Author: matte

Categories
note to self technology tips work

Autostarting Mongrel clusters in FreeBSD 6.x on bootup

Update April 2, 2009: This post is REALLY old. Do yourself a favor and install Passenger. I have and it’s a life saver for my Rails sites. No more crashing mongrels, or mongrels that don’t want to restart. Just sites that know they need to spin up if they’re down.

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.

Continue reading “Autostarting Mongrel clusters in FreeBSD 6.x on bootup”
Categories
cathy me me me wedding

Interesting facts about May 25th

in ascending order of coolness in my opinion…

  • 1992 – Jay Leno takes over as host of The Tonight Show (I’m a Letter-man. heh)
  • 2001 – 32-year-old Erik Weihenmayer, of Boulder, Colorado, becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest
  • 1787 – In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates convene a Constitutional Convention to write a new Constitution for the United States. George Washington presides.
  • 1932 – Goofy makes his debut in 1932
  • 1961 – John F. Kennedy made his famous put a “man on the moon” in this decade speech
  • 1977 – Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was released in 1977
Continue reading “Interesting facts about May 25th”
Categories
cool sports technology tv video work

Thank you TVUplayer

Tonight I was stuck at work trying to get my capistrano deployments working and I was listening to game 5 of the World Series. I couldn’t watch it and the Cards were quickly moving towards winning the game and The Series. However, with no TV nearby I couldn’t watch it. And everyone knows (you know. you really do) that you can’t just listen to the game when it finally ends and the winner is announced. What was I to do?

I realized that at some point in the past I’d downloaded this lovely piece of software called TVUplayer. It’s TV over the web but not like you’re used to hearing about it. They’re clever about how you receive the data. Kind of like how BitTorrent is a large mesh of users sharing data so that the speed can be very high, same here. Many users are watching the channel I want to watch so the datarate is better. Less users, the crappier the channel will look. Lifehacker may have described a little better than me.

Long story short. I got to WATCH the end of the game… sitting at my desk at work!!!

Isn’t technology wonderful? heh. Oh… and BTW – CONGRATULATIONS St. Louis!!!

Categories
note to self work

NTS: Changing the shell for a user in a Verio VPS

If you’re not hosted by Verio then move along. These are not the droids you’re looking for. (there ya go mom. the quote you were thinking of. heh)

NTS: Use “vedituser” when changing the shell for a user in a Verio VPS. You can’t just vi /etc/passwd to make the change. The change won’t resolve. Dunno what it does in the backend with vedituser that vi doesn’t accomplish but I’m sure it’s something that I don’t need to know how to do. 🙂

Categories
cool

This is a really cool story…

From the life of Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. He has something called “Spasmodic Dysphonia”. It’s a loss of the ability to speak… but only in a certain way. Sometimes you can sing… sometimes you can speak to large groups… it depends. NO ONE has ever beaten it…

Until Scott did. At least for a bit.

Read an really great story and smile today. Happy things DO happen. I’ve known it for more than a year now. 🙂

Categories
cool me me me mobile

Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey!

Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey!

Who has $2000 they want to spend? Huh? No one? Fine be that way! 🙂

I uploaded this through flickr

Categories
cathy me me me technology

Mini Microscope

Cathy needs this so she can show off all the gorgeous “wheating” around the band on her engagement ring. If only I knew Japanese… or could even see the characters on the website…

Does someone have an option for something like this in the US? Thinkgeek.com doesn’t have anything.

Oooh. I just did a search on Amazon for a “loupe” and I got all SORTS of great options. Never mind. go about your business. nothing to see here.

Categories
cathy funny pets

A boob and a …

A boob and a ...

ummm. sorry. I’m a child. 🙂 I couldn’t help it.

additional proof

heh

I uploaded this through flickr

Categories
cathy me me me photography sports

The A’s sweep the Twins!!!

Last Friday Cath and I were at the third and deciding game (as it turned out) of the ALDS series between the Oakland A’s and the Minnesota Twins. I’m proud to say that I had a hand in their win. I found a penny on the ground, heads up of course, and made a wish that they’d win that day. Whaddayaknow! Wishes do come true.

As is our way, we love to take pictures and that day was no different. I took some pictures I really like. Here are some of my favorites. Click the images to go to their Flickr page where you can see larger versions…

Continue reading “The A’s sweep the Twins!!!”
Categories
funny music wtf?

YMSB != YSMB

You know what? The acronym for “Yonder Mountain String Band“, an AWESOME bluegrass band is YMSB. It’s awfully close to YSMB. What’s that an acronym for?

You Sunk My Battleship

Yup. These are the thoughts that go through my head when I’m driving home from work.