Tag Archives: Technology

Apr 01

Longing for a simpler time.

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Remember when all websites were just text and hyperlinks and maybe a few images? Now everybody has to have some crazy php-based content management system application (yeah, yeah, pot-kettle-black, I know). Working in the webhosting industry and specifically, in Security, has really made me long for those simpler times again. Sure, editing html is tedious and time-consuming, but its pretty rock-solid safe once its web-accessible. Nobody can exploit flaws in your plain html code to send spam, upload phishing sites, or kill other webservers.

Oct 28

Car Annoyances

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Bart purchased an after-market alarm/remote start for my car back in August. We ordered 3 remotes (1 two way and 2 one way). The 3rd remote wouldn’t program. After a few weeks of fiddling with it, the guy who installed it finally got it programed, in the 4th remote ‘slot’, and the general consensus is that slot 3 doesn’t work.

A couple days ago, I was taking a nap and Bart was up working at his desk, and my remote started going off, like someone was trying to break into the car. He rushed out, but didn’t find anything suspicious at the time. We figured someone just lifted one of the door handles to see if it was locked, and ran away when the alarm went off.

Tonight when I got home, I got out of my car, locked it, and went inside. By the time I kicked my shoes off at the front door, my remote started beeping, and the shock sensor icon was on. I put my shoes back on and went back out. The alarm didn’t seem to be going off, but as I was standing there, the shock sensor gave warning chirps like someone bumped the car. Nothing was touching it. It wasn’t windy, and there were no trucks rumbling by.

I’m starting to grow very suspect of this alarm unit. My remote has also randomly rebooted itself on several occasions, despite the battery icon showing ‘full’.

Aug 11

Upgrading is such a pain.

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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. :)

Apr 21

Too Good To Be True

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Remember my last post? yeah…

I decided to update from Kubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) to 7.10 (Gutsy) and guess what? It installed a different driver for my wireless card and broke my internet again. GRRRRRRRRRRRR.

I spent the last 3 hours trying to fix it, with no luck. Why does every fscking thing in Linux have to be so damn difficult?

Apr 12

Unpossible.

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I’ve been struggling for months trying to get my wireless card working in Linux, including installing several different versions of Ubuntu, Mint, and others. I also thought it might be a hardware issue, since some of the newer Debian-based flavors weren’t working with live CDs. I replaced the power supply as well, since the old one was making a horrible sound and the system seemed flaky.

This morning, I stepped into my office at home to grab something, and my computer was sitting at the login prompt for Kubuntu instead of my Windows desktop (meaning, Windows updated itself and rebooted the pc). I decided on a whim to give trying to set up the wireless one more shot.

I didn’t have the network info handy, but looking in /etc/network, I found a backup copy of the interfaces file from when I had messed with it previously, and copied it into place. Restarting networking produced a slew of errors, most of which were from the wired interfaces not being plugged in. Seeing this, I commented those interfaces out of the file, and then I noticed that one line was missing from the wireless interface section that was in all the others, so I added it. I saved the file and restarted networking again, and POOF. Network connectivity! Unpossible!

Sadly though, I did not have much time today to play with my newly-connected desktop as we were busy getting ready to drive over to GR for our mini-vacation, and to see the Jeff Dunham show on Sunday night at the DeVos performance hall.