The Random Adventure That Is Life (RATIL)

Toniebox Tonies Duration Python Script

Toniebox Tonies Duration Python Script

Maximize your value on Tonie figurines with this sorted list of Tonie durations.

Vivint Smart Garage Auto Close

Vivint Smart Garage Auto Close

My car recently got stolen out of my garage so I wrote a script to automatically close the garage whenever both of our phones are not connected to the home Wifi. Thanks to Nate K Spencer and this repository for the Vivint API integration needed to make this possible: https:

Bulk Download Photos From Procare

Bulk Download Photos From Procare

Our son's daycare/preschool uses Procare to track attendance and send info about the school including pictures of the kids during the day. As he moved to a new school for Kindergarten, we wanted to make sure that we had all his photos from the app. Too bad the app

Book Review - Immune: A Journey Into The Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive

Book Review - Immune: A Journey Into The Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive

I just finished reading Immune by Philip Dettmer (the creator of Kurzgesagt-In A Nutshell). While I ordered this book back around Christmas time and was one of the first people to get the book, I had only read 1 or 2 chapters of it up until this week when I

Paddling the Colorado River

Paddling the Colorado River

After having rented paddle boards for years, I finally bought an inflatable one and brought it with me on my annual work trip to Las Vegas. After researching the area, I decided to attempt to paddle up the Colorado River below Hoover Dam and see how far I could make

When do you feel happiest?

When do you feel happiest?

I have had writer's block lately. Luckily Mrs. Steen bought the Best Self Ultimate Deck Collection, which includes a "Wordsmith" pack for just such an occasion. The first card I pull out? Yup, that title ^^^ right there. When vs. What vs. Where When you usually see this question, the phrasing

Previse

NMAP shows that ports 80 and 22 are open. The site at port 80 is a login page to a File Storage site. Running GoBuster against the site reveals several additional pages that although they redirect back to the main login page, do indeed have content as well. Specifically: * accounts.

Return To Hack The Box - BountyHunter

Return To Hack The Box - BountyHunter

After a several year hiatus from Hack The Box, I decided to jump back in and take a look. Here is the write-up for Bounty Hunter BountyHunter Initial nmap scan indicates ports 22 and 80 are open. Browsing the page on port 80, there is a "Portal" section that indicates

Stadia Firewall Rules

Stadia Firewall Rules

Google was running a deal that if you bought a game on Stadia you would get a free controller and Chromecast Ultra (what they call the Premier Edition). I was excited for this as this would round out my gaming capabilities to let me game on all of my screens.

Camping Types

There are probably hundreds of articles on this across the internet, this is just my take. There are 3 major categories of camping to me each with a few sub-categories therein: * Campground Camping * Tent * Car * Trailer/RV * Dispersed Camping * Tent * Car * Trailer/RV * Backpacking * Wilderness * Designated Site For all options,

Kids' and Wife's First Backpacking Trip

Kids' and Wife's First Backpacking Trip

If you know me or have read this blog, then you know that I like backpacking. Last year I tried to plan a backpacking trip for the kids into Rocky Mountain National Park but we got rained out by a storm that ended up being a Derecho Storm [https://en.

Family Road Trip 2021

Family Road Trip 2021

I had to be in Las Vegas for work for a few weeks. Since I was planning to drive anyways, we decided to make a road trip out of it and visit several National Parks along the way and finishing the trip off with a couple of nights in Vegas.

Head Against Wall: Odd Bootable USB Behavior

Head Against Wall: Odd Bootable USB Behavior

So for work, we provision devices to send to clients using a bootable USB Ubuntu installer with a bunch of custom options and additional software. This all happens without hiccups generally...until this week, when I needed to clone the drive for someone else. After much weeping and gnashing of

On Empathy

Empathy, Empathy, Empathy! All of this, all sides, all people. Empathy is the key and what we seem to be losing. I like to think I have great empathy for the disenfranchised but I fail spectacularly at demonstrating empathy for those whose political views run against my own and that

Lost Creek Wilderness Loop

Lost Creek Wilderness Loop

I was getting the itch to do a backpacking trip. Given the pandemic situation I decided to stick close to home and went with the Lost Creek Wilderness Loop. Coming from Denver, the Wigwam Trailhead was the closest entry point. However, that trailhead has about a 3.7 mile spur

Car Camping Load Out

Car Camping Load Out

I have a vested interested in making car camping as easy and comfortable as possible: 1. If I am going alone with my son, I have to ensure I am able to handle the whole trip solo and in such a way that a 3-year-old can enjoy it. That means

SSH Access With Cloudflare Argo and Access

SSH Access With Cloudflare Argo and Access

Although Cloudflare generally has pretty good documentation. In this specific case, the documentation is spread over multiple pages and actually just wrong in a couple spots. I am going to try to consolidate this process here. My goal here was to enable programmatic SSH access to an arbitrary number of

Skiing With a 2-Year-Old

Skiing With a 2-Year-Old

We took our son skiing for what could be the last time this season. As such, I thought it would be appropriate to recount the trials, tribulations, and celebrations of a season of skiing with a 2YO. Patience and Expectation Management The key to every ski trip with kids is

Squaw Mountain Fire Lookout

Squaw Mountain Fire Lookout

I am not sure where I first heard about them (probably some click-baity Facebook ad), but for the last few months I have been obsessing over renting a US Forest Service fire lookout tower. In their heyday, there were a couple thousand lookout towers. With the advent of modern technology,

Five Fourteener Frenzy Weekend

Five Fourteener Frenzy Weekend

After planning a Sunday trip to climb Longs Peak with some folks from 14ers.com [https://14ers.com] I decided to fill my Saturday with the DeCaLiBron route. After the Sunday Longs trip fell through, I ended up doing Torreys Peak on Sunday. Altogether I hit 5 fourteener peaks this

Unattended Install: virtualbox-ext-pack

Unattended Install: virtualbox-ext-pack

On 30 September 2019, Ubuntu updated the virtualbox-ext-pack package to no longer auto-accept the EULA in order to align with legal requirements and their desire to be very clear about non-open-source software installed through their repositories. Reference: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/virtualbox-ext-pack/+bug/1844654 As such, attempting to

DIY Barn Door

A common architectural feature out here in Colorado is to not actually put a door between the master bedroom and the master bathroom. So we decided a barn door was the best option but given the non-standard (wider than normal) size of our doorway, the only pre-made options were going

Verizon Wi-Fi Calling Firewall Config

Verizon Wi-Fi Calling Firewall Config

UPDATE: wo.vzwwo.com is an additional domain that needs to be allowed. This is short and sweet. If you want to get Verizon Wi-Fi calling enabled on a restrictive network here is what you need. UDP ports 500 & 4500 open to sg.vzwfemto.com and wo.vzwwo.com. The

Mount Evans - 14,264'

Mount Evans - 14,264'

Mount Evans is Colorado's 14th highest peak and also one of the most accessible as it has a road to the top. I tried to summit this mountain a few weeks ago with my 2-year-old on my back. We ended up turning back because he was ready to go home

Pit Stop At Arches National Park

Pit Stop At Arches National Park

The drive from Las Vegas to Denver is a long one. Somewhere in the 11-12 hour range. This length of trip necessitates at least one major pitstop (on top of regular gas and snacks). Luckily Arches National Park is almost exactly half way and made for a perfect opportunity to