not so silent (e)

Cathy and I have BIG NEWS! However, instead of repeating ourselves everywhere, I’m just going to ask you to head over to Cathy’s blog and read about it there. Without further ado, we present…

When life hands you lemons…

Note to everyone using Apache and the XSendFile module. If you’ve included the module and are getting 0-byte files, like I was today, make sure you have the following lines in your VirtualHost config

XSendFile on
XSendFileAllowAbove on

The website needs to know you want to use the module. Duh.

I’m coming out of blog hiatus to post about this important bill recently passed in Virginia. It relates to my biggest pet peeve about driving. People who don’t use their signal.

Didn’t use your turn signal? That’ll be $1,050, please!

Now, if only every state decided to use this. The world would be a better place.

PLEASE USE YOUR SIGNAL!!!!

Update 4/17: Bradley, the author of mongrel_cluster, was already aware of this issue and is getting ready to release a new version with some fixes for this issue. Best practice for now is to update your config files to place the pid files in /var/run/mongrel_cluster. He mentioned it way back on February 23rd. I shoulda read closer.

If you’ve been experiencing problems with restarting your mongrel cluster through Capistrano then I have two solutions that have worked for me and I’m pretty sure will for you as well. Read rest of this entry »

Cathy and I watched “An Inconvenient Truth” last weekend and it was really inspiring. Sure, it’s a glorified PowerPoint presentation but, with all apologies to Marshall McLuhan, in this instance the medium is not the message. So, I’ve tried to step up my looking for ways to help reduce my impact on our environment. My small steps may not make a HUGE difference but they’ll help and I can also help spread the word on my tiny little blog here. One thing that helps not just the environment but your pocketbook as well?

Stop idling the car!!

Studies have shown that idling the car for longer than 10 seconds is very wasteful. 10 SECONDS PEOPLE! That’s many stoplights out where I live, if I hit it right… wrong… umm, just as it changes to red. So, I’ve started to turn my car off when I think I can get away with it. The following link has more information and there’s a quaint, though low-budget (I love the squirrel), video that makes a good point as well.

(inspiration for this post) Homemade Hybrids - with the 10-Second Rule

Using this 10 second rule can even save you gas. The person quoted in the story I linked to above said he got an extra 30 miles in one month. That’s an extra gallon in my car. $3.45 saved. Per tank. I go through a coupla tanks a month. That’s big bucks.

What else am I doing?

• I’m starting to take lightrail more often into work
• I don’t run the water in my shower waiting for it to get hot as long as I used to. I used to shave while waiting but it gets hot enough, fast enough, that I start the shower after shaving.
• We’ve replaced standard lightbulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs in many places, though I think I know some places where we haven’t.

Little things, but things that help. You can too. So, if you find yourself idling your car, anywhere you’re going to be longer than 10 seconds?… A long stoplight… Waiting for the kids to come out of school… Tailgating… etc… Turn it off.

PS - What’s the deal with the title? If we save our world? We’ll be saving the lives of countless cheerleaders too. I, for one, am all for that!

Octothorpe??!!!???!???!?

Huh. Who’d a thunk it.

Jeez this has been a confusing day. I’ve been trying to figure out why the mongrel clusters powering my websites weren’t starting after a reboot of my servers. I’m initializing the reboots so don’t worry that my servers are unstable. they’re not. They’re well-behaved children.

FreeBSD has the /usr/local/etc/rc.d directory for shell scripts that will autostart services for you. Kinda like the “Startup” directory in windows. Great. So I found a shell script someone had written and sent in this email on the Mongrel-users mailing list. I copied that to the rc.d directory and placed the require mongrel_cluster_enable=”YES” line into /etc/rc.conf.

reboot.

Nothing. Apache was starting. Mysql was starting. WTF.
Read rest of this entry »

Why did I get to see this advertisement when reading my mail the other day?

I’ve uploaded a bigger version of the first image to Flickr.

Now, not that I don’t appreciate a good stripper pole. And not that I haven’t thought of having one installed. And not that I don’t have someone I’d like to see using it. And not that she hasn’t ever used one….

Umm…. What was my point? I got distracted.
Read rest of this entry »

The latest version of the WORLD’S BEST WEB BROWSER (IMNSHO of course) is out.

If you’re already using any of the 1.5 versions of Firefox then you can either wait for it to update in the background, unless you’ve disabled that ability or you could click the “Help” menu and then “Check for Updates”.

DO IT NOW!!! heh