Introducing the new Madhatt.com

This new version of the website will give a better look and also allow one to see more of the website at one time.

Goodbye Social media!

26 January 2012

Yesterday I finally dropped my last social media "not counting linkedin for biz" account.

No More Facebook

No More Google Plus

Never used Twitter

I think instagram is a joke.

Now it's just me and you Joomla!

What to do with companies that won't leave you alone

26 January 2012

So What do you do when a company won't stop emailing/calling you?

Well, I'm in that boat... I have a company that won't stop bugging me. So now, every time I get a piece of spam or a phone call from them I just send a special command to my phone system. This triggers the system to place a call to the company and play a recording I made that asks them to stop emailing and calling me. Of course for fun it also 'rickrolls' them "nice background music"

Legal? I'm not 100% sure but I think it should be since the recording states that the call is in response to a solicitation from them.

Goodbye Google +

25 January 2012

Today I dropped Google Plus... It just didn't seem to be very effective... Then Google changed their privacy policy and I didn't like their new tracking model...

Oh well, now I'll just use my website so that the 1 person who visits here will be able to keep up on what I'm doing....

of course that 1 person is me so it seems a bit redundant...

Visiting the family.

23 January 2012

Melissa and I took a trip to Texas this weekend to visit our families. We had a really great time and got a few pictures and video of my Nephew Garrett.

Here is the photo gallery with all the pictures

Here's a Video of Garrett

How to download a file over and over with Linux

19 January 2012

So Lets say that you have a website that you want to download a specific file from.

over... and over.... and over.... with no end in site..

Why would you want to do this? I don't know perhaps to run up someone's bandwidth bill.. or perhaps to load test your system by running this script on many clients.


rm -rvf /tmp/*
cd /tmp/
count=0
while [ "forever" ]
do
wget  http:/file_you_want_to_download.zip;
rm -rvf /tmp/*;
let count=$count+1
echo
echo Downloaded $count times
echo
done

Welcome Message

15 January 2012

thoughts and travels of a outdoor geek

Purchased our Tickets!

19 December 2011

So yesterday I purchased our tickets for Alaska!

Under $1,100 for two people for the flights out of denver...

Looks like Sam and I will be doing a couple days of backpacking in Denali and then on to a 4+ day kayaking/camping trip!

Asterisk call Script File

09 December 2011

So recently I had a issue with someone. They were dicks and stole couple hundred bucks from me by "deactivating" a product I purchased.... This deactivation process entails the software I PURCHASED turning off every 30 minutes.

Yes, Yes, Yes, I know, what a dick move, and probably illegal. So to begin with I decided to fight it. Not by suing as they dared me too. But by calling and asking for them to pay me. Over, and over, and over, and over again.

Thank goodness for Asterisk!

How to robocall someone with Asterisk

Step 1.

Record a WAV file of yourself saying what you would like to the caller. Place this file in /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/

Step 2.

Create a file stored somewhere, I'll call it, asshole.call

Inside this file put in something like this.

Channel: Local/5551111111@from-internal

Application: Playback

Data: audio-recording

callerid: "You dick" <5552222222>

The number 5551111111 represents the number you wish to call.

The number 5552222222 represents the number you wish to display in their caller ID.

The section Data: audio-recording represents the name of the file (no spaces) that contains your recorded message (minus the .WAV)

Step 3.

Create a quick and dirty script that will do 2 things. We'll call this script /callasshole

1. copy the call file to /var/spool/asterisk/outgoing/ and 2. change the owner to asterisk so that the phone system will process it.

#!/bin/bash

cp /asshole.call /var/spool/asterisk/outgoing

chown asterisk:asterisk /var/spool/asterisk/outgoing/*

Step 4.

Create a cron job that will run this file (place the call) every now and then.

enter into the terminal: crontab -e

enter in something like whats below. This will call the the victim every morning at 7:01 AM. It will play the recording that you set up to the caller, then hang up.

1 7 * * * /callasshole

Now just sit back and enjoy, this will call the guy every single day... this may be illegal in almost everywhere but who cares...

After a few minutes of thought I decided not to go ahead with this plan. I decided it was much easier to circumnavigate this "activation" process.

The server is still churning away today, or is it?

Starting to think about next year's Alaska Trip

28 November 2011

Looks like next year is going to be a good year for Sam and I to get to Alaska and do some hiking. I was thinking about doing something on Denali, perhaps go see the magic bus. Were looking at a full 14-17 days in the north which will give us time to see a lot of stuff and hopefully spend over a week of that backpacking in the back country.