lazy-fox.net

The server came. That’s partially why I’ve been slacking. I installed FreeBSD, got some power usage figures, then realized it only has an 80gig hard drive. Well, that won’t do. I did luck out and it came with two gigs of ECC ram instead of just one. I’m waiting on a newer WesternDigital Caviar Green drive now and then I’ll try to find a good colocation provider in the Seattle area, get some rails, and away we go.

Specs on the server:
Dual Intel Xeon LV 2.8gHz (hyperthreading)
250gig Western Digital Caviar Green
2gigs of DDR2-800 ECC ram
ATI Radeon Mobility onboard graphics
Dell PowerEdge SC1425 1u rackmount case

I found an old machine to tinker with FreeBSD and get back in to the motions. It’s my old gaming PC before the one I have now. AMD64 4200+ dual core, 4gigs of DDR2-800 ram, 400gig hard drive, and some crappy PCI-E video card I found lying around. Amazingly, after some bios tweaks, it runs almost completely silent. The loudest bit is when the hard drive is doing any sort of activity.
Messing around with this thing really makes me miss having a Lian-Li case. It’s so spacious, nice to work in, and weighs almost nothing…

I just found some old FreeBSD guides I wrote and some I had documented from others, like setting up qmail+vpopmail+binc IMAP and it hit me that I really don’t know any of this stuff like I used to.  I’m sure it’s one of those things where it’ll hit me like a sack of bricks once I get on a console and start navigating my way around.  But I had even forgotten FreeBSD uses a Ports system (it’s been a long time).  Time to find an old unused machine to tinker with.

Speaking of, I recently found an old, old machine sitting in storage.  Judging by the heatsink on it and the cables (it doesn’t have any SATA ports), I’m guessing it’s an AMD Thunderbird 1.4gHz.  Still got one of my old 3Com 3C905B network cards in it…  I probably used it as a router at some point.  I wonder if I can find an IDE hard drive now.  I found the board.  The good old Asus A7V8X featuring a VIA KT400 and an onboard Promise RAID controller.  And apparently it does have SATA ports (SATA-150), two of them that can only be used with the RAID controller.  Considering I found my old AMD64 Dual Core but I can’t find a PCI Express video card and this old machine has an AGP port with a nvidia TNT2, I think I found my BSD test machine.

Also, WordPress is not notifying me when people posts comments.  Going to have to figure that one out…

Oh, and if you’re crazy and don’t have Portal yet, you can snag it for both the PC and Mac (that’s right Mac users, Steam is here for you!) for free until May 24th at SteamPowered.com.  If you don’t have it, get it.  You will also understand the title of this post and the hilarity that comes out of my TomTom GPS with the GLaDOS voice mod.

Also, holy crap!  There’s some really good stuff going on right now!

Torchlight is only $10 right now!

The Telltale Steam Play Pack (Latest episode of Sam and Max and the complete Monkey Island collection) is only $30.

If you’ve only got $10 burning a hole in your pocket or want a really pretty Diablo 2-ish clone, get Torchlight hands down.  It’s great.

Over the years lazy-fox.net has gone from being hosted on several friends’ servers, to my own “server” (neowulf) in a datacenter that eventually got up and quit (I never got my poor little neowulf back), to pointing at nothing, and now it’s pointing at a shared hosting account I have with ASmallOrange who are absolutely terrific.  Since the loss of my server I’ve been kind of distressed about trying to keep everything up and let it all kind of slip.  Well, it might be returning to its former glory.  I got an amazing deal on a Dell PowerEdge server which has dual Intel Xeon 2.8gHz processors, a gig of registered ECC ram, and a 80gig HD (which will be swapped ASAP along with a ram upgrade).  And I got it for one purpose, to return this whole thing back to its former glory once I can find cheap collocation here in the Seattle area.  I’m actually kind of excited.

What I’m currently playing:

Playstation 3: Final Fantasy XIII

Playstation 2: Okami

Playstation Arcade: MegaMan 10, WipeOut HD

Xbox 360: Darksiders, Eternal Sonata

Xbox Live Arcade: MegaMan 9

PC: Borderlands, Sam and Max Collection

MAME: NeoGeo – Metal Slug Series

Nintendo DS: N/A

iPhone: Plants vs Zombies

Ah, my poor poor neglected website. One of these days I’ll fix you up proper.
I’ve been busy (surprise, surprise)! And a lot of things take up a lot of what free time I had. Yeah, I even got that WordPress iPhone application and set this up in it but haven’t posted anything. Go me.

Well, as the post before this one dictates, I am now part of the iPhone collective.  Why an iPhone?  Why even a new phone at all when my little Samsung Fin was getting the job done for the most part?  Well, my old provider, Helio was bought out by Virgin Mobile.  Ever since then, the service quality has decreased and I started getting soliciting calls and text messages quite frequently.  Not to mention, data transfer’s not free for the most part on Virgin Mobile, it usually ends up costing $0.05 a kb.  Since I got my iPhone last week, I’ve downloaded 200 megs of data alone which, at Virgin’s rates, would have cost me $10,240 in downloads alone.  I’m not too keen on forking over $10 grand just for data rates.  Anyway, it was time for a change.  I have a bunch of friends and know quite a few people from work who all use AT&T and don’t really have any complaints so I decided to give it a shot.  Besides, I have a track record of train wrecks with Verizon.  So far, no qualms and I can’t see any down the road.

Now, why an iPhone.  I wanted a smartphone after being completely sick and tired of the ordinary lackluster cell phones.  After watching a few of my friends use their iPhones or Windows Mobile and being a bit of a power user myself, I was intrigued.  I wanted a touch screen, I don’t want a ton of buttons, I want a nice looking yet functional UI, and I wanted a good price.  I was slightly willing to dish out for a HTC Fuze, I like the interface and full qwerty keyboard (despite being bulkier) but, for general UI experience and web browsing, no one has anything on Apple yet.  The other “option”, I suppose, would be the BlackBerry Storm but it’s a Verizon exclusive.

Anyhow, I’ve got an iPhone now and I absolutely love tinkering around with it; it’s been an absolute joy to use so far.  I do have a few minor issues (copy and paste) but most of those are being fixed come iPhone OS 3.0 which should be out this summer.  Awesome.

This is a test to see if I got WordPress working correctly on my iPhone.

Well, I’m finally feeling like my normal self again on this rollercoaster ride of health I’ve been on lately.  Hearing out of my right ear is still splotchy at best but it’s better than it was.  The fever’s finally gone.  I woke up this morning wanting to throw up but it went away after I got to work and drank a few glasses of water.

In my absence, the great Paul Newman passed away.  News of his death slipped by almost completely unnoticed due to the current economic crisis and the completely rediculous and stupid things congress is doing about it.  If you are unfamilure with Mr Newman, he was an actor, co-founder of the wonderful Newman’s Own brand, served in the military, a generous donator to charity, an auto racer (Indy, competed in one LeMans 24 hour), and more.  Seriously, one of the most amazing people who ever lived.

I may have found an alternative to the ever increasingly aging version of WinAmp I use (v2.95).  It’s called AIMP and so far it’s winning me over.  The amount of memory usage it uses versus the old version of winamp is quite a bit more and the default skin is ginormous (still looking for something small and lightweight) but I enjoy the sound quality, support for audio formats without various plug-ins, and the complete lack of needless bloat.  Seriously, why does WinAmp have the option to play video?  That’s what Media Player Classic is for.