Category: Stuff

It’s my Birthday!

Forty one today, forty one today. I’m the same age as the Superbowl.

I’m surprised that I haven’t updated my site, my bLog since September … I guess I have poured much of my offline time into my online vLogs on the OctaneCrew site … I’ve found talking into a camera much easier than doing this typing thing, but once all the video is recorded, editing can become a lengthy process …

So what’s new since my last post in September? Happy New Year!

Web Hosting: Nothing much new in the hosting world. I’ve been trying to get hold of Savvis to renew my contract. Three years has finally come and gone in December, but getting hold of my account representative has been more than difficult. I finally got him on the phone about a week ago and haven’t heard back yet. This has been the worst response from Savvis to date. I think their sales force is not as professional anymore, or I got the one guy who doesn’t keep up on things … I got a quote from them about a year ago for $250 less per month, but I was told I couldn’t renew my contract until it was up. When talking to my rep last week, he tells me the price has gone up. If this is the case, I will be switching companies, no matter how much the hassle.

The main Windows server crashed beginning of October. The machine went on its merry way into Lalaland … I was able to put the drive into an external enclosure and suck off the data onto a new installation which made the switch fairly transparent to those who just use web services … The mail handled by FreeBSD kept flowing, and the registry infomation that the Windows products keep there was able to be saved so no renewing of passwords, etc was necessary … What a relief that was …

Octane: Much the same as they continue to play every weekend on the Philadelphia club circuit. They did have a highlight November 30, 2006 when they appeared on the Opie & Anthony satelite XM Radio show where they played on the “walkover” … a deluge of CD orders poured in that I dutifully got out in the post … They were just on again yesterday morning, and again, the CD orders are coming in from across the country …

The crew is starting fresh in that the crew that I inherited when I started with the band are all but gone. The last remaining guy has given notice and will be done as soon as he can be replaced or he gets sick of waiting for us to find someone. My son started coming out to shows and he has fell into duties that he’s never done before … Of course this means I have to do much more work than before … It’s not been fun the last couple weeks … Hopefully we’ll find some new crew that can get the job done as before …

Father-in-Law: My father-in-law Edward Walter Andrews passed away January 2, 2007. He was born in December 29, 1925 … He had a building of fluid in his chest a week or so before Thanksgiving and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He never came back out of the hospital. I thought for sure that he would have come home. For my children and I, that was the last that we’d ever seen him … My wife went daily to visit him in the hospital … Again, I thought for sure he would get past this … He was a big burly cement finisher … Never thought that it would get the best of him …

Since I’d known him, he didn’t work … Already retired … He did keep himself busy though … You couldn’t keep him away from tinkering with something … When I was dating my wife, he’d help with the car if there was a problem, or I should say the “report” of a problem … Like my wife would mention that I was having a problem with my brakes … While sitting there waiting for her to come out of the house, out he would come, “Problem with the brakes?” … and you would want to blow it off and say yeah, but I know about it and I am taking steps to rectify the brake trouble. “Pop the hood.” … oh no, well, I will humor him … He checks the brake fluid level and stuff … “Need to bleed the brakes” and then we spend the next 30-45 minutes bleeding brakes and it’s fixed … He wouldn’t take no for an answer when it came to fixing things … While the brake bleeding went well, sometimes everything didn’t go as planned …

Once we moved into our house, there were things around the house that were broken and I would sometimes come home to find my father-in-law working on things … I would ask my wife why he was here, and she would say that she told her mother of the problem and he came over to fix it … So, sometimes the fix would be quick, other times he would explain to me what the problem was and make frequent trips to the hardware store getting what was needed and trying the next steps on to fix the problem … While we may not be able to use whatever he was fixing at the time, eventually he’d get the right thing from the hardware store and off we’d go …

I guess I should have mentioned that he was hard of hearing, so in these processes, you would say something to him, and his reaction wasn’t always such that you’d know if he heard you or not … It could have been lack of hearing or determination, not sure which so that added to part of the mystery … He would sit at family gatherings and be in his own little world … While everyone is discussing something at some length, he’d blurt, “Th’say it’s gonna rain tomorrow.” or he’d comment on a sports player playing on the team that was playing on TV … He was a Philadelphia fan …

Although very silent while in the family gatherings, you could catch him beaming at his grandchildren … Not knowing what was going on in his semi-silent world of his head, but he was entertained by his grandchildren … From across the room, he would make gestures to catch the children as they would fall … Ah, he was a character … My wife would laugh when telling me of things that her father would do … He was a price watcher, often going to 3 different supermarkets to catch the sale at each one … Often times, haggling on prices when prices aren’t for haggling … Being concerned with parking spots on a street etc … Having conversations with people and when they’d gone lean down and ask, “Who was that?”

My kids have lost their Pop and we took the kids to the viewing, mass, interment and luncheon … While the 8 year old broke down at the end of the viewing, the 5 year old was just about at comprehension … There was debate on whether the children should have attended and I was adamant about them going … They hadn’t seen their Pop since before Thanksgiving and never visited him in the hospital with all the tubes in him … They needed to see him sleeping in his casket and laid to rest … They did want to visit him in the hospital, but my wife also expected him to come back home as well … I still can’t believe that congestive heart failure won him over as well … I fully expected him to live forever …

Well, that sums up my major life since my last post. If anything else comes up, I will update.

It’s more than a mail server

So, I attempted to upgrade my mail server … it didn’t work …

Actually, it started out as an idea for me to start another mail server from scratch … I wanted to create a test email server so I could learn more about all the interaction that goes on … As I was researching this, I determined from my reading that it would probably be very simple to upgrade the existing mail server … You know, the one that’s serving thousands of actively live email addresses, whether email is stored on the server or forwarded … I have upgraded plenty of servers in place and have never had major issue … This changed yesterday …

Normally what I’m upgrading is PHP … They update PHP on a pretty regular basis, and it ain’t no thing to cvsup to the latest ports and deinstall, reinstall to the latest and greatest … but with the mail server, this is a bit different … there are many dependencies … I can usually handle this very well too … I can backtrack failures or Google errors and find a fix …

Up until yesterday, I have always paid a consultant to work on my mail server … Email is not something to take lightly … It is the most exploited thing on the Internet … Too much SPAM and Viruses to think that I could handle all of this on my own … So for years now, I have had someone else do the thinking and I do the tinkering … Because of all the tinkering I’ve done myself, and I’m pretty proud of myself that I setup authoritative name servers and an inline firewall all doing multiple amounts of graphing, etc … I thought that I was at the point where I could handle the email server on my own …

All that seemed to be required was that I bring the ports tree up to current and then compile the new programs … Since this was something I wasn’t familiar with, I figured I would let portupgrade have at it and upgrade all the ports that needed upgrading … That’s why it had sounded so easy to me … I also figured I had all the time in the world to do this as the active system would remain active until I rehashed and restarted the services … Not the case …

First thing to fail, the MySQL server … When it’s portupgraded, it stops the MySQL server … So that was the first problem that immediately ceased mail flow … I started the “new” MySQL server and all seemed well … but then things just degredated from there … Now it was a race to compile the programs and get everything in sync once again … The phone kept ringing, but I didn’t have immediate answers … I wanted to try to fix it before I talked to anyone … One hour became two … Then two became four … I didn’t have much sleep, so I was purty tired …

Once I got to the point that everything was finished compiling, out of the hundreds of ports that were checked and upgraded, there were three that didn’t make it … cronolog, fastest_cvsup and maildrop … Two of those stopped the operation of webmail as well as normal mail flow … cronolog stopped apache from operating and maildrop, well, it’s a mail server so something called maildrop was probably pretty important, eh? So I attempted to deinstall, reinstall those programs … When they didn’t work (and maildrop took some time to fail) I Googled to find answers … Those answers were not readily found … I suppose in retrospect, it’s because maildrop is probably not as popular as PHP or apache …

So, I am dead in the water … I could continue to tinker my way through and make it work, but there was two things going against me … The major one, there was a bunch of people that wanted their email … After all it was a Monday, and Monday is the most important (busiest) day … Man, when I screw something up, I do it right! The second thing was, no matter how I got it working, I would not feel confident that it was done right … That’s the most important thing to me … Again, email is something that I don’t think should be messed with or taken lightly …

I resort to turning my mess over to the consultant … Now normally I book time with him … We schedule a time and I open up the firewall, etc and we get it done … Him proceeding with the necessary steps and me babysitting in case he needs to restart the machine or something goes goofy … There’s been only one time that I can recall that I actually had to help him … Most things just worked when he did them … Anyway, by the time he straightened out what I had brought the mail server to, it cost me $200.00 … I figure it probably cost me more due to the fact that people couldn’t get their email … but it’s working now, and that’s all that matters I guess …

The problem is that I don’t understand the mail server … There are many programs working in concert to facilitate the flow of mail and in that process weed out the bad mail and forward the good … The good thing is that I understand the mail server more after this experience … Where I left all of the thinking to the consultant and Mr. Bernstein, knowing the steps in which to rectify the situation I have a better understanding of what’s going on … The other problem is that the mail server isn’t just a mail server … It’s a web server, and imap server, pop, smtp, etc and a bunch of applications talking to one another again, to facilitate the flow of what is to be determined as good email …

This brings me back to the beginning … I am going to set up a parallel mail server … One that I can break and not affect the masses that depend on the mail server … In doing this, I will be able to learn more about all of those applications that work together to stop the bad people on the Internet … There are many ways to do this, and I would like to get more of them in place … The more I can do on my own to figure out how to make it work, the better off I will be in providing this for other people as I will actually know what’s going on … That is becoming more important to me as the cost of running the mail server starts to hit my wallet more … While it’s all Open Source programs, they’re getting much more sophisticated since the baddies are getting that much more sophisticated … I don’t want SPAM … I want to stop it … I could certainly pay someone to make that happen, but that goes beyond the scope of a working mail server … That goes into to custom stuff, and that’s what I want to pursue …

If you’re someone that relies on my mail server for mail, sorry about yesterday (Monday, September 18th) … I had nothing but good intentions in bring the mail server up to date on the applications processing the mail … portaudit was informing me of application that contained vulnerabilites, and I wanted to get them fixed … I just didn’t want to spend the money for a simple portupgrade … Well, now I know that all things that may seem simple aren’t always so simple …

This goes back to things I have said in the past, and they certainly ring true by this example … It may be very easy to set something up … There are many people out there setting up hosting servers that are all encompassing and selling cheap hosting on them … $1/mo., etc … They’re very easy to put in place, either by paying someone to do it or by using a basic understanding of server setups … Where the important stuff comes in is in the ability to maintain that server/application … Vulnerabilities pop up all the time … Microsoft and Apple have facilitated an automatic update feature to solve this … Every once in a while, my iMac tells me, “Hey, you need to update this piece of software!” and I do it … The Microsoft guys, I manually check on a regular basis, sooner if I know something is up, and that’s due to having one machine that still checks and informs me if there’s something going on …

So, I want to get to know my mail server since I have been working on a control panel of sorts that is keeping track of many things for me … The more I update it, the more things are revealed that I was unaware of … This is just things that people were able to get out of me for free since I wasn’t paying very close attention … The more I got this working, the better handle I got on things, and with the mail server also keeping a database, I want to tap into that and merge that into the control panel … If something can be queried, it can be updated and eventually I will be able to get my application running the entire network … I work on this as time allows … The more and more I work on it, the more and more I get to a hands off solution … But I digress …

Back to School

Well yeah, I haven’t posted in a while … Sometimes I would think about when something in particular came up that I thought would be a neat topic to discuss, but I just didn’t get a round tuit … I think I used to have one, but I don’t remember where it is … and yes, by my standards, I have been busy …

The vLog … I have been creating vLogs for the OctaneCrew site … Got into this when monitor guy Alex started it, and I thought it was a much better way to share thoughts than typing up a storm such as I’m doing now … Then light guy Dave made a vLog of which he’s the video guy and he set our standards much higher … I have got into some pretty interesting video editing …

Octane has been working and working and we just came off a fun weekend … They played 3 all original shows … Friday they opened for Staind, Three Days Grace and Soil at The Electric Factory … Sunday they opened for Three Days Grace and Blackstone Cherry at House of Blues in Atlantic City … Saturday was an extended set at The Grape Street Pub in Manayunk … I guess in all instances I was on some pretty neat boards … Staind travels with the PM5D and HOB has a 5K … Grape Street has an A&H ML something or other … HOB sounded awesome …

Have been watching Eagles preseason … They look good … I remain, as always, optimistic and I will leave it at that …

Saw the season premeire of House last night … Still a good TV show so let’s see where they take it this year … Lost starts October 4th …

October 5th is the date I am supposed to be able to renegotiate my T1 contract and you can bet your booty that I will be on the phone first thing in the AM … I have been paying a T1 cost that is outrageous and was locked in three years ago … They would not renegotiate the contract until this one was up … I am in the process of determining if whether since they did this to me that I ought to switch providers … My opinion was that since the price dropped a couple hundred dollars per month that they should have renegotiated me at that time … Instead they told me that I had to wait and there was no recourse but to pay the contracted amount whether I stayed with them or not … Meaning, I could drop them at anytime, but I still owed them the contracted monthly payment … Funny thing is, one of the prices I got about 8 months ago was from them so I attached that email and sent it to my account representative saying that those two should talk … They stuck to their guns and continued to extort the additional money from me …

I cleaned up my hosting database substantially … All the domains that I no longer hosted I removed from my database … All the billing history, all the customers that no longer existed … While I tried to collect from them, it never happened so I decided to strike it up as a loss and to concentrate on those people that are part of the program and do pay as scheduled etc … I wrote a bunch of code in the last week to straighten out my DNS according to my domain database and removed all the discrepancies and found some things that were not right … Sometimes people get things by me, and this code stops that easily by painting a very clear picture of what’s going on … I need to expand this into email and actual disk residences, but DNS is certainly going to stop the traffic …

To sum up those last two paragraphs, with the T1 pricing and the coming and going of hosting customers, hopefully this will once again even out … I have been paying a lot of money to keep a connection active that isn’t necessarily supporting itself … For whatever reason, those people utilizing the service have chosen to stop what they’re doing or go elsewhere and I don’t claim to know exactly why … I can only assume … First, I can assume that someone else is cheaper … I have tried a 1&1 site for a little while … I have even started moving my domain registrations to another registrar … The second thing I could think of is service and where I try to be awesome in service, there are those times that my SmartJack got wet or I have had things such as my DNS server crashing … All interruptions were fixed as soon as possible, but for the 1 year uptime, that 1 hour makes all the difference … So what you were up 8,760 hours, that one hour was when I *really* needed my email … I changed the DNS servers at 1&1 and am pointing everything to me … I didn’t like 1&1’s interface etc, and I don’t like their junk mail … Back to the original reason I started hosting, to be able to do things my way …

Anyway … that’s an update on what I’ve been up to, maybe I will be able to get back to posting here regularly? That would be special …

Motorcycle Riding Class Part 1

I took the first riding portion of the class this past Sunday afternoon, June 4th … It was 1:30 to 6:30pm … They take you through the necessary controls of the motorcycle to be associated with and stressed those parts that shut the power to the motorcycle as well as cutting off the engine … A couple things have changed … There is no longer a “kill-switch” or a “kick-stand” on a motorcycle … Motorcyclists don’t kick or kill anything these days … They’re now the engine cut-off switch and the side-stand … The other important control is the clutch … Pull it in to remove power from the rear wheel …

Since I have been riding my Nighthawk for several weeks, a lot of it was review … I got confused as to where I was supposed to drive the bike at times as their cones are tiny … They’re about 2″ high … There are lines all over the course, and I’m not always sure what lines I’m supposed to be staying inside of … For the most part, you follow the person in front of you … Some of the exercises are difficult in that you have to gain some speed, but a lot of the other people aren’t gaining speed … I tried to take it slow … I thought that that’s what they want me to do?

I could tell that there were some people that never rode before in the class, and there were some that had ridden before … In fact I and another guy rode our motorcycles to the class … We didn’t use ours, we used their small ones … 125-250cc bikes … In one of the first exercises, a girl went down … I think she held on to the throttle handlebar as she went down cause the engine revved and the bike started to spin a little bit … They spoke with her for a while and got her a different motorcycle and she got right back on … I thought that was great … Some people may have given up right then and there …

The most difficult exercise of the day was the quick stop … You had to get going to about 15MPH in 2nd towards cones at the other end, and once your front tire crossed the cones you had to shift into first and stop using both brakes as quickly as you could … Once in 2nd, you had to maintain throttle and be in a normal riding position covering nothing … Once you cross the cones you have to squeeze with both hands and press down with both feet … When I ride, I’m always covering something, so this was a bit difficult, but this is one of the things that is on the riding test … It’s to simulate having to quickly stop if something comes into your path while riding … I have the luxury of practicing this on my own bike until the next riding lesson which will be next Sunday when we’re tested …

We all made it through to the next class, so that’s a good thing … This Wednesday is the final classroom which will culminate into the written test … 50 questions of which you need to get 40 correct … Then the final riding class/test the following Sunday … If I pass both tests, I get my Class M license … Again, anyone can take this course … All you need is a Class M learner’s permit which costs $10 … Eye protection, gloves, boots acceptable for riding (leather that covers the ankle), jeans and a long sleeve shirt … They provide a motorcycle and a helmet … Go to http://www.pamsp.com/ to check it out …

Motorcycle Safety Program, I’m in!

It doesn’t take much to start riding a motorcycle; $10 Check or Money order payable to PENNDOT, answer 16 questions correctly out of 20, buy yourself a motorcycle and a helmet. Then you can ride legally from sun up to sun down … Once you feel you’re experienced enough to become licensed, you go take your motorcycle driving test and if you pass, you get yourself a Class M on your driver’s license …

There is an alternative, and it’s the choice I made … I elected to take the PA Motorcycle Safety Program … It’s free to PA residents, and once completed, you get yourself a Class M license … You don’t need anything to take the class except the ability to ride a bicycle and the motorcycle learner’s permit … You could have never ridden a motorcycle in your life … They provide motorcycles and helmets … So, you could take this class and upon passing, you can go get yourself your own motorcycle and already be licensed … Or, you could determine whether riding a motorcycle is right for you …

The MSP takes 4 days … 2 days of class and 2 days of riding … The first class is 2.75 hours and gets you acquianted with riding, etc … The second class is 5 hours of learning to ride … The third class is 2.75 hours of more book learning and finally your question test that you must pass to get your Class M license … The last class is 5 more hours of riding … If you pass, you get a card that you present next time you take your license photo and you have the Class M added to your normal driver’s license … Up until then, the card counts as your Class M driver’s license …

You can sign up online for the program … I found that it was pretty much full when I decided to get into it … I had to wait for a sign up date (which is after 8:00AM on Monday mornings) and as I sat in front of my computer, I watched it fill up … I signed up May 22nd for a class to begin July 19th … My only option was a class that happened on Wednesdays and Sundays since I work on the weekends … There were only a certain amount of these classes as well … I decided that I would try to get into an earlier class as a “Walk-In” by going to the class on the day it started and hoped that there were no-shows … If all the classes are full to begin with, you can register as an “alternate” … So, when I went as a walk-in, I had to wait for them to register all the confirmed participants, then register any alternates that showed, then I would have a chance to get in … I showed up an hour and a half early to try to get into this class … Guess what? I got in …

Even though I already have a motorcycle, I am going to use theirs … You have the option of using your own if you want … The thing about it is, the ones they provide are usually smaller in size than something you’d buy so this makes them lighter and easier to drive for your learning/testing … I just took the first class last night … There was a very mixed bag of people there … Men and women of all colors and ages … The guy sitting next to me was 68 … The guy on my other side was probably in his early 20s … He didn’t seem too happy about the class and asked a lot of questions that are already answered on the web site … It seemed an inconvenience to him … ‘We have to go through this to get our license?’ … ‘How long is this?’ … ‘OMG, 5 hours?!’ …

It doesn’t seem an inconvenience to me … I think it should be a requirement … Riding on two wheels out there with other idiots on two and four wheels, I want all the ammunition available to me … I have already learned from riding, there are some simple basics that you should know … They don’t tell you when you buy a motorcycle how to drive it, and the book from PENNDOT just covers traffic laws and basic safety … The number 1 thing that I needed to learn was turning the wrong way to turn the right way … It has to be the most amazing sensation driving the bike … To turn right, I press on the right handgrip … Normally (and any sane person) you’d think that pressing on the right handgrip would turn the front tire left and you would go left … This isn’t the case … Once I came to that realization, I realized that a Motorcycle Safety Program is something that I should definitely take …

New Motorcycle

1983 Hona Nighthawk 650On Monday, May 15th, 2006 I purchased the 1983 Honda Nighthawk 650 pictured to the left off of eBay. I had been wanting to get a motorcycle for years as I’m sure most red blooded American males want to get a motorcycle. I have heard many a tale of a motorcycle accident in and around the family, and some of those accidents were terrible ones. Damn the consequences? No. Here’s the story;

Coming home late one Saturday night, I was subjected to the Sunday morning talk portion of the FM radio stations driving home in my car. This particular Sunday morning, the guests were from the Delaware Valley A.B.A.T.E. … (A.B.A.T.E. = Alliance of Bikers Aimed Toward Education) … What they were basically talking about was the safety associated around motorcycle driving and bringing awareness to those who don’t ride motorcycles to be aware that there are motorcycles sharing the roads with them … They said many more people were purchasing motorcycles due to the gas price increase.

This got me thinking again about purchasng a motorcycle. Simply mentioning to my wife, “Hey, I was thinking about getting a motorcycle.” gets a simple response of “No you’re not!” … But I had made a pact with her many years ago about getting one, and I was determined to hold her to it … There were other reasons I had for getting one. The major reason was that I drove the car on weekends to get to the truck to do the Octane shows. I told her if I had the motorcycle that she wouldn’t be left without a car and outings that she would be on would no longer be stopped short because she had to get the car to me so I could take it to the truck …

So off we go looking for a motorcycle. I packed the wife and two kids in the car and we took a ride to find a cheap used motorcycle. I have never owned a motorcycle, nor have I really driven one except for a friend letting me ride his once before I was even out of high school. The first place we went was East Coast Cycle Center … I had seen a used bike listed on their web site that was going for just under $3000.00 … I would never get that, but I recall a long time ago going to this particular bike shop and finding a 750 for $750, and that’s what I was looking for. All the bikes here had price tags hanging from them, and they were all very expensive … No one really talked to us there, so we left …

Just down the road a little south is Philly Fun Center … They didn’t have anything used either, but I was entertaining a scooter … They had them new for $1500ish … He didn’t suggest I ride something like that on the highway … Again the cheapest used was over $3000.00 … He said that people were buying up everything cheaper. He suggested a Kawasaki Dealer up the road … So off to Bucks County Kawasaki at 230C Route 13, Bristol, PA 19007 … Same thing there … Used $5,500 but why buy used when a new one was $6,900? Ha! You crazy?!

We then drove around, exploring areas we never drove and looking for motorcycle places … We stopped where we saw a lot of motorcycles, but they seemed to be a service place … They suggested an accessories store where they might know about someone selling used bikes … We drove there and I asked the guy behind the counter and he said he’d get back to me if he heard anything … I still haven’t heard from him … Again it was reiterated to me that bikes were selling like hotcakes … Not only was it the beginning of the summer, but the gas prices were converting a lot of people who had been thinking about buying a motorcycle before to finally get one since the mileage is so great on a 4 stroke two wheeled beast … I don’t know exactly what my mileage is yet, but I would estimate it’s about 50-60 miles to the gallon.

So, that weekend I drove Alex to the show in the truck, and on the way up I told him about our excursion and how I came up empty … He mentioned he had a 250 Ninja that didn’t run … Said I could fix it and use that … So we left it at that … Monday morning (5/15) I look at my iMac and in the IRC room I see that Alex posted a link to an eBay item Sunday night … It was to the bike pictured in this post … I sent a message at 12:48pm about coming by and checking the motorcycle out … I got a response from the guy’s wife with his phone number … I called and had to leave a message … The whole time I’m worried because there’s a Buy It Now on the auction … It could end any second! I tried to pass the time, went shopping with the wife and was rushing her to get home … So at 3:45pm I sent all the questions I wanted answered … Was it inspected, was he currently riding it, did it need anything, etc … She replied again at 5:30ish and that was all I needed … I clicked the Buy It Now and the phone rang … It was her to schedule me coming by to check it out, and then she says, “Oh, you bought it, I guess we’re scheduling when you’re coming by to pick it up.”

You see, I have been burned before on the eBay Buy It Now stuff … Something I’m interested in disappears right before your eyes … There’s nothing you can do once it’s gone … It was listed for a starting bid of $899.99 and a Buy It Now of $1000.00 … So, risk losing it waiting til the end for $100? The counter on it was well over 400+ and it was only listed about a day … It was also listed on Craig’s List with his phone number … I had already been around to the dealers and there was nothing like this available … Bam! I met the seller at 7:00pm … He had contacted a Mobile Notary who came out to the sale and did the title transfer (most tag places close at 7pm) … Alex met me at the seller’s and my wife dropped me off. Alex drove it to a local parking lot and I started messing with it there … Alex lent me a helmet and I drove it home …

I have my permit, my insurance ($95 for the year) and I am signed up for the free motorcycle class given by the state … I have driven about 300 miles and have stopped for gas 3 times putting $5.00 in each time … I saw another bike for sale on State Road … I stopped to check it out … It’s a 1982 Honda CB750 for $999.00 … It’s rusty, it has black pipes and doesn’t look as nearly well kept as the bike I got on eBay … I got a great deal … The eBay seller told me that he had tons of emails and his phone was ringing off the hook from the Craig’s List ad … Good thing I came with the cash and made it mine when I did … He was kicking himself … He knew he could have sold it for twice what he actually sold it for … and when I decide to buy a bigger newer bike, I will be able to sell it for that amount …

I’ve read the owner’s manual several times and I have beefed up the suspension for my big butt … It’s pretty damn cool … I was worried about what my parents would say, and thankfully they’re supportive and telling me to be careful … Always wear my helmet, etc … My older brother had a motorcycle and had a solo accident where he drove his leg into his pelvis … he was out of commission for a while because of it … I don’t think he ever took the class or had the ability to do as much reading as I have on the ‘net about riding … The key is to start out really slow and work your way into more advanced riding … I’ve taken it on the highway twice … I prefer not being on the highway …

Welp, this post is getting too long … There are some experiences I would like to share, but I will leave them for another time …

Moping Around

So I was moping around about the doctor visit, and I was thinking about this coming Friday (today) … I’m traveling down to Columbia, MD for St. Patrick’s Day … Not the best thing I could think of doing for St. Patrick’s Day, but that’s not my decision … Octane is working at Nottingham’s … They wanted us to load in at 11:00am this morning, but that wasn’t going to happen … Two thirds of the crew have day jobs that prohibits this … The thought of sitting around and doing nothing after we load in besides the fact that it’s over a 2 hour drive just to get down there … Blah! Anyway, so I’m figuring that we won’t use what we normally use there …

iPodI usually bring in my FOH board and run through their system … They’re not normally too happy about me taking up floor space, but there’s a nice cubby hole where I go that works well … I’m thinking that for St. Patrick’s Day and amatuer hour that I won’t be brining in a board that costs $7500 and a rack full of about $10Gs in gear not to mention sitting my $2000 laptop on top … So, instead of trying to fit a place for my laptop in a house system situation, I finally broke down and bought the iPod … I thought it might cheer me up having this thing to mess around with … It didn’t entirely … Money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness … Maybe I was concerned that I shouldn’t have spent that money on the iPod … They aren’t cheap you know … $399 plus tax … Then I got the case for it ($35) and a docking station ($99) … Makes it an expensive toy … The case is justified as I think you need to protect something that costs $399 and is that small … I’m sure it will earn its worth in the future …

So here I sit, just hours away before I have to get into it all … Not looking forward to it, but I am usually optimistic about these things … The situation usually warrants that it turns out to be a good one … Octane is a good band to work for in that they play music that I can get into … If I’m lucky, the music usually takes me away from the situation …

Here we go again

While I was sitting at my desk watching these DivX files, I felt a lump in my chest … My wife was worried, so off I go to the doctor … I went Tuesday … I told her I saved up all of my ailments for her (heir doktor) … A cold that never seemed to go away, the things I feel in my body that you go to feel on the other side to see if it’s normal (like having it on the other side too makes it okay) … my lower back pain … chest pain … and the back of my neck revisited …I left there with 6 pieces of scribbled paper … and they took three tubes of my life blood …

Pre1.) a prescription for a pain killer for what she thinks is arthritis in my lower back; Pre2.) a request to X-ray my lower back; Pre3.) a mammogram (which I will be refering to as a man-o-gram); Pre4.) an ultrasound of my right abdomen area, there’s some weird things floating around in there; Pre5.) prescription for Nexium to see if that relieves the tightness and pain in my chest; Pre6.) a CT scan with contrast (like I had before) to check up those little nodules in the back of my neck and see how they’re doing …

I worry, but I take this in stride … My wife worries, but she doesn’t say much … She goes to the pharmacy to fill the pills, and the pain medicine is around $30 but the Nexium is $175 or something … No generic, but Prilosec (which I was presecribed years ago) is now over the counter … She called the doctor to see if this was okay, and they told her to stop by the office, that they had samples we could get … In the meantime my blood results came back, and I’m back on some cholesterol medication … I go this coming Wednesday for a day of poking and prodding fun …

D.I.Y.

So our home phone no longer had a dialtone … We called for service and they came out … I was asleep at the time … Wish I wasn’t cause the guy royally screwed it up … He told my wife that things were screwed up outside … That he hooked it up properly and didn’t know why it wasn’t working … He traced some of my internal lines and couldn’t get to where some of them went and marked where the line came in and was working … That I would have to take it from there … What this guy did was rewire it at the pole so it came in on my defunct DSL connection … WRONG! … Being that that’s where it was, I figured out how to mount those wire in the demarc and get the line working internal to the house … I’m not happy about the connection now coming in that way as it’s now accessible on the back of my house whereas the other 7 or 8 lines come in on this big black cable … I’m not using all those lines anymore, they were for the now defunct BBS I had running when I moved in … The Internet took care of that …

This past Wednesday, February 1st 2006 Octane opened up at the TLA for Pray for the Soul of Betty which is Constantine from American Idol‘s band … Considering all of the concern prior to the show, it went fine for me … I made Octane sound good and everybody was happy … I didn’t meet the guy, but I was in his presence and that was interesting enough for me … I didn’t attempt to meet him either as I wouldn’t have had anything to say to him except that I saw him on TV … Still the highlight of my Octane career has been meeting Gene Simmons whereas I did have a conversation at length with him and he signed a copy of his book for me …

ICUHost.Net Billing went out and I also sent out a newsletter … After reading the letter and rereading it, I emailed it out and I missed a blatant misspelling … Damn! … I have started developing a replacement billing application that will replace the ASP one I wrote years ago … I am writing the new one in PHP … I am also using a different authorization system than I normally use for other sites I’ve secured up … This one does hash checking as well as email address verification through links and stuff … Pretty cool … Needed something like this for keeping tabs on customers and verifying new ones … I can’t tell you how many people I just didn’t set up because they were from out of state … Even though they signed up and everything, when I didn’t get back to them, they didn’t get back to me, so I guess I was pretty good in sniffing out the fakers … So hard to trust anyone on the Internet these days … Anyway, along with the new authorization methods, the new billing application will be able to verify domains via different databases and I’ll have a way better handle on billing and domain management … There have been domains that I’ve set up but never assigned to a user and they got a free site for months … When I started verifying DNS against accounts, this won’t happen … I’ll be able to check balances and anything past due I can update the DNS records and inactivate the site … Writing it in PHP allows me to utilize the command line and schedule the billing to run as I see fit … I think I will end up running something weekly if not daily … It will check many things for me that I have not been able to check on a regular basis … Right now, I have someone who moved their site, name servers and everything, but I see that they’re using my mail server and other stuff that I haven’t inactivated … I don’t think that’s right, and with automation, these things won’t happen …

Anyway … no time … need more time … We didn’t win PowerBall … We will this Saturday though …

Late Night TV

I work the night … and I mostly stick to the night schedule for various reasons … The most important is me keeping my waking hours to the time that I will be driving home from jobs on the road … I also appreciate the peace and serenity of the night … Some people may not understand this, but that’s okay … Phones don’t ring at night and cars aren’t pounding the streets at night … It is dark and quiet and the world I live in is sleeping … I like that …

So I am watching this movie in the middle of the night with commercials … The commercials consisted of ads geared towards old people and prescription drugs … One commercial was about “your final expenses” … and how social security pays about $250 in benefits but “your final costs” can be in the neighborhood of $6000-10,000 … “You don’t want your family remembering you this way, do you?” … So guilt the old people into leaving your relatives with your funeral bill … I don’t think they ever mentioned the word “funeral” … The other commercial put James Garner on the screen to tell you about “Reverse Mortgages” …

Then there was the Mobility chairs … One that had Arnold Palmer telling you to inquire about the chair and that “Pre-Qualification” was free … I am assuming that this particular mobility chair was covered under some senior’s health insurance or something and that this was how they initiated people to contact them about hitting up their insurance to pay for the product … In the same beat, The Rascal is advertised … It’s another mobilty chair that will help you get your life back, but this one they give away for free … They have a new one out and will be giving them away for a whole year! Well, one a month which means 12 in one year … I guess there are 12 lucky people that get a free chair, but there are the many that have to buy them … Maybe they’re covered under insurance as well?

Then all the drugs that you apparently need … Why do they advertise prescription drugs on television? You can’t go out and buy them, you have to ask your doctor to prescribe them … What’s up with that? You go in and tell your doctor what drug you need … Now you know what’s best for you? I guess this just shows you how much money is tied up in the health care industry with pharmaceutical companies that want to sell their product so desperately that they’re telling you to request their particular drug from your doctor … The guy on the commercial stating how his life was over until he started popping this particular pill … They used to arrest people for this sort of peer pressure … Anyway, so I guess if the commercial convinces you that you need this drug, you go to your doctor which generates revenue for his practice … Then you already know what drug you need, so this makes the doctor’s “practice” easier in that he doesn’t have to guess, you already have the solution … Then that drug is prescribed and you go and buy it … Circle complete … The only wrench thrown in is what if your doctor has a compatible drug that another pharmaceutical company has given him free samples to give to you to try and see if that helps? Hmm … Competition …

They should all go to hell …