Your ads will be inserted here byEasy Plugin for AdSense.Please go to the plugin admin page toPaste your ad code OR Suppress this ad slot. So remember when I had all these plans for doing all this stuff and junk? Remember when that was going to be a thing? Yeah, neither do I. But apparently […]
Category Archives: tech stuff
So life happened. It’s still happening.
Your ads will be inserted here byEasy Plugin for AdSense.Please go to the plugin admin page toPaste your ad code OR Suppress this ad slot. So a funny thing happened. I got all enthusiastic like about having some free time to do the geek things I’ve been putting off because academia. I even have, written […]
So how did you spend your summer vacation?
Your ads will be inserted here byEasy Plugin for AdSense.Please go to the plugin admin page toPaste your ad code OR Suppress this ad slot. I’ve managed some kind of personal best–three months or so without having done more than respond to a few comments over here. Well, that and do the usual updating for […]
Education: 1 James: 0
Up side: It hasn’t been 4 months since the last time I looked at this thing. Slightly less up side: Academia and I have become incredibly close over the last couple months. to the tune of I may have to tell the next person I’m dating that I can’t marry her on account of I’m […]
Support for windows 8 ended on Tuesday. downgrade to Windows 7 now.
Microsoft does this far too often to be healthy. They’ll release a halfway decent version of Windows, give it a year or several to run its course, then push out a flopper as a replacement. The flopper goes flop, Microsoft realizes perhaps they might not oughta have done that, so they come back with a […]
Geek training, now with actual geek tools.
College is awesome, if for no other reason than while I’m not being paid, I’ve still got plenty to keep me occupied during a day. And now, the stuff I have to keep me occupied just became a whole lot more relevant. I’ve been taking this program for pretty much exactly a year, now, but […]
The easy as pie CPanel WebFaction migration guide.
for reasons of plenty, I’ve had to end up switching hosting away from the server I won’t be running for much longer. The host I picked, I did largely based on the fact they advertise themselves as being a host for developers–which, for me, translates as a host for geeks. And so far, it looks […]
Bank of Montreal learns the gentle way why default passwords are bad for you.
This post could have also been titled: BMO is not smarter than a ninth-grader. It will probably surprise all of no one that there’s at least one version of your typical ATM’s user manual floating around the internets. It’ll probably also surprise all of no one that–at least as of last check–a lot of them […]
Why I will be a #Uber convert for as long as they’ll let me.
It’s a way too familiar story if you live pretty much anywhere. Your options for getting from A to B if you don’t feel like driving are limited to friends with cars, public transportation, or a handful of taxi companies who all charge very similar prices, take way too damn long to get to you, […]
In which I actually learn things. Who knew?
This thing’s due for an update. I have a couple minutes free in class. Therefore, update. And it’s a something. Last week, I officially started what I term my geek training. 6 eternities and a forever later, I walked into the first class of a computer systems technician program at Algonquin College. And in that […]
More posts by email things.
So a way back when, I found something that sort of did the trick for receiving posts by email. Mostly, except not really. It sent you your posts by email, but you got one email with anywhere from one to who knows how many posts depending on how active I decided to be when posting. […]
Rock bottom: charging $27 to install free software.
My former employer gets a little loopier every few months, I’m pretty sure. This time, the loopy shows up in the UK, in the form of a nearly $30 charge to install Firefox on some of their business level machines. Now, I’m not above charging someone for basic services–I used to willingly charge people for […]
Once more with feeling: Default passwords are bad. Not kidding.
If you’ve been reading this thing for any amount of time, you’ll probably notice I tend to come up with all manner of very strongly worded opinions. Particularly in the neighbourhood of geek things. Like, for instance, when it comes to folks who set up a piece of hardware–like, say, a router, or a server–and […]
System administration. Because the vodka industry needs some love, too.
Warning: the below post is probably long, and definitely geeky. You’ve been warned. I’ve had this blog and several others hosted on a server I run and pay for since around the neighbourhood of 2010 or 2011. Naturally, this means I go beyond the whole finding random things to post about idea and dip into […]
The only Heartbleed left now is the NSA.
So pretty much everything exploded this week. If you were paying attention, you were probably warned not to go near things like your online banking site, or pretty damn near anything that advertises itself as having a secure connection. This is because of a pretty lethal bug in the software that provides that secure connection, […]
How I ended up firing Windows XP.
So for anyone who happens to be paying attention, april 7th is XP dies a death day. Microsoft has decided after what’s probably shot past the 10 year mark to drop support for the OS. Which, escentially, means if you’re still running that version of Windows, you’ve just officially volunteered your machine to play host […]
In which tech failures happen in 3’s.
Things have a tendency of getting all kinds of eventful up in here. Particularly when they don’t *really* need to be. If it’s not family making, breaking, remaking, switching up and then completely forgetting about plans in the span of 5 minutes, or things bouncing in just about every direction except the one you want […]
In which Star Trek becomes a little less like science fiction. You saw it coming.
With the exception of the origional series–well, and the damage they started doing to the franchise with the last couple movies they turned out, you might say I’m a bit of a Star Trek fan. Well, okay, probably more than a bit–days like today would be mighty fine use cases for transporter technology, if we’re […]
Fun with passwords. Or, why your 25-year-old sysadmin might be looking a little grey.
Default passwords are a thing, and for a fairly decent reason. Your crap needs to be relatively secure, even if you haven’t actually done anything useful with your crap since the start of its existence. Default passwords are also incredibly, incredibly bad for you. It’s why most actual corporations force you to change it from […]
You know your skills are in demand when…
So. I mentioned once or twice my end goal being putting the geek abilities that result in, among other things, the existence of this website on paper. Someone asked me once what I’d use as an indication the skills I’m looking to prove I have and expand on are ones that would be in reasonably–meaning […]
Dear CPanel. You need to support Postfix. I’ll even ask nicely.
Since my former web host gave me the boot for fairly ridiculous reasons, I’ve had the pleasure of getting extremely familiar with a server and software of my very own. Part of the setup I’ve got going on now involves CPanel, which escentially lets me set up a website, email address, or any number of […]
How I handle backups. Or, happy world backup day!
For most of the world, it’s Easter. at least, on the east coast, for the next… we’ll say… less than an hour. But for anyone who maybe doesn’t cellebrate easter, or has maybe more important things on their plate besides that, today is also world backup day. In honour of that, let me tell you […]
If you used any of these passwords for, well, anything, please deposit your user’s license.
It’s a little late for best/worst of 2012 lists, but no one ever said I stuck to a schedule. Besides, this one amuses particularly because, well, server admin. So it’s kind of a big deal, if you get me. And also it beats the royal hell out of an entry wherein Amazon tries screwing folks […]
Did your internets grow a wednesday wabble? Here’s probably why.
What do you get when you take an ISP accused of being a spammer, the organization doing the accusing, the several security organizations defending the accuser, and one hell of an axe to grind? If you answered a wicked nifty cool DDoS attack, you get yourself a cookie. But since I have no cookies, you […]
A 3-strikes blog post for global 3-strikes copyright systems.
It never ceases to amaze me exactly how tightly folks will cling to the very same logic that blows up in their collective faces within about 6 months of it being deployed. Perhaps not entirely without some degree of amusement, you see it most often in the two worlds who could use a wake-up call […]