Pyranha I:3 222

Lightly used Pyranha I:3 222 yellow with orange swirls. Has been stored inside. Good river runner and playboat.

Deb and Conor

Conor Phillip Reilly at 8 weeks with grandma Deb.

Aidan Paul Reilly - One Month Old

Deb and I headed to Boston March 30 to see Aidan Paul Reilly who was born February 28, 2007.

Aidan is a hungry little rascal and lets out an indignant roar when you try to burp him in the middle of a meal. As long as you do not interrupt his meal time, he is a curious and good natured baby.

Aidan had gained 5 ounces during the previous week and now tops the scales at 8 pounds 4 ounces.

My Network Places / Workgroup not Visible

Ok, so I'm cruising along and I want to grab a file off of another computer on my LAN workgroup. I go to My Network Places, click the shared folder, and there is a hesitation then the window closes. I go back to Start, now My Network Places is no longer there! So I begin troubleshooting the workgroup and file sharing. This happened in early November as I reported in my blog and I was perplexed at it occurring again when I thought the problem had been resolved.

A few curious observations: 1) I could go to Start -> Search -> Computer and give a name of one of my workgroup computers to get to the shared files. So the issue seemed to be with the workgroup administration not the file sharing from the individual computers.

As part of my troubleshooting, I learned more about computer browser and downloaded browstat from http://rescomp.stanford.edu/staff/manual/rcc/tools/browstat.zip

Using browstat I got
Could not connect to registry, error = 53

After reading about likely causes for this error and http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2006/04/netbios-over-tcpip.html ; I went to all machines and insured NetBIOS over TCP/IP was enabled ( not default ). The problem seems to have resolved now.

For many years I have had a trouble free workgroup with all machines running XP home. This summer I added a machine with XP Pro. I'm wondering if the addition of the XP Pro was the catalyst for the workgroup issues.

netstat, net view, and other XP network commands

In diagnosing an XP workgroup problem, I learned about 'net view' which can be issued at the command line to show the computers in the workgroup. In addition, typing 'net view \\computername' will show the shared resources available on a machine in the workgroup. This was faster than reloading the gui view of network neighborhood as I tweaked settings to resolve the problem.

For TCP/IP networking commands: take a look at http://commandwindows.com/tcpiputil.htm.

Here I especially like 'netstat -a' to show all activity on the machine's ports. The command 'netstat -?' shows all netstat options. I used 'netstat -o' to determine process ids of odd looking connections. Then I looked at task manager and changed the view to show the pid. ( Though I could have typed tasklist at the command prompt.) So those strange looking connections?: one was from foldershare and another mcafee. If you suspect a trojan horse has taken over your machine, take a look at http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=443453
for help with the detective work including a list of known malware and the ports used.

Ports from 0 to 1023 are commonly used for services like mail, etc – generally not used for Trojans
Ports from 1024 to 49151 are registered for particular services for example – mysql uses port 3306 and oracle typically uses 1521
Ports above 49151 are rarely used except so suspect a Trojan or other malicious software

During this investigation , I noticed many attempts to enter the machine via UDP on port 1026. Apparently, this is incoming messenger spam. http://www.linklogger.com/UDP1026.htm

Windows XP Workgroup Not Accessible

I have long used a workgroup on my home network to easily share files and transfer files among machines. I recently began having problems after changing the network configuration to one wired machine and the rest on the network to wireless. This would not have been an issue except that the one wired machine had a firewall blocking communication with the workgroup.

After reading about the microsoft computer browser service at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/188001
and working through the suggestions at http://winhlp.com/WxNetwork.htm#Workgroup_is_not_accessible
, I resolved the problems. I modified the firewall to allow windows file sharing with NETBIOS on ports 137-139. Now the desktop with the wired connection can assume the role of master browser and workgroup irregularities have disappeared.

In the process, I found one of the laptops with both a wired and wireless adapter, needed to have the workgroup configured by the network wizard for both adapters at the same time. My clue about this was that MSHOME kept showing up in the network neighborhood in addition to my existing workgroup name. Another glitch with the laptop was healed after noticing one of the network adaptors did not allow file and print sharing. In the future, I will ensure both the wired and wireless adapters allow file and print sharing.

I learned about useful windows commands for networking like 'net view' that I'll discuss in my next blog.

Knu-Pac Portage Frame

In September of 2006 I completed my first trip to the Minnesota Boundary Waters; an 11 day / 10 night outing traveling over 60 miles with some 20 miles of portages. I used a knu-pac to portage an almost 60 pound canoe. While portaging was still a challenge, the knu-pac transformed the portages of the canoe to a task I could handle without straining my back or shoulders. I highly recommend it for anyone to carry a canoe (http://www.knupac.com).

Rails - Lighttpd and SSL

I'll be back later to report on my experiences with lighttpd and ssl.