For quite a while now, I've had my website and DNS hosted with DreamHost for $9.95/mo. They give me unlimited disk space, unlimited transfer, and unlimited domains hosted. However, I miss having the full control over a server and being able to add/remove software, add/remove accounts, and so forth. I'm in the market for a cheap co-location, VPS, or unmanaged hosting of some sort. If anybody has any ideas, please let me know. I'd rather it be FreeBSD or Linux based.

After I find a new home for my website, I'd like to redo the whole thing. I'm thinking about moving my blog out of LiveJournal and putting it into something like Drupal or WordPress. I want to have my blog as well as other content such as my resume, any projects I'm working on, about me, and so forth all on one site. I'd like to somehow tie it into my Flickr, last.fm, twitter, and other feeds as well. In other words, I want to modernize and go "Web 2.0."

Another thing I haven't done much of in the last two years or so is any sort of programming, hacking, or technology-related project. I'm beginning to feel as if my brain is losing knowledge it used to have and also a new sort of intellectual boredom setting in. I'd like to get back into hacking and programming, but I need a project and the hardware to do it with. Since I've gone all OS X, I really don't have any x86 hardware to put FreeBSD or Linux on at home anymore. I might end up building something. Maybe something powerful enough to put ESXi on so I can run several OSes at once. This boredom is another reason I'm looking for a sort of VPS hosting for my website. I've lost a place to test and play with new things in the open source world and I really miss that.

With all that said, here are some things I'd like to get accomplished in 2009:
- Get a FreeBSD, Linux, or ESXi machine at home for hacking on
- Redo the carpets, cabinets, and counters in my condo
- Start or contribute to some open source project to sharpen my coding skills
- Run GigE in my condo since WI-FI sucks (18 SSIDs spread across channels 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11)
- Get a Boston Keratoprosthesis in my left eye with hopes of being able to restore decent vision

Finally, here's hoping that 2009 turns out to be a much better year than 2008. I don't think I can take another year like 2008.

Over the last few days, my personal e-mail address has been being pounded by backscatter. There is apparently a spam operation under way that is using my e-mail address as the fake From:. As a result, I get all of the bounces from mail servers that are misconfigured and don't reject undeliverable mail up front during the SMTP connection.

Does anybody have any recommendations on how I can significantly cut down on the amount of backscatter I receive? Would SPF really help me much? I'm inclined to think not, since these mail servers are already misconfigured and sending out rejects as e-mails instead of as SMTP codes.

I need a solution that can plug into a Postfix/SpamAssassion setup.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. I'm being buried alive over here. And since I'm currently trying to work with banks, real estate agents, and so forth, I really don't want to miss any important mail.

So I was waiting for The Simpsons to start but it was being delayed by NASCAR. I saw the end of NASCAR where the driver wins and they ask him how it feels. This is the first thing that he said:

"I gotta thank Dish Network, everybody at Aflac, Office Depot, Under Armour, Ford... its great to be driving a Ford Fusion, the City Financial Group..."
- Carl Edwards

What a loser sell out. Not even mentioning his family? Just his corporate sponsors? Lame.
No wonder I hate NASCAR.

So now that I have the 52" HDTV, I need a source for content! I get a bunch of HD channels on cable, but there is almost never anything worth watching on. What I really want to see is Planet Earth in HD. It was amazing in standard def, so the HD must be amazing.

Now that the HD-DVD/BD-DVD war is over, I'm torn on whether I should go out and get a BD player or wait. Right now, there are very few Profile 1.1 players out there as far as I can tell. On top of that, I don't think there are ANY Profile 2.0 players. I don't want a player that doesn't do everything that Blu-ray is supposed to do. Do I wait or get a PlayStation 3?

The other consideration is the Apple TV. Now that Apple has put out the update and it supports HD rentals and so forth, it is a slightly more attractive option. My problem with this one, however, is that the bitrates on their HD content is low. It may be HD, but it could also be crappy HD. Plus, I can't own any of the HD content. It'd be very convenient, but not the best looking HD. Plus, no Planet Earth.

So, what to do? Recommendations?

A while back, I enabled the My Stats feature on my Flickr account. Using it, I can see overall and individual photo viewing statistics. What have I found? This picture is my most popular picture, having been viewed 515 times since posted. Further, it has been viewed 41 times just this week and eight times yesterday. All of the hits come from direct accesses, not from search engines or views on Flickr.

Why is this picture so popular? Who on the Internet is linking to this? And now, I guess I'm making it worse by linking to it myself. Oh well...

So here I am creating a template installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 server for use in VMware Infrastructure. I decided to check and see what Red Hat recommends as the default sizes for various filesystems such as /, /var, /usr, and so forth. Their documentation on this subject is amazingly brief. (At the time of this writing, the section is entirely empty.)

Thanks, guys. And don't even get me started on the whole installation number thing. I miss you, FreeBSD.

In the month of October, so far I've received about fifteen solicitations from recruiters looking for me to submit my résumé. These came in the form of e-mails (mostly through CareerBuilder) and phone calls at home and work. None of them have been through my LinkedIn as far as I can tell.

So far, none have been interesting enough to act on. Very close, but not quite. I'm not a big fan of Contract-for-Hire jobs, which is what a majority of them are.

I've been waiting for Apple to add more good content to the iTunes Plus store. As far as I can tell, they haven't. Instead' they've been screwing people over by bricking their iPhones, locking their iPods down, and just generally being monopolistic assholes. Maybe it is a good thing they're not big like Microsoft. They could actually be worse.

Anyway, after all that waiting with nothing to show for it, Amazon finally saved the day. They opened Amazon MP3. It is awesome. All DRM-free music encoded at 256kbps VBR. It just sounds really good, costs less than the exact same content over on Apple's store, and integrates into iTunes and Windows Media Player easily.

I wish Amazon a lot of success and hope they land more deals with more labels. It is about time somebody came along and gave Apple some real competition. They've been kind of stagnating and marinating in their own success a little too long.

When I was a kid, we had these alphabet magnets on the refrigerator. A was red, B was orange, C was yellow, D was green, E was blue, and F was purple. G began the cycle again at red. In other words, it was the colors of the rainbow cycled over A-Z, It also then cycled over the numbers from 1-9,0, meaning 1 was yellow, 4 was purple, etc.

I used to play with these magnets sometimes. Somehow, my mind permanently associated each letter's color vale with that letter. As a result, in my head I associate letters and words with colors. As far as I can tell, this has caused me to have much better recall. Making a totally uneducated comparison, it is like I'm using the color as a key into a hash table of thoughts, words, and letters. When I think of the word "Amanda," I think of the color red. Similarly, when I think of the word "Joe" (Hello there, Joe), I think of green. Conversely, when I'm trying to recall a word or an idea but am having recall issues, I usually start by remembering a color and work back into the word from there. It is rather interesting, if not insane. I've even been known to write scripts and programs that change the text displayed in some computer programs to match the color keying in my brain.

Sadly, despite my searching, I am unable to find an alphanumeric magnet set that has the same colors as the one I had as a kid. If anybody ever comes across one, let me know. It'd be neat to have. Apparently we don't value the rainbow color cycle in modern times. Sucks.

A new version of iTunes (7.4.2) is available. Would you like to download it now? No.

iTunes 7.4.2 addresses an issue with creating ringtones using iTunes Plus song purchases and includes bug fixes to improve stability and performance.

Dear Apple,

Stop it. You're really starting to get on my nerves. For a company that has Eric Schmidt on their board, you sure seem to be doing a lot of evil lately. I'm really starting to question doing business with you based on some of your tactics and community responses lately. In short, you're being a jerk.

A while back, you put the Apple TV on the market. Shortly after you did so, the community began to hack it and found all sorts of clever ways to make it better. There were ways to increase storage, add RSS support, and much more. When questioned about the hacking, you said it's your box, do with it what you please. To date, I'm not aware of you slapping people down for enhancing the product. Instead, you seem to be busy focussing on the iPhone.

Next came the iPhone and ringtones. In order to support the new iPods and the new ringtones for the iPhone, you released iTunes version 7.4 on September 6^th. I don't have an iPod Touch, iPod Classic, or an iPhone, but I was cool with this. One update that added features that didn't cater to me was acceptable.

Shortly after you launched iTunes 7.4 with ringtones, the community found a way to circumvent the requirement to pay 99¢ in order to convert music they already owned into a ringtone for their phone. In order to counter this workaround, you released iTunes 7.4.1 on September 7^th. This is one day after having just launched iTunes 7.4. In other words, you pushed another update out that had absolutely no relevance to me since I do not own an iPhone. Kind of annoying.

Today, I got a notification that iTunes 7.4.2 was available. While I don't know for sure what the update does at this point, the description implies that it is related to ringtones. That would make three iTunes updates within 11 days that have no relevance to me. Despite this, I'm still prompted to update my iTunes. Please note that I'm not even complaining about the 99¢ charge for making ringtones. While I find that to be totally absurd as well, it is less important to me at this point.

Please, stop this madness. If you really want to keep playing Whack-A-Mole with your valued customers, find a way to stop hitting me in the process. iTunes has become a monolithic program. Not only does it do syncing with iPods, it also manages Apple TV and iPhone. Maybe it is time to make iTunes more modular and only update modules as appropriate?

And while I'm here, let me just say that I find your continual iPod/iTunes changes to lockout third parties rather disheartening. While I understand your desire to control your user base and get them to use your products from end to end, I also wish you'd consider being less restrictive and try to accomplish this through quality, not force.. Stop changing DAAP/ROAP in iTunes to prevent third party streaming. Stop adding database checksums to the iPod to prevent software other than iTunes from managing them. Basically, just quit putting artificial roadblocks in place that the community will eventually break through anyway. You're just making yourself look bad and irritating part of your user base.

For a company that seems to value being able to use and interact with open source projects such as BSD, gcc, Postfix, and Apache, you seem to be going really far out of your way to screw over people who want just as much interoperability with you as you want with them. Stop it. You may end up convincing me to take my money elsewhere otherwise.

Another plane ticket on hold just expired. I have officially deleted vacation from my calendar. I am not happy.

From: jobs@careerone.com.au
Subject: Are you need money?

Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen!
We are an european Computers company.
We offer you an additional income for part-time employment. You can earn some cash for 2-3 hours per day work.It is absolutely free for you, you should NOT sale anything! Very easy and fun way to make money.

Few main facts:
1. 900-1000 AUD a week!
2. 18+ y/o ONLY, you have to be able to check your e-mail 3-4 times a day
3. 1-2 hours of free time Monday-Thursday, preferably in the morning.
4. Daily Pay Out!

Requirements:
a) Knowledge of computer tools and the Internet is a must.
b) English (written, spoken is preferably) .
c) Autonomy, flexibility, initiative and creativity, good organizational skills.


If I have to have written English skills like theirs, I guess I'm out.

Seen on Ars Technica:

Terrorists have moved their messages online in droves over the last several years, which has presented a challenge for domain registrars in the western world that want to respect their customers' privacy. But some claims that registrars are aiding terrorists are a little misguided.


Really? You figure?

I just got invited to and joined Google's new acquisition, Grandcentral. It would seem I can invite people and get them past the waiting process. If I know you and you're interested, let me know and I'll invite you.

One of the coolest features is the ability to transfer an active call between your registered phones without the other caller knowing. If they call me on my Grandcentral number and I pick up on my cell, when I get to work I can press *, my work (and home) phones will ring and I can just pick the call up at my desk.

It even has Project Gizmo dialing support.

And now for another letter from our mailbag!

Hi,  smkelly

  You want, that your "member" became strong as a stone?
  You would like to recollect a young years...
  Best quality! 100% Effect!
  Best Prices!

   Visa Verified Online Shop.Worldwide shipping.100% confidential.

It just occurred to me. I need help. Some kind of intervention. I now own eighteen domain names. Four of those are parked and don't actually go anywhere, and at least two are in limbo.

The breakdown:

• 5 .com
• 3 .net
• 10 .org

The worst part is that I'm using DirectNIC as my registrar. While they're an awesome registrar, each of these domains costs $15/yr. I think I need to find a cheaper one, because $270 on domains a year is just insane. Some are paid a few years out, but still.

The newest addition to my domain collection is vmkernel.com. VMkernel is the name of the VMware ESX kernel thingy. Maybe I'll start some kind of virtualization site or something. I'm also sitting on askasysadmin.com, though I never did anything with it.

If anybody knows of any good but cheaper registrars, please let me know. I don't think I want to go to GoDaddy. I mean, it is called GoDaddy.

The saddest part is that while I was writing this, I thought of two more domains I need to get. I should just start a registrar at this point.

A little over a week ago, I posted about how Schmap selected a few of my Flickr pictures of Paradise Point as candidates for their San Diego guide. Well, they picked some of them to use.

My mom was the first to notice that if you go to the Mission Bay section and hover over the Paradise Point entry, my pictures come up with attribution to me. Neat, I guess. Even better though is that they link back to the originals on Flickr.

Clearly I need to go back and take more pictures, as well as taking pictures of their other properties!

Bad news everyone.

I feel like Control-Alt-Delete'ing myself.

So here I am, installing the IBM Remote Supervisor Adapter II Daemon for Linux on a server here at work. The problem is, every time I try to install the RPM, it tells me:


No IBM Remote Supervisor Adaptor II was found.
Please make sure the IBM RSA II and any cables are installed correctly
and the RSA II is configured for *Linux OS*
Exiting without installing the package.


I know it is lying, as I'm logged into the RSA's web interface and it is indeed set to Linux. So, I look at the .spec file for the RPM and see this:


# Pre-install section
%pre
ADAPTERFOUND="0"

if [ $(lsusb -d 04b3:4001 > /dev/null 2>&1; echo $?) -eq 0 ]; then ADAPTERFOUND="1"; fi
if [ $(lsusb -d 04b3:4003 > /dev/null 2>&1; echo $?) -eq 0 ]; then ADAPTERFOUND="1"; fi


Now, is it just me or is that backwards? Shouldn't we be doing -eq 1 there, IBM?


# lsusb
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 04b3:4001 IBM Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
# if [ $(lsusb -d 04b3:4001; echo $?) -eq 0 ]; then echo "Yes"; fi
# if [ $(lsusb -d 04b3:4001; echo $?) -eq 1 ]; then echo "Yes"; fi
Yes


How exactly does this make it past any sort of QA? I mean, this shouldn't install anywhere under any circumstances. Now the real question is whether I actually bother opening a ticket with IBM or just abandoning their monitoring agents.