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)

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.

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 :>

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?

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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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).

I’ve come to the conclusion that my IRC server needs more people hanging out on it.  So point your IRC client to irc.srhuston.net (6667 normal, 9999 SSL) or follow this link to get into IRC and hang out with us.

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: }

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.

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.]