Four out of Five Doctors…
are currently hunting down the last remaining wise ass who refuses to toe the company line.
What do you want your Server do?
Partially as a learning exercise, and partially because I’m a money grubbing greedy bastard, I’m trying to come up with a clever extension to Microsoft Windows Home Server.
Unfortunately, I already had pretty much everything I needed on the base installation; I had originally installed it purely to have a system I could hook up my parallel printer to. It already supports remote desktop to systems within your local network, as well as remote access to files on the server via secured login. Heck, it even provides dynamic DNS service, complete with chained certificates for secured access. Nice, huh?
I figure most people out there do NOT have WHS installed. Probably have no need for it. So, why don’t you let me know what would make you want a Windows Home Server? If you have one, what feature do you wish it had? If you could have your own personal secured web server, what do you really wish you could do on it?
I’m married to the Chief Engineer!
Mandrina mentioned she wanted to audition for a new Star Trek fan-series to be filmed in the Seattle area — Star Trek: Phoenix. So she vanished for several hours both days this past weekend. I spent my time sitting in libraries because it was too bloody hot. Guess who accomplished more?
Well, come Monday the casting results were posted. Mandrina was cast in the role she wanted — as Chief Engineer… someone whose name I can’t remember. (Sorry, love!)
Okay, so I’m just bragging.
Retroactive tagging
I’ve spent a few minutes today going back through over two years of posts and tagging them “appropriately.” The new version of WordPress supports tags, and I’ve always wanted a Tag Cloud (left hand column — see that bit with varying sized pieces of text?), so…
So there have been a TON of updates today. It’s just that none of them mattered.
Amateur Hour
Someone took my PayPal account on a shopping trip last night! So nice, my PayPal account doesn’t usually get to go out and have fun.
However, I decided I wanted my six hundred dollars back.
So I suffered through several hours of frustration with PayPal, my bank and my credit card company. Not the most pleasant way to spend my day.
However, I managed to discover the email address of the perp (the police offer who filed my fraud report informed me that “perp” is a East Coast term) with the help of one of the parties who had had items purchased from. A half hour later, and I have his birth date (as in, Month, Day, and Year), preferred email addresses and online aliases, interests, and HOMETOWN. He used the same email address for legal endeavors as he did for his illegal attempt.
Thirteen years old doesn’t excuse stupidity.
“Da man” can mean “Dumb man.”
I just accidentally deleted almost a year’s worth of email. Unrecoverable. Not all the emails — most of them are automatically sorted appropriately. Over two thousand emails. Doh.
DAM Software: Expression Media 2
I didn’t know I needed any DAM software. I really didn’t. Maybe I should have caught on due to my twenty five THOUSAND mostly unsorted digital pictures. I’ve briefly monkeyed around, and looked around, to see what people are using to sort their pictures. At the moment I’m using Microsoft Expression Media 2, formerly IView Media Pro. Due to Jonathan’s prompting, I’ve just taken a quick look at Adobe Lightroom (the beta of version 2), and have decided to stick with EM2.
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Chiropracticing
(A deal’s a deal. Even if I’m slow.)
My back has been giving me grief for most of the last four years. I spent a year fencing on a pair of sore ankles, but then when I hurt my back as well, I decided to call it quits.
Now, one might think that I might be interested in actually doing something about continual pain in my lower back, but hey, that might make sense! Be reasonable! Be, dare I say it, sensible! Instead, I just dealt with it, figuring it would go away. It didn’t.
About a month ago, people from a local chiropractor practice came by our cafeteria at work. They were trying to drumb up clientele for their new location “directly across” from campus. (It took me twenty minutes to walk “directly across” the street to their location in back of an industrial park.) In the interests of screwing with their heads, I sat down for their brief examination. When the chiropractor asked if I was stressed, I laughed at him. He noticed some longer-standing issues than just stress, and suggested I come in for a full evaluation. Surprise, surprise. But, the receptionist was cute, and more importantly, they were copay-free, and local. So I went in.
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Last time, on Star Trek: The Next Generation
(Hey, Abigail, shouldn’t that be lower-case-t-the?)
I am slowly losing my mind. For all of you who were previously convinced that I had lost my mind long ago, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
First, the happy stuff:
For our one year wedding anniversary, Mandrina and I had chaos with a side order of fun. She had auditions both the day of our anniversary, and the next afternoon. The plans I had made for doing something ON our anniversary were therefore curtailed. Instead we had dinner at the Hunt Club in the Sorrento Hotel, and spent the night there. It was charmingly updated — the rooms had obviously not been originally designed to have the modern accoutrements of hotel living, such as a television, or electricity. Wire ran in visible metal conduits along the walls. Please don’t misunderstand, they were subtle. It was just a reminder that we were in a century-old hotel. Dinner was lovely; compared to the usual “cuisine” Mandrina likes to subject me to, I was in fact able to make a complete meal from the menu options. The wine was wonderful, but the port was just too much alcohol. The free chocolates were nice, though.
Since Mandrina had been busy right around our anniversary (she was cast, of course — “Oliver” at Shoreline Community College), we went to Vancouver the following weekend. There isn’t much to tell — more food was eaten, the hotel room was rather nice. We didn’t get to do much in the city — just lazing around was plenty eventful, although I did start going stir crazy. The one neat thing is that the hotel has two dogs “for rent.” Mandrina and I signed up on Saturday to take Beau for a walk on Sunday afternoon right before we left. Mandrina was surprised that I could hold a lead on a dog appropriately, but then I made Beau hate me because I made him run with me. Just a brief sprint back and forth, but he’s a dog, golly darn it! He repaid me by pointing out why dogs are taken for a walk.
Let’s see, other good stuff… Mandrina and I were invited (along with some others) to our most recent newlywed friends. Food and company were likewise good. Jonathan introduced me to Powershell. I had bumped into it before, but Jonathan showed off for a while, and I was impressed. I’ll probably write about it at length at some later juncture (currently, it’s installed on the two machines I use most — it’ll probably end up on the rest of them as well). Mandrina and I are watching all of the Lord of the Rings (Director’s Cuts). I got to see a bunch of people when I helped Xaandria move (sorry, too lazy to link to everyone. See my Vegas post, at least the girls get mentioned there). I get to go home every night to love and affection. Well, okay, I get to go home every night, and my wife is happy to see me, at least. The cats, well, are cats.
The bad stuff can wait until later.