Patagonia R4 Regular Fleece Jacket

I bought the R4 jacket back in 2007 but I had another Marmot fleece to wear that I have traded in for this.

I only really started using the jacket last fall since I had some other jackets - in addition to the Marmot - that I preferred.

People keep asking me how a fleece can be warm but this jacket has some Polartec WindBloc laminate between the mesh on the inside and the fleece on the outside.

I've already used it for skiing and can't complain to it's effectiveness on the slopes.

It definitely works for Colorado winters.

There you go - a commercial endorsement on this mini blog.

Using wget on a virtual Linux machine to download files from a website

A colleague sent out an email today about using wget to download our latest builds.

We run on Macbook Pros and connect to a lot of virtual servers, whether it be Windows 2008 or Linux Enterprise machines.

Since files testing application environments need to be similar - if not identical - then we need to duplicate local environments to remote VM instances.

I've used wget in the past sparingly but will use it more since now I can download files directly on the command-line from our local Hudson build server.

Here's the command:

wget --no-check-certificate "path to file from http:// to file extension"

Note the --no-check-certificate. Since we connect to a build server that uses SSL and the certificate is self-signed we need to add that to make the copy work.

Cool stuff.

If America is looking for catchy, unworkable solutions to complicated problems, Herman Cain has the answer

Great SNL skit last Saturday.

What is this country coming too?

JMeter, BeanShell, and Portecle ( and Bouncy Castle)

Discovered a very cool feature to JMeter.

You can embed Java scripting into JMeter; specifically BeanShell Sampler. BeanShell Sampler uses the BeanShell scripting language, which, when used in JMeter - allows you to write Java inside JMeter for specialized test scripts you might need to run.

Since I do a lot of security testing I need to access more specialized cryptographic libraries when using JMeter. BeanShell Sampler allows me one way to do security testing.

Since security testing involves truststores and key stores, I could use keytool on the command line but I found out about Portecle and that allows me to create, update and delete truststores and associated keys/certs in an easier to use GUI tool.

JMeter: trustAnchors parameter must be non-empty

If you're doing security/cryptographic testing with Java - especially with JMeter - you might encounter errors in your testing where you might get a message similar to:

javax.net.ssl.SSLException: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unexpected error: java.security.InvalidAlgorithmParameterException: the trustAnchors parameter must be non-empty

Searching Google gives you hints that you haven't defined your keystore or truststore correctly and it's coming up null when the test is run. This was the case for me too.

In regards to JMeter I had to check my script inside JMeter AND also the jmeter.properties and system.properties files under the bin directory.

Once I had successfully defined the cacerts file location I got past this error and was able to run my test.

Here is the snippet:

# Location of the truststore (trusted certificates)
javax.net.ssl.trustStore=/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home/lib/security/cacerts

Fair Game - Brief review

Saw the movie Fair Game a few days ago.

I'd recommend it since it condenses the story-line, leading up to and through the first part of the Iraq war, of the major and sidelined players who were influential and non-influential, respectively, in the shaping of our eventual involvement in Iraq.

In some ways it's a movie of how the Bush administration shaped intelligence to suit their policy for invading Iraq, going against some formidable evidence that Saddam wasn't pursuing weapons of mass destruction; principally, that he was NOT buying Yellow Cake from Niger.

I really enjoyed the performances of Sean Penn and Naomi Watts.

Another notable thing about watching the Blu-ray was the background commentary done by the former CIA analyst Valeria Plame and her husband Joe Wilson. Usually, this is done by the director and actors but not the actual real-life people that the movie is about. That was an unexpected bonus; although they were limited in their comments due to possible liability and non-disclosure agreements they've been bound to.

Highlighting in Windows command window suspends running programs

I use the command window quite a bit in Windows and have noticed that with some Windows versions, highlighting requires you to explicitly choose Mark and then select the text while other command windows you left or right click and highlighting happens automatically.

Automatic highlighting seems to be easier to do in more recent of versions of Windows; especially Windows 2008 Server, R2.

At work, I almost always run our principal application through the Windows command prompt as Administrator.

The problem though is that I would highlight and cause our BATCH application to suspend, without me knowing that I was going into suspend mode.

And learned as of yesterday, to un-suspend, the user needs to hit the ESCAPE key or use the keystroke CTRL-C in the command window.