Next, I tried out Volvo on a recommendation from Alex. I test drove a pre-owned S60 T5 that the previous owner had souped up with better exhaust and a turbo. I actually liked the car, but it wasn’t much of a step up from what I have now. In fact, that was my decision that day: I don’t actually need a new car anyway. I love what I’ve got.

Fast forward to this week. My co-worker, Tom, was telling me about his new car: a BMW 335i Coupe. He did the European Delivery Program which lets you buy the car in the US and then go to Germany to pick it up and drive it around for a couple of weeks. Once you’re done with it there, you give it back to BMW and they ship it to the US. The cool part is that you actually get a discount for doing that since BMW is able to ship it into the US as a used car at that point which saves them the tariffs they’d usually pay to import the car. Anyway, Tom convinced me to look into that car and I must say that I am impressed. It looks gorgeous and has a nice inline six cylinder engine with 300HP. I went out today to give it a test drive. Sadly, there are apparently no 335 Coupes within 50 miles of here: The nearest one is in Fife near Tacoma. However, I figured I’d try out the 335i Sedan while I was at the dealership since it has the same engine and handling as the Coupe. Once again, I’m just not impressed. Sure, it is a nice car. It has leather, keyless ignition, iPod integration, and a sexy exterior, but I just didn’t feel a connection to the road like I do in my Altima. I’m reserving judgement until I have a chance to try the Coupe. If Tom will let me, I’ll probably try to take a spin in his. Otherwise, I’m told that there are more in California and I’ll be down there in a few weeks.

For now, the moral of the story is that I love my car. For those who don’t know, I own a 2005 Nissan Altima 3.5SE V6. It’s fast (250HP), has “umph” (249 ft. lbs. torque), and looks sexy. I took it out for a car wash after coming back from the dealership. Sure, she has a few scratches and dings, but she’s mine and I’m glad I have her.

First, a bit about my environment:

• Server:
  • Windows Home Server
  • Debian “Lenny” running in a VM
  • Behind a Linksys WRT54G running Tomato
  • SSH forwarded into the linux VM
• Client
  • Windows Vista Enterprise
  • Behind an ISA firewall

To accomplish this task, I used the following tools:

• smbfs - Samba filesystem kernel module
• mt-daapd - Firefly media server
• Putty - Windows SSH client
• Rendezvous Proxy - Windows utility that proxies the Apple Rendezvous protocol from an arbitrary network address

Here is what I did, step by step:

1) Setup Debian to automatically mount my Home Server’s music share on boot:

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/mp3
$ sudo vim /etc/fstab

Add a line to the end of the file like this:

//<ipaddress>/Music  /mnt/mp3  smbfs username=<username>,password=<password>  0  0

Where <ipaddress> is the IP of your media server, and <username> and <password> are a login that has access to the file share

Then, I mounted the share manually to avoid having to restart:

$ sudo mount /mnt/mp3

2) Setup mt-daapd (you can grab this from sourceforge at http://tinyurl.com/mt-daapd):

$ wget <url path to mt-daapd tarball>
$ tar -zxvf <path to tarball>
$ cd mt-daapd-x.x.x.x  # x's are in place of the version number
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Now you need to configure mt-daapd:

$ sudo cp contrib/mt-daapd.conf /etc
$ sudo cp contrib/mt-daapd.playlist /etc
$ sudo vim /etc/mt-daapd.conf

Most of the defaults should be fine, but you’ll need to change web_root from /usr/share/… to /usr/local/share/…  You’ll also want to change the admin_pw to a more secure password.

Next, we’ll make mt-daapd load on boot automatically:

$ cd /etc/init.d
$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/sbin/mt-daapd mt-daapd
$ sudo update-rc.d mt-daapd defaults

We’re now ready to launch mt-daapd:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/mt-daapd start

Ok, barring any errors, you’ve now got sharing working locally.  The next step is to get to that share remotely.

3) Setup an SSH tunnel to your media server.

On your client machine, launch Putty and input the following settings:

• Session
  • Host Name (or IP address): the hostname or IP of your router.  In my case, I have a dynamic IP, so I use dyndns.org along with the appropriate settings in my router’s firmware.
  • Connection type: SSH
• SSH
  • Check “Don’t start a shell or command at all”
  • Check “Enable compression”
• SSH -> Tunnels
  • Source port: 3689
  • Destination: your linux box’s local IP plus port 3689 (ex. 192.168.1.100:3689)
  • Click Add

You’ll probably also want to save this configuration in the Session tab.  Optionally, you can setup SSH Key authentication so you don’t have to type your password every time you connect.

4) Setup Rendezvous Proxy:

Install Rendezvous proxy (download link above) and run the application

Click Add Host and input the following settings:

• IP Address: localhost (we direct the traffic to our SSH tunnel this way)
• Port: 3689
• Host Label: what shows up in iTunes
• Service Type: _daap._tcp. (iTunes Host)

Click Add and then launch iTunes.  You should now see your home media server in the left column.  Have fun!

(Thanks to Luc Dewavrin for his tutorial on setting this up.  It took some extra steps, but his documentation was priceless)

It goes like this: When I was shopping for all the parts in the machine, I explicitly chose a motherboard that supported hardware RAID. I installed Debian on the machine and was a bit bewildered when it showed both hard drives.  After doing some research, I found the issue:

When they say hardware RAID, they actually mean software RAID that is supported by the BIOS. In fact, it is very similar to a WinModem. That means that you are forced to use Windows if you actually want to use the RAID. Well, shit. Now, I am aware that there are experimental drivers for using SATA RAID on Linux (see dmraid), but most people agree that using the built-in Linux software RAID support (see mdadm) is preferred and better supported.

Anyway, after a long night of various fail and life-hating, I’ve now got a 500GB software RAID1 set running Debian “Lenny” Beta 2.

Off-topic: I’m seeing this odd behavior where when I cold-power-on my machine, it turns on, then suddenly dies after 2 seconds…then, without touching it, it turns on again and finishes booting. I’m using an Intel P35 chipset, and my friend Zach also is seeing the same issues on two of his C2D boxes, so perhaps it’s a chipset issue.

I had a really nice day today, so I figured I’d share.

It all started this morning. I was on the way to work and decided to call up Nokia to get the status of a repair. You see, last year I bought this cool device called the n770 Internet Tablet. It’s got a 640×480 pixel touch screen, bluetooth, wifi, runs a flavor of Debian linux, and has a large development community. I got it new from Woot.com for about $125. A couple of months ago, it stopped working. I could tell that it was on, but the screen appeared to be dead. I mailed it in for warranty repair and waited. Anyway, fast-forward two months; Nokia has had my repair status listed as “Waiting for Parts” since March 7th and I’m starting to miss the convenience of the device. So I called their customer care to ask what the story was. The 1st tier agent took my information and put me on hold for about 1 minute. He then came back and told me that he was researching and asked if he could put me on hold for another minute. One more minute later he came back and told me that he had Milton on the line from the Executive Resolutions department and that he’d take care of my problem. Milton greeted me and made sure that he understood my situation correctly. He then told me that, rather than making me wait any longer, they will send me an n800 tablet instead. The n800 is the next model up, came out about a year after the n770, and has much better hardware in it (including a faster cpu, and even a little camera). Naturally, I accepted the offer. That’s an epic win if I’ve ever seen one.

I got into work at around 10:45am and took care of some emails and questions from co-workers. Later, I went to get some teriyaki for lunch with Alex. After lunch, I went over to one of the buildings at Microsoft for interviewer training. A large part about working and advancing at Microsoft is helping in the hiring process. We take a lot of pride in hiring the “best and the brightest” people. The class was fairly interesting and flew by quickly (thank god since it was 4 hours long). Nothing scandalous to speak of…they just taught how to ask good open-ended questions and what kinds of things you shouldn’t ask about (race, religion, age, etc).

After training, I stopped by Alex’s office to say hi and then left to head back to my office. I got outside and saw that it is a beautiful day: sunny, blue skies, and mid-60s. I couldn’t pass this up, so I took the long way (albeit not necessarily on purpose). I walked about one mile.

Right now, I’m relaxing in my office catching up with email. I’ll probably spend some time coding before I leave.

Then, I went out to grab some lunch and decided that I needed to take advantage of the day. I opened all my windows and the sunroof and took a drive around Issaquah before going to Qdoba for some tasty-delicious Mexican Gumbo.

When I got back home, I saw a couple of packages waiting on my doorstep. My new GPS mounting kit and aux adapter for my car had arrived. I installed the GPS mount which looks great and makes using the TomTom a lot more comfortable.

I got back on my computer and worked some more on WPListCal. Then Alex gave me a call. I headed to his place, and we installed my aux adapter. I’ve now got 2 RCA inputs to my car’s factory radio. One of them is plugged into my Sirius radio which sounds tons better now that it’s not going over FM. The other input will go to a Harmon Kardon Drive & Play so I can control my iPod.

After a celebratory trip to Hooters for some delicious wings and beer, I headed back home and finished working on WPListCal. I was up until 5am coding…what can I say? I was in a groove.

Anywho, I’m probably going to hang out with Alex and Ferdinand later today.

Here’s the details

• MacBook Pro 15.4″
• 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo
• 2GB RAM
• 200GB 7200RPM HD (upgraded from 5400RPM)
• GeForce 8600M GT w/256MB GDDR3
• Wifi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Multitouch Trackpad

It should ship either Friday or sometime early next week.

Update: it is here and it is FAST! (and not nearly as hot as my old Powerbook [and by hot I mean temperature])