New Home and New Design Coming

February 28, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I am very pleased to announce jasonpoteet.com and a few other websites are running on a fresh dedicated Linux web server. It was completely built from from the terminal window by yours truly. Of course if it winds up getting hacked because I did something silly like chmod 777 my config files, you’ll know why.

My main hosting experience has come from Windows Servers NT 4 through Windows 2003. I like Windows but I also wanted to expand my Linux abilities. Linux is easy to figure out from the GUI so I decided that wouldn’t really teach me the proper way. I also wanted to make a server that was blazing fast and as secure as possible. Common sense tells you the less you have installed the faster and more secure your server will be. With that thought in mind, I decided to go with a minimal install that only has what I need installed.

Working from the terminal window was certainly an exercise in patience for me. It was pretty frustrating at times to know what I wanted to do, but have no idea where the file I needed to change was located. That is where the wonder of the Internet came in. The wealth of information on the Internet is just incredible these days. It was very satifisfying though when I finally got the hang of everything and got the website up and running. I am also very please at the improved load times versus the old server. The hardware this is running on isn’t that impressive so it is certainly an improvement.

When I finish up a few loose ends, the next phase will be redoing the design. The old design went south when I updated WordPress, so I decided to simple start over. The current look is a blank wordpress template from refueled.com. It looks good for a blank template, but it does need some livening up. That will be the next around here.

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My Satelite TV Woes

February 16, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I have two HD TV’s in my house and currently get my HD channels from my cable company. The provide around 15 channels which include some of the main ones I would want. I get the locals and the main ones from the big 5 movie channels. It hasn’t been a bad service, but it is also a long way away from the 84 HD channels DirectTV offers.

With that in mind, I was all set to make the switch to DirectTV. I called up AT&T and picked out my programming, selected my hardware, and picked an install date. I went ahead and took a day off from work to stay at home and wait on the installer to show. It certainly felt like the day before Christmas. The day progressed and about 30 minutes early the installer showed up at the house. He started looking around the house and took out his compass to try and find a location he could put the dish.

My house is really unique to be in a subdivision because the back of it actually faces some woods. The house has some very large trees in the back yard including some pines and an oak that are easily 100′ high. We can be sitting at our kitchen table and actually see deer or wild turkeys behind the house. This has always been something we loved about our house. It really is the perfect house to be in a subdivision. You couldn’t ask for a better location.

So the installer climbs up on the roof and continues his measurements looking for a spot he can mount the dish. He gets to the very top of the roof and the heads back down. He then proceeds to tell me he can’t get enough clearance to put the dish anywhere on the house. My tree line is about 5 degrees too much. It seems the only place he can put the dish is right in the middle of my front yard. Needless to say, the HOA would and my wife and I did veto that idea. It would just be way too tacky. I did however start thinking about a way to run one up a 100′ pole in the backyard. I haven’t given up that idea just yet.

DirectTV was also very nice and apologetic and of course they refunded my hardware purchase. It is just one of those things.

Filed Under: General