Blogging

Yet Another New Hosting Provider

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I admit that sometimes I cannot make up my mind. Last month I got a static IP address for my cable modem at home. I figured I would host my own mail/ftp/web server like I did in years past. It was a great idea. I know more than I did back then and even then I hosted stuff. My problem is I don’t have time to deal with building and tweaking a server at home. I have tried. The machine I got to use as a server has been sitting idle wasting electricity.

Over the past week or so I have been doing research on web hosting providers again. I see all these really cheap providers but none of them have all the features that I want. That is what lead me to want to self host anyway. For whatever reason I got sidetracked on the Typepad site before I logged in one day and saw the Moveabletype hosting providers list. I checked them out to see how much it would cost for a web provider that would give me Moveabletype blog also. Turns out some of them were nice and full featured web providers. They weren’t cheap compared to a godaddy.com or hostmysite.com, but they offered me options that I wanted. IMAP mail is key for me. Also the ability to host multiple domains or sub domains without paying a ton more. Also a decent amount of storage space was needed. I ended up choosing Media Temple. For like $10/month I got 2 gigs of storage, IMAP mail, and extra domains. $6/month more gets me Moveabletype. I still have months left on my Typepad subscription but I want to try out the hosted Moveabletype. If I don’t like it I can always stick with Typepad and still use Media Temple as a hosting provider.

I am not going to say anything good or bad about the new provider for a while. I have found several providers that seemed awesome until I found the one feature that they said they had and didn’t (godaddy and IMAP) or some other issue that caused me to cancel within my 30 day free period. This is after I do my research. This provider seems to have all that I need. As I write this entry my site is uploading onto the new server. I need to read up a bit more on Moveabletype to see how I can customize it. I like the way my Typepad blog looks now, so I want to try and emulate it as much as possible.

Powerpedia Lives

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While coming up with names (and uses) for my wiki, I came up with a name that I actually like and think is appropriate for this blog. For ages I just called it Scott.ac. Kind of dull, even though it is descriptive of the domain name. Well Jayson and I were riding the subway home the other day and he was telling me the name of his wiki, Wikilicious. Cool but not 100% original. I was trying to come up with something catchy but distinctive to me. Then Powerpedia came to me. .com was taken so I am sticking with .net. Power(z) because that is the online persona I have taken. See my new wiki for the story (link redacted).

So I have a cool & descriptive name, I might as well use it for things like this blog as well as for the wiki.

Stay tuned for some cosmetic changes to the site also, and most importantly read. I can be interesting sometimes!

Linux Is Addictive

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For years I have been getting poked and prodded by Gus to do more with linux. Of course he would say this as he gave me a workload no 2 people could handle. Over the past few months Jayson and Danny have been getting into the act of wanting to push our linux use, personal and professional. Now I got Brian, Chris and Kai also saying we should play more with Linux.

Jayson took it upon himself to setup a web server at his house. it is an old dell box I had lying in my closet. I have yet to put any applications onto it, but he has a website, blog, wiki, and mail system running on it so far. His enthusiasm is addictive. I have been working on a virtual machine that I can host my stuff in, but I am thinking that won’t be enough. I could just host my stuff with him. That was the idea of giving him the box in the first place, but then I think what fun would that be?

I want to play with my own personal wiki. The other stuff he has done I don’t really want. The mail server sounds good, but I am not sure if I want to put mail (i rely on mail allot) on a system that I don’t fully understand yet.

What everyone doesn’t (or does) understand is that I want to learn, it is just not super simple!

Messing With My Site

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I have been playing with my website today. Really tinkering if you want to call it anything. Jayson messing with apache and other crap on his Linux box got me to mess with my site. I was not as hard core as he has been. I have been using a Windows 2003 box with IIS. I am modifying my site using Frontpage, Fireworks, & Dreamweaver.

The basis for the tinkering is that I want to add more photos to my site. The issue is two fold. One I want to secure some of the photo pages with a password. I am doing that now but each section has its own username and password. That is not effective. The other issue is the organization of the site and how it is presented to the viewer. Right now people enter my site and see a home page built with fireworks. It looks nice, but it is not super easy to update. I want something that can dynamically update as I add content, or change the links.

I still don’t know what I want to do. I want to use Fireworks, but I am having problems updating it. I am playing around with text and tables in Frontpage to have the same affect. it is not the same, but I am not sure if it will do. I will mess with it more later in the week.

Journal Import Disclaimer

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A friend of mine emailed me about the old journal posts. Instead of replying directly to her I figured I would post several “disclaimers” regarding these old posts. First there is not that many of them. Between 1995 and 2000 maybe about 100 to 150 of them. Some of them were very short. Also they were clustered together. I did allot of writing during the summer of 1995. I had my first Thinkpad and allot of free time at night to write. I also did allot of writing in the late spring and early summer of 1996. I had my afternoons free when I was done with my Anatomy and Physiology Summer school classes. I then skip ahead to december 1999 through the first half of 2000. When you read the 1999 & 2000 posts you will see why I wrote then. I was in training and traveling for a while and I was alone, bored and had free time at the hotel. I then pick up again for a little while for a few days in november 2000. that is it besides one rouge post in 2001.

I will edit some of the posts, but others that probably should be edited (i go off on my parents a little in 96) I will probably just post as is. In an answer to my friend Jennifer’s questions, I don’t bash many people. I manly just said what I did on a given day and some feelings I had. In more recent posts on this blog I give more graphic opinions. And yes Jenn I do mention you in some posts. How can I discuss Oneonta without mentioning you? Well I could but it would be weird.

I hope to (when I have time) go back and fill in details on specific days that I remember things about. I think that would be fun to write about old almost long forgotten stuff from my less than wild and crazy youth. Of course then I may have to mention certain young ladies from the greater Binghamton area’s drinking habits! That is when it does not in any way incriminate other people (namely myself). But fun it will be. And no, as much as my blog posts are an english teachers nightmare I will not let anyone check my spelling or grammar. I found an outlet (blogging and email writing for that matter) where poor grammar and spelling is almost acceptable. don’t ruin it for me!

Journal Import Update

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It is weird reading over old writings about what was going on in my life. It is also interesting to see the huge gaps between when I wrote. There were months that I wrote almost everyday, and other entire years that I didn’t write anything. I have imported everything I have from 1995 till February 2000. Once I go through everything I think I will actually import it into this main site. The problem is since I never (never in a million years) thought I would publish this stuff for people to read I used last names, and other details that I should filter.

I realized I was depressed when I was working at Datastream. It was the being alone and on the road that I think did it. Being bored towards the end didn’t help either, but I when I read back on the posts I realize I was depressed even when I started working there in training. Of course I wasn’t doing what I signed on to do for the 3 months of training, and that could have been it. I don’t know. it is just weird reading all these old posts. I may decide to go back and fill in some blank spots of time with posts of things I remember.

Walk Don’t Run Down Memory Lane

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I started going through some old “journal” entries I wrote years ago. Yes before this blog (and any blog) I wrote a journal online. I kept them in password protected word files. I still have them 10 years later. I decided to take each individual word document and put it in a blog format. It is time consuming but once I am done I will have all my journal entries updated into a blog. Since most of that stuff was not originally written for the internet I will put it on a password protected site. Going over what I wrote it is all PG, but I will leave it on a different site than this one just because of how old it is.

I have already gone through 1995. That seemed like the first year I digitized everything I did. Before that I only kept 2 other journals. One was a high school project and another one was just a scratch pad I wrote on when I went cross country. When I was younger I only thought journals or diary’s were for girls. Going back over what I wrote 10 years ago is weird and interesting. Some stuff I was like wow, I remember that but I hadn’t thought about it in ages.

It will take me a while to update everything into the blog, but I have wanted to do it for a while. It will eventually get done.

It Is Done

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By request I have removed all posts categorized as WORK for the past 12 months. I have uploaded them to a password protected blog on this site. For now I will continue to write, but any posts that might be considered questionable I will post on the password protected site. For now I am calling it the unrated version of this site! I am going to see how this goes for a while before I make any long term decisions about this site.

This Site As You Know It…

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This site as you know it is changing. I have been asked (and I will comply) by my employer to no longer discuss work related issues on my site. As a person who is involved with security (physical and virtual) I can understand there reasoning. I may not agree with it, but I will comply with whatever guidelines are written up.

What does that mean for this site? At this moment I am not really sure. It is funny, I started writing this for me, and figured if I got people to read that was great, but not the primary reason for writing. Now almost 2 years into this journal of sorts and I kind of enjoy writing it. The problem is if you know me, my work is a major part of my life. Maybe too much a part, but that is not the topic of this discussion. It is so much a part of my life that I don’t know how this site would be without any references to work. There lies the issue. I can talk about work, but there is a fine line that I need not cross regarding what to say. It is truly simpler to not write at all about it. I am thinking about continuing to write and password protect the work posts. A unrated edition of this site kind of sounds good on some level. The irony in the request to restrict what I say is that I never mentioned where I worked. I never say my last name, nor do I mention other people’s last names.

On a related note I was/have been thinking about the site being to popular with people I work with. I like that people read the site, but I liked the anonymity. Maybe strangers reading the site is ok, but not people I know. I don’t know! The problem with anonymity is once it is broken, your ID is out there.

For now all non work related items will remain. Work items will no longer get posted on this site. I will post to a password protected part of the site. Maybe I can make stuff public a year or so after it happens? I will go back and remove work related entries for the past 6 months or so and move them to the private site. Before that time, I figure the information is not current enough to need getting moved. That will give me time to go through all the older posts and archive some stuff.

The timing of this change is ironic. I got a negative comment from who I believe is a friends fiance or he himself. I seemed to upset them. Totally not my intention to do so. I still value his friendship. Just because I don’t see him everyday doesn’t mean that I don’t value it. I was just making (in my mind and others) valid criticism about one item. That does not tarnish an overall stellar reputation. I mention this because this is part of the problem with this site. I like to vent, but I don’t want to anger people. Most people I don’t care if I anger, but I DO care about some people’s opinion’s. This to me brings back the anonymity issue. By having more people read this, I made it more difficult to write this site. That my friends may be the cause of this sites downfall. I am not sure about that yet, but it has been running through my mind. Don’t worry, this is not the end, but indeed changes are coming. Is the end near? Maybe, but not yet, or just change…

Godaddy Hosting No More

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Less than 24 hours after I wrote about how good Godaddy’s hosting was I have canceled my account. It turns out that they had just recently stopped offering IMAP mail support. They did in fact advertise it, but they don’t support it anymore. I am disappointed. they had great features. The admin tool seemed easy enough. Unfortunately for me IMAP is a must. I am back to shopping around. The problem is I have yet to find an affordable (under 10 bucks a month) hosting provider that had everything just the way I want it. I know I am picky. I am in the field. I host sites (granted for my own company). I do everything a hosting provider does but for my own company. That is why it pains me to not be able to find a provider that does everything I need for a decent amount.

In the old days (before I moved to my current building) if I wanted to I could host my own website. I did it for years. Actually I have self hosted my site for almost as long as I have paid for hosting. Pondering these issues I realized I can host the site myself. I can take an old computer and drop it at a friends house. They get a free hosted website, and I can put a server in a place that does not port block web traffic. Time Warner doesn’t block ports that I know of. I have tons of friends who use them. I smell an idea coming together…