...I'm still alive. It's been a busy life between the job and moving again (still in NC though, just out in the sticks now). We've been trying to do everything local these days- food and wine mostly, but have recently started hearing some of the local music. We just heard a Durham group called Dom Casual yesterday that just blew our minds.

They're pretty much what I'm in to right now, but the influence of acts such as Richie Valens, David Byrne, Johnny Cash, The Chantays (they did a good cover of "Pipeline"), and even one of my all-time favs, the Cramps, (I couldn't believe I was hearing "Goo-goo Muck" in such a down-home venue) were the most apparent to my ears. Even better, they're just really cool, down-to-earth guys. I got a chance to chat with lead singer Jamie McLendon after the show, and exchange some ghost stories, whilst buying their "Espanta Muerto" CD (which is excellent, get it if you can find it).

It is always a joyous occasion to build a new machine, and this time is no different. After almost 4 years of reliable service, the "toasteroven" (a Shuttle SB75G2) will be put into semi-retirement (ie. given to my wife).

This is a shopping list of all of the components I just ordered yesterday:

Greets, and a good Samhain to you all. It's been a while since I last posted, though I've been a lot more active in the forum these days... it has historically been a better format for me anyway since it feels less like publishing and more like conversation. I'll probably just mainly blog for tips and howto's in the future, and post everything else in the forum (so definitely sign up if you haven't already).

It seems that APlus.net (aka. Abacus America Inc.) has already washed their hands of this whole affair I spoke about in the "Hosting Woes" post. I am, as all of their other customers surely are, a persona non grata to them. I won't include all of the logs & discourse here, but this is my last letter to them, which has of course gone unanswered thus far.

Whether you call them feeds, podcasts, streams or whatever, they're what's on TV. (Or monitor?) I watch many channels while lounging in a beach chair at work (during my lunch break, of course), but these are the ones that get me all giddy upon arrival. Right-click the links and "Copy Link Location" to paste into your favorite RSS reader.

Complacency. This is generally why we don't always really try improving our lives, why we continue keeping inept people in office, and why we still continue paying for and using products, goods and services we know are inferior, substandard and useless. Take my former web host, Aplus.net.

I had developed some amount of loyalty with them in the beginning of this decade, probably a bug CNET planted in my ear when they rated them one of the top hosts back in 1999 or so. They were ok at first, but merely adequate for me over the last few years, then SERIOUSLY dipped in quality within the last year. So what do I do last March when the contract was up, knowing they were not what they used to be, not to mention knowing numerous BBB complaints were filed against them over some shady marketing practices? Hey, sign me up another year! Yes, the morphball can be pretty damned foolish at times.

I was going to write a long, detailed rant on why I think most of the planet have completely lost it with this fashion accessory du jour, but why spoil people's fun. I'm not a troll. I understand techno-lust (I had it for my 4th-gen iPod & xv6700), but this is pure product branding, people, seeing as it hasn't even been released yet. Maybe I'll wait until the 4th-gen iPhone offers GPS, a 5mp camera, a choice of carriers, and all the bugs are worked out. Otherwise, have a blast waiting in line, everyone.

People have often used this curious expression with me, but now it's manifesting in my window.

Oooo... scary...

Please excuse the plain, vanilla design of the site- I just realized my usual custom theme is broken in IE. I'm also contemplating an upgrade to Drupal 5.x and possibly a dedicated phpBB forum on it's own subdomain; more to follow.

I upgraded my old Inspiron 2100 ultra-portable a while back to the best security suite ever, Backtrack 2.0, and had not gotten around to checking out it's new tools yet until recently at a storage & virtualization seminar.