Cisco IPSEC VPN client Supporting 64bit Windows OS's *Beta* available now :-)

For the past few years Windows Vista has almost been the defacto Operating System being sold. This coupled with the fact the OS is 64bit makes sense that Windows 7 would almost tout features for 64bit operating systems over 32bit. Kind of Microsoft's way of saying 32bit worked well for the past 15 years lets move on and if you upgrade to 64bit you get all these awesome features for memory and of course applications if the developers utilize those features.

In either case the info for the VPN client is as follows -
Version - 5.0.07
Need Smartnet or Partner login to download the software
File that needs to be downloaded - vpnclient-win64-msi-5.0.07.02900-k9

To find the file go here :
www.cisco.com/tac

1. login to CCO
2. Click Download Software
3. Click Security
4. Click the Plus sign to expand VPN
5. Click the plus sign to expand Cisco VPN Client
6. Click Cisco VPN Client V5.x
7. On the new page that loads click on the latest release 5.0.07
8. Download the second link at the bottom for Windows Vista / Windows 7 MSI

I have tested this with a Windows 7 Client only. Hope to have another person from work test their windows vista client, yet that has not happened yet.

If all else fails then shrewsoft is a great VPN alternative that I know works for Windows Vista. http://www.shrew.net/download .

Peace out -

Kevin

Happy Memorial Day / Family Updates

It's Memorial Day today and I wanted to say thanks to my friends and vets that are still serving / have served, & to all those that still protect this great nation of ours,home and abroad, Thank You.

Had my family from out of town over for a swim party / bbq Saturday and it was great. Kids got to go swimming, pulled out the jump house all that good stuff. My kids even played Rock Band2 till 11 :-) They were having too much fun to turn it off, and school is out anyway so not like they have to worry about that right now.

The Fam and I have been going to church lately and been pretty happy with the one we are exploring. Only time will tell to see how things will pan out, but I want something we can all enjoy and still learn about religion. Met some great people as well from the Church and that helps :-).

I also read something about Monster Jam coming back to Phoenix in August so I will have to keep an eye out for tickets so we can go! Its even on the west side, UoP stadium which is nice :-) I hope 98Kupd has tickets again so I can buy a bunch :-)

Family updates

So Addison turned 3, got her tonsils out, seems to be doing fine, and seems to be able to breath better. We were pretty happy at how well she bounced back, trying to eat real food the same day as her surgery, but really tried hard not to upset her because we didn't need her aggravating her throat. She was a trooper with the pain for almost 3 days before it hit her that her throat hurt.

Brayden and I got to go to a Dbacks game and we went to the all you can eat section to see if it was like the Coyotes all you can eat section. Hands down Dbacks have the all you can eat section covered, just get there before the game to get your fill :-) Brayden wanted to check out the Republic's baseball exhibit in front of will call, threw a ball at the KTAR booth, and had a ton of fun on the play gym on the upper level. He wanted to play the mini baseball game but they closed it off before the 7th inning so he didnt get to do that. He did VERY well with the fireworks this time and I hope he can get used to loud noises without getting too freaked out.

We are planning our vacation to Hawaii and I cant wait to go away for a few days. Even though I know I will be working from Hawaii, I would rather be on the beach connected to work than actually at work :-)

Kara got a new laptop and I dont have to listen to her yell and scream about how slow her 3 year old laptop is. Im much happier now and the Kids have a Ubuntu laptop to watch DVD's on and surf.. which is really more of a click around and giggle a lot.

I also have been trying to go to Bike night at Westgate for the past few weeks and finally went last week, and going again! Its awesome to see that many bikes in once place, good times.

Happy Easter

So its Easter and while I understand that it has absolutely nothing to do with a Bunny Rabbit and Easter Eggs its still fun to celebrate with the family until we find a suitable church we like. Regardless of that, here are some pictures of Easter today, and we hope you all have a great day / Easter.

Easter eggs being prepared



Kids going crazy :-)



Easter Egg Hunt Addison



Easter Egg Hunt Brayden



Happy Easter!

Brayden and Soccer / Addison turning 3!

So my son is doing some soccer activities, skills, practice right now and he seems to enjoy it. He keeps talking about baseball so I need to get him signed up for T ball really soon. He seems to be enjoying anything that makes him run around for about 30 mins and lets him hit / kick something in the process without getting in trouble.






Addison will be turning 3 soon and we are going to host the party at our house. Somehow Kara got someone from her work to dress up as Tinkerbell and do fun activities with them. Not sure how this came up in conversation but I'm sure it was interesting.

I really dislike hosting kids parties at my house because we have limited areas for everyone to go / run around, and the second story with little kids.. is just not fun. I just need to figure a way out to sell my house and get another single story house with a bigger backyard / RV gate that I can store a Toy Hauler in and move. Its just really nice to live so close to work though / the market is all out of whack. Id rather move to a house that gives me what I need for my family rather than the nice commute. But that's another story.

Cool Password Checker

So if you have a password and you are unaware if the password really is a good one, let a website take a look and tabulate a score for you. The website is - http://www.passwordmeter.com/ .

Found this information from Chris Pirillo's website (from a while ago) and seems like a useful enough tool to take a password you may or may not think is "good" and actually test it against some great baselines for security measures.

It will show you the tabulations underneath the password and that will give you an indication if you can or should change something. Side note - being the paranoid person I am I didn't actually type in my exact password, but something very similar. This way I can find out if the method I am using is scored well or not. Who knows, this site could be a huge data mining / new cracker dictionary site... hmm? For example your real password is puppies!08 I would have typed in paddies!20 which does the same thing for characters and repetition, but isn't your actual password... Hopefully you follow my logic..?

On the note of passwords there is a great program called Password Corral by Cygnus to store your passwords, Password Generator by Atory and they are great tools for the many passwords we have to keep tabs on today.

What I like about Password Corral is that I can put the encrypted password file on my USB drive and use it on any computer I use because I have the program installed. I might have to do a special overview of this program alone as it works great, is free, and has 256 Bit Blowfish for encryption :-) YAY.

Password Generator by Atory is great for when I need to come up with passwords for vendors or service accounts on a regular basis. Most people have no idea what I am trying to do with 1337 sp3@k so I just gave up on them and use this random password generator, which is free at the moment :-).

New Desk :-)

I have been wanting a new desk setup for a while, and yesterday the stars aligned and I found a pretty nice desk for sale for a really decent price. Its not 100% brand new but the guy I bought it from took very good care of it. Either rate here is my before picture / After Picture.


Office Before-





Office After -



I still have a few things to move around / re-arrange but this desk setup is pretty sweet. I can open my sliding door / open my window if I wanted to. I can see into the living room and outside to keep tabs on the kids if needed and this could even become a guest room with a simple futon add.

Either rate I think its cool, just gotta figure out where to hang my flags.

Online Backup Carbonite selected as my method

So I have been looking into a few different online backups for use and I have settled on one. Carbonite is an online backup system where you can select as much as you want from your computer and it will back it up online for you. I figured I would give them 100 bucks for 3 years to test the service out, found a cupon code here for it to be cheaper, and even though I copy it to 3 different systems / 2 external Hard drives I would rather be safe than sorry. I also dont want my manual backup process to screw something up for me if I do need something restored and it does automatic backups after I select what I want backed up.

Pro's / Cool features of Carbonite -

• Seems to be an unlimited amount of stuff you can back up
• You can override their default settings to backup videos / mp3 players (I make home videos and have mp3's)
• Has remote Restore File access feature to get files you have backed up online. Didnt work for me but I didnt troubleshoot the issue.
• Fairly Cheep - you can use an online cupon code after you try it to get it for about 100 bucks for 3 years.\
• Live support for anyone testing / with the service is a major plus to help you along the way if you have questions.
  

Cons of Carbonite-

• May be difficult to use if you are not familiar with where you have files you want to back up outside of normal places of My Documents. Its not bad, but could be harder for some. If you have multiple hard drive partitions it doesn't automatically seek out items on those partitions for backing up.
• No Business /Small business versions for multi PC environment. You have to buy a subscription for each PC individually. This could be a good method for backing up customers servers / pc's for small business's but it would be somewhat costly depending on the office size. I have read this is being worked on, no ETA on the product coming out.
  

Windows Based 3D Switcher - Free

Pretty cool app I found on lifehacker.com called Deskhedron. Essentially it takes your screen and gives you a multi-view, similar to what Linux has been able to do with multiple desktops for a while now, and its free. Thus far it seems like a good app and seems to work fairly well.

If you want to try it use this link - LINK

Video Overview of what it does -



Im sort of working on an actual review but this is what I through together just for grins. It only shows you what it does until I add audio / edit the video.

2009 New year & Cards win Superbowl!?

So there is a new year, now a new president, and the Cardinals are in the Superbowl.

First off the new, historic event, presidency is quite an accomplishment looking back 40 years in America's History. It is great to see the fact that this nation can elect someone, not based upon the color of his skin, by the party they are or aren't aligned to, but based upon their viewpoints and who you like better period. Essentially, the republicans were screwed going into this election and Senator McCain didn't do a whole lot to make him look like the candidate he was in 2000. In either case it was a historic event, and this new presidency has to deal with a lot of things going forward, and RFK was spot on with his prediction about when America would elect a Black President. Congratulations Barack Obama and Joe Biden for making history. Lets just not make America History while we are at it.

Wow. So I have been a fan of the Cardinals here for as long as they have been in Phoenix (formally the Phoenix Cardinals) and the one year I was going to take my son to one of a few games I didn't. So I am taking the dive trying some season tickets on for size. My friend and I just have to agree on a section we want to sit in. My friend and I went to westgate for the game against Philly and enjoyed the atmosphere and people. Its one of those things that we wanted to be a part of so we went. He went to the Falcons game and I was supposed to go with him but something else came up. This past weekend I was able to find my Cardinals NFC champions shirt in Red and another pretty sweet one that has the Team on the back and Superbowl on the front with the Cardinals Logo on it. The last time Cardinals Fans (In Arizona) enjoyed more than the regular season games was when we beat Dallas!

2009 seems to be in line for an interesting year, so far, with many things that I am doing with my family and the economic issues that make you think a few times before spending some extra money. Saving more, preparing for the worst, and making sure I have the ability to protect my family is the most important thing right now. While I say this making sure life is as normal as I can make it for them is also important.

Go Cards! Superbowl 2008 Champs! (of course my prediction may not reflect actual events, though being a cardinals fan prepares you for this)

USHRA Monster Jam Phoenix Jan 2009

Monster Jam came to town and my son has been looking forward to this since the AMA supercross trip we took. Even though I read about what happened in Tacoma, that didnt sway my opinion on how these guys put on show making safety first and that the show was safe enough to go to. But I digress, my son had his earplugs on ready for the fireworks and the loud monster trucks (I was prepared this time!).

From start to finish this show had him completely entertained. I was amazed that he didnt want to leave early, nor did he feel sleepy at all during the show, and he was totally into cheering on Gravedigger. We got a nice Tshirt / Pennat with Gravedigger on it and he is going to share with his classmates at "sharing time" at school. I guess he talked about this trip soo much he got his classmates to all want to go to the show; I wonder how many other kids got their parents to take em? Besides the "FAN" judges NOT giving the freestyle win to Gravedigger, which he clearly won IMHO, everything was exciting and well worth the trip. We will be making this same one next year with the entire family. Again 98KUPD hooked us up with some great seats (bought them for 15 bucks each) and well worth the price to go.

The picture is okay.. but I didnt do as good of job this time getting his picture lol. Its better than nothing.

Publish Post

Next thing in line for Brayden to go to is the Lion King at ASU Gammage Auditorium. Pretty cool looking show that hopefully Addison will be ready to go see when she is 3 1/2 because right now she cant sit through 20 mins of a movie.

Monster AMA Supercross in Phoenix Jan 2009

So I was really excited to go to this one with my son. The Monster AMA supercross at Chase Field (BOB) in phoenix was pretty kick butt. So we got to see all the riders, the bikes, and some awesome freestyle riding!!! My son was pretty impressed with it all and really wanted to get his dirtbike I keep telling him about. 98 KUPD hooked us up with some sweet tickets right near the finish line / sand turn (which was odd btw) and my son got to sit pretty close to the action right before a nice triple! He was watching guys jump and thought it was the coolest..

Here he is showing his mom where our seats were.

So I learned my lesson on a few things that I will be bringing him his own pair of earplugs next year, not helping anyone move on this day, and going to see the riders before the show. Nevertheless the show was awesome. Being so close to Speedworld in Surprise makes it nice if he wants to go hit the pewee track there. All this and we got to see the Cards play at Friday's Front row. Supercross and watching the Cardinals BEAT Carolina made the night very fun! We had an awesome view of the field and saw the whole pre-event light show / fireworks right before our food showed up / cards game started.

Side note -- he saw an ad for the USHRA MONSTER JAM and needless to say I got us tickets for that too lol!

Coyotes Game December 08

So Brayden and I were able to go to a coyotes game recently (In December) and he really enjoyed himself. Might have to take him to a few more of those since they are on our side of town. Here is a picture of us before getting some food.

It was free blanket night and he enjoyed the blanket. I gave mine to Addison so they wouldnt get into a fight :-) He signed up for the howler club and if they do anything on the west valley side we may end up getting him on some ice skates.. that would be interesting!

Sweet new site for Music Videos

Reading Lifehacker today yesterday I found a post - MTV Videos - and I was browsing around and looking up some of my fav videos when MTV actually played them. A bit of GnFnR, Sublime, and some others but ran across a good song that took me back to High School... crazy stuff but maybe someone out there wants to watch Thriller, or some of the older videos like Whip It and they have the videos. Pretty damn sweet and either rate wanted to share it with the world. Go there yourself to look up some good videos - http://www.mtvmusic.com

Green Day |MTV Music

Other news - The kids and I havent done the pumpkins yet (they are just going to paint theirs I didnt want to carve one this year) we went to schnepfs farm and the kids had a blast. We stayed pretty late and Brayden went on the "spooky train" they have which is pretty good for younger ones. But the family had fun and here is a good picture of them on a ride there.




Beat Gears of War with a friend of mine on Insane level over the internet. It was fun but didnt take us as long as I thought it would. Didnt get the dumb achievement for playing the supporting character (Dom) the whole time but oh well. Getting ready for Gears of War 2 to come out so I can play that and see how well I enjoy that game.

I got to play Call of Duty World At War Multiplayer beta tonight.. Initial thoughts is that is okay but it doesnt seem as fun as COD4. COD4 had me from the get go and multiplayer had me playing all the time. Well there is always Counter Strike and thats enough fun. We will see how the single player goes as I play both on the Xbox and the PC and my preferred method is PC.

Installed new exhaust

So I bought an exhaust for my motorcycle the other day, got it yesterday, and installed this tonight. My buddy and I took about an hour to get it unpacked, remove the old exhaust, and put on. It doesnt look like much but it sure does make a nice improvement on the stock sound. I will be getting my carb's jetted for the new exhaust and Im not sure if I will be doing it or if I will take it to someone if they can do it for me fairly cheaply and quickly.

Here is a picture of the new exhaust. I hope to get a small video of it online so you can hear it.


Here is the picture of the bike with the stock exhaust (for comparison)- BTW I have it on craigslist if anyone wants to buy it from me :-) LINK