Brock's Blog

<h2>Motivation</h2> The world is out of IPv4 addresses. While some can be bought and traded, ARIN is no longer issuing new assignments to organizations in the USA. My WISP, <a href="https://bmwl.co">Black Mesa Wireless</a>, came up against

I picked up some older Supermicro machines from eBay (GREAT way to get some real server hardware, btw), but they have a <strong>VERY</strong> old IPMI firmware and no way to upgrade to a more modern version. They can't do standard virtua

I recently migrated my system to NVMe drives (great decision, by the way), and part of my reason for doing so was much faster swap, for some outrageously memory-hungry finite element mesh generation stuff. I also wanted to enlarge the sw

This is a guest post written by Steve Goertz after he solved this particular issue. <span style="font-weight: 400;">Use:</span> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Filtering and forwarding all emails re

I've been cycling a lot this season, but off-leash dogs are the rule here rather than the exception. They like to chase me on the bike, and even the ones that don't seem likely to directly harm me are liable to cause an accident. To combat

I am studying for the General license exam and came across question G8B07 (as of April 2015, it will change at some point), asking the following: <blockquote> What is the frequency deviation for a 12.21-MHz reactance-modulated oscillator i

<a href="http://blackmesawireless.com">My wireless ISP (WISP)</a> uses the Mikrotik hotspot feature with RADIUS on the back end to authenticate our users. This implements a captive portal that redirects all DNS requests so that the user is

And it's looking good today. :) <a href="https://blog.brocktice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/wpid-wp-1416765434029.jpeg"><img title="wp-1416765434029" class="alignnone size-full" alt="image" src="https://blog.brocktice.com/wp-content/u

I am not an expert on this, I just wanted to document a problem I had and a solution I found today, in a concise way. Comments correcting me or suggesting better ways are very welcome. I have a network running OSPF internally, and advert

I have been trying, without success, to come up with a cogent explanation of my thoughts on firearms ownership by citizens, government tyranny, those that call for violent revolution, and the costs of police and military intervention. This

This started out as a very different post. It was going to be a post about weev. Gradually, with the latest Snowden leaks and some other current news, it has become something else. I actually abandoned that draft to start fresh. I truly

It seems like every time guns are in the news someone misuses terminology, usually in the name of making something sound scary. I'm posting these here so I can refer back to this later. <ul> <li>Semi-automatic = loads another round afte

If you, like me, live in Gnome Terminal all day and have been frustrated with the recent color scheme changes (particularly, that that the active tab is nearly impossible to distinguish), you will probably find this handy. Worked great for

If you want to be able to pass VLANs along to your linux guests from a linux KVM host, there's a trick. The most common way is to create special bridges for each vlan you want to pass, but that's a big pain. Such an approach is detailed

I bought some cheap Acer c710 chromebooks, used, off of eBay for WISP use. One as a loaner for customers complaining of speed problems, when we suspect their systems may be the culprit. The other I'm testing as a field laptop for use in

I have a solar-powered communications tower site for my WISP running on the MPPT60 as listed in the title. That controller is way more charge controller than I needed for the site, and pricey too, but I bought that one because it has a buil

I recently did a linux reinstallation on my workstation after more than 4 years of cruft accumulation, but couldn't get ssh to work with my cryptostick. I did all of the normal stuff required to disable ssh-agent and enable ssh-agent suppor

<a href="http://blog.brocktice.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/IMG_20130529_163734.jpg"><img src="http://blog.brocktice.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/IMG_20130529_163734-1024x771.jpg" alt="Treadmill Desk 2013-05-29" width="625" height="470"

For whatever reason, LG doesn't seem to feel like they need to post the TONE+ HBS-730 Manual on their web site. I looked like crazy online for it before realizing I still had the original box and manual. So here for your reference and later

This is the second in my "So you want to be a Linux sysadmin?" series. See the <a href="http://blog.brocktice.com/2013/05/04/so-you-want-to-be-a-linux-sysadmin/">first post here</a> and the <a href="http://blog.brocktice.com/category/tech/l

<h1>Introduction</h1> There is a shortage of good Linux system administrators. Some friends of mine have an interest in helping to fill that shortage, so I have finally decided to embark upon a series of blog posts based on my experience.

Back when I was, I think, 15, I had the opportunity as a Boy Scout to do a two-week backpacking trek at Philmont Scout Reservation in Northern New Mexico. It was a fantastic two weeks. I learned a lot, lost a ton of weight, and climbed to t

I now have a cluster with InfiniBand network hardware in my garage. This is my bitcoin mining cluster that I've had running for a few years. Last summer I upgraded the CPUs from the cheapest available (Sempron 140s) to something faster but

I am building an AR-15 from a stripped lower receiver, and had read that it is good to have a vise block to hold the lower in place while installing parts. Rather than buy one, I was going to 3D print a magazine to use for this purpose. How

<h1>UPDATE 2013-04-29</h1> I have created a github for this <a href="https://github.com/brocktice/pixel_linux">here</a>. If you have patches please submit pull requests! <h1>UPDATE: I continue to update the kernel as more fixes make it

The title sounds really cheesy, I know, but this is a subject near and dear to my heart. This post has been on my to-do list since at least October of 2011, possibly earlier. I also want to preface this by saying that I don't know that this

The Vinagre VNC viewer included in GNOME on Linux does not currently allow more than 8 characters in a password due to historical limitations of the VNC protocol. Apple has somehow (and I don't pretend to understand this) extended the pr

I have been using Fujitsu ScanSnap double-sided auto-feeding scanner for years. I started with a Mac model (S300M I think? no Windows drivers?) and then moved to a Windows model, the S1500. For the last couple of years I've been running

I am going to be doing a few red-eye flights in the near future, to time zones far from my own. I decided to review the scientific recommendations around melatonin for jet lag. Unfortunately, most of the articles that have the needed inform

I started Virtually Shocking when I had dreams of becoming the web's foremost cardiac electrophysiology blogger, especially as it relates to simulation. As it turns out, I didn't really have the interest, drive, or time required to achieve