Jacques' Brain Drain

I seem to be having one of those nights where you’re down for no discernable reason, and things just don’t go well because of it. Today has mostly been dedicated to cleanup – both online and off. On the good side, I got a fair bit of housework done, and I’ve laid the groundwork for more server setup and improvement. On the downside, I feel lousy and don’t know what exactly to do about it.

Right now, the next significant project on my server agenda is to finish preparing Sekhmet to move some of my hosted sites back. I’m investigating mail server software, since I haven’t yet found anything I’m really happy with. Right now I’m using a bastard hybrid system which works, but not very well. It’s a stone bitch to maintain, and gives me hives every time I have to work on it. For this reason it’s about 90% likely that I’m going to try out something cleaner and more efficient and see if I can get something to work in a more stable way.

The major thorn in my side is mail vertual hosting. I do not want to have user accounts on the machines for each mail user. I’ve had it with that solution. I think that I’ll end up with courier backed by some kind of database – probably Mysql. Well – that’s for another day…

The embedded vieo plugin wp-ExtremeVideo is awesome. I picked it up at Ross Gerbasi’s blog, and it works well. I finally put an FLV file of my Red-Rock canyon video up, so that people may actually see it. (ogg and mpeg are still a PITA for my folks).

Happy viewing

I made a bunch of updates to the web server today – mainly to get ready for a large system upgrade. The largest involved cleaning up a number of DNS entries, removing unused functionality and upgrading key components – including a few wordpress installations. While I was at it, i also installed a wordpress plugin to insert inline audio. The major plus for that is that readers don’t need any special software to listen to it, as it comes up right in their browser – like this

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I’ve also installed video support for this blog. For example, you can view my Red-Rock Canyon video (lo-res version, of course) below. It’s a nice setup because it doesn’t require anything special on the destination box.
[FLOWPLAYER=http://jricher.jricher.com/video/redrock.flv,300,250]

Happy listening/viewing….

Finally got out to Arizona, and I’m getting all the world unpacked. It’s a minor nightmare, since I still have the bulk of my network in boxes, and that situation doesn’t make life any easier. In addition, COX managed to futz up my email in the move, and I’m waiting for that to be resolved. So far, it’s a great deal of fun :-<

At least my primary macjine is out of its boxes, and set up, and the phone is working now. This should make it easier to clean up everything else, but there are, as usual, no guarantees. I have two more days of unpacking, than back to the cotton mines….

I’m busting my #@%%^ packing up for the last run out to Phoenix. It’s going reasonably well, and I expect to be out of here tonight. It’ll be good to be gone, but Gods it’s a bitch to pack up an entire apartment.

In good news, all the utility stuff is done, and the Arizona board of Massage Therapy has finally gotten it’s stuff together and started processing G’s paperwork. She should be licensed within the week – and able to start working at Massage Envy in Phoenix.

OK – back to the cotton mines.