This weekend I had plans to work on some things, and thus far… that has not happened. I had to hang out waiting for the Apartment’s AC guy to come by for some inspection, apparently I have a smooth running AC - so that took out most of the day 10-4, but everything else thus far has been sleep or relaxing, not a project to work on… some I should be, but I’ve been working for 6 days straight of PHP/Server/Design - and I needed a break.
I am thinking about getting a new iMac - haven’t really purchased anything for the business this year, so I am thinking it may be time to get a new desktop as it has been almost 2 years since I got this station, and the its a CoreDuo not Core2Duo so it would be nice to kick it up a notch - but we’ll see - Apple.com does have some re-furbished models for a good sized discount, so I may pull off that, and get the RAM upgrade from Newegg as well as a new storage drive for Time Machine - not 100% sure yet, but really really considering it.
Business is slow - been going over the logs, not many new sales, but then again the site needs a big refresh, and that’s nearly done - one of the projects I had hoped to work on this weekend, and I still may tomorrow, granting I am not still asleep - but a nice refresh to FH and TN would do wonders I’d imagine, and once that’s up and running maybe snag a few more sales and eek up revenues a bit, but eventually I’d love to see the ability to leave the day-job behind again and focus on the ol Self Employement Game
Anywhoo - nearly 11, going to go start sipping some water and watching some TV then hopefully pass out on the couch, but tomorrow could bring some fun stuff - have a blessed Sunday folks!
Busy lately, been working / watching server software upgrades which are slow going, but bring a new optimized version of cPanel which should reduce memory usage quite a bit, aI was bumped from my church’s website project, due to ASP.NET/C# programming, but such is life I suppose, if only it were 6 months down the line when I had a production Windows server online - but sadly the Church site is moving forward sooner than that, but I don’t want to rush it thus I miss out on getting to host them like I had talked with the pastor about so bummed about that - but aside from some minor sad news with that, things are going somewhat smoothly.
New hours at work, not exactly what I wished for, but 8:30-5:30 is a step in the right direction, was hoping for 9-6 so I’d have an hour free and clear to do things like drop the network offline, but now I just have 30 minutes to fiddle - but at least it’s something better than using my weekend for doing work at the office, and leaves time for things like Sleep, Family, Friends, and my own business.
OS Front at work, I ditched my failing XP install, instead of killing it entirely I virtualized it and it’s running on the backup server leaving my primary workstation to become a Linux box, which is handy and keeps folks off it when I am not here, already had someone say “What’s up with your computer?” not sure why they were on it in the first place, but none the less they are confused now, I tried Ubuntu first, it was handy, detected all my hardware without issue, but I wanted each monitor to be a separate screen, with no support from the Ubuntu Forums on my post, I tried Fedora, but it was lacking support for my laser printer, and just felt a little laggy, so I just finished re-installing the latest Ubuntu.
Anywhoo - my day is nearly done, just wanted to post an update on things, going to go check out more of the latest cPanel release, and start the server doing a scan disk and a fresh reboot, ah the joys of file servers which are oddly setup. Night folks! Happy Fake Friday!
So I have found my first gripe about work. We use Windows. LoL - it’s not that bad, but being on Mac as a primary for so long, I haven’t used Windows keystrokes for a while, I have gotten used to the command+c vs. ctrl+c for copy and such, tonight back at home and not passed out from my day, I have been working on the computer a bit and I keep using the wrong keystrokes! Silliness indeed.
I have been considering asking work for a Windows Laptop, be nice to have for various reasons, one of which is to use at a workstation, or take offsite to some of the administration’s homes where I do some work on their “work” stations, but we’ll see - after this next week we move to Google Apps, so one step at a time I suppose, looking forward to 25GB of storage, plus I hope to migrate folks to the mail interface online vs. @#%! Netscape 7.2 (replace special characters with angry/nasty/obscene words) - they use it for Mail & Browsing, my goal is to do some streamline work across the board and replace Netscape 7.x with Firefox 2.x (none of them use IE!), and instead of Netscape Mail put in Thunderbird or Outlook, at this point I am game for ANYTHING more modern than 2004!
All in all the first full week went well, survived my first meeting, fixed some problems, made some calls, did various things to lay some more groundwork across the board for improvement, Monday I am going to start experimenting with a backup solution for all the workstations, only going to need 2TB of data storage, shouldn’t be too hard but I am getting there, balance of TN/FH is going fair, haven’t been on top of reps, but over the next week or so things should really start to level out.
Anywhoo - again, I can’t say it enough - big thanks to everyone for their prayers & support, and I ask that you say some extra prayers for my good friends Dan and Val as they are expecting their first child this next week! (Feb 18th is the Due Date!) so keep them lifted up to as they prepare for some new excitement in their life but as for me, I am going to wind down this week with a Cheese Pizza, some mindless TV, and a long nap into Saturday - which I get $300, some time on a computer (Re-Install XP for Matt) and of course if time and management allows, a walk-thru of an apartment! So much to do, so little time Have a great weekend folks!
So today I started it a tad rough, woke up feeling a lot better, but a little queasy, got up at 6:45, got in the shower, and warm water relaxed my shoulders and back which have been hurting, and then - whammo - puke city. Not a fun thing by any means, but at least it wasn’t at the new job So I showered, brushed the teeth, got dressed, headed out and got to the office a whole 5 minutes late - which still beat most folks in it seemed.
A full day though, been a while, at FHS when I was working with Ray Juhl I started early, rode my bike into the office, and changed, and got to work, not going home till sometimes 5pm after the last student finished a project, and the same with Masscom, sometimes we’d be there all night - though granted sometimes that was to play Quake 3 with the boss - but the bottom line is, I survived. I got my app filled out, copy of my resume in, a copy of my drivers license, have to bring in my social security card too - but it was not too shabby - even one of the guys who interviewed me walked by and saw the MacBook Pro and said “A MAC!? What?” - thinking I was going to get some fan boy speech either for or against, he said “I’ll have to have a look at that, I’ve been considering getting a mac for my office” - he uses PC, but is getting tired of M$ licensing fees, so he may have me help him make the leap if we can keep his access to some apps (ala Parallels) - in other words, the equation must be balanced.
So after work I took my usual quick route home, however, tonight everyone else, their cousin, their pet hamster, and their friend Joey who lived down the street from your cousin Ted in 3rd grade, ALSO took that route, and in turn I played the “Alternate Street!” game, which let me test my knowledge of the roads, and find myself a round-about, backwards way to get to the right freeway to wait another hour to get to my bank to only beat the manager from locking the door by 3 minutes, to put money in the bank to help combat the overcharge issues, so I was excited that I really had gotten there but I didn’t know *breath* - that my bank was fine. The two credits cleared this morning at the same time as the initial transaction from them, so I was ahead, and then some, adding an extra $400 from PayPal.
But anywhoo - I think it’s time to find food, and I might just be ordering a pizza, or cooking one, or thinking about cooking one - something though, as I realized around 3pm that I didn’t goto lunch, and I really didn’t feel like walking / driving anywhere except home, so it didn’t seem wise to tempt fate. So for now I’ll say farewell, may put down more thoughts later tonight, but I fear once the full belly hits, there will be little stopping me from the pillow. Thanks for the continued prayers and well wishes via IM - I’ll keep ya all updated!
So I posted to a fewsites about the common problem of the instructions for 802.1x auth over WPA2 Enterprise at Starbucks Hotspots (Provided by T-Mobile) - there were instructions but as of 10.5.1 it seems they were broken - so the other day I fiddled around and found the proper path - I’m posting parts of jayrcole’s instructions from MacOSX Hints and seeding in my tweaks:
1. Open Network Preferences, select AirPort, click Advanced.
2. In the Advanced section, click on the 802.1X pane, then click the “Domain” dropdown and choose “User”
3. Click the + and add in “T-Mobile” - really it can be anything.
4. In the username traditionally it’s your phone number, so fill that in and your password, on Network put in “tmobile1x”.
5. Under Authentication, check these: TTLS, PEAP, EAP-FAST, LEAP, and MD5.
6. Now click on TTLS, and choose “Configure…” and choose “PAP” and under Identity put in “anonymous”.
7. Under Network name, select Join Other Network; in Network Name enter tmobile1x, and under Security, select WPA2 Enterprise.
8. Finally, for 802.1X, select T-Mobile. And you’ll most likely need to re-enter your password (Didn’t save on my MBP).
9. Enjoy Hotspot goodness, and no more login pages, plus your browsing a tad more secure over WPA2, firewall is still a good idea.
So there you have it, if I get really energetic later I’ll install Skitch on the MBP and do some screen shots to go with the walk thru, but all in all this should get you rolling, I used it again today, just did “Join Network” and the tmobile1x was there put in my password and I was off on WPA2 Enterprise fun YMMV, who knows what 10.5.2 will do to us, but if it does change anything I’ll see what I can come up with.
I have some great friends (of which also happens to be a client) - this morning I got the note from my good friend BdG that he had snagged me a copy of the MacHeist Bundle - so this morning I have 8 (9 soon, all 11 within a week I’d imagine)! Very cool thing to do, gave me some great tools like TaskPaper which I’d been wanting to get ahold of, and if, but more like when the other apps get unlocked, it also gives me some great tools for the business as well adding in Snapz Pro and Pixelmator - so very jazzed indeed.
BdG if I could hug you in person, I would, and I wouldn’t care who saw it. Thank you my friend, a very awesome gesture indeed, and a nice pick me up to my day! Let’s hope it all flows as well! Happy Friday Folks!
leaving my primary workstation to become a Linux box, which is handy and keeps folks off it when I am not here, already had someone say “What’s up with your computer?” not sure why they were on it in the first place, but none the less they are confused now, I tried Ubuntu first, it was handy, detected all my hardware without issue, but I wanted each monitor to be a separate screen, with no support from the Ubuntu Forums on my post, I tried Fedora, but it was lacking support for my laser printer, and just felt a little laggy, so I just finished re-installing the latest Ubuntu.
