I realized today that my wife and I have celebrated a 25th, and we didn't even realize it--our 25th Christmas together. And this Valentines Day is our 25th one together. That's romantic, eh?
I ordered her a nice necklace and earring set from Novica.com. They have nice stuff from overseas artisans. I bought a mitten/scarf/hat set for my sister-in-law for Christmas last year. The necklace and earrings are from Mexico. Good prices, good service, nice stuff. Somehow affiliated with National Geographic, not sure how.
Finally got my new server up and running. It's doing well, but there is a glitch somewhere, not sure where, to track down. Such is the life of a small-time web site services provider.
Great what's happening in Iraq, huh? Encouraging.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Friday, January 21, 2005
Server Woes
I run a small web hosting company, single server, 15 or so customers, mostly businesses and churches. Server is colocated, some 30 miles away from where I live. That little server has been humming since late 1997, busily serving pages. I probably visited it 10 times physically--the rest of the time I administered it remotely using Timbuktu.
Well, my little server is no more. On Tuesday morning, everything was fine at 6 am, then at 7 am, nothing. Come to find out there was a major water leakage in the building housing my server, and of course the server is in the basement......fortunately, only my power supply got fried because the server box was off the floor, thank you Lord!
Anyway, it wouldn't reboot because when the power supply fried it messed my hard drives. But with a little help from Norton (Norton Utilities, that is), I was able to get them running again. It was flaky, though, and for 24 hours we just sort of limped along on a wing and a prayer.
About 4 months ago I started building a new faster server (the old one runs a 500 mHz G3, this one runs a 1.2 mHz G4) with some very fast hard drives. That was all put together and basically ready to go. So last night I copied the critical files (web sites and email), took the old server down one last time, and fired up the new one.
It's great, working well, no problems so far. It has taken some hours of work to restore settings, connections, etc. I still have a few things to go but basically we're online again. Could have been MUCH worse. And boy is the new one zippier!
Well, my little server is no more. On Tuesday morning, everything was fine at 6 am, then at 7 am, nothing. Come to find out there was a major water leakage in the building housing my server, and of course the server is in the basement......fortunately, only my power supply got fried because the server box was off the floor, thank you Lord!
Anyway, it wouldn't reboot because when the power supply fried it messed my hard drives. But with a little help from Norton (Norton Utilities, that is), I was able to get them running again. It was flaky, though, and for 24 hours we just sort of limped along on a wing and a prayer.
About 4 months ago I started building a new faster server (the old one runs a 500 mHz G3, this one runs a 1.2 mHz G4) with some very fast hard drives. That was all put together and basically ready to go. So last night I copied the critical files (web sites and email), took the old server down one last time, and fired up the new one.
It's great, working well, no problems so far. It has taken some hours of work to restore settings, connections, etc. I still have a few things to go but basically we're online again. Could have been MUCH worse. And boy is the new one zippier!
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Time flies like an arrow
What can I say? It's been a month and a half. In that time I have closed my teaching semester, took some time off for Christmas vacation, and gotten the new semester up and running. Gotta get back to blogging. I have some things to say. Stay tuned.
Friday, November 26, 2004
Very cool site
Amazing. Now here's an idea for entrepreneurs: cafepress.com. Basically it's an outfit that produces custom products (caps, mugs, frisbees, t-shirts, etc.) and does everything except market them for you: you upload your logo, and the handle the orders & fulfillment, all at nominal cost. The interesting thing for me is books: 3 cents a page plus binding, makes a 500 page book sell for $22 plus markup.
Makes me think about the college textbook I've been considering writing.
--Steve
Makes me think about the college textbook I've been considering writing.
--Steve
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Authoxy
With the help of Heath at HRSoftworks(.net), he got Authoxy working for me. We Mac users are now nearly 100% full citizens on our MS network. I can do everything including software update, access network drives, iTunes music store, iTunes radio, Live365, MS Office Update (and other software updates), etc. etc.
Can't do MaxiBidder (colourfull.com) for some reason. It doesn't work. Some other things don't work, like Skype, but that's not surprising because I think some of those special ports are not open to anyone here.
I am a happy camper. I've used Authoxy for about 4 weeks now hard, and it just works. There is an issue with startAuthoxy (startup items) that doesn't seem to be working right but I bet we get it working.
Can't do MaxiBidder (colourfull.com) for some reason. It doesn't work. Some other things don't work, like Skype, but that's not surprising because I think some of those special ports are not open to anyone here.
I am a happy camper. I've used Authoxy for about 4 weeks now hard, and it just works. There is an issue with startAuthoxy (startup items) that doesn't seem to be working right but I bet we get it working.
Wow time flies
It's been over a month, sorry (to all my multitudes of readers, yeah right).
I have a theory about time. When you're a kid, say, 5 years old, one day constitutes a large percent of your total existence (1/(365*5)). But when you're 47, one day constitutes much less than that when compared to your total (1/(365*47)). Consequently, the days seem shorter than they did when you were a kid.
It's just a theory. :)
Ciao.
I have a theory about time. When you're a kid, say, 5 years old, one day constitutes a large percent of your total existence (1/(365*5)). But when you're 47, one day constitutes much less than that when compared to your total (1/(365*47)). Consequently, the days seem shorter than they did when you were a kid.
It's just a theory. :)
Ciao.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Visuals
A week ago, several of the deacons in our church came to my house to talk over a change we want to propose at our church. It involves property, mortgages, real estate, etc. We talked through three or four scenarios, came to a couple of decisions.
There I am sitting in prayer meeting tonight and it comes to me in my mind, a beautiful graph showing how one figure will change over time, and how other figures will change in relation to it, all working together to confirm what we decided. I jot down a quick sketch and show it to our pastor and one of the deacons who couldn't be there for the meeting. They see the concept immediately!
It will serve as a superb visual to help the people in our church understand what we're proposing.
Ah the spendor of just the right visual! Worth many thousands of words.
There I am sitting in prayer meeting tonight and it comes to me in my mind, a beautiful graph showing how one figure will change over time, and how other figures will change in relation to it, all working together to confirm what we decided. I jot down a quick sketch and show it to our pastor and one of the deacons who couldn't be there for the meeting. They see the concept immediately!
It will serve as a superb visual to help the people in our church understand what we're proposing.
Ah the spendor of just the right visual! Worth many thousands of words.
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