Tag Archives: servers

one confusing mess and much geekery

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Okay, so I just got off the phone with the somewhat helpful girl at Qwest, who is upgrading my DSL from 256/256 to 640/640. The reason I’m getting this upgrade is so that fojar can come live at my house, which has a variety of advantages, including allowing Steve to cancel his phone line (to use his cell) and DSL service, and get rid of the cables that run all over his house.

Now, being the type of guy who tends to map things out in his mind, I’ve already come up with a rough concept of what the networking situation is going to look like in my house after fojar arrives

  • The phone line exits the wall and travels around my desk to plug into the DSL modem, which sits on top of my computer.
    • Aside: the phone line exits the dsl modem and plugs into a DSL filter.
    • The DSL filter plugs into the back of my computer, in the modem I have for receiving faxes.
    • The phone line exits my computer’s modem, and travels around the wall into the caller ID box, sitting on top of a speaker.
    • The caller ID box has a phone cord running into my cordless phone’s base unit.
    • The cordless phone is usually stuffed between the couch cushions.
  • An ethernet cable runs from the DSL modem up the wall to plug into my 5-port switch (which is a fancy type of hub).
  • One ethernet cable runs from the switch back down the wall into my computer, giving it a static IP and leaving it outside of the fojar firewall, meaning I can now netmeeting with Steve!
  • Another ethernet cable runs from the switch across the room, into the back of Fojar, giving it a static IP address so it can continue to serve the world with Pokey and Hatelife.
  • Out of the second network card in fojar comes another ethernet cable, which travels back across the room and plugs into a 5-port hub, which will probably sit on top of the switch, just to be cute.
  • An ethernet cable exits the hub, travels around the doorframe, and up into the moulding in the living room, and travels all the way around the room, and back down around the doorframe into Annie’s office, where it snakes around behind some books to plug into her machine, which will get a shared internet connection from Fojar.
  • Any other computers, such a laptops or my other Windows 2000 computer, will also plug into the hub and gain a net connection through Fojar.

TOTALS

  • 1 DSL Filter
  • 1 5 port switch
  • 3 dirty magazines
  • 1 5 port hub
  • 2 static IP addresses
  • 4 phone cables – over 20 feet total
  • 5 ethernet cables – over 70 feet total

Scatterbrained

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Too scatterbrained to write much right now, so I’m going to update you by category.

Girlfriend/Home: In case you didn’t hear, these two have merged. Annie and I live together now in a lovely place called Goose Hollow. We got a one-bedroom apartment with orange counter-tops, and got all moved in over three days. Things are going well, on the whole, though we are discovering a few areas of conflict, as expected. It’s all small stuff though, nothing to threaten the relationship. I really love her, and things are going well.

Work: Lots of stuff going on here. I’m working on three jobs right now. One is the same old job as a lab attendant in Shattuck. That’s going great, Mark gave me 37 hours/week, so I should be raking in the cash this summer. The second is that I applied for a position on the Tek team, which looks very promising. It’s probably less pay, and definitely less hours, but Mark would let me keep this job (at less hours) and still work there, so I should be pulling in a similar amount of hours, and the pay would be close. But the opportunity is great. Network experience for my resume, more experience with other operating systems, and of course, I’d be working with Steve and Miles, which would be a blast. Should be pretty cool! The third is the team I’ve joined. Miles, Steve and myself have hooked up with Dennis and his girlfriend to create a team called PDXmart. It’s an online mall project which is pretty exciting. Miles and Steve are the programmers, I’m the head designer/HTML guy, and Dennis and his girlfriend are the brains of the outfit. Dennis drives us pretty hard, but I have to admit that in less than three weeks we’ve already gotten a great looking site up at www.pdxhookup.com. It’s the first “store” in the mall, though an online classifieds site doesn’t really count as a store. It looks great, and we’re all proud of how well it’s performing. It’s kinda frustrating not having as much free time as I thought I would over the summer, but it’s really good experience, and it loads up my resume quickly!

Internet: Steve’s server is performing well, and spaceninja.com is alive and kicking. My personal site looks great, my new email address works great, and I’m proud of the whole thing. I do still owe money on the name, but I’ll get that paid soon enough.

I’ll write more when I’m feeling less scatter-brained.

Oops! Almost forgot… Money’s not as bad as last time I wrote, because Annie got a job at a used-clothing store, which will cover us until she starts Americorps.

Obey Giant

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Hmm. Well… I could write about all the stuff that has happened lately, but that seems like a lot to do, so instead I’m going to tell you about this kickass website Ryan sent me. It’s at www.andrethegiant.com, or if you prefer, www.obeygiant.com. They both go to the same place. This website, apart from hosting some awesome designs (very communist propaganda poster style) has some interesting ideas. They (He/She/It?) posted posters and stickers all over New York with Andre The Giant’s face on them, and the words “Giant Has A Posse.” The idea is that this is a completely meaningless phrase and that you could learn a lot by how people react to finding this in front of them (I recently did a similar project in Graphic Design class, which may be why I’m interested in this). Their manifesto is great, as is their poster gallery. They sell all their posters, and if anyone is ever looking for a good gift for me, that’s the way to go. I would love to have most of the posters they’ve done. I’ve posted a few examples down below.

You may have heard that I’ve moved. I just got all moved in with Annie at Goose Hollow. Things are going great right now. Annie’s a little restless because she’s got nowhere to go, and I’m at work all the time, but hopefully she’ll get a job soon, and that’ll take care of that. It’d be easier if we had TV reception, but with no money for cable, and no antenna on the TV (yes, I know I can make on with wire, but I don’t have any wire, either)… you’ve be surprised how bad the reception is inside a concrete box. I’m hoping to get my dad to loan me his digital camera so that I can post some photos of what our place looks like.

Since you’re reading this, you’ve noticed that I’ve moved servers. That went fairly smoothly, except for the send-mail bug that Steve’s trying to solve that prevents me from getting email at the spaceninja address. Hopefully that will be solved soon and all my woes will be gone! I’m pleased with the new site designs, and I’ve got a few coming. I’m going to get a great design up for the portfolio, and redesign the desktop themes page.

It’s kinda frustrating because all at once, everything in my life is being shared. I can’t just leave things as I want them because they impact other people. The PDXmart project I’m working on with Miles and Steve and Dennis is behind, due entirely to me, so people are kinda upset (rightly so), Annie and I are discovering the new stresses of sharing a living space, and Steve is upset with me because I can’t pay him. It’s frustrating because I just don’t have the money. It’s not there. I can’t borrow anymore from my parents because they just spend a bunch of money on me when I moved, I can’t borrow from Annie’s parents because they’re in a tight spot, I’m already paying $800 in bills on a $500 paycheck and Annie’s unemployed. I know it’ll all be good in a couple of months, but that doesn’t help when everyone’s demanding their share of the non-existent money now. Oh well. Things will work out. I get paid on Wednesday, and Annie’s hoping to get a call-back on a job-interview real soon.