erinammons.com » Site Info

Recap of 2011 and Looking Forward to 2012

Erin — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 03:57:11 +0000

I got a new job in November, I’m now a “Service Desk Resource I” (basically, tech support) at BDO (an international accounting firm). Since I’m no longer commuting as much, I finally had some time to catch up on my various to-do items lately, and one of those was to make at least a small update to this site. I’m still trying to decide if I like the new theme I picked, though. Also the Links page has been updated – all of my current social network profile pages are on there now, in addition to the buttons in the right sidebar.

Barton and I recently rented a self-storage unit, and have been seriously hammering away at all of the stuff we own that we don’t regularly use, to get it in boxes/totes and moved into the storage space. Some of the things getting packed away are items that we would love to have at our fingertips or on display – if we owned a house. But an 800-ish square foot apartment? Nope, there is just not enough room. We still have a long way to go though, and I expect the unit will be mostly full by the time we’re satisfied with our de-cluttering efforts. This will also make moving a slightly less monumental task.. I hope.

We also joined a local ham radio club this year – MARA (Michigan Amateur Radio Alliance). Interacting with those folks, and attending the monthly meetings has been a welcome break to the usual work-chores-sleep-work-chores-sleep monotony. We also joined the ARRL as well. I’ve been studying, off and on, to get ready to take the General License exam too, hopefully I will have that accomplished by sometime this coming spring.

If you have looked through my Tumblr (Warning: do not click on that link if you are at all sensitive to sexual content.. especially giantwtfomgbbqrobosex) at all, you’ve probably noticed I’ve had a huge resurgence in following Transformers/Transfandom this year. I’d hoped I might be able to attend Botcon 2012, but alas, it is now prohibitively expensive to go. Maybe 2013? Urgh. HOWEVER, I am still immensely looking forward to the second season of Transformers: Prime which premieres in February.

If you have waded through this massive update and are still with me… thank you… and…

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Rearranged

Erin — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 03:24:52 +0000

Really, there was *already* a post titled “Updatey Goodness”? Good grief, I’m dull.

Anyway. I made some changes. All of the links are on their own page now thanks to a handy-dandy plugin. I also changed the “Sewing” page to “Hobbies” to organize stuff better.

One thing I’m not sure what to do with yet is the “Security Tips” page. I think eventually I’d like to have a page or section dedicated to what I have been doing for a living for the past 6 years (tech support.. system administration.. computering really hard?). I just don’t have the mental capacity to write anything more for it right now so I guess it stays as-is until I figure it out. It bugs me though, cause its just kind of dangling out there. Ugh!

Captcha

Erin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:30:03 +0000

Yep. Too many spammers. So instead of killing comments altogether I’m trying a captcha mechanism.

Don’t Mind Me

Erin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:33:01 +0000

Just poking around with some new themes. Honestly I should design my own but I’m too lazy to figure it out. Or maybe I’m just not creative enough.

Twitter is back.

Erin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 03:27:08 +0000

I felt lonely without all the bots apparently. Or something.

And hey Alex, where the heck did you disappear to? Your myspace page is gone and alexypoly.com just goes to an Apache test page?

Upgradzoring WordPress.

Erin — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 22:55:01 +0000

Stuff may be/look broke for a while.

Edit: 16 minutes. I think thats the fastest EVAR. And, I didn’t have to fudge with my theme.

Security Improvements

Erin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:07:57 +0000

Now that I’m on the Secteam at LW, its obviously got me thinking harder about implementing better security measures on this VPS. One thing I’ve already done is install CSF (ConfigServer Security & Firewall, available at http://configserver.com), and set LFD (the login failure daemon) to send me emails about detected security issues.

I also have Apache2/ModSecurity2 (with our latest ruleset), however I’m finding that I probably need to make a few other adjustments, such as enabling SuPhp and open_basedir, locking down permissions, and most importantly, keeping up with new versions of software (omg, WordPress 2.6.2 already?!).Â These things I hope to accomplish very, very soon.

Comments

Erin — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:08:10 +0000

Since I’m geting so many spam comments on old posts lately (10-20 per day, that end up in the moderation queue), I turned off “Anyone can register” and turned on “Users must be registered and logged in to comment”. Email me if you have issues posting comments.

Edit: actually, not sure if this is going to even help. :/ Sometimes I hate the Internets.

Upgrading is such a pain.

Erin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:21:22 +0000

Every time I upgrade this thing, it breaks the theme I’m using, so I either have to re-hack it to make it look like it did before, or pick a new theme. I also want to upgrade MySQL from 4.1 to 5.x on the server, but, again, worried that it will break something, and a reversal isn’t easy. Ok, so I guess I will keep putting it off then. Glad I talked myself out of this.

New page – Goals

Erin — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:32:34 +0000

I will be adding/modifying this page with progress. Hopefully.

One very short-term goal is to update this site to WP 2.5. I hope it doesn’t break stuff.

Edit [9:25pm] – WP updated to 2.5 sucessfully!