Blogging

New blog look, or a small blog change

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If you read this blog, and lets be honest not many people do, you will notice that the title has changed. Also the URL or website address for you non computer people has changed slightly. I am always playing around with the name to see what sounds better to me.

I have moved the photo site completely off my Red Hat box onto a Windows 2003 server. I find it easier to manage the 750 megs + files within windows than within linux at this point. I am still running my blog on the Red Hat server until I can figure out how to move it to a Red Hat Server running under VMWare. Still working on that one.

My website

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If I haven’t blogged enough today, here is more stuff I have going on.

I am working on setting up my photo website on my new Windows 2003 server. it is really my old Windows 2000 server I have cleaned off and installed 2003. I am playing around with both IIS 6.0 and Apache. I am also working on my VMWare project mentioned a few days ago. No luck with moveabletype just yet, so my existing Red Hat server still remains.

Even-though I am using IIS again I am refraining from the temptation of using Front-page server extensions again. It took me forever to get rid of them (probably not really gone, but I like deluding myself) so I don’t want to put them back. I am going to continue to use Macromedia Dreamweaver.

Moving my photo album is taking a while over the 802.11b link. I have over 750 megs of images now. I may go back and re-run the iphoto exports to shrink some of those files, but for now the archive only gets bigger!

Moveabletype, linux, and vmware

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I am still a huge fan of Moveabletype. That is of course what currently runs my blog. I want to keep using it running on my Red Hat 9.0 Server I built. The only problem is the place I want to put it in my new apartment requires a wireless connection. My new Win2003 server works fine with Wifi, but I am having trouble finding drivers for the card I got to work with Red Hat. For now the server sits next to my desk, but I don’t want to leave it there. I am trying to hid as much electronic crap as possible from visible sight. I want 1 computer out. And that computer will be my desktop, not my server!

I am playing around with running red hat on VMWare on the Windows 2003 server. I am a huge fan of VMWare, but I have not really been using it to it’s full potential. I started using it allot more this week, and I am finding that I love it even more. The only problem is that I need more ram on my work machine to get it to run really well with more than 1 os running at a time.

But back to my idea. So I had a red hat VMware system already built. I configured apache and threw on moveabletype. I am getting some driver error when I try to start moveabletype’s prep file. I need an expert (friend) to look at it. I am going through my config files to verify things are correct.

To cover my bases I am also installing a Windows 2000 Server instance on VMWare also to play around with moveabletype on windows. I don’t plan to use it, but I want to see if it will work and I don’t want to mess up my system I just built so a vmware instance is the best way to test it. All I need to do is make a backup of the file before doing anything and I have a complete OS backed up. Wednesday at work I took an entire vmware OS file and moved it to a different computer and it worked without doing anything special. That totally ROCKS!

I will post results of my ongoing testing. Hopefully this will work and I can keep moveabletype on red hat and consolidate everything to 1 server and just run the vmware software. I will see.

New domain registrar

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This blog may turn into a free advertisement for godaddy.com. If you ever paid $35 or more on a domain name, you paid allot. I do still love register.com. They are much better than the old networksolutions, but they cost allot. They are good if you need them to do DNS for you. I still own domains through them for that reason, but if you don’t need them to do a completely customizable DNS zone for you, try godaddy.com. Godaddy costs like $9 per domain per year. It is cheap, and I honestly don’t know how they make money. A friend at work has talked about them for about a year. To cut costs I registered a bunch of work domains through them. When you get like 60 domains, the savings adds up.

This week I transfered my first personal domain to godaddy. The transfer was mostly painless, and the cost is right. They make it so cheap to buy a domain, you have no excuse to buy that customized name you came up with. I will most likely transfer most of my .com, .net, and .org domains to them when they need renewal. I still have allot of other domain names so I won’t completely switch.

On the subject of domain names I will say I am a fan of the .AC domains. I had 4 of them at one time. I still own 1 domain from the Ascension Island. They cost a bit more $50/year, but their management tool is good, and they have allot of more common names and phrases that you cannot find in COM, NET, ORG, or even BIZ, & INFO. I did get a domain name with scott in it. That rocks! It actually still rocks almost 4 years after I bought it. I have a couple of other inter-nation domain names from different countries, but my .ac one is the simplest.

Done with vacation, now back to “normal” life

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You don’t fully realize all the minor stuff you need to do around the house, and just stuff needed to be done to lead a normal life until you put everything on hold and go away. Today was the day of getting back up to speed with stuff. I got my mail that was crammed into my mailbox. I paid some bills that thankfully weren’t overdue. I am in the process of unpacking. I am not one of those people who unpacks right after a trip. The bag may linger for a week or so before I clear it out. After being on the road and having to do the quick pack and unpack routine, I am in no hurry to unpack now.

I uploaded the pictures from the vacation to my website. The photo’s were broken into two sections. I have my photo’s and the photo’s of morgan. 90%+ are of morgan, because lets face it she is cuter than anyone else I was traveling with, so I took photos!

I also sifted through email I got while I was away. That took a while. Has anyone ever realized that 90% of all emails you get are useless? that is how I feel after going through a weeks worth of mail.

I figured out while I was on my vacation that my powerbook has a defect. The headphone jack only play’s stuff out of the left headset. I bought a new pair of earphones thinking it was the pair I had. Wasn’t that. Turns out when I got home I couldn’t hear anything out of the right speaker I plug the powerbook into either when I am home. I am debating if I want to send the thing back again for a week of repair for this problem. They take forever to fix these things. I could just get a USB speaker set, but if I ever sell the mac (and you know I will) I may have a problem.

Can’t sleep, so I ramble on in the blog!

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So it is early monday morning and I can’t sleep.  I hate holiday weekends because I end up screwing up my entire sleep habit and it is hard to get back into the normal routine.  I was up till like 2-am Saturday night, and now it is after 12:30 on monday morning and I am not tired at all.  I got the itunes going with some soothing music, and I am about to make myself a drink.  Hopefully that will get me tired to get some normal sleep.

I was going to take the powerbook and lie in bed and do some writing.  That is my favorite place to write.  I know it sounds crazy but it is.  I like to prop my pillows up and sit and type.  I normally prop the laptop up on my legs and type.  The problem is the powerbook has been on all day plugged into the outlet.  It is aluminum and it gets really hot when left on.  I really don’t want to pick it up right now.  That is the one down side of this new powerbook.  The metal makes it really hot when it is on for a while.

OK, I broke out the Godiva Liqueur.  I keep a bottle frozen in my fridge along with a bunch of other alcohol.  I am not a huge drinker but I sometimes have more alcohol than food in that freezer.  I got to drinking the Godiva from my dad.  He used to drink it at night every  once in a while.  he isn’t a big drinker but he would drink that stuff.  It is good.  I keep that, some bailies, Jack Daniel’s, & Absolute in the freezer.  I think there is more, but that is what I normally drink.

When I was traveling with Datastream I was depressed allot towards the end.  I started getting bored and the travel was killing me.  I went weeks at a time getting bad night sleep.  My dad actually recommended a shot or two before bed each night if it was stressed that day.  According to the medical folks 1-2-oz of alcohol a day is actually good for you, or at least ok to do.  I didn’t do it every night, but I got in the habit of doing it.  I haven’t done it in a while, but I guess that is good because of the reason I started in the first place!

My whole time at Datastream is a testimate to every action or event has a purpose.  I got that job and it was everything I thought I wanted at the time.  Then it turned out to be nothing like I thought it would be, and I became unhappy after less than a year.  Then I just said I can’t do this anymore and quit. 

After a few weeks I got offered to contract a my friend jeff and dave’s company.  Six months before I might have taken a job with them without question, but by this time (march 2001) I was set against anything internet company related.  I took it because I had nothing else going on and at least it would be steady money for a while.  I took the job as a favor to jeff, by me coming on he could leave and make sure they had support people.  I was totally not happy for the first few months.  Dealing with my friend dave was difficult at best and we didn’t have much to do. 

Then my current company picked up my contract and I was worried that I would hate it.  The guy I was going to work for was a pain allot of the time, but again I had nothing else going on and the things they were doing were cool, and it was a good opportunity.  To my surprise I actually liked it.  Dealing with the boss was not as bad as I first predicted, and the work as I said was cool.  So by dumb blind luck I ended up in a job that I currently think is awesome, doing pretty much what I always wanted to do.  It was all because of dumb luck or fate or who knows what that I ended up where I am today.

The weird turn of events go back even further than Datastream but I think my tangent about the drinking started off this story so I won’t go back further than that.  But this whole chain of events gets me wondering if everything happens for a reason, fate or whatever.  Or is it just dumb luck???  I don’t know.  All I do know is I need so dumb luck on the girlfriend front and the universe will be in good shape!

Of course I don’t regret my time at Datastream.  I wanted to travel, that is why I took the job.  I didn’t get the travel bug out of me at IBM so it was worth the time.  Trust me you want to travel when you are young.  I am not old by any means, but I don’t know if I could do that kind of travel now.  It takes too much out of you emotionally and physically.  In under two years I went to more places than most people will go in a lifetime.  For that I am grateful.

OK, I am 1 1/2 drinks into this blog entry and I am not yet really tired.

My computers & Blogging stuff

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I realized yesterday that I wrote a bunch of blog entries. I decided to write an entry on on topic, or group of topics. So if I want to discuss a few things at once I will have multiple entries broken down for your reading enjoyment.

I am back into my routine of writing on the train. that is how we got the morning and afternoon posts yesterday. I just forget to post when I get to work and just have to post time-stamp things later on. I tried to use the thinkpad for blog entry’s. I found a bug in w.bloggar. Well I think it is a bug. The dam thing wont work on my laptop. I use it once after install and then it crashes every time I try to open it after that. I just gave up on Monday. My powerbook works great, and it is light. I can do without the thinkpad some days during the week.

Yes I do have two laptops. You are reading correctly. I have my own personal Apple Powerbook G4 12″. it is the little powerbook. It is awesome. I am new to the mac’s. I have only had a mac since last july. The other machine is my company issued Thinkpad T31. It has a bright screen and weight’s around the same as the Powerbook even though it is bigger in shape. It is also an awesome machine. The down side is that as much as I tried, I cannot get any windows laptops to go into and out of standby and hibernate modes properly. The mac usually works. Also the smaller mac is easier to open on the train.

Then we have desktops. I have 3 computers at home (not counting the laptops). I currently have an AMD Atholon XP 1500+ computer running Windows XP Pro. That machine is my main desktop computer. I don’t use it nearly enough anymore, but I bought it in December 2001 when my desktop was my main computer. This box is tricked out even though I don’t utilize it that much. It has a gig of ram, 180gig hard drive, etc.

My next two machines are used as servers. I have my old desktop, A Pentium III 800 with 780megs of ram. I use that to test different things on. It used to be my windows 2000 server. Then I have an old Dell Dimension desktop that I think has Pentium III 700 in it. That is now my main server running Red Hat 9.0.

While I am on the topic of my computer gear I can say that I am using a Linksys DSL Cable router with 802.11g wireless built in. That gives me fast wireless while I am on my Powerbook!

There you have it. I am trying to shrink down the size or amount of stuff I have so it doesn’t look so bad in my living room. I just put the AMD computer into a new smaller & cooler looking case. The other two are already in mid tower cases so I am not sure what I can do with those.

Cosmetic updates to the blog

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OK, so I decided to update the main style sheet that give this blog its look and feel. It is a minor change. Some colors and the font are different. Next step is to acutely customize the stock sheets mt offers. I also threw on some vanity logo’s to identify what software I use to build the blog.

I also fixed a bug I had on the blog. I was unable to do updates last night due to dns issues. When I changed the master domain I used for this blog I forgot to change the moveable type config. That meant when I pointed to the new site name I lost the ability to make changes since Moveable Type thought that the server was down. it was a 2 second fix, but I need to keep track of these changes.

w.bloggar offline tool. So far so good.

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Ok, so Gus didn’t like this tool. W.Bloggar. It is an offline blog writting tool. I have been using Kun-Log on my powerbook since I started using moveabletype. It is good, but it is for the mac only. I need something for my windows laptop. So I am giving this a try. So far so good. Setup was easy. one thing I dont like is that I cant bring up old posts already on the server. I will use it while I am away on monday and tuesday in chicago. I will not be bringing my powerbook. I like it and all but I need the “work” thinkpad. It has a much bigger screen and all my work stuff on it. Because of that w.bloggar gets a trial run.

After I finish this test post I will then go back to my VMware project. I have been working on it on and off all day. I got windows 2003 server installed on it. Red Hat 9.0 is a bit more difficult. 2 install’s have failed. More on that later.

Lazy Saturday’s

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I am being lazy today. I need to get a mothers day gift for my mom, but that is all I have on my agenda today. I slept late, and I am just hanging out now. My idea of laying low is very geeky. I am installing VMware 4 workstation on my desktop computer. I want to get red hat 9 on it so I can use windows xp and red hat on the same machine. If it works it will be awesome. Right now it is installing red hat.

My mom instructed me that she wants some pocket book or something. I will give her money and she can go get it for herself. That way I don’t have to get the wrong thing. I was also instructed to get flowers. I just love the surprise involved in this day.

Since Gus fixed my linux box I now have a choice. Should I leave my site on Red Hat or move it back to Windows? As of right now I have a copy on both. My friend jayson is letting me use his box to host my site, and I still have a copy on my Red Hat server. I am thinking I am going to leave the blog on red hat and have the rest of the site on windows. That way I don’t have to mess with taking the front page extensions out of the site. I was trying to deal with that for a few weeks and so far have gotten nowhere. I just don’t have the time. For now I will leave everything in both places. Unfortunately I don’t have the photo site up at all during this transition. it is 800+ megs and I don’t want to deal with it right now.

I have been following the apple music store since it was announced last week. I have a mac. I like it allot. I also find I use iTunes over winamp 99% of the time nowadays. I also went out a few months ago and got an ipod. That also kicks ass. So I am in a position to use this new music service. 99 cents is not bad for a song. I am still unsure if it is worth it. I saw an entire album I want to maybe buy and see if the service is any good. Limewire and the gnutella clients, and kaza are tempting. I am on the fence right now. The file format is supposed to be better, but I still like MP3’s. I was not sold on Microsoft’s windows media format, and now I am skeptical of this new AAC stuff. What is weird is that Microsoft comes across as more evil big company like, and Apple is the underdog hip company. In fact they are probably both just as evil. Right now for work I of course an clearly a Microsoft guy, but for home I am a apple guy. All this rambling boils down to eventually will buy stuff on this music service. If anything I want to know if I am missing out on something really good, or just saving my money.