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July 2007 Archive
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
[Comments: 1] 1:29 AM - week-in-review
Perhaps Tuesday is an odd choice for a week in review, but my last post was on Tuesday, so there was a week in there to review. Perhaps more odd is the idea of a "week in review" department.
All-in-all not a lot happened this past week. I did confirm that my condo is still on track for mid to late August delivery, which is good news, though I'm keeping myself prepared for delays and won't hold my breath unless I have to. :)
The weekend was mostly uneventful, as I didn't really bother to do much of anything. I toyed with the idea of going to see Harry Potter, but I never came up with anyone to go see it with, so I passed. I think this coming weekend will be busy with convention plans, so it might be two weeks before I can get to see it.
There's just under a week left until HostingCon 2007 gets under way. We have some of the necessary stuff in already, but there's a bunch of stuff left to be done. Hopefully it will all come together on time, but I'm not really doing any of the planning personally. With the staff changes, I am not at all worried about the full coverage of support, so hopefully I will be able to "relax" to a greater degree than last year. We're planning an interesting customer appreciation party with catered food, which should be fun.
My friend Andrew's birthday was Sunday, so I gave him a call, though he's out in some unknown location on a job, so I have no idea if he got my message or what he was up to. I also heard from my friend Dave this evening. Dave usually calls to ask computer questions, but we had a decent chat about other things as well. I really ought to keep up with my friends from college more. It would be great to see some of them sometime soon.
Monday this week was nice and quiet, which is a good sign for the week. We will likely have a relatively busy Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday based on what's already mapped out by customers and to-do lists, but the new staff has been great in making every day a lot more manageable, so I'm pretty happy. I still have to pay a little more attention than I'd like on weekends, but it's much better than it was at the start, a good sign. :)
The datacenter continues to progress in a reasonable way and we have some additional customers that will be moving equipment in over the next week or two.
I put in a request just today for an additional block of IP addresses to help with our expansion, as we're getting close to running out. With any luck those proceedings should be completed by the end of the week and we'll be set for about 6 or so months, if we're lucky.
It's a little early, but I'm fairly tired, so I think I'm going to hop in bed. Don't believe me, I'll be sitting here for the next four hours. :P
Good night!
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
[Comments: 0] 3:54 AM - tasty
Karl and I met a few of our friends at Taste of Chicago on Saturday. I spent about $30 and sampled some interesting and mostly yummy things from a few different places. Among the good were some goat from an African restaurant and some mustard-fried catfish. Among the bad was a pork-filled banana dumpling that I just couldn't finish off.
I was hoping to try more things, but I ended up getting full, and I guess that's for the best, because it saved me some money. After we were done tasting, we wandered over to see one of the free concerts, Cheap Trick. Soul Asylum was one of the openers, with decent music but lyrics that were far too bizarre to be explained. We figure they were going for things that fit and rhymed rather than things that had any meaning whatsoever. :)
Our first customer has been placed in the new datacenter space, though they're not active quite yet. This week should bring a few other customers in as well and then we get to hopefully see the HVAC systems switch from heating to cooling. We're wondering how it stays so cold in there when the HVAC is always heating...
Karl's decided lately to start dropping by here to eat with us because there's more cooking going on here than at his place. Since he likes to cook, that may be an arrangement we keep up. Curt, Justin and Cody don't usually care/bother with cooking. Karl's cooking is generally very good, so that'll be nice to get back to. :)
In other minor news, I am a bit upset with DNS stuff for beginning to charge and/or require registration for their services, which are so incredibly simple. They're making their site too annoying to use, and as it's a pretty nifty concept, I've decided I'm going to start my own, and perhaps expand in other directions into which DNS Stuff does not currently branch. I've registered nsDig.com to host this project, but I have no idea how long it will take to complete. If I get motivated, perhaps a beta will appear before too long.
I am toying with the idea of releasing the tools I write as open source, and trying to decide whether I should put ads on the site. I most likely will do the latter so that it "pays for itself," but I don't want intrusive ads, so I'll have to be careful.
One final political issue to bring up. You should write your congressman and tell them to kill this. This bill proposes to add more FCC regulation by making basic cable channels subject to FCC decency guidelines. As most of you probably know, I believe that it is the parents' responsibility to meter what their children watch on television and that the FCC should be removed from the position of regulating content entirely.
If you read the text of the bill, especially among the findings, you will see that they have "found" absurd justifications for this policy, such as the fact that too many children have TVs in their rooms. The solution to this seems clear to me: remove the TV from your child's room! They also "find" that the V-Chip is not effective because it is not available in enough households, so their solution is to impose the restrictions directly on the content providers. Instead, if they're doing anything, wouldn't it be better to pass laws to try to simply make it easier for parents to acquire V-Chip technology, and make use of an existing and completely viable standard?
I've sent a message to my congressman who has made the mistake of being a co-sponsor of the bill, and I've also preemptively emailed my senators to let them know I think they should oppose if it should ever reach the Senate. You should do the same if you agree with me. If you disagree, try to convince me to change my mind. :)
Don't do it now, though, I'm going to bed!
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
[Comments: 0] 3:49 AM - freedom
Happy Independence Day! (Or Happy Fourth of July to those of other nationalities!)
Karl told me this past evening that I could work from home since it should basically be dead tomorrow, so that's what's gonna happen. Adnan is still scheduled to be on site and should be able to cover anything that requires hands-on intervention.
We got the first batch of cabinets moved for the new datacenter space and the fiber and copper has been pulled from the old space to the new. What remains now is mostly network configuration and additional cabling to get the connections to the new equipment. It's exciting opening a new space, and this area is gigantic, so it should give us a good amount of room to grow. We won't be working on that tomorrow though.
Not to sound too self-important, but I think I deserve some vacation from all the work I've been doing lately. :)
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
[Comments: 0] 1:12 AM - powerless
I determined Sunday night while using my laptop that it was no longer charging correctly, as the thing was plugged in and it was not in agreement. After some analysis, I figured out the AC adapter is dead. It will briefly power up if I hit it just right, but that reeks of a major problem and I don't think I want the thing plugged in anymore. I ordered a new one to be overnighted to me, so I should have it this coming morning, which will be good, since I use the laptop extensively for work. I managed to get around this issue by borrowing Karl's laptop battery, which happens to be compatible with my laptop, and by spending a good percentage of the day in the datacenter on that computer.
Preparation for the mortgage has required me to put some additional money down to lock in my rate. This deposit went on a credit card, so I just finished running my numbers for this month to see how it will all play out. I am pleased that due to the timing of credit card due dates, I will not have to do too much shuffling of money to cover the change. I'm actually encouraged by this because it seems to imply to me that the mortage payments are not going to break the bank after all. <Insert sigh of relief.>
I've been mulling over the state of this web site, yet again, and I think it needs a cleaning, so I'll see about doing that soon. It definitely needs a new theme and I think some of the sections are unnecessary and no longer of interest to me. The theme is going to be hard for me to figure out, but it's probably time to flush the green overload away and come up with something better. The layout may as well stay simple, but maybe even simpler than what I have now.
I am thinking I might reorganize the space to eliminate the ChangeLog, which I don't bother with anymore, and try a new "feature" in which I discuss some political ideas. I can imagine I am not going to end up updating that all that often either, but it's more substance than what's there now.
I believe I'll probably drop the projects section, which is grossly out of date and largely useless, and maybe the resume as well, since it doesn't serve much of a purpose. I don't expect to leave Steadfast anytime soon, and I have a feeling if I did, I won't need someone to randomly find my web site to offer me a job.
These are just musings for now on the matter. I'll see what I'm in the mood for when I get back to tweaking. I need to go back to watching CSI: Miami, since the DVR ran out of buffer and it started playing again without me. :)
Good night!
Monday, July 2, 2007
[Comments: 0] 3:32 AM - tasteless
I didn't go to Tastes of Chicago today, because I'm thinking I'll try to gather a group to go next weekend, since it should be more interesting that way. It runs through the 8th, so perhaps I'll go on Saturday.
Clark is apparently inviting a bunch of people over here for the 4th of July to watch the fireworks. I don't know who will be here yet, so we'll see whether I'll be in the mood for the crowd. Worst case, I can knock down my wall of cushions and hide in my room. :P
I am looking forward to the 4th being nice and slow at work. Normally Wednesdays are relatively crazy, but this national holiday should bisect the week and if my guess is correct, the traffic levels will be something like Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday. This should be excellent, because it should give us some downtime to work on getting things rolled out for our new datacenter space. I wandered around on Friday when we first got access, and it looks like there shouldn't be any impediments to getting started. Should be an interesting week.
Okay, bed time! Good night!
