Never been one to let the carrier drop

Major changes @ sheer.us

Gateway* is in the process of being retired.

If you had a web site on Gateway, it now lives, or is in the process of being moved to, qm.sheer.us

Also, instead of the ~(user) directories, we now have user.sheer.us i.e. kayti.sheer.us. A rewrite rule will make sure your old ~ links still work.

Expect your web pages to be somewhat flaky for a day or two while I figure out where everything is supposed to be.

If you used Gateway for shell access, your new shell access will be through peterbilt. Your password has not changed. Ultimately, you can probably get away with waiting for the hostname record to be updated. If you have problems with your shell access, please *call or email*.

If you used Gateway for e-mail, you should check and make sure you are using mail.sheer.us for IMAP and POP3. This will reduce (but not eliminate) the amount of mayhem that results when we switch you over to the new mail server later this month.

If you read your email using ‘pine’, you will need to start connecting to shell.sheer.us in about two weeks. Watch this space for more details.

If you used Gateway for webmail, the new webmail will ultimately be at webmail.sheer.us. It will probably take a few weeks for me to get around to it.

If you used Gateway as a icecast rebroadcaster, please switch to using icecast.sheer.us. All other details are the same.

If you are dependant on my web site being up for reassurance that I haven’t been doing anything too horrible, rest assured, it will return to normality shortly. For now, if it is 404 or the counter is nonfunctional it does not mean anything bad.

* = This is the fifth*** Gateway. I have had a machine called Gateway, in the same position on my network, running web, dns, mail, samba, nntp (at times), tomcat/java (at times), mysql, oracle (at times), nethack, and anything else I could think of, since 1996. The first Gateway was a 486/66.

It’s the end of a era. It no longer makes any kind of sense to have one ‘uber’ machine running everything. The security implications were getting nightmarish, and it was getting to be unmaintainable. Still, I will sniffle a little when I run shutdown-really** -h now for the last time..

** = because gateway was so central to everything I did, I wanted to make absolutely sure that I really did mean to shut it down. shutdown just displayed a message.

*** = Maybe. It’s hard to tell. What do you count by? Gateway was kind of this amorphous blob.. sometimes it’d get a new case, sometimes a new CPU, sometimes more RAM, sometimes a new disk.. For a long time, for sentimental reasons, I tried to reuse as many parts as possible.. at some point this got down to where the only part left from the original was a 5.25/3.5 combo drive. (anyone remember those?). 5 is a guess.

I would like to publicly thank Enyc for helping me get to this point. I think the result will be much more reliable and more secure.

I’m going to start telling my customers that their requests will be handled ‘at internet speed’.

No, not really. But it does strike me as funny.

From NewEgg.com’s site:

Thank you for shopping at Newegg.com.

The reset password email has now been sent to your email address at Internet speed.

Please be sure to check your email (*CENSORED*@sheer.us), then reset your password and login.

Internet speed. Hm. That’s funny. That’s a value that can vary from unbelievably fast to slower than the USPS to altogeather nonexistant.

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_frm/thread/c25870d7a41696d2/f447530d082cd95d#f447530d082cd95d

Yep. The 80×86 line died, RISC won out.. mmmhmmm…

Yep, Linux is dead, and anyway only ran on x86 machines.. mmmhmmm…

I bet at this late date Linux has been ported to more arches than Minux by a fair shake..

Recently, I went to see ‘Children of Men’. I will say first that this is the first time that I can remember that a movie literally put me in shock. While I wasn’t blown away with the cinematography (others disagree and think it was wonderful), the violence was so.. accurate. I suppose if I’d been playing Half Life every day like a good little boy it wouldn’t have affected me so much, but.. I didn’t even react sexually to the lovely shot of the leading lady’s breasts because I was still in fight-or-flight terror mode from the love interest of the leading male charicter getting graphicly mutilated.

It was very disturbing, although the basic premise was pretty unbeleivable. (uh, huh, this magic whatever is completely undetectable by modern science, only affects humans but no other mammals – you know, that DOES kind of sound like the Hand of God. For some value of God that includes EVIL_BASTARD as a attribute.)

Anyway, I was thinking, as I watched the movie.. someone should make a movie in which $ENEMY thoroughly blows up the U.S., ending with footage from the recent $STUPIDITY in Iraq followed by, white on black, a feild of text.. ‘Let us hope and pray that our enemies don’t hold us to the Golden Rule.’

I can only think, watching the various factions blow each other up in a struggle for dominance, that this movie did, whatever else it did or didn’t do, do a remarkably accurate job – I imagine, I’ve never been there – of capturing what war must be like.

I Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate that any of my energy might ever be expanded on this enterprise – and yet, I will probably send the IRS a check in April.

In case it wasn’t clear, I think the individual who wrote that fine collection of laws was about as sick as a human being can be and still be capable of rational thought.

Of course, it may be that in terms of human sickness of the mental variety, I’ve seen nothing yet..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_laws

One peice of good news – no matter how sick I might happen to be, there’s always someone sicker.

s.

(and Randy Neumann too!)

One of the twighlight zone things about having submitted myself to the machinations of the modern psychological machine is that I can now think about my emotional states in one level of removal – kind of like I now have meta-emotions. Like, today I was depressed and wanted to sleep all the time, although of course I didn’t because I have to work or else I’ll only plunge further into debt, which can not possibly be good.

But, I do love it here. I’m already looking forward to the weekend, and it’s only weds.

And I love my love lobster. (I got a giant stuffed lobster – bright red – with a heart that says ‘Love Lobster’ – for Christmas. I think it’s my favorite Christmas gift this year)

(I really like stuffed animals. I wonder if this means I’m a meta-furry?)

Hm. My day of the word is meta.

S.

So, yesterday I took a day off work and went out with Deadman and Kayti to L.A. – we went to a Japanese Italian resteraunt (somehow they managed to blend authentic italian food with a japanese steakhouse atmosphere – it was very different, but pretty tasty – and, at $20 a head including desert, very reasonably priced). Then we went bowling..

I shouldn’t like bowling. I mean, it’s a sport, and I hate sports. Also, I’m fantasticly bad at it (I’ve scored a strike once in my life). However, I really enjoy it, even on the Wii and especially at the bowling alley. However, I hate bowling alone for many of the same reasons that I hate eating alone. So I was really happy that Kayti and Deadman went with me.

Then, we went to Kayti’s current favorite club, which was playing all the 80’s new wave you cared to eat – the DJ got progressively worse as the night wore on, and by the end of the night was trainwrecking about every other crossfade, but it was still fun. My legs are still sore from movin’ on the dance floor, and I didn’t feel threatened or unwelcome by any of the people there, which I sometimes do at a club setting.

When I went to sleep, I realized the emotion I was feeling was contentment, possibly even happiness.

Kayti went to Denver to be with her family, and is coming home tomorrow. I’ve missed her, and look forward to having her back.