I was watching an episode of Cops last night, and I had a stroke of genius.  It wouldn’t be that hard to bring an end to innocent people being victimized by drunk drivers.  All that would have to be done is to put all bars at the end of roads with several hairpin turns.  Anyone too drunk to drive would simply crash out trying to navigate the road before they ever got near anone else.  I’ll gladly accept the nomination for the Nobel Peach Prize.

I’m writing a web application and am using the Sun Glassfish application server to run it.  I was messing with some security settings today (changing the master password, looking at replacing SSL certificates, etc.)  After some messing I found the server would no longer start.  It gave me the following error:

Starting Domain domain1, please wait.
Log redirected to <glassfish-home>/domains/domain1/logs/server.log.
Incorrect master password
CLI156 Could not start the domain domain1.

I changed the password back to default, scoured the web looking for a fix.  After a bit of hair-pulling, I found the file <glassfish-home>/domains/domain1/master-password was owned by root-root.  I ran the password update command using sudo, but I forgot to force it to my glassfish user.  When Glassfish tried to start, it found it could not read the file containing the password it needed to access its keystore and failed.  A quick chown command to change the owner back to the proper setting (the non-privileged glassfish user) and the server fired up like a champ.

Hopefully this will help the fellow Java geeks from losing any more hair than necessary.

Well I finally found a program that will let me blog from my mobile phone. If it apears to work decently I’ll give some more details (maybe a review) later on.

Redbox to the Rescue!  The previews for Vantage Point that The Mrs. and I had seen on TV looked pretty decent. We were glad we watched it. Continue reading this post…

I finished reading Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother” (you can download and read it for free) over the weekend, and its put my mind cranking on security and privacy again.  This is a topic that is near and dear to me, yet it seems as I get busy I don’t think much about it.  Reading this book set the wheels in motion again, and I was thinking about how to set up whole disk encryption.  That train of thought reminded me of a product by Wiebetech called a HotPlug. Continue reading this post…

Another Redbox pick, Cleaner.  I didn’t have a movie in mind and this one looked like a decent movie based on the description.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  This movie stars Samuel L. Jackson and Ed Harris, two of my favorite actors.   Generally they star in decent movies.  Of course that isn’t always the case. Continue reading this post…

When my wife and approached our 1st anniversary nearly 8 years ago, we decided to start our own tradition.  Rather than buying each other expensive jewelry or other such traditional anniversary gifts, we decided to purchase something together for the family.  We’d treat our anniversary as the celebration of our family, not so much a celebration of our wedding date.  In years past we’ve gotten things like our swimming pool, a new video game system, things the whole family uses and enjoys.  The last couple of years we’ve pondered getting a new BBQ grill.  We’ve been using a hand-me-down gas grill but at the beginning of last spring it took its last firey breath.  Unfortunately the burner element is a non-standard size, and I would have spent close to the cost of a new grill to buy a replacement.  At that point we decided to wait find one we really liked rather than rushing out to get one.  Since my mom gave us a outdoor fireplace that can be used as a grill, we got by last year using it.  Its a great fireplace but an OK grill. Continue reading this post…

Another Redbox freebie, I picked out Wildhogs. The Mrs. and I had wanted to see it for a while, so  I grabbed this flick. This movie has a well known cast, including Tim Allen and John Travolta. If you like comedy, this one is a winner.

Continue reading this post…

I’m going to go for the 100 Push Ups Challenge I’ve read about.  Push ups are an exercise I’ve always struggled with.  In school I was one of the last ones done in gym class.  I’ve also had a hard time with bench presses.  My legs on the other hand are where all of my strength hides.  I set the leg press record at my high school by maxing out the machine.  I still hold that record today I’m assuming, unless the school upgraded their machine to allow for more weight.  That also assumes someone didn’t rip down the note card on the records bulletin board in the weight room too…

Anyway, the first step to the challenge is to see how many push ups can be done in a row.  I was able to do 13, which puts me on level two starting out.  I was hoping I could do better, but I expected to do worse.  I was going to be happy if I hit 10.

According to the first day of the program, since I did more than 10 on the initial test, I needed to do the 3rd column.  This meant 2 sets of 10, a set of 8, and a set of 6, with a 60 second rest in between each set.  Let me just say I was barely able to squeek those out.  Honestly on day 2 I may move to column 2 until I get my strength up a little more.  I’ll give it a shot on column 3 as it may be because I did the exhaustion test just a few minutes before I started the my first sets.

Even if I don’t wind up at 100 by the end of the 6 weeks, I’m still going to feel good about the improvements I will make.

I’ve been a fan of the Dateline NBC series entitled To Catch a Predator since it began.  For those not familiar, Chris Hansen worked with law enforcement agencies to set up sting operations in order to catch adults on the Internet looking to meet up with underage children for sex.  They enlisted the help from a volunteer organization called Perverted Justice to handle the online chatting portion of the operation.  One episode showed a suspect by the name of Louis Conradt, who happened to be an assistant prosecutor for a neighboring county to where the sting took place.  There were several instances of public servants being caught during several episodes, but this one was different because when he failed to show up at the sting location police attempted to execute search and arrest warrants at his home.  While the police were making entry to the home, he shot himself and subsequently passed away at the hospital. Continue reading this post…