Server move complete

June 15th, 2008 • chatter

The move to the new server is now complete. DNS is currently forwarded for all domains on the server, PTR is set up and resolving which is great. The server was unavailable for almost 3 hours earlier due to a problem with a new kernel so it had to be rebooted into a previous kernel to get it back online, damn you kernel updates!

With DNS forwarding in place, I’ll end up canning the old server probably early Monday so I can make sure there’s been at least a full 24 hours of propagation to major root servers and most leaf servers. This new box is responding so much faster than the old one so I’m definitely happy about that.

Server move this weekend

June 13th, 2008 • chatter

I’ve purchased a new server from Limestone Networks and am currently in the process of configuring the server. I’ve also had to purchase Fantastico so I’m waiting on that as well. All of the sites on the server will be moved over this weekend once Fantastico has been installed and all DNS will be forwarded to the new server.

This new server is so much faster, it’s a Core2Duo versus the AMD XP 3200+ Barton I was using for the last year or so. I haven’t loaded the server up yet or anything but it definitely does DNS resolution MUCH faster and SSH is performing a lot more quickly on the new server.

Boca seeks Florida Green Certification

June 13th, 2008 • chatter, environmentalism

According to the Sun Sentinel, Boca wants to be certified green. I think I must be seeing things. First I saw a Tree City USA sign for the Arbor Day Foundation and now this. Why am I shocked?

This is all greenwash.

A Tree City? Sure, why not.

Boca isn’t green at all and the city sure as hell isn’t a tree city. Recently, the city approved and built a new library out on US 441, right above Yamato. Great, I love libraries but there’s a problem: the library is surrounded by a HUGE parking lot and the land is completely devoid of trees. The parking lot is large enough to park probably 300 or 400 cars but the library itself doesn’t have the capacity to hold that many people at all. I used to drive past this part of Boca everyday for work and it was a beautiful forest. Now it’s marred by this gigantic parking lot of a tiny library. So for this tiny library, they cut down a few thousand trees. Great!

On the corner of Military Trail and Butts Road, the Lynn Group recently wasted land and money to erect a new multi-story business building. What was the cost? A small forest. Why was this move stupid? There’s a multi-story business building right behind it that was completed three years ago and still isn’t full. Now they plowed a whole bunch of trees to build another useless building. I also drove past this forest on the way to work two years ago when I worked on that side of town. The now gone forest was actually a park. How sad. Drive north on Military Trail about 2 or 3 miles and you’ll see another giant business complex on your right where another forest used to be. What’s the problem with it? It’s built on what was slated to be protected land for conservation. A few acres of trees plowed for another building the city doesn’t need. Many older buildings in the city are demo’d and built over which is both good and bad. Good because most of them don’t need current building and hurricane codes. Bad because they could be brought up to code and repurposed for a lower cost

Green madness

Now we have the green certification gig. The city claims to be making strides in things like recycling and environmental awareness. Can someone from city council please point these efforts out to me? More than 75% of the city does not recycle and businesses are not required, in any way, to recycle. The city has no facilities to recycle any used electronics or batteries — but we can go to Broward Country to do that…except in Deerfield Beach where you can’t recycle out-of-city goods. The city loves urban sprawl, they strongly adhere to “Build out, not up” and it’s pretty obvious. Instead of building more multi-story apartment complexes for housing, the city nearly mandates everyone to stay under 3 or 4 stories and happily approves new building developments on our ever shrinking available land. They’re even selling off protected and reserved conservation land for development. How is that green?

How about the bikers?

Boca Raton also touts itself as “bike friendly” which it most certainly is not. Just to get to the gas station at the end of Camino Real road (where I live), I actually get to cross Camino Real three times and Powerline Road once. Why? Because only one side of Camino Real has a sidewalk (no bike lanes here) and it’s on the north side of the road. However, the light for crossing the road and the crosswalk are located on the southeast side of Camino and Powerline. Once across Powerline Road, we have to cross Camino again because the gas station is on the north side of the road and this time: there’s no crosswalk or crossing light. How in the hell is that bike friendly? It only gets worse the farther west you go in town.

Or how about how Palmetto Park Road, one of our major lifelines in the city, has bike lanes on one side of the road that account for approximately 3 miles of the entire road? As soon as you cross over Military Trail on Palmetto Park, you get a bike lane until you get closer to downtown Boca and then it disappears. There’s no usable bike lanes on the road before Military Trail and no bike lanes after crossing Dixie Highway. That’s very unfortunate because a lot of people bike along Dixie Highway and US1/Federal Highway since Federal Highway is home to most of the city’s big name eateries and attractions.

What about the city government?

The newly elected mayor says that being green is one of her “top priorities” and that’s great but it’s certainly not enough since she still tools around town in a gas guzzler. Does she plan on offering incentives to businesses who want to use solar power or other alternative means of power? Probably not. Or any help to those who want to try and offset ‘heat island effect’? Again, probably not. While ‘heat island effect’ is not that big of a problem in Boca just yet, it will be in the future. There are not enough businesses clumped together to be a major source of heat islands as it stands now. Is the city government trying to cut down on paper waste by going paperless, even partially? Nope, paper is cheaper than using paperless office methods…for now. There are plans slated to increase mass transit in the city but they’re just not enough as it is now. There are not enough routes nor stops in this city and using mass transit is almost to the point of a joke, going just a 3 short miles can take 2 hours.

I’m sure they’ll be trying to make strides to fix this but given Boca’s image of being a ritzy town, they won’t do a lot or any efforts made will fall short of being helpful. While we have no need or space for a subway, we do need more bus routes and higher visibility (and usability) of cabs. We need more bike lanes and more traffic efficient intersection lighting. We need more city parks that have trees other than palms and more drought-resistant grasses. The city’s use of reclaimed water needs to be focused more on use in generating power than watering the grass in the city — all of the reclaimed water areas I know of are only used for grass irrigation. Waste Management needs to start using garbage to generate power at their plant on the Turnpike although, I’m fairly certain this is in the works.

The Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County needs to introduce “no sort” recycling along with consumer-friendly plastic bag recycling. There are hundreds of cities around the nation already doing this, why aren’t we? I routinely sort out everyone else’s recycling because they’re not educated by the SWA on how to properly sort. The people in my apartment complex see our recycling bins as extra trash cans and always throw their trash in there, the property management is not interested in fixing this despite my complaints.

What can residents do?

At this point in time, not a lot. Other than going to town hall meetings and holding officials accountable, there is not much we can do. Holding anyone accountable will be very difficult since many city officials are deeply ensconced with area developers and make more money off selling off precious nature reserve land than they do in saving it for nature. Since a large portion of the city’s residents are in multi-family residences or housing complexes, I’d say over 65%, we can’t install things like solar panels or micro wind turbines. And those that can are stifled by housing association rules. After Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma leveled most of the city, the city workers were out cleaning up downed trees only to replant them and replant grasses, they were highly focused on re-beautification and still are. I’m happy they were pulling down the ficus trees since they’re illegal to replant in Florida but they replaced them with just-as-insecure palm trees. Why not oaks or cherries or even magnolias? There’s a lot that could’ve been done back then to green the place up and replant for beauty.

I’m going to find out when the upcoming town hall meetings about the certification are and I plan on going to see how the officials can justify something they’re not really doing. I understand greenwash and I understand what the city isn’t doing to make this a cleaner place, I’m interested in their arguments on how they are greening it up around here.

Falwell’s wife writes book, wants him alive again

June 10th, 2008 • christianity, intolerance

Jerry Falwell died one year ago last month and his wife has just put out a new book, surely to be a snoozer. I was just reading this link from Newsweek regarding her new book and how she thinks the world needs Jerry back. Now, I’ve heard of apologists but this thing reads like a religious right significant other apologetic diatribe.

I understand it’s hard to lose a love one, despite whether people like them or not, it’s hard to deal with. Falwell was a media mogul for religious pundits that have gone over the edge. But really, this interview reads like a half-assed “I’m sorry but not really” letter, I especially love this quote from it:

After 9/11 he blamed the attacks on paganists, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians. This has not helped his legacy. Did he mean what he said?
I think it was such a horrible time … I think the whole nation was in shock. In hindsight Jerry would rather have said things a bit differently. But then again, everyone makes mistakes.

Of course he’d say something different because you realize that 9/11 had absolutely nothing to do with feminists (without them you wouldn’t be able to vote), abortionists (because all those unbirthed fetuses made some fanatics hijack planes) and gays and lesbians (I’m sure they had much better things to do than influence fanatics who hate them anyway). No need to apologize for Jerry’s incendiary remarks, it’s been almost 7 years, no one cares any more but he wouldn’t say anything differently and you know it. This one’s good too:

Do you think the “religious right” will be an important factor in November’s election?
I’m not too well bred on this kind of stuff. Jerry didn’t really bring problems home, so I don’t really know a lot about it.

So the movement that Jerry essentially spearheaded and brought to fruition was a problem? The movement that actually made him important was a problem? There’s a shocker. Most of us already knew this stuff but I’m pretty sure you guys talk about this in church and it’s a big deal otherwise, why would a former presidential candidate be so enthralled to write a passage for the book? Here’s a nice quote to directly go against what she just said:

Have you thought about who you’ll vote for in November?
I’ll vote for McCain, for sure.

Not because he’s A. part of the right and B. religion, correct? He’s just an upstanding swell citizen, that’s it!

I know we all read a bunch of contradictory stuff from these bobbleheads but this one just made me laugh from the belly. I wonder who coached her on what to say but didn’t coach her on what to make sense on.

The suffocated wrist

June 10th, 2008 • chatter

Ok so I attempted to sleep with that damned thing on my arm last night but it was impossible. Between fussing with it to make it less choking on my arm and the general uncomfortable feeling, it just didn’t work. The wrist support was slightly cutting off circulation to my thumb and no matter how I moved this thing, it wouldn’t alleviate the problem with my thumb so I had to sleep with it off. I’m returning it today for another one, any one, I can find.

Ugh wrist wraps

June 9th, 2008 • 5 comments chatter

I finally broke down today and bought a wrist strap for my right wrist. I’m tired of waking up everyday with a very stiff wrist that once moved, pops in about half a dozen different places all at once. Very painful indeed. However, I’m not so sure about this wrist strap now, it seems to be too tight although it’s not even tight — the straps are just barely strapped. It’s the small-medium because the large-XL can only fit Andre the Giant. Maybe it just needs to be broken in but it’s a little discomforting right now. Oh well, we’ll see how I feel in the morning after sleeping in it all night. Hopefully my hand won’t fall off.

We watched Idiocracy again tonight, I really enjoy this movie. Not because it’s witty but because it’s so telling of our idiot-driven, overly consumerist mentality in the States right now. I can only see kids getting dumber as time goes on, mostly because I see and go to school with kids dumber than rocks as it is now. Sure, that’s nothing new but when the US is starting to rank lower and lower on global testing scales, it’s a hard fact to dismiss.

Meh, I’ve got to find a new server. My current hosting company thinks that SoftLayer jacking up the price by $30/mo is unrealistic so they want all us dedicated customers to move to a datacenter that actually costs $34 more a month. How the hell does that make sense? Switch to actually pay more than the datacenter price increase? No thank you, idiots.

How (not) to witness to an Atheist

June 7th, 2008 • 2 comments chatter

Just came across this excellent piece by vjack entitled Witnessing to Atheists and it’s quite well thought out. By the time I finished it, I’d actually realized I felt this exact same way when Bible-thumping bobbleheads would witness to me when I was a church-going Christian (I got witnessed to at my own church). Sometimes these people just don’t know when to stop but it’s not really all that unbelievable when you think about the fairy tale they believe is inerrant truth.

So I bought Ninja Gaiden 2 tonight

June 5th, 2008 • xbox

And then I remembered how stupidly hard the first one was on the Xbox and then realized — after about an hour — how this one is essentially a gory button masher. I still think the game is fun but it’s definitely not as hard as the first one was, not by a long shot. Of course, this helps bring casual gamers into the fold a little easier but can essentially kill the replay value for hardcore gamers that helped NG1 become such a smash. I guess Team Ninja really had a toss up between shifting more units for Tecmo or keeping more in line with what Ninja Gaiden was always about: being hard as hell. But they definitely upped the bloody and gory killer moves, which do get repetitive, and added new weapons. It’s like “more of the same+” but still, it’s fun to be the world’s best ninja and kill lots of stuff.

I also snagged LEGO Indiana Jones but haven’t played it yet. I know my girlfriend is pretty eager to play though, she never played my LEGO Star Wars II game but is dying to play this one. Odd? Yes.

Crap! It’s almost 4AM and I still need to clean up Marley’s fresh head wound she got in some scuffle last night. It’s oozing all sorts of pus and I’m worried that her vision may be affected if not properly treated. Where’s her owner (again)? No freakin’ idea, we’re thinking of just taking her somewhere at this point.

I love it when I can do nothing on the weekends

June 2nd, 2008 • chatter

And that’s exactly what I did all weekend aside from running a few errands. I needed a break after the long and rather tumultuous week at work. It was busy to say the least, none due to some recent security issues we’ve had to face — not that this weekend was any better. But I unplugged and watched TV and movies all weekend, it was great. I did manage to get some edited shots from our first visit to Lion Country Safari finally edited and put up on my Flickr account. There were over 400 pictures but I cut that down to less than 200. I can’t even remember why we took so many but we did. Our most recent visit landed another 250 or so but I haven’t started editing those yet.

My girlfriend is nearly done editing her shots from our photo shoot early last month and some of them are up at her Model Mayhem profile. Hopefully she’ll get more up soon! We’ve got some ideas brewing that, if worked out, I think will be awesome for her portfolio (and mine if I can ever get my camera!!).

We went to Grif’s Western store on Saturday in hopes of getting me a new pair of boots but alas, walked away with none. The great looking black cherry pair I tried on last time I was there were still hanging around but I didn’t get them since my last pair of Durangos had to have arch support added since there’s almost none. I saw an awesome pair of beaten up Code West boots that I have got to have, the guy working there aptly named them “scuba boots” since they look similar to boots worn by scuba divers in full suits from the earlier half of the 1900s. I was weary of getting them since the inner boot has some kind of nylon webbing inside although I’m not sure why and neither did the guy we were talking to. I’m not sure if I should get another pair of black boots or go for a darker brown or more weathered brown. I know that Lucchese has a sweet pair of calfskin boots from their 1883 collection in brown that I’d love but I know that they’re probably $700. They also tried to sell me on a white straw cowboy hat since it’s summer but I just can’t see myself wearing one. And the only ones in beaver felt that I liked they didn’t have in my size. It was a fun visit but I had to walk out empty handed.

All in all, a fun weekend where nothing got accomplished but was fun anyway.