Grim Notion’s Blog

Delivery Exception

I’d like to know why I’m still waiting for Brenda’s main present to get delivered by FedEx when UPS managed to get things delivered to the hardware store in Amboy even in the worst of this weather. FedEx’s website tracking system claims weather delay, delivery exception, etc. when it’s been clear on the main roads for most of the days since Christmas. This package was shipped on the 11th of Dec. and has yet to arrive. I think this is the most pathetic service I’ve ever seen in my life.

Sorry for the rant, but at this point, I think this beyond stupid.

Snow Casualty

My newly painted truck is now sporting a dented driver’s door (the one I just replaced in Sept.) and bed. I was trying to maneuver around here in the driveway around the piled up snow and rubbed a icy bank of snow where I’d been digging so I could get the truck off the main loop and make a place for Brenda to get her Jeep up nearer to the door. I was pretty sick about after all the work I put into straigtening the sheet metal and painting it this summer. I think what I’m going to do is get some 3/8″ aluminum diamond plate and make my own armor for the body from the door handles down as I can see this happening again and I don’t want to go through this every year.

The snow was melting but now it’s snowing again… argh! My wrists are a mess from carpal tunnel which was severly aggrevated by all shoveling I did. I’m thinking about getting a used Bobcat to deal with the ongoing snow. It seems every year now we’re inundated with it up here.

And to top it off, our heat pump has a coating of ice encasing the main fan so it’s useless now. Luckily there is some sort of backup furnace built into the system and we have the woodstove.

White Christmas

The remains of the soft storage used to keep the Wrangler dry.

It’s beginning to look like we’ll have a white Christmas here. With 22″ of snow on the ground and more forecast, I think it’s a safe bet. Seeing as this is my first Christmas home since 2005, it will be nice, although I’m really wishing I would have bought a plow for my truck. Even with posi front and rear I managed to get it stuck yesterday. You can only push so much snow I suppose.

But, I even got it stuck and got to shovel snow for a while.

Brenda picked up the movie White Christmas the other day. I’d never seen it before and I’m not sure it will go down as one of my favorites, like Christmas Vacation, but I suppose it’s good to finally get an idea what Clark Griswold was talking about in his famous outburst. Holidays can be stressful!

I finally finished my Insurance courses for Life and Health and Property and Casualty and now have the test scheduled for two Sundays in January. It’s pretty boring stuff, but like with the Real Estate courses, I learned a lot. It’s interesting and makes you wonder how they come up with the exclusions and nuances of the laws. I’ve also been studying for my Amateur Radio Extra class license. At least that makes more sense and has more apparent logic to it. I hadn’t worked with logarthmic functions and tangents in a long time, but I always enjoyed math and find it intellectually challenging. That test was supposed to be Sunday, but with the weather, it’s been postponed.

Published Poetry

The Smoking Poet has published their Winter issue, and if you are curious about what poem of mine got published, please visit: http://www.thesmokingpoet.net/id10.html and scroll down until you see the title, “Part of My Soul”. I wrote this poem when I was taking the last of my college classes while stationed in Korea, however, I find it as meaningful today as I did then.

Perhaps it’s hard to understand if you don’t smoke a pipe, I don’t know. I know that I fondly recall the pipe I wrote it about and wish it were still with me. Unfortunately, pipes wear out.

Happy Holidays,

Steve

Snow and Holiday Cheer

Last night we came home from a holiday party at about 12:30 and there was about 1/2″ of snow on the ground. It had started a snow/rain mix earlier in the day, but when we left at 5:30 it was just wet. But this morning at 8:30am we had 7.5″ on the deck. Tonight we have another holiday get-together so I guess I’ll go knock the snow down around the driveway. I need to keep the snow off the portable shed the Jeep sits in to, or I’m sure it will collapse under the weight like part of my barn did last year.

I always enjoy getting together with friends during this time of the year, and since it’s been a while since I’ve been around, it’s really special this year. I was over at my friend Keith’s yesterday before the party so he could proctor some tests I needed to take for the insurance courses, and we had some Brrr!, a Widmer seasonal ale that was quite tasty. It amazes me the stuff he makes in his shop. He had made a bagful of stainless screws out of hexogonal stock that had a stepped down area like a collar then some fine threads for mounting print heads on a thermal transfer print machine. It’s one of those things you just can’t go buy anywhere anymore, so making them is the only way to get them. Anyway, I find it fascinating to be able to create stuff like that.

Enjoy the weekend!

Bush Be-Gone

My friend Scott sent me a link to this and I just couldn’t pass up posting a link here. I think it’s a great way to show your support for getting rid of the bush and celebrating a great new beginning for our country.

I’d like to see a contest for the most interesting design too. At various strip clubs I’ve been to, I’ve seen the Chevy logo, stars and I forget what all else trimmed in down there and it never ceases to amaze me.

Bring It On

In trying to get some sort of help for my chronic back pain, it became clear with my first ( since who know’s when ) referral to a specialist that having a good day is counter-productive to getting any assistance I decided that before I go in for my MRI, I’d make sure it’s a typical day after doing something I enjoy. So I spent the afternoon cutting, splitting and stacking firewood. My back is toast now and hopefully it will show up on the MRI accordingly in the morning.

It’s a shame that if you go to see the doctor on a good day, when you’ve been taking care of yourself and not doing the things you love, they see it as a condition that does not warrant any interdiction. But if that’s what it takes, so be it. I did something I love today and I’m hurting badly. I’ll sleep in the bed tonight, which will aggravate it all the more and hopefully, there will be some evidence that yes, indeed, Steve endures a pain level doing normal activities that warrant some sort of help.

Sorry, this is a whiney sort of entry, but I thought I’d share a little.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannuka, Great Kwanza, etc.

Tis The Season

I think it’s a real statement of how ignorant people truly are when I hear about the stories like the one in the Washington State Capitol over the Atheist’s sign stating their beliefs next to the nativity scene. Whenever a Pagan wants to display something during this time of the year, the Christians are outraged and try to impress upon everyone that this is their holiday, when in fact it is not. It was a Pagan holiday celebrating the birth of a new year and the death of the old year many years before Jesus was born.

When Christianity came into fashion and then became the state religion of Rome, it was a move by Constantine to unite the empire. But the new official religion was outraged that the new Christians still celebrated the old Pagan customs; it was ingrained in them, so much a part of their life they wouldn’t just stop. Giving thanks for a bountiful harvest, celebrating the end of the cold months of Winter and the dawn of a new Spring, offerings and celebrations to appease Nature for the success of coming crops. This was intolerable to the Church and in order to stop it, they made “Christian” holidays that coincided closely with  the old Pagan holidays in an effort to transition the people into the new more fashionable religion.

Don’t believe me? Ask a Jehovah’s Witness. This is the reason they don’t celebrate any of the holidays, because they know full well of their Pagan roots.

I’m glad Gregiore is sticking up for the first amendment rights of the Atheists that posted their sign, even if it goes against her beliefs. I didn’t vote for her but I’m glad to see our governer has the guts to stick with the law and not cave into the right wing hypocrites who are so clueless about their own religion. I don’t mind having a tree called a Christmas Tree decorated in public places, hell, I’ll have one too because I don’t see it as an expression of Christianity, it’s a tradition, like Santa Claus. But Christmas is special to a lot of Christians because of what they believe and that’s fine, just don’t go pissing on everyone who believes differently’s Cheerios and let them express themselves too.

Cisco IOS Password Recovery

A friend called me about this today and I couldn’t remember the steps to recover a password from the Cisco IOS for a local user account, so I thought I’d post the steps here.

In this scenario, you have an account created in the local user database of the router or switch and need to recover the password. Keep in mind this works with passwords that are not encrypted with the “secret” keyword and one-way encrypted, but rather, for the passwords that are using encryption lite, or the password keyword when the account is created.

For example, we have this in the config:

username cisco password 7 060506324F41

And you need to know what that password is. Hmm, there are some utilities out there to help you “crack” the password, but as long as you have access to the router, why bother? Do this to find out the plain-text password:

router#config t

router#(config)key chain GET-PASSWORD
router#(config) key 1

router#(config)  key-string 7 060506324F41  <–pasted from show run, cut & paste the password part

router#(config)do show key chain GET-PASSWORD
Key-chain GET-PASSWORD:
key 1 — text “cisco”
accept lifetime (always valid) - (always valid) [valid now]
send lifetime (always valid) - (always valid) [valid now]
router#(config)

There you have it, the plain-text version of the password. Now delete the key chain and go on about your business, there’s nothing to see here folks.

If you want to make your passwords secure using IOS as the user account database, use “username bob secret password” and it won’t be susceptible to this little trick or any others I know about. Secret causes the IOS to use an MD5 Hash that is not reversible.

Free eBook and Suicide Prevention

I’m pasting in a press release that I wrote announcing that I’m now giving away an electronic version of the book, Revelations For A New Age, and that all the profits from sales of the printed version will be donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

I know many of you have already purchased the book and I’m not expecting you to buy another, but you can help out by helping me get the word out and if you haven’t already done so, write a review and post it on Amazon. It’s a good cause and I hope that this will help out others who are contemplating a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Press Release

The suicide rate for males between 40-64 has jumped nearly 16% between 1999 and 2005, according to an article in the LA Times in October of 2008. This alarming trend’s reason is not known, however, researchers believe there is a connection between the abuse of prescription drugs and suicide.

Mr. Steven Schoeneman, of Amboy, Washington, wants to help by donating all the profits from the sales of his book, Revelations For A New Age, to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The book, a science-fiction novel, was co-authored by his friend Mark Wheeler who committed suicide in 2001.

“The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is the leading not-for-profit organization exclusively dedicated to understanding and preventing suicide through research and education, and reaching out to people with mood disorders and those impacted by suicide,” taken from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s 2007 Annual Report. According to this report, over 84% of every dollar donated goes directly to research and prevention programs.

It’s Mr. Schoeneman’s hope that people will not only enjoy reading this novel, but know that they have helped make an impact on a problem that needlessly kills 32,000 Americans each year.

Media: Contact author for interviews or review copies. Visit www.revelationsforanewage.com (“Media” link) for cover art, bios, author picture, and reviews. The book retails for $15 and can be purchased from Create Space, Amazon or directly from www.revelationsforanewage.com.