Archive for 'basic goodness'
The night started with “CHUCK” on NBC (the night was all NBC really) - but CHUCK was hilarious, all in all it had some fair computer humor, I did find it interesting when a computer fell over that the covers fell off the drives exposing the platters… but for most, I suppose that’d be a more understandable visual cue that “Drive Broken” - but the cast has one familiar face for me Adam Baldwin from Firefly, which for me added a nice bit of “Jayne Extreme” comedy. All in all, I’d say on a voting scale out of 5 stars, easily 4 1/2, just weary about the extent the plot can be re-played.
Heroes - the long awaited return of the series, a interesting start, some questions almost answered, and some new things rolling, like Virus Girl and Anti-Virus Boy? It was a good face paced episode, we find the fate of Peter, we see Nathan alive, but is what we see his true appearance or is he the man in the mirror? Is Sulu dead? very excited about a weekly return, granted this season looks thus far packed with shows I am going to watch, maybe it’s time to stop the BlockBuster online for a while?
Lastly tonight was Journeyman - not sure on this one either, it needed a little faster pace for me - the base story line has been built and some questions have been asked about his ability to move thru time and his purpose, but what is next? The show reminds me of a twist of Quantum Leap [link] and Early Edition [link] - and Apple/AT&T really got their foot in the door with the iPhone as it’s what the main character uses, granted I was a little sad to see them show it not allow any internet cached browsing (so I’m a nerd, little things irk me) - but the show has some promise, and at least a base to build from now - so time will tell.
More to come this week with shows, should give me a nice break in the evenings, but all in all today was nuts, just couldn’t get going, over-thinking again, not sure why - not sure if its a good thing or a bad thing - so two fold #1) Please keep me in your prayers, lots to do, feels like little time to do it, and with a tight budget, makes things even more crazy. #2) Post some comments in my last post, help me out a bit and give me some feedback as to what you’d like to see from a hosting company.
Anywhoo - midnight, part of me wants to sleep, part of me wants to clean, part of me wants to just sit and stare at the wall… ah life. Night all.
So for the record, I didn’t die. It may of seemed like it, but the truth of the matter is - I got fed up with SPAM, so of course, I do what any good server nerd would do…. start testing everything I can get my hands on - and I came across some great tutorials, some great software, and sort of did a mix of them all to see what I could come up with, and I think I made myself a pretty nice proxy for mail, basically the way mail flows now is as such:
Outside World -> Filter -> (if clean) -> Server
So it’s pretty nice, reduces the load of servers a bit, but the catch to the system as-is, there was no front-end to manage users in the system, so in other words, I unlike my other option (which wasn’t supported by most Datacenters) which was easy simply add the domain, it did the rest, this one requires each… user… for…. each…. domain….. to… be… added. So the original method was using phpMyAdmin to manage a database layer which managed users, which while was handy, for adding say, oh I don’t know 350 users, would be a pain in the but to do at some level, so what did I do? Spent the last two days developing and deploying a very ugly, but functional PHP application which while not GREAT code, it works 
and allows me to make as many users at one time as needed, so if I want to add all the users on a single domain all I do is make it as such “user:password” - the system does the rest, whatever domain it is managing it appends that domain to the user so say I was using this domain, it’d append @charlesabrown.com to the name for me automatically.
Needless to say I was pretty happy, and the system has some great tools for the end users which I didn’t code, but I am going to spruce up and customize a wee bit to make pretty for my customers, but so far the testing has gone really well - my parents both have accounts on a domain I own, and they were test subjects, so far it’s tagged about 4 good as spam, but that is because I have things turned up to the highest filtering on their two accounts, simply because they get a decent amount of spam, so currently as their MX records update, they are getting a slow steady stream of things going into their Quarantine - it’s lovely.
So that’s where I have been - My goal is to spruce up the code over the next week or so and make a interface for end users, thus it’s hard wired to a customer domain, so if a customer wants the filtering - they have full access to add users, and create new logins for the training interface for their users, needless to say, very nifty!
Tomorrow I am getting my car washed, my friends are working a car wash for my old Jr. High’s music dept. and quite frankly I am a sucker for music programs and I want to do my part, told them if they sold candy too I’d buy it all up but with some light rain, a little car wash will do nicely I hope! But other than that, no major plans for the weekend, I know I have some things to do around here (read: clean room more), and I am still trying to get the budget happy so I can get on my way to an apartment, so if anyone wants to give me money on a constant basis, please do! Heck I’d even work for it if needs be… well work within reason.
Anywhoo - thats really the catch-up of things, a pretty nice week, some good things taken care of, have some sites to clear from servers tonight, and some final bits of billing to adjust for customers, but all in all, tonight should be mellow, I think since no one has responded to going to Denny’s later, I am going to go put in a pizza, and then watch last night’s Burn Notice finale, next week all the good TV starts, how will I get any work done?
Parting Video:
Weekends are always… well uneventful, mainly I use them for sleep, or getting into trouble (muwhahaha) but this weekend was nice, got to hang out with some friends and have some food (which they paid for, thank you Noah & Rosie) - heck they even bought me ice cream - total score 
but also got to have some good times hangin with the kMan at his new temporary office which is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from me down the freeway, which is pretty cool, even got a key!
But the new week is coming, and I am actually pretty excited about it, get some more money coming in - tomorrow I find out about some server services, which could infuse the business a bit more, which is nice, also helps me pay some bills, not to mention get one step closer to an apartment, so pretty jazzed indeed, already increased the monthly revenue about $350 a month, just need to keep it rolling and keep the side work flowing aside from hosting, I really want to try and wing it before years end for real this year, so some work this week as well on the hosting front’s finishing up a re-vamped/re-tooled TN and get a new special/touch-up the FH site which just had it’s back-end all updated to all the newer security patches, went very smoothly.
Keep me in your prayers, while I know not a TON of you read this daily (heck I don’t post daily) - I know some of you check in on this now and again, and I’d appreciate some prayers, really working hard to find a good balance in life between work / family / friends / and most importantly faith - so hopefully as things level out these next few weeks I can really make a good effort to get things taken care of in that respect, not to mention finding a nice apartment in a good area, already have 2 places picked out from online, I need to go out and see what they are like aside from what the monitor shows me already have had several friends in town offer help in moving, so very grateful for that.
Anywhoo - thanks for stopping by, thanks for taking a minute to read this ol fart’s blog of thoughts, hopefully this week will turn out as good as last week! Take care all, have a good week!
Well quite a week, can’t actually believe it is Friday already! Just seems like this week has flown by and yet it is still going strong - lot of things went down this week, haven’t had a chance to really blog all that much - but it has been yowza - quite a week, to re-cap some of this week’s happenings:
- Expanded my prayer & bible time by getting on Ed Young PodCast & Daily Email (linkage)
- Picked up the 80GB iPod Classic (lovely)
- Tried to be Sick (not so good at it)
- Got a call from a old friend
- Getting INC’d - thank the lord
- Coded on Projects Some
- Got the last of my stuff from the old office #2 (kMan’s place)
- Watched and Enjoyed You Kill Me
- Assorted other things
It was a fun week though, had some blips, some hiccups, but it worked, almost entirely into a “normal” sleep schedule, it’s odd going to sleep at a semi normal hour and waking up before 7am… not sure if it’ll stick - but I sort of hope it does!
I am sure there are other things I could go into detail on, the topic for one was something I had planned to talk about, but the short version is this week has been some good give and take, constantly I feel like all I do is give sometimes, but this week I got to give and take, it was nice, I have some awesome friends - now I just need to take a nap so I can hang out some more this evening, and this weekend! More Later!
Well I have gone and done it, I snagged a 80gb iPod “Classic” - I weighed the pro’s and con’s in my head, and in the end it really just will be fine, no use in going back to the last get, going to use my change jar to get the TV cable when it comes out, but it is nice to be able to watch video and such now - plus the new UI bits are nice too, heck even came with 3 free games - so a full review of my takes on it in a few days.
All in all a good day today, got the ball rolling on a few things, some new job bits pop’d up over night, so work at least I’ll have tunes to enjoy while working and can leave my evil master “iTunes” and save 25% CPU & 25MB ram - anywhoo back to watching House! Have a Good Night Folks!
Well it’s life, budget has really bounced back some, granted wish it could be better, but it’s getting there - should level out over the next 2 months I’d imagine, and some more options coming up for money so pretty jazzed up, and I am going apartment hunting in the coming weeks as things really firm up and look at the option to get that rolling, while I have enjoyed the last few years here, rent free, really getting a chance to help my parents with their health issues, the last 2 years they have more or less gotten a lot better, and I am not as needed as I once was (or chose to make myself) - so back to a living on my own bit.
Which leads me to projects, projects galore, one I think is officially dead - took over 1 month for one of the folks involved to reply back on a staff board we had setup, I am not blaming anyone, if anyone is to blame I’d go for me as I am essentially the lead coder, designer, hosting guy - but at the same time each of these guys have other things going on as well (just like me) and thus I am not sure if it’ll happen - so I am going to take a lot of the code I have written and look at making a little tech blog sort of a Q&A bit for folks to ask me random questions on tech, and sort of do that, granted if the group gets together and says “Let’s go!” and we can make a REAL plan, I’ll definitely poke back at it for a while - just time lately I want to really hop into something fun, something that makes a little bit of revenue ($10 a month at least) and help others in the process.
Personal life - I dunno, I think I still have one sometimes lol - all the stuff lately with getting worked leveled out has taken a good chunk of my time up, which in itself isn’t a HUGE deal, but really it’s time consuming, nailing down a strong monthly budget with at least $150 above and beyond the set budget, which includes fun money already so $150 pad isn’t too shabby, but I am looking to do a REAL audit of all my hosting services, and I am feeling strongly about this new billing system, saves me some monthly money, as well as makes it easier to build an affiliate system - so going to peruse that for sure, but the apartment will help, having my own space, my own crazy habbits/hours/etc. and easier to have folks over to party like it’s 1999 so I am looking forward to that, and hoping that all the stuff that’s pending really pans out.
But there it is, things right now are mildly crazy, but I am enjoying some of the projects before me, some good fun, I am getting to really lay things out, learn new web functionality like AJAX and such at a more complete level vs. just recycling other scripts, which is making for more streamlined scripts, heck this last little bit deploying ajax and building a custom filter to scan the database for usernames already in-use, wonderful! So pretty excited, some fun things I can deploy using it, and really spice up some older apps I think, so we shall see.
Anywhoo - it’s 1am already, amazing how this evening has really gone by, only a few minutes it seems like it was 7pm - but such is my great grasp of time as of late but life goes forward, still looking to get an iPod, leaning towards the 80gb 6th gen, while the 160GB would be nice, all in all 80gb is MORE than I need, and I can use the difference to get the new iPod cable for the iPod to hook it up to my TV on occasion and watch flicks I have purchased on the TV - so we shall see what this week brings! Take care all, have a wonderful week.
Well so far a good day, well aside from the massive mess of streets near Oswell St. but hey - even that wasn’t THAT bad I had a good day, some good prayer time, and I am still fighting thru some things, but all in all, I am alive and breathing, so its all good.
Got the first payment from the kMan, just got off the phone with him in fact and really had a nice chat, got some very awesome compliments from him (nice to get a pat on the back now and again) - we discussed plans for next week sitting down and re-arranging his servers and getting things all fancy - possibly save him a couple hundred a month in hosting bills, letting him de-commission on of his servers and get him setup in a VPS, which for 2/3 of his smaller sites would work PERFECTLY - so pretty jazzed it’s all coming together, and the idea that I may have a good steady work flow from him is a promising bit, but still, I have to really get some things rolling with FH and TN here soon, probably more so with FH, but none the less, pretty excited!
Made it to the bank with 30m to spare, got money in, and processed a payment a day early just so it’s one thing off my mind, and have funds in there to cover my insurance payment now, like 4 things appeared overnight and drained the account, and the insurance had not show up yet! So this was a nice day to get that money in, and not have to worry too much, plus I have another $425 coming this next week it looks like from odd jobs, so it’ll be nice to have a bit of a pad again, granting I don’t go too wild and buy an iPod (donations welcome!) - but time will tell on the iPod.
Website projects are going good though, going to make a bite to eat, then basically hit the code for about 2 hours, going to launch a pre-registration page for a website tomorrow, and I just have a few tiny adjustments to make to ensure the database tracks, and the AJAX bit for checking the username availability works it is a very cool feature to have in it, so I am very excited.
Anywhoo - thanks to everyone who has been keeping me in their prayers, I really do appreciate it.
