The life and times of Jeffrey Forman.

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  Jeff Forman 11:14 am on February 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: corporate america, idiocy   

  Airline miles and credit card points, what a racket. 

  I don’t often use this medium as a bully pulpit to rant and rave about the idiocy I see around me, but this situation warrants it.

  I am in the midst of planning a vacation for my girlfriend and I. We had been batting around ideas of where to go, and have settled on going from our home in Boston to see Vancouver and Seattle for a week in April. Being that this is quite a long journey and an expensive one at that, my father has graciously offered up most, if not all, of his American Express points, and mileage points on various airlines to use for airfare, hotels, car rental, etc.

  One would think, “easy, log on to my father’s account, book travel in my name, done.” Not so easy. Below are my experiences with the various companies I’ve tried to use reward points with.

  Bank of America Mastercard World Points:

  Out of all my below rants, this one was the most sane. Login, see how many points I have, apply those points to a United flight from Boston to Vancouver. I noticed that on this card we didn’t have enough to cover the entire flight, so I would have to chip in some money. But I knew that on another BoA Mastercard that contributes to World Points we had more points. Knowing that BoA has a customer service representative on Twiter, I dashed off a quick question to him knowing whether I could transfer points from one card to another. Answer was no, but hey, at least I got a response from him.

  So I drained one account’s points, paid for the balance with a credit card, and off I go. I’ve at least got one flight figured out.

  Jetblue:

  Earning the points is quite easy. Some flights are worth four points, others worth six, depending on the length of the flight. Earn 100, book flight via website, select payment as TrueBlue awards points, and board your flight. Funny thing is, when logged into my father’s JB account and booking a flight with my name and my girlfriend’s name, it would not allow me to select TrueBlue point as my method of payment. When I entered in the names of the passengers and clicked continue, the radio button for ‘Use TrueBlue Points’ was unavailable. Seriously? You guys have never heard of someone giving their points to another person as a present? I love flying with you guys, but give me a break. My father earned his points, he wants to give them to me. This is not rocket science.

  American Airlines:

  While along the same lines as Jetblue, you guys are my current winner of the “Are you really kidding me?” award. I went to book the flights as usual, but when I went to enter in my father’s frequent flier number and my name, I got an error saying “Unable to process points. Please call our customer service for assistance.” The same customer service that adds a fee for calling, rather than using the Internet?

  Giving up on this train of thought, I saw a link for “Gift AA miles.” My holy savior, he can just give me the miles, it’ll be in my account, I can use them, easy! I entered in his account information, my account information and selected how many miles I wanted to transfer, 40,000, since thats how many miles it would be to cover our hotel in Vancouver for three nights. Clicked continue, and was presented with what I thought was a joke.

  Number of Miles:	40,000
  Cost:	$1000.00 USD
  Federal Excise Tax:	$75.00  USD
  Processing Fee:	$30.00  USD
  Total Cost:	$1105.00  USD

  So let me get this straight. For him to GIVE ME miles, it costs him $1,105, including fees. Maybe I can understand some processing fees, maybe some tax included because in some twisted math formula these miles have actual dollar values, but eleven-hundred dollars!? That’s actually several hundred dollars more than what the hotel in Vancouver would have cost me if I just paid for it in cash.

  At this point, I give up. I think I might end up having to pay for the entire vacation instead of trying to use the miles my father is trying to give me as a gift. I know my rant is a drop in the ocean of other rants against these type of programs, but it’s the first time I’ve ever tried to use them myself and I’ve lost all faith in them completely.

   

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  Jeff Forman 7:12 am on February 10, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: linux (6), nagios, raid   

  RAID array monitoring at home 

  Ever since I started using a simple RAID-1 setup at home, the only verification I had done to check on the status of the array was issuing some commands by hand on the command line.  I finally got around to implementing something a bit more proactive using Nagios, its NRPE plugin tool, and a simple bash script that queries dmraid.

  To cut to the chase, for those who understand Nagios syntax, the below two sections are added to my server’s Nagios configs.

  define command {
command_name    check_nrpe
command_line    $USER1$/check_nrpe -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -c $ARG1$
}

  define service {
use  generic-service
name check-raid
host_name $yourhosts
service_description Software Raid
check_command check_nrpe!check_raid
}

  Servers who wish to have their RAID status checked, are added to the host_name parameter here, or can get the services tag added in the hostname definition.

  The below code is added client-side to the nrpe.cfg, where the NRPE daemon is installed and listening. The command section assigns the check_raid command a simple script to run when the test is executed.

  pinotnoir:/etc/nagios$ cat nrpe_local.cfg
command[check_raid]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/monitor_raid.sh

  The script:

  pinotnoir:/usr/lib/nagios/plugins$: cat monitor_raid.sh
#-----------------
#!/bin/sh
raid_status=`dmraid -s | grep status | awk '{print $3}'`
if [ "$raid_status" = "ok" ] ; then
echo "RAID Status OK"
exit 0
else
echo "RAID Status NOT OKAY"
exit 1
fi

  This is the actual source of the script. As of the writing of this blog post, it only supports checking one RAID array using the dmraid utility.

  Example output of dmraid is pasted below, where my script simple pulls out the status line.

  pinotnoir:/usr/lib/nagios/plugins$ sudo dmraid -s
*** Active Set
name : nvidia_bfecfffb
size : 976773120
stride : 128
type : mirror
status : ok
subsets: 0
devs : 2
spares : 0

  Understandably it is quite short and basic at this point, where I hope to have more scripts forth coming that provide more exposure into the status of the RAID array, and potentially support multiple arrays.

  Osgpcq is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Osgpcq 9:10 am on August 4, 2010 Permalink | Reply

    Just try to disconnect a sata drive and the status still is ok (I have log about the de-connection of the drive).

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  Jeff Forman 3:44 pm on February 4, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  wd-50, gastronomic A+ 

  Last weekend I went down to Manhattan for the weekend with the Girlfriend, and had wanted to try a new resturant. Having combed OpenTable, Chowhound and Yelp, I was surprised to see an open reservation at wd-50 for Saturday night, pre-theater hours. wd-50 is Wylie Dufrense’s resturant, his style of cooking easily described as molecular gastronomy. Take a dish, deconstruct it, and put it back together in an incredible preparation and presentation.

  The meal did not disappoint, below are pictures of what we had.

  Appetizers:

  Sweetbreads, peanut, beet-pomegranate, pickled sweet potato:

  

  Having heard about sweetbreads for a while, and having never tried them before, I couldn’t resist.  The dish was incredibly rich and savory, while not being over the top. You definitely did not taste the fact that you are eating the thymus glands of lamb, beef, and pork.  The sweet potato was like nothing I had ever had, the perfect acidity while also realizing you are eating a sweet potato.

  Eggs Benedict

  

  By far the dish that blew us away the most. In the cubes is the Hollandaise sauce. Still liquid, it is encased in a bread-crumb cube, that splits when you send a fork through it. The ham sliced thin, and not quite crispy, but just the right bite to it when combined with the other dishes. The egg cooked until firm, but not hard.

  Foie gras, fennel, malt, sherry vinegar jam

  

  This is the dish I knew the least about, which made me the most curious. Having heard Foie Gras always associated with very fine food, I could not pass up the chance of eating it in a very unique presentation. Foie Gras, easily explained, is the fattened liver of a duck or goose. The malt and sherry vinegar jam was just the right sweetness to offset the rich texture of the foie gras. It was incredible, something hard to describe, and something I’ll definitely get again.

  Turbo, barbecued lentiles, cauliflower, dried apricot

  

  This dish my girlfriend got, which was quite tasty. While I found the turbot a little on the fishy side, the barbecued lentils were incredible, smoky and a little sweet. I found the dried apricots a little sweet, but incredible none the less.

  Lamb loin, green apple, chartreuse, green-tomater tots

  

  I ordered the lamb for dinner, which was one of the most flavorful pieces of meat I have ever had before. I waver between medium and medium-rare, never really sure how much of a pink center I want. This came out perfectly cooked of course, with just a little bit of fat on the meat. I wasn’t sure about the celery accompanied it, since I find that other more flavorful vegetables could be used, but these were a great addition. The apple cubes while good, although were missing that strong apple taste that I expected. Also quite good but low on the expected-taste mission, were the green tomato tots. I expected more tomato flavor, and got more of a potato tot taste.

  We paired our meals with a red and white wine for myself and my girlfriend respectively, which worked out very well.  I had a couple glasses of a 2005 Grenache old vines ‘tor ‘na ‘nong, from South Australia. Moderately priced, with an almost merlot-like body to it.