Category: Stuff

… or should I say ncurses? Getting back into C a little bit, and wouldn’t you know the first thing I come across is that the *nix side of the fence doesn’t have a conio.h library? I started creating a simple C program that would read one line at a time of a text file full of email addresses, and the first thing I wanted to do was clear the screen. Simple, right? Just clrscr(); … Well, no … Unix isn’t so happy to oblige. So I go off looking for conio.h and find the dreaded curses.h library that everyone suggests referring to … My gosh .. what a different world! So, I’m a little upset that this is a perdicament … All the program I wrote way back when will never compile on a Unix machine like I thought they would. There is a conio.h curses.h wrapper that someone wrote to get around this, but writing new things is going to be slower going because it’s so much different … and just for the heck of it, I installed TC++ 1.0 (Includes TurboC 2.0) on my desktop machine. DOS based, and it takes up less than 5 megabytes. =)

Know what I did for this simple program? system(“clear”);

I was just doing some surfing … and through all the links that I found, and through all the little holes I find on the net where people don’t protect their directory listings, etc … I found a screen shot of some guy’s desktop, and on it is the following quote:

Real Programmers consider “what you see is what you get” to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No, the Real Programmer wants a “you asked for it, you got it” text editor — complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous.

Oh, this is at http://drunkmonkey.org

I am a programmer … Since the late 80s, I have written programs … The first programs ran on mainframe computers, and they were written in ASM/H (Assembler) … For the most part this was for work, but I did write a program to keep track of our pick-up work softball team stats … Things get done when your’re motivated …

Then, in the early 90s, I started running a BBS, and I started coding utilities for this BBS in C … I chose C because it was portable … (You could run it on almost any platform unchanged) … I wrote a ton of C programs … Communication utilities, network utilities, online door games and tons of utilities for my Spitfire BBS System and I had registrations from around the world for these utilities as I shared them with other Spitfire Sysops … I started delivering the Inquirer, and I wrote a program that did everything except deliver the papers … This was before Windows/95 … before RDMS such as MSSQL, Access and MySQL … Then the Internet was born, and my 5 node BBS system that received over 100 calls per day dwindled down to nothing. The Internet took over …

I got out of computers for a while, and when I came back, I went to setting up a web page for the band I was in. I started using Netscape Composer, but when I got undesired results, I went back to editing the source HTML text as I had been so accustomed to in the ASM and C days. I never went back to a WYSIWYG editor. I tried development IDEs, and they didn’t return desired results either …

I taught myself ASM/H. I taught myself C. Then when the time came, I taught myself HTML. At some point, someone wanted me to do their site, and I was in a situation where I had to have somewhere to put it on the web, so I got into hosting reselling someone else’s space on their servers. I brought up my own web server using Windows NT4 on a 200K SDSL line and developed my own web site. I taught myself ASP. After the DSL company went out of business, and the number of people I was hosting grew, the viable solution was a T1 line for my own internet access, and my NT4 server was more reliable than the hosting servers I was reselling at the time. I taught myself NT4 (and eventually 2000) and I taught myself IIS, FTP, SMTP, etc … I taught myself to host web sites …

After a while I got into the web and wanted to do more things, so I looked into starting to develop COM+ apps for use with ASP, but I was disenchanted by the VB6 IDE … I was back in an IDE and I hated it … Then I found PHP … PHP is the best thing I have ever found … It’s like C, and coding PHP has been like an old shoe … So much more available for PHP than there is for ASP (unless you want to pay for ASP/VB components). The more I got into PHP, the more I was looking at Linux … The more I started learning Linux, the more I was exposed to FreeBSD as a solution for hosting and Internet servers (as they were the first Internet servers) … I now have a FreeBSD Mail Server that does SPAM prevention, Virus Scanning and it’s all updated dynamically via the Internet. The only investment there has been the time I put into it to get it configured properly …

So, now I have almost 50 computers all prepared to do Internet hosting in a reliable environment … I no longer get the errors I had previously at two other places I bought reselling from … I checked market value at the time and I have set up a pricing scale that made sense … Now here is where the problems start …

After all this history I have in computers (mainframes to minis to micros) and I grew up with the 8088, 80286, 80386, 80486, DX2s, SXs and Pentiums, there are those that seem to think they can fill my shoes by buying an IDE to do what I do … While some people may become pros at this, they are SOL when a problem occurs … Most of them will just start from scratch and hope the new one works … In my development of ASP and PHP (web scripting languages) I have also evolved with them knowing their idiosyncrasies and why things are as they are, or why something that used to work doesn’t work anymore … With the development came security and different way of doing things so that systems wouldn’t be compromised … To call yourself a web developer if the only experience you have with the code is looking at what the pretty GUI application created for you, think again. Unless you understand what’s happening, you’re a fool to submit it and run it on a web server …

So what I describe is a person who thinks they’re a web developer without thinking … This goes hand in hand with web hosts that think they’re web hosts … I have had this stress for a while now … I get the SPAM, I bet everyone gets the SPAM … “FREE 1 Gigabyte Web Site!” “$5 a month after 6 months” “No setup fees!” … Here is where they come from: A guy buys a computer or rents one (more economical to buy) … He then throws it in a datacenter rack somewhere in the world, and is now a port on someone’s network. He buys Plesk or cPanel and now has a “Dummy’s Guide to Web Hosting” installed on his computer. A bunch of scripts that will set up and manage hosting accounts for him, he doesn’t need to know squat. Some companies even install it for you, and here’s your password … Off you go …

Then this novice web host fires up Dreamweaver and creates a nifty web site that produces PHP code that he doesn’t even understand, but hey, he’s getting a return on reselling his disk space that he has sitting colo’d somewhere. So he easily makes his $150/month dedicated server payment. But what happens when the formmail.cgi bug is found in cPanel? What happens when Plesk goes south? What happens when his MySQL or MSSQL server is compromised … What about service updates and well, what I like to call “System Maintenance” isn’t done cause he doesn’t know better … What about when every port has a running service on it and his machine is shut down by the ISP because he has rogue IRC servers and FTP servers running on his box because he didn’t know any better? Well, your web site goes down.

All I’m getting at is that you get what you pay for, and while some deal might seem great, you really ought to know what you’re getting into … I do everything I can to make sure my connection to the Internet is top notch. I do everything I can to solve day to day problems along with recurring Internet problems (such as SPAM or email Viruses) … I keep my systems up to date and monitor mailing lists to make sure I hear from the people doing the same thing I am doing, competent admins running reliable hosting on networks they manage. I also run both flavors, Windows and Unix Internet servers. I have mailed my customers countless times about the availability of a SPAM/Virus Free server available to them.

In relation to the connection, I found a glitch in Fast.Net’s network. They regularly once per minutes without fail would exceed 80ms on the routers in their network. I reported this with tons of evidence. My customers didn’t notice cause 80ms is nothing in terms of HTTP. SMTP, POP3 or FTP. I was not satisfied, and Fast.Net said there was nothing they could do, and that this was acceptable per their SLA. I found it completely unacceptable and called a Tier 1 Provider after I hung up with Fast.Net’s tech. Wouldn’t you know, Fast.Net is in Chapter 11 as of June 2003. See, they should have listened to me. I know what I’m doing …

Well, off to another club date … This is the first time at Cavanaugh’s, but we were booked there before … Got canceled due to the weather I think, and tonight there’s a 50% chance of rain … I didn’t get the call, so I guess I’m heading down there … It’s the old Kat-Man-Du … I don’t really feel like going, but I have no choice … No matter the situation whether I be sick or anything, I have to go and provide for the band … There is no calling in sick to work when you’re a sound man … I guess I just don’t feel like going there alone … I could bring Fish, but he costs money … and I’d have to go pick him up, and he lives south of the Commodore Barry Bridge … There’s a Springsteen concert at Licoln Field as well as Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake at the FU center .. or Wohicka or whatever it’s called now … So, traffic down by the bridge will probably be pretty bad … Then I would have to take him home … Oh well, it’s a living …

So yeah, there was a bachelorette party at The Springfield, and one of them left their plastic phalic drinking cups … That thing made its way to being propped up in the front of my truck for the ride home … Luckily, we stopped at the WaWa just outside of Sea Isle on Route 9 and it was removed before the trek home … Haha .. funny … Fish and Alex are comedians …

Why do people pass trucks? They seem to pass me just to be in front of a truck, and then they slow down and I have to pass them … Then they will speed up while I’m passing them so they screw everything up … My favorite is the people that pull in front of trucks … They think, okay, I can go now, it’s a truck .. they’re slow … But do they realize, that’s a BIG truck … It could crush me in an instant and I will be dead … It takes much longer to slow down a big heavy truck than a passenger car … I guess they don’t think this … I haven’t killed anyone yet, but I have seen it happen all too often … Yeah, it takes a while to get up to speed, so we’re slow on the start, but when we get going, don’t try being cute, cause you will die, and us people in the truck probably won’t even realize it …

We won a scrim last night against a clan that we thought we were going to scrim, but all the ringers showed up … It looked bad when we started being we were down 3-9, but we came back 10-2 to win the first map, and the second map we tied 12-12 but we won 4-0 in overtime … That was a great win for us … even if it was only a scrim …

Princeton was loads of fun last night, I think I hurt my shoulder … But it’s all worth it to hump all that stuff in and up on that stage for the few people up front of a packed place who at least recognize that there’s a band there … Tonight it’s down to The Springfield Inn … Yeah, I came home … Why wouldn’t I? So now I am about to leave to do it all over again … Of course coming home gives me the chance to get a good sleep and offload the camera … handle anything that’s come up in email or forums …

Billing went out … some loose ends on some sites fixed up, and a new site went up … It’s the first site that is completely Microsoft free … Unless you count DNS, but that will change soon I hope … But HTTP, SMTP and FTP are all handled by FreeBSD … Now I must nap before my glorious weekend down the shore … Yipee!

Brought up a new FreeBSD 5.1 box today … I downloaded the ISOs yesterday while Mike was finishing up the paper and I was napping … Looks like there’s some nifty new features in it, and it looks like it may be going in the route of becoming more desktop friendly … I often wondered why the Toaster people were not into running on 5.1 and remaining at the 4.8 level … I’m thinking that FreeBSD is sort of making a server/workstation branch here, but I don’t know .. That’s simply my own observation … Was a bit of a pain to get a MySQL server running on 5.1 but I got it eventually … I am going to build the new web site I got for a customer and then I may start moving all of the sites I design over there … Running them on the Windows boxes just seems so foolish …

Okay, so I was close if not right on the money … Mike got done at 7PM … I was done around 3PM, but I milked the crap out of it to draw it out that long …

The Counter-Strike Server has been patched with the latest and greatest version … 3.1.1.1d … So now all the HLDS world is well, except for those who are complaining about everything … I really don’t understand these people … I have never had any problems with the HLDS Server running … have only had performance issues, and they were finally realized to be the CPU … I needed more power captain …

So, of course, after I finish the paper, I reward myself with a little Counter-Strike, and I got to play on the new patched version … This was after yet another nap … I fell asleep in the chair here while Mike rushed to get his paper done …

So, it’s 11PM and alls well … now some coffee, some web work, a movie and then back to the grind …

I am done the Out On the Town and the extraneous things that I have to do at times … Mike is still here rushing his butt off through the body copy and whatever else needs to be done to complete the paper … I heard him estimate to someone that he will be here until 5:30PM, so in Mike time, he’ll probably be here until 7 or 8PM … I could have easily been done this issue by Tuesday afternoon, but I have the mentality of why bust my ass when I know this is how the paper is going to end up … Plus the added fact that Mike didn’t have the last of the ads to me until midnght Tuesday night … Oh well, you be the judge …