/dev/random

It’s pretty sad when a web hosting company doesn’t understand specifying a port number for telnet. When I was having problems with the mail server at my previous host, I sent them the following message & terminal log:

IMAP server seems to be down for all of my sites:
[mike: ~]$ telnet mail.macmegasite.com 143
Trying 69.93.143.83…
telnet: connect to [...]

[Read more →]

I now have all of my sites running at Dreamhost and everything seems to be running smoothly. My bandwidth limit is now 64G/month vs. 20G/month at my previous host and is shared by all of my domains. With my old host, I had to allocate a fixed portion of the bandwidth & disk space to [...]

[Read more →]

Brian Wilson’s long-lost album Smile is now available in iTunes Music Store. Pretty weird stuff - it comes close to 70s progressive rock. Definitely ahead of its time. If you’re expecting a Beach Boys album, you’ll be disappointed.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Smile”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2004/09/29/smile/” });

[Read more →]

PEHosting had a major crash yesterday and some data was lost. No posts from my weblog were lost, but everything posted at MacMegasite since Friday is gone. They completely screwed up WorldBeatPlanet, losing all changes since June.
I’m now in the process of moving everything to Dreamhost. It’s about $1/month less than PEHosting and it gives [...]

[Read more →]

Everything seems more or less back to normal. Today I drove out of here for the first time since the storm & everyone seems to have power. All of the traffic lights are working and most of the downed trees have been moved.
Jeanne didn’t last as long as Frances, but some of the wind gusts [...]

[Read more →]

I ordered a second 120G drive and a PCI IDE controller for my server. I plan to set it up as RAID level 1 with my current drive. I’m putting it on a separate controller for better performance than having both RAID drives on the same controller. I’ve already downloaded the RAID tools and built [...]

[Read more →]

The storm is over & it’s clear but still very windy. No major damage, but we have a few trees down and lots of fallen or damaged brances. One branch fell on two cars, but they don’t seem to be damaged. A large branch went through the patio screen on one building and damaged the [...]

[Read more →]

Jeanne is expected to be worse than Frances. I just walked around the complex with some of my neighbors and we saw a few trees down. A tree is also blocking the street & we’re the only ones with power. The rest of the neighborhood is completely dark. We also have some pretty bad flooding. [...]

[Read more →]

I upgraded my Linux box from Kernel 2.4.21 to 2.6.8 and so far everything looks good. I also did an apt-get dist-upgrade to bring the rest of the system up to date.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Kernel 2.6.8″, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2004/09/25/kernel-268/” });

[Read more →]

I boarded up my window again and I had a hard time getting the board back in the same place. Since every room here has windows and would be pretty difficult to board up, for Frances I decided to only board up one room (which happens to be my office) and make it a ’safe [...]

[Read more →]

Via A Whole Lotta Nothing: Republicans for Humility presents a conservative case against Bush.
Some contend the President utilizes the rhetoric of traditional, limited government, free enterprise American values, which are hostile to the concept of empire, but consistently has advanced policies better described as “corporate cronyism” and international adventurism which undermine traditional conservative values. [...]

[Read more →]

I just got a Sony Ericsson CAR 100 Bluetooth remote control car. It charges from my phone (a T616) and can be controlled with the phone’s joystick. There’s also a Car-100 control application for the Mac, which lets me control it with the arrow keys.
Cody & Midnight find it very amusing. I’ve been driving it [...]

[Read more →]

Ivan missed us, but it looks like we won’t be so lucky with Jeanne. I already took down the boards I put up for Frances & I don’t intend to put them back up, since the un-boarded windows weren’t damaged by Frances and even if we get a direct it, the winds will be much [...]

[Read more →]

After trying Bloglines for a week, I’ve gone back to NetNewsWire since I find it more convenient. I’m now using a custom refresh schedule, with the sites I want to montor regularly refreshed every hour and everything else on manual refresh only.
BTW, I’ve been beta testing NetNewsWire 2.0 & MarsEdit (which were just publicly announced) [...]

[Read more →]

The condo board meeting was tonight. I try to go every month, although out of 276 units here, usually only about 15-20 people show up. A few more than usual showed up because of the newsletter we got a few days ago. One of the condo rules is that we can only have one pet [...]

[Read more →]

The former pop singer Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam, was denied entry to the United States and his flight from London was diverted to Maine, after his name turned up on a watch list, a U.S. transportation security official said.
This shows the stupidity of the ‘no fly list’ and current security practices. It [...]

[Read more →]

Loreena McKennitt has released remastered versions of all of her albums plus a DVD. She also plans to release an album of new material in late 2005.
And now the bad news: Enya isn’t releasing a new album, despite rumors to the contrary.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Good & bad news”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2004/09/20/good-bad-news/” });

[Read more →]

An awesome story, via Boing Boing: A New Yorker on a subway car grew tired of the homophobic Bible-thumping preachers, and retaliated by singing show tunes until they shut up:
Me: “If you all don’t lower your voices and cease calling me Satan, I will have to sing show tunes.”
[...]

[Read more →]

Jim Stork has announced his withdrawal from the race for congressional district 22.

September 17, 2004

As many of you know, I discontinued campaigning a few weeks ago due to illness and to undergo medical testing. I have decided to withdraw from the race effective today. I have a heart related condition that will not [...]

[Read more →]

Via Boing Boing:

I don’t celebrate Rosh Hashonah, but I find this hilarious.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Rosh Hashonah humour”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2004/09/17/rosh-hashonah-humour/” });

[Read more →]