Extreme Tolerance

New toy for the gym.

Admin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:13:28 +0000

Faking Facebook Places Location

Admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:45:54 +0000

People all over have been making a fuss about Facebook’s new “Places” feature. While most whiners have been complaining that “Facebook is not watching them” or its “an invasion of privacy” I have been traveling the world.

According to Facebook I have been to:

Everest Summit
The White House
Rio de Janeiro
Pont d’Iena
Moscow Kremlin
Apple HQ

All in around about a week. Now as you have probably guessed, I have not actually visited these places. I just told Facebook I had.

Facebook won’t just accept that you are somewhere, you have to trick it. So here is how to hack Facebook Places.

You will need Firefox. If you are using IE, stop now and go have random intercourse with strangers, that is probably safer.
Download User Agent Switcher Add-on for Firefox. This allows you to make FF pretend to be an iPhone, thus redirecting you to Facebook’s mobile site.
Open notepad or your favorite text editor and create a document that says this:
{"location":{"latitude":37.33182,"longitude":-122.03118, "accuracy":20.0}}
You should be able to see where the lat and long go. Edit to your heart’s content.
Name your new document whatever you want
Next type “about:config” into the address bar. You will be asked if you know what you are doing. In my case the answer is “no”, but I say I do anyway.
Type: “wifi” into the filter box. You are looking for the Preference Named “geo.wifi.uri”

Double click on the “geo.wifi.uri” preference and point it toward your document. (Tip: because I like to cut and paste, I clicked on my document and opened it in FF, then cut the location from the URL bar and into this preference, thus no typos.)
OK, now its time to have fun. Using user agent switcher set your user agent to iPhone 3.0.

Go to “facebook.com”
Click the places option
FireFox should be asking you if you want to share location, click “share”.
Continue with the check in like normal

Now Facebook does have some logic to prevent people like us from globe hopping. So I have been updating this every day or so. Also Firefox seems to have cashing issues with the Facebook places. If you place is not updating, first go to Google make and click the blue find me button. If it shows you in your faked location, mission accomplished, if not you screwed something up and should review the above directions. If the Google maps thing works and you are still having problems, restart Firefox.

Pretty Cool, Pretty Easy. Have fun messing with your friends.

Moral of the story, Facebook is not invading you privacy you just need to control what you put out there.

Dam You Steve Jobs

Admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:53:49 +0000

Your new touch screen iPod Nano is to good to resist. It will be the perfect replacement for my beat up, trusty, second gen shuffle.

New 24 Hour Pack Page

Admin — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 22:51:42 +0000

I have added a new page to this site. I wanted to cover how my Search and Rescue 24 hour pack evolved but I wanted to do it all in one place. Hence the 24 Hour Pack page.

I will make sure to drop regular post whenever I make updates.

Get Out Of A Speeding Ticket By Carrying Your Gun

Admin — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:18:59 +0000

Alternate title: What to do if you get pulled over while carrying a gun (legally).

That right. I was pulled over for speeding and my CCW got me out of it. Here’s how it went.

Sunday night I decide there is nothing in the refrigerator worth eating and I should run to the store so I don’t have to do it during the week. It’s around 10:00 pm, its dark but the store is not that far and in a really safe area. I was on the fence about taking my gun, but I had a new Raven holster I wanted to try out, so I strapped it on and ran out the door.

There is a long very straight road that connects my house from to the store, I turn onto it and zip right up to 60, after all there is no one around and I am destination focused. Glancing behind me I see the signal change and a pair of headlights zoom toward me and ride my bumper. Now sometimes it’s ass hole kids but I flip over my mirror and see the cop’s light bars. At this point I am second guessing my speed. I waffle a bit before turning into the stores parking lot. The cop is still riding my bumper.

As soon as I pull into the parking lot, he turns on his lights. At this point I am thinking OK, this sucks. I have never had an encounter with a cop while packing. So I roll down my window and keep my hands on the wheel.

A young Clark County Sheriff with black hair and a tight cut, approaches me as asks for my licence. I say, “before we go any further I need to tell you I am a CCW guy and I have my gun.” He says ok. In retrospect he did not sound surprised.

He asks where is the gun. I say on my right side. He asks if I have a permit I say yes with with my drivers licence. He asks where thats at and I respond also under my right side.

He must have made a judgment that I was not a bad guy by that point. So he says, ‘I am going to have you reach for your wallet but I want you to hold it out so I can see what is in your had before bringing it back toward your body and me.’ Now I am paraphrasing because I had so much adrenaline going at the time I cannot remember exactly what he said. Anyway, I repeated the directions back to him, as I understood them, before moving my hands. He nodded and I did as he told me, slowly.

Once I had my wallet out, I had my licence and carry permit out in a snap. He looked over the permit and gave it back. He held onto my licence. He says that I was doing 60 in a 40 zone. He also comments about how I probably noticed him run up behind me. I stupidly say, “ya sometimes kids do that too.” Before he headed back to his car he asked what gun I was carrying. I said “Springfield XD.” Then I glance at his belt and immediately recognize the gun he has! I say, “thats what you have too.” He nods and heads back to his car. That relaxed me a bit.

I chill. A short while later he comes back and says, “obviously I am going to give you a warning, I also want to tell you, you handled the gun thing really well.” I thanked him and said that I was nervous about that happening for the first time. He also said that in cases like mine where the driver is not moving around the car, its a tip off that something like CCW is up.

With that he said good night and I re-parked and headed into the store. Later I called my wife to tell her how strangely carrying my gun just got me out of a ticket.

In talking to people after the fact it was suggested that the officer may have been looking for drunks and when it turned out that I was not, it helped my case. It was also suggested that he knew I had a permit when he ran my plates. I am going to ask the SAR coordinating officers about that on Wednesday, to settle my curiosity.

Basically I walked away with the following lessions:

As a CCW you can have positive encounters with officers.
When the officer stops you keep your hands on the wheel or make no threatining moves.
Tell the officer you are carrying as soon as possible (I think this increased the trust level between us, further helping my case).
Do exactly as they say. Repeat the instructions back so there is no communication problems.
Move slow.
Be polite and honest.
Have your papers together.

I am left with a few questions though. What if I did not have my gun, should I still tell him that I have a permit but am not packing (See Update)? Also, what if I am in a friends car and they get pulled over, should we tell the officer then?

In summary I was happy to not get a ticket but happier to hear from the officer that I handled the situation correctly. Caleb (of Top Shot fame) says at the end of every Gun Nuts Media Podcast, “Carry Your Guns People.” This experience is likely to increase my carry time percentage.

Update: TriggerPullTactical.com weighed in. Take a look over at his blog. He also answered my “not armed” question. He says, “NO DO NOT BRING IT UP IF YOU”RE NOT CARRYING. The cop will think you’re stupid. haaa.” Well that answers that!

NOOOOO… iPhone 4 Bumper/5.11 Tactical Pant Fail

Admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:58:56 +0000

I have blogged in the past about the general awesomeness of the iPhone pocket on the 5.11 Tactical Pants. The awesomeness continued when I upgraded to the iPhone 4. That is until… Disaster… I received my free Apple Bumper. The iPhone 4 + Bumper still fits in the pocket but it does not slide easily in an out. You have to apply some muscle.

Maybe 5.11 could make the phone pocket a little wider… or maybe I need to find a case that does not have rubber on the outside.

Its a no win. I do like the rubber on the outside because it makes the phone gripper

Why I Love/Hate LA Police Gear

Admin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:16:38 +0000

LA Police Gear is a cool site. They have a ton of useful stuff at good prices. I started ordering 5.11 pants from them and then continued ordering SAR gear as I get more involved with that.

First the good. They are a one stop shop. I can usually find everything I am looking for all in one place and at a good price. Tactical pants, molle gear, paracord, its all there. They also have good customer service. They always have been more than happy to answer my questions or re-arrange my orders.

But here is the down side: It seems I can’t place an order without something being on backorder. Now, by itself this is not such a bad thing. Brownells and MidwayUSA both have things on backorder all the time. But here is the difference. Looking at LA Police Gear’s site you have no indication as to the inventory status of each item, until you actually place your order. So then I have to call them up and ask them how long until X item is back in stock and then decide if I can live with that. It would be nice to make an informed buying decision in the first place.

If anyone from LA Police Gear ends up reading this, please go take a look at MidwayUSA and Brownells and see if you can implement real time inventory like they do.

This is my most recent experience. I wanted my gear for a Labor Day Search and Rescue training. I had two orders with LAPG, both of which had back orders holding up the orders. So I called them up and had all the in stock items moved to one order and all the back orders moved to the second. Then I canceled two of the bigger ticket items that were on backorder as I could get me at botachtactical.com for cheaper/immediately. Hopefully with this arrangement I will be ready to go with 85% of my new kit for the training.

In summary, one-stop-shop, good prices, good customer service, buzzkill inventory problems.

iPhone 4 bumper

Admin — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:00:40 +0000

Look what just arrived. Strangely I think it makes it easier to type on the phone.

SOG Machete

Admin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 23:44:06 +0000

Its around $20 and makes a great sound as it blows though blackberries. What else do you want?

Downside: its got a saw thing which I think will be useless.

Eventually I would like to get one with a curve as to ass more weight toward the tip.

Just Back From Vegas

Admin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 23:28:17 +0000

I have been terrible about blogging. Seriously bad. But I have an excuse! I spent the last 4 days in Las Vegas. Had a lot of fun. Not a gambler so I did not loose any money, just enjoyed the sights and tried to take it all in.