benweir.com

A few days ago I mistyped a URL that I entered in the Firefox address bar. Usually this would result in the usual "Server not found" error message from Firefox. But instead I got an ad-chocked web page served up by Comcast saying they couldn't find the url. More about this at Ars Technica and plenty of other sites via Google

At the top of Comcast's page is a link to opt-out of this "service". I visited the opt-out page and entered my name, contact info, and cable modem MAC address and submitted the info. This was on August 24. I got an email from them that day and clicked the link therein to confirm my request.

Today (eight days later) I got another email saying that the MAC address I had entered wasn't recognized and that my request was therefore unsuccessful. It turns out I had actually put the router's WAN interface MAC address, not that of the cable modem. My error. So I revisited the opt-out page to try again. It seems they had changed it in the past week and now it requires you to log in with your Comcast username in order to do anything.

The Comcast account at my house is in someone else's name. They're not technical at all. To try and get their username and password or try to get them to complete the opt-out process would be way too much trouble. So I initiated a chat with a Comcast support technician and ultimately got them to opt me out.

At the end of our chat they had me run "ipconfig /flushdns" which I pretended to do on my Linux box. At that point I suspected that the way the opt-out worked was to simply send my cable modem a different DNS server via DHCP. Before all of this, my DNS server was 68.87.76.182. Afterward it changed to 68.87.76.178. Sure enough, they're different. Let's take a look at what hostnames those IP addresses equate to:

[bweir@surge ~]$ host 68.87.76.182
182.76.87.68.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer cns.sanjose.ca.sanfran.comcast.net.
[bweir@surge ~]$ host 68.87.76.178
178.76.87.68.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer nrcns.sanjose.ca.sanfran.comcast.net.

A-ha! So the "domain helper" server is called "cns" and the regular undefiled name server is called "nrcns". This should make it really easy for any Comcast user to opt-out without having to go through Comcast customer service or using some third party DNS server. Simply find out what DNS server IP address Comcast is assigning you, reverse resolve it to a hostname, change "cns" to "nrcns", resolve that hostname back to an IP address, and then manually specify that new IP as your DNS server.

So to go from the "domain helper" name server to using a good one, the steps would look something like this:

[bweir@surge ~]$ cat /etc/resolv.conf 
search hsd1.ca.comcast.net
nameserver 68.87.76.182
[bweir@surge ~]$ host 68.87.76.182
182.76.87.68.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer cns.sanjose.ca.sanfran.comcast.net.
[bweir@surge ~]$ host nrcns.sanjose.ca.sanfran.comcast.net
nrcns.sanjose.ca.sanfran.comcast.net has address 68.87.76.178

Edit: I also found Comcast's DNS servers page as well as a discussion on the topic at dslreports.com

I finally got the commuting century done! The green marker on the map below is where I live and the red one is where I work. My usual commute between these points is two miles each direction but yesterday I took 59 miles to get to work and 45 to get home.

Commuting century route (click for bigger)

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This was a spur of the moment flight to Merced (KMCE) to meet Susanne (who had driven up from Fresno) for dinner. And by spur of the moment I mean that I made the "go" decision on the same afternoon as the flight. I still got in a good hour of flight planning - figuring out my routes to get there and back, drawing them on the charts, preparing the navlog, checking weather, notams and TFRs and so on. So it was relatively short notice but not exactly like I just headed down to the airport and took off.

A direct route from Palo Alto to Merced goes straight over some mountains which I wanted to avoid. It's possible to get around the high terrain by going to either side so I decided to make things interesting by taking both different routes. I took the northern route there and the southern route back thus making a sort of loop.

Click to view the map interactively

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Last week my video card died while I was trying to fly practice instrument approaches in FlightGear. Instead of simply replacing it I took this as an opportunity to upgrade. So I ordered a new motherboard, cpu, memory, and video card. The parts arrived yesterday and everything is installed. After fixing one minor issue with the SATA controller kernel module everything is working great now. Things feel very fast since it's a quad core cpu running at 2.66Ghz compared to my old single cpu at 1.8Ghz.

One application that greatly benefits from the multiple cores is stitching panoramic photos. So in honor of how fast this now is, here's a long-lost panorama from way back in March. I shot it at Bayfront Park (which has since been renamed to "Bedwell Bayfront Park") after I had a little disaster there with a kite and a (different) camera.

The image above links to a 1600 pixel wide version. I also have a 2400px copy

I like flying in the evenings and watching the sunset from the air. Even better is when the moon is full and I can watch it rise on the other side of the sky. This was one such day.

After work I headed home and moved a few flying supplies from my flight bag to my backpack: headset, a/fd and charts, lights, kneeboard, and writing utensils. I also brought my camera. Then I motorcycled up to the airport. It was quite windy with scattered low clouds which I hoped wouldn't obscure my view of the sun and moon.

Click below for more words and pictures.

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This was my first death ride. I finished all five passes and overall it was not as bad I thought it might be. Part of the reason for this, I'm sure, was the superb weather. I mean 64 degrees when I started at 5:00am? For the whole ride I didn't need any layers other than my short sleeved jersey and arm warmers. It was ridiculous how perfect the weather was.

I got down before the rain. This is a good one sentence summary of the ride as I feel like I was out in front of most hazards both weather and people alike.

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With the death ride just a couple weeks away I'm trying to get some good hard last minute climbing in. So yesterday after work I headed out to get some miles (and more importantly elevation) under my belt. When planning my route I wanted to get the infamous Alba Road as well as a descent of Hwy 9. This is what I ended up doing:

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For Father's Day I wanted to go take Dad to see the Nevada City Classic bike race. The race was being held for its 49th year but this year was extra special because Lance Armstrong and a couple of his Astana teammates Levi Leipheimer and Chris Horner would be competing.

The plan was for Aaron, Susanne, and me to fly from Palo Alto to Elk Grove, pick Dad up, and then continue to Nevada City. The flight to Elk Grove was pretty typical. I climbed to 2000 feet and leveled off until passing east of I-880 before climbing again to 3500. There was a lot of thermal activity and we got bumped around quite a bit. I didn't want to climb higher because the headwind was supposed to be stronger and it's a pretty short leg (67 miles).

We were flying N26WG which is a retractable gear Cessna 177 Cardinal. I hadn't flown it since going to Truckee in January but it seemed familiar enough. I followed the checklists and everything went fine.

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The boots were too wide and I shipped them back. I haven't ordered another pair yet because I need to wait until they receive my return shipment and issue me store credit (110% - yay!)

The bike arrived in San Pablo four hours ago but for some reason is not scheduled to arrive at my house for three more days. Hopefully it comes sooner!

I sold another book. Actually it's a boxed set of three books and I sold the set for $15. I looked up a post office nearby and when I got there it was actually some third party shipping store. Even though they sent it media mail the cost to send the books to Florida was $6.54 . This is $3 more than the last book I shipped across country. I'm not going back to that place.

Tonight I went on a bike ride with my co-worker from a long time ago. We climbed Soda Springs Rd and rode around Lexington reservoir. I've been doing a lot of commuting on my road bike wearing street clothes and shoes. So to get geared up properly (mainly the shoes) it felt like I could really fly along effortlessly.

Flying directly in the face of my recent "eliminate possessions" craze, I just made two online purchases.

First, I got a new pair of moto boots. I already have a beefy pair of boots. In fact they're so beefy that they come halfway up to my knees and they have toe sliders. They aren't comfortable to wear off the bike and they squeak when I walk in them. I can wear them under jeans but they look kind of dorky and not at all like normal shoes. I like them a lot for serious riding and their waterproofness is great but they're no good for wearing on quick trips around town. In the past I've just ridden around in regular shoes. But in the last few years I've gradually shifted away from tennis/athletic shoes and towards slightly dressier and lots more delicate leatherish shoes. I don't want to ride in them. Obviously there's a NEED for new boots. So my new moto boots are low cut and a lot less conspicuous looking. They should be comfy enough to wear all day too.

Second, I got a new bike. Part of the justification for this is that I am getting rid of my old hybrid bike this weekend! So this one doesn't count as new stuff, it's just "refreshing" something that I already have. Plus it's a folding bike and so it will take up a lot less space. I am getting the silver model and I also ordered the Crossrack. This will let me mount a standard pannier from the seat post.

Both of these purchases are further justified by two fairly recent changes in my life. I moved and I got rid of my car. These two things have me riding the two wheeled machines a lot more and so it seems wise to invest in them.