Snowulf - DevNull

Cyber Monday / Black Friday

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0800

First - Black Friday.
Did you go out? Did you get any deals? I certainly didn't go out, though I hear things are getting massively out of hand. My mother was checking the sales on Thanksgiving and found that JCPenney was opening at 4 AM on Friday. For the love of kami-sama, that is too frakking early!!! Also, according to the news, people were lined up as early as 11pm on Thursday. What could be so amazing of a deal that necessitates you spending 5+ hours outside of a store? Of course, every year the stores open earlier (along with closing later), soon stores will be opening up at Midnight. I wonder if people will start lining up at noon then? Sigh...
Continue reading "Cyber Monday / Black Friday"

Happy Labor Day

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:00:00 -0700

We decided that it being a holiday and all, we should take the day off. Wednesday we shall resume with our regularly scheduled blathering.

Happy Labor Day!

BRB versus AFK

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:00:00 -0700

I often find myself thinking about the most random things. Sometimes, afterward, I worry about how much time I've actually spent thinking about these mostly random topics. Though who cares, right? Today, you get to join me in my random wanderings around the mind of me, because I feel like sharing and by some deity or other you can't stop me. Ok, so you could close the window, but where's the fun in that? The topic I was recently thinking about should be fairly obvious if you can read the title. What is the difference between BRB and AFK?

BRB or "Be Right Back" would be fairly obvious in its meaning, you are leaving, but you'll be "right back". The real problem is, what does "right back" entail for a given amount of time. The most basic use is "BRB Biobreak" or "BRB BRB" (meaning: bathroom break), and that is a minute or two tops. Other times, I've seen people say something like "BRB McDonalds", and unless the Micky D's is across the street - that is probably going to take some time. Is there a limit on what "right back" should be? For me BRB maxes out at 5-10 minutes, anything more than that must be an AFK. It's all subjective, which is really not helpful.

AFK or "Away From Keyboard" is also fairly obvious, you are going away from the computer. This is more indeterminate than BRB, since AFK simply means that you are gone - that's it. Sometimes I'll include an expected ETA such as "AFK 20", so others will approximately when I'm to return. Even though the return is unknown, by saying "Away From Keyboard" one generally expects that you will return, at some point in time.

So in the end BRB and AFK serve the same function. The real problem is where you draw the differentiating line. You could "AFK" and be back in less than 5 minutes. On the other hand you could "BRB" and be gone for 8 hours. How do you, the reader, separate BRB and AFK? Do you have specific requirements for the use of each of these wonderful TLAs? Or do you use them interchangeably? Or maybe just one over the other? Or maybe you think this is a stupid waste of time and you want the 5 minutes you spent reading this, back. Discuss.

Memorial Day

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:00:00 -0700

Today is Memorial Day which is a day off work, and a day for food! That being said, do try and remember why we get the day off:

"It commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in the military service."

You commemorating?
...
...
...
Ok. Back to BBQs!

Why bother buying local?

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:00:00 -0700

This is a serious question I'm grappling with today. I went to the local camera store and saw a lens for my Nikon that I really wanted. They told me it was $400, ok, no big deal. I checked Amazon while still in the store and it was $336. How can I in good conscience spend more just to get it in a store? If I spend $4 extra, I can have it overnighted from Amazon (oh how I love Prime). On top of the fact of the cost - Amazon has fantastic customer support, and a great return policy. I can return the lens for just about any reason and Amazon will eat the shipping cost (in most cases). With the exception of perishable groceries (because non-perishables you can get on Amazon) - why would I shop locally? Yea, playing with an item in my hand is cool... but it's not worth $60 to me.

Does anyone out there still buy things locally when you can get them on Amazon for cheaper? If so, Why? (Note: I realize some things aren't necessarily economical to get shipped - like LCD TV. But for smaller stuff)

Update: For some reason this got set to one day previous - its now been fixed.

Your Real Birthday? Better not be in 1910.

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:19:11 -0700

I was recently mucking about with my profile on Facebook and accidentally set my Birthday to 1910 (first year in the list). It threw me back an error message saying "Please enter your real birthday.". I found this extremely odd, just I fiddled about a bit with the birthdates. As it turns out - Facebook gives you the option of being born in 1910 - but you can't use it. It doesn't matter if you were born Jan 1, 1910 or Dec 31, 1910 - it kicks back with the same error. Of course it is extremely unlikely anyone using Facebook was born in 1910 (as they would be 108 years old) - but what is the point of giving you an option you can't be used?? Thats just shitty user design, right there.

Facebook, you fail User Design 101. Never give the users an option they can't use.

I've given up on ad's

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:01:00 -0800

Well in case you can't tell, I've given up on advertising around here (for those of you that don't have adblock turned on). I looked at the amazon and google stats. I've made zip from google and as for amazon, there were only 2 click through purchases - and I have a feeling they were mine (against TOS of course - but I didn't mean to do it). As for the blogrush thing, though I don't have much faith in it, I'll leave it for a bit longer to see.

Of course, I changed layouts too, gotta change things up once in a while.

Readers?

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 00:30:00 -0700

I've come to the conclusion (mainly from watching Google Analytics) that there are next to no regular readers of this blog. Most everyone that visits this site on a daily basis, is coming from a search engine (google, generally). Most are looking for an answer to their tech questions, then leave. Thats fine. The other reason I assume there are no readers, is that no one posts in the comments - EVER (besides John, and he doesn't count).

Unless there is a change in one of the two above, the posting schedule shall be changing. So effective ... Now... I'm going back to my "posting when ever the hell I feel like it" schedule. Yea, I'll still post. I'll have a big write up every now and then, and hopefully some more tech tips/tricks (but I do less of that stuff these days). The rest of the time... you are Shit Outa Luck (TM)

Blog Go Boom

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:42:52 -0700

So as you may have noticed, my blog got beaten to death yesterday by Digg. It was my own fault of course, but it was a hilarious experiment none the less. I'm taking my weekend off to relax, and play some Halo 3. I'll be back on Monday with something new and interesting, I promse.

As for my server... I thought I'd share a quick run down of some of the stats I collected. I'm sure I'll have more info later. But here's the quick version

Google Analytics Report (For yesterday 2007-09-28):
- 7,095 Absolutely Unique Visitors
- 7,150 Visits
- 72% of Visitors Used Firefox !! (IE got 14%)

My Internal Stats Software Says:
- 218,132 Hits
- 354.29 MB of Bandwidth Used

Just for the record. Thats about 400 times more hits than a normal given day. As its been pointed out though, most Digg users don't visit more than once. I'll be interested if anyone stops by again.

Update: Sorry for the Dupe. Don't know what happened there.

Digg makes baby Apache cry

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:16:43 -0700

Yea. My little digg experiment worked. Too well... Digg keeps crashing apache. I keep restarting it. Be patient.

Update - 2007-09-28 @ 16:43 While I'm still getting a good amount of traffic from Digg, Apache hasn't crashed in a few hours. I'll keep an eye on things, but it seems like the worst is over. Please don't tell /. about me.

Introducing...

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:01:00 -0700

I'd like to take this post to briefly introduce you to John, today's guest blogger. Please note: He spells his name funny and weird, and by that I mean he uses more letters than needed - but oh well. I guess he wants to be "unique". Regardless, John has done a segment about DBA (Database Administrators) that he'd like to share with you. I'm also trying to coerce him into writing a semi-regular column. So you may be seeing more of him in the future. You shall also be pleased to know, that he is an English Nazi - so his posts will be filled with the wonders of proper grammar, good spelling and coherent sentences.

Happy Evil Day of Distruction

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:43:34 -0800

Yea, its the evil day. Or so I've been told, I keep forgetting which day it is when.

In other news, you should check out Favbox. It is a cool favorite/bookmarking system written by Ben. Its really cool, supports tags, folders, and he even wrote a firefox plugin. I'd suggest everyone go try it out! And if you are interested in the plugin, read this.

The internet is for....

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 22:00:53 -0800

...Bots.

You thought I was going to say porn, didn't you? Well obviously the internet isn't for porn, its for bots. God damn my site has been hammered to hell the last couple months. I made some more ban changed mid last week, namely banning the entire internet. If you are reading this, you are in one of a dozen countries that I specifically allow to access my site. I've banned everyone else. Mainly because the bot traffic against my site is out of hand. Last month my site received some 55,000 hits. In the "heyday" of my blog when I updated every single day with useful information I normally didn't receive more than 20,000 hits. So obviously there is something wrong. If that isn't enough proof, as of right now I've already received more 10,000 hits to my site this month (Yes, as in the last 3 days). As of now, 98.5% of the traffic against my site is receiving a 403 Forbidden message (aka BAN HAMMER). Hopefully this will help reduce the traffic against my site as comment spammers slowly learn that its a waste of bandwidth. Luckily the 403 forbidden page is rather small, so even with several thousand page views a day, my bandwidth usage is negligible.

I'm hoping to get back up to at least 3 posts per week (m,w,f). I've managed to do that a few times, but I'd like to get back to a regular posting schedule. Recently I've been spending alot of time at work on our anti spam solution (MailScanner + SpamAssassin + etc). So I hope to be posting a bit about that, and the results I've been finding.

Amazon is Up To Date

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 14:36:45 -0800

I saw this just a few minutes ago on Amazon.com. Just in time for the holidays eh? Seems to be a few weeks late to me (or several months early)

FP?

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 22:48:14 -0800

First Post of the new year! I've been slacking for the last month or so. More correctly I haven't posted at all. I had finals to take care of, I was gone to the bay area for a while, etc. Excuse Excuse. Honestly I just didn't feel like posting. A few news bits though:

iPhone - Super Awesome.
Asterisk 1.4 was released. But I can't find the damned release notes, just change logs
I'm going to work on getting A+, Linux+, CCNA & MSCE certs
I'm tired of Tahoe.