iTunes music store

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The problem with blogging is I don’t remember what I have talked about and what I wanted to discuss. I go back over my previous entries but sometimes miss stuff. Not sure if I discussed this before, so here goes.

Last week I tried out the iTunes music store. I mentioned I was looking into it, well I did. I ended up buying the latest Stroke 9 album online. I liked their last album and figured it was as good an album as any to buy. So I forked over the $10. I gotta say that so far the music service is not bad. I haven’t tried to move the songs anywhere, but I did put them on my iPod. The sound quality is awesome. I can’t tell the difference. I will use the service again if I find I want to buy any new music. I don’t think I want to buy any more CD’s. the flip side is I can convert a CD to any format if I own it.

Now I am finally I little bit sleepy, so I am off to bed. More tomorrow, or later, or whenever!

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.

Sunday, lazy Sunday

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I did some lying by the pool sunday, its indoors. Then I did more website work. I also vegged out in front of the TV and caught up on some DVD’s I had. I am working my way through the second season of Babylon 5 right now. Then I want to revisit the matrix, and maybe Mission Impossible. Not sure, but I have an urge to see that movie again.

I am also looking at what movies to bring for my week off next week. I am going to be so out of touch with reality. No cell service, no pagers, and no internet access that I know of. I may have some modem access but I am not sure yet. It is good and bad, this lack of access. I need a nice long week off, but I also like doing some stuff on the computer to relax. My last big vacation was to Baton Rouge for the 4th of july in 2001. I actually helped my friend’s jayson and joe out with some computer work while I was down there. I enjoy doing it. When their is no pressure it is relaxing. When I was in london I liked to take an hour a day and just surf the web and check mail. Then we went out. I just like staying connected. This will be interesting because I probably won’t be able to stay connected. We shall see.

I need to look into where they offer scuba diving near where we are staying. I don’t know exactly where we are staying so I need to find out from my sister. The whole family is going to a house in Barbados, but where in Barbados I have no idea.

Drinking, and no movies

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A few of us went out after work friday. It was interesting. Gus, & Matt were trying to get me to dance with some women we were sitting next to. Now they were very nice women, but I am never good at dancing. I don’t think I am that good at it, but more importantly I just don’t like doing it. The only exception is when I am really drunk. Right before the passed out phase I like to dance! Friday was not one of those times. I never liked meeting women at a bar. It was always weird. I have “hooked up” a few times at bars mostly in college, but I just wasn’t into it that much. As Matt and I discussed, you meet people when you have the “i don’t care what happens attitude”. It is actually true. I have had my best luck meeting women by saying “screw it, what can I loose”, than by thinking about crap and worrying. The problem is you can’t force your self to not care, or I have not been able to. Either you do or you don’t. Not sure if I am making sense or not, but at this point I don’t care. When you have nothing to loose and you realize that, you get the best results. I just wasn’t into the game on friday.

Saturday I hung out with my friend Rich. I guess amanda (his girlfriend) was avoiding me. Kidding, I think she had other plans. We were going to goto see X-2, but by the time we got together and ate dinner it was past the last show. Dam outback has huge lines. He didn’t want to see the Matrix Reloaded. Either everyone I know has seen the dam movie or doesn’t want to go to see it. I may go on monday just to see it, screw going with people.

The rest of Saturday was a lazy day. I got my haircut, and missed breakfast with my parents because of the dam line. I also decided to actually do work on my web site. I am totally fixing up my photo album pages using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX instead of front-page. It is slow going removing all the front-page html in the site.

System automation

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I have always been a user enviornment type of guy. What I mean by that is I have worked at companies dealing with corporate users, and the desktops and servers that service them. My current job requires me to do that as well. Another aspect of my job also requires me to operate several websites and all the infrastructure that goes along with it. It is much different than corporate user systems. It is very challenging, but also allot of fun.

One problem we are working on is how to release updates to a system with over 8 web servers located in 2 locations (going on 3), each having a varying degree of importance. I am working with robocopy. it is a free utility in the Windows 2000 Resource kit. It allows you to take a file or directory structure and sync it with another file or directory structure. For our uses I will select a master server, and make all changes and releases on that, then robocopy all informaiton out to multiple servers. It works. I have tried it on some user directories when I needed to move data over file servers. It preserved the security levels and everything. I need to check and see if I can script this in a way that I don’t get prompted for a password when running a sync between two servers on two different windows domains. Also I believe it will work with UNC paths, but I need to try that also.

Robocopy and other great tools are tucked away in the Win2k resouce kit. If you do any windows administration, you should have this kit.

My next task involving multiple copies of data is creating a redundant FTP server. I am looking at 2 Red Hat Linux machines that RSYNC between themselves to mirror the data. We would place both servers behind a Cisco Local Director and load balance the traffic the way we would load balance a web site.

The advantage of doing these sync scripts is to take the human element out of udating things. You get continuity. We like to do the same thing with desktop updates. If you have 50 computers you don’t want some people walking around and manually updating things. You would get configuration differences between the machines. An installation package would make all the machines get the software in the exact way. Of course we actually do our desktop system updates the manual way right now. I am working on an automated system for that as well for our new office.

Besides all this reasearch going on, I have all the normal requests for things. Also we are having issues with the new Super Micro server and linux. I was not planning on running linux on this machine anyway, but I wanted to know if it would work. Keith is working through the problems.

Internet On!!!

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My internet came back on at home a bit after I got to work. I was pinging it and it came up. It went back down for a few minutes again and then went back up. The people at Road Runner called me to check if it was up. They said they fixed it remotely. They don’t say they can do that when you call. I guess I had a low signal problem or something like that. Lets just hope it stay’s up

The research I did at work on FTP on red hat has been very productive. I am about ready to setup FTP on my home linux server this weekend. Their are just a few things I want to sort out first.

Not sure if we are going out drinking tonight or not. I will know later.

Got my leise

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So I got the envelope with my executed copy of my new lease. Now all I need to do is call my current land lord and work out some sort of agreement over the last 2 months of rent.

Then there is the endless address change forms to fill out. The ordering of cable, etc.

I need to get a new lock for the door. Turns out I could have put an extra lock on my current apartment and I didn’t even know I could.

Some other good news about this new apartment. It faces west so I won’t get woken up by the rising sun. I have that problem now since I face south east. I get tons of sun. I like it dark when I sleep. It can be bright in the apartment in the afternoon. I am only home in the afternoon on the weekends anyway.

My sister has cool terrace furniture that she is going to show me. I don’t remember where they got it from, but we will take a trip to the store if I like it, so I can get a table and some chairs.

No cable modem

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The unthinkable has happened. Worse than no phone or TV, I have no internet access! I woke up this morning and went to check the weather and I found myself without internet access. Now I have had my cable modem go out before. In baton rouge it went out almost every week for like 5 minutes. The last time I lost my cable modem it was down for a week. That is why I am so concerned. These moron’s can’t do anything over the phone so for any problem they send a tech out. I should be thankful that I got an appointment for tomorrow (friday) because going a holiday weekend without it would have been bad.

This blog is being written now while I goto work on thursday morning, but I have no idea when it will get posted since my web server is down due to this outage.

I should get used to no access. When I am on vacation in 2 weeks I won’t have cell, pager, or internet access for the entire week. That will be interesting.

Holiday weekend

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To be honest I have no plans on the agenda for the holiday. I just realized I had off this week. I am not sure if it will be nice out or not. If it is I may goto the beach with my family. I haven’t done that in ages. Of course I can’t check the weather since I have no internet access!!!

I do have a bunch of projects around the house I want to do. I can think I will get some done this weekend, but I probably wont.

I want to frame this picture my sister gave me. I need to finish working on my web site. I need to get my dad my scanner so he can begin to digitize his slide collection. I also have some video’s to encode to MPEG also.

We have FTP, almost!

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I have worked out allot of the problems with hosting an ftp server on linux. I have a red hat 9.0 machine setup with users configured. It actually works. The last thing I need to do is security on the public folder I created for our applications directory. We have a space to keep needed app’s that may be downloaded. I need to setup a real test machine and get users onto it before I feel confident. The next major phase is to setup another FTP server on linux and sync them together with RSYNC. I also need to sync a windows machine the same way. If all that works, I have a working solution for our secure FTP site for a perspective client we have.

Of course someone may ask for SFTP and then I have to rethink the whole solution!