Geeky

Going insane with a simple domain transfer

Some years ago, I registered a domain for a family member and set up a small website on it.  Unfortunately (this being about 1997) the only domain registrar I knew about - maybe the only one available at the time - was NetworkSolutions, also known as Verisign.  The process was a hassle and it was expensive, but I got it done. 

Over the years I’ve hosted her site on a few different hosts but it’s always been registered on NetworkSolutions.  As I registered other domains (I have 19 now) I became aware that there are much better registrars out there.  GoDaddy, for example - their website is clear and easy to use, their FAQ files actually contain information that works, and in a pinch I can call them and talk to a real human.  They act like they really want your business.

It’s hard to imagine a worse registrar than NetworkSolutions.  Their website is loaded with circular logic like “Welcome to form A.  To do what you want to do, go to form B.” So you go to form B and it says “Go to form A.” Their database is a mess, it’s almost impossible to update, and just when you think it can’t get any worse, you try to get help from them…
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Posted by George on 01/08/05 at 09:06 PM
Geeky • (3) Comments • Link

What the heck is a “Captcha?”

“Comment Spam” is when some lowlife uses the comment feature of some Decrepit Old fool’s Weblog to post their web-links about debt consolidation, online gambling, generic viagra, and so forth.  mad  I just cleaned out several comment spams that hit this morning.  This caused me to enable “captcha” security…
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Posted by George on 01/06/05 at 07:03 AM
Geeky • Blogging • (3) Comments • Link

Just two naked men and a model

Despite all the jokes, men’s locker-room talk seldom travels along unsavory lines.  Usually it’s weather, sports, cars, work, and food.  This was the case the other day when I wound up talking about network technology with someone at the gym.  We were in the locker room, he getting ready for the shower as I was drying off.  As with most conversations, I’m not really sure how we got onto this subject:

“Bluetooth, wi-fi, wi-max, they’re all incompatible,” he opined.  “Someday one of them will win and it will just be the standard everywhere and everything will work together.”

I replied, “Actually the different standards you’re referring to all exist because...”
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Posted by George on 01/05/05 at 08:36 PM
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Firefox link is back

If you scroll down a bit, you’ll notice the brightly-colored Firefox logo to the right, just below the “Most recent entries.” Firefox is a free, next-generation web browser from the Open-Source people at the Mozilla Foundation.  It is a well-designed, easy-to-use application and about as secure as can be expected for a web browser.  (Internet Explorer is famous for NOT being secure.) Firefox also has some really cool productivity features (just click on the link to read about them) and I recommend it for everyone!
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Posted by George on 12/26/04 at 09:59 AM
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This week’s EE adaptations to DOF

As mentioned previously, The University™ is moving its College of Business into a wonderful new building.  This means I’m carrying monitors, setting up a lot of computers, helping professors do their grading at alternate locations, and such.  So it’s nice to come home and put all that aside to play with Expression Engine.  But recognizing that not everyone (translate: almost no one) cares a whit about the software I use to produce this blog, it’s all in the extended text.  Click on the link to read the rest of it:

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Posted by George on 12/20/04 at 07:25 PM
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Friday afternoon snacks

It’s not their fault, the news items and thoughts in this post, that they’re too small for a whole post.  Notice I didn’t say they’re not post-worthy; I’ve just been really busy today and have not solidified any of them into finished form:

1) The Internet is awash with rumors that a famous atheist, Antony Flew, recanted on his deathbed and became a theist or even a Christian.  Not true*.  Here is his essay; Sorry to disappoint, but I’m still an atheist.  (Note to the confused: the question of God’s existence or lack of same, is not influenced in any way by who believes this way or that.)

2) Here in Normal, IL there was a tragic accident yesterday in which a young construction worker was crushed under a 22,000-pount falling slab of concrete.  Naturally this led to some office discussion about different ways to die.  Someone said, “That would be a terrible way to go.” A terrible thing to have to clean up; yes.  A terrible way to go; probably not.  I feel sorry for his family, though.  He was from out-of-state and his life was cut short by a freak accident.

*3) This is actually a comment on item 1 - the phrase “Nothing could be further from the truth” is commonly used for refutation.  I hereby nominate that phrase for banishment from the English language.  First of all, it is terribly overused.  Second, since it is often used to describe events that, while untrue, could have happened, it is not accurate.  Events that could not have happened are farther from the truth.  If a statement is not true, how about saying; “Not true.” OK?

Whoops - they’re getting ready to close my favorite coffee shop.  Back later! 

Posted by George on 12/10/04 at 04:41 PM
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Thanksgiving and Snow pictures

Back in ‘82, I had a job in a photo processing lab that catered to advertising photographers.  But the owner knew his bread would pick up a lot of butter if we also processed people’s snapshots as well, so we put in a drive-up window and several kiosks, and watched the 35mm rolls come rolling in.

I learned to expect several things: 

  • After the 4th of July, we would have a couple hundred rolls of pictures with the backs of people’s heads washed out by flash, and a tiny, blurry fireworks display in the middle of the picture.
  • After any major concert, we would have a couple hundred rolls of pictures of the backs of people’s heads washed out by flash, and a tiny stage in the middle that may or may not have been the featured performer’s act.
  • After the first snow, we’d get several hundred rolls of pictures of… well, pictures of grey snow, as if it was the first time anybody had ever seen snow up in the mountains of East Tennessee.  But snow isn’t grey.

You know that snow is white; so do I and so does a five-year-old child.  But cameras back then did not know that snow is white…

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Posted by George on 11/25/04 at 03:23 PM
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Order to Chaos

If anyone out there is exceptionally bored and is trying to figure out the “scheme” to my links and subject categories, forget it: there isn’t any. 

That’s two taxonomies needed: posts and links.  ***Dave wrestled with the same thing a while back but as far as I know, nobody’s come up with the grandly wonderful, obvious, supercalifragilistic category scheme.  But I will need something pretty soon.

Maybe I’ll ponder it this afternoon while sitting in the dentist chair waiting to find out if I get to keep my left upper canine tooth.

POSTSCRIPT: 3:00 pm, same day… My miraculous dentist, Dr. Beer (Yes, that is his name… imagine when people think when they see that on your Meeting Maker schedule) was able to save the tooth, using his amazing ceramic milling machine. 

Picture this… you go in with a tooth that had been broken off once by bruxism, below the gum line.  The dentist designs a crown on his computer, and using a computer-guided milling machine, makes you a new tooth out of ceramic.  6 months later, you have a bicycle accident, and crack the crown.  Three months after that, the crown fails.  Your dentist calls up the digital file of the ceramic crown, pops a blank into the milling machine, and 15 minutes later has a replacement part for your tooth.  He removes the failed crown, installs the new one (setting the adhesive with ultraviolet light) and you walk out with a perfect tooth.

I’m still working on a set of categories for my blog, though.  Dr. Beer worked so fast there wasn’t time to come up with anything.

Posted by George on 11/23/04 at 11:37 AM
Geeky • Blogging • (2) Comments • Link

Tinkering with complicated machinery

I’m used to the innards of mechanical and electrical things.  As a child I used to watch my dad restoring antique clocks and guns, fixing the car, and plumbing the house.  I used to repair cameras before it just became impossible in a small shop.  I’m restoring a 37-year-old car and I did computer repair full-time for five years.  So when I get a shiny new machine, I can’t resist pulling off the cover plates and looking inside.  All my adult life I’ve made a living doing that.

Expression engine is alien to me.  There are obviously new concepts to grasp; I love that.  I change one little thing, save the change, and see what it does.  A picture is developing in my mind - still a bit hazy but it will come clearer as I go.  Today I got “extended text” working, so I can make my home page entries shorter and let those who care click on “Read more...”

I just ordered The CSS Anthology, 101 essential tips, tricks, and hacks by Rachel Andrew.  Rachel is a skinny, urban web-designer chick with orange hair the color of fall leaves.  Why they put her picture on the book page, I don’t know.  Do they not want any readers over 30?  Then again, after reading the sample chapters, I bought the book, and I’m… over 30. 

Posted by George on 11/20/04 at 12:46 PM
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Firefox browser hit the street today

Woo-Hoo!  Check out this report in BBC online about the Firefox web browser from the Mozilla foundation.

If you don’t know, Firefox is a web browser like Internet Explorer - only it is far more secure and has many productivity features to speed you along the web.

Here is an article I wrote on my old blog about why you should use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.

Here’s where you can download Firefox, which I highly recommend.  It’s a very small download, takes little time to install, and easily imports all your favorite links from IE.  Use it for a week, and you’ll start to “pity the fool!” who still has to use IE!  cool grin 

Posted by George on 11/09/04 at 06:16 PM
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Ethical antivirus company

At least once a day, someone tells me they received an email that says, in effect, “You sent me a virus” and warning them to contact their system administrator to fix the problem.  Invariably the message was sent out by someone’s antivirus program when an infected message came in “from” their machine.

They freak out, thinking their machine is sending out viruses.  But I tell them not to worry: odds are very good that they are not sending out viruses.  The infected email the other person received is not from them, but from some totally unrelated machine.  Their email address was harvested from a spam list and affixed as the “sender.”

(Email is just like snail mail in this respect: you can put anything you want on the “from” part of the envelope.)

So if your machine isn’t really the source of the virus message, why does the other machine send you the scary message?  Simple: it’s free advertising for the antivirus company. 

Well, not really free.  The antivirus company isn’t paying for it; their customers are.  The important thing, as far as they’re concerned, is that millions of messages are sent out by someone with their company’s name on them.  It’s called “spamvertising,” and for some reason, we just accept it.

Brian Martin of Attrition.org has written an expose of this pernicious practice: Anti-Virus Companies: Tenacious Spammers.

An Austrian company called ESET has an antivirus product called NOD32, that doesn’t do this.  I may try out their product because of their ethical stand.  In the meantime, shame on Norton, McAfee, etc.!

Posted by George on 11/09/04 at 05:02 PM
Geeky • Software • (0) Comments • Link

DOF’s FAQ

Every blog needs a central place for Frequently Asked Questions.  This FAQ will grow over time so newcomers and regulars can help DOF be entertaining and occasionally even useful.  I made up some of these questions, and others have actually been asked by non-made-up people.

I have high hopes for this blog.  I hope it will:

  • Improve my writing ability
  • Be read by (and entertaining to) lots of people
  • Attract interesting comments
  • Prompt interaction between commenters

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) follow:

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Posted by George on 11/07/04 at 08:26 PM
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New engine?  Change your oil soon.

This is why your new engine’s first oil change should be at 25 miles.  This is the oil I just took out of my 25-mile factory-new engine.  See the swirly, metalflake effect?  That’s exactly what it is - flakes of metal.  As the cylinders and pistons get acquainted and new cam meets new followers, there’s an initial period of “fitting in” that results in millions of tiny metal particles.

This is normal, and to be expected, but there’s no sense driving around with this stuff in the engine.  Next oil change is at 300 miles, and after that every 3,000. (You can ignore the black appearance of the oil.  In reality, this oil is nearly transparent, but the photo is taken at night and it is in a black container.  The interesting part is the reflective flecks of metal in the oil.)

Posted by George on 11/07/04 at 08:10 PM
Geeky • Link

Hot damn!  It seems to be working now

OK, I know that last one is boring but I just get all excited over information design stuff.  But while fooling around with it, I figured out the images folder path, and got the RSS feed working.  Oh boy oh boy oh boy!  Now to start working on the template…

POSTSCRIPT… well, not so fast.  Looks like I have some study to do on image path.  The images don’t show up when displaying comments (or coming in from an RSS feed)

Posted by George on 11/06/04 at 09:09 PM
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DOF goes all fancy

Readers of The Ballpoint Sketch please be patient with me - I just got started with Expression Engine and I don’t know my posterior from a hole in the ground.

POSTSCRIPT: 21 November ‘04… I have begun transplanting files from my old blog and my old website to here.  Anything dated before 06 November 2004 has been transplanted either from www.wiman.us or www.ballpoint.blogspot.com.  The transplanting process will probably take a year:  it’s very labor-intensive.

Posted by George on 11/06/04 at 03:40 AM
Geeky • Blogging • (4) Comments • Link
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