Geeky Baldisms

This one's for you, Anonymous (for Obvious Reasons), THX1138, Fatman, Mad Hatter, Cowgirls (both the original, and #2), Chicago, Roland, Bogey1, bear in a box (who works somewhere on the other side of the International Date Line), fluffyjacket1984 (who has had to take up posting under different monikers due to inciting the wrath of the Moderator Gods), Freeloader, kangoid, Jim but not THE Jim, Oldest Timer (who is a dear friend of mine, now enjoying his retirement), Feign, Jam, mlk, oldITgal, Army Dad, Cmdr_Michelle, scoot, Digital Willie, 0/0, and all my other ST buds. I'm sure any I missed will let me know!

I busted into this fulltime geek thing at the age of forty back in 2000. I like to think of it as the year that going to work became something to be savored instead of dreaded :-).

Anyhow, one of my new coworkers soon turned me on to Computerworld's Shark Tank. I became an instant fan.

The premise behind Shark Tank is that funny and/or frustrating in a funny sort of way things happen in the IT trenches. And we might as well laugh at them, because it's more fun than crying, and you get in big trouble for bringing weapons to work!

ST has gone through some changes over the years. While always relying on a daily email to get the stories out, and archiving a couple year's worth on their site, a while back they switched to a short email teaser. The rest of the daily account is on their site.

I was disturbed at first. I had created a rule, first in Lotus Notes, then in Outlook when my company switched, to send the daily Shark to a folder to be browsed when the day wasn't going well.

But Computerworld added another feature at the same time: comments on the daily tale.

At first, I was taken aback by the number of people whose comments consisted of how lame the story was, and how ST had gone to pot. What was with these people? If they hated the concept so much, what were they doing there?

Enter JIM THE BOSS.

I've been a bluehill.com customer for many years. I believe it was 1999 when I started hosting my sites with them.

I used a VPS type system until 2006, then switched to a dedicated server.

The price is decent, only 50 bucks more than the VPS. But I am taking a couple of days off from my regular job to move everything over to a dedicated box I'm leasing from jtlnet.com for an incredible $99 a month.

This blog will provide two public services: first of all, the nuts and bolts involved in moving from one dedicated server to another, and second, a review of JTLNet and their experience for the customer.

So stay tuned. I expect to begin the process any minute now...

I received instructions for logging into my dedicated server on Friday afternoon about 3:00 local time. It is now Sunday, 10:20 AM and I am pretty much done.

Total; time spent moving stuff: about 15 hours.

I am receiving help generating a SSL certificate now. Once I set up a secure website, this project will be complete.

My overall impression of JTLNet throughout the ordeal: very positive.

I used Plesk as a web admin tool with bluehill.com. It was robust enough. My new host uses SiteDSM. It's different, better in some ways. For instance, it allows the creation of .htaccess files with usernames and passwords or ip address blocking. However, it's difficult to edit any accounts you have created. The interface can be quite funky.

But I have a fairly hot dedicated server for $99 a month! I have used yum from the command line to add software.

Overall, an unbeatable deal for technically savvy webmasters.

This big move to a dedicated server is now complete.

And I would like to give an unpaid, hearty endorsement to my new hosting company, jtlnet.com, at this point.

I didn't hear anything for two days after ordering my dedicated server. That made me nervous.

That was the last "negative" experience that i had with them. It's all been very positive since then.

I would rate my technical ability when it comes to Linux web server management at about a 7.5 on a scale of 10. I can tweak conf files, but not without help from others who post their own conf files online. I know my way around chmod's and chown's, and am able to add/remove/update software from the command line.

But I am far from ponytail stage.

That's why my ringing endorsement of jtlnet is now presented for the world to see: their unbelievable technical support.

Here's why I love it:

It's not computers, but it's geeky. Here are some pics of some recent fossil finds.

Crinoid stalks.

Crinoid Mass. That big stalk is about two inches long.

For lots more fossil pics, check out What Is This Fossil?

Just so you know, I'll probably be getting another domain set up soon for my fossils. I'll try to keep this one concentrated on the geeky, computer-wise (and the occasional gripe). I've been having a BLAST getting back into a pastime that I enjoyed a lot as a kid. I've met some great folks on the web who have been helping me identify unusual finds.

This post will be very graphics-intensive, my apologies to those of you still dialing up.

Let's start with an absolutely amazing massive crinoid stalk:

Here's the monster still in its matrix.

For lots more fossil pics, check out What Is This Fossil?

This post will concentrate on finds that I discovered that cost me a pretty penny.

I mean, I'm in northwest Arkansas, I'm on a country road, a car passes every twenty minutes. No need to lock your door, right?

Apparently so. Some disgusting slimeball stole my iPod and my GPS. I gave the cops a description of your car, scum. Rest easy.

Anyhow, on a more positive note, I found some killer stuff. Here we go:

This is exactly the SECOND crinoid calyx I've ever found. The first one still lies in the wash in the woods on my Pea Ridge, Arkansas farm home I enjoyed when I was fourteen. It's in a slab that was too massive for a kid to mess with. It's just as well. I'm sure I would have misplaced it by now, as I did with a bunch of massive oysters I found in Austin, Texas construction sites as a kid.

I gathered these rocks from the roadside on a quiet country lane. It was at the site of a cutout about 10' deep.

The rocks are brown in color, and very porous. They get very soft when saturated in water.

First, the one that got away. I found an exquisitely detailed trilobite rear end that literally crumbled when I split the rock open. Sadly (and stupidly), I didn't photograph it on the spot. It crumbled into nothingness when I attempted to trim the rock down a bit.

Live and learn, as they say.

Here are some pics of some fossils that I did manage to successfully extract:

A small brachiopod, but exquisitely detailed. The soft rock preserves extremely fine details, as you will learn by continuing.

This is a tale of two golfers who decided to suspend their play.

The first one found out that his wife of thirteen years had been diagnosed with breast cancer. The golfer immediately decided that golf was a secondary pastime, pushed far to the rear by the more immediate concern for his lady's health. So the first one made an announcement that he would be taking a break from the Tour, to be by his wife's side as she began aggressive treatment to wipe out the dreaded disease.

His fellow golfers joined in on the cause. His good friend John Daly wore a pink pair of pants during a tournament. ALL golfers at the following week's tournament wore pink, in support of the golfer, his wife, and his family.

Two months after his announcement of a hiatus, the world rejoiced when the golfer revealed that his wife's cancer had been contained. He would be rejoining the Tour. In September, two months later, the first golfer, four strokes back on Sunday morning, would go on to defeat the second golfer at the Tour Championship. The first golfer would epitomize the well-loved and and admired family man and good sport, and would earn the admiration of untold millions.

That brings us to the second golfer to take time off from the Tour.

When I was eighteen years old, Rolling Stone magazine and myself began a relationship that continues today. Though I gave up the extreme left-wing articles several years ago, I continue to hit their website to get the only truly unbiased opinions of what music is good or otherwise.

Now Rolling Stone album reviews aren't perfect. I remember they trashed ABBA pretty hard during the late 70's, and I've come to appreciate the tight harmonies and flawless engineering of their stuff in my more mellow years. And so has, for that matter, Rolling Stone, being kinder to them in retrospective reviews than they were at the time.

But the fact is that when RS gives out an infrequent five-star review, it's because the artist has earned it, producing a great work that transcends musical genre. Thus, a rock and roll fan can listen to Bill Monroe's Bean Blossom and know that he was hearing the best bluegrass music that is out there. And that's how my own musical appreciation eventually spread out to include music other than that produced by loudly amplified electric guitar.

However, five stars is the highest honor that can be bequeathed upon an album by the Powers that Be over at RS. So, the question arises: what can you do when a master has accumulated a lifetime of musical accomplishments that all rate five stars? How do you discern the greatest of the great?

I've always been stuck in the past, musically speaking. In high school, while everyone else was listening to Styx, Foreigner, and Supertramp, I was into the Stones, the Beatles, and just about anyone else who charted during the 60's.

Even now, it took until the 21st century before I began getting into the hits of the 80's.

However, I've recently discovered two artists who are more contemporary.

The first is Drive-By Truckers.

Admittedly, what caused me to give them a listen was their homage to Lynyrd Skynyrd: Southern Rock Opera.

I've always been partial to Southern fried R&R. The Allmans, Skynyrd, Dr. John, I could go on and on. Some kind of down-hominess comes through from a southern band or performer that just can't be duplicated. So when I stumbled upon a review of SRO from Rolling Stone, and saw its four-star rating and its double-CD-full of praise for Lynyrd Skynyrd, especially the relationship between Ronnie Van Zandt and Neil Young, well, I had to give it a listen.

It's a powerful album. It has a hard edge to it that I would like to think that Ronnie and the gang would likewise possess had not that 1977 plane crash killed the original Skynyrd.

It took me a while to take a chance on another Truckers offering: Brighter than Creation's Dark. This album is equally listenable, with some sweet mellow tunes thrown into the hard-driving mix. This includes the gorgeous vocals of Shonna Tucker, a bass player who has joined up since 2001's SRO. She is also a songwriter. The group is lucky to have picked up her talent.

I now own all of the Trucker's albums, including a bootleg called Acoustic and Otherwise. I haven't obtained their latest, The Big To Do, but intend to do so soon. If you like southern fried rock, give the Truckers a try. That goes for you old goats my age, especially.

The second pleasant musical discovery I recently made was Lucinda Williams.

I wrote a column a while back about Computerworld's Shark Tank. Since then, many of the folks that got mentioned in the article have moved on. Many more have blown in. And it continues to be a fun place to read funny (allegedly) true tech stories, then afterwards to join in on the bantering that goes on in the comments.

Anyhow, here's a couple of pics of 02BIrish and myself, wearing our hard-earned Tank shirts.

Have you got one? Shoot a pic of you wearing it and I'll be happy to post it here. Let me know if you want to be famous or incognito. Click on the pics for enlarged versions (if you dare!)

02BIrish, world's greatest lymericist

Ye Olde Bald Guy, in his usual state of stuporous oblivion

This is Dimhelmet, he doesn't post many comments, but he wins shirts!