While I don’t doubt that there are many who need the robustness and complexity of Apache’s HTTPD, but in my “all I have is an ancient PC” universe, Lighty is working much better. To give you an idea on the oldness of this machine.. it is a Pentium MMX.. not a P2, P3, P4, core duo, whatever… I think the manufacture date on it is 12 years ago.. NICE. Installed the latest debian in about as minimal a fashion as possible. I have been thoroughly impressed with the speed at which this ancient box is serving up my html and php files. I have yet to make it try anything cpu-intensive yet (like running LaTeX or ImageMagick), but I think it’ll do for my works in progress 
If only I bought into that whole “if life gives you lemons” crap
It is a universal truth in my life that for every good thing that happens, there is some downside or consequence (not all consequences are bad — if I spill beer on the counter, it will be consumed and cleaned as I am both satisfying my stomach and cleaning up after my mess!). I remember a few years ago I was very excited about being able to pay down some debt, and that crushing feeling was alleviated for a short while. I go to get an oil change on my old lincoln and the tech shows me why he can’t inflate my tires.. because he can see the belt on the inside wall of the tire. I drove right down to the closest tire center (oddly enough, Sears), and that lovely “push away from debt” was erased.
Our taxes this year were something to be excited about. We both finished school, started new jobs, and had our second year with our #1 favorite tax credit (our son ). I am again in a situation where this will stand a chance of being erased due to a whole slew of items wrong with my car (now an explorer).. again new tires are on the list!
I’m finding a way to smile through this. Hopefully at some point in my life I can say “yea, it was crazy when, but look at me now”.. I certainly hope so!
Made the jump to the newest Wordpress today — I had already upgraded a different blog so I knew what to expect. Painless as always, which is a testament to the painstaking detail the devs go through with each release. Kudos to everyone involved. Now, add support for SQLite so I can ditch this tethering to mysql and I’ll be REALLY happy.
With new releases comes new themes — the last theme (Bala’s Organic) was outdated, and I didn’t feel like patching it forward. I am really glad I just found this theme I have now. Simple, basic, elegant… no widgets, but that is a 30 second fix if I feel like it.
With this, I think I will check the “let google know” box… hopefully this is a good thing
I think I’ve given up on any hope of having design sense or web design skills. I used to be great at it.. Back in the day I might have even gone into business. I just can’t seem to make my ideas come out in lovely XHTML/CSS.. EVER.. I have a really awesome idea for a theme for my blog, and I can’t make it look like I want (it’s something that shouldn’t be as difficult as it is… f**king css).
I’ll find someone else’s theme-magic and put it on here. I can’t be bothered to try anymore..
The NHL put out the conference semi-finals schedule after last nights game 7’s. Looks like I have a chance to get games 2 through 6 (not that the Habs should need 6 games… damn Bruins) on Versus… which I don’t currently have.
Sports on TV
I’ve debated whether I want to pay MORE money to Comcast to get those “extra” channels (we have the basic of basic packages… we don’t get things like.. Weather Channel, CNN, ESPN, VERSUS!!! (GRR), NESN!!! (DOUBLE GRR!!!)… etc). We only pay them for the basics in the first place because I am pretty sure we are too far from any television market to pick up signals with an antenna (Boston stations are ~100 miles, Burlington ~90 miles).. But an experiment will be in place soon.. read on.
Sports on the Radio
With my lack of available hockey channels (I do get NBC, but they always show Detroit.. snore — Kind of how Joe Buck hates the Red Sox… a-hole), I’ve turned to radio broadcasts for my teams:
- Habs, aka Montreal Canadiens: I posted on this earlier, but I’ve been picking up CJAD 800 online out of Montreal. It is amazing how different the vantage point is based on what broadcast you listen to or watch. NHL.com has a very complete set of online streams for local broadcasts from BOTH markets. Read on for my next adventure with my sports on the radio.
- Bruins – when they aren’t playing Montreal, I actually enjoy watching the Bruins (so, I guess I can apologize for all my negativity now? Now that.. well, the Habs prevailed). I am pretty sure I can pick up the NHL on AM/FM somewhere — so far as I can tell, it’s ClearChannel stations, and I think there is one nearby. Again see below for my next adventure.
- Red Sox – Not having NESN essentially limits me to the BoSox playing the Yankees on the weekend with the witty commentary of Joe “Sox Be Damned” Buck and whoever else is with him on FOX (yes, we get FOX out of Burlington on cable). I found a rather spectacular page outlining all the radio stations in New England who carry the games.. although this is on the radio only, and not online streams. You have to give the MLB $14.95 for that.
- NFL – Pretty much we get the Patriots on CBS, and the Giants on FOX (occasionally the Eagles or Skins). I imagine there is radio for them too, but the TV is fine for now I know that I can pick up my beloved Redskins on WJFK if I need to!
Sports on the Radio, Part II
After a relatively involved “radio search” last night (both online for the stations, and sitting at a radio checking), I came to the conclusion that I need some sort of AM or FM antenna. I’m thinking about ditching the AM and going FM (there is a station that is 15 miles from here broadcasting the Sox on FM, I can pick it up with a wire hanger if absolutely necessary).. partly because the decent FM antennas also are designed for UHF/VHF/HDTV.. I’ve struggled to find one that is high enough quality that is not one of the massive roof antennas. If/when we ever buy a house, I’ll put up a mac-daddy antenna with some serious amps to pick up whatever HD market I feel like.. but for now, this is where I’ll stay. The upshot of this is that we predominantly watch NBC and ABC in our house, and the closest NBC affiliate is 6 miles away, and ABC about 65 miles.. if I can pick those up with relative clarity, I may ditch TV altogether (sorry HSN and QVC hah!).
The other side of the “radio” equation is I need a radio worth hooking up a nice antenna to. I’ll post more on this at a later time. I’m considering building my own
Nothin’ like a good blowout to end a playoff series I’ll find a better pic soon For now, the banners will have to do! GO HABS!!
(Picture used under a Creative Commons license)
I’ve been using 7-Zip in Windows as my primary compression/decompression engine. It can handle just about anything I throw at it (I can’t think of any instance where I ran into a compressed format it couldn’t read). I am in the process of a total overhaul (front end) of my website and went font-hunting last night. I decided to see what else 7-Zip could do, and it just made my day:
Aside from the fantastic number of “other” options in that context menu, the “Extract Here” did exactly what I wanted: Unzipped all selected files right there, and brought up the conflict resolution as it encountered problems (a lot of readme.txt kinds of problems), and I said “Yes To All”. DONE.
Great job guys. I don’t know that you’re the ONLY ones doing this, but I’ll stick with ya! Their download page is here. Although the main app is Win32/64, looks like some other devs have taken the command-line tools and rolled them into a POSIX-friendly build (most *nix’es).
I figured the best start to my vacation week was to play some Wii. Popped in Wii Sports, played some tennis, then moved on to baseball, where in my second game did this:
The first fourteen batters scored… ON FOURTEEN PITCHES. Not everyone hit a home run, but they were all first pitch hits that left the infield
I then moved on to boxing where I actually broke a sweat, and got tired… zzzzzzzz….
is it bad to count down? april vacation starts on friday…
The only thing I don’t have is some Molson or Labatt (subbing in Genesee and Old Milwaukee), but definitely streaming CJAD for the Habs/Bruins game… fantastic!! I’m not brave enough for the French broadcast I am definitely getting the NHL Center Ice package next season! It’s only a matter of time… GO HABS!
