theratshack.net

New changes are coming!

I have just been informed that weh ave lost someone very special in the community. Details forthcoming, however website maintenance and changes pending and other major life issues are delaying me posting anything at the moment. Check back here in a week.

Yes, I’m ok.

This is a test post. I hope to be updating more often now that there is an app for Android specifically for posting to WordPress blogs.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about something that has been bothering me. Almost a year ago, I vowed to get into college and to work towards achieving a lifetime goal I have of graduating from college with a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering. Well, it’s almost a year and I have been able to do nothing towards that goal. To say that life has gotten in the way has been an epic understatement.

I’ve lost a job and gotten a new one. I love my new job, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just not what I want to do. I don’t want a job, I want a career. I want to be designing computer hardware. I want to be a member of a team where I am a respected colleague, not just “That New Guy” where my thoughts and opinions are valued not scorned upon.

I guess I’m still fighting off the remnants of what I’m sure is PTCD (post traumatic career disorder) after my last job fell apart after an anguishingly long term of standoffs with the supervisor. She did not value my opinions at all and rather than at least pay me the courtesy of listening to my thoughts and helping me understand, she saw fit only to muzzle me and to keep me out of the way. When I protested, she found ways of dealing with me.

My new job on the other hand is a very stark contrast to my last one. My supervisor treats me with respect and is a great guy in general, even if I did kick his ass in pool after work. My team is always available to help when I need them and I have helped them with many things as well. I get the feeling of value that I didn’t have at my last job.

But the problem is the job itself. I can do the job well at least according to my stats and my supervisor but it does not engage me as deeply as I want to be engaged. I don’t want to be assisting people figure out which wordpress plugin killed their blogging site or trying to figure out why Joomla is rendering a blank page for the next five years. I want more than that, no I need more than that.

My goal is to be designing electronic equipment. I want to be the guy featured on Make Zine for having brought home automation home, or the guy that is running his house and his network on a solar cell farm or a nuclear battery powered by trash (yes, it will have the name “Mr. Fusion”). I want to be desinging the hardware that makes life better, not sitting on the edge of the river of life with my big toe in the currents.

I’m almost 30 now and have nothing to show for it. I’ve never been outside of the country except to Mexico when I was 8, and I haven’t taken a real vacation in at least the last 10 years. The closest I get is a twice-a-year hiatus where I go to camp out with a lot of friends in Central Texas.

I had aspirations and dreams once, but it seems like every time I make a plan and set forth to implement it, my seemingly stable life explodes into a world of drama and chaos resulting in the latest financial disaster that must be dealt with. I can’t believe that this is going to be my life for the next 50 years. I refuse to believe it. On the other hand, I am so tired of wanting to do things and getting thwarted by life leaving plans half-sinking in the wake.

So, the $64 question is, what do you do when life gets in the way?

Not two days after initial launch, one of my posts on YourWarrantyIsVoid.com made Hack-A-Day. I am so happy that they liked the APC UPS article I submitted to them. The article is here:http://hackaday.com/2009/08/22/a-linux-server-that-tweets-power-changes/

Been thinking of a conversation between friends regarding the use of the world “Elder”. These two had an argument concerning the use of the term where one person thought that those younger should call them Elder because they were older then their peers.

The other person’s stance was that although the first person was indeed older, the younger person had been more engaged in the community and as such hadn’t really gained the “Elder” status that the first person sought from the second person.

This got me to thinking, (yeah, I know. Bad idea.) about the term “Elder” versus “elder”. I capitalized the first as I am attempting to differentiate between two commonly used meanings:

The two definitions are below (thanks to Dictionary.com)

–adjective a compar. of old with eldest as superl.
1. of greater age; older.
2. of higher rank; senior: an elder officer.
3. of or pertaining to former times; earlier: Much that was forbidden by elder custom is accepted today.
–noun
4. a person who is older or higher in rank than oneself.
5. an aged person.
6. an influential member of a tribe or community, often a chief or ruler; a superior.

Now I’ve been thinking about this and my interpretation of an “Elder” is a lot less jumbled together.

My definition of an “Elder”:
- A scholarly, aware and educated mmber of the community who has a significant, known presence and influence but isn’t arrogant or bull-ish with their presence.
- A person that commands respect, but is respected voluntarily
- A person that has/does serve(d) as an educator and guide for the community, someone that people can ask for help and approach easily without fear of judgment.

My definition of “elder” is more inline with “senior”, as only a declaration of age when used in comparison to another, like, “My grandfather is my father’s elder.”

I guess the cause of this internal examination was that there are several people that are elder to me in age, but I can’t really quite call them an “Elder” due to various circumstances. I think that an “Elder” is more like the Clerics and the Priest/ess in the villages of ages ago whose counsel was sought when things went bad, who kept their head calm even when all hell was breaking loose.

I actually believe that age alone does not qualify someone as “Elder” unless they have done something to earn the respect associated with the term. The “Elder” is respected by all people, even those that might not agree with them because they are diplomatic about the disagreements, even when others resort to less dignified methods of settling disputes.

Now that’s not to say that an Elder can’t make a mistake, nor are they absolved of any wrongdoing. It’s more how they handle the situation, owning up to the fact they gave bad advice rather than running away shouting names like a child. In fact, it’s oftentimes how they handle themselves when the gun is aimed at them that can define the difference between a true Elder and a coward.

Your thoughts?

Ok, I’m sure you’ve seen the ads, and with a little bit of speculation and a lot of time reading news sites prior, I think I have the answer.

The commercials are on a green background with a power plug that smiles and the number 23 appears on it. Soon after, 8-11 appears below it as if it’s some kind of date.

I’ve read numerous posts on CNN, Reuters, TheRegister and several others that the Feds were shooting for a “230 miles per tank” goal for fuel efficiency and I believe that one manufacturer is going to launch something on August 11. (two days from this posting)

It is my theory, backed up with many other people’s theories and compounded by news articles from reputable sources and CNN that this is a new viral ad campaign by GM/Chevrolet of the launching of their new Hybrid or EV vehicle, the Volt.

Of course, this is speculation.

So here’s what I know.
www.whatis230.com was registered July 30, 2009 and isn’t set to expire until July 30,2011.

Here’s the WHOIS information:

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain Management
Online Trademark Protection
Online Channel Protection
AntiPhishing Solutions
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


Ok, so we get it, they're trying to hide their identity. So on to the network mess. A traceroute reveals some interesting information... They're hosted at Rackspace!

5 te-0-1-0-5-cr01.dallas.tx.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.91.193) 32.591 ms 32.847 ms 33.409 ms
6 rackspace-bbr.dfw1.comcast.net (75.149.228.130) 33.721 ms 32.073 ms 31.999 ms
7 edge3-backbone1.dfw1.rackspace.net (72.3.128.250) 30.491 ms 20.043 ms 19.916 ms
8 vlan905.core5.dfw1.rackspace.com (67.192.56.229) 36.017 ms 36.210 ms 36.226 ms
9 67.192.56.71 (67.192.56.71) 24.688 ms 25.253 ms 25.364 ms


A DNS search reveals that whatis230.com's IP is 72.32.147.137 and according to their HTTP headers are running Linux w/Apache 2.2:

#1 Server Response: http://whatis230.com
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Set-Cookie: X-Mapping-caklakng=65BE8C9EE459FADABC27AA1230B712F3; path=/
Content-Length: 2912
Date: Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:49:36 GMT
Connection: close
Last-Modified: Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:41:53 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100


An examination of their site yields this javascript. I don't know javascript, so feel free to interpret:

$lt; script type="text/javascript" >
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
< /script>
< script type="text/javascript" >
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-10035141-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview('WHATIS230 | HOMEPAGE | INDEX');
} catch(err) {} < /script >


It looks like google code, but I don't speak JS fluently.

So, what do you think it is? I welcome any thoughts, comments, etc.

(My apologies to Shakespeare…)
Been thinking about a lot of this “Web 2.0″ talk that has been coming around more and more. I might sound a bit “get off my lawn”-ish but I can’t stand it. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to go anti-tech on anyone, (heck, I have a Facebook, Livejournal, Twitter and have a Myspace that really needs to die so there will be none of this pot calling kettle black ).

This talk of “blogging” is really driving me nuts. I personally have gotten aggravated at the word “blog”. It sounds like something the cat does at 2AM when I’m trying to sleep. “Oh god, the cat’s hacking up a blog on the carpet again.”

I’m not sure what it is exactly about the word blog that does it in for me but it’s like the four letter version of the old English teacher screeching her plastic press-on nails across the real-slate chalkboards of old-school time.

I much prefer the sound “journal”. It may be old fashioned, but to “blog” something makes it feel hastily dreamed up, crammed into a textbox and shoved through the server like your life depended on it. “Journalling” sounds like you sat down, took conscious effort and gracefully typed out the post.

Maybe it’s just me? I know that “blogging” is the “in” thing to do now, but what do you feel about the new terminology that is cropping up? What words do you like or dislike?

Oh yeah, and just for kicks:

From XKCD.com - Interblag

I was on a smoke break at work talking to a coworker who was talking about his site. I was listening kinda half-assedly when he said that his site was making a load of money. When I asked him about it, he said that Google was doing advertising and depending on the options selected, you could make money off of advertisements on your site.

Now, the instant he said “advertising”, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I started getting concerned. I had horrible flashbacks of popups, annoying flashy add banners, Flash based advertisements (like the ones that haunt CNN, and definately did not want that mess. But as I asked questions, he told me that the advertisers that did that were all the wrong ones and that advertising on my site is as non-invasive as the typical Google Ad-words advertisements that you see in Gmail and other Google sites.

I’ve always been very skittish about the “A” word as I, like so many other millions of people do not like getting the advertising two by four across the face when browsing a site looking for information, but I have to say that I was intrigued by the thought of my site one day being able to pay for its own hosting.

I’ve thought about it and although I have remained ad-free for the last seven years, I have been wanting to see if I could at least make the $10 needed to host the sites I own so that way I could keep theratshack.net alive and running for the many years to come.

But since this is not just a simple “Let’s do it!” thing, I want to reach out to the people that actually browse the site. What do you think?

I will be testing the Google advertisements and seeing what impact they have on my site, both from a usability standpoint and from an administration standpoint. I want the advertisements to be subtle and not interfere with the site’s use. I have already come up with the following list of things I want to ensure continue as I go through this change:

With this in mind, I want you to know that this is an experiment and hopefully the results are positive and do not impede nor hinder my site’s operation, navigation or accessibility.

The only question I have is would this classify as selling out or do you think it’s a good way to make some extra cash, even if all it does is pay for the hosting (or less?)

I’m interested in your comments!

Well, the files have been moved, the SQL unpacked and just rolling out the new carpet of changes and stuff. I’m happy to say that we look to have survived the transition from the home cable server to the new shared server at HostGator.com.

Lots of changes are in the mix as I iron out the kinks and squash bugs in the site. (Granted a twenty pound sledge helps with the squashing of bugs. )