rebelpeon.com

Blog

  • Did Everything Die Today?

    BLEH. Somedays I really hate being a “computer guy.” Well, actually, it wasn’t just a day, it’s been the last 4 days. As you can see, rebelpeon.com is finally back up (entirely). That’s about the first time since, what, Saturday? Let’s just say, it was going smooth until I started moving stuff back to my main server. DNS can be one of the nastiest things around. Then again, so can microsoft’s software. Between all the errors that had no solution and just crappiness all around, I stayed up way to late the last 3 nights pulling my hair out. Needless to say, it’s working now. By doing this, though, I’ve essentially started from scratch on my server without having to destroy my active directory domain. By not destroying it and starting over, I saved myself a lot more nightmares. I’ve also setup mysql and movabletype on the rebuilt server. This will allow a “real” comments section, and by having the blog database driven, I can have searching, a true archive, etc. I just need to muck around with the templates more to get everything the way I want it. Hopefully the new site will go live this weekend, but I make no promises 🙂

    This weekend was our first actually snow fall of the year. I definitely wasn’t missing the lack of snow, that’s for sure. The people driving, the plows that don’t come out till its finished snowing, the car covered in salt, the people driving (oops, did I already say that?), etc. Plus, it’s decided to go from decently chilly out, to down right cold. I’m not a fan.

    Today work was, well, interesting. Let’s start with last night, shall we? Well, last night I was talking to a guy that works for us (soon to be located at aaronbinford.com), and I noticed that our, the university’s, exchange server was down. No big deal, maybe they were doing patches etc. This was at 11. At around 1 when I stopped trying to fix my stupid servers, I noticed that it was still down. Oh well, didn’t really think anything of it…that is till this morning, when I arrived at the office to find that exchange was still down. Well, needless to say, we had about 4 phonecalls when I first got in. However, there’s absolutely nothing we can do, because we (at DIA) aren’t in charge of the exchange server. Well, the server stayed down the whole day (actually, it’s still down as I type this). Apparantly 3 harddrives failed last night, taking down most of the mailboxes with it. A 500GB restore from tape can take awhile. PLUS, we just implemented a new Point of Sale (POS) system at the Armory track and Atkins Tennis Center. Well, the software that was purchased had no way of differentiating between the stuff inputted in at the Armory as opposed to Atkins (or at least the users were trained on how to do that). So, the person in charge of the Armory, for whatever reason, started deleting records out of the database. Needless to say, he was on crack and started deleting everything, including the stuff from Atkins. Well, then later, after we told him what he had done, he apparantly did it again!!! Thankfully we had some of the stuff from tape backups (backups that had just started running last night). Let’s say that it didn’t surprise me what this particular user at the Armory did. *sigh*

    Off to work on the new website templates…

  • The Intraweb

    Check out how “Internet” changed our world. It’s crazy that it used to just be usenet groups, and now, well, we have this page 🙂

    In other news, the “test” server has just been made a backup domain controller. That was easy, now I just need to install exchange on it, and get the two exchange servers talking to each other. If that goes as planned, and as quick as promoting the machine to a DC was, then I may have things rolling tonight…

  • Fitness Center

    This is going to be a pretty short update because I don’t have a lot of control of my arms, and I want to start testing for what could become the new rebelpeon.com.

    Well, Colleen and I finally got our subscription to the fitness center. This is why I can’t really feel my arms. I probably did a little too much for the first time back in, oh, about a year of lifting. It felt so good though, that I just couldn’t stop. I can definitely tell that climbing has increased my upper body strength because I was actually able to lift more now than I was a year ago. I’m definitely looking forward to getting into a routine between the fitness center and climbing. So far, I’m thinking Mon & Weds I’ll climb, and I’ll workout Tues & Thurs. That leaves me with the weekend free to (hopefully soon) start climbing down south. Man, it feels good to be pumped again. Hopefully the feeling won’t wear off, and I’ll be able to keep this up for awhile.

    In website related news, I implemented a comments system on test.rebelpeon.com. It actually works fairly well, but there are a few things that bother me about it. First of all, the number of comments doesn’t update until you refresh the page. And second of all, I haven’t figured out a way to put the title (which in my case is the date) of the entry in the comments. Feel free to try and break it, or test it out as you see fit. I don’t think it’s going to last. I’m going to bring up a test server and try out MovableType instead of beating my head in with fixing those 2 problems (which I’ve been doing for the last few days). It seems to be promising. Hopefully, I can use it in place of my current blog technique, but still be able to customize it enough that it doesn’t look like all the other database driven sites. What I really want to do, is just have the database part, essentially, the text that I’m writing here, and the rest of my site (what surrounds my blog) by whatever I want. I think with the way that I’m currently doing it with iframes, may allow me to. That would be the coolest. However, MovableType needs MySQL to function. Yet another fun thing to play with. From what I heard, it’s not too bad. I mean Nick installed it for his forums, so it can’t be that bad. 😉

    Off to work on new possibilities…

  • My Aching Body

    Bleh, I don’t feel too hot. My body is tired, and I feel as if I have a lot of congestion in my sinuses. Oh yeah, plus a headache. It’s probably because I’ve been killing myself by climbing. On Saturday, a climbing friend of mine, James Fran, and I went to Upper Limits and climbed for around 5.5 hours. I was so dead. And then yesteday, Colleen and I went to Vertical Plains and climbed with James and a few other people there too. I think James wants me to go climbing tomorrow night too, but I haven’t heard from him yet. It’s fun because James is quite a bit better than I am, so he likes to do things, and I like to try and do them. Like on Saturday, I tried my hardest to keep up. I think he did 2 routes that I didn’t. However, he has way more endurance than I do, so he can go straight up a climb, where I have to stop around 2/3rds of the way up. Plus he’s lucky in that his hands don’t really sweat. Man, how I wish that mine didn’t. Zero to soaked in about 3 holds. Hell, even as I sit here typing, they are moist. It would help so much if they’d just stay dry…

    I haven’t touched the new site design since I posted it the other day. Colleen agrees with me that the background image needs to go. It’s just way to overpowering. I’ll probably do something more minimalistic (how I like my desktop wallpapers). The only thing about that, is I either need to find something (probable) or create something (not so probable). I really like the contrast of the cingular wireless commercials, so I may do something with that color scheme. However, instead of orange, I may use a lime green shade. Who knows though. I doubt I’ll be doing anything on it soon. Unless I get worse by tomorrow and decide to not venture into work.

    Today at work, glofish were brought up, and I’m bound and determined to get myself some. How can you go wrong, I mean, they’re glowing fish! I was going to call around to local pet stores today to see if they have any. I’ve always wanted to have a cool tropical aquarium, but the upkeep on them is way to much, so I think this would be a good substitute.

    Speaking of buying stuff, I finally got around to purchasing a desk. Colleen was happy about that, since I’m kinda (well, ok, I am) using her desk for the time being. I purchased an Eames Desk Unit produced by Herman Miller. It looks like a very fun desk, and I know it’s quality since my parents have an Eames Lounge Chair, which is nothing but great. I made the purchase from retromodern.com, which has some really neat, and expensive, stuff. The way I see it, is I’d rather wait and save up to buy something quality, than go out and purchase something cheap that works for “right now.” Hopefully the lead time of 4 weeks listed on their website is the maximum, since I can’t wait to get it.

    **Currently Listening To: Coldplay – Rush of B-Sides to the Head. If you like Coldplay, then I’d try to find this cd/collection of songs on your favorite file sharing network. There are some new songs, and lots of their normal songs, but accoustic, etc. I personally like the laid back-ness of Coldplay, and am enjoying the accoustic stuff on this compliation.

  • Site Design

    Well, I’ve been mucking around with a new site design. I’ve been thinking of something like this, but I don’t think I’m a fan of the big image, etc. Also, the links would be images, and there would be a top rebelpeon.com image. The also (rather large) problem, is that it seems to take awhile to load the page again. The background image isn’t even that big. Stupid cable upload speeds. I think I’m going to do something in that layout though. I really like the links at the top instead of the side. It seems to give more screen real estate. It’s most noticable when you click on the music link, and none of the cd titles wrap around to the next line. Also, when I view the current site, the text box is so small, since all I run is 1600×1200 resolution. The nice thing about the new site layout, is that it easily formats it correctly to your resolution. Feel free to stretch your browser window wider and smaller, and notice the frosted image stays correct. Took some thinking to do that, but not THAT much.

    Oh well, I may work on it tomorrow, but I really have other things I need to get to. Oh yeah, and I’m heading out to Upper Limits with a climbing friend. Plus, I have another friend’s father’s computer here that needs to be worked on. Wee, thankfully it’s a 3 day weekend!

    **Currently Listening To: Nick Drake – Pink Moon. It’s not a bad CD, definitely worth a listening to.

  • Script Kiddies

    Well, I finally received enough scripting knowledge to automate the music list creation. It took me way to long to actually sit down and do, but now my music list is updated nightly. One less thing for me to think about is always a plus. I’ve really gone to town with scripts at work. It makes it WAY easier for us (mostly myself), as we don’t have to be constantly checking certain things daily, hourly, etc. The one I’m most proud of is the inventory script I wrote. Now I just need to learn how to dump the results into a SQL database and it’s all set. Currently it just writes it to a html file. It has come in handy so far, but I think the true potential will be seen when I can query fields in a database. Also, that way, I can keep a record of all the machines better, since now if the machine is off, it is just skipped. With the database, I should be able to simply overwrite fields with newer info, instead of just overwriting everytime I run the script. Also, the one that checks server harddrive space and then email’s us when it gets too low is a time saver too.

    Tonight I went climbing at the local gym, Vertical Plains, and there was a guy there that looked absolutely amazing on the wall. The way he flowed up, down, and around the wall was stunning. I think I’m making my new goal to try look as fluent on the wall as he was within a year. I think it’s possible, but I doubt he’s only been climbing for 2 years (as I would be come Nov. ‘04). It’s amazing how much I’ve progressed within the last year though. You don’t really notice it until you start thinking about it, and realize how hard the basic basic basic stuff was when you started. And now, I’m getting routes before some of the way more experienced climbers are. This year will definitely be the year I climb outdoors a lot, and learn how to do it myself. That way Colleen and I can head out, and not have to go with anyone else to setup the routes. Just need some more equipment, and I should be set.

    For those of you that have never gone climbing, do it. It’s so much fun. Yes, it’s difficult at first because you’re not used to it, but if you go a second time, you’ll be amazed at how much easier it is. It’s great exercise, and the best part is, it doesn’t feel like exercise because it’s fun (unlike going to a gym). You should try it at least once.

    **Currently Listening To: Dave Matthews – Some Devil (Limited Edition). Ummm…it’s more of Dave Matthews stuff. Sound almost the same as when he’s with the band, only there’s no good fiddle playing, etc, that accompanies the band. How can people pay > $50 to see him in concert for this? I just fail to understand it.

  • Pondering a New Site

    Being able to vent to friends that live many states away is a Good Thing

  • Happy Birthday!

    HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!

    More to come later…

  • Busy at Work

    Depending if you came to the site in the last 24hrs or not, you may have noticed an RSS feed. And now, you may notice that it’s gone. 🙂 Currently I’m updating the website by just editing the straight blog.htm file. Therefore, to create an RSS feed, I’d have to, in essence, keep up 2 sites, since I’d be manually editing both the htm, and xml. Fat chance that’s gonna happen. It’s cool in theory, but I think I’d rather just have people visit the site currently. Maybe in later versions of the website, I can incorporate something that will automatically do it. With that said, if anybody knows of anything that would significantly make my life easier with creating the xml for an RSS feed, please let me know (spruit@(remove)rebelpeon.com). I was playing around with various RSS feeds, and they are pretty nice. Well, if you’re totally lazy and don’t want to visit websites. Then again, I’m sure some people (like those people that tell me to setup an RSS feed) visit a lot more websites daily than I do. It does make it A LOT faster to parse through data, since it’s all in one spot. The RSS aggregator that I was using the other night was BlogExpress. It seems pretty nice. But as I mentioned before, I personally don’t see myself using it. I browse the web to 1) get news, and 2) to waste time. Using RSS feeds totally negate 50% of my web usage. That can’t be good.

    In other news, I have been thinking about redesigning the website again. It’s working for now, but it just feels “eh” to me. However, I’m in no hurry, since I’ve got something up currently. I kinda want to do something more “hip,” but my artistic ability is lacking. Not necissarily the vision, just actually putting it into a usuable form. I’m sure the lack of html knowledge I have doesn’t help either, but Dreamweaver seems to be able to help me there too much. 🙂

    Let’s see, I think I’m on a roll here, might as well keep going. At work, we had talked about deploying Windows XP to the student athlete labs. We had talked about this for months how a good time to do it, was over the winter break, since we’d have a month to get everything working. Needless to say, it never got worked on before the winter break. So, Monday, Nick, Jason, and I had a meeting and the labs were brought up. Since we had 2 weeks left, we kinda laughed at the probability of getting a new image going. However, I am happy to report after a day and a half of work, the new image is ready to be pushed out. What helps, is that with all the new user machines, we are deploying the vast majority of applications via group policy objects (GPO’s). This means, that we just have to add a computer or user to a specific group, and the software automatically installs when the machine boots up. Previously all applications were either included in the ghost image, or were installed by hand. When building a new machine for a user, it was typically a full day event. However, now, the time has been drastically reduced to (at max) 2 hours. Now, of course, it’s not just as easy as I said, because a lot of work has gone into making the applications able to be deployed via this way, but since all the backend work had been previously done, it took almost no time to actually do the labs. This included totally redoing the group policy for labs (locking down the machines, restricting access, etc). It’s amazing how much technology changes in 4 years. From everything that I’ve heard from the guys that worked at DIA before me, the labs group policy has never been totally redone since the original one was made in 99/00. It’s crazy how much hack ‘n slash was put into it for each additional deployment that occured after the original was made. It should’ve been redone each time because of improvements made by Microsoft to various options in GPO’s. However, that didn’t happen. Needless to say, this has been one of the fastest (if not the fastest) lab build and deployment. Hopefully from now on, it will always be so easy.

    Food dryers are cool. I got one for Christmas from a relative, and Colleen and I used it last weekend. I love dried apples and bananas, so I’ve wanted one for awhile. We bought 4 different kinds of apples to try: Fugi, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, and Pink Lady. Needless to say, the best dried ones, were the same as the best undried ones. The bananas didn’t come out too well though. They didn’t get fully dried (had some soft parts in the middle) and so they didn’t last. Also, since the drier manual didn’t say to soak them in an ascorbic acid bath (like it said to do with the apples), they came out almost completely black. How appetizing. Also, with the manual, whoever made it and thought that only took 6-10 hours to dry the fruit really needs to have his head checked. Needless to say, I started it at 2PM Sunday, and figured it’d be done by the time I went to bed, ~11. HA! I went to bed at 12:30 because the stupid things weren’t done, and then I woke up every 2 hours after that to remove the peices that were done and keep an eye on it. So at 8AM, before I was leaving for work, everything was finally done (well, except for the bananas, as I mentioned earlier). Grr. Oh well, gotta learn somehow. Plus cutting the fruit the same thickness really helps. Unfortunatly the bottom rack will always finish before the rest, so you still have to check it frequently. Plus, I like to have apple and banana chips, where they are leathery. Colleen on the other hand likes to have them still kinda moist, like the dried apples you can get in the store. I’m not really a fan of those, though, because they feel so disgusting. I like mine a lot more dried. Just more variation…wee…

    Wow, this was an exceedingly long post. Yes, that’s how bored I am tonight. Well, I gotta go run over to Cunningham Children’s Home to drop off a form Colleen forgot to bring with her to work…

  • Frozen Pipes

    So, after looking at the time stamp above, you may be asking yourself if I’m still on vacation? Well, no, I’m not. I’m just not at work right now because maintenance is at our apartment fixing our frozen pipes. Needless to say, last night it got pretty chilly, and our pipes didn’t seem to take the weather too well. Thankfully they didn’t burst, but apparantly, where the pipes run is in the little room that can only be accessed outside (not part of our apt). Well, to no one’s surprise (well, at least not my own), this area isn’t heated, and therefore will be the same temperature as it is outside (it just blocks the wind effectively). And who would’ve thunk the pipes would’ve froze?! Apparantly they have insulated the crap out of these pipes, but the maintenance guy is sure that they must have missed someplace, since when we called the emergency number we were informed that this happens about every year. Now, you’d think that since this happens (almost) yearly, they’d let us know. At least have us run the water at night or something. Dammit, there I go making sense again.

    There was something else I was gonna post on here, but for the life of me, I can’t remember. Well, off to find something to do while the hot water heater refills itself so I can take a shower.