MuchTall.com

No, Linuxwhore.com isn't gone. It's still right here, however I'm going by a new domain name: MuchTall. Among other reasons, I decided I needed a more unique name. As of this date, the only result that MuchTall gets on Google is some site that randomly happened to squish much and tall together in their search engine keywords. So it's pretty much a clean name without evidence of use anywhere else but here. Today would be it's Google christening.

I'm still keeping Linuxwhore.com, and I still contend that I was the first. I'm not really pleased that so many people decided to rip it off. It was a unique identity, and they pretty much ruined it. When people start squatting on addresses like linuxwhore@gmail.com, I get a little pissed.

I need to learn how to negotiate...

Network Systems and Data Communications Analysts

Hmm.

It's been years since I conceived the idea, and then the idea was forgotten. Or rather more likely, dropped due to lack of interest, or motivation. I had the idea for a web-based family history site where family data could be updated frequently, high-res photos could be posted, and stories could be added as recalled. However, I didn't know where to start. I didn't have anything to use as an example. But that changed last month when my Great Aunt Lorraine finished the John E. Holmstadt Family History book. She'd put so much effort into it, but unfortunately, none of it is in electronic form.

So here's where I plan to step in. I'm going to start on my PHProots project and see if I can use the information she had gathered as a springboard. Hopefully it will provide enough structure to lead me in the right path, design-wise. The first step will be to import all the data back into electoric form by scanning in all 334 pages. I'm not sure just yet what format I should use for this, but my initial thoughts are to use 2400 DPI scans of the pages (in case someone wants a replica print of the book), and then make a downsampled copy of the images at ~150-300 DPI for scanning purposes. All the pages will then be ran through OCR and dumped into raw text files. This text will provide the filler for the initial database design.

...(much programming and design tweaking takes place)...

After a working site has been created, I want to invite family to re-submit photos and high-res scans for the website. Many of the photos in the book are poor quality, possibly due to low-quality reproduction. Not to mention, all of them are black and white.


Finally, I want to design a PDF-izer and CD/DVD-izer feature into the PHProots suite. Basically, a person could take a snapshot of the album at any time by pressing a button on the site, and minutes later a print-qulity PDF, CD, or DVD would be generated, ready for printing or multimedia viewing.

It's ambitious, but I think it'd be cool.

It occurred to me recently just how far I've come along the lines of IT knowledge. Years ago I experienced the frustration of not understanding the operation of computer hardware or software and wishing I knew more. I just kept plugging away and time after time, a new idea would be revealed to me like a veil was lifted from my eyes. I still experience this nearly every day. It's hard to quantify just how much knowledge a person has in IT until you start supporting the real newbies, the guys that struggle with installing a printer, or understanding the difference between a telephone port and an ethernet port.

It's funny, because I sometimes meet people decades younger than my mother that seem to be less computer literate than her. I remember back in my early helpdesk days priding myself upon patience for the customer, and encouraging them whenever they felt uneasy about what they had done or in their ability to just work the computer. It's actually pretty wild. It seems the people I worked with on the phone on a daily basis were waay more savvy than the people I work with now. Heck, at least those people usually knew how to connect. I dunno, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I just look back more fondly than I should upon that experience. Maybe it's that the scenarios were much more structured than the scenarios I work with.

Anyhow, I'm still learning, and having fun too.

Just a quick commentary to help keep my site from getting too stale (too late).

I recently re-committed myself to mental and physical restraint in one area of my life. Since I've been struggling to quit this addiction for over a decade, I've needed to look to others for help, and to other methods of helping myself.

Something that I've never tried, but that seems to be helping tremendously is wearing a rubberband on one wrist. The rubberband itself does nothing, it's power is in how you use it. Whenever I have a bad thought that tempts me back toward regression, I just give myself a good snap. This helps to de-program my mind by giving it a negative response to a bad thought. This overcomes the decades of bad programming when I recieved pleasure from acting upon those thoughts.

This little rubberband has helped me to rebuild and uphold my commitment to my faith. I hope someone else finds this suggeston helpful in reshaping their daily thoughts as well.

I just thought I'd take a moment now to say I kick arse. If you knew how much I rock right now, you'd faint. My geek skills are so white hot, you'd get burned just watching me work from a distance.


More details to come. I have to sleep :-)

Ok, so here's the deal. Due to a few reasons that I can't reveal, that company that I work for lost its internet connection on Monday night. So for most of the day Tuesday, we were dead in the water, with no chance of getting our T1 turned back up any time soon. After going over serveral options for internet access, we came to 1 immediate solution. Run the company's internet activity over my cell phone's unlimited data access. So by Tuesday evening, we were running a ~60-70 person network over a ~115kbps connection. Painful, but workable. I even ran our email over it.

Yesterday, a co-worker approached the business next door about sharing internet access for a couple days. So, after setting up a laptop with IPCop, we had a reasonable internet connection up and running. One problem tho, we were now running over an already NATted connection: no port 25 (SMTP/Email) access. We do, however, have a ServerBeach system with Win2K3 installed. After investigating the option of doing connection sharing there, and running port 25 over a VPN link (too complicated, and risky routing), I decided to setup an SMTP server. However, much like most MS products, you can't do what you need without spending a fortune. The solution? XMail. I was able to set it up to receive mail for our domains, then forward the message via the VPN link. Much simpler, and less risky. After a few hour pouring over the docs, and realizing that I was missing a carriage return in the config files, we were up and running.


It's now Thursday, and since ~8AM Monday, I've been either working, driving to/from work, or sleeping (+/- 1 hour free time). So yeah, I could care less what a certain previous employer claimed: I kick ass.

I thought I'd let everybody know that on February 1st, I will be moving in with my cousin Chris in St. Paul. This will cut down on my commuting costs (~$300/mo), and will allow me to start building a new social network.