

I hope that this journey inspires you to take on the challenge of building a home NAS for yourself. I know many home users have that old computer sitting in the basement or closet wondering what to do with it. Put it to good use and do yourself a huge favor by backing up your data.

And while it it sad to see this journey come to end, maybe it quite hasn't? There is a new feature in OpenSolaris 2008.11, called Time Slider, that is a gui interface to build snapshots. Sounds like an opportunity to let the adventure continue!

Spyware

An associate of mine at work asked for my help. He said someone had sent him a link, he clicked on it, when it got to the site the site said you don't have a Microsoft DLL installed, and to install it. He said that the second he clicked on it to install it he released he had made a huge mistake. The box is pretty horked up. SpyWare galore. He asked if I would take a look at it and see if I could get it fixed.

First thing I did was boot it without network access. It has been booting up for about 20 minutes. The processor is pegged, the disk is spinning like mad. I have been able to get task manager up. Lets see what is running and see if we can kill some things to get control of the box back.

Interestingly. As I was watching it churn a program called WinSpyControl has popped up It looks like a real spyware program. Can't get to it. So going back to killing processes.

With the little I have killed, gescw.exe has percolated to the top. Our first hit. I have also found about a dozen "spyware" programs running. I keep getting pop up's that there is spyware on the system and I need to click here to install a removal program. Umm Yeah right. Obviously my associate has clicked on these links and installed who knows waht.

I have gotten enough things to stop running that I can start windows defender. It warns its virus database is out of date, but I give it a shot. It does not do anything. Try to update the virus definitions and BAM, it can't update. Normal block for the trojan guys.

Going to www.pandasoftware.com. Their free on-line scanner has started. And is running. It found 14 spywares, which it was able to remove. It said there are 6 root kits that it can't remove.

I tried to run defender again. It can't upgrade its virus definitions. I found this link and tried it. Still no luck getting defender to run.

It has been a few years since I have had to help someone out in this situation. I just remembered one of the best programs is Spybot. I have downloaded and am running it. It is finding all sorts of nice stuff. 51 things to be exact. It has removed all but one of them. The last one is running in memory and SpyBot suggests a reboot to get. Rebooting. SpyBot ran another scan on reboot. It did not find anything. Things are starting to look better.

The system is up and running at this point and useable. I still can't get windows defender update nor windows update to run. I don't trust it. I am giving it back to my coworker so he can get his files off, and then we will wipe the drive and start over.

Insomniac Mac

I travel a lot for work. Many a nights I have been woken up in the middle of the night with my Macbook Pro going into this repetitive cycle where it wakes up, goes to sleep, wakes back up, over and over again. If you have a Mac you know that whir whir sound it makes when it wakes up. Think about sleeping in a hotel room, and having this happen over and over waking you up.

At one of our company meetings a few months back in Menlo, I had my Mac in front of me with the lid closed, and it kept waking up, making the whir whir sound, not only bothering me, but those sitting around me. The hypothesis was that I had flexed the notebook and the lid was not closing correctly. This led to a somewhat amusing episode of how many water bottles it would take to set on top of the mac, keeping the lid closed, to prevent it from waking up.

I have recently noticed that the issue does not happen while I am at home. Then on my last trip, the first night out it did not happen, and the second night it did. This really got me thinking about what was different about when I travel. The thing that came to mind is that at home I use my Broadband connect. On the road I use my Sprint WWAN.

This got me thinking about what I did differently between the two nights. The first night I disconnected my connection and then turned the card off. The second night I just turned off the card. After a couple of tests, the mystery of my insomniac mac has been solved. If I do not disconnect the air card before shutting it off, the mac gets into some funky state and continually wakes up.

I did a quick google search and nothing readily showed up as to why. Since I can solve the problem, by just turning the card off in the proper order, I consider the mystery solved for now!

Nepresso Jinogalpa

As many of you know we have a Nespresso. One of the fundamental tenants of the Nepresso coffee is that all of their coffee comes from sustainable, organic farms, documented through their AAA Sustainability Program.

Every year Nepresso creates an annual blend. These blends come from all over the world from special varieties of coffee that can not be produced in enough quantities to sell as a regular offering. This years offering is called Jinogalpa.

Obviously the people at Nepresso can describe it much better than I can;

"Cultivated at a high altitude on the beautiful plantations of Nicaragua, Jinogalpa takes its name from the two mountainous regions: Jinotega and Matagalpa. Brought to maturity by dedicated farmers and roasted according to the exclusive recipe of the Nespresso master coffee-roasters, Jinogalpa develops its unique character… "

As soon as we got the email, I called to place our order. The lady told me that I was the first person she had taken an order from. Yes.... as you know I am fanatical about this stuff and to claim I placed one of the first orders...

We have had the coffee for about a week. It is another great success and we have been truly enjoying it. And since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is a shot of the first cup.

dd-wrt

I have heard several different people talking about dd-wrt. I never fully paid attention to it because I did not have a use for it. Recently I needed a way to do something with a wireless router that the included firmware would not allow. After some brief research looked like dd-wrt was the thing for me.

My father owns his own business. He decided he was going to move into semi-retirement and decided to get rid of his office space and move his office into their basement. All of the equipment he has is old, at least 5 years old and depends on a wired Ethernet network. While it would be easy to re-establish the LAN in the basement, the challenge is that the Internet connection is 2 stories up, into a bedroom that had already been converted into my mom's home office.

What to do? Yes I could go through the expense of buying wireless cards and bridges for all of the equipment, but that was really not in the budget. Again the goal here was to reduce costs.

One of the many jobs I had in college was to run cable. Yes I am/was a certified Cat 5 installer. Did I really want to go through the trouble of drilling through two floor plates and crawling around in the attic? College was a long time ago and the answer to that one was a definite no.

I have somehow grown a stack of Linksys WRT54G's. I googled to see if there was some way to turn a Linksys router into a wireless client and lo and behold came up with dd-wrt which claimed to do exactly what I wanted to do.

dd-wrt replaces the default Linksys firmware with an open source version. This version, no other way to say it, unlocks the full potential of the router. dd-wrt provides so many features for the router, including turning the router into a wireless client. This allows the router to use its wireless connection to connect to another wireless router and turns the ports in the back of the router into bridged ports on the first wireless network. Perfect! This is exactly what I am looking for.

There is great list of supported devices on the dd-wrt website. The thing that one quickly learns is that there are many version of routers in the same packaging. For example there are 8 versions of the Linksys WRT54G. Installation of the dd-wrt firmware is dependent on the exact model you have. In may case I was able to use a toolkit called, VXWorks. VXWorks has you load a a new firmware file into the router, which in turn has the ability to load the dd-wrt firmware into the router.

The directions say to use the dd-wrt mega file. I tried several times and the tftp load process kept timing out. I found a file in the same download directory named mini, and gave it a shot. It loaded without any issues. I quite frankly don't know the difference between the mega and mini files. The mini provided the functionality that I was looking for and hence my drive or desire to figure out what the mega file was diminished. Anyone out there know?

With the dd-wrt firmware loaded I was able to turn the router into a wireless client of the upstairs router. Now all of the devices can get to the Internet!

Obviously a wireless link is slower than a wired one, but the speeds are more than acceptable for what they need. dd-wrt totally rocks and saved me the trouble of having to put in an Ethernet drop and anyone who has ever run cable knows just how big a relief that is!

SmugMug Rocks!

SmugMug Rocks!

Almost 5 years ago, I decided to put our family photos on-line since this coincided with the birth of our daughter and we were taking an increased amount of digital photos. In those days, there were not a lot of services so I set up a hosting account with GoDaddy.com and used the opensource program Coppermine. I know that many on-line services have eclipsed the functionality of Coppermine, but hey it was up and working, and I really did not have the cycles to switch.

On the topic of time, I soon discovered that I was using precious cycles to keep Coppermine updated so that it could not be hacked. While this was an annoyance, it was still not enough to change things.

Starting about 3 months ago, I started having problems uploading pictures to our photo site. To make a very painful long story short my current hosting company was of zero help and I decided I had had enough.

I started looking around for an on-line photo service. Many of my colleagues recommended SmugMug. I also had heard about the good relations between Sun and SmugMug so I decided to give it a try.

I was instantly thrilled by the ease of use with the site. I did ask a few questions about how things worked and I got immediate responses from the SmugMug staff. I also got welcome messages from senior staff members. The whole experience was delightful.

The best part about the whole experience is that SmugMug truly unlocked our family photos. Our digital photos have never looked so good, and the full screen slide show capabilities are amazing! One of the small but great features for us is the ability to sort by the date-time stamp of the picture. Our family outings normally wind up with more than one camera. The file names are always different and the pictures are out of order. Not anymore!

Of course I am wondering what I was thinking for waiting so long to switch. Our entire extended family is now extremely thrilled with SmugMug! I am thrilled because it has given me back that precious thing called time. I now have the time to actually look at the photos instead of dealing with keeping the site up and running.

Strawberries

We have had a strawberry patch on the side of house. A left over remnant from the previous owners. Maybe when they planted it 20+ years ago it was more sunny. Since we have lived in the house the patch is too shaded by the trees to actually produce any berries.

This year I decided to experiment. I dug several of the plants up and potted them and moved them into the Sun. Yes ladies and gentleman we have Strawberries! Now the only challenge will be letting them ripen before before the birds or squirrels get them!

Cell Phone Upgrade and Mark Space Missing Sync

After years of staying away from text messaging, it has finally caught up with me. A lot of people that I work with have started to text message me. The root of my dislike for text messaging comes from having to triple tap a message in. The reality finally set in that I would have to upgrade my phone to a keyboard phone. I did a lot of research, Palm, Windows, Blackberry and Symbian. They all left me desiring more, which in turn pushed the decision off. I came across someone who was selling a used Samsung Blackjack at a very reasonable price and the thought of not having to sign a new contract really appealed to me.

While I was doing my research on the different phones, I found a company called Mark Space. They make several software products, including one called Missing Sync. I purchased and installed the software.

It has been a long time since I have been so blown away by a software product. Missing Sync is truly amazing. The software was incredibly easy to install and configure. Once configured, my windows mobile phone simply ActiveSyncs to Mac. Yup let that sink in. On the phone, you simple start ActiveSync, and the Missing Sync software steps in and connects the information from all of you OSX apps into your phone. I have my contacts in groups and I have several calendars. Everything syncs with the phone, no issues.

The software will also sync a lot of other things. Missing Sync came with another program called Notebook. I tried Notebook and realized I had found yet something else I was missing. I keep my notes in a paper notebook. I often have to search through them, have the wrong notebook with me, etc, etc. Now I take notes in my paper one and after the meeting type them into the digital one. I now have a searchable notebook. The best part is that Missing Sync, gladly syncs my Notebook onto my phone, so I have all of my notes right on my phone!

My final thrilling experience with Missing Sync came with the camera. We went to a carnival today, and I forgot me camera. FIgured I would take pictures with my phone, because, something would be better than nothing. When we got back home, fired up Missing Synch, looked at the photo's sections and have a bevy of settings to deal with the photo's. I decided to just move the photo's off my phone into a directory. There are settings to move the photo's right into iPhoto, and to keep your iPhoto's on the phone. I hit the sync button and bam my pictures where on my computer.

I really wanted to tip my hat at the folks over at Mark Space. Their software is truly a cut above what one normally finds out there. I would highly recommend anyone using a smart phone and a Mac to give this software a shot.

Ecto

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am new to blogging and trying out off-line editors. I recently tried out MarsEdit. The program worked but lacked a few key features for me. The first feature is that I did not see anyway to create lists. Might be writing style, but I need to have the ability to create lists. The second was that paragraphs needed to be manually added it in. The author of the program pointed out to me that the paragraphs where an issue of the server, and there is a script to add them in.

So onto the Ecto eval. The install was very simple, and I was able to quickly have the editor link to our corporate blog site. The interesting thing is that Ecto found both my personal blog and a group blog that I participate in.

So far I am preferring the editor in Ecto. There are some cool links to add photos from iPhoto and music from iTunes. But as a mentioned I really need an editor that will take care of the paragraphs and allow me to do lists.

So onto lists. There are some nice formatting buttons across the top of the editor.

• Here is an unordered and list

1. and here is a numbered list

There is also an indent feature. While I did not mention this on my want lists, this is a great feature. I often post snippets of code and can use this feature.

I pushed a sample page. It looks like the paragraphs are working, and the rest of the formatting features are working.

Overall I like the editor in Ecto. I do have a couple of issues, that I am sure are users ones that I need to work out.

Hopefully I can work them out soon, so I can start using Ecto to maintain my blog. [posted with ecto]

Mars Edit

I have recently made my venture into the blogging world. I have been submitting my first posts through the web interface. I have decide to try and use an off-line editor. This post is really simple test post using the Mars edit program.

Setting up Mars Edit was quite simple. A few clicks through the settings and everything is up and working. The software downloaded my exist posts so I can edit them. The program works just like the rest of the Mac programs do with spell check.

I was hoping to see more advanced editing features. Lists are noticeably absent. The preview option also leaves something to be desired. Maybe I am missing something, but it pretty much looks like the typing window.

I just submitted the first post and paragraph breaks are missing. Please don't tell me I have to manually add them in.

Looks like the paragraph tags have to be added in. That will probably be a deal breaker for me! Will continue to look for other off line editors.

It looks like Mars Edit has the ability to work with external editors. Not sure I want to install two programs to edit my blog off line.

Water Bottle Project

My kid's homework project was to fill a clear water bottle with something interesting to add to the classroom science center. The directions where to simply fill the bottle with something for the science center, that would last a while and the teacher would hot glued the lids shut, which ruled out an living exhibits.

What to do? My wife had a brilliant idea. She mentioned that at some bridal/baby showers they fill a big bowl with rice and you have to feel around to find objects in the rice. Could we modify it and put objects in the rice, seal the bottle, and then shake it to find the different objects?

We started with the empty bottle.

Next we went around the house and gathered a bunch of trinkets.

Pink Glitter Ball Orange Pez Candy Blue Paper Dot Candy Blue Gemstone Flower Orange Gemstone Flower Green Jelly Bean Key Ring Green Frog Led Light Bulb Pen Penny Bat Pumpkin Screwdriver Safety Pin SIM Card (my personal contribution- wink wink) Paper Fastner Watch Battery Purple Bow Princess Ring Pink Heart Star Sea Shell Rubber Band Toothpick Crayon Gold Spoon Screw

The next step was to put it all in the bottle.

Finally as you turn the bottle and shake it lightly different things appear in the rice.

Off my daughter went to school with her project. The teacher told us it was amazing and it kept the kids occupied for hours. If you are ever looking for a project to keep a bunch of pre-kindergarteners occupied for a while this just might be it!

The cube, 2000th tweet

Today is shaping up to be a wonderful day. I will be posting my 2000th tweet. Many of my twitter friends who have crossed this threshold before me have set the precedent of using landmark tweets to announce something big.

Following the tradition I am using my 2000th tweet to announce the arrival of my new Nepresso machine. I recently blogged about our trip to Costa Rica, where we met some amazing people who work for Nepresso. My wife has stayed in touch with them.

A few weeks ago I had an acute rupture of my appendix and wound up in emergency surgery to remove it. I have been recovering well, but it is a slow process. Our new friends at Nepresso decided they would help speed up my recovery, with a new Nepresso machine! Imagine my surprise when the UPS man dropped off a package for me today, with a get well card, and a new Le Cube!

I have been like a kid on Christmas morning. Setting up my new machine, checking out all the features, warming some espresso cups and of course making some of the best espresso in the world!

Coffee

Hey we all love coffee, but I started thinking about and realized I might be a little over the top on the subject.

5 years ago my wife and I where invited to dinner by a lady I worked with at the time. After dinner she served the most amazing espresso I had ever had in my life. We asked about it and we were told that they had gotten the machine on one of their trips to Switzerland. I thought that would have been the end of the subject.

A few months later my wife surprised me with a Nespresso Machine. The Swiss company that made the machine is no other than Nestle. They had recently opened up a US branch and getting the machine and the coffees was now in reach of us common Americans!

Why is it the best cup of coffee in the world? There are many reasons, but it starts with the beans. Nepresso has some of the top coffee people in the world. They travel the world and find the best coffee in the world, and then they roast the coffee to their exacting standards. The real amazing part of the whole Nespresso process is that they have worked with the Rain Forest Alliance, to create the AAA sustainability program. This program works with local farmers to teach them how to grow their coffee organically and sustainably. The program also cuts out all of the middle men, so the money you pay for the coffee is actually going to sustain the farmers who are growing it. Yes you can drink your coffee and save the world all in one shot! (no pun intended)

Coffee is at its best when it is just finished roasting. Nepresso designed and patented an amazing system, to take the freshly roasted coffee and hermetically seal it in a capsule. This capsule prevents any light or air from reducing the quality of the coffee. Next they created a machine that forces water through the capsule at 19PSI. This causes the coffee to foam. They spent years researching how to bring the best cup of coffee from an Italian Barista home. Again it is a truly amazing system.

I know that Green is very popular right now. My wife has been in the "green" industry since 1993. She was green, before it was cool to be green. Due to her background she has closely followed the Nespresso AAA program and the Rain Forest Alliance. Nepresso runs a program every year where they invite students from around the world to a 2 week course in Costa Rica to discuss sustainability. One of the major highlights of the program is touring the farms that Nespresso has transformed in their AAA program. My wife and I have always dreamed about going, but alas we are well past the student age requirement.

In May 2007, Nepresso ran an auction to raise money for the Rain Forest Alliance. One of the things that they put up for auction was a trip to audit the course. Obviously, my wife and I were very eager to go. And in one of the greatest ironies they were actually auctioning off 2 trips. For what ever reason, everyone who was bidding did not see the second trip and bid up the first one. We were able to sneak in at the end and claim the second trip for just over the starting bid!

In September 2007 we were able to go to Costa Rica, meet the farmers who own the farms that provide the coffee that we drink. The Nepresso Magazine, ran an article on the trip. The trip turned into one of those once in a lifetime opportunities. We met incredible people and will never forget meeting Juan Diego, and his father who run the largest Nespresso coffee farm in Costa Rica. Now every time we sit down to sip a Livanto, I can reminisce about the trip to Costa Rico and Juan Diego's farm.

Update: The Nespresso website is currently having issues with the article. I have scanned and posted a somewhat legible version here.

Holy Cat

Aagggh the weekend time for nice relaxing activities. We slept in, went to run some errands this morning including the grocery store. The weather is warming up. When we got home from the grocery store and where unloading some of our neighbors came out, and as often happens in our cul-de-sac we starting shooting the breeze.

A while later we went back to putting the groceries away. I noticed that we left the door from the garage to the house open. We normally don't do this because of our dogs, but since we had not let them out of their room yet did not think anything of it.

About an hour later as we were eating lunch one of out dogs goes ballistic and charging up the stairs. Not the normal hey I am barking at something walking by. My wife goes up after him and the next thing I hear is there is a cat in the house. It was one of the moments, where it takes you a second to process what was just said, because it is so out of place.

I went upstairs as well and sure enough on one of the window ledges what a cat, scared out of its mind with our dog going crazy. I had my wife corral the dogs back to their room. I reached my hand out to let the cat sniff me to make sure it was friendly, and it decided on a human was a much better place than on the window ledge. As soon at it landed on my shoulders I realized it was not declawed. Decided this was the opportune time to walk outside and extract the cat from my shoulders.

Crisis over, cat out of the house, minor scratches. Looking back on what just happened it is very amusing. A little bummed, because I was wearing my I love Solaris t-shirt and it got the worst of it.

Proper Job

Almost a year ago our sanitation district notified us that they where doubling our rates, because the sewer pipes to our neighborhood are 30 years old and and they had to be replaced. The project was supposed to take 3 months. Like all good public works projects they failed to mention to everyone that the 3 month deadline was based on using a new technique where they force the pipes through the ground instead of digging everything up. Oooopppss! Of course the new technique did not work, and 8 months later after digging everything up we have new sewer pipes.

On my way home from the airport on Tuesday there was a large puddle in the road about a half mile from my house. The taxi driver thought it was weird because it was a perfectly dry day, and there was no running water into the puddle. As we hit the puddle it became obvious from the smell that it was sewage. Glad it was not my car <grin>.

Yesterday a large sink whole opened up and has closed the street in both directions. There are only 2 streets in and out of my neighborhood. You can imagine the disaster this has had on traffic. The good news is that I work from home. The sink hole is in-between me and my gym though. I will have to do my workout from home today as well. Norditrack here I come.

The real rub here is that the pipe obviously worked just fine for the last 30 years. The new pipe can't be 60 days old. The problem is obviously from an improper install. And like my grandfather always said. Don't bother starting a job unless you are planning on finishing it properly.

They have currently brought in special trucks, and I mean a whole fleet of them, to catch and pump the sewage out of the system before it gets to the break. This of course begs the question who is going to pay for this fleet that is running 24x7 while the pipe is broken? Who is going to pay for the repairs to system? I willing to bet the sanitation district, and hence us the homeowners, get stuck with the bill and not the company that improperly installed the pipes!

And to end on a cheery note, at least we live far enough away from the break that we can't smell it. I guess the residences close to the break are having to deal with the smell as well!