The heat in Connecticut is nearly unbearable; so much so, that whatever the blistering temp was outside, my basement (and server room), was 20 degrees hotter. This is roughly the surface temp of the sun.
Which was too much for my firewall. I gave my Dual PIII 550 to Ben (to cut down on power usage), and did the server shuffle.
I moved the Athlon 2200 (previously a workstation), and migrate that machine to the fileserver. The Athlon 1800 was migrated over to the firewall. and The P4 was migrated to the secondary workstation.
This worked great for about 3 days. Then both athlons melted. The 2200′s power supply took a crap, and the athlon 1700 just stopped working altogether. For the first time in almost 8 years, I had to use linux as a firewall. My file server has around a terrabyte of data on it, so a quick reload with openbsd was not not an option. I had to use iptables (for the love of God, please port PF over). I spent the next two hours stumbling over the arcane, and deliberately confusing syntax to get my network back up and running. At two in the morning, it is as if Rusty is trying to drive you mad.
As a linux user since the early 90′s, I have a great deal of love and respect for the software, but, IP TABLES SUCKS. There are no two ways around this. It feels kludgey, configs like something on an AS/400, and at the end of your painful relationship, it actualy punches you in the head.
PF lays it down, and works it over like Scott Peterson in prison. PF has a great single config file with decent syntax, variables, and easily to remember rules.
Thankfully the poor experience I had with IP Tables, helped motivate me to fix my Netra X1, and upgrade it to OpenBSD 3.9 (Sparc64). I really wish PF ran on everything.
So we are thinking of getting a pup. We have the yard, and I really believe that all kids should have animals (Dogs and Cats). The cat aspect is covered (with Xander and Angel), we just needed a dog.
I started digging around petfinder, and found most rescues wanted a ridiculous amount of money ($300 and up) to adopt a pet. I am of the opinion that if you are trying to get rid of of animal, a decent home is all that is needed. I read these horror stories about people adopting dogs and them selling them for medical research. That’s sorta like the razor blade in the apple thing. It probably happened once, or twice, and it has graduated to an urban legend.
Anyway, I found an ad for a wonderful little beagle. Sniffy. Sniffy is a two year old beagle. He’s trained, neutered, AKC (although that matters little now that he is snipped), and is need of a good home. We are going to go take a look at him sometime this week.
Hopefully by the end of this week, we will have family dog.
Science-Fiction.
The great Robert A. Heinlein wrote “A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method.” He immediately adds that if you “strike out the word ‘future’ it can apply to all and not just almost all SF.”
No where in Heinlein’s description of Science-Fiction does that include the ridiculous antics of your parent company, NBC-Universal; unless we are to assume that your silly head of programming has been assimilated by some sort of mutant, brain eating entity.
We are now subjected to the absolute lunatic compulsions, and, I might add, a complete lack of integrity, from your staff.
Wrestling? Is this an episode of the Twilight Zone? Probably not, you buried that to 1:00am on some odd day of the week ensuring that your stock viewership will indeed miss it.
Perhaps our plebeian palate is not attuned to your fine sense of taste. Perhaps we, and yes, I am speaking for your viewership as a whole, is so beaten down by your recent programming choices, that we are unable to recognize what sci-fi is.
Not very likely.
The loyal viewers have managed to stick with the channel even through the most ridiculous decisions were made. We have braved insulting infomercial after infomercial, watched you kill Dark Shadows, even watched you turn the last Dungeon’s and Dragon’s movie into a three hour blitz of advertisements (the actual movie is 105 minutes long).
Wrestling, however, is unforgivable.
Spike plays wrestling, but at least they play Star Trek. Check your schedules, I am willing to bet the are close to have the same amount of “sci-fi” content your channel has. Think about that for a moment.
Wait? Did you hear that? Asimov is weeping from beyond. He would have never participated on the board if he knew this is what it would become.
His weeping is echoed by your viewership.
What a cheap, and hopefully, devastating move this turns out to be. Perhaps when the accountants, soulless as they may be, crawl up from their conglomerate crypt, they will take mercy on your foolishly ignorant staff.
Zombies would be considerably more kind to you than the evil with whom you are in league with finds out the ratings of prime-time “Wrestling”.
Don’t even get me started on Law and Order. What a joke. Hopefully the person that made that decision has been put to pasture, or at least took the honorable path, and killed himself in front of his webcam. What’s next? Regurgitating Dateline for Fridays? Is Chris Matthews going to complain his way into the Sunday lineup?
RIP Sci-Fi channel 1992-2006.
Quick review of Cars:
Spectacular. Go see it. Pixar never fails. I wasn’t sure the animation could get better, but I was wrong.
