scott

Apache, Moveable type lives! IIS, Frontpage are on life support!!!

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Ok, after less trouble than I though (but with some problems) I am now hosting my own blog on a linux server running moveabletype and apache. My boss was awesome in giving up time to help me configure this. I had alot done by myself, but it still didn’t work right. So I called the man who knows linux. this is the same person forcing me to learn it, but I needed the swift kick in the ass to do that. Thanks, enough but kissing since I know he reads this!

The nity gritty of it all is I installed Red Hat 9.0 on an old dell desktop I have. Pumped 380+ megs of ram into it first of course. and then downloaded movabletype. that program kicks ass. I just finished importing all my old blogger.com entries into the new system. All I have to do is figure out how to properly back this thing up. I also got the offline posting app on my powerbook to work. I am writing on it right now. It is Kung-Log. I also downloaded w.bloggar to do the same thing on my XP box if I need to.

The next major step is to port my website over from IIS & frontpage to apache. that may be time consuming. I did have a copy of my site running on a win32 install of apache a few weeks ago as a test. seemed to display the current pages fine. I will just have problems with the indexing and other frontpage centric features.

As much as it was painful I actually enjoyed tinkering with red hat. I have ton’s to learn, but I learned it is not impossible to do.

Now that the technical stuff about this setup is written I can write about the past few days in the next post!

Hot n fresh OS install’s, mmmXP

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So I took the plunge. After more than a year (personal record since I started working in technology) I reformatted my home desktop?s hard drive and re-installed windows xp pro. It took me two hours to just get the OS installed, and service pack 1 with some hot fix?s on this thing. I just installed the latest and greatest Norton system works to get that clean sweep action going on. I am now contemplating doing office install?s. it takes a while and it is getting late. I came to the conclusion hours ago that this install wont be done till after the weekend. I will be finding applications that I need to install for the next few weeks. Who knows the settings I lost by doing this. I really should not complain. This is a task long over due. The final straw was the weird errors I got when I put my new 160 gig hard drive in the computer. Now I have a clean install that I hope to keep free of too much crap. At least my mac is (so far) easier to clean stuff off of.

Besides the virtual cleaning, I did a very quick once over of the apartment. My friend Steve and tom are visiting tomorrow. I wont have time tomorrow to do anything since I will be going to the concert right from work. If you haven?t read earlier posts we are all going to a def leppard concert tomorrow. Hopefully they are good.

Since I am going right to the concert I have to travel light to work. Of course that should be no problem since I can?t sync my palm tomorrow since I don?t have the software on my computer yet. That also means I won?t have my work laptop all weekend. I am taking off work Friday, and wont bring it to the concert. That means it sits on my desk all weekend. Don?t worry, it is locked down in a locked office!

Other news today, I convinced the powers that be at work (Gus) to purchase red hat 9.0. Actually it was a no problem. He was all for it. For $60.00 you get 1 license to the red hat network. If we actually start to deploy red hat servers in any number we can spend like $98 a machine for limited support patch syncing and other cool features. I SO need to learn Linux. I am trying to find things to do in it, but finding time is hard with all that is going on. On that note I want to setup my own blog (running on my server, instead of using blogger). Movabletype looks great, but I don?t have a Linux web box right now. Doing any personal blogging system on windows does not look too fun. All of the documentation is for Linux. Must get red hat 9 at home.

Other news (and then I will goto bed) is that I finally made airline reservations for my vacation in June. My family is going to Barbados to celebrate my dad?s 60th birthday. Got the tickets this afternoon, and even got good seats. My mom is renting a house and all we had to do was get tickets. It will be an interesting vacation. The jury is still out on if it will be loads of fun. I was all for going to a resort, but I lost that vote. I am looking forward to scuba diving. More on that as the vacation gets closer.

More in a few days. Not sure when I will post next since I will have company Thursday through Saturday. We shall see?

The scrub haircut guy & other misc. items

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Yesterday was a good day, I think. Got a lot done at work. We still are no where with picking a hardware vendor, but at least we getting other stuff done. Got construction requirements done for the space. I was bad and had burger king for lunch. I don?t do it so often anymore so I think it is ok. Keith was going down there, what was I to do? I also took care of my metro card problem. I never got my mail and ride ticket for April so I had to fill out an affidavit and get it notarized. It was a pain, but it is all sent out and I hopefully will get my money back and my may ticket on time.

Got my hair cut also. The guy I always goto was on vacation so his dad did my hair. He is good, but never cuts it short enough. I will probably have to go back in like 2 weeks. I like those guys. I goto an old fashioned barber. It is father and son who run it. These two Italian guys just cutting hair. they are cheap also. My friend jayson showed me this place years ago. I was paying double what I pay now for a haircut at the ?stylist? and it was not as good.

After I got my hair cut I picked up food at the omega diner and got my mom. We went over to my sisters to eat dinner. My dad was already there babysitting. Everyone is all worried because Morgan cry?s right after eating. I guess that is a bad thing for babies. Got to play with her for a while. Then I got to hold her while she slept. I love doing that. It is so peaceful. I had to go home though because it looked like we were having problems at work. Anyone at work reading this, when I get 20 pages while holding my niece I am not a happy camper!!! Besides playing with Morgan I also sent all of her baby pictures to myself via ftp. My sister is running out of hard drive space, and she does not have a cd burner. My next project is to find her one.

I got home around 9pm. I installed my new hard drive for my desktop computer. 160 gigs of stuff. I started to move stuff off my old drives. Got one of them done and found out the one that broke was the data drive with all my personal files on it. I am so happy I made a backup of most of it to DVD before I did this upgrade. It is bad, but not too bad. I gave up on moving my mp3?s since I have a more recent copy on the powerbook I am using. I will back it up later. The only thing I need to do now with my ?modified? not upgraded computer is to reinstall windows xp. I have been using the same install for over a year. That is like a record for me. I tend to reinstall operating systems every few months. Now I am busier I do it less often. Hopefully the mac will require less reinstall?s of the OS also.

Spoke to Steve. We are still on for Thursday. Him and tom are driving down around 4pm. That means they will probably be late for the 8pm concert. We shall see.

I am running late today. I just got up and could not get going. So I missed the 2 regular trains I take. I should be like 20-30 minutes late for work. Still well ahead of the rest of the department. Actually looking at my pager just now I realized I may be a little later than that. I don?t think we are doing a staff meeting today since 4 people are out of the office this week. I just paged Gus asking him what we will be doing.

Well we are now entering the famous train tunnel to NYC. It is rainy today, again. My hands also hurt and it is only 9am. I hope they get better because I type and mouse click all day! More later, maybe?

tuesday again (an original title)

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Tuesday again. I realized yesterday after I wrote this blog one reason I didn?t write in a while was I didn?t have the laptop during the train ride. Took Thursday off and saved weight on Friday and Monday by not bringing the powerbook to work. Oh well.

So I am really pissed, I was hanging out a little after work yesterday before I came home and a guy I work with dave hit me in the head with a mini basketball. It was an accedent, but it hit me right in the middle of my glasses. Since these glasses are so light weight (AKA easy to break), they are all out of bent. I can still wear them ok, but they feel like crap. I need to goto the lenscrafters near work sometime to fix it. The problem is I don?t go eat lunch anymore. We order in all the time. Also it snowed in New York yesterday so it is cold nasty and wet out today. It is april and it is still snowing. I will be honest and say that I would rather it snow than be 85 degree?s right now. My apartments air conditioners don?t come on till may 15, so it better be dam cold till then.

People actually read this blog. I am amazed. Well maybe not people, but a person read it. Of course that person happens to be the boss. Crazy, yet lovable Gus. Knowing that he may read this, I can safely say he keeps me on my toes and challenged. But he also adds to the blood pressure! Actually he was very funny Monday. He hurt his back over the weekend, and took some pain med?s Monday. He was loopy most of the day. Keith said he went over to his office to do something and Gus just staired at the keyboard for a few minutes before he remembered what he was supposed to do. Of course I won?t make fun of anyone hurting themselves working out, since I don?t and I should!!!

Trying to remember what is on my agenda for today. I am supposed to meet with some executives from a company called expanets. They support our phone switch in our call center. They are really bad so we are screaming at some executives. It may make us feel better, but I doubt that they will do anything new. I am a pessimist that way. Today is also day two of the no developers week. Or less developers than normal week. So far so good.

I want to add features to this blog to allow responces to my posts. I half want that to see if anyone is reading these. The other half of me doesn?t want it because I probably will get freaks posting stupid crap.

Looking out of the train just now it looks like it is going to snow again, or it is just dreary outside. The whole sky is all white, or white/grey. Not a beautiful site.

Well I think I have said my peace for the morning. More later, maybe!!!

Almost a full week of missed post’s

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I havent written in a bit. I have been sick and busy. not a good combination. here is what has been going on since the last post.

A bunch of us ended up going out to drink Wednesday. I got really drunk. It was fun, but I became a very light weight and felt it after 2+ drinksL a bunch of us ended up at no idea. It is the bar we end up going to after work most of the time. Yes we are lame, we need to expand to other places.

Not to get to graphic but because of some drinking Wednesday night and my pre-existing cold from earlier in the week I was a bit sick Wednesday night and Thursday morning. I got really sick (get the picture) and was unable to sleep most of the night. I was so out of it Thursday morning I sort of missed work. Not good. Also my all around my eyes were nice and read from blown capillaries. That was not pretty. I suffered through the day.

Turns out the office was not doing very well either Thursday. I heard that lots of people came in late Thursday morning. Also my department ran a disaster drill. This is when they simulate a failed server or other device. So they ran a fail over of our web site to our local office. Turns out something was not updated during a release and the test failed. Many people (myself included) was not happy about that.

Was able to make it into work Friday. Thankfully things were relatively quiet. I don?t like to say it is quiet. That is a no no word in technology. Usually you say that and something breaks. My stomach still wasn?t 100% all day Friday, but I survived. Thankfully things were fine Friday. Keith was had the day off so I was short handed. Keith is a network engineer I work with and he handles a lot of the end user problems. So it worked out well this week. I took off Thursday and he took off Friday. Thankfully neither of us went crazy short handed.

Some guys went out after work Friday, but since I was still recovering from Wednesday I decided to just go home. I ended up going to price club with my dad to fill up my fridge. I love that place, but I never get that much stuff. Most things I buy I don?t need a huge amount of. I bought garbage bags from that place like 2 years ago, and I am still on the same box. It was also good to spend time with my dad. I have been very busy at work and unable to see my family that much. After shopping we just went home. I was still tired from being sick so I passed on dinner.

Saturday I just hung out and watched crap I had stored on my tivo. I cleared that thing out a lot. Other than that I cleaned my apartment, and did some visio diagram?s for work. For those non tech people visio is used for network maps. You can do floor plans and other stuff with it but I was brushing up on our new offices proposed network layout. Visio is very cool but very time consuming to do a diagram.

Sunday I went to bestbuy with my dad to buy a vcr. Yes, a vcr. He had one that broke, and my mom still uses it a lot so he needs a new one. Like 6 years ago we bought 2 (one I still have and the one he is replacing). They were low end vcr?s and we paid like $185 each. At bestbuy Sunday we got a low end Panasonic vcr for $59.00. crazy how prices have dropped since dvd?s are the big thing. I still have not convinced my parents to buy a tivo. I think I am close to convincing them, but not yet. I also picked up a new computer case. I got the antec lanboy aluminum case. It is a mid tower case. I downgraded from a full tower case. It was too big and I just didn?t want that much wasted space. The new case is awesome. So far it is quiet, and the power supply glows blue. Unfortunately moving my stuff over I broke one of my ultra 160 SCSI hard drives. I just hope it was one of the ones I backed up.

I also ordered a brand new 160 gig hard drive for my new case. This is so I don?t need 4 hard drives in the new smaller case.

Unfortunately after I did all my computer upgrading Sunday I got a really nasty migraine. I took a 2 furicet?s and they worked (sort of). I ended up napping for a few hours and still felt like crap. I ended up being unable to sleep most of the night, and had a slight head ache all morning.

Monday was not that busy (crazy I know). 4 guys from our dev staff are out of the office all week. 3 are in training and one is on vacation. So my theory is that since they are down by 4 guys I will hopefully have less requests this week. This will enable me to get some other work done. Still working on getting a final hardware quote for our new office. I have setup some meetings for later in the week. I was able to make some changes to our windows 2000 active directory network. I removed the roles of one active directory server in preparation of a disaster test later this week. Right now I removed all the roles from our primary AD server. I will completely remove it from active directory tomorrow and run some maintenance on it and then restore it as an active directory box later in the week.

Got home late tonight. Gus was working on one of our Linux box?s at our data center. He setup some intrusion detection software and was configuring it. It is very interesting stuff. I didn?t get home till a little after 8pm.

I took the old power supply out of my old tower case and put it in my server case. This solved a problem I had with loud noise emitting from the old power supply. After that I think everything is ok after my upgrade.

That brings me to sitting down in front of my TV with my powerbook to write about the last 6 days. This is probably a long and rambling blog, but I think it paints a decent picture of what was going on in my life over the past week. Hopefully more entries a lot sooner than 6 days.

April fool’s fizzled.

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Its Wednesday morning. It feels like Tuesday didn?t exist, but I lived through it. Go figure. My big dilemma yesterday was that I had plans to go over to my sisters and help her out for a bit and see my niece on Wednesday (today). But people at work scheduled a night of binge drinking. As much as alcohol is nice, I was all set to play with my niece. Of course that only consists of holding her while she sleeps! Well my decision was made for me. I have been banned from going to my sisters until I get over this cold. When I spoke to my brother in law last night he was like if you are coughing you are not coming over. So I get to go drink now. Of course if I am getting over a cold I probably should not be drinking either. Oh well.

April 1st came and went and we only had 1 April fools joke. It was a non event. Oh well. Some good jokes are very fun. Most just are sad.

So we got approval to purchase some much needed equipment for our office, servers, switches, etc. Not going to bore non techies with the details. We also got the go ahead to look at equipment for our new office. I have mentioned before, but I will say again how much I hate sales people. They want you to spend a bunch of money and then they don?t call you back. I await quotes from people whose deadline to get them to me have came and went, and they act like all is right with the world. These people need to get a clue. Yes I am just a little bitter about these moron?s. hopefully today will go better with those guys.

On a good technical note, I got windows 2003 server on Friday off of msdn. I did my first install at work yesterday. I setup a test domain and trusted it to our existing one so I can work on it. So far I don?t see that much of a difference to get me to switch. It looks nice, and I am all for new OS?s, but upgrading server operating systems is not what I call a good time. I am going to continue to look at it and give some more feedback.

Well we are not in the train tunnel yet (yup on the train again) but I need to do an agenda for a meeting I have at 10am, or the boss won?t be happy!

give me a router over paperwork any day!!!

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I thought knowing how to configure networks would be difficult. Boy was I wrong when comparing to dealing with the business side of technology. Vendors and sales people can really bring your day down. I spend most of my day working on costs of my big move coming up. I did very little tech work. I did get to do a bit of ad hoc training with our resolution team. These are the customer service rep?s who answer e-mail?s from customers and other call center rep?s. note to self, when I hear my name mentioned in a conversation, do not stop and see what is up. That is how you are caught in a discussion!

I sat through a weekly management meeting again. That is the big event for Monday?s. it wasn?t too long, everyone got it down to an hour and a half.

My friend Dave IM?d me last week to do lunch. I have not seen him in a while, and I need to setup a time do that with him. He only works across the street but we never get together. In all honesty, we don?t always get along, but he means well. I also never see my friends nick, john, & Jeff from over there. I need to call those guys. They used to go out drinking after work at the same bar we do, but they are not there that much anymore.

Nothing going on in the social front. I need to get online again and see what comes of that online dating thing. Still not a big fan of that idea, but everyone I speak to has good things to say about it. I guess I started out on the internet too early, back then internet dating was frowned upon. Now it is hip! I still have an issue with chatting online with strangers. I do it with friends all the time, but not with strangers.

Enough of my bitching. I am sitting on the train going home doing this blog. I am also trying to connect my cell phone to the internet so I can IM my friend rich. I forgot to get back to him before I left work. Yes, I am really a computer person. I am trying to connect my laptop via Bluetooth to my cell phone. It actually works pretty well, especially using my powerbook. The problem is that during this dam train ride I get terrible cellular service, so I cant get a steady signal. I have done it before, but as I type this sentence I give up on my third and final attempt. Oh well, it is cool when it does work. I will call rich when I get home. So much for the always connected idea.

Note to self, I had to take a bextra today. Started getting a mild migraine so I took one before lunch. I am also using this blog to log those lovely head pain events! I also took some fureset on Friday. Not sure if I noted that over the weekend. I may need to go back to the doctor. Seems like I am taking the meds a lot recently. Of course the change in weather always screws with my head. It was 70 Saturday and 40 Sunday. Stop the madness. Ok done ranting on about this and that. More tomorrow, I hope!

Maybe I am sick, I have no idea?

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Well I believe that I got a cold and not allergies. Do you ever have that period of time where you cant tell between them? Well when I started coughing and my ears really started to hurt I decided that it was a cold. I stayed in most of the day today. Watched some DVD?s I have been wanting to watch and just rested up. I went do dinner with my parents. We went to their traditional Sunday night dinner experience at my dad?s favorite pizza place. I haven?t gone out with them in a while so it was nice.

My sister wants me to come over Wednesday, I think they need help with their digital camera, but I also haven?t seen my niece in like 2 weeks. I hope I can go, if I have a cold. Not sure. We both decided that we will wait till Tuesday to decide what will happen.

Tomorrow will be interesting, I have to get budget approval for hardware for our new facility. Also need to meet with a reseller about a network design in order to get a quote from them. More tomorrow.

What to do today???

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Yet again I end up being just wiped out at the end of the day and didn?t do this blog. At least I am writing this in the morning. So I finally got the packing information to send back the bad stuffed animal I got from my niece. It should be picked up while I am at work. Now lets hope the new one is good. I was trying to get over to my sisters yesterday for dinner but that didn?t happen. My dad was over babysitting the baby while my mom and sister went shopping. By the time I was ready to leave work it was too late. When I got home I just sat in my comfy chair and watched a bit of TV. Still unable to get to sleep before 11pm. For some reason this week I have been unable to goto sleep early, or get a good nights rest. Not sure if it is the allergies I am starting to get again, or stress or what? Lets hope this weekend is better.

So apparently my big new project to add another office at work is finally a go. We are having a meeting about it today. So much to do, and probably a really small amount of time to do it in.

I got a voice mail this morning from Dan (a guy I work with who runs the operations of my company). He is up looking at furniture today, and getting bids for the interior construction. I am going to have to get used to that train trip. We are getting space up in Kingston NY, it is about a 90 minute train ride from Penn Station. So it is like 2-2:30 hour trip for me since I have to get to Penn station first.

So Gus challenged me to learn Linux, for real. He meant the command line stuff. This is something I have talked about for like 3 years and haven?t had time or motivation to do. I know I need to, but always have the windows crutch to fall back on. I am thinking of taking a project and doing it only on my red hat machine at work. I moved my mail onto it yesterday. I want to get as much stuff on it as possible so I can try to use it. It sort of worked for my mac, when I was trying to get into that. Now I am sitting here on a powerbook writing this blog. The difference is that in Linux there is no Microsoft products, no shinny install shields, etc. I can handle that, but I need to be motivated. I built a red hat 8.0 box at home last weekend, and I have one at work. I think I will spend time this weekend trying to use them. I will keep you posted.

OK, so I am on the rail road doing this blog. I covered that in earlier posts. What I don?t understand is today I got the early train, the one that is completely express from my stop to penn station and yet it is taking a long time to get there. We sit on the tracks as other trains pass by. This always happens. If they know this dam thing will be late, why don?t they adjust the schedule. The train 15 minutes later is only arrives in penn station like 5 minutes after this one. What is up with that?

Not to get political in this blog, but I asked a bunch of people at work a question I thought of yesterday while writing this blog. On TV you see all these people in Arab countries in protests burning American flags. If we are so evil, where do they buy those things from? Do they buy them from us? Does some company in those countries make money by making American flags? Does the governments that sponsor those rally?s buy them, thus helping our economy? I was just wondering.

I think that is it for today. More tomorrow or later tonight.