Often during the day I'll think of something totally sweet to post about, but have to back-burner it because I'm busy and don't really have time to post. And then I get home from work and my mind goes blank. This happened today, in fact—you'll have to believe me when...
As you've noticed, there are some problems. Those of you with my email address can mail me if anything has gone horribly awry with the comments or anything. Stuff still broken includes:All old entry archives (about 25% right now) RSS feed A bunch of the comment post-processing stuff, although it...
In an attempt to fix the search functionality (hint: it works) I accidentally flattened my theme. Enjoy. P.S. Read my last post, since it's got actual content for the day. P.P.S Please hold tight while the archives are rebuilt. It'll be a few ... hours?...
Mr. Rob W. informs me that /dev/null is still blocked by the Chinese government. I'm not sure what I said to piss them off, but it's clear I'm too much of a corrupting influence on the citizenship....
Rob sent this from the middle kingdom—apparently /dev/null is now banned in China! ...or my host was down at the time? P.S. awesome annotation courtesy of Rob this time. P.P.S. It's time for a new blog tagline....
Just about a week after it started, my web hosting company has reported that they've solved the 500 problem: Apache was timing out my and killing my Movable Type scripts. I suspected this was the case. All is well now. No more 500 posts, I promise....
I'd be really annoyed with my hosting provider if I paid them more than $4/month. Comments are probably working again. The comment scripts are light enough to be affected little at this point....
OK, the CGI scripts are now crashing early enough to keep comment entries from completing. Please stay tuned and skip the comment forms for now....
It appears my Movable Type installation (or any underlying component) is throwing out 500 HTTP errors in response to mostly anything put into the system. So if you get a "500'd" from the comment form, don't despair. It probably worked—but I'm still trying to figure out why....
That's right—it's been 3 years since I lobbed my first handful of posts here on /dev/null. It looks like I missed noting this last year (I was in Tucson) but since I don't really have much else to say tonight, I figure I'll keep the tradition going from 2006. So...
Sorry folks, I broke comments last night, and can't fix them until ... later tonight. Update: It's working now. A thousand pardons....
It turns out that the second channel on my ALi IDE controller was, in fact, torched—just not as torched as the first channel. So now that I've sunk the $5 into a replacement from PC Recycle, I'm finishing my Windows Home Server installation. Although, I got into an argument with...
I think I've fixed all of the problems that cropped up during my hosting migration. Hopefully, this will be the last post about the exciting world of configuring a hosting installation. If you hit problems (with feeds, etc.) please drop me a comment. If you hit problems with the comments...
The last post in my migration from Debian to Windows Server 2003 reads strikingly similar to my latest hosting migration post. My RSS feed generator appears to be particularly problematic. Exciting times....
RSS/Atom feeds will be fixed in the next few days. Pictures are ... still being uploaded....
I've hit a few bumps getting everything moved over.Comments are down, so don't even try. I'll have this fixed by tomorrow night. No images. I'm sure you figured this out. Old RSS/Atom feed links are broken, but I'll try to have that fixed shortly. It appears there are some miscellaneous...
I've just pulled the trigger on some shared hosting for the site. The net effect to you is that my site will be faster and won't be down nearly as often. The net effect to me is that I'm very slightly poorer, and have something fun to do while I...
Comcast's service was down all day last Wednesday. Our power flickered Monday night, taking down my cable modem. Comcast went out again Thursday night, ostensibly due to the massive windstorm. But that didn't matter, since the power flickered early Friday, taking out the cable modem. When it all came back,...
I'm trying out the new Windows Live Writer. All I did was:Install it Fire it up Type in this blog's URL Fill in my username and password ...and that's it. Type this post in the editor, and hit "Publish." So...does it work? P.S. Holy [expletive deleted], it does work. Right...
It appears that an errant ActiveState Perl installation option befunked my blog: sometime between my old Activestate Perl installation and the build I just installed, the ActiveState Perl people renamed their IIS extension mapping from "Perl CGI Extensions" to "Perl CGI Extension," thereby failing to preserve my existing configuration option...
Day 3 of no blog: I spent last night helping Manuel install some hot car stereo action into his wee Miata. That took significantly longer than expected, so no progress on actually fixing the blog problem. Maybe tonight? P.S. It looks like Layla took this picture right when I was...
Day 2 of the blog outage (err, comment and publishing outage?): I'm considering finally going to a hosted solution. Livingdot.com seems to provide exactly what I'm looking for. I'm really sick of managing all of this Perl and Movable Type nonsense. Again, gross....
Comment about something of interest for your fellow readers. Comments in two sentences or less get extra points....
Is it my crappy Comcast service? Is it my crappy Linksys AP? Or is it the crappy video drivers that keep bluescreening my Server 2003 machine? Who knows—let's restart all three!...
There are typically two explanations for the power going out around here: a giant freak storm, or some jackass plowing his car into a power pole. Well, the power outage that took down the server this morning appeared to be the latter, and it also took out a big chunk...
My cable internet service is on the blink, which is probably why you can't see this site right now. Comcast tells me this isn't part of an area-wide problem, so I immediately qualify for less-than-stellar personal service. A technician will supposedly be out on Monday to inspect the line and...
In honor of passing 1280 posts a while ago, here's a recap of posts whose index is a power of 2 (or a multiple of 128, which is why all aren't of the form /^10*$/). This post is largely copied from Power of 2 roll call (1000). The entire static...
In honor of passing 1152 posts a while ago, here's a recap of posts whose index is a power of 2 (or a multiple of 128, which is why all aren't of the form /^10*$/). This post is largely copied from Power of 2 roll call (111). The entire static...
Some of you may have noticed that this site has been really damned slow for the past few weeks. I've been aware of it, but haven't really had the time to deal effectively with the problem—mostly because I really haven't had the time to look into it. But last night...
Continuing last night's comment theme, I figured I'd write tonight about a special milestone I've just met: I've now got as many comments as posts here on /dev/null/. This is sortof a big deal because I've been keeping this journal for the last twenty months and during the entire time,...
Most of you read either this main page, or (I suspect) the RSS feed for this journal. I try to keep it up to date with lots of interesting things and because the new content is usually more relevant than the old, most of the commentary that happens around here...
In honor of passing 1024 posts a while ago, here's a recap of posts whose index is a power of 2 or a multiple of 128. This post is largely copied from Power of 2 roll call (110). The entire static version of this journal is now 378MB. 10000000000 (1024):...
That's right, kids: I've been busy in the last eighteen months. This is the 1,000th post I've made to this journal. The only really notable thing to say here is that when I hit my 800th post, I mentioned that it would take until the end of the year to...
For a really long time, the moving category in the hierarchy on the right side of the screen has been the only one without a link—because there were no posts in the category itself...only subcategories. Well, enough of that. I'm tired of the inconsistent link....
It isn't too clear to those of you using the front-end of /dev/null, but the entire database backend is down. So comments don't work and this post won't actually make it to the site until whenever it is I actually get everything working again. This is mostly my fault. It...
This is sortof moot since the site is going down in a few minutes ... but the site is going down. This all stems from an odd networking problem that exists between one of my laptops and my access point—so I'm taking it to the office to get it all...
I know, it's really breaking news. And poof, they're gone....
In case you couldn't tell, the home.milkmandan.org server was down all day today to get a swap into a new case, get a new ATA controller, and have a new drive attached. I've got real posts for yesterday and today, but will toss them on the server tomorrow sometime....
I haven't been posting as much as I used to. Writing long articles takes a lot of time and energy, and since we've moved to Kirkland, I've been spending a lot of it getting my physical health in order. Save for a month or two of morning cardio early this...
In honor of passing 896 posts a while ago, here's a recap of posts whose index is a power of 2 or a multiple of 128. This post is largely copied from Power of 2 roll call (101). The entire static version of this journal is now 280MB. 1110000000 (896):...
I said I'd do it: I've launched a new journal. It's a whole new site. Autos Articulated. Layla actually came up with the name last night, and I liked it so much that I went ahead and registered it. For now, the site is sitting here on my home machine...
I'm going to take all of the automotive content here at /dev/null and spin it into another journal. The rationale behind this is that /dev/null has evolved a bit beyond what it was originally supposed to be: a way for me to dump links and interesting stories for close friends....
I've gotten some genuinely weird comments here at /dev/null in the last few months. None of them seem to be spam, but they're all just so ... weird. All of them have numbers in them, so I'm thinking that they're possibly part of a covert message-passing scheme. To all the...
Somewhere during the recent move, Comcast neglected to move my account information along with the cable modem information to the new address—so earlier today, when they shut off service at the old place, our access went out. This cascaded a bunch of work for me like recloning the router's MAC...
I'm nearing my 30th collectibles article here at /dev/null and I figured that instead of just writing the post (as I usually do), that I'd also write about writing the post. Writing about writing? Why heck, that sure sounds like excitement to me! Step 1: Get the ball rolling. In...
I'm about to leave to go snowboarding, and the power in the apartment just flickered on and off a few times. I'm fairly sure the server survived unscathed, but both my wireless hub and my cable modem were frazzled. I've rebooted them...and they seem fine for now, but if you...
In honor of passing 768 posts a while ago, here's a recap of posts whose index is a power of 2 or a multiple of 128. This post is largely copied from Power of 2 roll call (100). The entire static version of this journal is now 206MB. 1100000000 (768):...
My post on the Galant VR-4 is number 800 posted to the site, which is notable only because it's going to take me until the end of the year to reach 1000 posts. I've done power of 2 rolls calls before any time I've hit a major power-of-2 milestone, but...
For my journal's 1st birthday, the milkmandan.org server decided it would eat a hard drive. Sometime around 10pm (right around the time I was putting the finishing touches on the Collectible autos: the Ferrari 275 article) the system drive on my file server started screeching. This was a problem, as...
It's been an entire year since I launched /dev/null. I originally put it together at Mouser's suggestion as a way for me to relay all the nuttiness that occured when turned from a slacker student into a slacker professional. Since then, things have gone from being fairly picture free to...
It seems that due to either a power outage or feline hijinx (infinitely more likely), the milkmandan.org server went down last night sometime after midnight. But now it's back up. This has highlighted a shortcoming in my network: if the server isn't yet up, I can't use the workstation for...
I've been thinking a lot lately about where I want to take my work—both in terms of what I do professionally as well as what I do in my "spare" time, which currently consists of posting on this journal and working on cars. Professional career and garage hobbyist aside, I'm...
If you've looked over on the right-hand side at this journal's home (http://home.milkmandan.org/dev/null), you may notice that I'm organizing and clarifying my posts. The idea here is to provide more meaningful navigation because although names like, "Little baby trees," and "Two flatulent felines," may be cute on a close read,...
Some (OK, most) of you have probably noticed that home.milkmandan.org isn't on the fastest of connections. In fact, sometimes it's downright terrible how slowly the bits move from point A to point B. There are a few reasons—most of which aren't my fault—which dictate why you don't get super-quick download...
So last night I didn't sleep all that well. Unlike last time, I don't seem to have any fantastic post ideas for today. That's too bad, really. I've been up for a while now....
If you use any sort of RSS feed aggregator (such as Bill's LJBP list, for example) or if you read both 0xc0debabe and /dev/null and have a good memory, then you probably realize that Layla and I almost always post at around the same time. The biggest reason for this...
For those of you who aren't reading this directly from http://home.milkmandan.org/dev/null/, you'll likely need to make your way over there for this to make sense. Now that you're here (although you may not be) you can see that the calendar to the right is completely filled with posts. I love...
Ask 3 out of any 4 blog-owners: why did you start writing online? Survey says...one of the top reasons is assuredly, "to become a better writer." That's a statistic that I just made up, but I figured I'd say it because Family Feud gets away with that sort of thing...
Yesterday Layla and I went to Fry's and bought some x64 hardware to launch the Windows Server 2003 changeover. Part of this is because I want to run 64-bit Windows, but most is due to the aging hardware my Linux filesystems runs—it's a dual 300MHz Celeron with blown motherboard caps...
Some of you may know who Jakob Nielsen is. He's a design expert (I'm not sure what his credentials actually are) who has been righteously ragging on web design issues for a long time. How long? Well, take a look back on his 1996 Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design....
I was going to post about getting some new hardware to replace my aging 300MHz file server, but I noticed that this is the 666th post that I've made here on /dev/null1. I haven't done a post roundup in a while, but do know that it's been an awfully long...
November 14th holds special significance for me. It was on Nov. 14 five years ago that I registered milkmandan.org. I got it originally because all of the cool alternatives (milkman.org, penis.com, etc.) were taken, but I nevertheless needed some sort of referencable address to point people to. In 2000, New...
That's right. Unless you're reading this from my syndicated LJ account (and, actually, anywhere else I'm syndicated...although I don't know of any others) ... what the hell was I talking about? Oh, right. Unless you're reading this outside /dev/null, then you'll see a map on the right. If you're using...
I've been syndicated on LiveJournal1 once before. The process essentially involves pointing LJ at my RSS feed and then letting the cron jobs on LJ's servers do the rest. It doesn't really matter who sets up the syndication—once it occurs, the syndicatee's account is ownerless. So, changing information like the...
So, /dev/null was accidentally down for a few days. Oops. I actually didn't even notice the problem until tomorrow (Edit: I meant yesterday. Am I high?) morning and I would have fixed it except that I don't have SSH tunneling turned on so I need to be at the apartment...
Six months ago to the minute, I started my first journal post. And since then, I've made a grand total of 524 posts. This averages to around 2.9 posts/day—and I say "around," because I'm not actually calculating the exact number of days between then and now. So where have I...
I've known how to fix this for a while, but I've finally gotten around to it. The fix I've got requires that you point yourselves to my RSS feeds again, because they have moved. Those of you who appreciate direct linky linkies will appreciate these:Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0 RSD...
In honor of just passing 512 posts, here's a recap of posts whose index is a power of 2. This post is largely copied from Power of 2 roll call (11). The entire static version of this journal is now 69MB. 1000000000 (512): Slowswank 0100000000 (256): d00m3d 0010000000 (128): Weird...
Jarrod has been kind enough to set me up the bomb. No really, he's set up an RSS syndication at the L of Js. Those of you with LiveNuts accounts can now tune in to the madness without leaving the domain. Ph00t! The way this all works is that my...
I've inserted a post in my May 2005 archive that allows you to jump directly to the time when I shut down /dev/null and started posting to /tmp and offline. The first posts are in May, and the rest are in June—I've got links to both to help you out....
For those of you who have been keeping up with /tmp, you can jump straight to the first post that hasn't been posted there. Click click...
Remember my rant about how slowly Movable Type 3.15 generates pages? I didn't either, so I had to go search for it to make sure I had actually written about it. On March 30 (a bit under 90 days back), I had 202 posts. Oddly, I decided to run another...
Dammit! Remember when I accidentally blew away a bunch of files with my scripts? Well, I accidentally blew away a directory of pictures of Aleph and ... the other cat, because I don't have delete confirmation enabled. This isn't a problem on my local drives because everything gets moved to...
It worked! Wooooo! Thankfully, only the index file was trashed. It only took one command to fix the screwup. Amen. So, back to business....
Despite the fact that my fileserver is not actually online, I nevertheless use it to compose and backlog posts so that when I do go online, it will all be finished for me. Earlier today, I was adding a post when the entire machine stalled and rebooted of its own...
Yet another reminder about the upcoming journal switcharoo. /tmp It's looking like I'll be shutting the homestead down on the 18th instead of the 19th, so be sure you don't get caught awry with the changeover. Set those bookmarks for stun, Mr. Spock....
On or around May 19th, I'm going to be shutting down my machines and packing them in boxes. Because one of the most critical elements of a journal is timeliness, I've got a temporary blog set up where I'm going to post to while I'm not around. Mouser has gone...