Thoughts on Fishing

Recently, I've tried my hand a fishing and I guess I'm "hooked" having spent a lot of time fishing and well, not really catching.  I'm trying, on my own, to work my way through the basics and the different aspects of fishing.  While I could spend a couple of hundred bucks on a guide or a charter or otherwise learn from others, I'm thinking I will save that for later.  So, I'm essentially fishing the same area for the same fish week after week, testing different theories, changing just a few variables at a time in order to understand this thing.  To keep things simple, I've been focusing on boat trolling, with a downrigger.  I'm on a medium sized lake going after cutthroat trout.   This is where I fish:

Beautiful winter morning on the lake.

I've managed to increase my catch rate from zero to 1 so I'm not focusing on figuring out exactly what changed and what to build on.

So far, I've found that the following matters:

• Speed of trolling (less than 2 mph per my Windows Phone).
• Depth of trolling (20' seems to be the consistent)
• Length of line out (currently playing with ~ 100')
• Lure (rainbow colored Luhr Jensen Needlefish seems to be the winner)
• Attractors (sticking with a Ford Fender)

Things that don't seem to matter:

• Bait (no bait, powerbait, power worm, etc)
• Noise (lure is 100' behind me, so no sense whispering)
• Fish Finder (all times I've had a fish, I didn't see jack on the fish finder prior to the hit)
• Treble, barbed or single hook.  I'm using single hook no barbs.  Haven't lost a fish yet.  My guess is the big to-do with barbed vs non-barbed is a philosophical thing.  Basically if the fish is on your hook, you got the fish.  If it's going to get away, it's going to get away.

Things I'm not sure of yet:

• Length of leader from attractor to lure.
• Time of day

Some observations:

• Ford Fender creates a LOT of drag - makes it a chore to bring it up.
• When there is a fish on, even a small one, you can really tell.  If you are wondering if there is a fish on, then there isn't one on.

SOLVED: Wireless Limited Network Connectivity

Issue: Wireless connection never completes and shows "Limited Network Connectivity" or it does connect and intermittently disassociates and/or shows "Limited Network Connectivity".

Other Symptoms:

• System Event ID 5060 for the Wireless device:

\Device\NDMP35

Intel(R) Centrino(R) Ultimate-N 6300 AGN

0000: 00 00 08 00 02 00 38 00 ......8.
0008: 00 00 00 00 C4 13 00 60 ....Ä..`
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0028: 48 4D 41 43 A5 0F 00 00 HMAC¥...

• Often unable to associate properly with a wireless router but works with other wireless routers

Solution: Disabled Quality of Service (QoS) on the router.  In some routers this may show as "WMM" or something similar.  Just disabling the QoS function altogether caused all wireless connection issues to go away.

Note: This issue occurred with my work laptop and my home wireless router.  The home wireless router worked with everything else - mobile phone, personal laptops, Apple TV, wireless tablets, XBox, wireless connected TVs, etc, etc.  Conversely, the work laptop worked with everything else: work wireless router, Internet sharing mobile phone, other routers, etc, etc.

Hitman: Absolution Easter Egg

Found it by accident.

Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer

Well, actually it can.  The problem is that if the install disc you are using came from another system (i.e. pre-bundled DVDs) instead of the retail version.  The workaround is fairly straightforward:

1. Create a DMG version of the DVD using Disk Tools.
2. Restore the DMG version to a thumbdrive or external hard drive.
3. Using a terminal window, copy the "System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg" file somewhere (i.e. /tmp):
   cp /Volumes/Untitled/System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg
4. Figure out what your system type (i.e. "MacBook4,1") is:
   sysctl hw.model
5. Extract the contents of the file using "xar":
   cd /tmp
   xar -x -v -f OSInstall.mpkg
6. Edit the file named "Distribution"
7. Look for the line "var hwbeSupportedMachines" and add your machine code so it looks something like this:
   var hwbeSupportedMachines = [
                       'iMac10,1',
                       'MacBook4,1',
   ];
8. Save the file.
9. Recreate the OSInstall.mpkg file (again with xar):
   xar -c ./ -v -f NewOSInstall.mpkg
10. Copy this new file over the old OSInstall.mpkg:
    cp /tmp/NewOSInstall.mpkg /Volumes/Untitled/System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg

Now you shouldn't get that error message anymore.

Internet Explorer Bad Grammar

Is it me or is this bad (or at least awkward) use of the English language by Internet Explorer?

Security protects something, so why would my security need protection?  Perhaps a better way to state this is "To help enhance your security, Internet Explorer has shut itself down."

Date Ranges in Web Apps

I find it extremely frustrating that date ranges, especially in but not limited to online banking, will typically show you the "current month" as the default view.  Simple use cases will show that while this works extremely well for the later part of the month, it is not so helpful in the earlier part of the month.

Seriously?  How does this help me?

A more reasonable approach is to have the default view as the "last 30 days" or something like that.  Month-views should be optional.  When viewing your history, do you really just care about the last three days???

Much better.  KTHXBYE

Bloatware

Installing a Microsoft Silverlight browser plug-in needs 100MB in space?

Installing a printer driver requires a 200MB in disk space?

How about a video card driver that needs a 160MB installation file??

Can we cut the please, please cut the bloatware before we need a 4GB printer driver?