sean’s place

Remodel Thoughts

On the new home, I’m thinking of making these changes in fairly immediate order:

• Replace the boob lights in the bedroom with ceiling fans with remote controls
• Replace kitchen light fixture with track lights
• Replace kitchen boob light with a recessed fixture (if possible)
• Add recessed lights to living room (if possible/conveniently inexpensive)
• Paint the walls a tan/light brown color — something warmer than the off white (this is, of course, after spackeling and priming)
• Change out the standard apartment-style venetian blinds with something… less crappy
• Washer/dryer
• Perhaps a new refrigerator that’s better fit to the space

In the future:

• Change out the carpet (berber = bad)
• Perhaps hardwood flooring in the kitchen and dining nook
• Finish the basement (possibly into an entertainment center with a wet bar)

I think I watch too much HGTV.

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On Houses and People

I bought my first place!

After touring 20 (or so) townhomes and single-family homes throughout Fort Collins with my realtor until we came across just about the perfect unit in the center of town. It’s a 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath townhome just off (like 50 feet off) the Spring Creek trail. It has a single-car attached garage and an unfinished basement. I should have pictures online soon!

Location-wise, it’s perfect. It’s right on one of the main bike trails in Fort Collins and practically around the corner from old town. It’s also right around the corner (but the other way) from Whole Foods.

I signed the contract (after a negotiation with the seller) on Friday. The inspection is tomorrow — here’s hoping it goes well!

Cheers!

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Building Xdebug into PHP on ARM

So a large part of my day job consists of hacking on a small PHP application intended to run on an ARM device. We chose PHP for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the “ease” of development (PHP is not one of my favorite languages) and the reasonable performance we can achieve on ARM. Unfortunately, PHP compiles without Zend extension support on ARM making it difficult to run things like Xdebug or APD.

Problem:
# php -v
Extensions are not supported on this platform.
PHP 5.2.5 (cli) (built: May 15 2008 16:54:51)
Copyright (c) 1997-2007 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2007 Zend Technologies


Solution:
build% cd php-5.2.5/ext
build% tar xfz xdebug-2.0.3.tar.gz
build% mv xdebug-2.0.3 xdebug
build% cd ..
build% ./buildconf --force
build% ./configure --enable-xdebug
build% make && make install


This builds Xdebug straight into PHP for profiling goodness. One caveat, I get this warning when I start PHP:
PHP Warning: Xdebug MUST be loaded as a Zend extension in Unknown on line 0


The warning doesn’t seem to affect much; I still get (reasonable looking) profiling data out of Xdebug.

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Cycling!

I love Fort Collins.

This city has some amazing bike/multiuse trails winding throughout the city. Today, I (with co-conspirator Dave) rode about 30 miles of them. We started off just outside Dave’s place near Edora Park on the Spring Creek trail. We rode it out to the Poudre trail and rode the length of it until we hit Laporte. This trail was simply stunning. It hugs the Cache la Poudre River for most of its length and it’s green. Trees, plants, everything is green! Absolutely gorgeous.

We rode out past the Poudre Trail until we hit Laporte. We made a quick detour to Vern’s, where, due to a lack of a bike lock, we failed to have lunch. A lady I met at the Colorado Democratic Convention, Mary, called the bike trip out to Vern’s “The Bacon Run.” So apt. Note to self, bring a lock next time!

On our way back, we skipped the Poudre Trail and skipped up onto North Overland Trail (which is actually a road, not a trail). This was the hardest part of the ride due to the gently sloping hills. My poor conditioning and a gentle headwind made this a tough ride. That said though, it was still fun. We rode Overland Trail until Cottonwood Glen Park (maybe 4 or 5 miles). For those that have visited me, Cottonwood Glen Park is the park with the bike trials course.

From there, we rode home along the Spring Creek trail. Dave continued home down Spring Creek whereas I parted company at the Mason Trail. I continued down the aforementioned Mason Trail (which isn’t really all that visually interesting) and onto the Fossil Creek Trail until it ended at South Lemay. I then rode the short bit down Lemay back to my place.

All in all a fun ride. I posted some photos of the Poudre Trail part on Flickr.

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The Wheels on the Bus

As I sit here (in the Double Tree in Colorado Springs — avoid this hotel at all costs), I’m reflecting on the interesting conversation I just had with two fellow Larimer Democrats who attended the Assembly and Convention with me. Thanks to Roland and Diane for their thoughts.

We talked a bit about the seemingly unified themes coming out of the Colorado (and to an extent, the national) campaigns — themes like alternative (maybe we should say “smarter”) energy, health care, and ending the war in Iraq. These things are rallying points for Democrats and ideas amenable to some Republicans. The focal point for the message contrast seems to be our current administration and their friends in Congress.

Lets take the war in Iraq as an example. Betsy Markey, Mark Udall, and Barack Obama are both calling for a smart withdrawal of our troops from the region. One of their main arguments is the sheer cost of the war — some put it in the high billions, even trillions. Unless we’ve found a way to literally grow wealth on trees, if these numbers are even slightly accurate, we’re plunging ourselves into massive debt in order to finance the war. This is interesting, because unlike some other wars we’ve fought: we haven’t raised taxes to pay for this war.

Americans are an intensely generous people. We send aid at the drop of a hat to regions devastated by natural disaster: China, Myanmar (as we can), Indonesia, and New Orleans to name a few. Ostensibly our goal in Iraq is to rebuild their infrastructure, economy, and deliver a democratic regime friendly to our interests; noble goals, to be sure.

Why haven’t we, as a people, been asked to help this effort (short of enlisting)?

Iraq is war-torn (we should know, we did the a lot of the tearing) and country desperately in need. Why haven’t we seen a national push to give aid to our brothers and sisters there? Our troops, who do good work there, don’t work for free and we certainly know that their equipment isn’t free. Installing and maintaining a logistical support base also can’t be a small cost. So, to my friends who support the war in Iraq: I suspect you think of yourselves as the fiscally-responsible sort, so, would you accept a tax increase to pay for this war?

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“The politics of the small”

I greet you, my fair blog, from Colorado Springs where I am attending the Colorado State Democratic Convention and Assembly. In addition, I attended and voted in the Congressional District 4 Convention and Assembly, held in the very same place.

In addition to the chat and networking opportunities with fellow Democrats, I must admit to being awed by a single thing: the resounding support of CD4 Democrats for Betsy Markey.

Betsy entered the CD4 Assembly to a fanfare of drums. Following many (and often tedious :)) nomination speeches, Betsy finally took the podium. There, she delivered a rousing speech outlining her goals as our district’s next congresswoman. She touched frequently on the “politics of the small”, the negative, divisive, and damaging politics that infects our system today. “Big problems require bold solutions” she says, a line that continues to echo in m mind over and over again. She stood tall, calling for a “uniquely American” system for universal health care, a withdrawal from Iraq, and the need to rebuild our middle class. Big problems — bold solutions, indeed.

Finally, to toot my own horn before I sign off, if you listen to AM 1310, you may hear an interview of yours truly on Ken Clark’s show. If you hear it, let me know what you think

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Letter to the Editor

Editor,

Northern Colorado is quickly becoming a hub for the new energy economy. If the recent opening of the new Vestas wind-turbine blade plant, Woodward Governor announcing 100 new jobs for their wind-turbine inverter business, AVA Solar Inc.’s plans to open a new manufacturing facility in Del Camino and the new Colorado State energy research “super cluster” are any indication, the future looks bright.

Just as we did for the oil companies in their heyday, we can help spur additional investment in the region with tax credits and other incentives. Unfortunately, our House representative, Marilyn Musgrave, recently voted against such a renewable energy stimulus package. In fact, over the last few years, she has consistently supported the oil companies and the “old” energy way.

It’s time to ensure that our interests are represented in the U.S. Congress. Unlike Musgrave, Betsy Markey has renewable energy high on her priority list: She wrote: “We have a unique opportunity at this time in our history to change the way we power this country. Colorado is poised to lead this effort. Our state’s wind, solar and agricultural energy supplies offer opportunities to create jobs, protect the environment and decrease our dependence on foreign oil.” I have no doubt that she would have voted to secure the long-term economic and energy security of the region by voting “aye” to the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2008.

Sean Rees,
Fort Collins

Update: This letter has been printed in The Coloradoan and The Journal Advocate.

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Welcome to episkey

Welcome to episkey!

I’ve started to transition my primary services (starting with the web stuff) from my home network to my new server installed at Red Rocks Data Center in Morrison.

I will be moving more stuff over the weekend.

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Hunting for Colocation

While I might not be such a do-it-yourselfer around the house, I certainly am when it comes to the Internet.

Case in point: my email, web, and IRC infrastructure.

When I moved to Fort Collins, one of the first things I did was obtain a Comcast Business Class cable connection for my home. I did this for the purpose of running my own e-mail, web, DNS, and IRC servers on my own. Setting all this up was a marginal cost increase over a residential cable modem (due to the relatively inflated costs of Internet access in Colorado — thanks Qwest!) plus hardware.

However, like residential cable, business class still suffers from being a “best-effort” IP delivery service. Comcast likes to do “maintenance” at odd hours and this causes interruptions to my service. In at least two events over the last 3 months, my connection flapped wildly for hours at a time. This sort of behavior really isn’t conducive to running a reliable IT infrastructure, even if it is just for me (and a few others)!

So, I’ve decided to expand my scope and look for colocation. I have a 1U short-depth rack mount server that’s on its way and I’m looking to install it in a facility with a bit more data-oomph that I’ve got. I’ve looked at a lot of different companies throughout Colorado, including Front Range Internet, Red Rocks Data Center, EarthNet, RockyNet, and NeTrack. I’ve tentatively decided on NeTrack.

NeTrack offers the best bang for my buck: $75/month for the rack space and 200kbit (95th percentile) of bandwidth. However, I’m principally concerned over two things: 200kbit is probably too low to be sustainable and their slow/nonexistent response time to requests. I’ll saturate 75% of that 200kbit initially with my current traffic patterns and their bandwidth overage charges are very high. What I’d really like is someone who can provision me 512kbit (read: breathing room) and stay competitive with the $75/month rate. Native IPv6 would be a major plus, too.

I suppose I’m what you might call a high-powered IT hobbyist.

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Cat Maintenance

I took my cats in to the shop, er, the vet today for their (belated) annual checkup and shots. Talk about an experience.

I took my cats to the VCA Fort Collins Animal Hospital; home of a friendly staff and moving dust. As part of their annual checkup, these folks do blood work and urinalysis in addition to the shots, the physical exam, and the great poo float (if one remembers to bring in poo samples!).

As it happens, the blood work was just too much for my little ones. The vet tech took each cat, one at a time, to “the back” to perform the extraction. To make a long story short, the process scared and pissed off both cats. They had such a rough time with the rest of the exam (hissing, swatting, biting, screaming) that the vet and the techs weren’t able to finish it! In an unusual mood, Max took to biting, hissing at, and attacking everything (before falling into the trash bin) — including the vet, her sister Alex — but, excluding me. I was apparently the only one who could calm her down. (I feel so loved.)

I left the cats at the vet to calm down (and so they could finish the exam!) and proceeded to work (by way of home to pick up a second carrier and a new shirt). I picked up the little ones 2 hours later and drove them home to a symphony of sad meows. I decided to stay home to supervise, just in case Max was still having violent tendencies.

I’m happy to report that no cat-on-cat confrontation has occurred, though Max is holding a pretty significant grudge at the moment. I think it’ll be a while before she forgives me. But hey, at least they’re healthy (pending results of the blood work)!

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