You may have noticed some instability in the blog recently. This is due to the fact that the place where my server is held recently switched to an ISP that blocks port 80 due to the Code Red Virus. As I’ll be moving soon, it didn’t make sense to enter into a contract with a business tier ISP for the server, so I had to do a few hacks to get the server running. A few more hacks this morning allowed me to get the blog working, since the blog kept looking for the old URI and I had to do some creative things with the URI in order to keep the same one working for those of you who have linked to the top level of my blog.

It’s almost been a month since I went to Cancun, Quintanilla Roo, Mexicao. I meant to blog about it, but at first I was busy getting my married life and my room back into order. While in Cancun I decided not to rent a car in case the drivers were as crazy as the ones I’d heard about in South America. They actually ended up driving just as good (or bad) as people do in Tampa and arguably a lot better than how they drive in Miami. Since I wasn’t actually in Cancun, but in Puerto Aventuras (Adventure Port) we had to take a taxi to get anywhere Interesting.

I have chosen the ramart theme, developed by the owner of a blog about Weird Al Yankovic. After going over all of the available themes, I chose this one because it best reflects what my blog has evolved into. As a blog mostly about technology news and the GNU/Linux operating system, I feel this theme best conveys my content. However, don’t worry that I won’t be talking about personal things, politics, or religion - it’s just a realization of the main topics of this blog as well as the fact that I ’m a VERY technological person. I mean, how many other people have three computers they use on an everyday basis, including a server. Finally, with the theme I was previously using I didn’t like the font as much - some of the letters ran together such as a c and an l - looking like a d.

I believe that websites, magazines, blogs, and other media that people become accustomed to should always look the same. Afterall, that’s what people become comfortable with, so why change it up? However, I also realize that these things always change and it’s often for the better. In that vein, I am going to be changing up my blog a little bit. I don’t like that I’m just using one of the default templates for WordPress because what is it that distinguishes my blog from Andrew’s Blog or any of the others using the default template. It may take me a while to customize the template the way I want it, but I don’t want to take the server down again - it’s had enough downtime recently. Therefore, you may notice some changes on your visits until I get everything tweaked the way I want it. Thanks for you patience and see you on the better side of “It’s A Binary World 2.0”.

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. That’s a very important mantra to have in the software/hardware world. For example, OpenOffice.org has its own file format, but around 90% of the world uses the Microsoft Office format. Therefore, OO.o must incorporate support these formats. Similarly, a large portion of the Internet servers out there are running Linux and/or open source software. That’s the reason that Microsoft has decided to try and booot compatility with open source. How hard are they trying to make their software work with open source?

Sound card in my server tanked, taking down the ethernet card with it. Result - server was down most of yesterday. I took out the sound card today since there is no need for a sound card in a server. It’s back up and better dang well stay up.

I wanted to be able to talk about the news stories I found very interesting without creating an additional post for each story, so here is the first edition of “In the news today”.

This BBC story shows how NASA’s attitude about shuttle accidents has changed since the 2002 shuttle destruction. Previously NASA was more concerned about its PR image. How would it look if NASA was trying to check the shuttle for problems due to foam hitting the wing? For whatever reason, they decided to deny the astronauts the ability to check the condition of the shuttle, costing them their lives. This time around, with a possible heatshield tile missing from the Shuttle Discovery, they are doing a full diagnostic over the entire shuttle to determine the integrity of the protection system against the heat of reentry. I’m glad NASA has finally learned its lesson. I hope that this is one it doesn’t forget.

Today I was reading an article about the perils of blogging about the workplace. This is something I have always avoided. I think it’s ok to say something like, “Man, this guy was a real jerk to me in the cafeteria, I wonder what problems he was facing to feel that way.” It’s not ok to say, “Man, my boss is such an [insert favorite insult]” because that will just cause problems. Don’t think that he/she might not read it. Although I garner a few thousand hits to my website a month, I know that I have a pretty small audience compared to the more famous bloggers and I figured my blog to be relatively obscure. My wife’s neighbor googled me and found all sorts of stuff on my website that we presented as proof that he had researched me. (This is not as weird as it sounds, she grew up with him as a neighbor and he protects her as a niece or maybe even a daughter - and he’s a great guy) So, your boss might end up on your site too. Keep your comments as generic as possible and try not to mention your company by name and you’ll probably be ok. But I’m way off on a tangent from my purpose for writing this post.

Just wanted to remind people that the comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks on this site are moderated to help prevent comment spamming. Your comments probably won’t be posted for a few hours after they are made, so there is no need to double-post.

As we switch the server over to Fiber Optic lines (providing faster experience for you), you may experience some periods of downtime on the server. I hope to have things resolved by the end of the week.