I’ve had more reticence than usual to update the blog, because I’ve frankly been computed out.
That’s because the last few months I’ve been working on an involved computer project. (Warning geek alert – the following probably won’t be at all interesting to most – you can skip to the next Image may be NSFW.
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First, a brief history…
We’ve had WiFi Internet access in our break area at work for some time now. But it’s not provided by our benevolent employer – it’s paid for and administered by the employees (while on their breaks).
The connection was administered by a single person, who basically just collected dues to pay for the Internet connection and wrote out checks if they decided to buy hardware (like routers or cables). Until a few years ago our WiFi connection was a open access point with an honor system wherein only those who paid dues were supposed to be using it (although we knew there were a few cheaters).
About two years ago the state of the state of our Internet connection had degraded to a point where it was almost unusable (the Internet connection was poor, and people kept getting disconnected from the wireless router), and a few people (including me) became part of a work group overseen by the acting administrator of our Internet connection to try and make improvements.
My reason for getting involved was simple: I was willing to do the work (on my breaks) so that I could get a decent Internet connection – others would benefit from my labor, but my motivation was primarily selfish.
We were to discover that although the administrator was collecting dues to pay for our Internet connection (DSL at that time), that he did little else. But by controlling the money and Internet connection he essentially had complete control.
After the formation of the work group, it became obvious that the administrator wanted to remain in charge but that he wasn’t actually willing to dirty his hands with any real work. He went so far as to say that the connection had degraded because no one had come to him and asked to do anything about it; if they had done so he would have given them free reign to improve things, including giving them money – they just had to ask. But he accepted no responsibility otherwise.
He had very little direction for the newly formed work group and couldn’t tell us specifically what we were tasked with. He even went so far as to insult some members of the group causing one to quit.
As volunteers it didn’t take long before we decided that we weren’t going to do the work at the beck and call of the administrator/King. If we were going to do the work we wanted to be in charge of the connection; not lackeys having to ask “mother may I” to do anything.
I particularly objected to any individual or group that managed the money and therein had control but that didn’t have or accept neither responsibility nor accountability to anyone (which he didn’t).
When we tried to wrest control of the funds away from the administrator he resisted, even though he clearly didn’t want to do the work. Eventually he did begrudgingly give up the funds to our group, and we formed an Internet “Association” (a cooperative) via an organizational document, with system administrators that were accountable to the subscribers.
The work group members became system administrators of our fledgling cooperative and we went to work fixing our connection problems. That included buying a new wireless router and changing our Internet connection from DSL to cable.
We also restricted access to the router to only paying subscribers. Subscriber information was stored in a Google Doc and I wrote a program to convert an exported Google Doc into a format that could be uploaded to the router. After several months of work we had a good Internet connection.
When we had stabilized the connection we had elections for system administrators and myself and two others were elected to continue to help administer it.
Then this summer my local union president asked me to set up a WiFi connection for the union. I was already the union’s computer technical support guy, but that mostly involved just cleaning viruses off the Windows computers the union provides in its offices for use by members.
So I agreed to replicate the WiFi configuration I was already administering.
He later asked me to call some other locals and find out how they were running their Internet connections. In the discovery process and because the union had aspirations for future expansion, the union WiFi project morphed into something much bigger (and more complicated).
That was primarily due to the need to run a Radius server central to create a secure and expandable configuration. Since we had a limited budget, the Radius server was going to have to be a Freeradius version.
That meant I had to learn how to install and configure a Radius server (including a MySQL database server), as well as hone my meager Linux skills.
It rapidly evolved into what I considered to be a job for a real network system administrator (which I’m not nor do I claim to be) and I expressed my reservations about the project. But as there were no other suckers to do the job it was mine by default, so I plodded ahead.
In October I created a test Freeradius configuration in my workshop to experiment with.
I found a Linux distribution called CIITIX that did most of the setup for the various components that comprise a Freeradius server with MySQL, but CIITIX is based on an older Linux kernel with older program components as well, some of which I updated.
One of my biggest concerns was committing to a user database stored on the server in a MySQL database. If the server hard drive crashed that data would potentially be lost. One option was to use a RAID configuration.
An alternative was to store user information in a Google Doc like we were doing with the other WiFi connection.
I liked how our other Google Doc user setup worked: it offered an offsite/safe copy, as well as allowing non-techs to administer the user information that the system administrator could then simply download and upload to the Radius server.
But in order for that to work I had to write another program to re-format the Google Doc and import it into the Freeradius MySQL database.
Once I had that all figured out I was able to install the initial union WiFi hardware and get it up and running the first weekend in November. Like any new installation we knew there would be some problems.
One big drawback to the 802.1X configuration was that Windows machines needed security certificates to work properly. All other devices could connect without them.
So I had to help people install the security certificates initially. Once a few other people had done it they were then able to help others. Then we had some other problems: specifically Intel Centrino wireless adapters had problems connecting to the wireless router (including the one in my notebook).
Hours of research and testing led to the discovery that it was the wireless router firmware. I spent many hours trying to find a workaround because I didn’t want to order a new router and deal with new potential problems with it, but I finally conceded I had to do that.
I got the new router and as anticipated had some problems with it as well. The first issue I had to rectify was that it sent data to the Radius server in a different format than the other router, so I had change the Radius configuration files to reformat the data into a common format.
Eventually I found firmware for the original router that fixed the Intel Centrino connection problems and had the configuration options I needed for our setup, and after a crash of the new router this weekend I’m running both as backups to each other.
To summarize a long story (i.e. excuse for not updating my blog in a timely manner), I’ve spent so much time over the last few months researching, testing and working on computers, that sitting at my computer and writing for my blog wasn’t really hasn’t been high on my list of things I felt like doing and/or had time for.
So that’s the primary reason my updates have been few and far between. Hopefully that will change as more of the technical glitches on that project get worked out.
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After a long and mild fall as unlikely as it was, it was starting to look like a white Christmas was doubtful.
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But then they forecast our first big snowstorm for the second weekend of December.
I had found one whole piece of the original brown J-channel that I thought we’d run out of, so with it and the other pieces I had I was able to finish the gable of the east doorway on the new building before the storm arrived.
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I spent the days before the storm doing some last minute cleanup before stuff got buried with snow, discovering that we had a new calf.
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Then it snowed a bit overnight Friday, but on Saturday night into Sunday, December 9th, we got around 9 inches of wet snow.
It got really cold the day after the storm, but then warmed up again to around freezing by mid week. By the time I got a chance to move most of the snow I made a bit of a mess, because it had been warm enough that the ground really hadn’t frozen yet and the snow wasn’t sticking to it much; in the process of moving snow I moved a fair amount of dirt and gravel too.
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Then the very next weekend, it warmed up to over 40, then rained for over a day, reducing the snow on the ground further.
At the beginning of the week I had picked up my proper size 3/4″ J-channel replacement (last entry I wrote how Menards ordered the wrong size), so in the warmer weather the day before it rained I got the J-channel installed on the garage gable. But unfortunately I ran out of time and didn’t get any of the shake siding installed before it got dark.
I didn’t want to be doing vinyl/plastic siding projects in colder weather because I know an errant hammer blow is more likely to break things, but I’m out of warmer weather for a few months so I don’t have much choice now.
About a week before the storm I also received and installed the new larger circulator pump for the new building radiant boiler, and it does seem to be helping the system run better.
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When the outside temperatures are below freezing it’s costing us about $10 a day to run the heat in the building to keep the radiant system from freezing, and I suspect (hope) that’s probably about what it’s going to cost us to heat the building to proper temperatures once it’s insulated.
I started preparing the subfloor in the house for some flooring so we can get our re-finance done. Part of that work involved removing the spikes with the washers in them. They went through the subfloor into the load-bearing beam in the basement.
They came out with such ease that they couldn’t have been doing much anyway, and I surmise they are related to how they assembled our factory-built house on site.
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Of course if the house falls down, that theory will be proven incorrect…
I just saw this video and don’t know if it’s real or not – judge for yourself. I’d say this one is going to go viral regardless.
(UPDATE 12/19/12: Apparently the video is a fake, made by Canadian animation and digital design students. Kudos to them for their work – over 5 million views in a day, but it’s more evidence that if a video seems too incredible to be true, that it probably is. It reminds me of this State Farm TV commercial that Kim and I routinely chuckle at – “They can’t put anything on the Internet that isn’t true…“)