A Day Late

A few weeks ago I was attending the quarterly webmasters meeting at BYU. There was a discussion about getting a group of people from across campus together to form an XML advisory group of sorts. I wasn’t exactly sure what the focus or purpose of the group was, but it sounded interesting so I raised my hand along with several others when they asked who would be interested in participating in such a group. The next question was, who would like to be the head of the group? I wasn’t about to volunteer for that, so I sat silently…much like everyone else who raised their hand to the previous question. After a few moments of awkward silence someone volunteered that Jeff (me) should probably head the group since I also serve on the university web advisory board. That’s when I knew I was in trouble, a few seconds later it was all over and I was the head of the group.

I was a little nervous about this decision for a few reasons. For one thing I’m short staffed right now and my workload has been backed up for months and I wasn’t sure I would have enough time to devote to the group (I’m still not). Second, I didn’t have a clear idea of what the purpose of the group was. All I knew was it had something to do with the use of XML across campus.

After asking around a bit I discovered the idea behind the group was to look at designing some XML standards for campus to share news releases and other information which could be valuable as a shared resource. After some discussion on the group email list I believe the best way to go is to look at implementing widely adopted XML standards already in use, as opposed to creating our own. RSS or ATOM could be used for press releases. I’ve started thinking about other ways we could use XML. Sharing calendar information for example. I’m not sure if there is already a calendar XML standard, but it’s worth looking into. Anyway, it looks like my hobby interest in XML might have to grow a little. If anyone is aware of good XML resources or has some good ideas about how it could be used on campus, let me know.

I was looking at the weblog and noticed the server has been up for over 300 days now. Not bad considering it’s sitting in a basement, hooked to a DSL modem with a simple battery backup. I’m running the stable version of Debian on the server and I have to say I’m impressed. Haven’t had to reboot it once in almost a year. Incidentally I was just looking at the cisco DSL modem and it has an uptime of 312 days. That’s reliability.

I upgraded my Wordpress installation to version 1.5 yesterday. The whole process took about 5 minutes. I decided to stick with the “default theme” and I have to say I’m pretty pleased with it. I added a graphic to the header and I’m thinking about creating a rotating header graphic. I’ve also spent a little time customizing the left menu. I haven’t added my Amazon.com wishlist back to the sidebar and I don’t think I will. There’s already too much clutter on the left sidebar as it is. Instead, I think I’ll try and create a seperate page for the wishlist. Wordpress 1.5 allows you to create pages, just like posts, but you can’t use php scripts in the page so I’m going to have to figure out a way to pull and display my wishlist and still stay in the weblog template. Should be fun.

Assume you come home from work one night and decide to fix enchiladas for dinner. Thinking ahead, you decide to fix an extra large batch so you can have some for lunch and possibly again for dinner the next day. Naturally they turn out excellent and you are very glad you have leftovers.

Here’s where the tip comes in. You come home for lunch the next day, start watching one of your favorite shows, selected from your DVR listings. You put some enchiladas in the microwave, on half power, for a few minutes to reheat. Now…before you decide to do this, make sure the enchiladas you tossed in the microwave are properly ventilated. If you don’t, you’re going to miss 20 minutes of that favorite episode while you clean out the microwave. Who knew a tightly wrapped enchilada could be a bomb waiting to go off?

I wanted to take a moment and express my utter disappointment in the broadband internet options around Provo. If you live in Provo, you basically have one option and that’s Comcast high speed internet. On average I lose my connection and have to reboot my comcast modem around 4 or 5 times a day (keep in mind I’m at work 8 hours of the day). When it is working, it’s really not that fast. The upload speed is rarely above 200kbps and the download hovers around 600kbps. For all this, I pay around $45.00/month. Now that may not sound bad to some people, but compared to what I had in the past, it’s awful!

A little over five years ago I lived in Springville, which is roughly 2 or 3 miles south of where I live in Provo. At the time Springville had an ISP called AirSwitch. I won’t go in to the entire AirSwitch story (if you want to read it, go here) but basically a few techy neighbors decided to create a LAN around their neighborhood. They connected their LAN to a high speed backbone (T1 line I think) and suddenly the whole neighborhood was enjoying high speed internet access. Naturally word spread, demand increased and the company was born. Eventually, almost the entire town was wired with a fiber optic backbone. Depending on the network usage at the time you could connect to the internet at up to 10mbps. For this, I paid $19.95 /month. The service was reliable, cheap, and incredibly fast. I remember downloading RedHat ISO images in the time it took me to eat a sandwich. I’m not sure what happened to the company, I suspect mismanagement, but a few years ago it went under and AirSwitch was no more.

That was how things used to be. Now I’m stuck with this unreliable, poor quality, overpriced, COMCAST TRASH. There are a few other high speed options in the area that utilize wireless technology but they’re not any cheaper (which is really what I’m looking for). Isn’t technology supposed to improve as time passes? I’m betting it’ll be quite a few years before I see a 10mbps internet connection for $20/month. Supposedly Provo city has started the iProvo project. Unfortunately the area I live in is in the very last phase of the project (scheduled for July 2006). Assuming the project stays on schedule (it won’t) that’s a long time away. So, I have to wonder, what would it take to wire my subdivision and connect it with a T1 line (or something faster)? Possibly something worth looking in to.

As you can probably see, I migrated my Movable Type weblog to WordPress. The process was pretty straight forward. A big concern I had about migrating was losing my search engine links. Fortunately I was able to find some nice Movable Type import and mod rewrite instructions that will automatically redirect anyone who tries to access one of the old movable type pages. The whole process only took an hour or two (and most of the time was spent searching for the search engine fix). Anyway, I know the weblog looks a little WordPress generic. I’ll get around to customizing it one of these days, but not today.

A friend called today and said he tried to post a comment to my last entry and received a message that he was not allowed to post comments. Turns out last time I was adding IP addresses to my banned IP addresses I accidently added a blank entry which apparently matches any IP address. I thought it was a little unusual that I hadn’t received any comments for the past few weeks (particularly comment spam). I have to admit I really enjoyed the break from the comment spam. I removed the blank entry so comments should be allowed again. Sorry about that. Thanks for notifying me, Wayne.

After just over a year, I’m now a dog owner again. I picked up the puppy last Friday thanks to the help of some friends. After much consideration I named him Kody. Kody is a yellow lab and turned 7 weeks old last Monday. He was a little shy/sad/nervous when I first brought him home but that didn’t last long. He got his first bath that night, with American Crew shampoo (it was all I had). He seemed to enjoy it and hey let’s face it, that crew smells good. After his bath he was very playful.

He’s definitely a smart little guy and loves to play. He tends to play hard and then drop over where he stands into a deep sleep. The house training has been going pretty good. He’s had a few accidents but on almost all of them I’ve been able to catch him in the process and take him outside to finish. I take him outside at least every 3 hours when I’m home. He’s to the point that he will immediately relieve himself when we go outside (when he needs to of course).

I’ve also been working on kennel (or crate) training him. That’s coming along very well. Up until now I’ve had to keep his kennel in the basement while I sleep, cause of the crying (I still wake up every 3 hours and let him out). Last night was his first successful night sleeping in my room in his kennel. When he gets puts in he’ll whimper initially but goes to sleep fairly quickly. We went to bed about 1:30am last night and he woke me up at 3:45 to go outside. I was expecting to make one more outside trip during the night but he slept until 8 o’clock. I actually had to wake him up and practically drag him out of his kennel. During the day, while I’m at work, he stays in the basement (which is unfinished). I sectioned off a fairly large area with some chicken wire and he seems to be adjusting to it well. He doesn’t like being left alone but he’s getting better. Usually one of my roommates is home during the day to play with him periodically. If they’re not I’ve been going home on my lunch break to play with him.

Like most lab puppies, if not all, he loves to chew on things. I bought him a few chew toys and such but it’s interesting that his favorite things to chew on are some old towels I had. He’ll play with his other chew toys too, but he definitely seems to prefer the towels. I’ve trained him pretty well that he won’t try and chew on me. Usually a loud “NO!” will get him to stop. Teaching him not to chew on other people is still a challenge. Anyway, he’s a cute little pup. I don’t expect he’ll stay little for long. For those who are interested, here are a few pictures of him.