Friday Five

The Excuse

None needed. W00t!

The Week

I found myself in Dallas this week (Irving to be specific). On more than one occasion this week I had to remind myself of where I was, which is just a weird feeling.

If you’re interested in the pictures from our vacation and didn’t see the links go up on Twitter, here they are:

Central Park
Citi Field (Mets)
Citizens Bank Park (Phillies)
Nationals Park (Nationals)
Capitol 4th

The Restaurant

For the first time ever I’m going to mention an airport restaurant - Le Grand Comptoir in Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport. This place just blew me away. I've obviously been to more than my fair share of airports and visited way more airport restaurants than condoned by the Geneva Convention, and as such I've been desensitized to the food that they usually serve in airports. This place is completely different.

First, it's got an awesome atmosphere. The place is wide open, high ceilings, and a great bar area and cute tables throughout (but yet not crowded into the space).

Second is the wine selection. They have about 10 reds and 10 whites available by the glass, and an amazingly extensive bottle selection. They also have a very good booze selection, although their beer list leaves something to be desired (but I'm not going to ding them for that as that's not what they're going for).

Third is their food - real food. I went with a roast beef sandwich which came on a baguette that tasted very fresh with cheddar cheese and horseradish mayo. it was served with a nice little weed salad and a very nice vinaigrette dressing. If I could pick one nit is that it would have been nice to have had a side of horseradish to go with it, but I'm not going to ding them a star for that.

I love this place and it deserves everyone one of those five stars that I gave it. The one thing I do question is their viability. The number of wines they have available by the glass pales in comparison to their bottle list, and I don't see that many travelers coming through and ordering a bottle of wine (maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't see it). They also have a huge walk-in wine cooler that takes up quite a bit of real estate in a very expensive location (an airport). Don't get me wrong - I hope they succeed and I'm looking forward to stopping there every chance I can. I'm just not sure that they have a winning model.

The Exercise

Well – I actually managed to get down to the gym this week. Twice even. Although in my zeal I managed to get myself good and sore on Tuesday and haven’t been able to comfortably lift my arms above my head since.

The Five

Recently I’ve been running into more than my fair share of bratty kids, which leads me to a five (as suggested by Sarah) of the 5 reasons why I’m happy to have a dog and not a kid.

1. God has a sense of humor and He’d give me daughters. Sons would be easy – just build a padded room and let them beat on each other. Daughters? The cost of the dungeon and moat would be too expensive.
2. You can kennel a dog. Apparently CPS has a problem if you try to put a kid in a cage for a few hours.
3. Dogs belong on leashes, not kids.
4. We have a list of people about a mile long willing to watch Roscoe when we go on vacation. I can’t imagine that’d be the case if we had kids.
5. Dogs are just cool. Well, our dog is just cool.

KeePass 101

This is a posting I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while and just haven’t found the time. Well, now I’ve found the time.

I’ve posted in the past about my love for KeePass, which is a fantastic tool for managing passwords. The most secure thing you can do when it comes to creating accounts on sites (besides just not creating an account) is to have a unique password for each site. This becomes rather problematic, as trying to remember them all is impossible.

Now a bigger concern is the security questions that sites ask you as a backup for your password. Forget your password? Not a problem – just answer these general knowledge questions about yourself and we’ll give you a new password. What drives me crazy is most questions they ask are ones that nearly anyone would know, meaning nearly anyone could access my account if I answered those questions honestly. The end result of “security questions” is decreased security, as was demonstrated recently in the hacking of a Twitter administrator’s account.

In an effort to try and aid people looking for a good solution to this problem, below is a walkthrough on how to setup KeePass and create an account with it. What I love about KeePass is that it does not need to be installed on the local system; you can just place the files in a folder and run it out of the folder. You can then either put the folder on a flash drive and make it portable, and synchronize the folder with Mesh for safe keeping.

(BTW – you can download KeePass here. I’m demoing version 2)

Step 1: Create a database

When you first launch KeePass you’ll be presented with the following screen:

The button you want is the one on the far left (the one that looks like a piece of paper with a sunburst on it). That will allow you to create a new database. The database will store all your usernames, passwords, URL’s and other notes.

After clicking on “New…”, you’ll be presented with a traditional “Save As” dialog asking you where you wish to save the database. For ease of use I place my database in the same folder as KeePass. Choose whatever name you wish here.

Step 2: Encrypt the database

After choosing the name of your database, you’ll then be asked to secure the password. You’ll have the option to provide a password, create a key file, or map it to your Windows account. The last option is a tad problematic as it makes the database non-portable, so I choose the first two options.

The key here is the password. You need to ensure it’s going to be something very secure. It should be a sentence with punctuation, and realistically at least 20 characters. It can be something about yourself, but it would need to be something that absolutely nobody knows. When you create the key file, you’ll be asked for the location first (just another “Save As” dialog).

After choosing the file you’ll be asked to generate entropy, which for the most part is a fancy way of saying “we need something random we can use for encryption purposes”. Just move your mouse around the little box on the left until the bar below it fills up.

Step 3: Configure the database

After creating the entropy and clicking on OK on that screen and the Create Composite Master Key screen, you’ll be asked to configure the database. There’s a couple of tabs of note here. First is the General tab, where you can set your default username. Most sites now just use your email address as your account name, so you can specify that there.

Next will be the security tab, which will ask you how encrypted you’d like your database. If you click on the “1 second” link it will set it to take one second to load and save the database, which is generally pretty good.

Last but not least is what you want encrypted in the database. What I like to do is encrypt the notes as well, as I store my “security question” and answer in that field so I can create random answers.

Step 4: Create a new account

Congratulations. You’ve now created a database and you’re all set to go. To create a new account, simply click on the little key with the green arrow on it.

You’ll then be asked for information about the account. Put the username you’re going to use in the first field, and then any notes (such as that security question and answer) down below.

The ellipse icon next to the password simply indicates if you want the password to be hidden on this screen. The little keys allow you to create a new password randomly, which is by far my favorite feature of KeePass. Simply click on that and choose “Open Password Generator” and you’ll be presented with the following screen:

From here you can choose the password length and what characters you want to include. You should choose any special characters the site will let you, as well as the maximum length. What is annoying is many sites won’t tell you right up front the restrictions they place on passwords (something that drives me crazy), but when they do take advantage of it. For instance, here’s the account creation screen from Yahoo:

You’ll notice that I can use up to 32 characters and no spaces. So I’d want to type 32 into the size, and choose Minus and Underline as well as Special. Then simply click on OK on the first screen and then OK on the second. This will bring you back to the main screen (mine is pictured below, slightly “fuzzed out”).

To put your new password into Yahoo, simply click on the entry and hit “Ctl-C” (the copy command). What’s nice is it will put the password into your clipboard for 10 seconds, which is long enough to paste it twice into the password and confirm boxes on the account creation page.

Congratulations – you’ve now set up KeePass and created your first account.

Step 5: Use KeePass

To use KeePass going forward on a day to day basis, there’s just a couple of things to keep in mind. When you open KeePass you’ll be prompted for your password and key file. Simply type your password and choose your key file on this screen.

To use your passwords, you can simply click on the entry in the screen and hit Ctl-C to copy it. Another great trick is to bring up the screen you need to enter your username and password in, click in the username field, and then bring up KeePass. Click on Ctl-V (paste), which will switch windows back to the one you were last on, and then put in your username, tab, and then your password, and then hit enter for you. Pretty slick.

Making the move to KeePass will take a little getting used to, but once you do you’ll be more secure online, and very pleased with your decision.

Friday Five

The Excuse

I didn’t leave Tampa until Saturday, so I didn’t have a chance to sit down and peck one out. I didn’t finish it before landing, and when I finally landed I was all about dinner, Rock Band and Dexter.

The Week

As you’ve no doubt figured out, I was in Tampa this week. Alas it was a week of me and a hotel room and work, well, that and heat and humidity. While I’ve heard all the jokes about, “an oven’s a dry heat”, I’m here to tell you it does make a difference. As this was really just a hotel/work week I unfortunately don’t have too much else to add here.

The Exercise

I wish I had an excuse.

The Restaurant

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned a restaurant here twice, but I have to hand it to The Oyster Catcher. Stopped by there again last night and the bartender remembered me (even hooked me up with half price drinks). Started with a portobello and goat cheese quesadilla, and then moved on to wood fire grilled scallops. Just out of this world. If you’re in Tampa you really need to swing by.

The Travel Note

By far the best part about being elite access is being able to jump the “stand by” line. I was able to get a much earlier flight into San Diego today because of that fact.

The Five

If you have any suggestions out there I’m listening… ;-)

A long while ago I did a 5 things every waiter/waitress should know. I had meant to do a 5 things every guest should know but never got around to it. Well, Abram, here it is.

1. Keep in mind that your server lives on tips. In most states the minimum wage for a tipped employee is much lower than the regular minimum wage, making it just enough to cover taxes and little else. That extra $1 to go from 15% to 20% makes a big difference for the server.
2. Don’t bug the host. Yes, they know there are empty tables. Yes, they know you’ve been waiting a long time. But really, there’s a lot more going on than just sending you to an open table. After you put your name on the list, just leave them alone.
3. Be nice. Not only because of the honey/vinegar thing, but simply because it’s the right thing to do.
4. It’s OK if you don’t know what you want. The one thing to avoid, however, is trying to make decisions while the server is at the table. If you’re not sure, let the server know; they’ll appreciate the chance to move on to other things while you contemplate the menu.
5. Reward a server for things they can control and don’t take it out on them if the kitchen messes up. If you order a rare steak and it comes out medium, that’s not the fault of the server. At the same time, if you go with the recommendation of the server and you love it, reward them.

Friday Five

The Excuse

This was another week when I knew going into it that I wasn’t going to get a Friday Five up. Karin and I went on vacation (details below), so come Friday there just wasn’t any way I was going to get a post together.

The Week

As I mentioned above, Karin and I took part of a week to ourselves and spent the other half with family. One of the issues with having some family in MN and some in NY/VT is that we usually only travel to visit family and don’t take any time for ourselves. In an effort to fix this we always try to do a split vacation of sorts – we’ll spend part of the day off by ourselves, and the other part with family.

For this trip we started by landing in Washington, DC on July 4th. Well, Karin landed in Washington, DC. I landed in Newark to find out that my flight to DC had been cancelled, which meant I wound up on an Amtrak train so I could make it down in time. Our hotel was just a few blocks from the White House, so we roamed on down to watch the fireworks, which are of course spectacular. It was our second time seeing them; this time we were a bit closer and I have to say it’s better to have distance.

From that point, it was all baseball all the time for 3 days. We took in a Nationals game on the 5th, which turned out to be our favorite stadium of the three that we saw.  They did a fantastic job on the park itself, and the Rushmore mascots are great. The highlight by far, though, was seeing Marine One fly by.^[1]

We picked up a car on the 6th and drove up to Philadelphia. We did dinner at Pat’s King of Steaks, which is the site of the original Philly, and then headed over to the Citizens Bank Park. Our seats at the Phillies game were the best of the trip as we wound up with a great deal on club seats. Great ballpark, but of course the highlight was seeing the Phillie Phanatic, especially since the game was a 22-1 blowout.

After a quick trip up to New York City on the 7th, we were joined by my Aunt Mary for a visit to Citi Field, home of the Mets. The park was styled after Ebbet’s Field, and features (among other things) a tribute area for Jackie Robinson named (imaginatively) the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. The game was a blowout (the Mets went down 8-0). Still no word if they’re officially changing the line in Meet the Mets to “Step right up and beat the Mets”.

We were going to head over to Boston on the 8th to take in a Red Sox game, but threat of rain (and quite a bit of travel) made us decide to just stay in New York City for a day. Our way of “taking it easy” was to take a walk through Central Park (logged a good 4 miles of walking) before heading over to Lombardi’s Pizza for dinner and a nightcap at St. Andrew’s.

After the 8th it was family time. We roamed on up to Vermont, where I managed to get my traditional speeding ticket in Vermont. I’ve had two tickets in the last 10 years and both have come in Vermont. This time it was because I was allegedly doing 67 in a 50, although I maintain I was only doing 64. After dealing with that, we spent the night with my mother, doing dinner at Junior’s Downtown and then taking a look at the pictures we had taken so far during the trip. The 9th was breakfast in Burlington and then a trip across the lake to Rouses Point, NY for dinner with my father’s side of the family that night and a “gathering” (not a reunion) on the 11th. A good high school friend of mine attended the gathering, and we spent many hours catching up – it was just like old times, without the Commodore 64.

It was a whirlwind week, but a fantastic week. I will post full picture libraries when I finish working through them all.

The Travel Note

I was on a Dash-8 from Burlington, VT to Newark, NJ. The way the model I was on is configured is there’s a half-bulkhead on the left side, with the bulkhead creating a barrier before the door (row 1), and a full bulkhead with an exit window on the right side (which is the first row on that side but is marked as row 2). I was on the aisle on row 1 (seat 1B). Shortly after the guy on the window (seat 1A) sat next to me someone walked in with a cello which, we found out later, was worth many thousands of dollars and was over 100 years old. Not wanting to check it, he always flies with it buying it a seat. The catch is that it must be behind a bulkhead and not the one for the exit row. This mean the only acceptable seat was 1A. Try as the guy might, the only seats he was able to reserve were seats 2C and 2D, the ones on the exit row. It was at this point we were informed that we had to move. Again – move just across the aisle from one bulkhead to another.

The guy on my left refuses. The flight attendant wasn’t informed of the requirements for the cello (the owner of the cello knew the whole store), so she goes to talk to the pilot who leaves to talk to the gate agent. At this point it’s obvious that the jerk in 1A is going to lose the fight, but he’s not going to just give up. Finally the gate agent comes down and explains to him he has to move, but undeterred he holds up his ticket stub explaining that he’s assigned seat 1A and that’s where he’s staying. About a minute or so later he finally comes to the realization that he’s going to loses this battle, and moves across to seat 2D, complaining and sulking the entire time.

Next time – just be a bit more flexible.

jerk.

The Exercise

Does walking around ballparks and Central Park count?

The Restaurant

I’m going to go with Lombardi’s this week. For anyone not familiar with the history, Lombardi’s was the first pizzeria in the US. They still use a coal fired oven (one of the few left in New York City that does, or can for that matter). This gives the pizza dough a nice char, giving it more taste and character. They also don’t douse it with cheese; it has just the right amount. If you’re in New York City you owe it to yourself to stop by.

The Five

My adventure in Newark (cancelled flight) inspired me to do a Five on the tips I think every traveler should know when a flight is cancelled or delayed.

1. Know where you are and what your other options might be. For instance, one great advantage to being on the Eastern Seaboard is Amtrak is a fantastic alternative. Renting a car would have worked as well.
2. Find out why the flight was cancelled. If it was anything other than weather the airline has to get you out on the next flight on any airline. It may not help as frequently there aren’t any other options, but it may.
3. If you have access to one of the clubs, talk to the agents there. I have found them to generally be more informed and friendlier.
4. Being elite level always helps. I know this isn’t something that everyone travels enough to achieve, but if you do always try to stay with that airline.
5. Above all else, be friendly. Honey will get you more flies than vinegar. There will be times when you have to be impolite and more vocal, but those are the exception rather than the rule.

^[1] I don’t know if it was actually Marine One at that moment as it depends on the presence of the President. Your bit of silly trivia is that the name of the aircraft the President is on is <Name of branch> One. If the President isn’t on the aircraft it’s simply another aircraft.

Friday Five

The Excuse

Well, here’s the thing. When I’m at home for a week I usually don’t have a good chance on Friday to sit down and write out a five. I’m trying to spend time with friends, family, and, of course, Rock Band.

The Weeks

As I mentioned in the open I was home two weeks ago. I got a great gig doing online training. It was delivered on central time, meaning I was up and at ‘em by 6:00, but I was also done no later than 2p. It was just fantastic. Although I did learn that it’s not something I could do full time. I missed having the connection with the students; it’s just not the same doing it online.

This week brought me to Tampa (my new Houston). Alas, I had a ton of other work to do, and I was an absolute hermit; it was just work, dinner, and a the four walls of a hotel room.

The Exercise

I have no excuses.

The Restaurant

I don’t normally do this, but you have got to read the review on Yelp for the restaurant this week. We stopped by Muzita Abyssinian Bistro with a few friends this week. It’s an Ethiopian restaurant started by a husband and wife who simply wanted to open a restaurant. The place is just unreal, and any attempts to type out a quick little synopsis here would be pointless – you have to read the full review here (it’s the first one).

The Travel Note

I’m all for someone being efficient. But just a note to the guy looking to rush the rental car off for cleaning and servicing when I returned it – wait until I’ve finished unloading my luggage from the trunk. Just a thought.

The Five

I really did want to do a post last week, if for no other reason than to mark the two year anniversary of the blog. I’m a big proponent of celebrating anniversaries and milestones as I think it helps keep momentum going towards the next one. Plus, it’s just an excuse to celebrate something. As I did last year, I’m going to list off my five favorite posts:

1. The Perfect Manhattan – Not only did this give me a chance to quote one of my favorite shows (The West Wing), it was also just a lot of fun to write and research. I think this may be my favorite posting ever.
2. Define “Marriage” – I’ve gotta tell ya – My marriage feels very defended since Prop 8 passed in California. Phew – dodged that bullet.
3. My Favorite Christmas Story – It was a short post, granted, but it’s still one of my favorite stories, and best expressions of love and compassion I think I have ever seen.
4. E-ticket Virus – Granted it wasn’t a huge post, but it’s the one that actually shows up on search engines (Google “e-ticket virus” and it will pop up as number 6, but not on the first 5 pages on Bing.)
5. Get Mesh-ed Up – This one is getting a nod mostly because Mesh came up recently on Facebook. Mesh is still one of my favorite Microsoft products of all time.