Mac Dev Lessons

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I have been playing with Apache, PHP, MySQL & Surgemail on of all machines my Macmini. I was still having issues with the new linux box so I messed around with these programs on the mac. Man most of it was easier than the linux setup, but it was still hard. I found several prebuilt install packages for most of the programs I was playing with.

I learned a few valuable lessons today. First never install anything you don’t know how to uninstall. Doing technology for as long as I have, I should know that by now, but I guess not! Second, I need a setup for testing and messing around and a separate environment where I keep working things like my current website, email, etc.

Right now I actually have my website running on my mini. I don’t want to keep it there, but for now until I sort out my linux issues it will remain. Tomorrow I am going to do mothers day stuff so I probably wont have time to mess with this stuff. Hopefully I will get to some more during the week.

IPCC Deployment

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I have been quiet on the work front recently. Not because I don’t have things to talk about but because I have been busy. We went over the statement of work for our IPCC deployment yesterday. We need to go over a few details to make sure we know what we are doing! More news as that LONG project progress’s.

iChat Plus Jabber = Cool

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I never really warmed up to Apples iChat program until this week. I liked AIM. I never really used MSN. So I stuck with AIM. I like AIM (the service, NOT the program) only because I could not find a better program that will get me on AIM (the service not the program). GAIM, Trillian, etc didn’t do it for me.

On the flip side I use Jabber at work. I love it. It is another fantastic tool that Gus turned me onto years ago (wow, it has been years). Well my love of jabber and my use of my Mac had issues since there was no good jabber client for the mac. I have been using PSI for a while now. it is a good tool, but it had some serious quirks that I didn’t like. Actually they drove me crazy, but I had no other tool that came close to it on the Mac. Then came Tiger. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that iChat now supports jabber. After a few minutes of tinkering I figured out how to get my jabber server up on my iChat software. A few customizations with iChat (that I didn’t know I could do before) and now I am thinking differently about iChat.

Now I have another windows program that works as good or better on my Mac! Dare I dream to work completely off the mac without dealing with my Thinkpad crashing all the time? I have to stop myself from getting excited!

Rethinking The West Side

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I really shouldn’t be bashing the west side anymore. We went to a bar near Miguels on the upper west side for Cinco de Mayo. I used to be all worried about how to get home afterward. To take the subway would require me to go down half the dam island to go cross town and then up again to my place on the east side. I originally thought a cab ride from the west side would be crazy expensive. Well it is not. Late at night it is easy to go uptown, and then really simple to shoot through the park. I was home in less than 10 minutes. I had an easier time getting home than others living downtown since they had to go down on the train.

Another reason to like where I live!

New Server, Almost

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I took the plunge and forked overs some money to build a “decent” server to run my site on at home. I got a tiny desktop case CPU, RAM, & DVD drive for really cheap. I already had a drive for it. I built it today and I am now trying to put linux on it. I am going for Suse 9 Enterprise or Suse 9.3. Not sure what will end up on it just yet. I put Suse Enterprise 9 on before but had problems so I am trying it again.

Right now I am having media issues with both 9.0 and 9.3 so I am not happy. I am still very new to the Linux crazy so I am very frustrated.

Now that I am building this new machine I have a few decisions to make. Do I keep using Typepad, or host my own blog using Moveabletype or WordPress? I like Typepad, but I am not sure if I want to pay to host when my subscription is up when I am hosting my own server. I liked moveabletype as a program but it is a pain to setup. I proved that today with several attempts at configuring it right. I hear WordPress is good, and they “claim” to have a simple install process.

Not sure what I am going to do just yet. I just want to get Linux installed and working right now…

IDE & SATA RAID

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One of our IDE & SATA RAID card manufacturers is telling us we need to run some sort of synchronization utility at least every month to prevent disks from corrupting. We are having an issue where the disks are getting marked bad, when they are in fact fully functional when we format and try to use them again.

This is disturbing to me. I am continuing to feel that this company (maybe the entire technology) is still have baked. We don’t have these issues with newer SCSI drives and controllers.

Oh and the synchronization utility they want us to use took 3 days to run on a disk array with 1tb of data. These guys have got to be kidding…

Cisco 7920 IP Wifi Phone

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I have had the opportunity to play with the Cisco 7920 Wifi IP phone recently. I have said before I am a fan of Cisco Call Manager (CCM). I use it, I like it. I thought the 7940 wired IP phones were great. This Wifi phone operates just like a 7940 but it is a cordless. I have taken it between 2 locations with the same WEP configuration and it worked seamlessly. I took it between 2 floors with seamless wifi setup and it worked without a problem. The battery life leaves a bit to be desired, and a cradle would be nice for what these things cost, but the phone is still great.

I am tempted to get a wifi IP phone for my personal Broadvoice account. They offer help on configuring them, and they even sell one through Hello Direct. I am just not sure if the quality is as good as the Cisco one? Too bad the 7920 is only a skinny based phone and wont work on SIP.

Cisco Network Conference

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I got my reservations for the Cisco Network conference in Las Vegas this year. I made my reservations and called everyone I know that is going. I will hopefully meet up with Joe out there. He is taking Karen, so hopefully we can get together for dinner one night. I hope to also meet up with one of the Cisco engineers I know. I still have to set my schedule for the conference but with tons (200+) things to do I will have a hard time picking just a few stuff to do. I am really excited to go. I get out of the office that much and this really sounds like an interesting conference. That it is in Vegas has no bearing on my happiness on going!

I also spoke to Sean about the trip. I am hoping to hook up with him on the sunday I fly in. It has been a while since we got together. I hope he and Kelly have some free time with the baby and all. More news as it develops.

Updating Stuff

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I have been really bad over the past year or so on keeping up with my moves. I have had a few statements, and an insurance policy point to old address’s. I never called to update the companies with my new address’s. I have no excuse except for I was lazy. I finally broke down today and called everyone I forgot to call in recent history and updated all my information. I feel better now. Procrastination is a lifestyle but it gets to you over time:)

Static IP Bliss

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I finally took the plunge. I finally forked over the extra money to my cable company for a static IP address. Granted I have had the same ip since I moved in, but my provider (RCN) blocks web and SMTP ports. That means I couldn’t host a website or a mail server. With my static ip (and RCN having $20 a month from me) I can (according to tech support) host stuff on my server now. I am kind of pissed that I have to pay since I was able to do this with Time Warner for free in the past. Granted I am not sure if TW actually allowed it but it was technically possible to do. I could have gotten a port redirector service to allow me to host my site with port 80 being blocked but RCN did offer me this pay for an IP option. I cut back on my cell phone since I haven’t been using it so the cost to me is a wash.

I have just configured my router for the static VPN tunnels that I have. Stupid changes were needed on the Pix’s on the other end to get it to work, but after about 10 minutes on each tunnel I was up and running again. With 2 configuration changes on my router I was able to get a demo page up on apache. Seems to be working now. All I have to do is take the virtual machine I am running my site on, back it up and move it home. Hopefully everything comes up ok. Once I move the site to my home machine I can begin to work on a linux only version of the site.

Once the site is moved I can really test and see if RCN’s claims are accurate about their ip service. More news on that later.