Jamie and I ventured off last weekend for a few days’ camping up Glacier Park.  It is just over 3 hours’ drive north of Missoula and there are various campsites and hiking trails throughout.  Below are a few photos of our adventure.  I may post more as time permits.

Jamie and I on a turnout off Going To The Sun Road from West Glacier

View from Going To The Sun Road (West Glacier) just after Weeping Wall

Our campsite in Rising Sun (Lake Mary - East Glacier).

Snow covered our day hike trail to Lake Otokomi (5.2 mi; 1900 ft elevation increase).  Plan for a 6-hour affair; it’s a long hike and bring plenty of food and water.

We undestimated the length of the hike and didn’t pack enough water.  Thankfully there were waterfalls and streams from the top of the mountain so we took our chances with one and replenished our supplies.

Jamie in a field of beargrass.  Many portions of our hike seemed like a “fantasy land”.  The hike alone was well worth it, including the workout.

Scenery during the drive to E. Glacier towards our campsite.

Goomzee “cameo”.  I have a few of these at various sites.  Shameless! 

This afternoon I hiked “the M” (Mount Sentinel) with a friend and his two dogs.  The University of Montana sits at the base of Mount Sentinel and along the Clark Fork River.  Just a few days ago I posted photos of a freak snowstorm but since Friday it’s been beautiful, mid to high 70-degree weather and sunny.  Below are some photos (panorama) of the Missoula valley.  Facing right while on the mountain is North and up Rattlesnake Creek.  As I pan left, you can see Interstate 90, the Clark Fork River and the bridges crossing the river heading downtown.  You can then see the valley which stretches approx 6-10 miles in each direction, surrounded by mountains on all sides.  To the left is the Bitterroot valley and Lolo peak.  Two main rivers converge in Missoula, the Clark Fork and Bitterroot rivers, each with other tributaries flowing into them, including Lolo Creek, Rattlesnake Creek, Blackfoot River and Rock Creek; world-renowned fly fishing.

Facing north looking up the Rattlesnake.

Interstate 90, Clark Fork River and Washington-Grizzly football stadium (UM Campus)

The University of Montana Campus, bridges crossing the Clark Fork to downtown Missoula.

Missoula valley with U of M campus at the base of Mount Sentinel (directly below)

Missoula Valley south looking toward the Bitterroot Valley and Lolo Peak.

We had a freak weather system and we actually saw snow, in JUNE!  Here is a photo taken of snow on Mount Sentinel here in Missoula, taken by my wife’s mobile phone this evening.

Snow in Missoula Montana in June.  This is not common, I promise. 

Last week I had a flurry of business meetings in and around Washington DC.  I was in Virginia, Maryland and DC and managed to walk around downtown Washington near the White House for one afternoon.  Below are a couple photos of the Washington Monument and also standing in front of the gates of the White House.

The grounds were fenced off because some foreign dignitaries were in town.  I am across from the White House and the Washington Monument is in the background.

Standing in front of the grounds to the White House in Washington DC.  The weather was perfect and a couple hours later it was raining so I got the best Washington had to offer.

Jamie and I hung out with friends at their family ranch in Victor, MT.  It is about 30 minutes south of Missoula and the views were so cool I thought I’d share.

Jamie and I in Victor Montana at friend’s ranch.

Today I read Machiavelli’s “The Prince” which was recommended reading for my friend’s MBA education and it really got me thinking.  About 2/3 through the book, Machiavelli speaks of hiring mercenaries and how they ultimately weaken the State.  If the mercenaries are successful in their job, then the State becomes indebted to them given the mercenary could align with an adversary and destroy the State.  This invoked thought about the globalization taking place and outsourcing.  I’m curious whether the outsourcing of a company’s key functions ultimately weaken it, despite the assumed efficiency it gains, and whether there any analogs between lessons learned in “The Prince” and what we see happening today.  What should and should not be contracted? 

My wife, Jamie, is an avid equestrian who competes in the sport of dressage.  It is all about the connection of horse and rider and she trains horses up through the levels.  Her last horse competed at Prix St. Georges and her baby, Aden (6 yrs), is getting ready to start competing this year.

Jamie on her horse, Aden.  Picture taken with LG flip phone at JMG Stables in Clinton, Montana.

We have a linux server running that hosts our internal systems like CRM.  We noticed significant slowdown of the system and failure to run batches on email.  In logging into the control panel for the server I was shocked to see 58GB of 73GB used for the disk.  Given only 9 domains and neither reported exceeding their allocated space, we didn’t know what used up all the space on the server.

I found two great resources that helped me isolate the issue.  First was identifying a series of commands that would display the largest files/directories on the server to start investigating:

# du -a /var | sort -n -r | head -n 10

Thanks to: nixCraft

I ran this command and found that /var and /var/logs and /var/logs/audit.d/  directories had 50GB of file system used up.  I found in /var/logs/audit.d/ that there were save.1, save.2 … files all over 2MB each and hundreds of them.  In searching online I learned that these audit logs were not crucial and followed instructions to remove them and turn the audit service off (given internal systems anyway).

See this post from: Frank Mash - thanks Frank!

After performing these two steps, the CRM system is running fine and faster than ever.  Our control panel reports only 5GB used of 73GB on disk and I can breathe easy for a little while.    Hope this helps somebody else out there.

Since last year my friend has been raving over Redbox, $1 DVD rentals, in our local Albertsons grocery stores. Given I usually buy all my DVDs (avid collector), I didn’t try the service. Tonight I tried for the first time. You can either choose from the onscreen menu on the machine or order online in advance. I chose the latter. It was very cool because I ordered two movies, showed up at Albertsons, swiped my credit card and out popped my 2 DVDs within less than a minute.

I’d recommend Redbox.  No subscriptions, no waiting for the mail, $1 rentals, no lines and no hassles.

I was surfing Facebook as I had some friend posts and requests left unanswered.  Some random browsing to a friend’s page and some other buddies must’ve posted some questionable material.  I thought this notice was kind of funny and definitely a “hip” way to deal w/ censored content.

I finally decided to “attack the mac” and get the environment working again after my Leopard upgrade.  In my prior post, I noted how the Leopard install turned off the web server and PHP (simple fix) but the major issue was killing my ability to run Castor and XML-based applications.

I scoured the forums and first deleted all copies of xalan.jar, xercesImpl.jar and xml-apis.jar.  I found the latest xalan-j package online, unzipped it and it contained the various jars including serializer.jar, resolver.jar, etc.

It took adding the -verbose:class flag to catalina.sh (extending $JAVA_OPTS variable) and various trial/error to finally get it right.  The solution was to place ALL xml-based jars in the /tomcat_home/common/endorsed/ directory.  I had them split between /common/lib/ and the endorsed directories and when I consolidated them all, everything started working.

If you use Spring Web Services (WS) then you may see the error on “could not create Envelope” and this was what we were seeing.  After placing all JARs in the common/endorsed directory and restarting Tomcat, everything worked.  I hope this helps someone from countless days of headaches.

See below the proper jars in proper directories (mine may vary based on usage):

ALL xml-based jars in the endorsed directory solved xerces and xalan errors after upgrading to Mac OSX Leopard.

I recently upgraded my OS on my Macbook Pro to Leopard.  I must say it was as painless as possible but there are a few hiccups given I have a web server and a few other development-oriented programs running on my notebook.  Apache and PHP were not working and I have an issue with the Fire multi-chat IM client, plus some classpath issues in Eclipse IDE.

To get Apache and PHP working again:

- Preferences: Sharing: Web Sharing [turn on]

- Leopard installs PHP 5 and Apache 2.2 and I learned that it creates an entirely new config directory for apache.  I racked my brain over this one as it used to be /etc/httpd/ …  all the configs looked correct until I learned that Apache was now running from /etc/apache2/ so I edited the httpd.conf file and turned on the php5 module and restarted Apache and it worked.

- sudo vi httpd.conf  and uncomment the line w/ the PHP5 module

- sudo apachectl restart

I am still working on the Eclipse issue to get that working again and will likely use a different multi-chat client (unless Fire has an upgrade).

My friend, Garren Du, recently launched a new sports site in time for Super Bowl Madness.  Football Squares and Fan Site

Why use Rival Central for your Super Bowl Squares league?

• Create as many leagues as you want online and manage them from a single account.
• Invite league members to sign up and join your league by providing them with a League ID and League Password.
• Get your squares filled quickly, all through the internet.
• League members can log in, select and view all of their squares immediately and online.
• League Commissioners can lock the squares, assign squares to players that may not have internet access, and kick out deadbeat players.
• And the best part is - IT’S COMPLETELY FREE!

Rival Central will be your premier online sports gaming management tool. Expect player leagues to be ready in time for NCAA March Madness. More sports-related competitions will follow for popular college and professional sports. Rival Central is a competition oriented community Website. Services provided by Rival Central are for private amusement and entertainment purposes only.

Rival Central Online Sports Gaming Management

I just received this update from TWICE (This Week in Consumer Electronics) and thought I’d share - thankfully I don’t have any iPod accessories but sorry for those that may face this issue:

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Given everyone was off on New Years Day, Jamie and I decided to continue to be productive so in the morning we took a dip in the hot tub, had some lunch, and then proceeded to remove the old 70’s paneling that adorns most of the walls in the basement.

One of our goals was to knock down the wall between the family room and one of the bedrooms to make a larger living space area but I wasn’t sure whether I’d have to hire an engineer to help us design a beam to support the load.  Much to my pleasant surprise, I learned that the “make-shift” bedroom was not a load bearing wall and the original floorplan called for 2 2×10 headers with a beam between them that rests on top of the foundation wall.  I saw the beam after removing the paneling and then tested by removing the closet, then removing some studs and the entire wall was free standing!  See demo pics below:

Wood paneling and spare bedroom.  See removed panel exposed beam the covers the span.

We demoed the closet that was in the bedroom, and then I got the fun job of punching and kicking out the particle board.  Jamie got in on the “fun” to and man-handled the remaining sheet into submission.

Dust still settling as I knocked out the remaining studs for the wall.  The two rooms are now opened up.

As soon as I decide where to re-rout the electrical switch, I’ll knock out those remaining two studs on the right.  Now we just have to find a place to haul all the scrap material - I’ll be re-using some of the studs to build an in-wall entertainment unit at the far end.  I’m also installing the electrical components into the wall to the right so there will be access from under the stairs for wiring, etc.  Enjoy!

I had a couple days off and so did everyone else. Well that didn’t stop me from jailbreaking my iPod Touch, installing new apps and on the non-geeky side, ripping down paneling and knocking out a wall in my basement to make a large family room. We’ll ignore the latter project for now and I thought I’d share my discovery for opening up your iPod Touch to install at a minimum, the same apps that are included on the iPhone.

Screen Snaps of my iPod Touch (now multiple pages of apps):

Read below to find out how to install additional applications on your iPod Touch. No tech support offered but it does work, all the steps are included and some additional snapshots at the bottom of this post. I hope this helps!

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A friend of mine is a seasoned Venture Capitalist based in Austin Texas and was kind enough to share his former fund’s due-diligence checklist with me. This helped me prepare for our own fundraising and ensure we had everything in order ahead of time. I was allowed to share this list and thought it might be helpful to others - it’s great for any company, whether fundraising or not, in that it forces you to actually have a plan and your documentation, strategy and financial/legal documents in order. ENJOY!

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From Spring Framework 2.5 Tutorial. Given AspectJ pointcut expressions can seem somewhat cryptic, I thought sharing these examples might be useful.

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I was using Bluetooth and tried to use the OBEX commands to send a file to my LG VX8350 phone but the phone was locked down for that file type. It refused the file. I then chose the browse option, navigated to the MyPictures folder, and transferred the file successfully. This may be a helpful workaround for anyone trying to test pictures, etc. on cell phones. (hint)

See the error you may have faced and then see my solution below (for Mac OSX):

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