I have been fighting a cold for a few days. It is winning for now, so that is why I have not posted. I am writing up a few things and hope to post more soon. I am contemplating taking tomorrow off since I feel a bit sick. I am not so bad that I want to take off, but I am borderline so I feel if I do goto work I might make myself worse. I am going to sleep in tomorrow and see how I feel when I wake up. That is the joy of living 20 minutes from the office. I can jump down there whenever I want! Or that could be a bad thing…
Month: January 2005
Free DNS And Bad Cable Modem’s
Today I stumbled upon a free provider of DNS. I have seen a few before, but they have been really slow or unreliable. This one so far looks good. It is called xname.org. They were a snap to setup, and so far they seem to be working. My problem (until now) has been that I like godaddy.com, but they do not provide DNS for domains I register unless I pay a fee. If I want DNS included in my annual domain name fee I can continue to use Register.com but they are over 3 times as much as Godaddy. Other than the DNS options there is no real difference to me what registrar I use. So would you pay 3x the amount for just DNS? I don’t want to. If I had 1 domain name maybe I would pay. In fact I pay for dynamic DNS hosting of my Scott.ac domain. I just don’t want to pay for all the other domains I own. I have like 10 of them. If xname works I have no reason to continue using Register.com for any domain names. Other options for me would be to have friends host my DNS, etc. I just like being able to make changes to my zone files when I want to. And every so often I do make changes.
Another issue I came across today was that my cable modem provider RCN does not allow inbound access to port 80. That means I cannot host a website on my machine at home even if I wanted to. And I kind of wanted to. Miguel lets me host a site on his server, but until recently he did not have much space on it. I had a ton of photos that I wanted to host. I guess I will just have to use his box for it, or pay for hosting. Since I am paying for the blog (and I think it is worth the money) I don’t want to pay for web hosting when I have all the tools at my disposal to do hosting. If I had less morals I would just put up a web server in my companies DMZ and use that as my webserver, but I won’t. Dam morals!
Monday morning I have to get Miguel to fix some configuration issues on my site on his box so I can once again host a site on his box, or I need to find a cheap web hosting company. There are several out there that look good. I just need to do some research.
2004 Recap
As most people do near the end of the year, I am looking back on 2004 the year that was. For me it was a year of change, and a year of some things staying just the same.
I moved (again) this year. I now live in the big city. Well I always did, but Manhattan is allot more city like than Queens. I took no vacation, but it wasn’t because of trying. My niece turned 1. I don’t see her as often as I would like, but she is so adorable. I can’t imagine the universe without her! Now my sister has to have another one!
On the technology front this year saw me buy my first store bought desktop (PC) since 1992. It also saw me get 1 Apple Power Book, and sell one iMac. Pretty normal year for me! Ebay has caused my gear to turn over quickly. I only bought 1 new cell phone this year (if you don’t count the extra # & phone that I got). I went from a Treo 270 to the new 600. That is down from the 3 or more phones I got in 2003. I saw a Tivo die, and another one get adopted.
At work I lost a boss, and of course gained a new one. I lost a colleague who I thought was a friend, only to have a long time friend surprise me and come work with me. My group went from a rag tag team of 4 to be a group of people I would trust to do anything (anything technical that is) that will grown to 8 in the next few weeks. I completed (with lots of help) moving 99% of our call center to its new home upstate. I lived through countless upgrades, and system changes. I traveled the east coast looking at ACD software in action. To date no decision made on that front. Began to work on building out phase 2 of our call center. That will start to happen in 2005.
As I look back on 2004 I remember something that is always in the back of my head. I may seem pessimistic allot of the time. I think I am just a realist, but it comes out as being pessimistic. But while looking back on 2004 the year that was I can safely say I am happier and better off today than I was 365 days ago. I hope everyone that is reading this can say the same thing?