Category: Uncategorized

Lucas is growing up

Today we rode our bikes to school. This was the first time this (calendar) year, and the weather made riding irresistible.

Lucas decided he was going to ride his new big bike (16″ wheels) instead of the Trail-A-Bike with me. We left a little early, just in case. We didn’t need to. Not only did Lucas keep up just fine, but Kayla couldn’t catch him. One whiff of her catching up and off he zoomed. After riding back home (2 mile round trip), we had to travel 8 blocks out of our way, because it has been too long since we biked past the church.

Two weeks ago, he picked out his own books from the library, and is able to read half of them. He starts kindergarten in the fall. He is more than ready.

Flashback and Mac OS X security

I’ve had several people inquire about the security of their Mac, particularly since the media began exploiting the Flashback trojan with sensational titles and coverage that I refuse to link to. If you want a good summary of the Flashback trojan, Macworld has an excellent writeup: What you need to know about the Flashback trojan. As for what you should do, read on.

We need to remember that absolute security is impossible to attain. Safety and security are more accurately described in degrees. What we mac users are accustomed to is a greater degree of security than other PC users. So long as we employ a bit of caution when downloading, we can surf the big bad internet with very little concern.

That’s not so say we’ve had absolutely nothing to worry about. Every year, there’s been an exploit or two and the page view generators declare that “The Mac is no longer secure.” Never mind that no platform is secure. Such facts do not generate page views. Here in reality, we Mac users have seen three primary vectors of security exploits on the Mac platform: QuickTime, Flash, and Java.

  • QuickTime: There have been quite a few QuickTime exploits, often as the underlying open source applications discover and patch exploits. Apple has been pretty good about getting these patches applied and pushed out to users quickly. Software Update is easy to use so most users see and install these updates.
  • Flash: Flash is the gift (to those with malicious intent) that keeps on giving. For a while, it seemed that Flash Player needed to be updated every week to remain secure, where by secure we meant it had no known vulnerabilities. A few years back, I realized that nothing I cared about required Flash, so I manually deinstalled it. John Gruber has a few tips for going Flash free. The benefits I noticed from disabling Flash were the disappearance of animated ads, faster page loads, greater battery life, and a cooler laptop. I was pleased when Apple shipped Lion without Flash and Java. With Flash use on the decline, the internet is already a better place.
  • Java: For the same reason that Java is popular in enterprises (write once, run anywhere), Java is popular with malware authors. Apple has a history of slow Java updates which you can read about at Macintouch. The short version is that just like Flash, Java updates on the Mac require cooperation with a third party (Oracle, and previously Sun). That often delays the release of new features as well as security fixes for Java on the Mac platform.

The only web site I use that utilizes Java is one bank, and it uses Java only for its online check deposit feature. Since I rarely use that feature (there’s an App for that), and having Java enabled poses real security risks, I have little reason to have Java enabled in Safari. Apple has made it very easy to disable Java: Safari -> Preferences -> Security -> Enable Java and click that checkbox off. I recommend that everybody does the same. It is comparably easy to disable Flash and Java in FireFox, Chrome, and Opera. Doing so inoculates you from nearly all internet nasties.

In summary, Mac users can continue to eschew antivirus software and still remain reasonably secure, so long as we employ three basic precautions: apply security patches that Apple releases, disable Flash, and disable Java. This is the way it has been for years. The thing that has changed the most regarding Mac security is that now it’s easier than ever to live without Flash and Java.

ZFS: Z pretty File System

This week I had two disks fail. The first was the cheapest to fix, as it was in my 27″ iMac. I took the entire machine to the Apple Store and picked it up the next day. The failed disk was covered under AppleCare, restoring my data from Time Machine backups was effortless, and my total cost was $4 in gas and 1 hour of time.

The other failed disk was in my file server. The server had a mirrored pair of 1.5TB disks and a mirrored pair of 1.0TB disks. One of the latter exhibited pre-fail symptoms so I ordered a pair of 3TB disks to replace both pairs.

I removed one disk from each existing pair, inserted my new disks, created the new zpool, and then remembered why I like ZFS so much. Here are the commands required to initialize the new disks and copy everything to the new array:

zpool create zmirror3 mirror ada1 ada2
zfs snapshot -r tank@now
zfs send -Rv tank@now | zfs receive -Fvu zmirror3

That’s it. There’s a little housekeeping, like setting ‘zfs set mountpoint=none’ to prevent conflicts and cleaning up the snapshots, but that’s really it. By using ‘zfs send -R’, all the zfs pool and volume meta data gets transferred too. It seems too good to be true. Below are the verbose messages that are enabled with the -v flags included above.


receiving full stream of tank@now into zmirror3@now
receiving full stream of tank/root@now into zmirror3/root@now
received 1.31GB stream in 20 seconds (67.2MB/sec)
receiving full stream of tank/usr@now into zmirror3/usr@now
received 1007GB stream in 8625 seconds (120MB/sec)
receiving full stream of tank/snapshots@now into zmirror3/snapshots@now
received 456GB stream in 7487 seconds (62.4MB/sec)
receiving full stream of tank/swap@now into zmirror3/swap@now
received 34.6MB stream in 4 seconds (8.66MB/sec)
receiving full stream of tank/var@now into zmirror3/var@now
received 1.10GB stream in 34 seconds (33.2MB/sec)
storage#

How much do you need to retire?

Here is a simple paradigm (from a comment BenE posted) for quantifying how much a person needs to retire successfully*:

Divide your life into three thirty year periods. During our first 30 years, we have limited means for savings. During the next 30 years, we work and save. We spend the last 30 years retired, spending our savings.

To spend as much in retirement as we did during our working years, we must save half of our income during our 30 working years so that we may spend that half during our 30 years of retirement.

Read that again. Pause and reflect on that.

Afterword

There’s plenty of factors that influence how much one must save. This paradigm excludes them so that the raw scale of savings can be easily grasped. Some of the most notable factors that can influence how much it is necessary to save include:

  • Start saving early
  • Postpone retirement
  • Social Security income
  • drastic reductions in living standards
  • Be born to rich parents/win lottery
  • Die early
  • Retire at the beginning of a long bull market.

* Successful retirement is defined as not outliving ones nest egg, or as not having to eat Alpo in ones golden years (William Bernstein).

Costa Rica Trip Log

Day 0. Picked up Kayla from school at noon and headed for the airport. We parked our van with a friend in SeaTac who dropped us off at the airport. Our flight departed on time and we spent 5 hours walking backwards on the moving sidewalks, running in the not-so-busy parts of the airport, and otherwise amusing ourselves in Denver. The overnight flight to Costa Rica was fine, but not as restful as we hoped.

Day 1. We arrived in San Jose at 5 AM. After checking through immigration, we met Fer outside the airport and took a cab to the bus station. While waiting for the bus, I spotted a vendor selling apples out of a “grown in Washington” (state) box, which amused me greatly. Fer had picked up a prepaid SIM for me. I dropped it into my unlocked iPhone 3. After unlocking the SIM PIN and setting the data APN to ‘kolbi3g’, everything worked perfectly. We rode the bus to Alejuela and then another bus to Palmares. To our bodies, which are accustomed to the cool damp Pacific Northwest, it was a hot, hot, day.

Laura had taken the morning off work and had breakfast waiting for us. We exchanged greetings, took naps, played in the shaded back yard, exchanged dollars for colones, and planned our next few days. We also did a little shopping for pie ingredients. Fer had developed a taste for peach pie while in the states and wanted to make pies on her own. So we baked a delicious peach pie. 🙂

Day 2. We started with a cab ride to downtown and a 15m bus ride to San Ramon. There the kids were introduced to public restrooms as we waited for the 9:30 AM bus to La Fortuna. The bus ride was about 2.5 hours. We ate lunch in town, arranged Friday’s tour of Cañon Negro, and booked a cabina for Friday night. Then we hitched a ride out to Los Lagos Resort where we slid, swam, waded, splashed, and chased in the pools until dusk.

Kayla: We went swimming. We saw a volcano. We saw coconut trees with coconuts. We saw palm trees. We rode a bus for a long time. I picked up flowers for Fer Maria. We got stuff for bug bites. It is very warm in Costa Rica. The houses here are smaller and have metal roofs.

Day 3. In the morning we ate breakfast, surveyed the exhibits (ants, frogs, butterfly, gators, fish) and then went back to the pools. During midday, we retreated indoors and caught up on homework, some writing (see separate Day 3 post), checking email, and racing water bottles down hills. After the heat of the day, we returned to the pools for the rest of the day. We sampled drinks front the bar, got Neanderthal on them (no sense in wasting that coconut or pineapple meat!), and finished the day at the wet bar for dinner.

Plants and Flowers

I saw butterflies, frogs, ants, and crocodiles. The ant farm was big. The butterflies were beautiful. The frogs were small and liked to hide, so we had to listen for their croaks. The crocodiles were sunbathing. The green iguana was sunbathing. Here are some beautiful (pictures of flowers and frogs). There are hot and cold pools.

Day 4. As with every day in C.R., we awoke early. Our tour operators picked us up after breakfast and we rode out to Cañon Negro for our river boat tour. We made a bunch of stops on the way to see sloths, toucans, iguanas, and other birds. Upon arrival, we asked the staff to cut open a coconut so the kids could drink the water. They gladly obliged.

Even before boarding the boat, we saw a couple caimans in the river, as well as several varieties of birds. Once on the river, we saw bats, caimans, howler, white faced capuchino, and spider monkeys. We saw sloths, egrets, kingfishers, turtles, jumping fish, guanacaste trees, air plants, and a wide variety of other fauna. Then they fed us lunch and we bussed back to La Fortuna.

We ate dinner at a little mom-and-pop soda and then failed to buy the tres leches cake we had spotted two days prior. It turns out that the boy we saw didn’t sell them to the store. His mom makes them daily, and he sells them in front of the store. We would be gone before he showed up tomorrow, so we settled for some delicious pork kebobs being grilled and sold on a street corner. Here’s a little travel tip. In Latin America, resist the urge to eat at “dinner” time and wait until you see locals congregating around food vendors. If there’s a line of locals, you won’t go wrong. Also, to get ‘local’ prices, watch how much the locals pay, and offer the same amount.

Tours and Animals

We got up early and rode a bus for a long time. We took pictures with coconut and banana trees. We drank coconut water. They cut open our coconut and we ate the meat. We saw 2 caimans watching us from the water. On the boat ride, we saw monkeys, bats, sloths, turtles, toucans, other birds, butterflies, a snake, iguanas, and other lizards. My favorite part was seeing the snake.

Day 5. Traveled from La Fortuna to Cañitas (Monte Verde) via Eagle Tours’ 7:30 AM bus-boat-bus route. For $12, it’s a bargain and the views of the Arenal volcano from the lake are quite pleasant. Unlike most Ticos, our last bus driver wasn’t particularly helpful but we both recognized the farm upon sight. We arrived to warm welcomes at Marina & Aurelio’s farm. The kids spent the day exploring the trails through the coffee plantation, up and down the mountain, and feeding fallen flowers to the poultry (chickens, ducks, turkeys, and a peacock).

We began the process of meeting family with Randall and Laeticia. We toured his Bel Cruz cabinas (which are the nicest we have seen in C.R.), hiked their trail, and watched hummingbirds from his deck. Randall reserved our zip line tickets for us on the following day. Everyone in the tourist business (half the country) wants to make reservations and accept payments from tourists so they can get a commission. We avoided most of the “help” but allowed Randall to reserve for us because he makes the reservations and his customers pay at the park. It works out much better that way.

we rode a bus, a boat, a bus around the volcano. The boat ride was fun. I met Fer Marias grandparents. Their names are Marina and Aurelio de Bello.

Day 6. Early morning zip line (canopy) tour at Extremo. The kids did great. After seeing how well they did, the guides let them go on a zip line by themselves, and with us. I think rock climbing had acclimated them to being in a harness, hanging from a rope, and looking down from great heights.

After returning, we took a long slow drive around town with Marina and Aurelio. Meybel joined us for the drive out to the local lecheria (dairy) plant for fresca (cheese) and ice cream. We drove out to the Monte Verde reserve, stopped by the hummingbird (colibri) sanctuary and then meandered back to town. The roads are rugged and having elderly passengers makes for very slow going. We stopped off for fried chicken, Aurelio’s favorite, on the way home.

We went on some zip lines. The longest cable was 3,280 feet. We went on 15 zip lines, 1 Tarzan swing, and 1 rappel. We saw a waterfall and 7 howler monkeys and 2 babies. The walking distance was 3.8km. I liked the Tarzan swing. It was my favorite. Some parents were scared but not Lucas, Matt, Jen, and I.

Day 7. We awoke early. Again. After breakfast, we drove out to El Mirador but the vista views were obstructed by cloud cover that refused to lift. Being in a cloud forest is remarkably like being at home in Seattle—cool, gently precipitating, but so gently that I wasn’t wet after a 15 minute walk. We picked up a couple cuttings of some plant, watched the trains, and walked around the cloud forest. After returning to the farm, we did some homework, laundry, and got locked out of the house. (Great story, ask us about it.)

Noticed that photos taken with the phone in “airplane” mode have no GeoTag data). Duh. Oops.

Cloud Forest

We went out to the Santa Elena cloud forest reserve. It was beautiful. It was rainy and windy. We saw a train. We saw a waterfall. We washed clothes and put them on a line to dry. And my shoes too.

Day 8. I awoke very early (2ish) because Jen was awake. The winds were whipping and she was imagining our laundry departing from the clothes line and sailing away. We got up and fetched our laundry under perfectly clear skies. After breakfast, Matt baked a chocolate cake. The ladies watched with great curiosity as he melted chocolate chips into a cup of coffee. Later, as the baking cake started to smelled up the kitchen, the curiosity became keen interest. Once the cakes cooled, he spread the ganache over it and had ample left over. After sampling the ganache on a banana, the ladies lamented paying no attention while I made the ganache. We appeased them by translating the recipe.

Then we took a drive around the area, seeing more of the family farm, coffee plants, the mountain they own, and learning more of the family history. We visited close friends with a nursery. Aurelio selected a half dozen plants to add to his yard and spent as long haggling price as selecting plants, Latin style.

After the tour, we had cake and coffee. We walked a family sized piece of cake up to Randall’s shop where it was well received. Since Randall’s wife is a baker, she insisted on the recipe. We spent the next while translating ingredients and measures to the nearest C.R. equivalents. After the 4 of us completed translating, she asked me directly, “What is your secret?” We explained about differences in chocolate. Chocolate is grown here, but it is all exported. Processing happens overseas, so getting some premium chocolate, or even dark baking chocolate here is unusual.

Chocolate and Flowers
MATT baked a chocolate cake for our Tico family. The cake was good. We shared it with other people. We visited a garden. It was beautiful. We helped Aurelio plant some flowers.

Day 9.
We caught the bus from the farm to CITY, and then bussed from there to CITY, where we caught the bus to Liberia. There we waited for Fer to arrive, and then took a $50 cab ride from there out to the JW Marriott. Along the way we stopped at a roadside vendor and picked up two watermelons. Of the four watermelons I purchased, I paid more for all of them than I would had have in Seattle.

Once at JW, we spend the rest of the day in the pool. For dinner we split two very expensive entrees and followed them with lots of juicy watermelon. Watermelon is the perfect dessert after playing in a pool all afternoon.

For eating options, we had little choice. After arrival at the JW, we were isolated by distance from everything. A cab ride into town was $30, or $14 per person on their shuttle. Plus we’d have the wait for the cab to arrive. If we had rented a car, we would have been loathe to spend an hour of extra driving on dirt roads just to go into town for dinner. The alternatives to spending $30 per person for breakfast and dinner weren’t much better.

travel day
We rode hot sweaty buses and a taxi to get to our hotel. Then we played in the pool and lie down in a hammock.

Day 10.

Beach and pool day

After a big breakfast, we went down to the beach. I found some shells. It was hot and the sand was hot too. Later we went inside. I did my homework. Then we can go play in the pool again.

Day 11.
Depart from the beach area. $50 cab ride to Liberia, $3 bus to Palmares. Baked a chocolate cake.

Day 12.
Shopping at the market. Bus to Zoo Ave. Fabian rescues an orphaned kitten. after getting it home, we force feed it some milk, then spend the next few hours combing off a hundred of fleas and nits. Seviche for dinner. Mmmm.

Day 13.
Hang out with the family. Do laundry. Take pictures. Bus to San Jose airport and spend the night at a very nice Marriott. Play in pool and hot tub. Meet even more Seattle natives who are visiting Costa Rica. Dinner in the executive lounge.

Day 14.
Wake at 4AM. Be at the airport at 5AM. Bump into a friend of Jen’s from graduate school who also departing Costa Rica with his daughters. OUr kids play together while we wait for our flight. Flight departs at 7AM. 5 hour layover in Denver. Arrive home at 9:30 PM.

Costa Rica, day 3

This resort (Los Lagos) is exquisite. Tropical, remote, volcano in the background, fancy restaurant with food catering to U.S. tastes, lush gardens, frog garden, ant farm, butterfly sanctuary, crocodiles, caymans, zip lines, horseback riding, and the highlight: a water park with dozens of pools and slides into the cool (74°), warm, and hot water. It’s everything one might expect from a first world resort, with lots of fun surprises.

The restaurant is open air, as most are. Tropical wildlife watching is part of the dining experience. The night before, Lucas spent a long time peering under the table. We finally figured out that he knew there were crocs here. He relaxed after we told him they were in cages. At breakfast, we watched a bird snack on fresh fruit off another diners plate while he refilled at the buffet. Nobody told him who he shared with. We watched an iguana sunning himself within reach of a chair. Then we hit the pools again.

The pools are not chlorinated. This makes swimming for hours very enjoyable. The water is spring fed, and after passing through the pools, it drains into the fish ponds, where tilapia and a couple other fish featured on the menu swim. From the fish ponds, the water drains to the gator ponds, frog farm, and the many gardens before returning to the river. They don’t ‘use’ water here as much as they temporarily divert it. Many of the ponds are dry because this is the dry season. There are two seasons here: wet and dry.

Unlike the houses in C.R., the resort housing has large roof overhangs to defend against the hot midday and afternoon sun. Most Ticos don’t bother, they are used to the heat. When we left Maria’s house yesterday morning, we were in shorts and Maria wore jeans, sweater and boots. It was a “chilly” 75° F.

Here at the resort, hot water comes from thermal springs and a solar hot water heater (for the restaurant). All the buildings are made of concrete, for its imperviousness to moisture, and for modulating the diurnal temperature swings. The thermal mass absorbs midday heat and releases it at night. Hot water is a luxury in Costa Rica. Most Ticos don’t have hot water. They take cold showers, wash their hands in cold water, etc. Their sinks usually have only one handle. Since we are in the tropics, cold water isn’t very cold.

There is a large open pool with a swim up wet bar. There are several group sized retreats for parties to congregate. Further up the hill, the hot pools get progressively smaller and more intimate, with privacy walls and couple sized caves.

In a nod to Eco-consciousness, the rooms have a “green switch.” It’s not green in color, but when you enter the room, you place your key in a slot next to the door which turns on the electricity. When the key is removed, the power to the room shuts off.

Margin Call

Last night we watched Margin Call, a thriller whose script is a clever copy and paste of real events during our financial crisis. Because the plot elements have nearly all been publicized in the past few years, I found no suspension of belief required to completely engage.

There is however a problem with the movie. Despite the admirable attempts to make the plot comprehensible and educational while entertaining, the movie is still littered with barely explained acronyms (CDO, CDS, MBS), unexplained concepts like leveraging models, reserve requirements, and other financial jargon. We paused the movie several times as I was asked to explain. It’s a fun movie, but I’d first recommend that people first watch Inside Job and Wall Street.

For something quite educational, Bill Moyers has a great series of educational videos called Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned its Back on the Middle Class (On Winner-Take-All Politics, Crony Capitalism, How Big Banks are Rewriting the Rules of our Economy).

Green built houses

With house prices and interest rates low, we are considering homeownership again. We have looked at hundreds of houses in the past year and found a half dozen that we really liked. What we haven’t found is a house we like at a price we like.

In 2011 we learned about three standards in the green building industry:

  • Passive House: limits household energy consumption to 120 kWh per cubic meter. A Passive House is very efficient and there are tens of thousands of houses built to this standard in Germany, Scandanavia, and Canada.
  • Net Zero: consume zero energy and zero carbon emissions annually.
  • Energy Plus: produce more energy annually than is consumed.

In 2011 we attended several green energy festivals. We toured a couple Passive Houses and the only Net Zero homes in the Puget Sound area. The cost of getting to net-zero is 15% more than building a traditional home. Our goal is to get as far as we can towards net-zero. A net-zero home has a monthly gas and electric bill of $0. Getting to net-zero requires reducing energy consumption through:

  • an efficient building envelope (super insulated, tightly sealed, oriented for beneficial solar gain)
  • highly efficient fixtures and appliances (LED lights, induction cooktops, solar water heaters, heat pumps)
  • a heat recovery ventilator (recover heat from ventilation air before exhausting it)

The other ingredient required to achieve net-zero is energy production. Solar has long (at least since the Chinese & Greeks oriented their buildings to face the winter sun 2,500 years ago) been the first answer for harvesting energy. Until the 1970s, the best available technology was exposing internal masonry to the sun. The thermal mass of masonry would warm up in the day and then give off the stored heat at night.

Using solar exposed masonry is still an excellent and highly efficient way to collect heat. The obvious limitation is availability of sunshine, which is often meager in Seattle’s heating season.

Retrofitting an existing house to achieve green building standards is more complex than building the house well initially. This has made choosing a house more challenging. I desire the ability to retrofit a house up to at least the Passive House standards. Some house designs make this more challenging than others. For example, I can’t easily change the orientation of a house to capture beneficial solar gain. Generally, houses are sited for the convenience of the builder rather than the long term benefit of the occupants.

In the meantime, we aren’t waiting for a new house to be more environmentally aware. We have reduced our household waste to less than one kitchen bag per week. The majority of food waste is diverted to my compost pile and the rest is recycled. I have replaced all our household lights with LED bulbs. In areas where lights were typically left on, I installed motion sensors with timers. We have a hybrid Ford Fusion and a Nissan Leaf, greatly reducing our gasoline consumption.