Found this on my phone…

My brother Ron unsure of what I am doing with my phone, and then showing me he was on the Sea food diet.

Moved Servers - Again.

Well after some experimenting, some downtime, and some consideration, my blog is back where it started - for you Xanga visitors, not much will have changed, you get a cached blog post more or less, as whatever and wherever I post from you get a copy, but for those who actually come to my site or use the RSS feeds, you may just be barely seeing this as I just put in the changes to the nameservers - but its already starting to propigate slowly but surely.

Anywhoo - been a long day, got a lot on my mind - thinking about wandering off for a few hours and getting some fresh air to clear my head, or a nice nap to rest this ol rusty body

Positive Work

A lot of projects are just work, they are just “Complete Task ABC” and in-turn get “Payment XYZ” - but with the Hands and Feet Project, it’s always a blessing, I discount all my work (and in some cases just do stuff because they are a fun group of people to work with, and are doing awesome work in Hati) - but tonight I put some finshing touches on their blog and gallery - both going live either tomorrow, or Monday - need to get them packed up on the dev server to move over to the production server.

But here is a sneek peek:

Both came out pretty darn good - had to do some learning on Smarty Templates in PHP to get past some errors related to the design’s mouse overs (aka use of Javascript) but all in all they came out nice. Using Gallery for the new photo gallery - and of course everyone’s favorite blog enviroment Wordpress for the blog, modded with some plugins to accomidate Flash Video from the trip, and various other mini-tweaks.

Very excited about these changes - a lot of awesome websites wrapping up here, launching at least 3 things Monday, if not more - as well as some tid-bit changes @ CMC to the nav, and such. But all in all these recent projects were fun, a tad complicated as far as hacking up design, but in the end it worked - so I can’t complain too much.

Sleep beckons soon (I hope) - night all.

Like a broken record…

So I have a lot on my mind lately, getting things ready for some big changes, security concerns, one client I am considering dropping and moving on after a few years working with them, personal life insanity, work (going good but I miss sleep) - but one chunk of verses I keep coming back to, and I think for everyone it’s important, if your in a romantic relationship, a friendship, family bonds, etc. the importance of love, and what it is:

1 Corinthians 13
The Way of Love

1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

2 If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

3 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

4 Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head,

5 Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,

6 Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

7 Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best, Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

8 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit.

9 We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete.

10 But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

Good stuff - for me I have been racking my brain with something, I can’t decide to tell someone or not, and based upon these scriptures taken from the message, I imagine you kind of get a hint of the topic - love to me is also total vulnerability, offering up yourself for another, be it in the love of family, love of friends, love of that special someone, it’s all those things - but it does in the realm of romantic involvement come with risk - man the joys of growing up late

One day I will grow up though (I’m thinking 32 or so, maybe work my way up to acting at least 12) - but for now, going to let this set of scriptures roll a bit more - because above and beyond everything else I mentioned, this scripture is how God chose to love us - we as humans were tainted with sin, and sin led to death, but through it all God sent his son and loved us and never gave up on us, loved us all the way to the cross to defeat the hold sin and death had on all of us, and gave us a chance at life. God is Good.

When did I get so popular?

Last couple of days I have noticed folks finding my site by searching for things like “CHUCK BROWN” - lot of traffic coming from MySpace/Flickr/Yahoo - kinda crazy - did I win the nice guy of the year award? Is there a bounty out for my capture? Did I win the lottery? Who knows.

So far a rather productive evening/afternoon - got a lot done on a project for the Hands and Feet crew, they now have a overly fancy Wordpress blog, with Flash Video support - a very nice setup, still want to fiddle with it some more, but all in all it looks good, going to work some on the photo gallery, then I have to spend some time working on Awaken’s site - get in sinched up and good to go, then first thing in the AM is working on HaF again on a email newsletter system, I think we still have one in place from before, but not sure, need to check it out, apply updates, and go from there, as well as put in a few tweaks to DNS, as well as get a banner setup announcing the blog.

Anywhoo - back to listening to Finnish Radio Chamber Choir - man I miss good vocal chamber music, good stuff, latin - understand some of it, but all in all, just sheer power of human vocal sounds, wowza, good stuff. Anywhoo - off I go! Zoom!

Server Security (it’s definately a monday)

Today I got the email I kind of fear “XYZ server compromised?” - thankfully there was none of the usual ?!?@?!?@$#!? attached to the question as sometimes folks do, but just another kick in the pants to get some of these upcoming changes done, and me out of the sys-admin loop, I mean doing it for someone else is one thing, but even that, I am going to probably pull out of sooner or later, as much as it’s “fun” and makes decent money, just not worth the stress anymore, as in a situation where your truly hacked or hardware issues, etc. it’s not a happy place.

Thankfully in this instance, it was a single site compromised, nothing horrible, but will require folks to change their passwords, as it looks like they took a snapshot of their forum, as well as their database password from the config file, happens, not fun, but happens - so tonight I put a few rules in place in the mean time to try and weed out some of the junk, it’s testing on 2 servers, and running smooth, seeing lot of random denys as a lot of older apps out there lately.

If you use a blog, a online gallery, a CMS system like Typo, PHP-Nuke, etc. please please please, even if you don’t host with me, update your installs. Check for security notifications and do your part to keep your site safe, and from attacking others, the chances are you will one day get hacked if your site is in a search engine, but it’s one of those things you hope never happens - and I can safely say, the passing of the sysadmin baton is one I am not dreading in the least.

Tomorrow I do have a meeting downtown with my brother, going to be installing the 4.5mbps line (finally) - so from 2 or so until evening I’d imagine I’ll be there, or if time allows, I may goto BC and help Rosie do research in the library, worked with her tonight via me using the net, and her jotting down notes, so got her squared away some, but the paper is due on Thursda - so always tons of fun research to do

Got my taxes out in the mail today, bought a lawn mower as my old one of 5 years or so died, so it was time to shell out another $240 and get a new 6.75hp mower and begun some of the outdoor joy of mowing the backyard down a few feet so I can really get a good feel for the backyard and my project for it, going to sketch up what I want the firepit to look like don’t worry Jake, it’ll be perfect for putting things in and making them glow! (woohoo!) but it looks promising, probably about 1-2k of materials I’ll need, and some time, so hopefully after the road trip, I can start putting away some cash, pick up a few projects, sell this new inter-office server etc. so lots of cool options to consider, but just excited it’s a possiblity.

Anywhoo - Gotta get back to these two servers, if these patches look good, I have 2 others to patch now, and then I’ll do client boxen tomorrow - but they do seem to be blocking attacks, so that’s promising! Pray for me and my bro tomorrow around 3pm as that is our install time, this upgrade has been full of insanity, and the remainder of the night we will be pushing the limits of the line to ensure its properly setup and running smoothly, so gonna be a long week.. but through it all, God is Good. Night folks.

God is Good (even with Taxes) :)

WOW. What a awesome Easter. No complaints, even with a local server lockin up, it wasn’t the end of the world (have a while before it’s production level anyway) - but good time at church with my fam, good food (oi good food, Michael is my hero) - good ol fashioned fun with my niece (photos of her finding evil eggs to follow) - and finished taxes ($152 owed Fed. / $7 refund from State) - a lower payout this year as this past year for business was sort of more of a building year, didn’t focus on sales (as a 2 yr running of the same homepage & special @ FH!) but this year will be different, granted lower income this year, but a higher total revenue, some good changes throughout the year which brought about a lower operations cost, and with fewer projects done this year I actually made less money, but in turn more profit.

So a good good good good day. Very happy the tax wasnt the origianl thing TaxCut told me, $5,893 - I hate that it does a running tally, at one point I did have a $77 refund from fed though, though self employment taxes helped rid me of that but I kind of get it back, going to try and be a nice guy, even though I don’t HAVE too, but it’s that age ol bit of how my mind works, God blesses me, who am I not to bless someone in return.

Anywhoo - Have to get up bright and early and pick up a few 3800 forms from the post office (certified mail) and get them slapped on my envelopes for my returns and then dropped in a mailbox! A GOOD day. Good chats too - I have awesome clients. Nuff said. Night folks.