Category: VAULT Treasures

where there is no path and leave a trail.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Haven’t heard this song in a long while. It is an old Boy Scout hiking tune that seeps of longing and sadness. Makes me miss camping on cool fall mornings:

The Happy Wanderer

I love to go a-wandering,
Along the mountain track,
And as I go, I love to sing,
My knapsack on my back.

Chorus:
Val-deri,Val-dera,
Val-deri,
Val-dera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Val-deri,Val-dera.
My knapsack on my back.

I love to wander by the stream
That dances in the sun,
So joyously it calls to me,
"Come! Join my happy song!"

I wave my hat to all I meet,
And they wave back to me,
And blackbirds call so loud and sweet
From ev'ry green wood tree.

High overhead, the skylarks wing,
They never rest at home
But just like me, they love to sing,
As o'er the world we roam.

Oh, may I go a-wandering
Until the day I die!
Oh, may I always laugh and sing,
Beneath God's clear blue sky!

Albondigas Soup

Heather makes the best soups I have ever had.   My bragging has caused a number of people to ask for the recipes.  As I pull out the Heathers 900 year old hand written recipe cards, I will do my best to post my favorites.  Today’s soup selection in Albondigas Soup:

  • 1T Chop Fresh Cilantro
  • 1lb Ground Beef
  • 1/4 cup Rice
  • 1 Egg
  • 1t  Seasoned Salt
  • 1/4 cup Ice Water
  • 3 cans Chicken Broth
  • 1 can Diced Tomatoes
  • 1/4 cup Chopped Onion
  • 1 rib Celery Diced
  • 1 Carrot Diced
  • 1 Potato Diced
  • 1/4t Garlic Powder

In a medium bowl combine ground beef, rice, egg, cilantro, salt, an water; form into small meatballs.  In large saucepan, combine broth with vegetables and garlic powder.  Bring to boil; add meatballs.  Reduced heat; cover and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Serves 6-8.

If this had been a REAL post

This has been posted with Deepest Sender.  Another Firefox add-on that I am testing.  Basically it creates a sidebar for posting to Livejournal/WordPress/Blogger.  It seems to work OK, but I really wish it didn’t re-login every time I closed/opened the sidebar.  It includes a full mini-GUI for editing/adding posts that is reachable via shortcut key (Ctrl+\).

I’ve Memorized my Beer List

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.

–Alexander Pope

I have updated the wine list with a couple new entries and have finally added the Scotch list.  Scotch is one of those things I buy and lasts me weeks, so I often forget which Scotches I have had and which ones I like.  For any Scotch drinkers out there; let me know if you have a recommendation.

I am not sick. I am broken.

Firefox changed some of it’s defaults in version 2.0.  The new defaults are mind-numbingly bad in some places; and simply annoying in others.  Thankfully they can be fixed.  Here are a couple of the worst offenders and how to fix them.

Changing Back to shrinking Tabs in Firefox

  1. Open a new firefox tab.
  2. Type “about:config” into the address bar
  3. Type “tab” into the filter field.
  4. Change the settings of both “browsers.tab.tabClipWidth” and “browsers.tab.tabMinWidth” to 5
  5. Restart Firefox.

Use a single close button on Firefox

  1. Open a new firefox tab.
  2. Type “about:config” into the address bar
  3. Type “browser.tabs.closeButtons” into the filter field.
  4. Change value to “3” (without the quotes)
  5. Restart Firefox.

With foxes we must play the fox

Here is a list of Firefox shortcuts I have found over the years. I have kept this list on the company blog for months now, and yet, every-time I read over it I find something useful.

Shortcut Description
Alt + B Open the Bookmarks drop-down menu
Alt + D Select the current Location bar text
Alt + E Open the Edit drop-down menu
Alt + F Open the File drop-down menu
Alt + G Open the Go drop-down menu
Alt + H Open the Help drop-down menu
Alt + T Open the Tools drop-down menu
Alt + V Open the View drop-down menu
Alt + Enter Open address in a new tab
Alt + Left Arrow Move back
Alt + Right Arrow Move forward
Alt + Home Open the Home page
Alt + F4 Close active window
Backspace Move back
Delete Delete
Esc Stop downloading a page
End Move to the bottom of a page
Home Move to the top of a page
Ctrl + + (plus sign) Increase text size
Ctrl + – (minus sign) Decrease text size
Ctrl + 0 Restore normal text size
Ctrl + 1 Open Tab 1
Ctrl + 2 Open Tab 2
Ctrl + 3 Open Tab 3
Ctrl + 4 Open Tab 4
Ctrl + 5 Open Tab 5
Ctrl + 6 Open Tab 6
Ctrl + 7 Open Tab 7
Ctrl + 8 Open Tab 8
Ctrl + 9 Open Tab 9
Ctrl + F4 Close active tab
Ctrl + F5 Refresh (override cache)
Ctrl + A Select All
Ctrl + B Open/close the Bookmarks pane
Ctrl + C Copy
Ctrl + D Add a bookmark (defaults to the active page)
Ctrl + E Activate Web Search
Ctrl + F Find
Ctrl + G Find again
Ctrl + H Open/close the History pane
Ctrl + I Open/close the Bookmarks pane
Ctrl + J Open/close the Downloads dialog box
Ctrl + K Activate Web Search
Ctrl + L Select the current Location bar text
Ctrl + M Open a new e-mail message using the default e-mail client
Ctrl + N Open a new Firefox window
Ctrl + O Open a file
Ctrl + P Print
Ctrl + R Refresh
Ctrl + S Save As
Ctrl + T Open a new tab in the current Firefox window
Ctrl + U View the source code for the current page
Ctrl + V Paste
Ctrl + W Close the active tab within the current Firefox window
Ctrl + X Cut
Ctrl + Y Redo
Ctrl + Z Undo
Ctrl + Down Arrow Select next search engine in Web Search bar
Ctrl + Up Arrow Select previous search engine in Web Search bat
Ctrl + Tab Select the next tab within the current Firefox window
Ctrl + Page Down Select the next tab within the current Firefox window
Ctrl + Page Up Select the previous tab within the current Firefox window
Ctrl + Shift + Tab Select the previous tab within the current Firefox window
Ctrl + Enter Add “www.” to the beginning and “.com” to the end of the text in the Location bar
Ctrl + Shift + Enter Add “www.” to the beginning and “.org” to the end of the text in the Location bar
Ctrl + Shift + R Refresh (override cache)
Ctrl + Shift + W Close Firefox
Shift + F3 Find previous
Shift + F6 Move to the previous frame
Shift + Enter Add “www.” to the beginning and “.net” to the end of the text in the Location bar
Shift + D Delete the selected Autocomplete entry
Shift + Backspace Move forward
F1 Open Mozilla Firefox Help
F3 Find again
F5 Refresh
F6 Select the current Location bar text
F7 Toggle on/off Caret Browsing
F11 Switch between full-screen/normal view

Surrender Hope all… wait, is that Snow?

I actually shed a tear yesterday.  Jason accomplished what I thought would never happen.  Liz (his beautiful and yet amazingly stubborn wife) went shooting for the first time.  Though she had never before shot a gun, non of us doubted Liz’s shooting abilities.  Mostly because I was already throughly convinced that she could kill any one of us, at any time, with anything she chose to use.

Hope you had a good time Liz! This finally proves, once and for all, that… “Guns don’t kill people. Liz kills people!”

Mail Server on OpenSuse

Quick link to a mail server install that I have been working on for a client. These are simply some notes on getting SMMP, cyrus-sasl, Postfix, and POP3 working with SSL. The information also includes creating public key certificates and signing them. The intended platform is OpenSuse 10.2

The notes are based on a HowToForge.net article titled The Perfect Setup: OpenSuSE 10.2.