07.31.08
Posted in About Me, Technology at 1:00 pm by Todd
For more than 4 years I have been meaning to create a personal site for myself on wallentine.com. Last night, I finally uploaded a site that not only has real information but also has a tidbit of style. I now present todd.wallentine.com to the public.
On my site you will find a collection of information that will be evolving as I have time to upload new material. It should give people a good idea of who I am and what I have done. This site should help to establish my personal brand. And it also helps me to work towards completing my 2008 goals.
I should mention that the design of the site was taken from Raymond Krause (pogy366) who generously posted it on the Open Source Web Design site. I really like that site since the designs are free to use, they host a large number of designs, and many of them are very, very good. This design should be good enough for now - at least until I can afford to hire Ben to redesign it for me.
I would love to hear comments from my hordes of blog readers (all 3 of you). Feel free to comment on the content, the design, and anything else that bugs you.
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07.26.08
Posted in About Me, Technology at 1:00 pm by Todd
Last week I got a little angry at an old trusty friend - my firewall. We have been together since 1994 when my dad purchased me my first PC - I was heading off to college and needed something to play games on .. er, I mean do homework on. It was a Gateway 2000 tower (P5-90) that had all the bells-n-whistles from that day (Pentium 90MHz processor, 730M hard drive, 8M of RAM, printer, 15″ CRT, keyboard, mouse, Office 4.3, and 56k modem with a price tag of $2900). It was eventually upgraded to a 200Mhz MMX Overdrive processor, 16M of RAM, and a 2G hard drive.
During college it served as my workstation for homework (papers and programming assignments) and as my connection to the world (email, ftp, gopher, irc, and eventually the web). It even hosted many nights of Madden Football tournaments.
At some point I started to feel like the machine couldn’t handle my daily activities and it became a file and web server. Eventually, it was moved into a position of trust - the firewall on my home network. It was at that time that I installed OpenBSD and used ipf/pf to protect my home network from evil-doers that lurk on the internet. It performed this duty admirably for many years (at least 5) and needed very little maintenance (2 upgrades of software and 2 non-upgrade-related reboots - take that windows).
So after all of those years of service in all of those different roles, it finally decided it was ready to retire. The day started with frustration because the home network wasn’t connecting to the internet. I did everything possible to diagnose the issue and decided that I needed to restart to sync the firewall with the cable modem. After a restart it started working again - ah, sweet relief.
Later that same day I started having issues again. It looked like the network card in the firewall which was connected to the cable modem was failing so I decided to stop the machine and try to reseat the card. After a quick cleaning of the inside of the machine and reseating the card, I restarted the machine. That is when the machine informed me of its final decision to retire (it wouldn’t POST but instead reported an issue using the internal speaker using a sequence of beeps: 1 3 4 1).
Long story short, the machine is toast. I will probably spend a few minutes when I get some time trying to get it back online. But considering the age of the machine it is probably a loss.
Farewall good friend, you have been very good to me. From Madden football to Pascal homework and beyond, you have been a trusted aid. And your services will be missed.
For those of you that don’t know me that well, I am a super-nerd and get attached to technology. Especially trusted technology!
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07.24.08
Posted in Books at 1:00 pm by Todd
I recently finished reading Freakanomics (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner). This means another goal completed. But more important, I really think that I learned something from the book.
The book made me think more about incentives than I ever did before. For example, when thinking about selling my house I will have to consider what type of deal I can strike with a real estate agent to ensure that I get the best price. I suppose this really is just a lesson in basic economics but I had never had it explained in this way.
The were several parts of the book that didn’t sit well with me. It wasn’t the content but rather how they presented their arguments. At times, they didn’t provide a strong enough case to completely convince me.
Overall, it was a great book that I would certainly recommend to everyone.
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07.22.08
Posted in Manhattan, People, Sports at 1:00 pm by Todd
This summer I am playing in a 6-v-6 soccer league run by the Manhattan Parks and Recreation department. We are generously sponsored by della Voce bistro italiano. The team is made up of ex-teammates from my high school team - the Manhattan High School Indians. This includes the likes of Noah Reagan, Oscar Montenegro, Justin Kastner, Steve Howe, Justin Deweese, Brett Robinson, and Jim Launchbach. The team is supplemented by friends to round out a good, but aging team.
We finished the regular season with 3 wins, 1 tie, and 3 losses. At least 2 games we should have won (the tie and one loss). We are starting the tournament tonight and hope to play better in the tourney than we did in the regular season.
I have enjoyed the soccer but the best part is catching up with old friends. It is amazing that Oscar hasn’t lost a step and has turned out to be a hard working banker and family guy. Steve and JK are still in pretty good shape and still quite the players despite the lack of practice. And Jim is as strong and aggressive as ever - a nice thing to have on the back line. And it was fun catching up with Deweese but it sucked that he broke his collar bone in the first game.
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07.21.08
Posted in About Me, Sports at 10:00 pm by Todd
Well, I am officially crazy today. Not only did I recently agree to run in a half-marathon (thanks to Ben and Adam for convincing me along with the constant pushing of Jeremy) but I started training for it. I could have easily said I would do it and then back out a few weeks before the race. Instead, I decided that I should start training in hopes of being able to complete the half marathon as well as put myself in position to start training for a full marathon.
Before I start I wanted to get a baseline of some numbers to compare my current health with my health right before and right after the event. So I had Kari do some measurements and take some pictures. Beware, the pictures posted below are not for the faint of heart!
Current weight: 180 lbs
Resting Blood Pressure: 132/79
Resting Heart Rate: 62
Body Fat (estimate): 21.12% (using the U.S. Navy body fat formula) or 18.97% (using the formula developed by the YMCA) (using this calculator and these measurements: 34, 35.5, 40.5, 14.5, 5′10″, 180).
I am going to try and follow this training plan. So I got up early this morning and went for a 3 mile run. I finished slower than I hoped (28 minutes and 46 seconds). But I did finish despite some knee tightness/discomfort as I ran.
I am hoping that by posting this I will be motivated to continue training as well as to run and complete the race. So my craziness started today and will continue until I finish the half marathon. And maybe, just maybe, I will decide to run a full marathon in the spring (of 2009). Feel free to post encouraging words in the comments section - and feel free to keep your unflattering comments about my picture to yourself 
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07.09.08
Posted in About Me, Customer Service, KSU, SAnToS, Technology at 3:00 pm by Todd
Update (10:15a 11 July 2008): The DNS information should be propagated by now and most of the bugs worked out. We had some issues with CVS and host name that needed to be fixed. Hopefully those are the last bugs we find for a while.
Update (5:00p 09 July 2008): Looks like the DNS information is harder to change than expected. So the post of this entry was a little premature. Oops!
For the last 2+ years I have been working to upgrade our project management server to use new hardware and new software. And it is finally complete! Today, we finalized the migration from the old project management server to the new one. The new one is running GForge AS 5.4 purchased from the GForge Group. We had several issues getting this done but it looks like the job is complete (some of them mentioned in this post).
I would like to take the time to thank Tim and Marcelo (from the GForge Group) for helping get the migration completed. They certainly worked hard this last week to make sure this happened.
I would like to thank Travis, Cole, and Seth (past and present members of the CIS system admin staff) for working to get this migration completed. They worked on it for quite some time to make this happen. They also suffered my constant pressure to get it done and get it done correctly.
I am particularly excited about a couple of features in the new software: 1) CruiseControl, 2) the Eclipse plugin, and 3) Subversion. I have used CruiseControl for some toy projects in the past and I am really interested in getting it to work for some of my real projects (SpAda and Cadena). And since I use Eclipse as my main work environment, it will be nice to have the ability to interact with GForge from inside of Eclipse. That integration will make it easier to track and fix bugs as well as keep on task. And with the ability to use Subversion, I will finally get a chance to try it out. I have been using CVS for so long that I do checkouts from my fridge to get my midnight snack.
But the best feature is that the CIS department system admin staff will be taking over the admin duties for the box. This means no more late nights or early mornings fighting with the machine. And it means no more customizations to deter script kiddies. And it means no more little changes to the GForge code to make sure it works correctly. Best of all, no more KSUAFRS (a custom download manager that Jesse and I wrote for GForge) - John and Robby decided that feature was no longer necessary.
I am really glad that this task is complete, that it got done without any major issues, and that the admin duties now fall on the department (instead of me).
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07.07.08
Posted in KSU, SAnToS, Technology at 10:05 am by Todd
Today is the day that the project management server is getting migrated. It will soon be running on new hardware (dual Opteron 248, 12G RAM, 80G hard drive) using new software (GForge AS 5.4). I am hoping that in a few hours I will post a completion announcement here.
Wish us luck and say a prayer that Murphy doesn’t visit Nichols Hall today.
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07.04.08
Posted in About Me, People, Technology at 1:00 pm by Todd
A while back a friend of mine pointed me to a really neat site: FreeRice. On the site you can help develop your vocabulary and provide rice to the UN World Food Program.
I have been doing this on-n-off since then and have generated 4460 grains of rice. I am pretty steady at vocab level 40 (although I have dropped as low as 36) and hope to achieve their highest rank of 60 at some point (fat chance but I like to set lofty goals).
Sorry, I just had to brag a little bit. Besides, it is always fun to promote worthy causes - and feeding the hungry is always a good cause.
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07.02.08
Posted in Business, Customer Service, Technology at 1:00 pm by Todd
I just watched this hilarious video that makes fun of both techies and non-techies. It does have some vulgar language so make sure to not watch it at work or around kids (or around those that will be offended). I was laughing out loud watching this.
It does remind me that techies like me have no business talking to regular people.
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