The 2009 budget for homeland security is $50 billion.
The budget for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is about $1 billion.

From the article: "We fund terrorism prevention at about $17,000,000/fatality (i.e., $50 billion/3,000 fatalities) and accident prevention at about $25,000/fatality (i.e., $1 billion/40,000 fatalities)"

This is just one more example that the government's priorities are way messed up based on where it's spending money.

original article here

Amazon announced today the availability of Reserved Instances. Basically, you pay a one-time fee and get a significant discount on the hourly rate for that instance.
Their rates are available here.
After doing some calculations on it, I figured out the break even point between the old "On-Demand Instances" and the new "Reserved Instances."
For the current 1 year term, the break-even point is 193 days. For the 3 year term, the break even point is 298 days. So basically, if you're going to be running a particular instance for much more than a year, you should probably sign up for the 3 year term.

Here's a brief comparison of the year by year costs for a small instance. I've only listed the small instance type since the costs for the other instance types are all proportional (e.g. large is 4x and xlarge is 8x.)

	1st year costs	2nd year costs	3rd year costs	3 year Total
On Demand	$876.00	$876.00	$876.00	$2,628.00
1 year term	$587.80	$587.80	$587.80	$1,763.40
3 year term	$762.80	$262.80	$262.80	$1,288.40

(I'm not sure why the spacing is so funky on this post with a table in it.)

I recently ordered a couple of replacement filters for my Katadyn Guide water filter through Amazon. They arrived today (yay! I love getting packages!) When I opened the box one of them looked normal but the other was pretty dirty and appeared to be leaking activated carbon (which is used in part of the filtering process.) When I gently shake it, something is rattling around inside the filter. There is no such noise when I gently shake the good one.

Looks like a defective filter to me. I immediately contacted the 3rd party seller (backcountry.com) through Amazon and Katadyn to see what can be done to resolve this. Obviously, my expectation is that it will be replaced at no cost to me.

I'll post updates here as things progress. If I were a betting man, I know who I'd put my money on but I don't want to spoil things for anyone else who may be reading.

---

Update: 3/3/09 - 10:40am: I just heard back from Katadyn. I'm a bit surprised that they beat backcountry.com in responding. Here's the response:
It is not necessarily defective. A few loose granules are completely normal. How many are there? If it is a smallish amount, that is ok, but if there is a lot of it, that might indicate a problem.
Please let me know.
Sincerely,
Sarah
My reply:
Hi Sarah,
Thank you for your response.
It seems like more than just a few loose granules. I've posted a picture of it (click on the image to enlarge it.) http://altj.org/blog/katadyn-guide-filter-replacement-leaking-coal
Please let me know what you think.

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Update: 3/3/09 - 11:44am: Another reply from Katadyn:

Yes, that is more than a few.
I will send you a replacement cartridge.
Would you like me to use the address in your original email?
Sincerely,
Sarah
Awesome! It looks like this is going to be resolved very quickly.

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Update: 3/3/09 - 6:55pm: Received an email from Backcountry.com

Thanks for contacting us at Backcountry.com.
Sorry about that! If the item is damaged just give us a call at 1-800-409-4502 and we will be glad to help you out in returning this product and getting a replacement for it.
If you have any additional questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to tell us, anytime… we don’t really sleep. Enjoy your day, we’ll talk to you later.

---

Update 3/4/09 - Called Backcountry.com

Told them about the problem and within 30 seconds they said a new one would be shipped out to me. They also sent me a shipping label to return the defective filter.

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Update 3/5/09 - Received replacement from Backcountry.com

Wow, that was fast. I contacted Katadyn informing them that Backcountry.com has handled the problem and they don't need to send a replacement.

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Backcountry.com wins! Although their initial response was slower, they took care of things efficiently. I'll be purchasing from them again!

Logging into one of my systems, I saw the following in /proc/mdstat this morning.
Personalities : [raid1]
md0 : active raid1 sdc1[0] sdb1[1]
976559104 blocks [2/2] [UU]
[=========>...........] resync = 45.7% (446333440/976559104) finish=489.8min speed=18037K/sec


Unaware of a power failure or disk failure (these are pretty new disks) I did some digging. Looking through /var/log/daemon.log, I found these entries:
Mar 1 01:06:02 chewbacca mdadm: RebuildStarted event detected on md device /dev/md0
Mar 1 04:49:03 chewbacca mdadm: Rebuild20 event detected on md device /dev/md0
Mar 1 08:43:03 chewbacca mdadm: Rebuild40 event detected on md device /dev/md0

After some googling around, I found that on the first Sunday of every month at 1:06am, an array check (/usr/share/mdadm/checkarray) is run on Debian and Ubuntu systems. (see /etc/cron.d/mdadm)

For some reason it is listed in /proc/mdstat as a rebuild even though it is really a read-only operation to check the health of the array. Whew! Now I can go get ready for church.

We were having a little problem on our webservers with php5-memcache when we try to utilize multiple memcached servers. The error was:
ALERT - canary mismatch on efree() - heap overflow detected (attacker '10.X.X.X', file '/path/to/file/index.php')
It didn't come up too frequently in the logs, but it was frequent enough to cause some concern.

As part of troubleshooting, I was tasked with upgrading php5-memcache on one of our test systems so that we could see if this resolved the issue. This turned out to be much easier than I thought. Here's what I did (as root):

apt-get install php5-dev
cp /usr/lib/php5/20060613+lfs/memcache.so /usr/lib/php5/20060613+lfs/memcache.so.bak
pecl install memcache-3.0.3
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart


That was it, we're running on 3.0.3 now and I'm crossing my fingers that resolves the issue we're seeing.

Comcast has changed its method of throttling bandwitch from targeting apps to just targeting high network traffic. This new "protocol-agnostic" will temporarily throttle heavy users if their area of the network is experiencing heavy traffic. "customers’ accounts must exceed a certain percentage of their upstream or downstream (both currently set at 70%) bandwidth for longer than a certain period of time, currently set at fifteen minutes."

Here's more information on the change as well as their FAQ.

If you've heard about the recent Bernie Madoff scheme where over $50 billion has been taken from investors, you know what a Ponzi Scheme is. If not, here's a brief video for you which explains it:

Basically, the schemer pays returns to investors with money from subsequent investors. Normally, it falls apart and the schemer is exposed. Here are two cases of Ponzi Schemes that are still existent and legal.

Ponzi Scheme #1 - House Flipping
This one is interesting in that it is a distributed ponzi scheme, there are multiple schemers. Think of the recent real estate bubble in the process of correcting itself. All of those people that "invested" in real estate as this bubble grew, flipping houses to make money, were contributing to the scheme. They were all schemers trying to make easy money. (To clarify, by house flipping I'm referring to those people that purchase houses on speculation that the price will increase, slap on a coat of paint and sell it as recently remodeled.) Sadly, the victims in this scheme were those that purchased and still own the homes purchased at over-inflated prices. I'm not currently aware of any legislation or pending legislation that will prevent or even discourage house flipping in the future.

Ponzi Scheme #2 - Social Security
This one is especially disturbing because we are all victims of it and are required by law to "invest" our money. By 2017, Social Security will have to pay out more in benefits than it receives in taxes. Sound familiar? Current workers are paying into a Ponzi Scheme that will not be able to pay them back when it comes time for them to retire. I'm not counting on Social Security funding my retirement and neither should you. I just wish there was a way to opt-out of this one.

I just finished "Crash Proof: How to profit from the coming economic collapse" I must admit, it was a very interesting read. Published in 2007, Mr. Schiff does a pretty darn good job predicting the burst of the real estate bubble. More alarming, he's predicting the collapse of the dollar. I'm a bit surprised that the dollar hasn't lost more value through the recent economic turmoil.
He goes through and explains what's been happening to mask current inflation and what you can do to come out ahead when all this comes crashing down. Unsurprisingly, his company (Euro Pacific Capital, Inc.) specializes in the kind of stuff he's suggesting you do to protect your wealth. He also explains how to do it on your own (without Euro Pacific.)
Anyway, I strongly recommend you read this book. It offers a unique perspective on what's going on all around you in the financial world.

For you locals (in Salt Lake) here's a link to the book from the library's website.
For everyone else, here's a link to the book on Amazon.

If you're running a small business or are thinking of starting one in the near future you should take advantage of this deal. Quickbooks Pro 2009 Edition for free from Staples after mail in rebate:
$199.99 Reg. Price
- $40 Instant Savings
- $159.99 mail-in-rebate
= FREE!!!

Today only!

I've told you before and I'll tell you again, Stop using Internet Explorer. If you haven't heard the news from earlier this week read this article. There are huge flaws in Internet Explorer, this one has finally been fixed.
"It's a remote exploit that gives the attacker compete control," said Michael Argast, security analyst for Sophos. "It's the most critical type of flaws that can exist. It's one of those drop-dead scenario's where you've got to fix it."

If you're looking for alternatives, I recommend Firefox. Others that come highly recommended by my friends include Chrome and Opera.

If I catch you using Internet Explorer on your computer, I can't quite say what my reaction will be. It will probably something between a strong-worded scolding and kicking your computer down the street and into the trash because it will be better off there.