A Day Late

Actually…I should have titled this, I *want* to relocate my server. I needed a break from studying for finals, so I spent a little time this morning playing around with vmstat, top and ab to perform some benchmarking tests on my blog (there’s a good article in this months Linux Magazine, in the LAMP Post section, about using these tools to do simple benchmarking). I quickly learned my DSL connection is a MAJOR bottleneck. Out of all the test I ran, my idle CPU usage barely decreased. The most CPU usage I saw the httpd process use was 0.7%. Not bad, not bad at all, but some of the tests still ran terribly slow and I think it’s safe to conclude it’s because of the bandwidth limitation on my DSL connection. However, I realize that my blog usage isn’t that heavy and I’d be surprised if there were more than 2 or 3 users accessing it at the same time. None the less, I’ve seen a steady increase in access over the last few months so why not start planning for the future, right?

I started looking into some colocation services, but most run around $300/month which is a little pricey for me. Esspecially considering this is really only a hobby. However, I started thinking of hosting some commercial sites on my server and charging a monthly fee. I’m confident that with a little work I could quickly recruit 10 or so customers and if I charged 20/month that would put me up to $200. With a little more work I’m sure I could recruit hosting enough sites to cover the colocation cost thus financing my “hobby.” If I get into that though, I know I’ll have to spend quite a bit more time and money with administration. I’d probably have to setup a mirror server to add redundancy which would double the colocation costs. I’m not sure I really wanna commit that much time and resources to it just yet.

The other option is having a third party host my blog which is significantly cheaper, but I really like having it on my own server so I can tweak and experiment with different things. Well, for now I think I’ll just leave things as they are. If anyone has ANY complaints about slow access or response please let me know. Until I start hearing otherwise I’ll just keep with the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy.

I changed cell phone providers and got a new cell phone last week. I was with Sprint PCS before but I have to say I was never that impressed with the service. The sound quality wasn’t that clear (regardless of what the commercials tell you) and I would get the ever popular “signal faded” on my phone quite often, at least once a day anyway. That’s not really what sparked my move though. In January, my roommates and I decided to cancel our house phone since we all had cell phones. As a result I used my cell phone more and I was starting to exceed the limits on my plan. I still wasn’t using that many minutes, but my plan was 2 or 3 years old and I never upgraded to a better one since I never really needed more minutes. Well, I figured this would be a good time to not only get a new plan with more minutes, but also switch providers.

I decided to go with AT&T Wireless for a few reasons. Mainly the better covereage and second my employer has an employee discount purchase plan with them. With my Sprint PCS the coverage was basically down the I-15 corridor in Utah, however AT&T basically covers the whole state. Anyway, I was able to get a really good deal on the Sony-Ericcson t68i phone, which is the phone I always wanted. AT&T was offering an instant $100 rebate which dropped the price of the phone from $150 to $50. That’s hard to beat.

So far I have to say I’ve been pretty pleased with the service and also the phone. I haven’t had a dropped call yet (knock on wood). A couple of the things I like about my t68i phone: 1-Bluetooth, I bought a little USB bluetooth adapter for my laptop and synced up my entire address book with my phone. Much easier than punching everything in by hand. 2-Battleship, had I realized how much entertainment this could have provided in a boring class, I would have bought it sooner. 3-Text messaging, I don’t really use text messaging that much, but it’s nice to be able to. It’s nice to be able to type a quick note to someone when I’m in a situation where I can’t make a phone call. So those are my likes, and my only dislike is the keys are a little small and close together which took some getting used to. Also, the keys are pretty loud when you press them. Trying to type a text message in a quiet environment is somewhat of a challenge. Also changing my cell phone number was/is a hassle but that doesn’t have anything to do with the phone or AT&T. Anyway, to sum up, new plan and new phone. Pretty happy.

It’s been a while since I posted. The last week of the semester always seems to be a crazy one and this one was no exception. My last day of class was yesterday. It’s really hard to believe and it felt a little anticlimactic in a way. It’s definitely a milestone day that you look forward to, but it comes and goes just like any other. None the less, I’m not quite finished yet. I’ve got a couple reading days and then finals start on Friday. My last final is Tuesday night and then graduation on Friday. Not too far away.

Well, hooking up my docking station to an external monitor didn’t help with my XFree86 problem. So I just decided to modify the XF86Config file by hand. I’m not sure why I didn’t just do this in the first place. The modifications were pretty trivial and only took a couple of minutes. The hardest part was finding the right values to enter in. Anyway, I modifed the monitor and screen section. These modifications are for a Dell C800 SXGA 15.1 LCD laptop.
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I downloaded Red Hat 9.0 on Tuesday and decided to upgrade my Dell C800 laptop from 8.0. After the upgrade I can no longer get XFree86 to work. I think it’s because it upgraded to a new version (4.3.0) and created all new config files. However, I think I found a work around . As I read the post I remembered, when I originally installed Red Hat a few years ago, I had my laptop connected up to the docking station and an external monitor, which is probably why I didn’t have this same problem. I still have the docking station but not the external monitor. So I’m gonna see if it will configure the “Screen” section of the XF86Config file correctly by just connecting it up to the docking station. If it doesn’t work I guess I’ll have to borrow an external monitor for a little while…or I could just write the XF86Config file by hand, but where’s the fun in that?

I just finished taking my first final. It was actually for an independent study class I signed up for last year. All I can say is it feels good to have it over with. Now I have less than 2 weeks of classes left and then my other four finals scattered from from April 18th - 22nd and finally graduation on the 24th and 25th. I can hardly believe it’s almost here. I wonder what I’ll do with all my new spare time. Hmm…maybe take up a new hobby or something. Actually, I should probably work on finding a new job before I do anything. That should be interesting.