Winter Solstice

According to WeatherUnderground, the sun was "up" for 3 hours and 40 minutes today. In reality, we had snow coming down and dark clouds during our daytime. For the next six months, the days will be getting longer now that it is officially winter. Today's snow was heavy and wet and I almost needed to chain up just to plow our driveway. The most challenging part was just connecting the plow as the truck wanted to slide sideways. And this was just in our driveway. We need some real winter temperatures. It was an almost tropical 29°F today.

Things are pretty quiet around here. Still going to the gym a couple of times per week even if it's just to use the treadmill. I picked up the programming cable for the dual-band HT radio and using a free software package called Chirp, I set up the local repeaters plus the NOAA weather channels. There isn't a lot of activity during the day but enough for me to play around with. Still trying to get familiar with the repeater guidelines. Such as announcing that you're tuned in and listening or how to answer. There is another active ham in the area that has a call sign really similar to mine so I always need to use the phonetic alphabet for the last two letters of my call sign. I'm also starting to learn CW aka morse code as it is still used as the requirements are much more achievable here in Alaska.

I finally got around to installing the cables for the four golf cart batteries from the trailer. I then used the "smart charger" to do an equalization. With the garage temperature at about 40°F, that meant a charging voltage of around 15.6 VDC. The "smart charger" is designed for a 60 amp-hour battery and not the 430 amp-hour bank. But it eventually got it done though it took a few days. I then topped up the water in all of the cells again. None of the cells were very low (i.e. no plates showing) but between all four batteries, I added around 48oz of distilled water.

I'm finally done with the IPv6 video and it is now uploading to YouTube. I have it embedded below though I should warn you that the production value is modest, the target audience is pretty small, and it's almost 3 hours long.

San Francisco - Day 1

On Sunday morning, I went through Chinatown with the thought that I could get some dim sum. I found what looked like a decent place but during the 20 minutes that I was there, only one cart came by with one item. I left and continued on to the Hyatt Regency. On the way, I stopped for a Vietnamese sandwich at a to-go place. It had a lot of fresh veggies and a pate. Nice, spicy and tasty.

We met at 11am to set up for the workshop which started at 1pm. Here is one of the presenters from Syracuse talking about IPv6 Security. His challenge was to pare down his 1½ day presentation to fit in under an hour.

Here is most of our intrepid group. One I've known for years from Hawaii and the other originally from Louisiana but now hails from Texas I've known for maybe ten years. This picture was taken after the workshop was completed so everyone is feeling much more relaxed.

On to another topic. Last week after passing the amateur radio Technician test with a perfect score, I decided to go ahead and take at least the General exam. I signed up for an online course and they plot your progress through the course material. During the past week and sitting in the Seattle airport, I had been going through the material. You only need a 75% score to pass, I think that I'm ready for the next test. Now I'm thinking that I'll study for the Extra class exam as well and take both of them at the next opportunity. Which, in Fairbanks. it looks like that'll be early in December.

IPv6 on Comcast

Not related to the road trip but I am currently connected into a Comcast configured Wi-Fi access point and just noticed that I have a native IPv6 connection and almost all of my connections are over IPv6. The only IPv4 connections are Blogsy and Clustrmaps.com. Pretty shocking considering the number of tech journalists that seem to ask why bother with IPv6 since no one is using it. The image is a screen capture of the connections established by Chrome to display my blog page.

And, it's not just Comcast. These are the IPv6 addresses assigned to my iPad by Verizon on the LTE cellular data network.

No IPv6 on the AT&T LTE cellular data network (iPhone) though it also has an address from the Comcast Wi-Fi access point.

Does this post suggest that I'm getting bored?

 

Posted with Blogsy

San Francisco (cont)

No rain and a nice walk from the motel to Moscone West where most of the presentations were occurring. The sun was even breaking through the clouds. Most of the presentations I attended were within the Cryosphere program and focused on snow and ice in the polar regions. The Moscone Center wi-fi is pretty pathetic as you might expect with some 20,000 attendees. But I arrived with no shortage of connectivity options. The iPad has Verizon LTE, the iPhone has AT&T LTE and the Nexus 4 has T-Mobile HSPA. All have connection sharing via Bluetooth, wi-fi and USB. Right now, I have been using the iPad as the Verizon service is fantastic. AT&T isn't too bad this year either. The hotel free wi-fi is barely functional and is there just so they can advertise that they have free wi-fi.

After a morning of listening to talks, I went out in search of lunch. There was a decent selection of ethnic food at the Metreon food court across the street From Moscone West. I ended up getting lunch at the Inay Filipino Kitchen not because the food sounded good but because the line wasn't too long. I've never had garlic fried rice and it was fantastic. Wonderful flavor. That's something I'm going to be trying to make. The photo is one from the Internet. I think you will be hard pressed to find bad food in San Francisco. I had an audio conference this afternoon and just used one of the comfortable meeting alcoves at the Marriott Hotel for several hours. GoToMeeting using Verizon and audio-conferencing using AT&T.

Here's a little bit of moto content. On the way back to my motel, I passed an interesting store front. It is the meeting place of Piston and Chain, a local motorcycle club. The have bike lifts and tire machines available for rent to their members as well as an assortment of tools. Some of the bikes were for sale (lower group) and some were just on display (upper group). A couple that I had never heard of like a Laverda. One of the members came by to chat and it looked like an inviting place.

There's an open house every Wednesday evening. I may stop by since it's less than a block from the motel. The "Nice bike" card is one that they leave on someone's bike that they see parked inviting them to attend. Kind of nice.

Something interesting that I just noticed is that Verizon is IPv6 enabled. I have this Chrome extension called IPvFoo that shows the IP addresses for the content on any web page and as you can see, connections to most of the servers are via IPv6. For the real geeks, my guess is that Google has an /40 allocation with addresses beginning with 2607:f8b0:40, that is 40 bits of network address assigned to Google and 24 bits of subnet that they allocate followed by 64 bits of host address. And they are manually addressing their servers. The only times I usually see this kind of IPv6 connectivity is either in my office or at Internet² events. Way to go, Verizon! (I'm an IPv6 champion) 

The Last Day of TIP 2013

 

 

The first picture was just put there so the blog entry won't show another food picture for it's index entry.

The IPv6 workshop finished this afternoon and I went in search of a light lunch. There was a food truck parked across the street from the East-West Center called Made Fresh, and they had a wonderful collection of asian food. This is the chow mein with tofu with picture for Bobskoot. Still tasted basicaly like teriyaki but that may be difficult to get away from around here.

Today was the last day of TIP 2013 and, possibly, the last Joint Tech meeting for a while. The Joint Tech's were a technical meeting of network engineers from Internet², ESCC, regional networks, connectors and members. Most of those attending are network engineers or operators committed to provide high performance connectivity to education and research groups mostly, but not limited to, the U.S. Whenever the meeting is held in Hawai‘i, it is combined with the APAN meeting which adds in the Asia-Pacific national, regional and campus high performance network providers.

This afternoon, moto-vlogger (motocycle video blogger) @808yewtube, gave me a brief tour of the Hawai‘i outside of Waikīkī partly because the real flavor of Hawai‘i wasn't being reflected in my pictures/posts if I just stayed in Waikīkī. The color of the ocean was a beautiful dark blue and the weather was beautiful.

This is from what Google Maps labels as the Waimanalo Beach Park Lookout though the beach shown in this picture is Makapu'u Beach Park along the Kalanianaole Highway about 10 miles east of the Waikīkī area. Google Map fail.

The pictures don't do the area justice. The water was somewhere between green and blue and the ocean was very calm. Thank you @808yewtube for taking time out of your busy day to share some of your beautiful state. Far better than just hanging around Waikīkī or the University of Hawai‘i.

I liked the way the moon shown even with the bright sun. This is a lava outcropping at the lookout.

I catch the shuttle to the airport at 7:30pm for a red-eye to Anchorage and a morning flight back home to Fairbanks where it's -27°F today...

This evenings dinner was a seaweed salad (never had this version before) and the sashimi plate. Both delicious and in a little hole-in-the-wall place on a side street. There were some challenges as the menu, the specials board and signs were in Japanese. But fortunately, there were pictures in the menu for those who don't read Japanese.

I must admit that the sashimi was even better than Osaka's (and half the price!).

Posted with Blogsy

TIP - IPv6 Workshop

All of today was spent participating in an IPv6 workshop. The other participants have a wide range of experience and exposure to IPv6 and from a range of institutions. The focus of the class is different from when I had last taught the workshop and is not campus centric as opposed to connector or regional network centric. Also, the workshop used to be more "hands on" which required shipping hundereds of pounds of gear around in travelling racks. Very expensive and somewhat problematic as we usually ended up repairing something when setting up.

Last night, I went out to dinner with my former supervisor and his significant other at the Himalayan Kitchen, a Nepalise and Indian restaurant. I had a very generous serving of lamb vindaloo with jasmine rice and garlic naan bread. No food picture unless I take a picture of the leftovers in the hotel fridge. They now live uphill from the University of Hawaii campus and picked me up at my hotel. They mentioned that this was the first time in a long time that they've ventured into the Waikiki tourist area. It was much quieter and relaxed once you get out of town.

This evening, a network engineer from Iowa and I went in search of dinner within walking distance, which meant that we would be in Waikīkī somewhere. He wanted to avoid a chain or anything else he would be able to find in Iowa. Along the main drag, everything was either a chain or somewhere which would have stretched anyones budget past the breaking point. A couple of blocks away from the main street, we found a non-chain Hawaiian steak house called Vit's Hawaiian Steak and their daily special was ono steak with shrimp. Tasted like teriyaki but it was fine. As with most meals, too much food was served and I ended up leaving some on the plate. Peter is also a rider and used to race sports bikes so there was a lot of good conversation.

Posted with Blogsy

Barrow Coastline and IPv6

I went out at today about 1:00pm to take a look the washed out section of road towards Point Barrow. This is looking northeast along the coast in the same area where the road was washed out near the end of October just past the "Road Closed" sign. The buildings in the distance are referred to as "duck camp". On the far side of the buildings is the baleen palm tree that I had photographed before. The ice has a nice blue tint which is difficult to see in this picture. No direct sunlight in spite of it being after local sunrise.

This is looking towards the DEW Line site which also houses some NOAA labs doing atmospheric monitoring. The flat foreground is not water but an old military runway which serviced the NARL facility back in the cold war days. Words that come to my mind when looking out over the tundra are flat, isolated, windswept, cold...

I must be easily thrilled. This capture from a webpage shows that IPv6 is up and running in Barrow. For any not aware of what I'm talking about, IPv6 is the next generation Internet protocol that replaces IPv4, the protocol that the Internet runs on. Over the years I have taught workshops on this topic and I have been trying to get the University to turn on IPv6 system wide. Getting it turned up in Barrow is a start. Getting IPv6 running up here was not my primary reason for coming up but it's a nice addition.