Jason Buscema

Looking for Bad Guys at Fort Casey

We spent the day at Fort Casey on Whidbey Island, again with grandma and grandpa. Isaac and Levi absolutely loved the place. They each had flashlights and would go around looking for all the bad guys. The fort is really something to see and much of it is still open to the public. I remember playing capture the flag here once back in college. Insane.

The history behind the fort is very interesting even if a "real" shot was never fired on an enemy. There is obviously so much more underground that isn't available to the public to see. I would love to see how the fort was back in the early 1900s.

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Crabbing with Grandpa

Today we went to Grandpa and Gigi’s house near Kayak Point to go crabbing. I’ve never been crabbing before and neither have the boys. Grandpa has a unique method that proved to be very successful. I was in the canoe with the boys just offshore while Grandpa was wading in the water. We would spot the crab from the canoe then push them to more shallow water using the oars. Most often Grandpa and I would double team with our oars to bring a crab up into the canoe. After the first crab, I was hooked. We ended up catching around 25 sized crab and threw back 13 females. Later in the evening we feasted on the 12 crab we caught.

The weather cooperated as well. I thought I was back in Souther California… minus the Dungeness crab. Another wonderful day on our Seattle vacation!

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Summertime in Seattle (part 2)

I'll keep this one short as we're trying to get out the door for either the Woodland Park Zoo or the Seattle Aquarium. The aquarium is our backup plan should it rain... which its doing right now. Now I'm seeing why everything is just so green up here, although yesterday we definitely had to sun-block up the kids.

The last couple days we've seen a ton of family, spent time at the beach and some parks, and continued our eating spree. The boys just loved the beach at Mukilteo as its so different than the beaches in San Diego. They really enjoyed all the rocks, shells and crab body parts, looking at the jellyfish in the water and climbing on the driftwood. It really is a great place to play. Emily kept having to tell the boys that we can't bring home the crab body parts with us as  cool as they were. Who wouldn't want to bring home crab legs, right?

Today we're upgrading Emily's parent's garbage DSL from Frontier to a respectable connection from Comcast Cable. Everyone here is excited to have working Internet again. I still can't believe the terrible connection they've had to live with for some time. $25/mo for 768k/128k connection, max. Yuk!!

Off for another day of adventure.

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I'm 99% slower than you

I can't believe the family I'm staying with is paying $25/mo for this crap service from Frontier. Look at these tests below... all done within 5 minutes of each other.
I called Frontier and they told me the area we are located in is being upgraded so we should expect intermittent connectivity for 30-45 days. Maybe they should expect intermittent payment as well. Even once the lines are updated, the max profile available is 3Mbps/768k for $30. Gimme a break!!!

I want to click on the rating option but I there isn't an option for ZERO stars.

BTW - They are moving over to Comcast 20/2 tomorrow... for the same price.

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Summertime in Seattle (part 1)

We're up in Seattle for a couple weeks visiting family and friends. I still can't get over how late the sunset is up here. I took the sunset photo from my father-in-law's place near Stanwood around 9:15pm. Just amazing (both the lateness and the view from his place). Getting the kids down to bed is not as easy here as it is in San Diego. Their bedtime in San Diego is around 7:30 and it's pretty dark by 8pm. So far, the kids have been going to bed after 9pm and it's still light out until 10. They are a bit confused!

At Grandmas and Grandpas, we've been eating our weight in raspberries. Grandma has a fantastic garden full of all sorts of treats... peas, berries, rhubarb (crisps!).

On Monday the Samms came up to visit. Isaac had been asking to see them since we stayed at their place last summer. They were awesome with all of the boys and wore them out! They even did a fencing demonstration for us.

Today we're off to Mukilteo for a bit.

Love vacation!

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How to use AT&T to Hijack Someone's Cell Number

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I should find this shockingly disturbing however for some reason I’m not the least bit surprised. That “some reason” is because the people providing the means to jack someone’s cell number is none other than our friends at AT&T.

Think of someone you really hate … now hope they use AT&T so you can steal their mobile number, then lock their account. From this point on, we’ll refer to this person as “the sucker”.

All you need is a business account with AT&T. Sure, to get a business account you will need to give them your federal tax id number and undergo a credit check but that’s not really a big deal. Once you have an AT&T business account, you can take over the sucker’s personal AT&T number without their prior permission or knowledge. The only two pieces of information you will need to know is their mobile number and their name. Real tough to get I know.

How to do the deed:

  1. Call AT&T’s business line (Assuming you can stomach calling AT&T in the first place)
  2. Tell them you want to transfer a personal account/number to your business account
  3. Give them the super secret information (the sucker’s name and mobile number)
  4. Answer whatever questions they have about rate plans, etc.
  5. That’s it! You’re done.

Now within a short period of time, the sucker’s mobile number will be transferred to your business account. AT&T will not make any attempt to verify this request with the sucker. Once the number is on your business account, you have full control over the sucker.

Sounds impossible, right? I’ve done this now with three different employees of ours over the past week. In my case, I told two of them what I was doing but I didn’t have to verify anything with AT&T. The third employee I simply forgot to tell him I was going to transfer his mobile number to our corporate account. When the transfer was done and I informed him, he was shocked and upset that it went through without his permission. I was as well. So I called AT&T business and they told me that business accounts do NOT require verification from the personal user to transfer the account.

INSANE!

Colorful Seattle Graffiti

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Golden Gardens - Shilshole Bay - Seattle, WA

Last month we were in Seattle visiting family and attending and shooting a cousin's wedding. The wedding ceremony was at Golden Gardens (Shilshole Bay) just NW of downtown Seattle and right on the Puget Sound. I hadn't been to Golden Gardens since my college days at Seattle Pacific University and needed some time to scout a few possible photo opp locations for the happy couple. I actually wanted to get a photo with the couple on the train tracks but decided against it for various reasons. The trains run pretty slow but I didn't want to be the one responsible for killing the couple on their first day of marriage, especially since they are family... Emily's family. Not such a good idea right?

In my travels to find an easy way onto the train tracks for a possible shot, I wandered through the pedestrian tunnel under the train tracks and found what I thought to be some pretty cool looking graffiti. I especially liked the colors, the blue mushroom and the frog troll prince guy. I ended up using this graffiti train tunnel as a backdrop for one of the wedding photos which I will post later. 

Seattle is home to some very cool and very funky people who produce some very cool and very funky art. It makes for a fantastic place to shoot in addition to the scenery of course... well, when its not raining.

Enjoy!

Technical Consultant

I have over 10 years experience in the technology field and over 8 years experience with Linux based web hosting, specifically RedHat Enterprise and CentOS distributions. I have managed teams of developers, technical specialists and vendors throughout my career.

Within this past year I migrated a datacenter setup over to Amazon Web Services. This move helped reduce costs by eliminating equipment, power, battery backup systems, cooling and company resources. In addition to the cost saving benefit this initiative allows for rapid growth and scalability. 

Professional Experience

Experienced, well-respected Technical Specialist with a wide range of expertise in complex web and IT environments. Lead agency technology specialist, skilled at designing and efficiently deploying web infrastructure for growing enterprises. Communication conduit for non-technical staff and clients as well as third party IT vendors and internal teams. Driven by a passion to diagnose and find creative/innovative solutions to business and technology problems.

Key technologies

  • CentOS/Red Hat Enterprise Linux configuration and deployment
  • Amazon Web Services - Cloud comping (EC2, S3, EBS, CloudFront, RDS)
  • Zimbra Collaboration Suite and Google Apps for email, documents and calendaring - setup and configuration
  • Atempo Time Navigator backup software
  • Apache, PHP, MySQL, Subversion, Trac, WordPress, LDAP, shell, rsync
  • Telecommunication implementation, specifically 3Com VoIP phone systems
  • Network design and implementation using Cisco and HP switches, routers and firewalls.
  • LAN/WAN design, DNS, DHCP, NFS. Networking graphing and systems monitoring with MRTG and Nagios
  • Mac/PC hardware support, upgrades and troubleshooting
  • Promise storage arrays, Apple xServe RAID, LTO tape backup systems and QLogic fibre channel switches

 

Other interesting things

I manage and photograph for Sideline Studios, a youth sports photography business serving Southern California.
via Posterize

For Sale - Canon 1D Mark II w/ RRS plate

Selling my seldom used Canon 1D Mark II SLR body. This was my primary body for the past few years but took a back seat once I got the Canon 1D Mark III body. It's in very condition and has around 50k actuations on it. Never been dropped, always taken care of.

  • 8 megapixel
  • 8.5fps (frames per second)
  • 3 Delkin 1800mAh batteries
  • Really Right Stuff plate
  • Canon dual battery charger
  • body cap, strap
$850 shipped within CONUS. PayPal only.

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First week with the iPad

I've been a bit of critic pre-launch of the Apple iPad but thought I would reserve my judgement until after I've had the chance to really use it. It's been a full week now and I like it much more than I did the first day but I'm still not entirely sold on this version... yet.

The iPad definitely doesn't have the same WIFI range as my MacBookPro but so far I found it to be tolerable. This past week I've used the iPad to check news and email, follow a recipe using the Epicurious app (very nice) and use the Pandora Radio app to get some tunes in my room. It was nice not to have to bring my MacBookPro into the kitchen while I was cooking... the iPad was perfect for that.  The ABC Player app is very nice although I don't happen to watch any ABC shows. My three year old son loves the FirstWords: Animals app. It's a fun device and will be great on our plane trip to Seattle in a few months. It'll keep the little ones busy! Although the iPad won't come close to replacing my MacBookPro, I would consider leaving the now bulky laptop at home and taking the iPad along on future trips. The iPad, as of now, is not a device I will pack along with me daily as I do with my laptop. I'll mostly use it at home for now. We'll see.

What's good about it:

  • The screen - It's very clear and sharp. Viewing video and photos are stunning and it's easy to read emails, articles or books.
  • Speed - The UI is very responsive, especially when compared to my iPhone 3G. The apps run very well.
  • Mail app - The Apple Mail app on the iPad is very simple but quite elegant, especially in landscape mode. It's great to have messages on the left and the message content on the right unlike the iPhone mail app.
  • Sound Quality - The sound quality is quite remarkable for such a little device. We don't have a stereo in our room (unless you count my laptop) so we've been using Pandora on the iPad to pipe in music. Sounds great.

What's not-so-good:

  • Size - It's a great size for the content on the screen but it's a bit awkward to hold it in your hands.
  • Camera - There isn't one.
  • Typing - This will take me some time to get used to as it did with the iPhone. You can't hold the iPad and type at the same time unless you use one finger which I can't imagine anyone doing. The only way to type is to put the iPad down on on your lap or table or somehow prop it up. Typing is a bit strange because the keyboard is obviously smaller than a regular computer and some of the keys are hidden. It's doable but not anywhere near the speed and efficiency of a computer.
  • I'm going to drop it - Seriously, the case is so slick!
  • Kids - My two kids love it. My oldest is three years old. The iPad was $500. Just not a good combo.