A Ninja's Progress

Someday, this will be me

I have finally passed an important milestone in my ninjutsu training.  After 2 or 3 years (I don't actually remember how long it's been), I have at last earned my next belt: solid green.  For many, this particular rank is just one more step along the way to black belt, and not even really worth mentioning.  But for me, this is a huge deal.

My Old Belts
In a Box

When I earned my green/white belt (my previous rank, for those who aren't familiar with our ranking system), I had been divorced for just over a year and had just started dating my wife.  At the time, I was only able to see my kids for an hour at a time under supervision, thanks to the vicious lies my ex had been spreading about me. I had also lost my home to foreclosure and had to move into a cheap apartment closer to work - 50+ miles away.  This made attending class at my home dojo in Ann Arbor on a regular basis somewhat difficult.  In short, life was happening all around me, and as I left Quest with my shiny new green/white belt, I just kind of ... knew .. I would have to find a different path if I wanted to progress further.  As it turns out, I wouldn't train again for a long time.

The intervening years weren't necessarily difficult. Like life in general, they had their ups and downs. I got married again, had a baby, moved a couple more times, and changed jobs. I've paid off most of my debts, including the ones left over from my previous marriage. I've fought and (mostly) won a drawn out custody battle in court and finally have something that resembles a fair arrangement for my kids. The court system seems to finally recognize that my ex has been lying to them all along (took them long enough, though), and I'm starting to finally see some improvement in my relationship with my older kids.  My wife broke her ankle a couple summers ago and had to recover from corrective surgery while caring for our newborn daughter - that was a trying time for all of us.  I still don't think "difficult" is the right word to use - perhaps "busy" will work.

During the whole time, I became frustrated with my inability to continue my training. I even tried starting over in a different martial art at a school close to home. It just .. didn't "do it" for me, and I quit after 3 months.  I struggled (and still do) with staying motivated and many times failed to make training even a concern, let alone a priority.  My health suffered, too .. I went from being in the best physical shape of my life to what is now probably the worst. I'm currently only 5 lbs down from the most I've ever weighed in my life. I feel like I'm getting old and perhaps nearing that "mid-life crisis" everyone talks about when a man reaches middle age - if I'm not already smack in the middle of it.

DING, level up!
Shout out to my awesome Sensei, too!

But .. a few months ago, I was able to start training again under my awesome sensei, Joel Iverson at the Art of Life Sanctuary in Detroit (shameless plug), and I've managed to stick with it.  As I've chronicled before, it's been tough at times. I've felt like giving up more than I'll ever actually admit.  I've had to overcome the frustration that goes with realizing I've forgotten so much of what I had learned before. I've learned the value of self-discipline the hard way - by not having any and reaping the consequences.  I still have a long way to go, too - 5 more belts before my first black belt, and I don't plan on stopping there.  Today, I will tie around my waist the first tangible token of my recovery and progress as a developing ninja - my first new belt in close to 3 years.

To me, this belt symbolizes many victories. It reminds me of everything I've had to overcome and adapt to over the last couple of years in order to earn it.  My sensei at Ann Arbor once told us how he was more proud of his white belt than any other (and he was a 3rd degree black belt at the time), because that was the one that started everything - that was the belt he had to overcome the most obstacles in order to earn. Today, I understand what he meant.

Fixing the Otterbox Echo Phenomenon

I recently purchased an Otterbox Defender case for my shiny new Galaxy Note 2 from AT&T. I like it a lot - it's durable, sturdy, and the holster doesn't break off all the time like those annoying $6 cases you can get from that site that begins with "Am" and ends with "azon."  But .. there's always a but.

As soon as I installed the case and made a phone call, the person on the other end complained that they were hearing a loud, obnoxious echo of themselves speaking. This basically rendered the phone useless for what is supposed to be its primary function: making actual phone calls!  So, I went immediately to Google to do some research.

It turns out, a lot of people experience this problem, not only with Otterbox cases, and not only with the Note 2. I read reports of the same behavior with the Galaxy S3, iPhone 5, Galaxy S2, Motorola Droid whatever, HTC phones .. the list goes on and on and on and on.  Sidebar:  That last bit is better if you sing it like a grunge rock song.

So, what to do about this?  Well, Otterbox says it's the fault of the phone and not their case, citing numerous users of the same product that don't experience the issue.  All the carriers are either silent, or say that, since the issue shows up when you add the case, it must be the case's fault. Neither is going to do anything about it except point fingers at the other and leave their customers hung out to dry.  Thanks.  Jerks.

Not satisfied with the corporate buck-passing, I decided to take things into my own hands. I'm an engineer, after all, I should be able to solve this problem. And indeed I have. In fact, this solution highlights the fact that I am a messed up combination of engineer, redneck, and former wanna-be musician.

The Earplugs

The idea is to acoustically isolate the primary microphone (the one you speak into) from the rest of the phone, and especially the earpiece speaker.  To do this, you'll need the following materials:

1. Some disposable foam ear-plugs. The kind you squash and stick directly into your ear. You can usually find them at your local shooting range, usually for free if you spend some time on the range (which I highly recommend).

2. A good, SHARP pocket knife. No, seriously - if it's not sharp enough to shave your arm hairs with minimal pressure, then sharpen it until it is - then sharpen it some more. If you don't have a pocket knife, a good sharp scalpel, art or surgical, will do.

Sliced

First, use your sharp knife to slice off the wide edge of one of your ear-plugs, making the slice as thin as you can make it. A fraction of a millimeter is all it takes.  Actually, do this twice. In order to have uniformly sized slices, I used two separate earplugs. If the earplugs you find are not the tapered kind, you can use the same one twice. What matters is that you end up with 2 thin slices of earplug foam, which you'll use to surround the primary mic pinhole of your phone.

Next, use your sharp pointy thing to cut a very small opening into the very center of each slice. This opening needs only to be 1 to 1.5mm in diameter, and it can be square or whatever shape you end up with. You just have to make sure you actually physically remove some of the material - simply poking a hole isn't enough. The material has to be able to fully expand and retain the opening.  UPDATE:  I've found that a hand-held hole punch is perfect for this part of the task. It leaves a nice big hole making it much easier to align with the mic, too.

Hole poked and Applied to Phone
note the mic pinhole is visible

Now, take one of your perforated slices and fit it over your phone, leaving the hole over the primary microphone opening in your phone as shown.

Back in the hard shell. See the mic?
Pay no attention to the
weirdo behind the phone

With the slice in place, fit the phone back into the hard shell. Make sure you can still see the primary microphone's pinhole in the phone, otherwise no one will hear you when you make calls. I found that it took quite a bit of fiddling (and some cursing and swearing) to make sure the shell closed completely while leaving the microphone exposed. If you have a Note 2 like me, you can use the stylus to finesse the foam a little once it's closed in order to accomplish this. I presume some other pointy object like a pushpin could also suffice.

Everything back on. See the mic?
Yeah, me neither. I had to re-do it.

Now, take one of your slices and fit it to the bottom microphone hole on the inner (hard) shell of your Otterbox. I had to trim one side of mine because it ran up against the porthole for the USB charger. Again, you have have to make sure that the opening in your slice is over the opening of the hard case, which is over the opening of the first slice, which is over the primary mic's pinhole. With this in place, fit the outer rubber shell of your Otterbox onto your phone. Once again, this will be tricky and your profanity skills will likely be called upon. At the end of the process, you should still be able to see all the way to the primary mic pinhole.

Finally, you're done. Make a test call, preferably to someone who's complained frequently of the echo problem. If they don't hear the echo, you're done.  If they do .. well .. please post here and let me know, and feel free to try something different. Remember - it's more likely to work if you swear at it.

Just for Fun - the finished product*
*feel the swagger

Remember, this solution is specific to the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 in an Otterbox Defender case. However, the main principle should apply to any phone/case combination. If you're reading this post, you are probably smart enough to adapt it to your specific situation, so please feel free.  Good luck!

Why I oppose "universal background checks"

The truth is, I really don't - at least not in spirit.

I can haz rifle?

I think it's a great idea to keep guns out of the hands of the violent and crazy people who would do harm with them. The NRA (of which I am a card-carrying life member) even agrees with that principle, and there is already a system in place that covers the vast majority of legal firearm purchases: the NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System).  Check out the link to see the laws that are already in place, contradicting the popular misconception that "any nut can go buy a gun."

You'll note that private transfers don't require a NICS check .. so, if my dad wanted to give me his AR-15, for example, he could do that (hint hint, Dad ;)) - as long as I'm allowed to have it. Background check or not, it's already illegal to transfer a firearm to someone who is subject to prohibition (in addition to being a dumb idea to begin with).

I think it would be great if private individuals could run a background check on the person about to buy their gun. The problem is, we can't.  Currently, only a federally licensed dealer can do that.  Truthfully, I wouldn't even be that upset if it ended there, but it doesn't.  The devil, as they say, is in the details...

Because guitars are cool, too!

What I am actually opposed to is the other baggage that goes along with every NICS background check performed. A lot of people don't realize this, but a background check involves far more than a yes or no decision on whether a person can have a gun. Besides collecting personally identifying information, the serial number and model of gun is also collected, along with a record of who received it - name, address, social security number, etc.. The government, by law, is supposed to destroy these records, but frankly I don't trust them to do that.  The dealer, however, is required by law to maintain those records and to turn them over to the feds when/if he goes out of business. And these same feds are always looking for a good excuse to revoke anyone's federal firearms license and seize this paperwork.  This creates a de-facto registry, in the hands of the federal government, of every firearm purchase that involves one of these "background checks," and that is what I have a problem with. You can see my FAQ and FRO page for the reason why.

You want expanded background checks?  Fine .. open up the NICS system to anyone, not just FFL dealers, and do away with the back-door registration scheme.  I wouldn't mind at all calling up the NICS number, giving them my information, and the prospective buyer's information, waiting a few minutes, and being told "go" or "no-go."  But, that's all that's really necessary .. they don't need to know what kind of gun it is, or if (in the event of a "go" decision) I even decide to go through with it after all. This is fine, because, let's face it, a criminal isn't even going to bother to call in the first place.

As I asserted before, it's already illegal for me to sell or give a firearm to anyone who shouldn't have one - this idea just gives me another tool to help me make sure I don't run afoul of that law, and it allows me, a responsible gun owning individual, to help keep them out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them.

Unfortunately, that's not even close to what's being proposed in Washington and several states. What they're after is just the next step in a much broader agenda which, they hope, will eventually lead to the complete disarming of law abiding Americans - and God only knows what after that. This is yet another devil in the details that begs the question, "who gets to decide who should and shouldn't have a gun, anyway?"  But that's for another post, I'm afraid ...

NOW we're talkin'

My Pretty Awesome uVerse Setup

WARNING: technical content - may not be suitable for non-nerds.

So, I just moved to a new house and brought my AT&T uVerse service with me. I decided at the same time to upgrade my in-home network to gigabit ethernet and 802.11n wireless.  Both are up to 10 times faster than what I previously had.  There were a few issues, though:

1. The uVerse RG, or "residential gateway," is not compatible with gigabit ethernet or 802.11n wireless. Instead, AT&T seems to be stuck in the dark ages of 100-base-t and 802.11g.

2. The service typically doesn't jive well with setting up your own router behind the RG. It can be done, but you kind of have to know what you're doing.  Since I do .. well .. challenge accepted.

3. The tech who did my install was a pretty awesome guy. When I told him I wanted to have Gig-E in the house, he made sure to run all the connections for the TV and stuff so that they would be compatible with Gig-E. If you decide to duplicate this setup at some point, make sure your technician does this, too, or you'll be out of luck. Anyway .. the problem here is that the TV signal takes up a LOT of bandwidth, and all that stuff was getting re-broadcast back onto my LAN and strangling it. Even the wifi was constantly transmitting, and it was stuff that's useless to the rest of the devices on the network.

So, the first step was to buy a gigabit router with 802.11n. I chose the D-Link DIR-825 for this, and got a refurbished one from Newegg for about $50. This is a dual-band router with quite a few bells and whistles, and it ended up being the key component in this installation - in fact, I ended up using 2 of them.

My original plan was to run the DIR-825 (known as "the router" henceforth) as an access point in the living room and have the TV hooked into it on the wired interface. This resulted in problem #3, so no-go there. I eventually do want to have a wifi access point in the living room, though, so the way I got around this is important.

First thing I did was to flash the latest version of OpenWRT onto both DIR-825 routers. For those who don't know, OpenWRT is an open-source firmware that runs on a lot of commercially available wireless routers and access points. It's usually far more feature-complete than the "stock" firmware that comes on these devices, and lets you do a lot more with them.  You can find out about openwrt at http://openwrt.org.

The end result
Red = internet
Yellow = tv
Orange = vlan trunk line

After that, it was a matter of configuring each one to give me what I wanted.  The one in my office, next to the uVerse RG, became the actual router, and the one in the living room became a dumb access point without any routing features.  I actually have 3 separate networks (called VLANs) running over the single wire between the office and the living room:  1 for the TV, 1 for my local network with internet access and access locally to my server, and 1 for guests who want to use my WiFi to get on the internet.  Each network is isolated from the others, and the guest network is even isolated from itself (meaning guest devices can't see each other, only the internet).  The TV signal stays out of the other networks, and everything runs really well.

Just for references sake, here are a couple of links that I found very helpful when configuring my routers:

For configuring VLANs with uVerse: http://forums.att.com/t5/Setup-and-Self-Install/UDP-Traffic-flooding-with-Airport-Express-behind-switch/m-p/2761815#M159

For using my own router with uVerse: http://forums.att.com/t5/Residential-Gateway/U-verse-for-BUSINESS-2Wire-3600HGV-bridge-mode-or-another-AT-amp/m-p/2707755#M182

For OpenWRT stuff:  http://wiki.openwrt.org/

For testing your firewall: https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

Good Friday

A very long time ago, I wrote a song. The lyrics are from the point of view of Roman soldier who plays an integral role in crucifying Jesus. Some good friends helped bring it to life with their musical talents that remain far superior to mine.  As the band grew, and I left on good terms to finish my computer science degree, the song eventually fell off the set list. It was never officially recorded or released - that I know of, anyway.  Yet, I've always wanted to do something more with it. I feel like it still has some potential.

So, today, I have taken it upon myself to re-write the lyrics a little, give it a new title, and who knows, maybe eventually it will get some new life. After all, new life is what this weekend is all about...

-= Centurion =-

You came to me

Like so many had before

Doomed to die

The crowd still shouting, "crucify!"

Crowned in thorns

Your wounded visage caught my eye

And looking past the blood I saw the love

The love that crowns and crucifies

(chorus)

And now I come to you

I plead the blood

I shed by my own hand

Father God, forgive me,

I knew not what I did

You left my whip

Beaten one lash short of death

Sadistically

I stripped your clothes and drove the nails

Darkness fell

My face turned pale, my blood ran cold

For dying on that cross I saw the Son

"My God, what have I done?"

(chorus)

Now I come to you

I plead the blood

I shed by my own hand

Father God, forgive me

I know well what I do

You rose again

Like no one had before

Victorious

Over Hades' deepest grave

Redemption dawns

As you roll the stone away

Now looking in your face I see the light

And on my knees I pray..

(chorus)

Now I come to you

I plead the blood

I shed by my own hand

Father God, forgive me

I know now what I did

Not The End

Fighting with Your Eyes Closed

"Walk by faith, and not by sight." - 2 Corinthians 5:7

I had an interesting experience last week during my martial arts class. I've been struggling to teach my body the "wind" style footwork required for most of the techniques found at my level. It's completely different from what I learned before, or at least it feels that way. I'm used to moving from my hips, but wind moves from the shoulders. I'm used to 45-degree angles, but that's water - wind is more about circular motion while receiving energy.

 Morpheus

Sensei says my problem is that I think about it too much instead of just doing it. My body knows what to do, he says, but my brain keeps getting in the way. I picture Morpheus during Neo's introduction to in-Matrix combat telling him to "stop trying to hit me and just hit me!"

To prove his point, he told me to do the technique with my eyes closed - a technique that begins with me getting kicked in the stomach!  That's crazy-talk, right? But, I figure there's a reason he's a sensei and I'm a student, so I gave it a shot.

I had to rely completely on sensing the energy of my opponent and waiting to feel the first sensations of the incoming kick, and then receive and redirect that energy. I had to know where my opponent was just by feeling it, and defeat him by moving into the right position relative to his, applying the technique, and all of this without the benefit of sight.

I felt the beginning of the kick on my abdomen, and began to move through the dark... And you know what? It worked! Sensei even said that was the best implementation of that technique he'd ever seen me do! Not only was it possible, but it actually worked better with my eyes closed and out of the way.

Now, for perhaps the first time, I understand the scripture I quoted above. Sometimes, we just have to close our metaphorical eyes and do what we know is right in the face of a challenge, purely on faith. This doesn't mean we do nothing and wait for divine intervention, but rather that we trust in what we've learned from the divine and apply it without being distracted by fear and an over-zealous need to analyze or be in control. At least try it ... you will probably be surprised at the results.

Gunplay, Adrenaline, and Things to Come

Well, this week has certainly been interesting. I have somehow managed to pick up my third illness in two months - another sinus cold!  I hope this one will go away without the need for medical intervention, but it did cause me to miss my Thursday evening To-Shin Do class. Thankfully I was feeling well enough on Saturday to attend class that day.

Remember how I said in an earlier post that I was worried that "it just wouldn't be the same?" Well, I couldn't have been more right, and it seems like that's a good thing. As it turns out, the training I'm receiving now is more geared towards potential real-life self-defense situations than previously. This is natural since the instructor has worked in law enforcement and private security for decades. Now, please don't interpret this as a put-down to my former school. Those guys know what they're doing, too, and I'm grateful for the instruction I received there. In fact, it's a testament to their awesomeness that I'm doing as well as I am, starting at level 3 at this new place after 2 years off. It's just .. different, that's all.

Now, with all that said, Saturday felt like my brain was going to explode due to information overload. Or was it sinus pressure?  Well .. maybe both. The highlight of the class, for me anyway, was the workshop we did on gun defense. I was able to play the role of a gun-wielding defender and an un-armed defender. In both cases, the idea is simply to not get shot, and therefore staying out from in front of the barrel is the main goal - for both people. In either situation, once the un-armed party decides to try to take the gun, it no longer really matters how it started - both are fighting for their lives at that point. It was pretty eye-opening for me in a few ways. First of all, I learned that if you're forced to use a gun to defend yourself, it's not a good idea to let your assailant get close enough to think he has a chance to take your gun from you .. and if he's already that close, you're better off just leaving your gun in your pocket and going hand-to-hand. It was also encouraging to find that I seem to have the skills and intuition to have a pretty reasonable chance at surviving a close-range encounter with a gun-wielding assailant, or an assailant trying to disarm me.

This was an experience unlike any I've had before .. even though I knew the guns we were training with were safe, I still felt quite a surge in adrenaline each time I had to defend myself. I had tried to put myself into the mindset at the time that all that mattered was not letting that thing be pointed at me no matter what, and that I really was fighting for my life. While I realize that there is no substitute for the real thing, I hope that were I ever to face the real thing, I would at least know that I know what to do to survive, and my training would kick in.

The other neat thing that happened in class was that my instructor told me I'd be ready to move up a belt rank soon. This is an especially big deal to me because I've been at the same rank now for 2 years. Just as a comparison, it look me about 2 years to go from a beginning white belt to where I am now. When it happens, my new belt will be solid green, and it will mean a lot to me, just because of all the struggles, internal and external, that I will have overcome to earn it. In fact, I will probably consider it one of my greater achievements over all.