March 27, 2006

Slow Posting? I Hadn't Noticed.

As if I hadn't slowed down in my posting to this blog enough, for the last couple weeks, I haven't written at all. For at least the near future, I can't say how much I'll be posting. Time is becoming more of a commodity in my life, requiring a few changes in my priorities. I'll still be posting, but I'm still trying to figure out where I'll be fitting my writing into my day.

Some of my time is being taken up by temporary things. For instance, Saturday mornings have, for the last while, gone to transferring many of my belongings from one storage area to another. Also, I've been taking part in some of the training we've offerred locally for new Amateur Radio operators.

Some of my time is being taken up by more permanent things. I've been promoted, at work, so my daily work has changed. Before, if our call volumes slowed down, I could spend some time reading, writing, browsing the web, or just chatting with my co-workers. Now that I'm in a management role, even the slow days mean plenty of work to do.

In my free time, the wife and I have been watching a lot of TV. We've taken on TV projects, spending Sunday afternoon and some evenings watching seasons of great shows. We've re-watched Battlestar Galactica a couple times. We watched the first season of Lost, since we never watched it on TV until recently, and caught up in season two. Since we threw the 24 addiction after season 1, we decided to catch up on that. We're currently over halfway through season 3. Up and coming, we're looking at seasons 4 and 5 of 24, plus Monk, Ghost in the Shell, and maybe something else. Maybe we'll watch the Sopranos for the first time.

The training class will go away soon. The move of all the stuff will be done, soon. Spanish class will go for a while longer. (Yes, I'm learning Spanish) Time will ease up a bit. We'll still be watching the TV projects for a while, and work is going to continue to be busy. I'll find time to write. Writing gnaws at you until you do it. I'll probably write in the early morning, after I wake up. Since I wake without an alarm clock, though, I'm slightly concerned about the upcoming time change.

That's the situation. I'm not going away. I'm just not writing, or indeed reading, as much as I was.

See you soon.

Posted by Lockjaw at 5:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 14, 2006

Recent Blog Downtime and Problems

Some of you may have noticed, over the past week, that there has been some downtime with this blog. Now that things are finally ironing out on this front, I thought I'd pass along what happened.

I attempted to load, one morning at work, a special weather page that I have on this site (private url) that collects a few weather maps onto one page. I use this page at work, so I can track the weather at the location of the customers that I speak to. It helps during the long waits, to help keep conversation up. On loading the page, I was notified that my account had been suspended. No information had been given to me through any means to explain that our account was being suspended, or why.

I sent an email, assuming that our bill was due, and awaited an answer. Meanwhile, my wife informed me that our bill was not due until July. I opened a support ticket, and was soon informed that there was a script in one of the archive directories for this site that was allowing spam to be sent out. For this reason, the entire site was suspended.

Working with the support group, we got the bad script deleted, and the site back online. Two days later, I received an email that we had done nothing to remove or fix the suspect script, so they were cancelling our service. They informed me I should collect my data in preparation for the cancellation, and that they would refund our money for our unused time we had paid for. When I went to collect my data, I found that the entire directory devoted to this blog had been deleted from the server, rendering it inaccessible.

This had me a little agitated. The suspect script had been deleted, yet I was being cancelled because I had done nothing. I sent help desk requests and emails, attempting to get my data back and determine what script they had determined to be the problem. After more than a day, and several exchanges, I got my data back. I NEVER got an answer as to what script was the reason for their cancellation. To this day, I still have no idea what they found offensive, after the original spammer script was removed. I've since checked all my scripts against the original installation scripts, and can find no modifications. With no information from my host, I had no way to "fix" what they say is a problem, because they've REFUSED to give me any sort of answer to my questions.

Now, I've got a new host. My site is back up and running. Other sites that I operate are in the process of switching over, as it becomes possible. My wife's site is lagging behind, as my old host isn't being very quick about approving the domain name change. Soon, though, all will be as it should be.

I'm still in the dark as to what the real problem was with my site. My old host never bothered to answer any questions about this. I'm not happy.

Well, I am happy, actually. I've got a NEW hosting company. They seem to be better in every way.

My old hosting company was AvaHost. I've been with them for a few years. I've sent many customers their way, bringing them plenty of income. With this bad experience, however, I'm unable to continue to suggest them. It's their loss. One thing I will not miss is a help desk that doesn't read the actual ticket request before saying "I've tested your site and it is working" then closing the ticket. I'm gone, and I'm not looking back.

My new hosting company is BlueHost. They cost less. They give more space (almost double). They offer more throughput per month. They offer more databases. They offer more email addresses. They offer more features. They have a better interface. In every measurable way I have needs for, BlueHost is better. I'm glad to be a customer.

Now, I'll just continue to finish the move and get all the little bits ironed out that are popping up. Hopefully, on this blog, you won't notice any more of that.

Now, I can go back to posting.

Posted by Lockjaw at 10:44 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 11, 2006

Test Entry

This entry is just s test. The Lair has moved to a new hosting company. Story to come later. This post is just to verify that things are working properly.

Posted by Lockjaw at 6:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 1, 2006

300th Post - What I Believe

This post marks the 300th post on this iteration of my blog. There have, undoubtedly, been over 1000 posts in the course of my blogging career, but many have been lost in upgrades. Each time I changed my blog software or location, I selected a number of posts to bring into the new system, and left the rest out altogether. To commemorate my 300th post, I thought it would be a good idea to state my basic beliefs. To make things simpler, I'll break this up into sections.

Faith

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic (ie. universal) Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.

To quote from the song "Creed" as performed by Third Day, I believe what I believe. It's what makes me what I am. I did not make it, though it is making me. It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man.

Politics

I believe in the sovreignty of the individual. I believe that each person should be left to his own choices and the results of those choices. Each person's actions should be considered his own, only answerable to others insofar as they affect the life, liberty, and property of others. To create a false construct called government in order to impede upon the sovreignty of the individual is an evil act.

The government which governs least, governs best. Government should exist to protect the populace and property within its borders from outside nations and powers. Government should protect the basic rights of its citizens from infringement by others. Government should levy taxes only when necessary to do these basic jobs.

As we are a constitutional republic, I believe that our federal and state governments should act within the limitations of the constitutions which define government at both levels. The interpretations of these documents should be based upon the intentions of those who crafted it, and not upon modern re-interpretations that are designed to change its meaning. The Constitution of the United States of America is not a living document, except insofar as there are means available through it to make changes to it.

When powers are needed beyond what is allowed in the constitution of the nation or state, these powers should be exercised by local government, the people as individuals, or not at all.

Education, health care, community growth, personal finances, employment and many other issues are made worse, not better, through government involvement.

Taxation does not cause growth, economic benefit, or a better society. As such, it should be used as a last resort for government to perform only constitutional duties, and not a means for politicians to buy votes.

All men and women are not created equal. Government, however, should be blind to differences of race, sex, religion, national origin or many other factors. Government should protect the basic rights of the individual from infringement without concern for what external group that person defines themself by.

Political parties should be abolished as a concept.

Money spent to aquire an ability to speak should not change the right to free speech.

There is no peace without justice.

Personal

Be a good neighbor. Be a good friend. Choose your friends carefully. Be slow to anger, and hard to annoy.

Smile.

Posted by Lockjaw at 12:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 21, 2005

Slower posting of late

I know, my posting on the blog has slowed down a lot in recent weeks. This is likely to continue for a while. I've got idea after idea running through my head for the posting, but I've been busy on other things. Working all week, and busy all weekend has been the usual routine. Some weekends, like this past one, have had me on the run morning to night. Monday, I took a short nap after coming home from work and woke up hours later. This coming weekend, I'll be attending a bluegrass festival. Of course, there's also been the work on no less than 5 websites, amateur radio, chores, and the occasional video game. I also work with the church's youth group. I'm having a blast, but man does living life take a lot of time.

Through all of this, posting on the blog is hardly impossible. My latest position at work, though, has me leaving the house at 6:40am, when I'm normally in prime writing mode. I'm starting to settle into my new morning routine, though, so more activity should happen soon.

Well, 15 minutes to liftoff. Time to finish.

Posted by Lockjaw at 6:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 31, 2005

How Spam Affects Blogging

I haven't been the most active lately, on the blog. I know. I've been doing a lot of stuff, but that stuff just hasn't been here on the blog. One reason is spam. Every day, I've been logging in to the blog and deleting spam comments by the dozens. Overnight, over 80 spam comments have been posted to the blog. The filters catch it, and you never see it on the blog, but I'm tired of the daily spamcop routine, when I'd rather be blogging.

There is an answer. I can turn on TypeKey authorization requirements. This would require that anyone who posts on the blog have a TypeKey account, which would be used to authenticate that they are a real person before they can post. The good news is that TypeKey authorized users see their posts appear automatically, without my approval being needed. The bad news is that some people simply will not post if they have to do anything more than type their message. I already make use of this service for automatic approval of posts, so you can register already, and see your posts appear immediately. What I'm considering is blocking all non-Typekey approved comments, as a spam-prevention measure.

I welcome any thoughts on this from my readers. If the end result is more writing, would you be opposed to registering with Typekey (NOT registering with this blog, but with an outside service) in order to post? Let me know.

Posted by Lockjaw at 5:48 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 20, 2005

Minor De-Uglification of the Lair

Slightly different color change (One color changed) and a slightly less ugly logo are now in place. How do you like it. Is it less ugly enough? I never have been one to try to make my websites look too fancy. Functional is best. When I design for others, I try to make them look much better, but my own purposes demand simplicity. Hope you like it. The "Ogre" gargoyle is attributable to Jon Hurd and used through Creative Commons provisions.

Posted by Lockjaw at 9:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 18, 2005

Comment Spams and MT Upgrade

I've been fighting the good fight against comment spam on the site for some time. Moveable Type has some nice tools available to help in this. One of these is MT-Blacklist, which I've used for some time. Unfortunately, after upgrading to the new MT 3.2 Beta 1 platform, MT-Blacklist quit working. I installed the patch, but it was still broken. This opened me up to a HUGE number of spams.

I've since installed a different anti-spam plugin for Moveable Type. This one does things a bit differently. I've set it at its most oppressive levels, so as to keep as much spam out as possible, without my having to do much work. This MAY mean that some legitimate commenters could find their comments blocked. If this happens to you, you can get a TypePad key and use it to authenticate when you post. This is a good thing to do anyway, as it works across many sites.

I'm enjoying the new version of Moveable Type. I'm looking forward to the furtherance of the Beta process, and finally release. It has some nice new features, and some changes to the interface that I've wished for.

Posted by Lockjaw at 11:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 25, 2005

New Logo - Too Big?

Well, I've made a new logo. I think it looks nice. When I look at it on a different computer, running at only 1024x768, though, it looks a bit large. I may have to shrink it down just a bit. What do YOU think?

Posted by Lockjaw at 4:42 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 22, 2005

Almost There - MT Upgrade Woes

I'm getting closer to where I want to be. I've modified the template a bit, and changed a few things. Now there's a left column and a right column. I'm having some font issues, but they're secondary to functionality issues. I think I've handled the functionality, so I'll fix the fonts next. There are still a couple little things to work on once I get the fonts fixed, but for the most part, the site is now fully operational like I want it.

Moveable Type is a whole new system to get used to. Since it doesn't have all of the extras that Postnuke did, which I didn't need, it's a lot simpler to learn. I don't get to un-learn the PostNuke stuff yet, though, because that side of the site is still operating normally as well.

All in all, I'd say this has been a fairly painless upgrade. Managing the site on this system is already much simpler. I'm going to like this.

UPDATE: Font problem fixed. Layout cleaned up to work with the fonts. I think I'm done, and I learned a couple new things about HTML and CSS in the process. I'm not a big fan of overly graphical websites, when text is what you're selling. That makes the design process simpler, and I think it makes a better blog.

By the way, I know the page is huge. It will take about a week for it to clean up. I imported 120 stories from the PostNuke site into this one, and they're all listed for one day, so EVERY story is currently on the front page. I could fix it, but I'd have to go through and modify the date on every post, so I'll just wait it out.

Posted by Lockjaw at 9:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hey Now, It's Movable Type

Over the years, I've run this blog (or its predecessors) on a variety of platforms. First, there was SlashCode, which was nice for what I was trying to do at the time. Then came CuteNews, which never quite did exactly what I needed. For a while, I ran my blog over at Xanga until I made the jump BACK to my own server. When I moved my blog back to www.lockjawslair.com, I started using PostNuke. Postnuke is a GREAT application, with FAR MORE power than I'll ever need to run a blog. Unfortunately, it lacks a couple features I've come to love. It doesn't automatically ping update sites, and it has no capability to handle trackbacks.

I've paid attention to which blogger runs what software, and what they think of it. The most respected blogging software seems to be Movable Type, by Six Apart. Well, I've made the jump. Lockjaw's Lair now runs Movable Type 3.16.

The old site is still up and running. I did this so that old links to stories will continue to work. The two systems (Postnuke and Movable Type) can actually co-exist pretty well in the same directory. If you go to index.php, you're on the old Postnuke site. If you go to index.html or just plain old www.lockjawslair.com, you'll get the new Movable Type site. Links on the old site are starting to point to the new site, as fast as I can change them, and the transition to the new site should be rather painless.

What this means for my readers is that commenting on posts will be easier. I'll have more control over comments. The site should run cleaner, load faster, and generally be better.

What this means for me is that I've got to get to work on my template.

Posted by Lockjaw at 2:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Lockjaw's Lair Entry Wins Award

Blogshares is a stock market trading game, where the companies in which shares are traded are blogs. For the month of October, a contest was announced on the BlogShares forums. This contest was for the best blog entry related to Blogshares. The post was to be on the participants own blog, and was open to nearly any kind of post, as long as it was relevant to BlogShares. It could be humor, technical, strategic, or pretty much whatever the writer wished.

My entry in the contest was entitled Blog$hares and the Opera Browser and went into detail explaining features of the Opera browser and how they could be utilized to streamline play on BlogShares.

Well, the results are in. I won. I received first place in the contest, which came with a free one year premium membership extension ($15 value), $200 billion in BlogShares cash, 25,000 chips (which can be spent on the site in various ways) and a selection of ideas (another type of stock which can be traded in the game).

Congratulations to the other winners, and the runners up. Can I call myself an award-winning writer now?

Posted by Lockjaw at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack