i love fixing things in linux. it's so much more satisfying than fixing things in windows. my latest: flushing the dhcp client cache!

i use a netgear wgr614 wireless router and dhcp server for our home lan. hadn't had any problem with it, except that one of my port forwarding rules mysteriously disappeared. (it still existed, i just couldn't see that the port was open--or close it, for that matter.) not a huge deal, it wasn't a critical port. i'd been happily netgearing along until yesterday, when my gentoo box started receiving the wrong ip address. (the router does serve as a dhcp server, but i've got reserved ips for all our home machines.)

i'm sure a real geek would just shrugged, restarted the router, flushed the dhcp client cache, grumbled a bit over netgear's ineptitude, and gone on her merry way. i'm a networking ninny, so my first thought was to force the ip. worked half-way: i got the ip i wanted, and i could access the lan, but couldn't get outside the router. (i'm still a networking ninny; anyone want to explain why that is?) couldn't find any relevant info online--just lots of people from 2004 with no solution. took a look at the router again, and discovered it had reset ALL my port forwards to a completely bizarre destination ip. that's it,, thunk i. i reset the router to its factory defaults and re-configured it.

short interlude here; benjamin and i watched an episode of star trek (next generation). while in windows (i haven't set up xvid in gentoo yet), i noticed the ip address was correct! hurrah! it's fixed!

alas, 'twas not so in gentooland. i tried all kinds of things--setting the reserved ips to outside the dhcp server range, on both sides; changing dns settings and gateways (not that that should make any kind of difference); etc. finally, it occurred to me to check the mahvelous little dhcpcd tool, to see if it might have a solution built in. it's linux, after all.

i discovered -k: "Sends SIGHUP signal to the dhcpcd process associated with the specified interface if one is currently running. If dhcpcd receives SIGHUP it will send DHCP_RELEASE message to the server and destroy dhcpcd cache."

$ sudo dhcpcd -k eth1
$ sudo /etc/init.d/net.eth1 restart
$ sudo wpa_cli reassociate

bingo.

so now i feel a little ridiculous that it was such an easy fix, and that i wrote a book about it, but it was so satisfying!

i'm working on a redesign, thought i'd send a skeleton. it's mostly put together layout-wise, but i have (as usual) a couple quandries:

1. i really like the columns-on-the-right thing--you should see it at 1680x1050, it's awesome--but i don't know what to do with the rest of the content. you can't tell in the picture, but that little list on the left is a fixed-position mouse-over (pure css, naturally). it's ok there, but i know it'd be better elsewhere. just haven't figured out where, exactly.
2. i'm currently sending it as xhtml 1.1. trouble is, internet explorer--even ie 7--doesn't support it. i don't really need it, since i'm not building/using xhtml modules, so i could kick it back to xhtml 1.0. ie doesn't support that either, but it can be sent as regular html and still validate. naturally, there's a whole host of problems associated with sending xhtml as html, so at that point it'd almost make sense to just go back to html 4.01. interestingly, the w3c sends xhtml 1.1 for standards-compliant browsers and html 4.01 for everything else, which means they're actually changing the page code for different browsers. i could do that, but it'd be a lot of effort that i'm not sure i'm willing to put in for a browser that has absolutely no excuse for its noncompliance.

and why bother with xhtml at all you ask?

1. because i'm a geek
2. because i like my languages to make as much sense as possible
3. because i'm lazy, and making sure my xhtml validates keeps me honest

so much for my web adventures. i'm also playing with sqlite triggers and views, which is all kinds of crazy.

in other news, kylie was up for the weekend, so we all went to the beach this afternoon and played frisbee--probably one of the last opportunities we'll have, really.

you know those sears flyers you get in the mail starting the end of august, covered in grinning pre-pubescents in red/black checked skirts and knee socks? that's my image for the beginning of the school year. that, and our old gravel driveway, miles away from the house, where i used to sing about things while i waited for the bus. and piles of leaves. that's a good one, too.

those images assaulted me on my way into our apartment building the other day, when i suddenly realized school had started.

ah, memories.

at any rate, the point of this ramblage was supposed to be the two college/community orchestras i joined this season; do excuse the sidetrack. one is doing a shosty symphony; the other is doing a lot that i've already played (tchaikovsky, prokofiev, john williams) but that i'm more than happy to play again. i've never yet done justice to tchaik's romeo and juliet. i'll be practicing again, regularly. feels good so far.

in other news, benjamin's attending a funeral in oregon this weekend. he's flying back on monday. the eleventh. of september. quite the five-year anniversary; i'm praying nobody gets any funny ideas. or not so funny ideas, as the case may be.

i love waking up in bed & breakfasts. the good ones have figured out the perfect balance of firm mattress and solid/soft sheet, and waking up feels like floating to the surface of those nimbostratus clouds that tend to line the maritime coast.

breakfast is served at 0830, courtesy of david and his apron. david's on the smaller size, shorter than both benjamin and i, but the easy-going presence he commands raises his height a good foot or so. and the apron is good for at least three inches all by itself. he'd set up the room with two goblets of grapefruit halves (we have the house to ourselves this morning), a pitcher of pulpy orange juice, two decanters of bran (what kind of place puts bran in decanters?!), and warm rhubarb muffins. delicious, all of it.

*break*

at this point, the narrative as it exists must end. i stopped writing these over a month ago, and the details have disappeared. to summarize:

• we biked 22 miles by mistake, thanks to st. margaret's trail. mostly straight double track, but we did find a few offshooting offroads. the aftermath of a logging route bordered one. depressing, really. they adore ATVs in that province, they were everywhere.
• we ate fresh nova scotia lobster in hubbards. the restaurant was built of an old-style dance hall, peppered with checkerbox tables and folding chairs. Thirty-five dollars per person bought a salad bar (held in an old dinghy), unlimited fresh steamed mussels, one medium lobster (the edible dissection class), and dessert. it was like the cafeteria at marlboro college, with waiters and lobster. i've never had so much fun eating seafood in my life.
• we did make a (very short) fireworks display, in honor of canada day. i made a valiant attempt at taking pictures, which actually came out pretty well. (they're definitely better in the states.)
• on day four, we went spent a day biking on mcnabb's island, in halifax bay. i had no idea halifax was such an interesting place--reminded me of a much smaller montreal, to be honest. not that we spent much time there--only got out of the car to find out where to catch the island "ferry". run by a compact man in a bright red beard, wraparound sunglasses, and suspenders. we explored two forts, a tea house, a broken lagoon, a beach, an inaccessible lighthouse, and a point with an amazing view of the oil refineries. it was phenomenal. good biking, too.
• the ride back was mostly uneventful, and very, very, very long.

so in short, it was a spectacular experience that'd i'd definitely do again. benjamin and i enjoyed each other immensely, and the whole thing was worth every minute and every mile and every dollar.

we get out of our recompense campsite by 0800, nary a bear to be seen. dagny is beside herself for the next two and a half hours, while we book it to the monteux school and the love of her life. our food, packed in its aldi cooler with antique ice packs, starts to melt a bit--no matter where i put the darn thing, it always ends up in the sun.

hancock is a scorched strip of a town, closest thing to a desert i've ever seen in the northeast. there are trees, obviously, and grass, but somehow the effect is stale. arid. maybe it's the traffic. we catch the monteux school on the second pass, thanks to the unreadability of its classy gold-on-white sign. its roads are marked with signs like "lento" and "molto adagio". dagny and i start grinning uncontrollably, as the musical geekiness of the place settles into our respective nervous systems. the building is reminiscient of tanglewood on weed: an oversized cabin in an overgrown field, cars parked haphazardly beside the puddle-filled track that serves as a driveway. billy the kid leaks from the screened windows, so benjamin and i decide to wait a bit. he repairs a bike tube in the shade, dagny reads in the sun, and i wander aimlessly, reliving the last time i played copland, until the bees chase me into the car.

tsb appears after an interval (hahaha! *cough*), dagny is left with attendant stuff, and benjamin and i are back on the road by 1100. it's a nine-hour run from hancock to chester, taking customs into account, so the sun is nearly gone by the time we hit the bed & breakfast. it's a very cape-cod house--or rather, what i imagine a cape-cod house would look like. sharp eaves, red roof, wood siding, gabled window seat, etc. it sits immediately across the lighthouse route from mahone bay, on the southern side of the aspotogan peninsula. david, out of birmingham (england), is there to meet us; his wife mieke (MEE-kah), runs their pottery business. (those are her boxing kangaroos in their garden.) he oohs and aahs over our bikes (or rather, mine), and gives us the nickel tour. it's a great house. telescope looking out over the bay ("to see the seals", david tells us), plant-infested sitting room, bannister-ed stairway. our room, pink though it be, faces the sunset. after a cursory inspection, we stumble off in search of food.

alas, we failed to take into account the one-hour time difference! the only open establishment is the tim horton's in "downtown" chester, where the canada day fireworks are in full swing. we order the ubiquitous soup/sandwich combo, exit soon after the local cop contingent crashes our party, and sleep-drive our way back to the century house.

the bed is great.

we drive. well really, we work, and then we drive, but as this is the story of the 'independence day holiday', i'll begin at 15:00 on june 30, when i gleefully log out of the automatic calling system and start packing up. my coworkers think we're insane, to drive all the way to nova scotia and spend only two full days, but i have a feeling.

we'd packed the night before (and some that morning), so when we get back at 3:20, we're ready to start loading. dagny pulls in three seconds behind us, fresh from the coffee shop. she feeds the cat and laughs at my laptop while i grab our stuff and benjamin gets the bikes ready--he's decided to ride my old 820 for the trip, since he can't push his any further. the cannondale will be arriving the following monday, just late for the journey. ah well.

we're off by 16:00. the thruway between syracuse and albany had been flooded a day prior, and we can see the high-water line, above road level, in the ruined bushes and mud-covered trees as we pass through. the trek from rochester to maine is a familiar one, and we pull into freeport by 23:30. thanks to my ineptitude (which no one else seemed to mind), we spend the next half hour goose-chasing it down the wrong road before we finally find our chosen campground, deep in the woods before the bay. dagny has determined to sleep in the car, so benjamin and i hop out to set up our tent. in the dark. on the coast of maine. all proceeds dandily, tent stakes secured and poles threaded, until benjamin says,

"uh, gemma...you should move."

in typical fashion, i fly into 'death imminent' mode and hot-step it to the car. "why?"

"something big just growled."

that comment alone is sufficient to send the both of us back to our bucket seats. dagny, unconcerned, queries.

"i heard something big moving around and growling," benjamin explains.

"are there any bears in maine?" i chime in.

dagny starts to laugh hysterically. "um. not at the coast?" she manages. "there are lots of raccoons, though, and they growl."

benjamin roots for the flashlight and returns to the front lines. i'm not moving, and i can see something crawling around behind the tent. benjamin sees it too. dagny keeps laughing.

needless to say, we all slept in the car that night--at least until 4:00 (dawn in that insane place), when benjamin finished setting up the tent and woke me to come sleep stretched out for a few hours. which was lovely.

as it turns out, "something big" was a cow, and "growling" was probably a raccoon--which also may have been what left very muddy footprints all over the car.