August 10, 2007
OpenVPN success
I finally got the spare cycles to nail down our OpenVPN configuration, and it is wonderous (when I redesigned our web application architecture, I went ahead and put almost everything on a private network which I had been accessing via ssh... unfortunately, some of the interfaces I needed to access were web-based).
I now need to cook up some sort of web application for generating certificates for the rest of the office so that they can get on the tasty action.
Posted by jeff at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2007
What all this fool's been up to
Just some updates on what I've been up to the past few weeks... er months... er probably close to a year, now.
After raiding with Fist of the Horde for more than a year, I finally quit earlier this month. Everyone else was leaving, and I'd been planning on quitting anyway. I ended up giving my account to a couple of guildmates. I could've sold it for a decent amount, but I would've felt bad about doing so.
For my (28th) birthday, I bought myself a pistol (Kimber UltraCarry 2). It's a nice little gun, and I've been trying to make it out to the range twice a week or so to shoot. To facilitate this, I went ahead and got a range membership (and a lot of practice ammo from an online reseller).
Last week I got a membership at the university's student rec center. I've been going there during the time I would've otherwise been playing a video game of some sort, and it's been nice. I found out that I'm a lot more out of shape than I really thought I was, and it's been painful getting back into the swing of things. My immediate goal is to get down to a 9 minute mile, which is not something I've ever been able to really do. Since I'm there anyway to jog and use the stationary bikes, I've also started working on my arms, abs, and legs. I'm significantly older than I was the last time I tried to get in shape, and stuff repairs slower, but I think I'm making some progress.
Those are the big things going on with me right now. If I have any interesting updates, I'll try to make a post :)
Posted by jeff at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2005
Schism
As a possible successor to SAGE, LOPSA is a new organization to join if you're a sysadmin or system administrator .
I wish them luck, I know quite a few people involved, but who knows if they'll really become a big force in system administration
Posted by jeff at 05:49 PM
November 11, 2005
Majordomo
"Majordomo is crufty!" "When is a new Majordomo version going to be released?" Most people don't know, Majordomo 2 has been available a while now.
Posted by jeff at 03:06 PM
July 14, 2005
Wireless access underground
Via NANOG, an interesting article on ways wireless providers are giving subscribers network access in underground locations.
Posted by jeff at 03:02 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2005
Dumb mud-dev thread
Sony recently decided to start facilitating the trade of real monetary resources for game objects on certain EverQuest servers. Now, before I go further, I'm sure there are some people who absolutely cannot fathom the motivation to spend real money on a game resource.
I haven't myself, that I can recall, but it goes a bit like this. You play a MMO game of whatever sort as much as your time permits (either a MMORPG like EverQuest, or maybe a MUD). It's a traditional sort of game, in which the point is more to level up a character, get it gear, fight battles, and explore areas (for those of you not into the scene, Diablo 2 is rather similar. Or Baldur's Gate if hundreds of others played at the same time). Now the game designers for these games don't want to have to keep creating ridiculous new levels, so they use an exponentially increasing set of experience point values required to level. Thus they have the hope, maybe, of slowing a real teenage crack-monkey playing 8 hours a day (or way, way more) down to reaching the maximum level for a character in a reasonable period, say maybe a month. Given multiple character types and player versus player gaming, and there's a chance of keeping your user base from churning massively.
There you have what's referred to as a treadmill... but it's tuned for people with large amounts of time. You enjoy the game, but you're a working professional and it's hard to get more than an hour a night to play, or a few more hours on the weekends. You start getting tired of spending a month on the same level, with the same powers, seeing largely the same area. BUT, you enjoy the game, and you become willing to trade that which you have in excess (cash) for that which you don't have but which might make your play more profitable and rewarding (gear, gold, whatever). That is the motivation behind paying for game items.
Moving along, Sony deciding to support such interactions (which have traditionally been frowned upon) is laudable and was almost inevitable. It's laudable because they are a large company, and this feature will perhaps pressure other companies to try such a setup out. It was inevitable because such trading was happening anyway. It was like sharing music except instead of suing someone, the most you could do was cancel their account... thereby depriving yourself of a customer and money.
This is a thread that developed on mud-dev from the announcement. My personal favorite message from Jaycen Rigger who is, apparently, an idiot. He shows an ignorance of the very game in question when he claims that "customers decide what cheating is." I say this because I remember quite clearly instances when EQ came out of beta where you could take advantage of the formation of a zone to kill certain mobs with impunity. EQ decided this was cheating, not the players, and punished people accordingly. Those who forget history, etc.
Posted by jeff at 04:39 PM | Comments (0)
May 03, 2005
Blogroll readded
I went ahead and readded the blog roll from my previous blog, and linked to my old blog. Stuff that was dead or no longer being updated got omitted (including Micah's blog, unfortunately). Added some personalities because I hated having a category with one link. Linked to my OpenBSD resource and rant page, because I'd like for Google to index that some day.
Posted by jeff at 07:54 PM | Comments (0)
Shipment tracking...
May 2, 2005 8:52 pm Left FedEx Sort Facility NEWARK NJ
6:58 pm Arrived at Sort Facility NEWARK NJ
11:06 am Left FedEx Origin Location EDISON NJ
10:27 am Pickup status EDISON NJ
Yay (this is faster than I was expecting!)... keep 'em comin'!
Posted by jeff at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)
April 29, 2005
New computer parts on the way from NewEgg
1 MB ECS KT600-A 462 RT Item #: N82E16813135143 $38.50 $38.50
1 CPU AMD|3000/400 ATHLON XP BARTON % Item #: N82E16819103394 $119.00 $119.00
1 DDRAM RSWLL|512MB PC3200 RET Item #: N82E16820223009 $33.99 $33.99
Subtotal: $191.49
Shipping: $10.97
Grand Total: $202.46
It's about time I got something to replace this athlon 800.
Posted by jeff at 10:51 PM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2005
Cleaning msword HTML
Thanks, steph
Posted by jeff at 05:11 PM