We went shopping for a mountain bike today, for my wife, and we were surprised by the wide range of service.
Last week, we went to Erik's in Oakdale. Although the saleswoman was helpful, they did not have a wide range of selection in the kind of bikes that my wife was looking for.
Today, the salesperson at Galyans (now Dick's) in Woodbury was helpful in that he told us they did not have what we were looking for right out. My wife liked that he didn't try to change her mind or focus into getting something just because they had it. We need to go back there sometime for fishing gear, and they had some pretty cool pants.
The Penn Cycle in Woodbury had several employees working, but noone provided any service to us. To get a seat readjusted so that my wife could try out the bike, I had to ask for a tool to do it myself and was given a hex bar too long for the seat/reflector combination. I don't know where that guy went. I cannot see ever walking into that store ever again.
The Gateway bicycle shop was interesting, it had a naturey feel about the whole store, like when you walk into a ski chalet, or that mountaineering store that used to be on the West Bank. The owner, Bill, I believe was the fellow helping us, and he was very helpful and answered a lot of questions and provided support. We went through about three bikes before we had the one we wanted, but he bore with us. At the end of the day, we ended up buying the bike and a lot of components, and we'll probably come back when our son is tall enought to ride a 12" bike.
I just ordered a Quest for the Dragon Lords game two weeks ago from my local hobby shop, Unicorn Games. It looks pretty neat, it is a lot like risk with orc, dwarves, and elves. Unfortunately the copy of the game that I bought was missing some dwarves (ok all of them), but after an email, they sent them off to me quickly and efficiently. Tonight if I get a chance I will try to play it with my wife.
Jabberd Server
Looking for a Windows XP jabber server that could run on my home computer.
ejabberd 0.7.5 - Oct 12, 2004 - http://jabberstudio.org/projects/ejabberd/releases/view.php?id=670
jabberd2 - March 32, 2005 - requires GPL/src build only - http://jabberd.jabberstudio.org/
jive messenger 2.1.2 - March 6, 2005 - http://www.jivesoftware.org/messenger/
Administration
http://127.0.0.1:9090/setup-index.jsp
Admin Console Port:
videobox
9090
Secure Admin Console Port:
9091
Allows SSL XMPP connections
For the datastore, I chose to use the embedded HSQLDB. This is not recommended for large installations, but for my experimentation it should do fine
I chose MySQL. I would like to look at the tables and additionally if I wanted to show/dump date for this project, I could easily construct a SQL command. I downloaded MySQL 4.1, windows essentials version, from: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/4.1.html.
Installed MySQL admin 1.0.19. Loaded the jive into mysql
mysql -u root -pminijabber2005 jive20050410 < messenger_mysql.sql
Next I did an install, and a start on the service. I think there were two versions of the admin running, so it did not show users. It said somewhere not to trust the GUI and instead use these commands:
# messenger-service /install -- installs the service.
# messenger-service /uninstall -- uninstalls the service.
# messenger-service /start -- starts the service
# messenger-service /stop -- stops the service.
1st - GUI Client:
http://www.jabberstudio.org/projects/exodus/releases/
Connect via port 5222: http://videobox:5222/
Get admin at:
http://videobox:9090
I was listending to a lot of old CDs recently and came across an old DJ CD by Jack Trash. Usually I remembered him as JT, a friend of my friend Rich aka DJ Pike (the fish not Christopher "no no" Pyke). I remember one time being surprised to find an old copy of DJ JT versus the empire in a bin at Aardvark records on Penn in Bloomington. At least someone else in this world had that album too. I can't seem to find evidence of it online, but I think with Star Wars making a resurgence every time a prequel comes out, someone else would have liked it as well. It probably violated the heck out of copyright laws on sampling, but when the Sith lords rile up Luke, it makes a perfect intro to a a hardcore track.
I remember once in college trying to help out at this rave that he was DJing at, I think it is the 1992 rave they keep mentioning in the articles concerning him. I was running the lights for a while, but he made me quit was I was doing manually and went back to a more random music style. I think that I was putting too much strobe out there - some kid might end up a seizure I later realized. I was not really dressed for the rave, I think I was wearing a normal hoodless striped sweater. I remember his compadre DJ Woody from my first party at the University of Minnesota for incoming freshmen.
He used to have a pretty cool show with my friend Rich, called Overdrive on Radio K. I used to listen to taped of that while driving around the northeast for work. I think I heard a little of his show on the Rev radio station before moving away.
I also remember when DJ Rap (Coming in 2005 again) was playing at Glam Slam, he came out to help her with some technical difficulties before she really got going.
He started to get a little too much into the jungle house and drum and bass for my liking, but that was the club trend at the time.
Here are a couple articles about him:
City Pages Article (2000), and Sound in Motion Bio (2005).
University of St. Thomas
CSIS 560
Project Proposal
Jeff D. Conrad
Security Concerns in Instant Messaging
Instant messaging is a protocol which shares a lot of the same security concerns as email. Corporate use of IM clients is often discouraged or limited. Most commerical IM services require the client to communicate with internet servers in real-time. Some companies are looking to bring the IM server behind the firewall, where communication can be limited, controlled, and less prone to eavesdropping. One of the interesting uses of advanced IM communication is that the entities in a conversation do not both have to be human. What are the security concerns when you want to inquire on data from a 'bot-like entity? How can you insure authentication, non-repudiation? For this project I propose to examine a few of these concerns via the open-source Jabber IM project, an open source Jabber server (either the original, or Jive will be used), which is now formally known as the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). The paper will include a current review of related terms and work-in-progress, such as off-the-record messaging. Two to three of security-related JEP and RFC for XMPP will be examined. For the programming portion of my assignment I would modify an existing open-source Java client and/or API to include recommended security enhancements. Due to the time limitations of this assignment, this will focus on a one-to-one conversation (no groupchat implementations).
References
Jabber Home. http://www.jabber.org/
Jabber Studio. http://jabberstudio.org/
Jabber Applet. http://jabberapplet.jabberstudio.org/
JEP List. http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jeplist.shtml
Jabberd Server. http://jabberstudio.org/projects/jabberd2/project/view.php
Jive Server. http://www.jivesoftware.org/messenger/
Jabber Security UI. http://www.yabber.org/design/security.html
Off-the-Record. http://news.com.com/Making+your+IM+secure--and+deniable/2100-7355_3-5576246.html
I haven't figured out how to download these permanently. I've been collecting my favourite fan films over the past few years. For instance, there was a film, Duality, that is no longer available.
Cheap Seats - "Hey that's the guy who took my ride!"
Sith Apprentice - "I shall succeed where the others have failed."
Real Men of the Empire - "This one's for you, Mr. Death Star Gunner."
Recruitment Ad for the Empire - "Did he say pink?"
Pink Five - "Cut the chatter, Pink Five."
Pink Five Strikes Back - "Take me you cannot, for my ally is the Force."
Empire of One - "I'm always ready to explode into action... Explode!"
I sent some money to this one, it's absolutely hilarious:
Watch the deleted scene if you have time.
Here is the actual Episode III trailer.