Don't Back Down

Once we arrived in Bonaire, it would have seemed that the hard work was done. Not the case. We found a taxi from the airport easily enough, but as I mentioned previously, the operator of our chosen lodging had already left for the night! Luckily he left his cell phone number posted on the door, and the cab driver was kind enough to both call him for us and then wait until he arrived to let us in. Finally, approaching 10pm, we were able to check into The Friar's Inn (now called Hotel-Bonaire Inn).

Read "Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles" »

Like most people, I have accounts everywhere. Unlike most people, I am hoping to do something about that. And no, it's not anything like some super single-signon system. Please. I'm just going to try and consolidate things.

I started with email. I think I have a webmail account just about everywhere. Certainly all of the biggies. But I never check them. I logged into Yahoo Mail today and had 3000 messages. I actually read through them (not the messages, just the headers) and maybe a half-dozen were things I had subscribed to at one point or another. So I unsubscribed those, just to be nice, and deleted everything else. If all goes as planned, I won't log into that mailbox again. Hopefully by the time I have, the account will be deactivated.

I logged into Hotmail, only to find that I've already been deactivated (yippee!). Same with Excite. My account is still active with MyWay, but I rarely even remember that I have it, so I think I'll just forget about it. I have a Netscape account, too, but for some reason was having problems with their signon mechanism, so I blew it off for now.

Then I moved onto IM. I run Trillian, like any good little Windows geek (that's an oxymoron for you), but rarely use anything other than AIM. What to do? I just removed my ICQ account - I haven't heard from anyone on ICQ in ages. I don't think I've even noticed anyone with an ICQ address for a while.

I decided to remove my MSN account as well, because I really hate it that I have to use an email address. Much nicer to use an alias of some sort, with the email address set in preferences. Two down, two to go. I then actually installed the Yahoo! Messenger to try it out. First time I've done that, I think. The program is okay, but I hate that it won't stop reminding me about email. It's gone.

I then installed AIM (again, think that's the first time for me), which isn't bad, but I just couldn't get into the look. Too busy and clunky for me. So it's back to Trillian for a client, at least for the time being. But what to do about the last two IM accounts?

Turns out that Trillian also continuously updates the Yahoo! Mail status, and that gets under my skin because the account is just full of spam, and I hate seeing an envelope there, knowing I just have to clean it out. Seems like a waste of time. So I removed my Yahoo! IM account too. That means it's AIM from here on out. Unless something changes, of course.

As you all should know, I'm in the process of redesigning things. It must be something in the air, at least for people named David (1, 2). Though my name isn't David, I'm still working on mine. Anyway, I haven't changed much in the last month or so, while trying to determine if I like the new look or not. I think I do, which means I can't really use that as an excuse anymore. Now the problem is the rest of the site.

Specifically, the monthly, daily, category and individual archives. I'm not sure what to do with them. Rather, I'm sure what to do with them (that is to say that I'd like to keep them), but I'm not sure of the best way to rework them. So I'm wondering about reading habits.

Looking at my stats, I see that nearly 50% of my traffic comes through an RSS reader. Which is great. I use one too, and I don't have a problem with that at all. It's just that none of that traffic can see the site itself. So if you read through an aggregator, you can safely ignore the rest (or visit the site to let me know your thoughts).

Jeremy talked about losing his blogroll the other day, which I think I'll do. I removed it from the front page, and I think I like the look. Moreover, I haven't updated it for a while, and I generally seem to link to things I like, so if you keep up, you'll be able to tell who I read. So that was easy enough. I think where I'm stuck is on the formatting of the pages - namely the monthly and category archives, which can get pretty big. The daily archives and individual ones aren't generally too bad, since they have maybe 5 entries at most.

Those larger archives are the ones that really pile up the entries, especially over time, and thus result in these incredibly unwieldy pages that just don't seem to work quite right. So while I'm tossing ideas around, feel free to add a comment and let me know your thoughts - on the new design, on the old design, or on any design at all. What I'd especially like to know is how you read through entries if you visit the site.

That is to say, do you like to have a list of entries on the side that you can click through? A list at the top? Simple next entry/previous entry links on the entry itself? How do you determine what you will read? Do you even visit the archives, or do you simply scroll the main page to see what you've missed? Do you like to read backwards (from the most recent back) or forwards (from the oldest forward)? Any insight you can add to the process would be great. Thanks for your help.

A new entry in the wish list category is the Home Depot. I actually like their list - they have my address in my account, so people can send me things without needing to know where I live - but I don't like their implementation. Mainly, the only way to get someone to your list is to send it to them. I'd love to be able to link to it here on the blog, so if people don't want to send a book or a DVD, they can pick something different.

I must say that they are responsive. I wrote customer support about the idea last night, and within minutes had a reply. Unfortunately, the reply was that they don't allow that. So that means another wish list makes it onto the trash pile.

I don't understand why people can't get it. Let me set up a name for my wish list. Using jayseae would be nice, but I'll use my real name. I simply don't want to use an email address. Store my address so that I don't have to give it out to the entire world. Let me link to it so I can point to it here on my blog. Give me a decent selection. So far, the only list I've found that gives me all of those is Amazon. Maybe someone else will figure it out. In the meantime, if you see something, let me know.

Okay, really I've just installed one dishwasher. But I did it. I took out the old one and installed the new one. Without electrocuting myself during either process. All in all, it wasn't too hard. Two screws holding it in, one pipe for incoming water, one pipe for outgoing water and a simple electrical connection. As long as you don't mix up those last three, you shouldn't have any difficulties.

I did end up replacing the water lines. The drain line came with the dishwasher, so I used it. The old copper tubing that supplied hot water to the dishwasher was, well, old copper tubing. So I ended up buying one of those no-burst types, with the braided metal look on the outside. Hooked everything up, turned the electric back on, and it worked! Woo-hoo! Anyone needs a dishwasher replaced, give me a call.

A story mentions that 4 minutes is all it takes for a computer when first connected to the Internet. Four minutes! That's not even enough time to download the latest patches that you need to protect you from those hackers.

I just read another story where this guy visited a single web site and it installed 16 different programs on his PC. All through security vulnerabilities present in an unpatched version of Internet Explorer. And this story talks about a vulnerability in Java that leaves even my beloved Firefox at risk. What am I to do?

For the first problem, I just pray a lot. For the second, I've stopped using IE except in rare situations, when I can be relatively certain that I won't have a problem. And for the third, I uninstalled the Java virtual machine from my PC. Probably not the best decision, but I'm curious to see how it goes. I survive perfectly fine without flash (for the most part). There are a few sites who use it in their navigation and don't offer alternatives, but most will allow you to get around even if you don't use flash. I'm hoping that I'll be okay without Java, but we'll have to wait and see.

I've been setting up three new domains on an Exchange 2003 server for a few days. It really isn't that difficult, but it's taken me a bit to get used to working with 2003. It's a lot different (a lot more integrated) than previously. Of course, 2000 versions may have been as well, but I've never - knowingly - worked on an Exchange 2000 system, so that could be part of it. Quite a jump from Exchange 5.5.

Anyway, it's never been particularly difficult to set up another domain on an Exchange server, and then to assign additional - or even different - domains to different email addresses, and on to users. But I had all that set up and it still wasn't working. Everything worked well internally, but when I tried to send email to one of these new domains from an external account (not on that server), it returned a dreaded 550: Unable to Relay error. I was stumped.

Read "Multiple Domains with Exchange 2003" »

Observant visitors to the site might notice a new link in the page banner today. It leads to the new contact page. This page is based very loosely - in the way that movies are based loosely on books - after Peter's contact page, and should provide you all sorts of ways to contact me. Enjoy.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the Inn and decided that we needed a car. The island isn't huge, and the city (Kralendijk) isn't that big, but it would help. So we had the innkeeper call a service for us. The promised rate was something around $25 USD, but as we traveled back to the airport, our driver informed us that those cars were not available, despite our innkeeper's reservations a few minutes earlier. While we appreciated the ride back to the airport for free, we decided we'd check out the competition and see what they offered, since this company didn't seem to want our business very badly.

Read "Bonaire Day Two" »

I'm really beginning to hate categories. Don't get me wrong - I love the organization that they offer, and the ability to focus on a particular topic. But filing them in that way is tough. You've seen my various comments about new categories over the last year and a half or so. In case you hadn't guessed already, that means there is a new category. Actually, there are two. The first is a new top-level category, while the other is a new sub-category under that one.

Read "Categorically Speaking" »

Yesterday, in the process of moving my office from one side of the house to another, I decided it was time to extend the cable connection to the other end of the house as well. Can't have an office without an internet connection, after all. So I spent much of the morning carefully running a new cable all the way from one end of the house to the other. I plugged things in, and... nothing. Well, I did manage to stick my foot through a ceiling, but nothing much more than that.

Today I set about trying to correct the problem. Strangely, the internet connection worked in two rooms (on one end of the house). The television worked on the other end of the house, where the office was going to be located. But no internet. Dang.

Finally, as I was about to go back in the attic and try to track down the problem, my amazing wife suggested I try this outlet again, but with a different cable. Perhaps even check for a loose connection in the outlet that I installed. The easiest being to try another cable, I did that. And what do you know? It worked. Man what a pain. But at least I didn't have to re-string a few dozen feet of cable.

For those of you waiting on the category archives to get fixed, I'll get to them. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow. But getting the office functional again - ideally by Monday - is currently the top priority. So it might be out for a couple days more. Let me know if you run into any problems and I'll make sure to address them as I am able.

So I'm apparently being forced to switch carriers again, for the second time in as many months, after not having switched for several years prior. No biggie. I really don't mind switching.

Read "Switching Cell Carriers" »