Playing more drums, and I love it. Last night I had an old fashioned bang session with my buddy Craig on guitar, and this dude Owen on bass, who turns out to have been the previous bass player for the Butthole Surfers during their Electric Larryland tour. Turned out to be a fun night, and I hope to keep rocking out soon. I can’t get enough, and I feel like it’s been pretty quick getting my chops back (and then some). The new drum kit helps!
Rockin’
I went and rocked out tonight, and boy, was it awesome. I ran into Josh Haddix of Greasy Beans fame last weekend, and mentioned that I was looking for people to play drums with. He said he was putting together something electric and needed a drummer, so tonight we met up with a couple guys he works with at Musician’s Workshop. WOW, it was great. Everything seemed to click, and the tunes were great. After one evening, we already have 5 songs in our pocket.
The style has a southern-ish hard rocking edge ala Neil Young or even some Wilco. I’m looking forward to more of this.
Recent Stuff
First, I’d like to point out the new Photo Gallery I put up here. I decided to start fresh, but look for more pictures (and video…yay!) soon.
September has been a more relaxed month in that I am no longer under the big deadline I was stressing out about in August. The web server nightmare and subsequent move to a new server has smoothed out rather well. I’ve had visits from family the last two weekends. And I’ve been playing some music here and there, which is always good. Most importantly, I’ve been doing fun things with the boys and Alicia since I haven’t had so much extra work to do.
I have a bunch of cool links to post soon, so check back.
Oh, in case you were wondering, we don’t need no stinking badges.
Server Update – Part II
The problem turned out to be something other than a hardware failure. The good news is I have set up a completely new dedicated server with a completely new company (who will be managing updates and security for me). The bad news is, I lost ALL the data that was on the original server.
I do have local backups of web sites I did, but I lost databases, and people using webmail lost saved email. Clients who were doing their own web sites may have lost their data if they werent backing it up locally.
Brief recap of events:
1. Server was hacked at the end of July. I hired SeeksAdmin.com to go in and clean up the mess, patch everything, and lock it all down. Everything was great until the server somehow got rebooted (I had nothing to do with it), and it didn’t come back up. According to 1and1, my server provider, the machine was stuck booting up because it couldn’t load the kernel. They couldn’t select the previous kernel because SeeksAdmin had locked down lilo, the bootloader. I know SeeksAdmin had mentioned they had problems with the new kernel working, but they claimed they rebooted the machine multiple times and rolled it back to the older version. I can’t prove or disprove that, but the circumstances are a bit concerning.
2. I was 99% sure that my backups were being performed by 1and1, and that all was OK when it came down to re-imaging the hard drive. Unfortunately, 1and1 locks out the backup FTP server from being accessed except from your dedicated server. So, I had no way of verifying that the backups were OK since the server wouldn’t boot and I couldn’t log in to look at the backups.
3. SeeksAdmin re-imaged the server for me, and after getting it back up, I logged in and FTP’d to the backup server to check things out. Nothing was there. I was stunned, and I was very angry.
When all was said and done, I was left wondering what had happened. There is really no one person/company to blame, rather, a bunch of bad things conspired from different places to screw me over and cause a large nightmare for all the clients I had hosted on that server. Had 1and1 been doing the backups, which they were supposed to be doing, all would have been OK. But then, it seems the system had become unstable since SeeksAdmin had gone in to do their work, so I wouldn’t have run into the problem if I hadn’t hired them. But then, if I never was hacked in the first place, none of this would have happened in the first place.
The silver lining to all of this is that I had been itching to leave 1and1 for quite some time, as they are the Wal-mart of web hosting. I was stuck with them because the task of moving all my clients was just too time consuming to think about. The new company I settled with is all about service, and being supportive of their clients. They are smaller, personal, and responsive. I also got away from having to use Plesk, and am now happily setting up all the sites in WHM and CPanel.
Server Update
Not long after restoring and securing my main web server after the hacker incident, it has a hardware failure!
When it rains it pours. If you are one of my clients trying to figure out why you can’t get your email or web site, it’s not just you. I am aware of the problem and trying to get it resolved ASAP. Trust me.
Will
I Got Haxx0r3d
My dedicated Linux server was hacked a few days ago. Specifically, someone managed to compromise Apache by way of an outdated PHP-based application that a hosting client of mine had installed. The hacker planted a script that tied up the system doing nefarious things such as portscans of other machines. My hosting provider shut down the server, but neglected to tell me what had happened.
After punching a hole through the illiterate frontline support technicians, I finally got through to someone who told me what was up. I was able to clean up the mess and uninstall the vulnerable application. I have also contracted some security experts to harden the machine for me and help prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
I will also be keeping a closer eye on scripts that get installed on the server, making sure they are all patched with the latest updates of everything.
I am glad this wasn’t worse. It could have turned into a defacement or total crippling of the server. Not that I don’t have backups, but it would have been much more time consuming to fix.
In order to maintain communication with my clients during the downtime, I moved this site to a different server quickly, and took the liberty of setting up the latest version of WordPress, along with a spiffy new theme.
Enjoy.
Falling Empire
Another sign that the Microsoft empire is failing and falling:
Steve Jobs acknowledges that Microsoft will be forced to embrace web-to-deskptop technology. He’s about two years too late. Google, Yahoo, and many others are way ahead in this game.
Linux Is Here To Stay
You may have read here before about my ventures with Linux on the home pc, where things must work for the whole family, not just me the Linux Geek.
Back in March or so, I grew tired of Windows XP on my home desktop. I was sick of having to keep up with WGA cracks (ahem), sick of bloated crapware, and not interested whatsoever in Vista.
So, I installed RedHat Linux (Fedora Core 6 to be exact). This was highly tolerable for a couple of months since I was used to using it at work all the time, and I am well versed in RedHat operating systems. However, it caused issues for Alicia because it just wasn’t intuitive enough, and it didn’t just work. There was always some fingling needed to be done in a terminal window.
I decided a few weeks ago that I would install Ubuntu 7.4 Fiesty Fawn, and I haven’t looked back since. When I learned that Dell was shipping PC’s with Ubuntu instead of Linux, I knew it must be time. The installation was fast, and it was insanely simple to do. The Ubuntu developers have thought of everything, and it seems like they are driven to make something with mass appeal that is better than Windows. In my opinion, they have.
It just works. Plugged in my iPod, it worked. Plugged in my old NTFS data drive, it worked. Plugged in my USB card reader, it worked. All of it works. Needed a codec to watch some video clip, and Ubuntu went and found it easily, letting me start watching within seconds.
The final test of Ubuntu’s readiness for the masses was how well my wife handled it. So far, the only complaint is that she cannot listen to music she bought from iTunes (until I work around that). So all in all, Ubuntu passes with flying colors.
Thingitudes
Some random goodness to fill up your Sunday afternoon.
Ever wondered what this RSS stuff is all about? Venture over to Mashable’s “Ultimate RSS Toolbox“, then learn how to keep tabs on just about anything on the Internet as it happens.
And speaking of getting organized, I’ve been toying with Essential PIM the last week or so, and have found it working itself into my daily workflow. Even the free version is very robust, but I’m considering a purchase of the version that will let me run it off a USB drive.
I was pleased to find out that Sitescore thinks relatively well of this web site. Plug in your URL to see what might be keeping you from reaching as many people as possible.
If you find yourself with a nagging itch to play video games, then you must visit 100 of the Best Legal Free Full Version Games You Can Download Online.
Simple Spark is a nicely organized catalog of online web applications, ranging from free to subscription. It is easy to find an application to help you do anything from word processing to accounting to chatting with friends. Pretty slick in and of itself, and it leads you to all the fresh Web2.0 goodness (or crappiness, depending on your point of view).
Enjoy.
Beachin
Been at the beach this week, heading home tomorrow. Gray went fishing, kayaking, and crabbing for the first time. Dax collected little crabs and in an upside-down frisbee, undeterred by their little claws. Alicia and I got a little too much sun.