Notes on upgrading to Mac OS X Lion

In the engineering wing of my company a majority of us have upgraded to Lion from 10.6.8.

One of the reasons we upgraded was that we could use the new 1.7.x JDK offered by Oracle instead of using the 1.7.x OpenJDK from Google.

Unfortunately there's some work to be done and new ways of doing things in Lion that have changed from 10.6.8.

Some of the tasks you might have to work on, or feature changes you'll need to be aware of, will be:

1) Install more RAM.

     After the install I needed to go from 4 Gigs RAM to 8 Gigs RAM. An additional update. With the new Mac Book Pros with flash drives built in the last few months, 16 Gigs of RAM is even more desirable so I would recommend going to 16 Gigs if your IT department can afford it.

2) Installing the latest JDK 1.7.x from Oracle

     This is an easy download and install from Oracle. There seems to be a new path for the JDK and you'll have to work on your Java Preferences to reenable old Java versions.

3) Getting used to the new virtual desktop layout in Lion.

     Unlike prior versions, the virtual desktops are laid our horizontally and you add more from left to right, instead of classic cardinal direction layout having four desktops arranged in a square like pattern.

4) F8 doesn't seem to work to see all your desktops.

     You'll need to use F3 to see your desktops and add new ones by mousing to the upper right and clicking the plus sign.

4) Using Lion's VPN client instead of Cisco's VPN client

     Cisco seems to not have a VPN client for Lion yet. It stopped working for me once I upgraded to Lion.

5) Getting used to Lion's ostensibly slower user experience

     Lion is definitely slower and if you have encryption features turned on that could also cause additional slowness.

6) ITunes not working anymore if you have an earlier Lion DMG file since it doesn't automatically update ITunes to the latest version.

    Since you might get a Lion DMG installer from a few months ago the ITunes that gets installed could be a few months older and your ITunes will not launch anymore so you'll need to manually download ITunes and reinstall.

7) Having to work on password timeout settings since those will be overwritten. I had a 30 second timeout for a screensaver on my MacBook Pro, which would automatically lock my user session.

     You'll have to update your preferences under System Preferences for Desktop & Screensaver and Security and Privacy.

8) Vertical scrollbars are not automatically enabled.

     This was definitely a huge annoyance for those of us who like using scrollbars instead of the new gestures. Under User Preferences > General I selected Always for Show Scroll bars.

Perry Canyon to White Rock Trail and back

Did a new ride just south of Brigham City today with my sister-in-law.

I found the ride on utahmountainbiking.com under Ogden Area rides. It's at the bottom of the page.

We rode in monsoon (raining or slight drizzle) weather for 90% of the ride so it was a change from what we did the day before when it was sunny and in the low 90s on Snow Basin mountain.

The trail is certainly hard to follow at points but the website is pretty good in giving directions. It would help if there were a couple more signs but we made our way around the loop in about 4.5 hours with plenty of breaks.

You're cautioned in that the trail is a little overgrown - especially when wet - and that parts of the trail are not well worn and can be considered primitive or faint since it seems to be one of the newer loops on the Wasatch front. Thankfully, the fainter parts of the trail are on the lower sections and the upper sections, whether on the Perry Canyon or White Rock Trail are easier to follow, the higher you go.

I would recommend doing it counter-clockwise like they mention on utahmountainbiking.

Also, follow the single-track up from the parking lot and you'll see the turnoff for White Rock inscribed on a tree limb with Grizzly on the left if you'd like to try clockwise.

Don't use any of the roads up to this point; unless you need to cross them to follow the single track. You should only have to cross the creek once in Perry Canyon too and that's in the beginning - within the first half mile.

Tough Mudder Beaver Creek - June 9th, 2012

Did Tough Mudder, Beaver Creek for the second year in a row last weekend. Thankfully it was a sunny day and warm because it was a tougher course due to longer mileage, higher elevation gain and some tougher obstacles at the end of the course.

I signed up last September, which saved me quite a bit of money over registering late; although the total cost was still about $118.00.

The group I did it with (from work) was a little bigger this year but by the start time it was more fragmented due to some people deciding to start earlier, or not starting at all due to being injured before race day.

I'd definitely say that the mileage affected me more this year and due to a few more colds over the winter, and early spring I was unable to train for the event as much as I wanted.

As a sample of the course here is a video of the hill climb we had in the middle of the race:



For this year I got rid of the camelback and found the aid stations sufficient. I kept the small fanny pack for sunscreen, gloves and video camera. I also kept the neoprene vest for the water/mud sections and to keep my torso and shoulders from getting scuffed up too much.  If I do the race next year I'll keep the vest and fanny pack.

I think for next year, if they have a similar course layout, I'll probably pack knee pads since the course obstacles had a lot more crawling than last year.

And, since I forgot the baseball cap this year, unlike last year, I'll try to use it again next year since the high altitude certainly burns the top of the forehead.

Cooked Matambre for Memorial Day BBQ

Lisa got a new gas grill and I've been able to try a couple of new recipes on the grill; one being a Matambre roll.

I recommend Steven Raichlen's book, "How to Grill," which has a good recipe that's easy to follow.

Gas grilling with the amount of irradiated heat coming from the burner caused the meat to cook faster than expected so when we were finally ready to serve it was good but could have been a little moister.

SSH > read from remote host < > operation timed out

I have a MacBook Pro and I connect to a lot of Linux Enterprise machines throughout the day from the terminal window.

Unfortunately, I was getting hung SSH sessions after going to lunch where the session would have to quit on its own to give me the terminal prompt again.

As in a majority of my research forays I had to do some Google searches and found I needed to update my /etc/ssh_config and /etc/sshd_config files on my client and server machines.

Adding these lines to my ssh_config on my client side Mac in /etc/ssh_config >


Host *
ServerAliveInterval 240

AND on the server side in /etc/ssh/sshd_config, enabling >

ClientAliveInterval 240

seemed to work.

I made sure to restart my sshd server too with the command /etc/init.d/sshd restart.

Haven't had session timeouts in the last day...

One Simple Trick!

I really dislike the one simple trick ads that have been online for the last few years.

I really wish they would go away, but I can see their appeal. I've certainly been sucked in by wondering what the one simple trick would be for some of those remedies they are selling.

Basil wilted from cold getting down to 36 degrees overnight

I left my basil and Italian parsley out overnight on my front porch. The early morning temperature according to the NCAR foothills lab weather site got down to 37 degrees.

I didn't do my due diligence with researching basil cold tolerance so the leaves wilted :) I brought it in late morning and will keep it in the house for the next few days.

According to one site, as long as the basil didn't freeze it should come back but I might have to trim some of the stems and leaves that might necrophy.

Update: After 8 hours the leaves did come back so it didn't take too long

Here are the photo of the basil plant after it was taken inside:

Here is a photo of the plant after 8 hours inside: