Author Archives: srhuston

by srhuston

Idle Hands

I’ve mentioned IRC here before a few times; well, the network that Leigh and I setup a few years ago is growing ever so slightly. I installed a different services package, and we just changed server programs as well (to Charybdis since Hybrid seemed to be going nowhere and this has some nice features). We’ve also picked up another link, making three servers in the network. Why bother, you might ask?

Initially the “network” was just the two of us, and only because I’d been playing with IRC servers for a long time and thought it would be fun to link to the one Leigh already had setup. After running it for a while, we realized having more than one server was handy – if one of us had some kind of outage, we could congregate on the other server until it came back. We’ve never really “advertised” the servers, though I’ve posted about them here a few times, and picked up the occasional additional person now and then. But I’ve wanted to expand things for a while and make a bigger network – not necessarily thousands of users, but more than the handful of us who chat.

I checked out a couple websites that list IRC networks, and one of them had an interesting bit on their registration page: What does your network do that others don’t? What reason would users have to choose your network over some other one? Honestly, there wasn’t one. But reading through a lot of the posts on the site showed many people who don’t have a clue about how to run a networking service of any kind. They download the server code, compile it, run it, and think that’s the hard part – though sometimes getting the server configured can be quite difficult. So I thought, “What about a network that teaches people how to do this?” It seemed to be a good fit, after all – most of us are technically inclined and do similar things for our work, so we do know what we’re talking about. And too many people get the response of “STFU noob” if they ask questions which some might consider “newbie” questions about linking and networking. Of course they have to learn somewhere, why not here?

So that’s it. irc.srhuston.net (and the srhuston.net network) exist, at least in part, to teach people about networking and server administration. I’m sure there will be other channels and other things that go on there, but you’ve got to start somewhere and that seems as good a place as any. For now at least, this page will serve as the network’s “home page” as well; at some point in the future I may get fancier with DNS and have a separate page for irc.srhuston.net since I wouldn’t want to lose my homepage for it. But in the mean time, those who come here to learn about IRC might learn a bit about me, and those who know me might learn a bit about IRC. Seems like an even trade, no?

by srhuston

Power To The People

Hm, one post a month.. that’s about right for me I guess.  Today’s is prompted by the fact that I don’t feel like retelling this story many times over, so I’ll tell it once and then I can just paste a URL from there on.  Go, lazy!  Speaking of which, I’ve started (a while ago) uploading photos finally.  I’m not done yet – there’s probably between 1 and 2 thousand more to do – but I’m getting there slowly.  Now, on to the story.

As some of you know, they’re doing construction in our building at work.  Half the building is evacuated while they do the work, and I’m in the other half (normally, I wasn’t moved there though some people were).  Today, they were saw cutting through the poured concrete into the women’s room, which is halfway between my door and Leigh’s, right in the middle of the “Occupied” area.  So late yesterday, everyone was told, “If you don’t absolutely have to be here, don’t be here.”  I planned on sitting at home, checking mail and working on some other things I wanted to do.  I did not plan on going into the office.  I just got home about an hour ago.

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by srhuston

Photos Are Coming! (And Other Stuffs)

Last night I started going through the myriad of photos and videos that have collected on my computer in the last… I’m not even sure how long.  Captioning, organizing, and getting ready to turn them loose via iPhoto2Gallery to get them all uploaded.  So hopefully I’ll have a new post here with links to all of it in the next week or so.  Yes, I said that before when I upgraded the laptop to 10.5, but I had other things to work on and didn’t get to it then.  Sosumi 😛

David is doing well.  He just started pulling himself up from just about laying down to a seated position, and he pretty much stays seated on his own (occasionally topples, but who doesn’t?)  He’s been standing as long as you support him, and smiling and laughing at a lot of things.  Occasionally you get him in the right mood, and you can keep a laugh going until he just about runs out of air :>  The other night he was sitting on the floor, and I laying next to him on my side; he grabbed my jeans and just about pulled himself up to standing, probably would’ve succeeded if the blanket he was standing on wasn’t slippery and his feet went out from under him.  Guess it’s getting near time to lower the mattress in his crib now too.

In other news, the renovations in my building at work have begun.  The library is now gutted, and there’s a few rooms elsewhere that have been stripped clean in preparation.  This summer’s going to be “fun” – probably a week or two of frantic running around, then quite a bit of time twiddling thumbs, and 2-3 spurts of constant work over a weekend to move things around in the server room since there’s some work being done there (finally, after 7 years, we might actually come out of this with a usable and well-designed space).

by srhuston

while(lazy) {

Yeah, I’ve been lazy. Last post in here was in September. A lot of things have happened and changed and whatnot, but I’ll get into that later on. About to upgrade the laptop to 10.5, and I hope to spend the rest of the afternoon uploading the photos that need uploading, and then I can throw some links to them in here (as well as have a bit of story time). We’ll see what – if anything – actually happens 😛

EDIT: For David Severwright’s benefit: }

by srhuston

Chance of Showers

This past Saturday was the baby shower.  Stephanie wasn’t too sure when it was going to be – just that it would be soon – but we had enough diversions all over the place that she didn’t know for sure that it was Saturday.  Things went smoothly, and now our living room is full of stuff.  Maybe in the next week we can move things around and find our floor again :>

On Sunday, I also checked off an item from my long-term to-do list.  Mostly, anyway.  Got the 2m groundplane antenna that I plan on using for APRS mounted on the garage peak, and the coax run from the shack out to it.  Just need to solder the end on the coax inside the house, and the project will be completed.  But when I finished up last night, I didn’t feel like doing anything more with it, so the coax just got coiled and stuck into the passthrough box for later.  Hopefully it’s tuned properly for somewhere around 144.390, and I don’t have to get back up there to retune it or anything.  Especially since I’d have to undo all the tape and lower it foot by foot to get to the antenna again.  Oh well.

by srhuston

Less Wisdom

It’s been a while since I posted something, probably because this is the first time in a while that I’ve not only had interesting stuff to share, but actually time to sit down and share it. Most interesting is that I finally broke down and went to a dentist – and then an oral surgeon – about my teeth. I’ve had issues with them for a while, and have put it off entirely too long. Since the dentist I found is very nice (and very good), when I explained that I knew I’d done wrong things but wanted to make it better, he instead of berating me for what I did wrong sat down with me and outlined a course of action to a healthier mouth again. I was quite happy with this! First thing on the list was to get the wisdom teeth pulled, and one other molar that was pretty much shot. So that happened this past Friday, and I’ve been in and out of drug-induced hallucinogenic states since then. Today is actually the first day I didn’t wake up and take a Vicodin right away, which is good. But I’m still not quite on solid food yet, a big part of that may be less of a physical issue keeping me from it and more my own mind saying I’m not ready yet, even if my mouth is.

Also picked up a couple new toys over the weekend. Lowes was having some sales, and most importantly their deal of zero interest and zero payments for a year, if you bought something this weekend. So I researched and found that one of the lawn vacuum/chipper/shredder units they had was the one that I wanted, and we went and got it. Man does that thing work nice! Since last year I ended up doing a lot of extra work to get rid of the leaves, I’m looking forward to it this year. Plus the brush pile next to the house will be going away too, since I can chip up all the branches there and get rid of them. And last, we picked up a shed to put the vacuum, and the mower and other yard power tools into. This way they’re not taking up precious space in the garage, and need to be moved out of the way all the time. Since we had a perfect “dead spot” where I could put it – next to the walkway beside the house where the trash cans were sitting – it doesn’t even take up any space in the yard that we would’ve used differently. And it looks nice!

Last thing. I setup a web-based IRC system, which you can see here. IRC is like the predecessor of all instant messaging and chat programs, and yet is still in fairly wide use today in some circles. Now you can just go to this site to see how it works and connect to the IRC server that I run. Enjoy!

[At some point, I’ll probably come back and throw a lot of links in this post. Right now, I’m just tired, and wanted to get the words out.] [Edit 2007/09/06 – Hey, there’s a few links.]

by srhuston

Ceiling Cat

Many people have seen the photo of Ceiling Cat before.  Usually the caption is something like “Ceiling Cat is watching you masturbate”.  It’s a photo of a cat peeking through a hole in a ceiling.  Kinda cute, especially with the captions that some people generate.   Well, I’ve been adminstering a Tremulous server for a while now, and one of the regulars refers to me as Ceiling Cat, since I will chat with people via the console if I can’t fire up the game.  And today, he posted this on our forums:

Rocinante ceiling cat

by srhuston

Quivering, Quaking Or Shaking

While that may be the definition of “Tremulous”, that’s not what I mean. Instead, I’m talking about the first-person shooter that David went and got me hooked on. Tremulous is based on the Quake 3 engine, and was originally a mod for the game. When the engine was released open-source, Tremulous became a standalone game which is free for all to download and play. With clients for Windows, Linux and the Mac, it’s quite easy for anyone to join in and have fun. And that’s what I’ve been doing lately. Met a few friends by hanging out on “DarkLurker’s Lair”, a server that David helps to maintain and has a lot of good people that come and go throughout the day. And one of them, Mexel, mentioned that his clan was disappearing. So we started one called The Deft…

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by srhuston

Phase II Begins!

You may remember discussion of Phase I from before (and if not you can click that link to see it).  Well, the time has come, 90% of the needed equipment is here (waiting on the bracket to mount a patch panel to the plywood), but there’s no reason I can’t start by making some holes in the walls.  So this evening that’s just what I did.  As of right now, the first wallbox is half done.  Still one more in the office to do after that, then there’s the living room and shack.  And that’ll be about 90% of the house wired for Ethernet :>  I’ll also want to replace the one phone line in the kitchen, and may want to eventually run one or two wallboxes to the kitchen/dining room, and I’ll definitely want one in each bedroom.  But the upstairs ones can wait longer, since they’ll be more difficult and there’s no real need for them yet, as can the kitchen/dining room.  So that initial 90% figure will be about 100% of the ones that I really want to have done anyway.

Pictures will follow when the job is complete (in fact, I haven’t taken any yet, but not much has happened so far except a hole in the wall and 3 CAT5e cables coming out of it).