Long Term Storage

So.. it has been a month and a half since my last post.  Did you miss me?  I am guessing you didn’t even know I was here.  Did you?  That’s Ok. I don’t hold it against you.

Where have I been I see you asking.  Well, I went to Asia for a 17 days.  Found out my grand mother had a stroke and has the beginnings of dementia.  Built a new PC cause my File server died.  Reorganized my entire network.  Moved this site to a new provider and moved my old provider to a new box.  Got pulled off base work for my primary contract and added as a part time admin on a new one.  Drank beer.  Played footbag and disk golf.  Hung out with friends and enjoyed loving my girlfriend.

Let me tell you.. it has been fun.  Ups, downs, lefts, and rights.  The Grand Mother and job thing were my favorites for adding stress.

Asia.  Asia was a blast.  Anna and I were gone for 17 days.  We visited Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Ho Chi Minh City, and Tokyo.  Over 3200 pictures that we are still sorting through.  When I get the pictures put up, I will.. maybe.. go into more details.

Built a new PC.  AMD Phenom 9600 Quad core, 4GB Ram, 650G HDD, Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H MoBo, new case, a few fans, and a lot of time figuring out how to transfer ensure I didn’t lose my MP3 collection.

Because the file server died and I subsequently decided to not replace it with the new PC and instead am using the new PC, I had to reorganize the network.  I repurpose  my laptop for the time being to be an internal DNS server.  I purchased a Linksys WRT54G-L which I will be putting openWRT on eventually.

I run the web servers for ClanBBF which formerly was supported by a non-profit web hosting service.  The owner officially killed the web hosting portion and moved the clan site to a new box hosted by Blue Razor with a few others.  My/This site used to be on that server as my compensation for maintaining it.  The new box is much too slow, so I ponied up for an Ubuntu VPS with RapidXen.  So far, I am very happy with them.  Root 4TW!! 

During this transition to the new box, my DNS got a bit hosed up.  Much to my dismay, my registrar 1and1, was to blame and the tech I spoke with really didn’t know WTF he was talking about.  I was very close to dealing with the PITA that is transferring registrars I was so irritated with them.

At this point, my network is together, all of the websites are up and running, DNS is correct (I think), and my PC is doing fine.  Cheers to that.

Company politics is something most of us are used to and expect.  The only thing that trumps politics is the bottom line.  When the two collide, you can rest assured that foolish decisions will be made.  In simplified form, one part of the company thought they could do the job cheaper so they are taking over the base work.  My team will still be around for projects, etc.  In this change though, I got pushed over to a government contract doing some Sun Access Manager support.  Let me tell you, I now know where our tax money is going.  Today makes 15 days since I started the process of getting a very low level clearance.  If I am inferring properly from the events that happened today, the paperwork JUST got into the database.  It will still be 1-2 more weeks before I have actual access. 

Soon I will be doing some corporate PKI support and that will be good.  Just got word that a project was finally approved so that will be taking up my time as well.  Speaking of.. I should be reviewing a 200 page document right now.

More later.. I have started a list of posts that I need to make.