Diary of a Network Geek

So, I’m not entirely happy with my webhost.

After bouncing around from place to place, I finally found a great webhost who had competitive prices and super-responsive support. Even when I had issues with some particularly unruly scripts, they worked with me and got everything working just right.  Granted, the company was run by the cousin of a friend of mine, but, stll… Unfortunately, they also sold the business to someone else who’s not quite as good as the folks I was with for so long.
Normally, I wouldn’t just jump ship, but I have a little project that I’ve been toying with and it would be a perfect test case for a new web provider. Naturally, I thought I’d ask you all, my faithful readers, before just closing my eyes and picking someone, if any of you had any suggestions. So, do you? Are there any of you who have had particularly good, or bad, experiences with any web hosting companies?
Inquiring minds want to know!

And, yes, this little “project” is also why I’ve been thinking about blogging software and search engine optimization.  Funny how all these things seem to tie together with me these days.

Well, everyone else seems to be talking about it this week.

No, really, it feels like everywhere I turn someone’s talking about how MoveableType is going to an Opensource version and how important that is. Now, for those of you not familiar with MoveableType, it was the first really good blogging software that was freely available. Before that, bloggers basically had to write their own HTML pages and upload them one at a time. When I first had this blog, that’s how I did it and let me tell you, it sure was a tedious proceedure to suffer through for a little search engine marketing!
In any case, it wasn’t the easiest software to use or customize, but, frankly, it was the only thing going, so pretty much everyone who had a serious blog used it. Then, blogging started to get popular and a lot of other people started making blogging software and Blogger showed up, among others, to make it easier for anyone who wanted to rant about their unfair life to set up a blog. I stuck with MoveableType because I had invested so much time and trouble into getting it just right. I even kept up with the upgrades, right up until they started wanting to charge for what had been free. And change the license agreement in ways that made me very, very uncomfortable. So, I started hunting around for a replacement.
That’s when I found WordPress. Opensource, free, easy to install and configure. It was everything I wanted in blogging software. And, it was easier to write plugins for, to boot! Well, I wasn’t alone in my migration to WordPress. Lots and lots of former MoveableType folks, as well as new bloggers, moved to WordPress. They’ve always been free, had great community support, and there don’t seem to be any plans to change.

But, still, it’s nice that the new version of MoveableType will include an Opensource version. I think it’s interesting that they’re also including features that have been in WordPress for a version or two or three now, too. Kind of seems like they missed the boat on this one, doesn’t it? I wonder how many people will move back from WordPress to the new MoveableType? I doubt too many. Frankly, we’re spoiled now. I just couldn’t go back to the hassles of developing and customizing blogs on MoveableType after having it so easy on WordPress.

But, what do I know? I’ve only been blogging for seven years or more.

Wow, I guess I undervalued my skills to my divorce lawyer.

According to this article on AustralianIT, SEO salaries are really out the roof! I mean, sure, I did search engine optimization as a bit of fun while I was working a banckruptcy back in 2000, but I am highly ranked on Google. And, my lawyer was very pleased with the results I got him by re-optimizing his pages then getting him hooked up with a submission mill. A reasonably priced search engine submission service, that is.
Hmm, maybe, just for the fun of it, I should start a website from scratch and build it up in the search engines.  It might be a fun project.  I mean, I’ve kind of been thinking about redoing some of my web presence.  You know, consolidating websites that are related and getting rid of old, dead sites that I don’t really maintain any more.  That kind of thing.  And, I’ve been thinking about ways to sharpen my IT skills, or at least ways to keep my current skills sharp, so building a site from scratch, including fresh content, then making it a “number one” site might be just the thing.

Well, either way, it surprises me how something I do for fun can be big business.  Who knew?

You didn’t think I was going to let an unidentified mass in my lung keep me from posting some Friday Fun Links, did you?

Of course, I queued this post up last night and I had to work two and a-half hours late to get a couple of circuits squared away for a cutover we’re doing on my phone system, so that might have had an effect on what I picked this week.
The theme is computers and zany fun.
First, we have a link to Things Not To Do In A Server Room. Sadly, at one time or another, I’ve done most of these things.  Hey, when you’re working by yourself to string cable for an entire company, things just happen!
And, having users that Abuse Their Computers Through Neglect doesn’t help things, either.  I have to warn you, one of the pictures at that link is totally disgusting, so make sure not to look at it too close to lunch.
I tell you, it’s enough to make you want to Smash Your Computer To Bits, and that’s just what the people did who submitted the pictures on that last link.  Reminds me of a movie I know that just happens to be like my life, except I have no Jennifer Anniston to round things out.  Ah, well, maybe one day…
And, finally, just to end things on a happy note, here’s a link to pictures of Office and Computer Pranks.  Now, I’ve never done anything quite like these, but there was that one time that I wrapped a guy’s cubicle in police crime scene tape after he freaked over a spam that claimed the FBI were on to him.  Yeah, that probably was unreasonably cruel.  But, it was fun.

So, think happy thoughts as you click your Friday Fun Links.  I’ll probably be talking to my pulmonary specialist as you read these, but don’t let that keep you from having a great Friday!

So, I’ve been writing a bit of Perl again…

It’s kind of a long story that’s really rather boring, I think, but we’re changing e-mail providers at work again. They’ve got a new system to try and reduce spam that involves a challenge-response system and a whitelist.
For those not familiar, it works like this: The first time you send an e-mail to their servers, the anti-spam system fires back a verification e-mail to you. That e-mail verifies that you’re a human and not a spambot by asking you to click on a link. When you click the link, it adds you to the system’s whitelist and lets your e-mail through from then on. Pretty good system, actually. And, about the only way to assure virtually no spam gets through.

Well, to minimize hassle to our customers, we decided to pregenerate a whitelist of known, good e-mails. Naturally, that task fell to yours truly.
So, I turned to my old pal Perl. The mail is mostly stored in a UNIX mail format called “mbox”, which, luckily for me, is basically a flat file. It’s like a giant text file that has a lot of extra junk in it that no one but mail programs care about. So, the first thing I did was dig up code, and modifiy it, to pull all the e-mail addresses out of those mbox files. I called it “emailpull.pl“. That managed to pull all kinds of addresses. In fact, after I culled out the obviously bad address and eliminated the duplicates, I had a little over 4000 addresses.
Well, that was just a little too many for me to just dump into a whitelist without some kind of extra verification. So, I hunted around and found a handy CPAN module called “Mail::CheckUser” which is meant, you guessed it, to help check e-mail users. A little finagling with the code and I put together “emailverify.pl“. That little badboy takes a list of e-mail address, in text file form, and verifies them with the alleged e-mail host. Works like a charm!

Oh, and if you’re a Perl fan/addict/whatever, check the links to the code. They take you to a place called PerlMonks.org. They used to be the place to get code and help and, well, everything Perl related. But, you know, lately? Not so much. When I was there putting these two snippets of code up, there was a whole big bruhaha going on about membership to some internal, super-secret cabal group. And, there’s a lot of focus on getting levels and all sorts of junk like that. Which is ironic, to me, considering that Larry Wall, the guy who wrote Perl, did so in the hopes it would draw people together in harmony and spirit of helpfulness.
Ah, well, at least I got my task accomplished. Well, at least it will be by morning. That second script was still running when I left the office.

Update: That second script, when it was done running, reduced 4060 e-mail addresses down to 3255 validated e-mail addresses. Hopefully, it culled all the potential spam originators!

Have I got a tool for you! (Oh, that sounded wrong in all the “not-safe-for-work” ways…)

So, I had this “little problem” at work with a machine from a remote site. We don’t have high-speed connections between offices, so each office is their own Domain, right? Well, no one could remember any username/password combonations on this machine so I could sign in and fix the other problem.
Luckily, I found the “Offline NT Password and Registry Editor“.

I used the bootable cd ISO and in less time than it took to download and burn the CD, I had reset the admin password and was working. Did I mention this is a free tool?

Anybody want to buy land in Costa Rica?

So, the other day, I was talking with this guy from church about his impending divorce. It’ll be his second, so there wasn’t much I could tell him that he didn’t already know. And, since he lives in the River Oaks area, there’s going to be a whole lot more money involved than I’ll probably ever see in my lifetime. Again, not much advice I could give him, except, of course, to remind him why one hires a lawyer for these things. I just reminded him that he didn’t need to roll over simply because he was the man and, traditionally, the woman got the lion’s share of the communal property. They’d earned that money together, each contributing their part and he was entitled to his fair share. Besides, at the moment, she actually makes more money than him, so it’s not like he’d be hurting her financially at all. Mainly, though, I “advised” him to let the lawyers haggle it out when things got ugly about the money. Again, that is why one pays for a personal shark in the first place, right?

Anyway, he was talking about investing in real estate in Central America. Specifically, in Costa Rica. Now, a lot of times when guys start in with this kind of thing, I figure it’s somebody trying to impress me, but not with him. Something about the matter-of-fact way he talks about some of this stuff and his plans for developing some of the land and making a resort just ring too true for me to feel like there’s a scam or an ulterior motive. I’ve been wrong before, of course, but, these days, I’m a fairly hardened, bitter cynic and I tend to trust my instincts when it comes to people. Sadly, when I suspect something untoward, I’m rarely wrong.
But, he knows what I do for a living and for fun. He knows, for instance, that I’ve done web design work for my divorce lawyer. And, as a check was on the way, I mentioned that again this weekend when I saw him. Also, it turns out that when you Google Houston Divorce Lawyer, my lawyer already shows up on the second page of hits. Considering that he didn’t show up in the first 20+ pages of hits before I revamped his website, I’d say we’re doing pretty well. A little more time and he’ll be on that Holy Grail of search engine optimization, the first page of Google results.
In any case, I was joking with him, the guy from church, not the lawyer, about how I was in that very unique position of actually making money back from my divorce lawyer. But, it wasn’t long before he was asking about domain names and websites and optimization. And, yes, I found myself volunteering to do a simple website for him and optimize it for the search engines. And, of course, advise him about how to find an URL submission service that would keep his ranking good and high.

And that’s when he jokingly offered to trade me a hectare of land in Costa Rica for doing a website from scratch and optimizing it for the search engines. At least, I think he was joking. I mean, he was sort of laughing about it, but… But, it would be a pretty damn good deal and I’m thinking about calling him to see if he was serious or not. Because, I’ve been looking around at it a little bit and $750 worth of land now could very quickly and easily be over $75,000 some time in the next five years.

And, I was getting ready to tell him I’d do it for nothing.

So, does anyone know about real estate investing in Costa Rica?

Yes, there are still some things one can get for free.

There are a lot of ways to find free wireless Internet connections in Houston. Besides using Googlemaps, there’s also the Houston CitySearch pages that list public establishments with free WiFi by category. Not to mention all the Panera Bread Company cafes that all seem to have free wireless, nation wide, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts.
(Sadly, it seems you’ll have to pay for WiFi at the airport, and not just in Houston.)
While a lot of that might not be “fun” for everyone, those of us who live in Houston can now get out this weekend and still be connected. And, for a Network Geek like me, that is fun. So, what the heck, it’s Friday, you might as well click the links and get ready for the weekend.

Today, I bring you an actual technical tip.

Sadly, it’s not a tip I bring to you via actual experience, but via a regular e-mail I get from the fine folks at TechRepublic. Among the many e-mail news updates I get, they send me a Linux “tech note” filled with helpful information. Today’s was particularly useful, or would be if I were still actively using Linux at work. In the Windows world, a standard setting is to have the Windows password expire every so often, forcing users to create new ones. This usually prompts them to throw out their old yellow sticky note stuck to the bottom of their keyboard, too, but that’s just a side effect of improved security. Now, thanks to this article, you can enable password aging on Linux, too.

Before you start creating users, edit the /etc/login.defs file. Change the following settings:

PASS_MAX_DAYS   99999

(Change this from 99,999 days to something more like 60 or 90. That will force users to change their password more often.)

PASS_MIN_DAYS   0

(Normally, you wouldn’t need to change this.)

PASS_WARN_AGE   7

(This gives them a full week of warnings to change their password. You know your users, but I think “less is more”. Five days should be more than enough.)

You will also want to edit the /etc/default/useradd file, looking for the INACTIVE and EXPIRE keywords:

INACTIVE=14

(This would make an account that has allowed its password to expire to go “inactive” after two weeks. That’s a week of warnings and a week of not working. Should be plenty.)

EXPIRE=

(This sets a specific date for an account to “time out”, regardless of when the password was set. Normally, I’d leave that alone, but if you really want to set it, it’s done in the format YYYY-MM-DD.)

That should get you through most “normal” situations, but if you’ve already got existing users or want more information, read the article at Tech Republic.
Wow, that was fun. For me, at least. Now, all I need is a job that lets me actually use those Linux skills that are rusting like a horse-drawn plow in the Winter snow….

Oh, so you thought a fancy title was enough?

Ah, I remember those fabulous days in the web bubble when everyone around me was selling out and making giant bank.  Not me, though.  Oh, no, I stuck to my principals and fought the noble fight for things like security and longevity and all that sort of silliness.  Ah, well, according to Wired magazine, those times may be fast approaching again.  So, this time, I’ll be prepared with the Web 2.0 Business Plan Generator!  This time, I’ll be able to get some of that venture capital for myself!!

Oh, well, maybe not, but at least making a random generator in PHP was fun.
Hey, it’s Friday, cut me some slack!