They hooked me!

As I've mentioned, I've been using MotionBased with my new GPS unit uploading each activity (dog walk, running, and in-line skating) to the website. The free version of the website only lets you see the last 10 or so activities and has a few other limitations. These include no saved reports and no totals. Well, it only took 5 days of me using the site and uploading data to convince me that I needed to subscribe so that I could separate my activities and total my activities. So far, it seems worth it and I think that I'm really going to enjoy using the website even more as I continue my training. Excellent work, MotionBased on giving me a free taste and then reeling me in!

I'm not an IT person

My dad called me today telling me that his IP phone wasn't working (it's hooked to my server). Well, he hadn't restarted the phone in awhile and I had upgraded the firmware on it so that the next time it rebooted it would pull it down. What I hadn't realized is that the phone's firmware switched from using active FTP to using passive FTP. My server was setup to allow active FTP (not much to setup), but didn't handle passive FTP. So after the phone got the firmware (using active FTP), it choked getting its config file via passive FTP. After a bunch of work, I figured this out and fixed my firewall to allow this. That was only part of the problem; the second problem is that I was using a non-standard SIP port (6060) for some reason that I can't really remember. Either the phone or my dad's router didn't like that, so I had to reconfigure the server (Asterisk) to use port 5060 and reconfigure the phone configuration to use port 5060. I think that this got the phone working again, but it took something like 2 hours and got me very annoyed at my dad when it clearly wasn't his fault.

I'm definitely not cut out for doing IT stuff. Luckily I don't have to do this all the time or I'd be pulling my hair out.

Virtual Trainer is out to get me

One of the features of my Garmin Forerunner is a virtual training partner that gives you something to try to keep up with during training. I tried it out yesterday and set it to a 9 minute mile which is about what I've been averaging. When I was ahead of the pace, the lower half of the display was black text on a "white" background, but when I was behind, it was a black background with white text. It shows how far ahead or behind you are relative to the training partner. The problem with the training partner is that he never has to stop for stoplights, is never out of breath, and just keeps running. When I was behind, I could just hear him say (not literally) "you wimp, speed up". There are parts of my run that I can easily beat the partner and other parts where it is hard (going uphill). Luckily, I managed to beat my virtual training partner by a few hundred feet on my 5 mile run. While it is a nice concept, I can't say that I like that kind of competition even if it really is all in my head.

Another stupid hack attempt

I was checking the statistics on my server this evening and saw a constant CPU and bandwidth spike from 6 am to 10 am. After some research, I discovered some bozo trying to break in via SSH. Hello, if you can't guess the username/password in the first 10 minutes, why not give up? Someone has obviously attempted to secure the system. So, I found a script called SSHBlack and then easy instructions that will blacklist an IP address after a few failed SSH attempts. I guess I'll know soon if it all works. Geez, don't people have better things to do with their time?