Topics

46

Announcements / Bandwidth Use Issues

« on: December 22, 2009, 05:26:04 pm »

EDIT: Finally found it... been digging on this for two days. Turns out, I made a really dumb mistake a few weeks ago. See below for updates.

Something is causing a huge spike in bandwidth use this month. I'm about to go over the prepaid amounts bought for the server. I don't think it's any sort of normal use that's doing this, as I'm having a hard time tracking it down. It looks like it might be caused by incoming data, rather than stuff served out. As a temporary measure, I've suspended all OUTGOING traffic on port 80. This means your scripts won't be able to grab remote images and such to process them. Mostly this may break some RSS parsers and such. If you have something that broke, let me know. Most of you shouldn't notice a change though. If this doesn't shake out the problem though, I may have to try some other stuff while tracking it down, and it could be slightly disruptive while I poke around in things. I'll let you know if anything major is going to happen though.

47

General Chat / Google Wave

« on: December 03, 2009, 05:00:58 pm »

I haven't really seen much of it, but I'm intrigued by the idea. That said though, I fear it might not exactly be the next gmail. It reminds me in many ways of the early Microsoft "Active Desktop" push, along with IE's "push" websites. Nothing caught on there until years later when RSS feeds finally took off. Wave seems like it might be useful, but only in the same way AIM is... that is to say, it only works if everyone is using it.

Anyway, thanks to a friend, it appears I now have some invites to hand out. So if you're raring to get your paws on the newest google noun/verb, lemme know, and I'll toss a few out here. If, on the other hand, all of this was gibberish to you, then don't panic... you'll likely never miss it. :-)

48

Announcements / Xepher's Moving (Again!)

« on: December 02, 2009, 05:12:17 am »

It's a short/easy move this time though. From San Antonio over to Houston. Shouldn't affect xepher.net at all, and really, I just felt like making an announcement. :-)

49

Announcements / Blocked Email Issues

« on: November 14, 2009, 11:23:18 pm »

Some of you may have noticed that many emails have been getting bounced when you try to send from xepher.net to other services over the past few days. Turns out the datacenter where the server is got their entire range added to the Spamhaus PBL. This is a kind of blacklist, and it specifically says "these IPs are dynamic (they change ownership frequently), for home and other use, and shouldn't be sending email." I requested an unblock a couple days ago, and it went through, but as they work to resolve the issue as a whole, it looks like the server got whitewashed with the rest of them, and back onto the list. I've again gotten it removed, and hopefully it'll stick this time. If not, I'll continue to work on getting it resolved. Believe me, this is more annoying to me than anyone... I (obviously) use this for all my own mail. :-)

50

General Chat / Wild Things

« on: November 04, 2009, 10:49:02 am »

I just saw "Where the wild things are"... I thought it was pretty good. I love the cinematography, and the way even the most absurd stuff (hitting owls with rocks) could be taken seriously. Anyone else have opinions?

51

Announcements / Outage

« on: November 02, 2009, 12:14:55 am »

Update: Second outage (0700 UTC Nov. 3rd) is not my fault. :-P The datacenter lost power and all servers there went offline. It's now back up as of 20 minutes ago.

My apologies for the outage today. The webserver was offline about 12 hours (exactly during the period where I was asleep.) It looks like it tried to restart as per normal due to monthly log rotations, but something prevented it from coming back up correctly. Unfortunately, I don't really know why, as it's an error I've not seen before.

It's back up now, and I'll be keeping a close eye on it. I'll try some troubleshooting later in the night to see if I can narrow down the cause. Thanks to all of you who IMed me letting me know there was a problem... If I'd been anywhere but asleep, I would've gotten to it much quicker.

52

General Chat / Music Videos

« on: October 10, 2009, 02:05:35 pm »

Okay, so let's post music videos. They can be posted for being a cool video AND/OR being cool music. Bad videos with good music still count.

To start:

http://vimeo.com/6284199

53

General Chat / What are YOU doing with your life?

« on: September 26, 2009, 04:55:37 am »

This kid apparently plays half a dozen instruments, recomposes songs, and sings in 3 languages. http://freddegredde.com/

I, on the other hand, was proud to play Row Row Your Boat on a telephone. :-/

54

Announcements / Application Backlog Now Processed

« on: September 24, 2009, 08:07:14 am »

I've finally managed to go and review all the outstanding applications. If you were waiting for a response, please check the forums. A few approvals were done, and a few further inquiries. Having no day job is AWESOME! Now I just have to figure out what to do with my life.

55

General Chat / I Quit My Job! (Again!)

« on: September 01, 2009, 05:26:06 pm »

So, the last tech job I had was chronicled in this thread http://xepher.net/forum/index.php?topic=330.0 and it lasted only 8 weeks and ended with much hate. This current job was way better, and I kept it the full year I promised myself I would. I gave my notice at the start of last week (written on my "happy one year at the company" balloon actually.) So this week is my last at the company. It's actually the longest I've ever held a job and I think I may even miss some aspects of it, and definitely the people, so it feels kinda bitter sweet. The problem was just the job itself... fixing computer problems all day for other people... was never going to be satisfying enough.

Anyway, I'm now going to be unemployed and looking for what to do next in life. I've saved up about $25K over the past year, so I have enough of a cushion there to move pretty much wherever and get started doing whatever I want. My thoughts right now are to move someplace "awesome" and probably go back for my Master's in Creative Writing... stick around at school and eventually become an english professor maybe. The main question I have is WHERE to go for that. Part of it is a school with a decent program, but the majority of the question is where I actually want to move to. I'd love to have some cool weather and mountains again, but mostly I want to live someplace that's good to live. A town that's not TOO big, but with some culture... a music scene maybe, but at least some people my age (late 20s-30s) that aren't all drop-outs or whatnot.

Bottom line is I'm really excited to do something new... just gotta figure out what. Any and all suggestions are welcome. Where's a cool place to live (if you could)?

56

Announcements / Another Vacation!

« on: June 29, 2009, 04:43:26 pm »

Update: I'm back!

This time, I'm going to Costa Rica for a couple of weeks: July 17th through August 1st. While I'm gone, Will-san will be keeping an eye on things, though that's really just for emergency stuff. He won't be approving applications or anything like that.

57

General Chat / Let me google that for you...

« on: June 12, 2009, 03:35:35 pm »

Found this the other day... really great for being a jackass when people ask dumb questions. You can enter a search, you get the link, and send it to them. It then chides them by typing out the search for them. :-P

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+do+I+turn+my+computer+on

58

Announcements / Vacation!

« on: May 06, 2009, 10:36:36 pm »

I'm going on vacation next week, starting Saturday the 9th and coming back the following Saturday. I likely won't have net access for most/all of that time, as I'll be on a cruise in the Carribean. This shouldn't affect anything, as the new server seems rock solid, though applications are going to be delayed further, since I won't have time to get to any of them before I leave. If you have any last minute requests for support or things you need done, get them in within the next day or so. Otherwise, I'll see you all when I get back.

59

Announcements / New Forum Registrations Now Require Approval

« on: May 04, 2009, 01:24:50 pm »

Apparently the captcha thing no longer works well enough at preventing spam, so I'm switching the forums to require approval from me on new member registrations. I've not used this before, so if it seems like you're being ignored or not being approved, feel free to email me (admin@...) and ask me to approve things. Make sure to include the forum username/email you used to register.

In the long run, I need to find something better for this, so let me know if you have any ideas on how to keep out the spammers.

EDIT: I'm being kinda biased here, but if you're in Asia/India, Africa, Russia, or Eastern Europe, I probably won't approve your registration unless you specifically email me about it.

60

General Chat / Helpful Reviews...

« on: April 27, 2009, 09:50:04 pm »

So I came across a link to this most ridiculously overpriced ethernet cable I'd ever seen... $500 for a 5 foot cable. But then I started reading the reviews for it... HILARIOUS!

http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B000I1X6PM

Make sure to click on "read all reviews" and read some of the additional ones. There's some pretty good comedy buried in there.