by srhuston

Screen Is Good

Wouldn’t be me if the posts were any closer together, would it. After a couple people’s comments in IRC channels I frequent, I started looking into customizing Screen a bit more to my liking. Here is the end result (and here’s the screenrc that made it look like that). What you’re looking at is two nested screens (one home, one at work); the innermost statusbar tells you which machine you’re on, and the depth tells you how many you’re nested. The hostname and clock are fixed on the right side, and the window list will grow until it reaches them, then scroll off the left side (or back to the right if you move to previous windows) to try to keep the active window in the middle. I’ve already got used to it, and renaming screen instances on the fly so I can keep track of opened tabs – no more opening a terminal window to do something quickly, just Ctrl-A Ctrl-C and type away :>

Oh, and that’s obviously a small window. Almost none of my terminals are that small normally, I maximize them on whatever machine I’m using. And since irssi is one of the tabs there, I might as well show off my irssi setup too. Screenshot, and description:

  • adv_windowlist – Gives the nice list at the bottom of the screen, nicer than just “Act: 2,3,6” to say which windows have activity.
  • auto_whois – When someone sends me a /msg, it does a /whois on them automatically. Most people who /msg me, I know, but for those that I don’t it saves me the trouble.
  • away_hilight_notice – If I’m /away and someone says something that hilights me, it sends them a single noticie to say I’m away and why. I emphasize “single” because there’s some scripts out there that will keep spamming people every time you hilight them, and those scripts suck.
  • bantime – Aliased to /bans, it will tell you in normal terms how long a ban has existed (instead of in seconds).
  • bitlbee_tab_completion – Tab completes some common bitlbee commands.
  • bitlbee_typing_notice – Know how some IM clients tell you when the other person is typing? This adds that functionality to irssi & bitlbee. Looks neat too :>
  • buf – Saves your current scrollback buffers for doing an /upgrade. Yes, irssi can be upgraded without really hurting your connection status. It rocks.
  • conncount – Tells you how many users are connected to your IRC daemon, useful for opers who want to keep track of lusers.
  • dispatch – Sends any unknown /commands directly to the server. No need to remember to /quite kline, just /kline.
  • idlesince – Tells you how long someone was idle in the /whois response.
  • kicks – Spice up your kick messages! Instead of just using your nick if you /kick without a reason, this will pull from a list of reasons and pick one automagically. I have the BOFH ones installed, which are a big hit in channels where I have to use them.
  • mangle – I first got this for the rot13 ability, but some of the other bits are fun too. Lets you mangle your text appropriately.
  • nickcolor – Colorizes nicks in the window. Helpful for tracking who said what.
  • nicklist – I don’t currently use this, but it’s still loaded (occasionally crashes my irssi, probably because of bugs I’ve introduced). Displays a nicklist on the right side of the screen. My modification adds away-coloring, so people who go /away are colored dark blue in the list.
  • per_window_prompt – Saves your input text so if you change to another window, it’s cleared, and restored when you change back. Great if someone asks you about a setting, and you start to reply and then Alt-1 to go to your status window to check something; you can see the setting and come back without clearing & retyping your response.
  • screen_away – Automatically sets /away if you detach your last screen.
  • scriptassist – Lets you download and upgrade scripts from irssi.org/scripts easily.
  • scripthelp – I forget which script suggested I install this, but it helps with the help system for it. I don’t even know if I still need it, but there it is.
  • timer – Create timers to do things. I think I’ve used it twice. Still neat though.
  • topicsed – Ever want to change one word in a topic? /topicsed s/one/two/ does the trick.
  • trackbar – See the line in that screenshot above, near the bottom of the screen? That’s where the chat had stopped last time I looked there. Damned handy if you’re in more than 1-2 windows and ever idle in IRC (which is what IRC is all about anyway).
  • trigger – Most powerful script ever. Basically, “when something happens, do something.” Can be used to do just about anything.
  • usercount – Gives the count of users/ops/voices/OPERs in a channel which sits in the statusbar.
  • window_switcher – I don’t use this one as often anymore, but if you type Ctrl-G and start on the name of a window, it’ll let you switch to that window quickly. Now I’ve just aliased /w to /window, and do /w 28 or whatever.

Most of the above scripts can be found at the Irssi scripts page, the rest you can find with Google pretty quickly.

by srhuston

PECO Sucks Balls

Those of you looking for the IRC server, it’ll be back soon. Why is it not there now? Because PECO sucks balls.

They turned off our power today for “nonpayment”. They claim that they spoke with someone about this, yet it was news to both of us when the asshole (and he was quite the fucking asshole) came out to actually do the shutdown. He didn’t have to be nearly as rude as he was – actually, he didn’t have to be rude at all – and would’ve had a much more pleasant experience with my wife’s questions if he answered nicely without extra commentary about “you people”. He’d have probably got shot by me, but that’s another story.

So anyway, we call them to find out what the hell is going on, and as I said they claim to have talked to someone about this. They also claim to have mailed something to us about it – however, then someone had an “Oh, yeah” moment when Stephanie asked them to look at our account where we mention that many times we don’t even get our bill (sometimes due to them, sometimes due to the post office – yet another issue). So we pay the bill over the phone, right then and there. Nevermind that they’ve got a check either on its way to them or in their hands already for the same amount. And then we’re told when they’ll turn things back on.

In 48 to 72 hours.

Yeah. We can shut off your power whenever the fuck we want to – or just have shitty systems that fail left and right and leave you with no power anyway – and get back to you in three days about getting it back on.

So yeah. PECO sucks balls. They can suck mine too. Supposedly there’s been a lot of complaints against them, I’m filing one with the PA Public Utility Commission later this afternoon.

Edit: Hm, maybe I should’ve said they can eat my ass instead. Then I could give them plenty of links like this one: PECO (it’s Wikipedia, but not exactly safe for work either)

by srhuston

It’s Craptastic – No More!

In other news, our current “promotion” for Comcast Cable was due to expire at the end of this billing cycle.  A few months ago we looked into alternatives, and DirecTV seemed to be the way to go.  My parents have it, and they’re quite happy – and the normal price for a comparable package to one we had already was cheaper than Comcast’s special price, whatever special that was (certainly one that we had to call back every 6 months and complain about the bill being too high so we could get it).  So a week ago Saturday DirecTV came out to install the dish, and I helped run the coax through the side of the house into the basement and up to the TV since I wanted it to go a specific way – plus I could do that while the installer was mounting the dish, and it got done even faster (and if something got screwed up, I was the one doing it :> ).  We ran both boxes together for a week while we copied over the series recording lists, told the Comcast box to stop recording new shows, and caught up on what was stored there (it was empty as of this past Saturday morning).  One thing I definitely noticed, the DirecTV software is MUCH faster than any of the Comcast boxes we’ve had, even without a DVR in them.  When you scroll through a page of channels in the guide, it just happens instead of thinking about it.  Rewinding the DVR isn’t a matter of push the button and wait and see if it registered, it just works (sometimes too fast, you’re back where you started before you realize it rewound at all).  The 30-second “skip” is no more – even though the Comcast box required that you program a key on the remote to do it, since they didn’t advertise that it was available at all – and instead you get a 30-second “slip” where the box goes into fast forward mode for 30s of recording time.  I actually prefer this, because if you see a commercial that interests you, you can back up and watch it.

All the dish naysayers will talk about “losing signal in the weather”, but we’ve had two major storms since it was installed and only the latter showed any problems – for all of 2 minutes while the worst of the storm went overhead.  I can deal with that no problem, considering all of the benefits this system has already shown.

by srhuston

Come Up To My Pad

Bit of old news, but it was a.. landmark :P  David’s Christening was a couple weeks ago, and before that Stephanie and I decided that it was high time we do something about the grills – when we bought them right as we moved in, we put them in the back yard and planned on doing something more permanent later.  Well, it’s been two years, I guess that’s later.  After getting a quote for a nice deck that we wanted to do, and realizing it was around double what we wanted to spend at the time, I priced things out for pouring a concrete pad to sit them on (originally I thought about doing pavers, but that would’ve been as much or more work when you consider leveling the ground and all, plus you can still get weeds growing up through them).  This was all decided on a Friday night, mind you, and we started the work on Saturday :>  Went and got all the materials, and Leigh and I started digging.  By the end of the night, the basics were done, and on Sunday he and my father did the post hole and trench for the electrical (I put a pressure treated post by the pad, with an outlet and light on it for nighttime grilling and use of the rotisserie without an extension cord).  Jim showed up later on, and we finished the form, backfilled and leveled, and then waited for the rain to pass.  After it did, and the ground dried up enough, we mixed 18 bags of concrete to pour a 10’x3’x4″ pad – hampered by the failure of the cement mixer part way through, and having to mix the rest by hand in the wheelbarrow that I’m glad I bought on Saturday.  By about 9pm I was edging, grooving and surfacing the pad, and while it would’ve looked better if I finished in the light (so I could see where I dug a little too much while surfacing it), I still say it looks damned good for someone who’s never lifted a bag of concrete in their life.  So did all of the people who saw it the following weekend :>

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.

Continue reading →

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.