I'm not a hunter

That said, I do support the so-called "right" of people to hunt. I prefer if someone goes out of their way to kill an animal there be a use for the decedent. Even if you shoot, say, deer for sport perhaps the meat could be harvested for, say, a local food bank? I know that's not easy, even food banks and soup kitchens, ones operated under by license, have strict rules and laws regarding the source of the product they are giving away in most cases.

Hunting just isn't for me. Granted I do enjoy a good hunting story, particularly that of Colonel John Henry Patterson, the man who killed two maneless male lions in Tsavo, Kenya because the lions were making mincemeat out of his railroad bridge building crew. Patterson later wrote a book called, aptly, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and a "based somewhat on a true story" movie was produced in the 90's called The Ghost and the Darkness. Enough about the history. Besides tracking and killing the two male tigers who were eating his crew Patterson's account of his time in Kenya also included many stories about hunting in general. In fact he killed, and this is from memory so don't quote me, a species of antelope unknown to science that was named for him as the discoverer. The most entertaining story of hunting was a failed hunt and I believe it involved either a water buffalo or rhino, whatever it was it was something big. Patterson shot the beast with a fairly low powered rifle and the bullet failed to penetrate the skin of the beast. What it did succeed in doing was piss the giant off in a big way and it charged Patterson who took defense by lying down in the tall grass. After the beast had passed Patterson, in his own words, decided to shoot again "against his better judgement". This turned the pissed-off-o-meter of the animal to eleven, so to speak, but Patterson survived the encounter.

What's the point of all this? Well a lady from Massachusetts on a gator hunt in South Carolina shot and stunned a 1,025 pound american alligator this week which she then killed with a knife between the skull and spinal column. But why? Is she going to eat a 1,025 pound gator? I don't think so.

I'll say this: I'm deathly afraid of alligators. Crocodiles too. I don't like them and we have alligators in North Carolina. In fact I've seen a few, very far out East in the state, mostly along Highway 64 close to Manns Harbor just past the accurately named Alligator River. An alligator is one animal I'd kill without second thought if I believed my pets or myself to be in danger but I don't think I'd want to go kill a 100+ year old alligator "just for the hell of it".

Still, somehow, I support the ability for someone to choose to do so. It's just not for me nor for is freezing my ass off turkey or deer hunting in the fall or winter months. If you want to, more power to you, I guess.

Today's post is a song

..and not one I wrote, sorry to say.

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above,
Don't fence me in.
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love,
Don't fence me in.
Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze,
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees,
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
Don't fence me in.

Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle
Underneath the western skies.
On my Cayuse, let me wander over yonder
Till I see the mountains rise.

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses
And I can't look at hovels and I can't stand fences
Don't fence me in.

Stuck in the mud

I need to be doing more with my life but I just can't seem to get around to doing just that. I love photography but I rarely take photos. I love to travel but I rarely go anywhere. I love to write but can't seem to push a noun and a verb together when I have the time. The solution seems to be grab the camera, go somewhere and write some kind of photo/travel journal or book but it's more difficult than you might imagine, at least it is for me.

Perhaps I'm depressed. My most favorite place in the world (within a reasonable distance mind you) is the North Carolina Outer Banks, in particular the unincorporated town of Rodanthe. Rodanthe, and the Outer Banks in a larger sense, is the location where I've taken what I believe to be my best photographs. The photo I've linked above is one I took last year in the town of Rodanthe, for the record. Trouble is Rodanthe is becoming the vacation spot for my ex-wife and her new boyfriend and this area of the Outer Banks is small, far too tiny to not expect chance encounters to occur. It's not that I don't think we can happily all co-exist i town, that's not what I'm implying at all but I do think having me so close would cause some discomfort for them and I'm all about living and let live.

So what to do? I think it's time for me to find a new place to hang out on the weekends. The NC Outer Banks is four hours (plus another 30 minutes most trips) to the East. If I take out a map and draw a four hour driving circle over Durham, NC I bet I could locate a few interesting places to visit and photograph. The only question is what to drive. Sure, my Chevrolet Valdez will get me there, no question about that but hotels each and every weekend are going to get expensive. One possible solution is to purchase another RV for travel. Being single, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future and perhaps forever, I don't require a large RV and deals on fully converted RV vans can be found if you're willing to look hard enough.

I've found two vans with potential, one here in the greater Raleigh area and another down in Florida. I'm leaning towards the Florida van but, quite frankly, I'm worried about the mold that could have potentially accumulated in a RV van that lives outside in the Orlando, FL area. This is a real concern and potentially costly to fix if the elements have managed to get a foothold inside. But that's neither her nor there as it's a bridge I must cross later.

I'll keep everyone posted.

go figure

Someone at my ISP put the Internet back in 4th gear. Thanks to you, unknown ISP person.

Of IPv6 and proxies: squid vs socks

I stumbled upon something interesting today, it should have been obvious but still I found it to be quite a surprise. First, a bit of background. I have a friend that lives on the coast almost four hours away. For years I've administered her simple network remotely mainly via the single open port to the Internet (ssh). All device on the network, aside from the PCs she insists to use, could be managed via ssh or http. For the http hosts I've kept a Squid http proxy running and I'd connect to those devices via a ssh tunnel using port forwarding and for years this setup was "good enough". Plus it gave me a remote host on the Internet were I could redirect my http traffic should I be so inclined. There are drawbacks to this setup, first and foremost my DNS queries would be resolved on my local network and the http traffic would travel over the tunnel thus bypassing any http proxies, but the evidence of my trespass was still evident in the DNS queries. Granted this wasn't a problem as I was never going places I really shouldn't have been in the first place so it wasn't ever a concern.

The old command I used to use to connect to my Squid proxy was: http greg@myserver.remotenetwork.com -8080:127.0.0.1:8080. After the tunnel was set up I'd go into Firefox and set up the proxies under Network Settings to use 127.0.0.1 as the proxy IP address and 8080 as the remote host.

Flash forward to last week. The remote ssh host in question is an iMac desktop and during a recent trip I upgraded the iMac to Snow Leopard. This caused a few applications to seize, most notably Squidman, my old trusty http proxy. I left the beach without installing a new Snow Leopard friendly proxy. Whoops. I just wrote it down on the to-do list next time I needed a salt air fix, and being a business at the beach this is certainly what we can define as the "slow time" of the year and I wouldn't likely have a need to connect to any http hosts between trips in the first place.

It's true that I am an old network dog but I occasionally learn a new (old) trick and I did that this week. A discussion started over e-mail about proxies and what-not someone suggested using a SOCKS proxy which would do two things: resolve DNS on the ssh host, not the local network and redirect http/https traffic (among other cool things). I tried it out using the following command:

ssh greg@myserver.remotenetwork.com -D 8888

From there I set *ONLY* the Socks proxy in my Firefox network settings to 127.0.0.1 and port 8888 and, as if magic with no configuration of extra software on the iMac my http requests were redirected over my tunnel just like when I used to use Squid. Cool!

But here's where things got interesting. Because my DNS queries were also being redirected I could resolve addresses for IPv6 hosts, such as ipv6.google.com and m0n0.ch. Cooler yet was even though my machine was on an IPv4 only network I could reach IPv6 webpages via http. This was very cool indeed. Had I thought about this prior to today it should have been obvious this would have worked but it still surprised me and I'm happy to have the IPv6 connectivity and I just think it's cool that I can tunnel requests for IPv6 hosts when my laptop is on a network that only supports IPv4.

Give it a shot, it works pretty well.

Outer Banks indeed

I'm back on the Outer Banks once again and I'm loving it. I've been here for a few days and I'll be leaving tomorrow most likely. I love it out here. Great place. Greater people. Yes, the winter in Rodanthe is kind of "dead" with the population of year-round residents plummeting to near zero and only a handful of businesses open, one of which is the local gas station. Still there are few places on the globe I'd rather be during my down time.

But it's the new year so let's talk about that. First, goodbye and good riddance to 2009. This year saw the unraveling of my 13 year marriage and forthcoming divorce and I can't be happier that this year is going to be behind me for good. Kelly and I remain close friends and that's the single bright spot in that whole debacle. But it's not something I want to ever go through again. Oh, and there was also a banking meltdown, massive layoffs across multiple industries, the death's of my friend's parents (both in a car accident at the same time).. there was much to hate about 2009 and I do despise that year with a true passion.

2010, I hope, is a better year. It's starting rather well, I have to admit. I'm back at the beach and I brought in the new year with my good friends Jeanette and Pauly, both local residents. Pauly's family has a long fishing history in Wanchese, NC, well all over the Eastern US actually. I was going to stay in a local rental unit, a small but comfortable one, but a problem surfaced on the way down at Kelly's condo so I stayed here to sort things out so she didn't have to come down. That's what I call a win-win for each of us! Kelly's condo is much more comfortable, roomy and it has all the comforts of home. You also can't beat the view. It's fantastic.

I'll get back to work in a couple days and I feel invigorated. I'm ready for the challenge and I'm looking forward to getting back in school once again. I'm also thinking about moving next year. The company offered me a position in Philadelphia and I was very tempted after visiting the historic city but I think I'll stay here, in North Carolina. Friends also offered to rent me a place in Maryland but I don't know if I could make that work, professionally at least. I'll probably stay in or around Durham and I'd like to get a small house where I can once again share my down time with a dog. I miss my dogs terribly and I think they miss me too.

Well that's it for 2009 and the into to 2010. I can't believe this year is here! 2010! Holy cow. Life is flying by me and I've been a numb zombie for nearly the past year. I think it's time to return to the land of the living.