Domain switching checklist High-level overview Set up new hosting environment Access control panel, set password and security info View domain configuration and FTP user info Upload files to new FTP location Test new DNS service Test new Web service Create new email account Set up mailer Verify you can read both old and new email accounts Send test email to new account Last-minute sync for any changed files Configure domain registry to point to new DNS servers Wait for NS records to update Check to make sure web site looks OK Check to make sure email accounts and forwards are (all) working Copy mail from old account Notify gconnor to remove and archive old information ...

I very rarely give in to memes, but I like the artwork on this one. Yes, I still think memes are basically ads for a web site, so I will hide this one behind a cut. What type of Fae are you? ObActualWriting: I don’t think I’m really cold, distant or violent. But I do have a twisted sense of humor. Also, looking at this gives me some ideas for my D&D campaign. (Yes, that means there’s Drow in it, but what’s a Dalelands campaign without some good, honest, well… Drow?)

Here’s the recipe to go with the pictures in the previous entry. It was based on this: Curry Chicken Pot Pie from Good Eats: Casserole Over. I made it according to the directions except for the following: More onions: about 2C diced instead of 1C More broth: 1 can of broth is 14 oz, more like 1.75C instead of 1.5C More liquid: I also added the reserved liquid from the canned chicken (2 cans of mixed light-and-dark chicken meat is about 2C but I couldn’t bring myself to toss the extra liquid, about 1.5C) More butter and flour: I was afraid by adding more liquid I would not have enough thickening power, so more roux! No curry (M is allergic) and no parsley (didn’t have any). I was going to add garlic to compensate but I forgot. ...

I have made 1 chicken pie, and with the left over filling, a dish of chicken and dumplings as well.

For my web homies I have moved a bunch of directories from your home directory to /home/domains/whatever.com/. This is being done in preparation for possibly sending web requests to a different server in the future (after the files have been synchronized of course). Mostly this should not affect you. I have left symlinks in the old location pointing to the new location, so if you just cd where you expect stuff to be, you’ll be taken where you need to go. The web pages should still all be functional, though you may want to take a moment to verify that everything is still working. ...

Exercise log for July Sat 7/1: none (weight 275.6) Sun 7/2: exercise bike 30 laps Mon 7/3: none Tue 7/4: walk 55 min Wed 7/5: exercise bike 35 laps Thu 7/6: none Fri 7/7: none Sat 7/8: none Sun 7/9: exercise bike 35 laps Mon 7/10: none Tue 7/11: exercise bike 30 laps Wed 7/12: exercise bike 45 laps Thu 7/13: exercise bike 50 laps Fri 7/14: none Sat 7/15: exercise bike 30 laps Sun 7/16: exercise bike 50 laps Mon 7/17: exercise bike 45 laps (weight 274.8) (last 7 days 30+ avg!) Tue 7/18: exercise bike 32 laps (weight 274.3) Wed 7/19: exercise bike 30 laps Thu 7/20: exercise bike 30 laps Fri 7/21: none Sat 7/22: exercise bike 32 laps Sun 7/23: exercise bike 50 laps (avg 31.2 min for the week) Mon 7/24: exercise bike 36 laps Tue 7/25: exercise bike 32 laps Wed 7/26: exercise bike 30 laps Thu 7/27: exercise bike 60 laps Fri 7/28: exercise bike 30 laps (weight 272.4) Sat 7/29: exercise bike 30 laps Sun 7/30: none (avg 31.1 min for the week) Mon 7/31: exercise bike 50 laps

Two years ago, I started as a contractor at SGI, herding unix machines and with the general guideline of “do cool things and train the rest of the team on sendmail, when you have time”. I was hired into a group of five sysadmins, one “monitoring” guy, two “remote access” folks, one security guy and a manager. Since that time I have: deployed a spam appliance trained people on spam deployed a dhcp management interface and 4 dhcp servers trained people on dhcp taken over “monitoring” (read: nagios and munin) from the “monitoring guy” when he left trained people on monitoring seen two sysadmins get laid off got converted from contract to perm right near a layoff, hard to do taken over design/architecture roles when 4 designers left within a couple months seen our manager leave and not get replaced taken over “remote access” when the last remote access person left (a @!*&load of busy-work) ...

Those who were interested in my “pusher” script, here is a “sneak preview”. Pusher Pre-Alpha Preview Right now it knows how to install ~root/authorized_keys, push a firewall script and run it, and push apache2 config files. It is very debian-centric and will need some tweaking to allow alternate handling of /etc/init.d scripts for other platforms, as well as taking some templates and variable definitions and putting them in a central “global template” location. ...

One thing I still miss about AV is “fetch”. Fetch was not just a program; it was a freakin’ way of life. All machines ran fetch. All machines obeyed the great and powerful fetch. Fetch was a perl script made for configuring a lot of machines identically. It could literally install, configure, and start up all the services needed on a new box. Pretty much all we had to do was install the server using the OS CD (DEC or Linux), teach the new machine its hostname, and download and run this program. ...

Posted for review, comments and entertainment value. If this is interesting, please comment, or just point and laugh; it’s okay. Casual Sysadmin Hosting Service “Don’t ignore your domain. We’ll do it for you!” Service overview We host a handful of vanity domains for ourselves and friends. We try to do everything as cheaply as possible and we pass the savings on to you.