Nationals 2006 -- Wednesday

Industry Expo Center, City of Industry, CA -- Every thing is settling in for this year's AVA/USEF National Vaulting Championships. Today the main vaulting competition rings and the two warm up rings were in place by mid day in the Expo Center's Grand arena. Following the required vet checks the competitors began practicing on their horses. Many of the vaulters showed significant improvements during the afternoon practice sessions as they and their horses became accustomed to the surroundings. Several of the team freestyle routines look like they will be very impressive this year.
Setup was also completed of the "white arena" [barrel area] in the west end of the Expo Center's Grand arena. At a few minutes past two in the afternoon the Para-Nationals competition began in the "white arena". Performing in this pre-nationals event were vaulters from Valley View, Flying Stars, Elkhorn Equestrian, Half Moon Bay, Oak Hills, Starlite, Flying Stars, Flying B clubs. Many of these vaulters performed for the crowd of about 60 spectators despite significant disabilities.
As the afternoon advanced, the overhead misters and an afternoon breeze brought temperatures in the stands down to comfortable temperatures. The moderating temperatures in the Los Angles area should only make things better as the weekend's events unfold.
It looks like every thing is ready for the AVA & USEF recognized events to kick off tomorrow morning.
Watch these pages for more reports and in the near future VaultingCast.com interviews with competitors, coaches, trainers and [hopefully] a judge or two.

Progress: Distributed Family / Home Backup Networks

I've made some significant progress toward setting up a Distributed Family / Home Backup Network. Over the past few weeks I've been squeezing in some time hacking on my Linux server. I successfully got the Server version of Ubuntu Linux installed on my <$100 used IBM Personal Computer 300GL, aptly named LampCat. LampCat is a 400MHz PII with 376 MB RAM, an 8GB internal hard drive and a 100GB external USB 2.0 hard disk. Using just SSH connections I installed and configured Apache and a few other apps. I've also been backing-up the home directory off my AMD64 desktop machine, LinCat64, (running the AMD64 version of Ubuntu Linux) to LampCat using rsync.

The big acomplishment came this past weekend when I finially configured the various NAT routers in our house to allow access to LampCat from the outside Internet. For some reasion my SpeedStream 2604 won't forward port 80 properly, but forwards HTTP fine on another arbitrary port. I also was able do a rsync back-up after to opening the SSH port and using the fully qualified domain name.

On LampCat I still need to configure some file permissions so the backup process can be done as some user other then root and configure secure access to the backed-up filed via the HTTP server. I might also install wordpress.

Horse Show

I entered my first horse show in at least twenty five years this past Sunday. [I may have been in one near my grandparents farm when I was a kid.] The show at Farrel McWhirter Park in Redmond was just a local schooling show, so it wasn't too serious an affair, and thus I didn't spend as much time practicing as I might have.

It took us about forty minutes to ride down to the park with a couple of other horses from our barn. Cali and I entered two classes, finishing fourth in the English, Walk-Trot Equitation class and third in the Open Halter class. Our friends from Mecca finished their entries before the lunch break so after the show Cali and I rode back up the hill to Mecca by ourselves.

This and more photos are on my Flickr account.

Re: Christian Humor

I was skeptical when I read the subject. But it's a good one.

Carol Sayles <teacher_carol@ya...> wrote:

This came from Dave Pritcherd of Iowa State Days.

I LOL so thought you might too.

 

SOME CHRISTIAN HUMOR

 

 Jesus and Satan were having an on-going argument about who was better on the computer.  They had been going at it for days, and frankly God was tired of hearing all the bickering.

 

 Finally fed up, God said, "THAT'S IT! I have had enough.  I am going to set up a test that will run for two hours, and from those results, I will judge who does the better job."

 

 So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.

 

 They moused.

 

 They faxed.

 

 They e-mailed.

 

 They e-mailed with attachments.

 

  They downloaded.

 

 They did spreadsheets.

 

 They wrote reports.

 

 They created labels and cards.

 

 They created charts and graphs.

 

 They did some genealogy reports

 

 They did every job known to man.

 

 Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster than hell.

 

 Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power went off.

 

Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld.

 

Jesus just sighed.

 

Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted their computers.  Satan started searching frantically, screaming:

 

 "It's gone! It's all GONE!

 

 "I lost everything when the power went out!"

 

 Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work.

 

 Satan observed this and became irate.

 

 "Wait!" he screamed.

 

 "That's not fair! He cheated!

 

How come he has all his work and I don't have any?"

 

 God just shrugged and said, JESUS SAVES.

 

---

Want to be your own boss? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business.

[howto] General 6.06 - SCRIPT: Take back the Firefox & Thunderbird logo - Ubuntu Support Forums

This a way cool script for Dapper Drake.

[howto] General 6.06 - SCRIPT: Take back the Firefox & Thunderbird logo - Ubuntu Support Forums

Upgraded to 64 bit Ubuntu

On after trying to print a complex document (with lots of other programs running) Wednesday morning, when I hot home Wednesday evening I found that my main desktop machine had hung (black screen / screen saver). I'm still not sure if this was due to a hardware issue (likely a hard drive write-back failure) or some other software bug. After a bit of fiddling attempting to recover, I went ahead and installed the AMD64 version of Ubuntu's recent Dapper Drake (ver 6.06) release onto an empty partition. It took a couple of passes to get it up and going, but all seems well at this point. I also had to set back up a few hardware items like my $29.99 HP Photosmart 1215 printer.

Fortunately all of my personal data was on a separate hard drive partition and was quickly and easily backed up to an external USB hard drive. So with the new Linux install I still have all my settings, preferences and data files.

Hard Drive Failure?

I think the hard drive with the boot partition on my main desktop machine is on having problems. So my e-mail access on my soot-n-smoke account may be a bit flakly until I can diagnose it.

My /home is on a different disk and I'm running a complete back-up tonight.

Ten Years of Soot-n-Smoke.com

It was ten years ago this month that I first registered the Soot-n-Smoke.com domain name.

First Bread

The present from my parents was a "Breadman Ultimate" [TR2200C]. I opened it Thursday evening [6/8] because I was leaving for a competition in Canada on Friday. I also made the first loaf (1 lb) with it using the "100% Whole Wheat Bread" recipe from the Instruction Manual & Recipe Guide.
It's a nice machine with lots of features including three different loaf sizes, 1, 1.5 & 2 lbs. It cleans up easily.
My only problem so far is that the loaf shape is a bit awkward. The Breadman machine that my friend Josh has makes a tall skinny loaf that has the aspect ratio of a normal store loaf stood on end, and thus slices fit nicely in the toaster. The larger (2 lbs) loaf from my machine ends up being the same width as a normal loaf but taller.
This past week I've been working out a recipe similar to the one I used back when I lived with Josh. I'm going for sweet and dense with a flaky crust that isn't too bad nutritionally.

[Fwd: Important - Your Web Addresses have expired]

I'm getting expiration notices for my domain, when I have in fact transfered it to another domain registrar, GoDaddy.com. [Check WhoIs.net.]

This is either poor marketing on your part, or more likely a bug in your system.

Please pass this information on to your managers and automated mail system developers.

TTFN
    Tom Sayles


Note: Links below have been modified.
-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Important - Your Web Addresses have expired
Date:	Sun, 11 Jun 2006 14:03:02 -0400
From:	Renewals - Register.com <renewals@imail.register.com>
Reply-To:	Renewals - Register.com <renewals.L2SZW.151795@imail.register.com>
To:	tsayles@... .com

YOUR WEB ADDRESSES HAVE EXPIRED! If you do not renew the domain names below, you will lose them! You have received this email because you have not yet renewed your names, or Register.com could not process the credit card on file for your names. Your Web addresses expired: 06-JUN-06 Click here and renew with Invitation Code S#####7 THE LONGER YOU RENEW, THE MORE YOU SAVE! SOOT-N-SMOKE.COM 06-JUN-06 The more years you choose, the more you save with invitation code SYS547*   RENEW FOR     SPECIAL PRICE     YOU SAVE     1 Year     $35.00     -     2 Years     $49.95     28%     3 Years     $65.95     37%     5 Years     $92.95     46%     7 Years     $115.95     52%     *savings off year-by-year renewal at $35/year Don't forget to enter invitation code S####7 to receive these special prices. *You will not lose any time on your current term by renewing today* When you renew your addresses with Register.com, you'll continue to enjoy:        24/7 customer service    Web site forwarding - point your Web address to an existing site    1 page template-based Web page Please note that once your domain name expires, you will no longer have rights to that name and Register.com may make it available for sale or auction to third parties.** To avoid having your name auctioned, sold or deleted, please click here to renew. Thank you for using Register.com. Customer Support http://www.register.com Forget your password? Click here Questions? More information about renewing your domain names through Register.com Get online Customer Support Or call us toll free in the U.S. and Canada:    (877) 731-4440 Outside the U.S. and Canada:    +1 (902) 749-5917 *Please do not reply to this email. Replying to this email will not secure your domain names* **For more information on auctioning domain names, please click here Please be aware that if you do not renew your domain names, all products and services associated with them will be deactivated. All domain name registrations and renewals are subject to the terms and conditions of our Services Agreement. © 2006 Register.com, Inc. All rights reserved. 575 Eighth Avenue, 11th Floor New York, NY 10018