bogen.org

As the winter of 2004-2005 winds down here in Madison, the rhythms of our lives are changing.Dalla’s Spring Fur Explosion has begun in earnest. Usually, this means our house is absolutely coated in dog fur for several weeks. This year, we’re taking a different tack. In addition to brushing the dog regularly, we’re also vacuuming the dog. We use a canister vac with an upholstery attachment. If we’re careful to keep the attachment from sucking up skin instead of fur, Dalla really gets into the whole affair.

Sarah and I have been planning our gardens. We applied to get a plot in a local community garden since there are very few (read: none) good spots in our yard for a garden since almost no location gets what would be defined as “full sun.” If we don’t get a plot in the community garden, we have a contingency plan that involves a raised bed, some tilling of new gardens, and plenty of hope.

Ira should come out of the fridge tomorrow into his cleaned and renovated indoors tortoise house.

Of course, with the weather we’re having, I might just put in outside for a few hours. Today we had highs in the mid-sixties and tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer.

I pulled out the grill tonight and dinner (a chicken) is roasting away on it while I write this. It will be very good to eat grilled foods again. The broiler is a sorry substitute for a good charcoal grill.

Recently, I ordered two pairs of blue jeans from LL Bean, my blue jean supplier of choice for the last ten years or so. However, LL Bean seems to be following the trend of making blue jeans bigger. That is, a 34″ waist is no longer truly 34″. I first noticed this with a pair of Lands End jeans. I got a 34″x34″ pair as a gift. That is the same size I’ve been wearing for the last ten years, and it is the same size I recently ordered from LL Bean. Apparently, the inch the folks in Dodgeville, WI (where Lands End is based), and Freeport, ME, use a different inch than the rest of us. In both cases, the jeans are noticeably bigger than they used to be. It like they started making 35″ or 36″ jeans and marketing them as 34″ jeans to make people feel better about getting bigger.

My fantasy baseball team drafted last night and I got a variety of players from the Minnesota Twins, which made me happy. I like to have players on my fantasy team from my favorite team in real life. That makes it easy to cheer for both. Like last year, I held to a hard and fast rule against drafting any New York Yankees. There are plenty of suckers to draft those bums.

Sarah was sick most of last week with a really nasty cold. In my usual understated fashion, I took to calling it “The Plague.”Before either of us would leave, I would make sure to collect a “Plague Kiss” from her. Unfortunately, I must have collected too many Plague Kisses, because I got the Plague last Wednesday.

Delightfully enough, I still have the Plague today.

In addition to rubbing our noses raw, Sarah and I have been busy. Last Saturday, we started dog sitting while some friends of ours went to Spain for two weeks. Maya, a six year old reddish Golden Retriever is staying with us through next Monday. She’s a different personality than Dalla. While Dalla couldn’t care less about chasing Frisbees, Maya lives to grab Frisbees out of the air. Dalla generally doesn’t care much for toys unless they have some value to another dog. Maya places a very high value on toys. So, for the next week-plus we’ll have two dogs to follow our every move in the kitchen.

Friday night, I sold programs for the UW/Alaska Anchorage Men’s Hockey Playoff game at the Dane County Coliseum. The building was built in the late sixties or early seventies, so it’s definitely past its salad days. Compared to the Kohl Center the Coliseum looks especially dated. My initial thought as I walked around the building was, “What a dump.” That thought was shared, out loud, by many of the people entering the building. After a while, I realized that the Coliseum isn’t really a dump, it just isn’t as new as the Kohl Center. In fact, compared to The Maracaná in Rio de Janeiro, the Coliseum is actually a marvel of modern American sports construction. For instance, let’s compare a men’s room in the Coliseum to one in the The Maracaná:

What I realized was that all these people probably had no basis for comparison. They probably thought, “Compared to the Kohl Center, this place isn’t very nice.” But, most of them probably don’t realize just how nice they have it.

At most the Coliseum holds 10,000 people in climate controlled comfort with concessions regulated by a health agency and a surrounding neighborhood that would never be described as a slum.

The Maracaná holds upwards of 175,000 in tropical heat and humidity with concessions dispensed by random guys wandering the aisles and a surrounding neighborhood so rife with crime, drugs, and poverty that a platoon of Marines might think twice about entering it.

Perhaps some of my fellow Wisconsin residents could use a healthy injection of perspective.

Sarah went to the game there Saturday night with one of her friends, and they both agreed that it is a better place to watch hockey than the Kohl Center. The building is older, but the sightlines are better, the fans are closer to the action, and the piped in music is less obnoxious.

We also jumped into the world of satellite radio last week with our acquisition of a Delphi Roady2 XM Radio receiver. During the six months of the NFL offseason, we just don’t watch much television. We mostly use our DirecTV service during those months to listen to commercial free music (especially jazz since there is no Madison jazz station). Rather than pay over $40/month for a handful of radio stations, we decided to pay less than $15/month for a hundred or more stations. So, for six months, we’ll just have broadcast television and satellite radio. The first year we won’t save much money (though we’ll save some) because of the equipment costs, but the next year we’ll save a fair amount.

The weekend before last we had some gorgeous weather here in Madison. On Sunday, it even got to sixty degrees. That day really awoke the gardening bug within us. Unfortunately, we’ve had nothing but cold, snowy, windy weather since.

Ira is still in the vegetable crisper in the fridge. He is holding steady at 12.1 ounces. I’m ordered him a new heat lamp, and when it arrives, I’ll wake him up for the spring and summer.

Rather than post long winded, self-important movie reviews that I doubt anyone reads, I use a minimalist system.

The “Thumb’s Up; Thumb’s Down” system sounds like it might be nice, but in reality, it’s binary nature leads to unncessary praise and criticism for movies. Some movies are watchable, but not necessarily good. Does that mean they get a thumbs up or a thumbs down? For instance, I would rather spend my time taking in a watchable movie than be bored for two hours on a plane without a good book. Or, if I’m in the mood to just vegetate in front of the television for two hours, a watchable movie is certainly better than infomercials or reruns.

With that in mind, I’m going to use the following three classifications for movies:

• See It – You should make an effort to see this movie. For whatever reason, you will not be disappointed.
• Skip It – Don’t waste your time with this turkey.
• Slack It – The movie is watchable. It isn’t good. It isn’t bad. Don’t make any extraordinary effort to see it. If you have some slack time, and this movie is in front of your face, then watch it. If you just need to veg out, and this movie is available, you could do worse.

We’ve been busy since the last time I wrote in this space.Wednesday (05 Jan) and Thursday (06 Jan), Madison got just short of nine inches of snow. Considering the slight dustings that had preceded it, that snow was actually welcome. Sure, we had to shovel the walk no less than five times over the two days, but that was worth it for a good volume of snow.

Over the weekend, we were finally able to get out and do some cross country skiing. Over the summer, I equipped myself with various bits and pieces of nordic ski gear by shopping end-of-season sales and garage sales. In late October, I had one of the local ski shops integrate my bindings on to my skis so I would be ready when the snow flew. Ha, ha. No need to hurry, certainly as the city of Madison didn’t get more than a dusting until Christmas (when we were in South Dakota) and that snow was all but gone when we returned.

So, both Saturday (08 Jan) and Sunday (09 Jan) morning, Sarah and I took our skis and Dalla out for some Nordic action. Dalla still doesn’t completely understand the concept of nordic skiing, but she does like the fact that we cover ground faster with skis than on foot. Sometimes she is guilty of stopping on the trail just in front of our moving skis. At that point, we either crash into her or fall of the trail to avoid said crash.

Regardless of Dalla’s lack of understanding, we all had fun getting out and about.

Saturday night (08 Jan), we had some friends over for dinner. They recently had a child, and this was the first time said child had ventured over to our place. We were curious to see how Dalla would react to a small person invading her living space. She does very well with small children (much better than with adults, actually), but we didn’t want her to get the idea that the baby was prey. She was curious about the kid (and especially about the odors coming from his posterior), but not terribly jealous or concerned. I’m not at all used to having kids in the house, so every time he made a noise while dozing, I thought it was the dog.

Monday, Sarah and I finally, mostly, finished up our attic insulation project. We rented a U-Haul truck, picked up an insulation blower from a local hardware store, and spent three hours blowing cellulose insulation into our attic. When we bought the house, we learned that parts of the attic were generally uninsulated. As we worked on various projects related to getting our skylights installed and finished, we learned that only part of the attic was uninsulated. The other part was wildly uninsulated.

So, we’ve been working constantly towards getting another R-19 or so insulation up in the attic. Finally, we reached a point where all or most of the prep work had been done and it was time to get the insulation in the attic already. Considering how rapidly the weather turned frigid (two days later), we got that work done just in time.

Tuesday night, I made it a point to attend and speak at a local government committee meeting. The Mayor of Madison is ramrodding through a ridiculous idea, and even though it was tilting at windmills, I felt obliged to trot downtown and speak my piece.

After the meeting, we met up with some friends of ours who were in town checking out the medical school. They live in Seattle currently and I hadn’t seen them for a very, very, very long time. We had a drink together at a downtown bar, and then we went home while they went back to their hotel.

Wednesday night, the same friends came over to our house for dinner before starting on their long trip back to Seattle. It was fun to show them our house, sit around a dinner table with them, and generally spend time with them. Hopefully, the enjoyed Madison enough to consider putting UW-Madison near the top of their list.

The weather of late has been South Dakota cold with temperatures well below 10 degrees. The past few days, we’ve gotten up to temperatures well below zero.

Despite the frigid weather, we went hiking Sunday morning with the dog at one of the local state parks. Saturday afternoon, we took our skis and skied around Capitol Square. A qualifying event for the US Olympic Ski Team was being held in Madison in a rather unique format. 80 truckloads of snow were made by one of the local ski areas. That snow was then trucked to Madison, and dumped around the Capitol building late Friday night and early Saturday morning. By Saturday morning, a groomed cross-country ski track had been completely laid around the Capitol.

There was a time set aside for the public to use the temporary course, so we put the skis on top of the car and drove downtown to give it a go. Even though it was supposed to cost us $5 a head, we just walked on to the course without paying and no one ever asked us for a dime. We made a couple of trips around the Capitol (each lap took about fifteen minutes), enjoyed the novelty of the experience, and went home.

Last Friday, the temperature in Madison was in the fifties. Today, Sarah and I shoveled our walk for the fourth time in twenty four hours.

During that fabulous stretch of weather last Friday, Sarah, Dalla, and I went geocaching near Lodi, WI. We started by hiking a few miles on the Ice Age Trail near Lodi. While hiking the Trail, we found two caches and Dalla got to run her little canine heart out. She only rolled in one terribly smelly thing.

We stopped in Lodi on our way to Madison and bought some landjaeger (sausage) at a butcher shop and some butter cookies from a bakery.

For New Year’s Eve, we started the evening by watching the fourth ranked and recently hapless University of Wisconsin Badgers Mens Hockey team tie (!) Yale (1-11 coming into the match).

After that, we stopped at the Churchkey Bar (a bar in an old church near the university campus) for a beer before continuing on our way to Capitol Square. While we were walking up to the Square, fireworks were launched into the sky as part of a “family friendly” celebration near the Square. So, we watched the fireworks as we walked up the street.

We ended our trek at Restaurant Magnus where El Clan Destino (a local Afro-Cuban jazz band) was playing for a none-too-steep cover charge ($10). The band was really tight that night. They played some truly excellent Latin jazz that had people dancing amongst the tables. As we were walking back to Capitol Square to find a cab home later, we walked by a cheesy Irish bar packed with people who had paid upwards of twenty dollars to listen to a bad cover band play bad 80′s music. I felt sorry for those folks.

My curling team finished up the first half of our season with a 3-4 record. Considering that we started the year 1-4, we felt that record was an improvement. Last week, we won the game 10-1. Previously, we were often on the losing end of a score like that. If we can continue our strong play through the second half, we can still make the playoffs for our league.

As I noted above, Madison finally got snow yesterday. Over the course of the previous 36 hours, Madison got between three and six inches of snow. It is nice to finally not be able to see brown, dead grass as far as the eye can see. Fresh white snow hides many an ugly neighborhood yard.

If the snow sticks around, Sarah and I would like to get out on our cross country skis this weekend.

Both Sarah and I have been busy the last couple of weeks.Sarah had a very hectic finish to her semester this fall. One of her classes was an absolute bear. She worked on this one class somewhere in the range of forty to fifty hours during the final week of the semester and she was still unable to finish the work assigned by the professor. The big problem is that the professor assigned them a huge project at the beginning of the semester but didn’t give them all the tools (read: knowledge) to complete the assignment until two weeks were left in the semester. So, even those who were proactive about starting the project early (like Sarah) could only get so much done before they ran out of knowledge. Then, they had to wait for the professor to teach them more so that they could take the next steps in the process. All in all, it was a really dumb way of structuring the class.

So, Sarah ended up with an incomplete in that class until she gets the project completed. While nearly everyone else is off on their Christmas break, Sarah was working today trying to finish the project for the class. She is not alone, however. Just about half the class took incompletes while the remainder just threw up their hands and took whatever grades they earned without finishing the project.

In late November, we purchased a gas cooktop from Sears to replace the forty-four year old electric cooktop that was in our house when we bought it. The biggest problem with the cooktop is that, at some point in the past, a prior owner of the house replaced two of the four burners with burners that were close but not quite replacements. So, we had two good burners, one that never sat level and always tilted the pan sitting on it, and another that was just ever so much larger than it should have been.

The new cooktop is gas, which both of us prefer for cooking. I didn’t feel comfortable running gas piping, so we brought in a plumber to do the work. The plumbing work ended up costing more than the gas cooktop did. The first estimate we got was so high, that we were afraid the guy was trying to rip us off, so we went out and got another estimate. That estimate just just about as high, so we bit the bullet and went forward.

What made me feel really dumb is that we brought in an electrician to do the electrical work. The gas cooktop uses electrical sparks to light the gas when a burner is activated. My thought was that a circuit would need to come out of the main electrical panel to the cooktop to power the sparking electrodes. Of course, that was a big error. The amount of electricity needed to spark the gas is a negligible amount that can be drawn off of nearly any other 120V circuit in the house. Once I heard what the electrician planned on doing, I just about slapped my forehead in disbelief. “I could do that!” was the thought coursing through my mind as I watched him work. However, my guess was that we would be charged anyway for the guy showing up, even if I kicked him out before he could do any work, so it made sense to let him continue. If we got charged one hour for the guy to show up, tell me what to do, and leave or one hour for the guy to show up and do the work, I might as well let the professional do his thing.

While the plumbers were putting in the gas piping, Sarah and got busy trying to remove the old electric cooktop. The old cooktop was stuck to the laminate counter with some old caulk and forty years of grease and grime; the cooktop did not come up easily. As a result, the laminate countertop suffered some damage. In addition, once we got the new cooktop in place, it was just ever so slightly smaller in width than the old cooktop. So, now we have to figure out a way to both fix or cover the countertop damage while fixing or covering the gap on either side of the gas cooktop. Right now, we’re leaning towards moving the cooktop all the way to one side, and installing a butcher block cutting board directly into/onto the counter. This will effectively fix/cover both problems.

Once the cooktop was installed, we discovered that one of the burners did not light, so we called a technician out from Sears to fix the problem. He diagnosed that the problem was with some of the parts we were shipped with the cooktop. He ordered some replacement parts and went on his way. When the parts arrived at our house, we installed them (they were very, very, very easy to install) and tried the burner. The burner lit right up. However, the parts were different colors from the rest of the cooktop. So, I spent over thirty minutes on the telephone yesterday with Sears trying to get them to ship us the correct parts in the correct color. In the process, I spoke with no less than six different people and was twice transferred to some anonymous office that was closed. Nice. If we cannot get the right part in the right color soon, I’ll just place another service call saying that the burner won’t light. When the technician comes out to fix the problem (again), I’ll just have him order the correct part in the correct color. That will cost Sears a ton of money, but if their telephone agents are morons, that’s the price they’ll have to pay.

In addition, I’ve been busy rewiring the basement. The electrical work down there is a mess. So, I’ve been installing outlets where they are needed and fixing others, as necessary. All of the lights down there were activated by pull-chains, so I’ve also been replacing the pull chains with light switches, which makes everything look much nicer.

At some point in the past, a few cheap fluorescent fixtures were installed in the basement to provide light. These were powered by a series of adapters and extension cords that plugged in to the cheap, ceramic, pull chain light sockets. So, I’m replacing the whole mess with properly wired sockets and light switches. The work isn’t done, but it is proceding nicely.

Last week, I also discovered that bathroom vent fan was never properly vented to the outdoors. As such, all the hot, humid air that was being pulled from the bathroom by the fan was being dumped into the space above the soffits without any sort of venting. So, I had to cut a new hole in the soffit and install some additional ducting on the old bathroom fan ducting so that the fan now blows air from the bathroom out the new hole in the soffits. Now we can see that the bathroom air is being properly vented on really cold days. When the hot humid air vented from the bathroom hits the cold outdoor air, we can see plenty of condensation and fog forming.

Sarah and I baked up a storm before Christmas. We made peppermint swirl cookies, cutout cookies, gingerbread cutout cookies, and almond bark pretzels. I’m only being honest when I say that all of them turned out quite well.

For Christmas, Sarah, Dalla, and I traveled to South Dakota to visit my parents. My sister flew out from Boston to join the clan on Christmas day. We did all of the traditional family stuff, but we also went geocaching around my hometown on Sunday. It was cold, but fun, as we found three out of four caches that day.

Ira, so far, has managed to avoid his seasonal trip into the refridgerator. I’m hoping to get him started with hibernation in the next day or so. Then, he’ll be in one of our crisper drawers for the better part of two months.

Sarah and I kept ourselves busy the past few days with a variety of chores and fun activities.Thursday night, Sarah’s office Christmas party was held at one of the local bars. The food at that particular bar is nothing special, but the beer is brewed on-site and decent, so we had at least one thing to look forward to. In addition, many of Sarah’s co-workers are interesting people which led to some interesting dinner table conversation.

On the way to the pub, we drove by a place named “Yes Buffet.” My immediate thought was to open up a restaurant named “No Buffet” right next door. No Buffet would have a stricly ala carte menu with absolutely…No Buffet.

Friday and Saturday night, we saw the UW Badgers men’s hockey team beat the team from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. We both enjoy the hockey games, and we enjoy them even more when the Badgers win.

Saturday morning, we drove over to the UW Stock Pavilion to buy a Christmas Tree. We bought a seven foot Fraser fir tree for our living room.

In afternoon while Sarah studied, I did some electrical work in the basement. All of the lights were pull chain lights, which is both ugly and inconvenient. So, I replaced a pair of the pull chain light with lights that are activated by light-switches. In addition, I rewired some things that were badly/incorrectly wired.

In the latter part of the afternoon, Sarah and I decorated the Christmas tree together. It had been three years since we decorated a big, real tree. The past couple of years we’ve either had no tree, or just a little artificial tree. The tree we bought looks really nice in a corner of the living room. If I had a digital camera, I’d post a picture here for people to see. As it is, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

This morning, we spent some time geocaching before breakfast. We looked for one micro cache for quite some time but never did find it. After trying for a while, we decided to give it a rest and try to find a different cache. That cache gave us much less trouble and we were successful finding it. At least we didn’t go home completely empty handed.

While Sarah was at school working in one of the labs, Dalla and I went for a walk to one of the local parks. We took in the view from a high-point, and walked home.

We had a generally pleasant and low-key weekend.Saturday’s weather left plenty to be desired. It was one of those all-day fall rains with temperatures right around forty degrees. So, we spent most of the day indoors except for a pair of dog walks.

Saturday night, we went to the UW-Madison Men’s Hockey game against Michigan. We have season tickets to all the games this year, and had seen the Badgers lay and egg against Michigan St. on Friday night. UW was ranked No. 2 in the country going in to Friday night’s game while Michigan State was unranked. Michigan, Saturday night’s opponent was ranked No. 1 in the nation, which set up an intriguing matchup. As it turned out, Wisconsin gave Michigan all they could handle and then some. We both enjoyed watching the local team beat a Michigan team of any stripe.

Sunday afternoon, we went geocaching for the first time. We found one cache but failed in our attempts to locate another. I really enjoyed the process of geocaching and am already looking forward to partaking in the activity in different locations whenever I travel.

Recently, an Apple iBook found its way into our home. Rather than spend all our time tethered to an Ethernet switch, we decided to go wireless between the laptop and our Internet gateway. However, given the woeful security record of WEP, the decision was made not to rely upon WEP to secure our data from prying eyes. While I used to be a very adept Macintosh user and admin, years or avoiding the platform (for a variety of reasons), and a major OS change on Apple’s part had conspired to render most of my Macintosh knowledge rusty and best and obsolete at worst. So, when choosing a good data encryption platform, my choices were between OpenVPN and IPSec. Having used OpenVPN in the past, it was my first choice. However, it would take some doing to get the OpenVPN tunnel up between the two systems and most of that doing would be on the Mac. I generally viewed this option as an extremely shallow to nonexistant VPN learning curve with a (possibly) very steep OS X learning curve. The other option was to use the IPSec support built in to both operating systems. Since Mac OS X draws much of its lineage from FreeBSD, it has a KAME derived IPSec support under the hood. If I went the IPSec route, I knew that I would get quick response since the encryption/decryption is all done in the kernel, high-quality crypto, and the hassle that comes with setting up an IPSec tunnel. However, that option would avoid the possibly steep Mac OS X learning curve.

In the end, I decided to go with the IPSec option, at least for the short term.

To help others avoid some of the hassle that I went through, I’m posting some notes about my experience below.

On my wireless LAN, the FreeBSD system acts as both a firewall and gateway to the Internet and my wired LAN. So, all my laptop traffic needed to pass through the BSD system at some point, regardless of its destination. In addition, I could not use the DHCP daemon on the wireless access point since it always handed out DHCP addresses with an incorrect default router (i.e., the access point always said that it was the default gateway when the FreeBSD system was the proper gateway). Therefore, it was important that whatever I used, it needed to allow DHCP packets to exist outside of the encrypted datastream.

The other option was to use the IPSec support built in to both operating systems. Since Mac OS X draws much of its lineage from FreeBSD, it has a KAME derived IPSec support under the hood. If I went the IPSec route, I knew that I would get quick response since the encryption/decryption is all done in the kernel, high-quality crypto, and the hassle that comes with setting up an IPSec tunnel. However, that option would avoid the possibly steep Mac OS X learning curve.

In the end, I decided to go with the IPSec option, at least for the short term.

To help others avoid some of the hassle that I went through, I’m posting some notes about my experience below.

On my wireless LAN, the FreeBSD system acts as both a firewall and gateway to the Internet and my wired LAN. So, all my laptop traffic needed to pass through the BSD system at some point, regardless of its destination. In addition, I could not use the DHCP daemon on the wireless access point since it always handed out DHCP addresses with an incorrect default router (i.e., the access point always said that it was the default gateway when the FreeBSD system was the proper gateway). Therefore, it was important that whatever I used, it needed to allow DHCP packets to exist outside of the encrypted datastream.

On the FreeBSD system, I setup the DHCP server daemon to always give the laptop the same IP address. I’m reasonably certain that the FreeBSD/Mac OS X IPSec implementation cannot function with dynamic addresses as tunnel endpoints. By giving the laptop the same IP address, I always know where to look for it on the wireless LAN.

Both systems will need to have racoon installed on them to manage the IKE process. You may need to use the port system on the FreeBSD system to install racoon if you have not previously done so. The Mac OS X system ships with racoon installed already.

You will also need to enable IPSec in your FreeBSD kernel. Do so by adding the following lines to your custom kernel configuration:


options IPSEC #IP security
options IPSEC_ESP #IP security (crypto; define w/IPSEC)


Many FreeBSD focused web pages say that you need to uncomment the gif device as well and spend time mucking around with the resulting devices. Whether or not that is true remains to be seen. I did uncomment the gif device in my kernel, but spent zero time mucking around with it.

Once you have your customer kernel configured, compile it via the instructions in the FreeBSD Handbook.

Now comes the interesting part: configuring IPSec.

There are two nodes that we will reference in this example. The first is the FreeBSD system. It has the IP address 172.18.1.1. The second is the Mac OS X system. It has the IP address 172.18.1.7.

Decide what you want to use as a pre-shared key on both systems to start the encryption process. For the sake of argument, I’m going to use ‘pskDemo‘ as my key. On the Mac OS X system, put the following line in /etc/racoon/psk.txt:


172.18.1.1 pskDemo


On the FreeBSD system, put the following into /usr/local/etc/racoon/psk.txt:


172.18.1.7 pskDemo


Now, make sure that the psk.txt file is read/write only for root on both systems by using a chmod command something like the following:


chmod 0600 /etc/racoon/psk.txt


Now, you’ll want to ensure that both systems are using the same racoon arguments for various negoiation and encryption processes. On the Macintosh, edit the file /etc/racoon/remote/anonymous.conf. My version of the file looks like the following:


remote anonymous
{
#exchange_mode main,aggressive;
exchange_mode aggressive,main;
doi ipsec_doi;
situation identity_only;

sainfo anonymous
{
lifetime time 60 min;
encryption_algorithm rijndael, blowfish, 3des ;
authentication_algorithm hmac_md5, hmac_sha1;
compression_algorithm deflate ;
}


Now, you will need a matching set of directives on the FreeBSD system. For the sake of better organization, I changed some of how the racoon port is installed. My /usr/local/etc/racoon/racoon.conf looks like this:


path include "/usr/local/etc/racoon" ;
include "anonymous.conf" ;
path pre_shared_key "/usr/local/etc/racoon/psk.txt" ;
path certificate "/usr/local/etc/cert" ;
log notify;
padding
{
maximum_length 20; # maximum padding length.
randomize off; # enable randomize length.
strict_check off; # enable strict check.
exclusive_tail off; # extract last one octet.
}

timer
{
counter 5; # maximum trying count to send.
interval 20 sec; # maximum interval to resend.
persend 1; # the number of packets per a send.
phase1 30 sec;
phase2 15 sec;
}


I then created the file /usr/local/etc/racoon/anonymous.conf that contains the following:


remote anonymous
{
exchange_mode aggressive,main;
my_identifier address;
send_cert off;
send_cr off;
verify_cert off;
passive off;
lifetime time 24 hour;
proposal {
encryption_algorithm 3des;
hash_algorithm sha1;
authentication_method pre_shared_key;
lifetime time 24 hour;
dh_group 2;
}
}

sainfo anonymous
{
lifetime time 60 min;
encryption_algorithm rijndael, blowfish, 3des ;
authentication_algorithm hmac_md5, hmac_sha1 ;
compression_algorithm deflate ;
}


Now that we have identical (or nearly identical) configurations on both ends of the tunnel, we can create the IPSec policy database directives. On the FreeBSD system, these go in /etc/ipsec.conf:


#delete all existing entries from the SAD and SPD databases
flush;
spdflush;

#add the policy to the SPD database
spdadd 172.18.1.1 0.0.0.0/0 any -P out ipsec
esp/tunnel/172.18.1.1-172.18.1.7/require ;
spdadd 0.0.0.0/0 172.18.1.1 any -P in ipsec
esp/tunnel/172.18.1.7-172.18.1.1/require ;
spdadd 172.18.1.7 0.0.0.0/0 any -P in ipsec
esp/tunnel/172.18.1.7-172.18.1.1/require ;
spdadd 0.0.0.0/0 172.18.1.7 any -P out ipsec
esp/tunnel/172.18.1.1-172.18.1.7/require ;
spdadd 172.18.1.1[500] 0.0.0.0/0[500] udp -P out none;
spdadd 0.0.0.0/0[500] 172.18.1.1[500] udp -P in none;
spdadd 0.0.0.0/0[67] 0.0.0.0/0[68] udp -P out none;
spdadd 0.0.0.0/0[68] 0.0.0.0/0[67] udp -P in none;


The first two lines ensure that the IKE packets are dropped onto the wireless LAN outside of the IPSec data stream. While I did not have trouble with that myself, others in the world have, so it seemed prudent to avoid the problems they had encountered.

The next two lines ensure that DHCP packets are also dropped onto the wireless LAN outside of the IPSec data stream. When these were stuck inside the IPSEC data stream, the laptop would always fail to renew its DHCP address which dropped the laptop off the LAN after roughly fifteen minutes.

The next lines all dictate how the tunnel is created. Some resources online will tell you that you only need the following configuration and that everything will “just work”:


spdadd 172.18.1.1 0.0.0.0/0 any -P out ipsec
esp/tunnel/172.18.1.1-172.18.1.7/require ;
spdadd 0.0.0.0/0 172.18.1.1 any -P in ipsec
esp/tunnel/172.18.1.7-172.18.1.1/require ;


That was very much not the case with me. When I used just those lines, I got all sorts of very helpful error messages from racoon like “pre-process failed” or “no policy found”. In the end, I needed all of the above lines on the FreeBSD side of the tunnel.

On the Mac OS X side of the tunnel, I put my SPD rules in /etc/ipsec.rules. Why the different name? No idea. Anyway, the contents of that file look like this:


flush;
spdflush;

spdadd 172.18.1.7[500] 172.18.1.1[500] udp -P out none;
spdadd 172.18.1.1[500] 172.18.1.7[500] udp -P in none;
spdadd 0.0.0.0/0[68] 0.0.0.0/0[67] udp -P out none;
spdadd 0.0.0.0/0[67] 0.0.0.0/0[68] udp -P in none;
spdadd 172.18.1.7 0.0.0.0/0 any -P out ipsec
esp/tunnel/172.18.1.7-172.18.1.1/require;
spdadd 0.0.0.0/0 172.18.1.7 any -P in ipsec
esp/tunnel/172.18.1.1-172.18.1.7/require;


Again, the top four lines serve to drop IKE and DHCP packets outside of the IPSec data stream. The bottom four lines serve to establish the data encryption policy between the client and the server.

Once I had those files in place, I did the following on the FreeBSD system:

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/racoon.sh start
# setkey -f /etc/ipsec.conf


On the Mac OS X system, I did the following:

# /usr/sbin/racoon
# setkey -f /etc/ipsec.rules


In addition, you’ll need to adjust your firewall rules to accomodate the wireless LAN and the IPSec traffic. I use ipfilter, my Internet traffic flows out tun0, and my wireless LAN sits off of interface dc0, so my ipfilter rules look like the following:

/etc/ipf.conf:

block in on dc0
pass in quick on dc0 proto udp from any port = 68 to any port = 67
pass out quick on dc0 proto udp from any port = 67 to any port = 68
pass in quick on dc0 proto udp from any port = 500 to any port = 500
pass out quick on dc0 proto udp from any port = 500 to any port = 500
pass in quick on dc0 proto esp from any to any
pass out quick on dc0 proto esp from any to any


/etc/ipnat.conf:

map tun0 172.18.1.0/24 -> 0/32 proxy port ftp ftp/tcp
map tun0 172.18.1.0/24 -> 0/32 portmap tcp/udp 10000:20000
map tun0 172.18.1.0/24 -> 0/32


Once I did that, everything worked for me.

Obviously, I glazed over some details and processes while covering portions of the above. However, there should be enough here to give people an idea of what I did to get everything working between the two systems.

It seems that most of my favorite radio programs are only aired on the weekends. And, since I am usually busy working around the house or doing something active somewhere else, I often miss my radio shows.

For some time, I had known about the Linux Radio Timeshift HOWTO but for various and sundry reasons, I never got around to playing with the software and hardware to make it all happen. Over the last week, I have been playing with the software and hardware here and there until I finally got a working system.

After playing around with the scripts provided on the HOWTO page, I decided to engage in a major re-write. Since I do not have a radio that can be controlled by the PC, I do not have to worry about tuning the radio. I just have to worry about taking in audio off of /dev/dsp and turning it into some sort of encoded output.

To my ear, the Ogg Vorbis encoding scheme sounds much better than MP3. So, the first change I made was to switch to oggenc from a LAME-based MP3 encoder.

The second change I made was to increase the quality of the recordings produced by the scripts. Why on earth should I record FM stereo broadcasts, only to immediately encode them such that they sound like AM-mono broadcasts?

Finally, I rationalized the scripts somewhat. I introduced some error checking in some locations. In other locations, I just rewrote the scripts so that they offer meaningful exit codes.
So, while these scripts are no longer anywhere near what I originally downloaded, they are certainly inspired by them.

If you are interested in using my scripts, you can download them here: linux_radio_time_shift.tgz

Hurricane Ivan has completely disappeared from the US media as a newsmaking event. However, those who live in the Caribbean and who experienced that particular category 5 hurricane for themselves find themselves living with the aftermath of the hurricane every day.

Some extended family of ours is hosting several refugees from the Cayman Islands at their Minneapolis area home. Last weekend, Sarah and I drove up to Minneapolis to make dinner for them.How are these folks related to me? The mother of the family is the sister of my uncle by marraige. The mother, in turn, is married to a man who originally hailed from Grand Cayman. They, in turn have three kids, including one set of twins.

The folks staying in Minnesota from Grand Cayman are all nieces and nephews of the father of the Minnesota family. The number of Caymanite (?) refugees still living in Minnesota has dwindled to six from a high of thirteen, so life is getting more sane for them. If you want to keep up with their daily lives, you can read their website.

The devastation of Grand Cayman by Hurricane Ivan was nearly complete. Winds were clocked at over 200 miles per hour when the storm blitzed the island. Almost no structure on the island survived without some damage. Power is still out to large parts of the island. Drinking water is scarce and most people are getting their water from wells. If you want to view pictures of the devastation, the Forbes’ website, listed above, has a page full of links to various photo collections. As an example, check out www.terrafutan.net.

The kids staying in Minnesota will most likely not go home until power has been restored, drinking water is once again available, and schools are open. Until then, they will be in Minnesota drinking clean water, attending public school, eating good food, and wearing clean clothes.

Of course, providing all those things for nine kids isn’t easy for most folks, so Sarah and I drove up to Minneapolis to give the parents a night off from cooking. We cooked too much chili. Apparently, I was expecting the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Division to stop by for a light snack. In addition to chili, we cooked four loaves of cornbread, which were generally well received.

When Sarah and I moved from California to Wisconsin, we used one of the national moving companies. As might be expected, our experience with that company was less than ideal.Soon after we got to Madison, got our household goods, and finished unpacking, I wrote a long rant about how awful the moving company was which was posted on my website.

At the time, my hope was that our experiences would warn others about the moving company and how they treat their customers.

Since that time, many people have visited by website to research the moving company in question. The page in question ranks quite highly in several search engines, as displayed in the following table.

Unfortunately, I have not cracked the Google listings yet. I’m guessing that with the next version of Geeklog, I’ll be able to rewrite a few URL’s and make my site more Google spider friendly.

Regardless, it is a good object lesson of how long a bad reputation can follow you around on-line. This all happened two years ago, but my writing is still out there informing people’s opinions today. Search engines, browsers, and the web make it incredibly easy for someone with a bad experience to color the perceptions of others years after an event occurs.

Sarah and I kept ourselves very busy this weekend with entertaining, hiking, working around the house, spectating, and the like.We entertained at our house twice in the last few days. Sheri and Bryan were entertaining her parents this weekend, so we invited the whole clan over for dinner on Thursday night.

Saturday morning dawned windy, cold, and cloudy. After taking Dalla to a nearby dog park, we were back home preparing for more entertaining. Sarah and another graduate student threw Sheri a baby shower at our house.

Once the baby shower was over the guests left, we buckled down and started working on the house. Raking the lawn was job one, and that took about one and one-half hours. Once that was done, we ripped out all of the remaining tomato plants and their support structures. Rearranging the garage was next on our list as we started to move items indoors for the winter. Sarah’s potting bench, which she keeps on the back patio in the summer, got hauled to the basement. The patio furniture came into the garage. The grill got cleaned out and then washed out with the hose before being rolled into the garage. Ira’s outddor pen was unlocked for the winter and his house was taken indoors. While Sarah cleaned and rearranged some of our garage shelves, I worked on making the door from the kitchen to the garage work more smoothly and lock more easily.

After that was done, we took Dalla to a dog park farther from our house for a nice walk. While we had been working, the weather turned very nice: sixty-plus degrees and sunny.

Shortly after getting back home, we ate a quick dinner and then went to our first hockey game of the year. Wisconsin beat Michigan Tech 3-0 in a game that was never that close.

This morning, we got up early and went for a hike in Governor Nelson State Park. There were a pair of sandhill cranes near the parking area when we arrived. Once they saw Dalla, they started jumping up and down and making (what we assumed were) menacing noises. Dalla was several counties this side of afraid. In fact, she kept standing up on her rear legs (which we generally interpret to be, “Hey, look over there! Prey!”) and lunging at the leash.

While I watched the Vikings game, Sarah went to work for a couple of hours at the National Park Service office. Dalla and I picked Sarah up after the Vikings game and we went out to Indian Lake County Park. Once there, we hiked several miles. We left there as the sun was going down and the weather was turning cool.

As you can probably noticed, we kept ourselves busy this weekend. However, with the beautiful weather we had on Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday, both of us felt compelled to get outdoors and enjoy the days.

For the past new months, Sarah and I had been discussing adopting a second dog. On 18 Sep 04, we did just that.After talking about what kind of dog we wanted, we started looking around at the local shelters. After all, that was where we found Dalla, our first dog. Since none of the dogs there struck our fancy, we expanded our search using Petfinder.com.

Some time later, we decided to drive up to Baraboo, WI and visit a dog named Sammie at the Highway of Hope rescue there.

After contacting the shelter, we bundled Dalla into the car, and drove up to meet Sammie. The rescue was nothing special. It is run by two women out of their homes. We met Sammie in the fenced backyard of one of the women. He was a nice looking dog, black with tan and white on his chest.

We spent probably a half-hour in the backyard with Sammie, the woman who ran the rescue, and Dalla. The dogs got along okay for the most part, with the expected jealousy from Dalla the only real exception. We were planning on taking Dalla for a hike at Devil’s Lake State Forest, so we asked the woman who ran the rescue is we could take Sammie with us, as well.

She agreed, so the the four us went for a hike at Devil’s Lake. It quickly became obvious that Sammie had never seen the opposite end of a leash before as he was all over the trail, weaving back and forth and tugging against the leash. However, he clearly enjoyed himself and we enjoyed having him with us. After our hike, we drove back to the rescue and told the woman running it that we wanted to adopt him. Some short time later, after filling out some paperwork, we were on the road back to Madison with two canines in the backseat of the car instead of one.

The first couple of days after we got Sammie home were interesting, to say the least. Dalla clearly was the alpha female and she laid down the law about what Sammie was and was not allowed to do. Sammie was also adjusting to the rhythms of our household. We normally take Dalla for a walk morning and evening. Some days, we take her to the dog park, instead of walking her around the neighborhood. At the rescue, Sammie was let out to run around the fenced backyard with the other dogs. Since we do not have a fenced yard, he could only be let outside on the leash.

We took Sammie to the dog park with Dalla on Sunday. While we generally did not have any problems, he was aggressive towards a beagle that jumped up on Sarah to solicit some attention. This was disturbing, but not unheard of as Dalla was also protective of us and jealous of dogs that she felt were horning in on “her” people.

Monday, 20 Sep 04, we took Sammie to the vet for some shots and to get him microchipped. While we were at the vet, we noticed some spots on his muzzle. The vet thought that perhaps they were old scars.

On Monday, I also tried taking Sammie to a dog park within walking distance of our house. We got to the dog park, but he attacked a beagle-mix that came within range of him while he was on the leash. He also barked incessantly at the other dogs. So, he was never let off the leash, and we walked back home.

Walking both dogs at the same time was something of a trial as Sammie was all over the sidewalk. If one person tried to walk both dogs, he quickly tied himself and the person walking him into a knot. Dalla would often get run over as he swerved side to side, seemingly without care. Given that he was so difficult to manage on leash, Sarah and I were forced to each walk a dog which immediately doubled the man hours spent walking dogs each week.

By Thursday, the bumps on Sammie’s face had leaped out into high definition. Another trip back to the vet got him a prescription for anti-biotics since the vet thought he had a bacterial infection. She also found that Sammie had roundworms, so he was given a wormer to take care of those and an anti-diarrheal because the wormer often causes diarrhea.

About this time, Sarah and I decided to change Sammie’s name to Chili. We knew of three other Sammy’s or Sam’s at the various dog parks. In addition, neither of us was crazy about having a dog that shared a common name used by people.

Friday, Sarah took a plane to visit her Grandmother in Pennsylvania while I took the dogs with me in the car to visit my parents in South Dakota. Whenever I stopped the car at a rest area, Chili would bark fiercely at the dogs outside the car.

After a weekend in South Dakota, there were no signs that Chili’s temperment or bacterial infection were improving. Another trip back to the vet yielded more bills and more tests. Finally the diagnosis came back: ringworm.

The treatment for Chili’s ringworm was to bathe him every five days with a special shampooo, use a post-shampoo antifungal conditioner, give an oral antihistimine twice-a-day, and use a topical antifungal twice-a-day. We would have to do this for the next six weeks. In addition, we needed to start bathing Dalla with the antifungal shampoo to prevent her from getting ringworm.

While all of this was going on, we noticed that we were having trouble getting Chili enough exercise. We couldn’t walk him very long because he was so frustrating to have on leash. In addition, he would eventually see or come upon another dog, and he would lose it: barking, lunging, and growling. We could not take him to the dog park because he had a track record of attacking other dogs at dog park. We could not take him to many of the unofficial dog parks around town because he might attack dogs there, as well. So, we were forced to start seeking out those fringe areas were we could run him, but generally not expect to see other dogs. In a somewhat larger city like Madison, those areas are harder to come by than you might think.

While it was a nightmare to get exercise for Chili outside, we was a pleasure to have when he was inside. He got along swimmingly with Dalla after those first few days. They could eat side-by-side and share the same water dish. They would chase each other around the house, mouth wrestling, jumping, growling, and playing tug-of-war with a pair of old socks. Chili was very affectionate towards us. He loved nothing better than to jump into bed with us, no matter what time of day or night it was. We often had to kick him out after he would try and sneak in to the bed late at night.

Chili loved to play tennis ball and he didn’t care who threw it or where, as long as he could go get it and bring it back. Dalla refuses to play with Sarah for some reason, so Sarah loved having a dog around who would play with her. Chili had clearly been taught to release the tennis ball at his last home because he sometimes dropped it into a hand held below his mouth; other times, he would put it down and push it towards people with his nose.

We loved having another dog in the house with a different personality than Dalla’s. Not that there is anything wrong with Dalla’s personality, but variety is always nice. However, we were constantly worrying about getting Chili exercise and what might happen if he got out of the house by running out an open door.

Finally, that worry and hassle became too much for us to handle. Despite our best efforts, we just could not get him the exercise he needed. His extreme aggression towards other dogs made it just too difficult to take him out into the world.

Earlier today, I brought him back to the rescue in Baraboo. Doing that was a very difficult thing to do, but it was also the right thing to do. If we never had to take him outdoors, Chili would still be here. However, we like to take Dalla out for walks around the neighborhood and to dog park. We like to take her for hikes in spring, summer, and fall. In the winter, we like to take her out on the frozen lakes. We just could not envision doing that with Chili.

While we may have been able to manage his aggression with some intensive training, we could never hope to “cure” it. We would most likely always be worrying in the back of our minds. “Is this the time he loses it and rips some other dog apart,” the little voice would be constantly asking. In addition, that training would have been very resource intensive. It would have taken money and time we don’t have.

We miss Chili. The house is quieter without him and Dalla tearing it up. Coming home is a bit less of an event with just one wagging tail instead of two. But, we do not miss the worry and the aggravation his unfortunate upbringing instilled in him.

Good luck out there, big guy. We both hope you find a nice family with a fenced yard out in the country. That is really where you will fit in best.

The calendars below help me to keep track of when we’ve gotten rain in Madison. Dates with a light-blue background signify dates that Madison received measureable precipitation.

What on earth have we been doing since we got back from our honeymoon? That’s a good question.This last weekend we tried to catch up some of our work around the house. We moved mountains of laundry through the washer and out onto the clothesline in the backyard. I mowed the lawn. Sarah did some weeding and pruning. After mowing the lawn, I put some caulk around the basement windows where the original caulk had dried out and broken off. Sarah also put up some curtains in our office. We had several that we saved from our house in Alameda, but she made one more because the ones we saved weren’t quite long enough.

Yesterday, we went mountain biking in Governor Dodge State Park which is about one hour west of Madison. A so-called real mountain biker probably wouldn’t appreciate the trails there as they aren’t terribly technical, but we’re not out there riding to experience single-track spills and thrills. We just like to go farther, faster in the woods than we can on foot.

The park itself was delightful. We encountered exactly nobody on the trails. The weather was plenty warm, but not terribly humid. There is a pleasant lake and beach area in the park that attracts numerous families and other sun-seekers. While we were eating our lunch (after biking), we watched some kids swamp their canoe about twenty feet from the dock. They didn’t know how to get back in the right way, so they ended up back in the canoe with so much water that just the tips of the canoe were visible above the water. It was fun to watch.

After we got back to Madison, I watched the Vikings game while Sarah walked over to a friend’s house to visit.

Labor Day weekend, we laid around the house most of Saturday. We sat out on the patio, in the shade of the house, and read, snacked, and drank. It was a very pleasant and relaxing way to spend the day. For lunch, we had four bratwurst from BratFest. Sarah ate one, and I ate somehow found room for three in my stomach.

The next day, Sunday, we spent most of the day installing a ceiling fan in our bedroom. That wasn’t on the agenda when we woke up, but it needed to be done. Of course, none of our home improvement projects can be completed without at least one mid-project trip to the hardware store. So, while we made that trip, we also stopped at BratFest and bought four more brats for lunch.

Installing the fan took a fair amount of time because we first had to remove the old lamp, and all of the old wiring from the electrical box. Since our house was built using a technique called something like “spider web” electrial construction, all the wiring for any given circuit can be found in a ceiling electrial box. So, the master bedroom circuit has three outlets on it, including one in the office. That means that there were four pieces of conduit attached to the ceiling electrical box.

After removing the old lamp, and untwisting the various wires, it was up into the attic for me. That was easily the worst part of the job. The attic was at least 110 degrees. I was sweating so profusely, that I soaked through both my shirt and pants in twenty minutes of being up there.

I needed to get into the attic to remove the old electrical box. In this house, the electrical boxes are fastened to joists via some old system. So, I had to crawl up there with a wrecking bar, a hammer, and the like to remove the old electrical box. Once that was done, I was able to install a new “ceiling fan approved” electrial box that would support the weight of the ceiling fan.

Once I had that done, needed to enlarge the hole in the ceiling that allowed access to the electrical box. The old electrial box had some sort of cowling on that it limited access to it from below. So, after persauding the plaster to fall with the wrecking bar, she fit the hole to the new electrical box.

When we purchased the ceiling fan, the box said it was a “quick connect” type that could be easily and quickly installed. Even as I read that on the box, I knew that it wasn’t true. Sure, once you spend six man hours getting everything ready for the ceiling fan, it will most likely be a relative snap to finish the installation. That turned out to be the case. Once we had the electrical box in place, it only took about an hour to attach the mounting bracket, wire up the fan, attach the decorative fairing, and balance the fan blades.

With that done, we took the rest of the day off. On Labor Day, we tackled our basement. Since we moved into this house a little over one year ago, the basement really hadn’t gotten any attention. As such, we tended to just dump things down there we didn’t want cluttering up the first floor. Such a policy naturally lead to junk everywhere on the foor.

So, we spent most of the day sorting through the junk in the basement. We ended up with three boxes of stuff for Goodwill, several bags of trash, and an amazing amount of floorspace.

In addition to all of the above, Sarah has been getting ready for her classes. Today is the first day of her first full week of classes.

I’ve also been getting up early every morning to take Dalla to a dog park that is within walking distance of our house. All of the all-day dog parks are driving distance from our house, but there is a limited hours dog park just ten minutes away. The hours are 05:00-07:30, so we have to get up early and get over there before time expires. She has a great time there chasing and being chased.

Nothing makes a person feel more loved than to get exactly two pieces of mail, both addressed to “Resident.”

Note: This page is no longer maintained. I’m archiving it here. – DJB

Since I started commuting to work by bicycle several years ago, I’ve experienced more flat tires than it seems any one person should have to endure.  At first, getting a flat tire was all part of the novelty of riding to work.  Commuters who drive their cars generally don’t deal with flats in the same way bikers do.  A flat tire in a car is an unforeseen event.  Most people don’t even keep their spare tire properly inflated.  Others don’t have the slightest clue how to change a tire and are entirely dependent upon AAA to rescue them from this generally inconvenient, yet rare, event. Bicyclists, on the other hand, generally plan for flat tires.  For instance, I carry a spare tube, a pump, a patch kit, and irons (among other sundry tools).  Originally, I just carried one tube.  That all ended the day I got one flat riding to the ferry from Alameda to San Francisco, and another flat while riding to lunch that same day.  Much cursing, swearing, grumbling, and other methods of verbally expressing my frustration soon followed that particular flat. The odd thing about these flats is that throughout my first 25 years on the Earth, I probably had as many flats total as I’ve had in the past few years. Towards that end, I’ve decided to start a compilation describing each and every flat from here on forward.  This will probably be therapeutic for me since it will make me realize that I really don’t get flats every other day.

Sarah and I mixed work with play this weekend and got several projects finished while still taking time to enjoy the reasonably nice weather.On Saturday, we put some more plants in our herb garden, potted plants in hanging planters, and weeded a few garden areas. Sarah also fixed the toilet in the basement that had developed a tendency to run.

After all of that, we headed out to Governor Nelson State Park to take advantage of Wisconsin’s Free Fishing Weekend. Neither of us knows much about fishing, nor do we have an extensive collection of fishing gear. But, fishing is a very Wisconsin thing to do, so we decided we’d better get out there and try it once in a while. An hour and one-half of fishing later, our biggest haul was a piece of waterlogged bark and a tennis ball.

We took Dalla with us to go fishing because we wanted to see how she would react to all the water. Suffice it to say that she was rather unimpressed by the lake. The first time she got her nose near the water, a wave came to shore and soaked her nose. She leaped back from the water like it had bitten her and never got terribly close again.

Sunday we did some more work around the house. I cut a dead and rotting limb off the birch tree in our front yard while Sarah weeded the garden in front of our house.

In the afternoon, we went for a long bike ride on the Military Ridge Trail. We biked for just short of two hours, so my estimatation is that we rode about thirty miles. Not a terribly long ride, but in the relatively hot and humid weather, long enough.

April 16th is Poop for Peace Day. You’ll want to check out the Poop For Peace website from which the following excerpt was lifted:

On April 16, take some time to think when you take your time to stink. Think of yourself on your toilet, and George W. Bush on his, and Saddam and Osama on theirs. Think about the children of Iraq and the children of America, and realize that while their skins are different colors and their gods have different names, their daily ritual is exactly the same. We all poop, which means we’re all human, which means we’re all brothers and sisters. Any other differences are arbitrary — we are all united in the daily struggle against the tyranny of the bowel.