Work Trip: San Diego

Originally uploaded by x11tech

First time using the “blog this” feature on Flickr. Got to say, I sort of dig it. The only problem is that it’s not easy to backdate posts. So my photo blog entries will probably always be a week or more behind when the photo was taken (I’m just not that dedicated to uploading the photos to Flickr).

Spent two days in Sunny San Diego this last Monday. If the heat didn’t kill me, the humidity would. I’ve not sweated that much without working out since as far back as I can recall (ok, maybe living in Fresno competes). Nonetheless, it was horrid every time I had to go outside during the day

 

Updated my About > Books and About > Television pages with new information:

Books

  • Started reading the Off Armageddon Reef series by David Weber.  I’m enjoying it, although it’s interesting to note (as one reviewer did) that the cast of the book is entirely male, no major female characters, and females make an appearance only rarely.
  • Finished reading Small Favor by Jim Butcher, excellent.
  • Trying to find time to start reading Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3) by Patricia Briggs.
  • I’m rabidly looking forward to Cyteen II which has been announced (and which I posted about previously)

I somethings think that I should start a little Amazon.com store, but I kind of doubt that I really have many people reading my blog (which is fine, as it’s really just a notepad most of the time.)

Television

  • Moonlight got cancelled by CBS.
  • I stopped watching Battlestar Galactica after “Razor”.
  • Started watching Burn Notice (season 2) and trying to catch up on all the shows I’ve missed so far.
  • Watching Eureka (season 3) and Stargate Atlantis (season 4)
  • Anticipating the return of Heroes and Chuck.

 
My winery (Black Stallion Winery) in Napa had a release event for a new red blend wine.  During the event we had a cheese pairing.  I thought it odd that the cheesemonger (the guy who made the cheese) told us that the 18 month old cheese was the one he thought was too acidic and while popular, he felt that the newer 12 month old cheese was the future of cheeses and his personal favoriate.  I think it odd because both me and my girlfriend liked the 18 month old cheese.
 
Sadly, while we liked Bucephalus, both me and my girlfriend really enjoyed the 2002 Cabinet Souvignon more.  Well, I guess it’s not too sad for all parties, we bought a bottle of this at $65 (before club discount and taxes).
 
A fun day trip.

 

 

Teaching myself how to theme a WordPress Blog for the fun of it. The new theme incorporates a second side bar and also modifies how pages are navigated. I like the cleaner approach to page navigation and will have to continue to refine how page navigation occurs till I’m happy with it.

One of the biggest obstacles to me filling out the Meridian-1 tutorial section has been the unwieldy approach the default theme had to heirarchal page navigation.  If I resolve that to my satisfaction, then I’ll start incorporating a lot more free tutorial stuff on to my website.

 

Site moved and functional.  The old hosting site will be terminated in the next 48 hours, thus avoiding the almost 90$ per quarter I pay.  The features offered by my new hosting provider are way cool.

 

On July 11, Verio will want to renew my hosting, so I have 5 days left to cancel before being charged another $80 a quarter.  Hostmonster, on the other hand, seems to offer more features (and certainly upgraded PHP and MySQL which is why I’m moving) at a reduced price.

I know that Verio offers all of these nifty packages at different rates, but even the lowest package at 11.95 a month can’t compete with 6.95 a month, especially when Verio will not let me use PHP5 which is becoming mandatory for a lot of open source web applications (like wordpress and phpbb3…  not that I plan to run a phpbb again in the near future…  but I just might install it to play around with it.  Which I would not be able to do thanks to Verio’s living in the stone-age and running PHP 4.x)

In another 24 hours the move process should be complete, and I should be able to cancel my account with Verio.

 

I’ve begun the move process.  I have changed the DNS pointers for the domain to point to the new name servers in charge of my .net domain name.  When you visit http://www.datarave.net/zfh/ and can see this post, then you’ll be able to resume monitoring .net for updates instead of .org.

My biggest concern over this accessing old email during the transition.  As the name servers update across the Internet, spammers will be directing email to both locations…  As will legitimate senders…  which means that I have to monitor both email locations, and monitor them by IP address instead of domain name.  /sigh

 

In preparation for the eventual discontinuation of hosting services with the current .net‘s hosting provider, and the move of .net to the new hosting provider, I will no longer be updating the .net blog.

In the mean time, if you want to know the latest tid bit from my blog, visit the .org website instead.

As a reminder, this is temporary and not expected to last more than 7 days.  My old hosting is coming due on Jul 11… I hope to migrate very soon.

 

Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the online petition:

“Renewed artistic direction for Diablo 3″

hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition
service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/d3art/

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might
agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider
signing yourself.

Best wishes,

 

I’ve activated my datarave.org domain name on another host provider and I’m in the process of mirroring all active code there.  DATARAVE.NET has enjoyed a good long run with our current hosting providers, but they are both more expensive and less inclined to upgrade their PHP and MySQL offerings to the current stable code, therefore I’m voting with both my feet and my cash for a better quality hosting provider.

My email will not be mirrored to datarave.org, so don’t bother sending any email there.  When the time comes to migrate .NET itself, there will be a short interruption in email services.  Further, I’m not sure what I’ll do with .ORG once I’ve finished with the whole process.

The activation of .ORG was primarily to permit me to perform testing and quality assessment of the hosting provider.  Unless anything crops up during the migration process (prior to actually moving .NET), I should be moving within the next 30 days.

Stay tuned.

Favorite Books

Favorite Music

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