So today has really just seemed to drag on and on, I can’t get going! There is a pile of things to do, and all I really have the desire to do is goto sleep, had a bad night of sleep, forgot to set notifications off on monitoring for 10PM as the upstream was doing a upgrade at 12AM CST, so I got woken up as server by server’s monitor went off, not my favorite kind of wake up call, but I got to sleep about 2 hours later, and had a rough night, couldn’t seem to get comfortable.
Project wise the PHP is coming along, even found a solution for the project for Josh, granted I wasn’t to begin working on it till Monday, but it just posed some fun challenges, and I actually got ahead on other things - though tonight is EE code night, 2 days off should give me a fresh look at the project, it seems pretty easy going for what I hope to have up soon, but the code should actually roll out pretty quick at this point as the requirements and such have really firmed up, so excited to have that moving forward.
Anywhoo - I hope I get some energy here soon, I may take a cat nap here in a bit and see if that takes the edge off my lack of energy, or I’ll just grind along here getting as much as I can done with only 1/2 a brain working Take Care all and enjoy your Thursday!
So the house thing seems to be a bust - little sad, but not too unexpected, apparently the property my rents looked at was in pretty bad shape, and would of cost a small fortune to as my mom put it “get the smell out” so their search continues, but I am not giving up hope of my own place soon.
Picked up a possible project, still working on the particulars for the quote, but I have been thumbing thru a SQL drop file here for a bit, and I think I have the project nearly laid out in my head, need to sleep on a few things, but I think it’s do-able, hope to make some headway on other projects over the next 2 days, both billing & programming, both are two key projects I really want to wrap up and have done and done right, so far so good, just need to really buckle down tomorrow, hopefully I can get some sleep tonight.
I looked in the mirror a minute ago, and I actually recognized myself - I dunno, just so much stress lately, and questioning why I do things in life, things I have taken for granted, things I am trying to change in my life, for a while there I didn’t seem like myself in some areas of my life, and I think I am getting there, still some changes down the road, still some rough patches ahead - but I think I am going to make it even got a good laugh tonight, and got to relax to some good TV (which is rare) but I dunno, I am just praying over a lot of things right now, jobs, opportunities, finances, everything, now if only God would add me to the share list on his Google Calendar for my life! Oh how much more simpler that’d make things.
Anywhoo - I appreciate all of you who keep track of me here, and those of you who keep me in your prayers - good to know I have friends out there who cover me in prayer! Take care all, have a good Tuesday!
So the day hasn’t really gone as planned, seems they rarely do, so this afternoon, and I am sure into the evening short of someone calling me to goto dinner somewhere else, I’ll be tinkering in PHP, two projects I am going to toy with, one is a paid projects I have gone slow on, I think I am just going to finish it and be done with it over the next few days, the other is a CMS, going to re-vamp the old system I wrote for a few clients, and tune it up for a larger-scale application.
I want to get out of the house tomorrow and do some photography weather willing, with the recent rains, some things are green, so might be nice to journey up the hill, was thinking of going to Lake Isabella - goto Ming all the time (easy drive) but the big lake is up the mountain on a 2 lane road, so its a little more of a stressful drive at some level, but who knows - it could be fun!
Anywhoo - just wanted to breathe for a moment why I was waiting for PHP to re-compile - take care all, remember My Name is Earl returns tonight, FREE EARL!
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?
My playing with CakePHP has ended for now, I like some of the interface, not as elegant as Ruby, but PHP is a more accessible language at the moment and some of the basics are looking pretty nice - but a break was needed to step back from the joys of toying with it, and decided to work on my blog a little and get some client details done, all in all a productive morning
Well back to it for another hour or so, then a good long nap. Another day of trying to track down some money (yay)
Now and again I help out a friend or two with PHP code, today I was given a good little challenge to help on, the issue was a event calendar, one side displayed the text title/date/time of the event, the other side showed a thumbnail of the event’s flyer, the task was simple:
When you click the TEXT link it would change the side picture template (already working)
Data for Events/Info pulled from database (already working)
When you click thumbnail, have it popup the full-sized image (not working)
So #3 is where I came in, to find a solution for the code bit to make it dynamically load the pop-up code instead of the one static image it was doing, so I got to thinking, and what I came up with was tweaking the existing javascript in the PHP end of things - I made a function that set one of the variables needed in the javascript popup code “imageURL” so when you clicked the link and it went to change the image thumbnail, it set a variable that was the image location the popup needed.
Was pretty cool, I realize that seems maybe trivial at some level, but it was a fun challenge to tackle with a hybrid of php & javascript,it was a nice stretch of the ol brain as javascript is not one of my languages of choice, but in this case my knowledge cut it and I made a few other tweaks to the code - came out really nice.
Well busy night tonight, Denny’s, Server Migration, Sleep - I personally after the in-and-out heat today could go for “sleep” but the migration should go pretty smooth - so on with the evening - have a good weekend folks!
Take Care all and enjoy your Thursday!
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.
