JohnnyComeLately's Journal: Life update: Buying tanning salon, resuming MS in Soft Eng..

Thought anyone who is curious might appreciate an update and I have a question maybe someone here can answer.

I finished up Space and Missile training for Air Force officers. I apologize for not keeping up to date with the daily journal, since I think RedWarrior and a couple others were intersted. I moved from a hotel with WiFi and had some academic difficulties. The two combined meant I spent most free time studying. I ended up with a mid-90's average, but my goal was to be eligible for Distinguished Graduate. Unfortunately, being a father, full time worker, and full time grad student meant my body is not as fit. When fitness is now a part of the "judgement process" for DG, an overweight, early 30s body just doesn't compete well with 22 year olds. I did double my fitness score in the eight weeks, and I've since kept up the gym routine (at the expense of family time). I also beat all but one of the other 30-somethings. Next time my goal is to DG (I have another class coming) and do the 1.5 mile in under 12 minutes. My personal all time best is 13:30..I've been a 15 year soccer player with great bursts being my strength, but no endurance or long distance running, meaning anything over 100 yards has been a weakness.

Starting back up on Software Engineering. Another goal is to pull a first A in this grad school. I had quite a few in my MBA, but I've started this MS degree behind (no prereqs or previous classes in software). Fortunately, the next class is on ASP.NET, so I have some background in the area.

Finally, my wife is buying a tanning salon. It's something she's wanted to do for awhile, and we have enough saved up to get a loan for the remainder (2nd mortgage, no SBA bullshit thank you). So I've been racking the brain to remember all the training I got in Finance and Accounting as I read the last 4 years of financials and tax papers from the seller. We've retained and seen a lawyer and visit a CPA tomorrow (backup in case we've missed something). In addition, I'm looking to make it a high tech salon. I've gotten cameras and will soon purchase a video card with digital recording/streaming software. We'll put in DSL (no cable ISP avail) and stream. My question is this: Anyone ever dabbled in setting up a barebones Linux machine as a proxy? The shop uses Windows so I know its not secure, but it makes us $$ so it needs to be 100% reliable, 100% of the day. The second question: Anyone know of software/hardware that takes an incoming stream from the internet and will send it out a composite video out on a PCs card? The reason I ask is it would be really cool to take the web-based video feed, and send it to a modulator I have at home. This means I could turn on any TV in the house to channel 119 and watch the cam live in the tanning salon. Cool for a geek!

Enough for now. Just glad to post a non political JE.

John

Glad to read a non-political JE

[Red Warrior]

Congrats. An average in the 90's is nothing to feel bad about. Being DG is cool too, I suppose. Being a dad is cooler, though. Good luck on the ASP.NET class.

Re:Glad to read a non-political JE

[JohnnyComeLately]

Thanks Red. I'm not an overly competitive person, but I took a certain bit of pride in the fact that when I was active duty I DG'd every class...except the first. However, I missed that DG by only .001 (.1 %). And, I HQ'd (highly qualified) every evaluation. So my expectations were pretty high.

Being a dad is definately the most important thing in my life, although I do greatly feel honored to be an officer in the AF. If I weren't a father, I would have volunteered for one or several of the deployments

Re:Glad to read a non-political JE

[Red Warrior]

so I think they mean you're no where near in danger in Iraq.

Mostly. I *DO* have the distinction of being stationed in the most attacked coalition base in Iraq. Just not the most *effectively* attacked. We take indirect on a more or less daily basis. But not many rounds at a time, and Haji can't shoot[1]. And it's not personal - Nobody actually shoots at me in particular. [1]For various reasons, including good sensor-to-shooter on our side, thanks to the AF guys we have here.

One word- Linksys Router

[Marxist Hacker 42]

There's a version of Linux available now that can be flashed into the ROM of linksys routers, or you can just use it as a NAT Router/Firewall. If you don't do any port forwarding, it'll make your internal network completely stealth- except for one port which is listed as "closed" unless you forward it to nowhere....but the Linux flash rom OS will even take care of that.

Re:One word- Linksys Router

[JohnnyComeLately]

Wow thanks! (and it's actually two words, Linksys & router....hee hee, j/k) I'll look into it. I'm probably being paranoid, but I am very entrenched in my belief that any Windows machine on a public network is just waiting to be exploited. It's like the No Fear shirt, "It's not IF, it's WHEN and HOW BAD"

Re:One word- Linksys Router

[Marxist Hacker 42]

VERY true- Zonealarm (http://www.zonelabs.com/ [zonelabs.com]) can help a good deal, but for any REAL protection, you need a hardware firewall. Linksys has a pretty good OS already set up, but there are Linux variants out for actually reflashing the Rom and running a real Linux (the built in is linux based, but has a bunch of HTML pages running on an internal webserver for easy peasy setup).

Location

[allism]

When your wife gets the tanning salon set up, you should post a link to its website and physical address - not all of the geeks on here are male, and not everyone that gets a tan is a girl.

Re:Location

[JohnnyComeLately]

Very good points about customers, geeks and generalizations. I will certainly post the address and link. We close escrow the 3rd week of November, so expect to see a link right around then. Once I get the video streaming going, and confident it's secure, I may even add a link so anyone can view the lobby. Although, I'm not sure if the PROs out weigh the CONs to doing it.

Pros vs cons...

[allism]

It will be interesting(?!) if your wife's salon gets slashdotted...(not the website but the actual business...music from Jaws and "We're gonna need a bigger boat" playing in the background)