The Geek

1:26am: Is this thing still on?
Test

2:14pm: Moved
On, there are two things. Until the DNS catches up, you can find me at the temp URL. When DNS does catch up, go to the domain for Geek Blog. Thanks for the visits.

9:25pm: Code available
I have one Live Journal code available. If someone wants it, please explain to me what exactly you'd be using it for, and the first one I agree with I will give it to. I am shutting this down in the next few days, so I want to make sure it does not go to waste. Megan was a good person for giving it to me, I want to pass it along.

5:28pm: Ohhhhh yeah.....
Well, the blog is around for three month's at least. It's paid and all things are going great. Now, for propagation. I have been setting things up, like the new Geek Blog's mail list, the Geek Blog's Forum, and even a chat room. I can now really see what Keith meant when he said that the control panel is awesome. I have thoroughly enjoyed the control panel, and it makes things a lot easier to use. The blog is still here for a short time. I will not be blogging through Moveable Type yet, because I don't want to import the old entries until such time as I have no doubts that all of the visitors will hit there, or most of them at least.

This is the kind of host I have been waiting a very long time for. Secure, but not overly anal about that stuff. They have their own Message board package, their own chat program and their own list software, which is Mailman and makes me very happy. I may, one day, even move Geek's World there. Maybe. For now it is good at Shawn's server. I hope to be up and blogging on the HM/Blogomania server by the end of the weekend. So, if you want, feel free to delete this on Monday, things should be good.

I will ask you all to look for the new server, and the only way you'll notice a small difference is the "Temporary LiveJournal Blog URL" link at the top. Oh, wait, I just added a bunch of icon's on the side. Needless to say, you'll know when you are seeing the new server. When you do see it, please let me know. The one thing, by the way, is that when I move to Moveable Type, it is very likely that at least for awhile things will be a little.. different. I am having a hard time figuring out the templates, so I may have to live with the default one and just post in my two side bars.

9:34pm: Gates pranked for great April Fools
The Register reported yesterday that Bill Gates, co-founder of the world's biggest software vendor was tricked and conned by as couple of Canadians. According to the Globe and Mail report the story is based on, they spent a month working through the red tape, pretending to be Jean Chr?tien, and when they finally got through they got around to the Canadian PM having a problem with Windows and asking who the hell created it. It must have been one hell of a trick, because it seems that until the end of the call Gates had no idea it was a prank. I guess Bill is even more gullible then to think his software is good enough to withstand the force of a bunch of angry Unix geeks.

9:21pm: Best Buy in Canada
A while back Best Buy bought Future Shop, the troubled Canadian electronics retailer, which was in the midst of many renovations. Best Buy had planned to expand on it's own, but this gave Best Buy an immediate in. Well, the other day Best Buy announced that due to lack of sales in their Future Shop outlet's, they would be launching some of their own stores under the Best Buy brand. I haven't been in a Future Shop since Best Buy took over, but I can seriously tell you that anything could be better then the vulture like attitudes of the employees. you couldn't enter their stores without being mugged by the staff.

8:30pm: Winnipeg on West Wing
Ok, why is it that all of the writers in the US of A(and Toronto) always refer to Winnipeg as a small town backwater hick town with nothing good? They just referred to Winnipeg on West Wing. The situation was the Vice Pres. describing the play-by-play of a typical hockey game. He referred to an announcer describing a guy named Hagenchuk who 'was traded from Winnipeg for a case of Labatt's Lite'. Now, I am not very knowledgeable of way trades are made, but I am pretty sure that Randy Carlyle would be a little perturbed if anyone in his organization traded even the worst player for 'a case of Labatt's Lite'. This is not to mention that we would want a hell of a lot more to trade any player to an NHL franchise. There. Rant done.

6:48pm: Host choices
I am really happy to see that Blogomania has moved to Hosting Matters, the same host of the wise Mr. Devens, for their host. Based upon the descriptions of Christine, these people have gone to really great length's to ear her business, even supporting her overnight. When you have a host that is still answering questions on an emergency basis until 6:30 AM, you know it is a really good host. I hope to be set up with them by the end of tomorrow, so this may be one of the last few posts here. I'll let you know when things change, and provide a link back while this is up.

5:38pm: Oh, did I forget to mention Blogger's problems?
My bad. I am not sure if the following is being experienced by normal users, but I was trying to set up a blog for myself, Dave and Christina to share ideas for a Project Dave has an idea for, but since I set it up last night I have has nothing but trouble. I keep getting a 503 error. It appears to be fixed now, but there have been varying levels of screwed up over the last 12 or more hours. For instance, hen I first signed up, none of my blogs showed up on the right like they usually do. Two red blogger B's and they both had no text beside them and only pointed to Blogger Pro. Now the accoutnI set up shows as non existent, and when I try to create a new blog over that one, I get a message that the user name is taken. Go figure.

4:45pm: In other site news...
The newly launched Ask It Here is pretty much dead. Anyone going to the main page is redirected to a page saying "Access is denied. Internal error:The request failed with HTTP status 404: Not Found." and unless I am blocked by IP, the site is dead. Might I add that Netcraft shows they are using Windows 2000 and IIS 5.0. Guys, just ask Microsoft's web admin how well that works. I hope the site is back to fully functional soon enough.

As well, I am a little pissed off at TechTV. They asked for beta testers for a couple of new message boards they were testing out, and it looked basic but good and functional. The problems arise today when I go back to find 90% of the messages removed. I am sorry, but why set up a message board if you are going to delete everything? I can only hope this is an automatic process gone wild, because this is bad form and bad design.

4:37pm: Welcome to the great Blogomania set up race
I am informed by Christine that she is working fast and furious(well, ok, she is at work, but other's are) to get the Blogomania site and it's customers back up. It appears some lucky people are still able to see the Blogomania customers, and have graciously volunteered to move as much data as possible off of the rotten VeoWeb server's. Pathetically I note that VeoWebv's site is sitting pretty. Bastards! Anyway, Christine says that the weekend is pry a little longer then it will take, but assuming all those who want to stay inform her ASAP things look like propagation will be the only hitch, at least for their own forums.

I can access the site now by IP, so I know it is back up, but it is only a matter of propagation. Christine assures me that the forums will probably be up tonight, to help facilitate the discussion among customers. I am also told that the propagation will be done ASAP, though it really depends on the DNS servers on the web. I just hope VeoWeb does not pull DNS theft by continually reasserting itself as the primary DNS. I have seen bitter hosts do this before, but after 22 hours and not a word, they have no room to be the injured party.

3:51pm: Disagreement abound
So, my mother and sister appear to agree on one thing. My priority should not be in getting Geekblog.net back up but instead in saving for Rent. Good point, but I have lines on a few things to get my rent paid, and at the very least assistance should cover it if I am in the program I am looking into on Monday. I will find a way, and I am pretty sure my landlord will be lenient as I did pay the first 9 months of my rent in advance.

3:19pm: Gentoo is big, hardware plans
Ok, Leo Laporte had blogged Gentoo. Gento, the Linux distribution that is customized and compiled on the system, for each system individually, has had a lot of mention on some of the Daynotes member sites, and several of the medium sized blogs. But to have the attention of Leo Laporte, co-host of The ScreenSavers, is a huge thing. I doubt Leo will be doing a show on Gentoo any time soon since from what I hear it is a very long(well over 90 minutes) install process seeing as it has to compile all your programs into the kernel and such, but I think that Gentoo is and will quickly surpass SuSE, Slackware and Debian as one of the most popular and mentioned distribution.

This is the first that compiles itself for your specific specs, and therefore runs smoothly without as many problems as something like Red Hat might have. there is also a lot less trouble with settings because, like I said, it is customized to your own system. This is not a users Distro, yet, as there is stuff you need to know that an average user wouldn't, but overall it is a great choice for the expert and not so expert user. I plan to look into this as one of the many things on my long list of stuff to do, and trust me there is plenty on that list.

For instance, I want to figure out how to test this P133 so I can leave some sort of feedback with Yuel, the seller. I also want to reassemble the 486 and try the net installs of OpenBSD and if that does not easily work, Net or FreeBSD's. Following that I want to get a Linux/Windows 98 SE system for Cody using the 233 and the board I am currently using to test the 133. Then, once I get the motherboard I am expecting anytime from a geeks list member, I will probably set the P133 up as a router and finally totally decommission the 486. All of this and look for a way to support myself too! Whew.

Oh damn. I just realized something. I need another HD. the 6 GB from the school, I think, had been the thing that haunted my old Merlin 2000. As I may have mentioned before, when I hooked up drives from M2K up to RivenDell the first, 4.3 GB drive, went fine, but then the second, the Seagate, caused a very familiar problem. I am not familiar with a HD causing the reboots I was experiencing, but within about 3 or 4 minutes of hooking up the Seagate drive I experienced the same mysterious reboot. This leads me to believe that the drive is either on the way out, or is dying a slow death, an cannot be trusted to go into a system I use regularly. Therefore, with the plan above, with giving Cody the 4.3 GB, I will need something to toss in the P133 when/if I get it set up.

I had thought I would be able to put the P133 in the board for the P75, but I now realize the P75 was a Socket 5, and the P133 is a socket 7. Doh! So I guess the P75 board will be made into something of artwork. or maybe something a little more useful. Oh well.

2:21pm: Bah! I don't wanna be awake
I have done my good deeds for the day, I went and looked, unsuccessfully, for work, I did my work out as usual. Now I just want to crawl into bed. It feels colder down here today, likely because it is colder outside. I think I went to far when I got this place. I saw few windows and so forth, and thought I should get a basement suite for the coolness in the summer. Sadly I forgot our more obvious season, winter, in which being in a basement suite, which is excellent in a hot environment because the heat rises and does not get stuck in your suite, also makes it bad for winter because heat escapes and does not get trapped in the suite. Thus, I am constantly freezing my ass off. Bah. I wanna go to my nice warmer bed with my heavy blanket and just sleep.

4:17am: Des Moines is with the blog world
Cool article from Chris Pirillo's home town of Des Moines Iowa. A few mistakes, really, but good none the less.

3:27am: Blogomania screwed
Ok, I have been given the go ahead to give info on this topic(don't ever say I don't respect privacy!), so here goes. I would first like to thank Christine, I hope on behalf of all her customers, for the constant updates and information. Most hosts wouldn't even tell a customer their site went down. I would never consider writing anything negative as you have done nothing wrong and I am pretty sure all your customers realize this was just a case of a bad choice. for that no one can fault you, we can only move on.

Now, for the updates. As of now the Blogomania site, along with all of their customer's sites, are down. they have said they hope to have everyone back up over the weekend. Though this is an unusual length of time, I think we would all be much happier if we were assured this type of problem would not happen again. Their host, VeoWeb, has apparently not informed them what the problem is, nor contacted them in anyway about the issue. They are giving the users a number of options, like staying with them when they move to a new host, staying with VeoWeb or leaving that setup all together and seeking a new host.

I personally recommend that any people who are with them stay with them during this as they have been more then a little informative which as I am sure Mike and other's will tell you is not a common thing. This is still a very personable host and they are the only host I know who welcomes the occasionally hassle filled blog community with open arms. Christine has done an excellent job of keeping us all up to date, and letting us know the latest. I thank her and I hope all of her customers do as well.

I would love to get feedback from the other customers of Blogomania, as I think I am one of the few who has other means of blogging and updating. Please make liberal use of my comments system, and I hope to contact Mike to see if he is willing to set up a forum category or topic for this. More info to come.

2:37am: AIH is Back! AIH is finally back!!!
It is a good thing to see AIH is back up and running. The site went down more then a month ago, and after what I can only assume is a whole lot of work and trouble, the site is back up. Thank god, Dilbert and apparently newcomer Grisson. Three cheers and many beer's to you all.

1:57am: PLUG event
Well, the event went well, though I wished I had money because we went all(or most) went to Johnny G's after for food and drink. Sadly I was broke so I was left with Jeff's girlfriend's left over bread from her salad and water. Then after an hour or two(I lost track of time in the varied conversations) some people left to go home and some of us others went to the more customer friendly Pocket's a couple of doors down and discussed stuff like who needs to be contacted about switching the 14,000(I think) desktop's to Linux. I said EDS, which I was told owns the machines and is the only one who can decide what goes on them, and another person said the province itself is the one who owns them and so on. Nothing was decided by the end, other then that whoever does that project should contact IBM for help and support. Nice to hear.

The person who presented was Jim Elliott, who also presented for the MUUG meeting about a year ago. His presentation was more generalized on what IBM is doing for Linux, why and what they use Linux for internally. It was a good presentation and I really enjoyed it, and it was nice to see he still had some of the blue suited Tux pin's to give out. Overall I think everyone enjoyed it and I think that the group should get together like that more often. I was saddened to hear disparaging remarks about MUUG, and I would hope Syd would be had he heard them as well, since I think he has a lot of respect for the MUUG group and membership. That, if anything, gave me good reason to seriously consider becoming a PLUG member.

1:31am: MS/Unisys anti-Unix site problems, round 2/3
I mentioned in the hack the other day about the new MS/Unisys site that is strongly anti-Unix. called wehavethewayout.com. Netcraft showed that the site was hosted on a FreeBSD(version of Unix) and the Apache web server. Well, shortly thereafter Microsoft switched the web server to Windows and Internet Information Server. It now appears that, shockingly, IIS on that server has crashed, completely, and the site is dead. Not to be rude, Bill, but 'Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so, Told ya so,'. Thank you for your time.

6:22pm: PLUG/IBM event
There is a PLUG/IBM joint event tonight at the Fairmont which I figure I will go to. I am not sure what I thin of the 'dress to impress' description of attire as that could mean pretty much everything. What impresses is a wide range depending on the situation. This means I will pry just dress like I do for job hunting, which is to say decent jeans and a nice sweater. That means there will be little of the blog tonight, but when I get home I will be sure to update you all on the happenings.

4:07pm: PCHIAN up for Pre-Order
So, Bob announces that his new book, PC Hardware in a Nutshell is up for pre order on Amazon. I recommend ordering it, as I have had the pleasure of reading the first couple of chapters and it is a great book. It looks like it'll be printed and up for sale in about a month, I guess.[correction, according to the Amazon page linked to above it is available in June]

3:45pm: Solutions? Maybe
Ok, a few things were sort of solved. Christine is going to get the DNS stuff sorted out, which is a good thing, but I need to figure out how to get the payment to them ASAP. This will facilitate the blog returning to it's normal location, though I will be likely give it a few days just to get everything set up and working. I need to set up MT 2.0, get the posts to show up in the right place, get my posts(including those here) into the MT system and see if the various types of post take, and more. For instance I have self output blogger entries, actual blogger entires, and these LiveJournal entries, and all of them may look somewhat different. For instance, the LiveJurrnal have a title, while the other's don't. I wish I could keep my old blogger pointers, but I will have to be happy with just being back blogging.

Another extended problem that looks to be on the road to a decent solution is the internet connection one. I used the form on Shaw's site the other day to tell them of just as few of the problems I have encountered. Lease problems, connection dropping for hours at a time and so on. They messaged me back in respects to the internet stuff and the possible solution is easy. I need to take my precious modem, the one that has been with me for more then a year now, and give it back for a new one. I will, I guess, be doing that tomorrow, as I just came from there once today.

3:11am: MSN/Trillian problems still
So Mike tells me his is fine, and a lot of other MSN + Trillian users tell me all is fine. So why am I and a few others getting kicked right away? Trillian obviously is not aware of any problem, and the official MSN client works fine. I am surfing the Trillian message boards and found this page, which seems to have some alternate solutions. Hopefully they will work, one of them. Doesn't look like it worked.

1:51am: AFD prank pulls Canadian dollar even lower. That's possible???
According to this article from Newsbytes, an article on bourque.com that was an April Fools Day prank about finance minister Paul Martin resigning his seat to raise cows and ducks was taken a little too seriously and while Canadian may have rejoiced if it were true, the story is said to have pulled the dollar lower. I honestly didn't think it was actually possible, but according to the article, dated 04/01/2002, it did. Just when ya thought we couldn't possibly go any lower.

12:10am: Hack done
Ok, so I was a little longer then I had hoped to be. I just have had so little to hack about. Check it out.