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Birthday trip to Joshua Tree Nat'l Park

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We loaded the family into the T210 and headed to Palm Springs, CA for a weekend trip to Joshua Tree National Park .  For this trip we reserved a quirky, cute little mid-century mod AirBNB home in Joshua Tree, CA, right up the street from the north entrance to the park. Sadly, we had to cut the trip a day short and come back Sunday instead of Monday because of a fast moving winter storm system that blew into the Reno / Tahoe area Sunday night.  I had a backup plan to fly to Bishop, CA and drive the rest of the way but the storm system was too big and too unpredictable to chance that not working either, so we cut our losses and headed back early. As such, we only got one day in the park.  It was beautiful and the whole area was charming, so I expect we'll be back. Miles and the huge saguaro in front of the AirBNB The backyard Backyard   Backyard Backyard     Joshua Tree Nat'l Park   Joshua Tree Nat'l Park   Joshua Tree Nat'l Park   Joshua Tree Nat'l Park   Joshua Tree
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Reinstalling grub on my Debian 12 LVM LuksCrypt dual-boot laptop

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So, Microsoft's latest Windows 11 update decided to blow away my dual-boot config because Microsoft apparently hasn't been involved in an antitrust lawsuit recently enough.  (Seriously, I liken this to buying a Ford vehicle and then discovering that it actively disables any non-Ford vehicles also parked in your driveway.  Not cool, Microsoft.) Anyhow, since I run Debian 12 with LVM and an encrypted root filesystem, recovering the grub bootloader was a very manual process.  I'm adding the steps I used here for my own future reference.  Yours will probably be different.  This assumes you know your way around Linux, hardware device mappings, &etc.  Please don't ask me for help recovering your own system unless you're also offering me $200/hr for my time. 1. Boot Debian 12 install media, Advanced Options, "Rescue Mode" 2. Follow the prompts but then "continue with no root filesystem", drop to an installer shell 3. The encrypted LVM logical volume
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That 1981 KROQ Doodle

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Someone posted this notebook doodle in a Facebook group that I'm in.  It appears to be a transcription of the playlist on Los Angeles' famous  KROQ  station overnight from 10:15pm - 04:15am, one random night, long ago.  It's kind of captivating.  I set out to decode it and recreate it on a playlist, with pretty good success. First - the doodle itself.  (Click for the original version as I found it.) I don't know who created this, but I kind of love it.  It's like a time capsule into the broadcast FM punk & new wave scene of Los Angeles at the beginning of the 1980s.  Most of it was pretty straightforward, but there are some errors in it and some oddities. First, though, here's the playlist as best I could recreate it.  Then I'll go into the challenges, guesses, and  errors I came across trying to reconstruct it (noted as orange highlights below). Youtube Music playlist:    KROQ Doodle I don't have spotify, but if you recreate this playlist on Spotif
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HowTo: GeoIP restrictions for Amazon Linux 2

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Background: I have a few Amazon Linux 2 EC2 instances that I run for personal use.  Generally, I restrict "important" / remote access services to my home egress IPs, but for services that I expect to be generally available I cannot do that. Anyone who has hosted a service on the public Internet knows that it's a matter of minutes after the service comes online before it starts being probed by all manner of scanners, exploit scripts, curious hackers, botnets, &etc.  No big deal, just build secure services, right? Naturally.  But "defense in depth" dictates that if you can  filter out a large percentage of these requests, you should.  As doing so not only reduces the load on your service, but also reduces the likelihood of your service being tagged by some unforeseen exploit. Enter:  Maxmind's GeoIP database and the xtables-addons GeoIP filter .  With the geoip module you can easily use iptables to restrict traffic to only those countries you know your se
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Wiring Diagram for Whirlpool / Maytag Dryer MEDC200XW1

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 Wiring Diagram / Schematic for Whirlpool / Maytag Dryer model # MEDC200XW1 Drawing listed as Part No W10185989 REV L
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WHAT DAY IS IT?

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I made a "DayClock" to remind me what day it is.   You can find the details on my GitHub page: https://github.com/phreakmonkey/DayClock
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Flight to Death Valley

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We took the T210 down to Furnace Creek, Death Valley national park. Here's some snapshots in no particular order (LOL): And a video of the landing:
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