Midspot's Blog

New Blog Address and feed URL change

jon@midspot.com — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 23:10:20 GMT

I'm gonna try something new. I'm moving my blog to a different URL which utilizes Blogger for my blogging engine.

You can now find me here:

http://blog.midspot.com

Maybe I'll switch back maybe not...

Please update your RSS feeds to the new address.

Blogging showdown

jon@midspot.com — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:27:59 GMT

In response to yesterday's post:

Blogger did finally get me in and running yesterday. I know, it seems odd to me too that their support gets handy when my blog post comes out...

As for Wordpress, still nothing. I even visited their site last night and requested another activation key.

I guess we will wait some more...

Blog change, or not

jon@midspot.com — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 13:35:36 GMT

I am considering moving this blog to a standard service such as Wordpress, Blogger, etc. I have a couple of reasons behind this. First reason is that if for whatever reason my own servers, network is down, I can still (hopefully) use my blog at a 3^rd party to inform of the outage and give expected times that services will return to normal. Second reason is that when I look at a lot of the upscale bloggers they are using a 3^rd party service for the most part instead of rolling their own. This is due in part to the reason that services such as Blogger and Wordpress offer great ping support to assist in being listed with Technorati, PubSub, IceRocket, etc.

This makes a pretty compelling case to switch not?

Well here’s the rest of the story: Since October I have been trying to get Blogger to give me my login credentials for a blog I started there a couple years ago. I want to recover the account as it is the same username I use here. No dice. They want the original email I signed up with. Like I remember. I am known for using whatever@domainiown.com for registering at places as the addresses are all collected by my catch all. I do this cause if someone gets smart and wants to start spamming me, I can disable the address and not worry to much. Well I finally did figure out which address I used to sign up at Blogger and informed them 4 days ago and I still have not heard back. If it takes me five months to get a simple issue like that sorted out, I don’t think their service is for me.

On to Wordpress: Yesterday I applied for an account at wordpress.com. It told me to check my email for a verification link, which is very common in today’s world of Web 2.0 applications (so they think) but anyway I wait, and wait, and wait. 24 hours later, still waiting. I double checked the address even sent a test message, worked fine. Wordpress you’re off to a great start. You only have 4 months and 29 days to beat Blogger with the worst customer support ever.

So after my excursions it looks as though my blog just might stay on my own servers, where the customer service is excellent and under 2 hours, let alone 2 months!

Your thoughts?

Somebody had to see this before it was too late not?

jon@midspot.com — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 18:45:00 GMT

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Credit Link

File Server Advice?

jon@midspot.com — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 17:17:00 GMT

I'm looking to set up a cheap file server in my house. I just have alot of files that I would like to share among my various computers. Also having a better backup of files is always a plus...

These are the requirements:

user and group privileges
raid mirroring support
web browser interface for configuring

Not huge requirements but it seems like any free/cheap solutions don't exist. I have looked at freenas, naslite and openfiler.

Openfiler seemed about the closest but it needs an active directory or ldap server for the users and groups and I don't want that much overhead. The other two don't support users or group authentication.

Any suggestions?

Last Month

jon@midspot.com — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 04:56:54 GMT

Well it finally happened, last month my side business, Internet Wonders, brought in more money than my full time job.

Thanks to all my clients for making it happen. Hopefully someday it can be my full time, profitable job. I made myself a promise though that I won't take that step again until it continually makes more than my full time job for 12 consecutive months. Here's to 11 great months to come!

Whats New

jon@midspot.com — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 04:40:03 GMT

Wow has it been awhile since I posted!

Been busy, busy, busy...

Saturday we wired the basement of the house for internet and I got 3 wireless points set up now and hopefully get the 4th hooked up soon. Then the entire house will be wireless. I love this idea of having a house big enough to have an actual network. Hopefully by spring I get all the test and development servers set up as well.

I got alot of more to post soon but I gotta get back to the grind...

Common Mac Mistakes

jon@midspot.com — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:19:56 GMT

Having the Macintosh background I do, I found these quite hilarious and true!

1) they close an application's windows thinking the program has quit.
2) they'll download Firefox and then run the browser from the disk image and then not be able to throw away the disk image because the program is still running. See number 1.
3) .exe files lie scattered around the desktop from aborted downloads of Flash Player or some screensaver-cursor-spyware doodad.
4) untitled folder. untitled folder 2. untitled folder 3. untitled folder 4...
5) Using Safari's Google search field to get to hotmail.com.
6) Desktop Picture or Wallpaper is not a synonym for Screensaver.

Link: Common Mistakes Made by New Mac Users

Bismarck cabs: Unsafe to maximize profits?

jon@midspot.com — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 23:29:23 GMT

OK, so it’s been awhile since I posted. I have been super busy and just haven’t had the time although there are many things I would like to comment on. The following has been brewing for quite awhile and was revisited Friday night:

Bismarck’s cab service is unsafe. There I said it. Now I will explain why. By no means is it due to the drivers. As I have used the service more and more as bars and clubs offer free vouchers and I don’t like the insane fee the DMV charges to “store” your license during suspension periods, I have greatly appreciated this token of appreciation given by said bars and clubs.

The unsafe part comes in with a little something I like to call “collection cabbing”. This is where the cab company puts all the seats full to maximize profits. As anyone out of the local area may not know the solo cab company in town has nothing but minivans instead of the common cab sedan in most other areas of the country. I believe this is to maximize profits even more. Here is the situation: everyone leaving the bar is ushered into the cab whether they are using a voucher or paying themselves, said cab then drops off individuals at there respective places and returns to said club to repeat.

HELLO!!!

What if I was a potential stalker, rapist, etc waiting/lurking in the club shadows waiting for that single/alone female to leave all by her lonesome and get into this unsafe situation? All I would need to do is get myself a free voucher and join the ride and boom, I find out where said girl lives.

This threat also appears in other forms such as racial and other forms of hate crimes that have the potential for getting ugly.

So please do your part and one, refuse to participate in this action, and two warn others of its potentially dangerous outcomes.

Google Adsense top choices

jon@midspot.com — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:27:40 GMT

I just ran across this article this morning, highlighting the top paid words for the Google Adsense program.

mesothelioma $84.08
mesothelioma attorneys $80.93
mesothelioma lawyers $69.04
malignant pleural mesothelioma $55.95
Asbestos Cancer $54.17
mesothelioma symptoms $53.66
peritoneal mesothelioma $52.27
trans union $51.91
lung cancer $43.12
search engine optimization $30.19
mesothelioma diagnosis $28.70
home equity loans $20.06
Baines and Ernst $18.47
consolidate loans $17.74
Lexington law $17.68
Lexington law firm $16.81
debt problems $16.28
register domain $15.74
home equity line of credit $15.61
affiliate programs $14.33

Amazing how most of them are for lawyers and health conditions that have lawsuits starting like crazy. Americans and their lawsuit happy ways...