November 27th 2002
VPN!
Got the VPN server working! I’m VPN’d in right now writing this weblog entry. Works pretty well on the Mac; I can even use the Finder and browse our servers. I’m pretty excited about this!
Archive for November, 2002
November 27th 2002
Woe is me
Last night, a little after 9pm, tokyo went bonkers. The cache updating combined with heavy traffic brought the SQL server to it’s knees. I couldn’t even get an ssh login! An hour later, I called Aaron at CoLo to reset the machine. After 11pm, he was there and reset it. But it didn’t work; the machine just refused to boot. By midnight, we came to the conclusion that we would have to go into Seattle and try to fix the machine ourselves. This is the day before our expected biggest day ever, btw.
By 1:15am, we packed our stuff up, burned CDs with a database backup and a MySQL installation. We took the 1:30am ferry into Seattle and headed to the Westin building. About 5 minutes before we arrived, my cell phone notified me that tokyo was OK! We got to the machine and found it was just fine (although the clock was off by an hour since the hardware clock is not as smart as the software clock wrt Daylight Savings Time).
We went back to the Fauntleroy dock and waited til 5:30am when the first ferry took us back to Vashon.
We need some backup/redundancy plan.
November 26th 2002
You Want Frequent Flier Miles with That?
WSJ.com – The New Menu Option At McDonald’s: Plastic
The average fast-food consumer eats 16.4 times a month at a fast-food joint, and so-called heavy users, ’s equivalent of frequent fliers, eat 27.5 times a month…
GROSS
November 26th 2002
My TiVo Thinks I’m Gay
WSJ reports this recommendations plot line is everywhere.
“I like the idea that someone cares,” she says. “Even a machine.”
November 25th 2002
Kyocera Smartphone
I can’t believe I’m getting excited about a cell phone, but the Kyocera 7135 smartphone looks pretty good. It’s nice to see that Kyocera is persistent given their previous 2 failures and that PDA/cell phones are getting pretty slick.
November 25th 2002
WAP!
I got the new firewall machine up on Sunday, after a frustrating weekend. The new firewall is iptables (the old was ipchains) so it’s much more powerful & flexible. The big win is that I can do forwarding to fumweb so I can get access via my cell phone! So now I can get CPU stats and even recent analog reports!
Now I can kick back, drink beer and just check stats on my cell phone all day. Woo hoo!
November 24th 2002
WSJ Misses Another Opportunity to Interview Us
I can’t believe they use epicurious, whose boards suck! …but the rest is true. We built a community and people made friends. UPDATE: You’ve got to check out GardenWeb. It is everything we’d like to be. They do a lot to support communities and the site is dead simple html. They claim 13mil pages/month and 1.3 million users, and are profitable. They do nice advertising (easy buys), and a directory, and subscriptions with some “niceities” just like we want. very cool!
November 22nd 2002
Successful subscription site explains how
American Greetings claims they actually planned it: setting the stage, deciding what’s free, timing and pricing it right.
November 21st 2002
Forget about slaps on the wrist; what MSFT got was a pat on the back
David Pogue cribs Troy in this “Profit and Innovation at Microsoft” column
Why does Microsoft bother me so? Because in my view, its success relies primarily on this unique “you?re our customer whether you like it or not” arrangement. If Microsoft won through the superiority of its products or the brilliance of its new ideas, I wouldn?t resent its dominance one bit. (You go, Sony!)
November 20th 2002
Arizona Cuisine
Note to self: never move to Arizona. The Arizona Daily Star did a restaurant review of Arby’s!
