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Outages

Battery Backup Death Spiral

The battery backup that serves the electronics has been having a problem, one that we were finally able to catch it doing. It was power cycling the electronics on and off in a spiral of electronic death.  I don't know how the router, VOIP, and switch survived, but they did.  We running off battery backup until I can find the cash to replace the unit. Everything should be working again. Ug.
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Posted by Steve Major on August 29, 2007 3:53:00 PM EDT #

Fixed Width Web Pages

All the space in the universe...itty bitty pages

Why is it some web pages have fixed width web pages? You know the kind, where it looks like you're looking at a sheet of paper with the margins on each side expanding to fill the width of your display? If you have a smaller monitor, that may not be a bid deal, but I have a couple of wonderful wide screen displays. The result? A strip down the middle with content and a lot of wasted space! It's stupid!

Some web designers think it's cool to make me look at a page as if I'm viewing a 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of paper. Tell you what, if I want to see your site that way I'll print it out and read it. Let my browser scale to my selected screen-width please!
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Posted by Steve Major on August 21, 2007 4:41:00 PM EDT #

Blogs Are Here

Blogs Are Here
One of my vacation projects is what you see here: to convert parts of this website to a blog engine. Since I use OS X server, it seems logical to use it's built-in blog engine which is based on Blojsom. http://www.blojsom.com Pebble: http://pebble.sourceforge.net.

Are there better Blog engines? Yup. Could some of this content be better housed in a Wiki? Yup.

It's a matter of time. Once, before the critters, I had lots of it. I could spend entire weekends tweaking, playing, and configuring all sorts of things. Now, I need something simple, quick, and easy.

This works and my time is much better spent elsewhere. So the Front Page Updates, Humor, and Steve's Gripes have been converted to the blog.

I have left comments turned on for now, so enjoy making some!
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Posted by Steve Major on August 17, 2007 3:47:00 PM EDT #

Clickers of Everything

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is that after all these years of being exposed to computers, people still fall for the lamest "tricks" to expose them to a virus or spyware. Probably the truly single most jaw dropper for me is the people that have been caught by these tricks, not once, twice, three times, but multiple times and continue to get not only their shorts pulled up over their head, but tied in a knot too. Some advice: Stop. Think. Simple as that.

Here are some examples: From an email: You've received a greeting card from a Neighbor Okay, what's your first clue here? How about "Neighbor"? Why would you get a card "from a Neighbor" and not by their actual name? No service I've ever seen for computer greeting cards lets you specify a locale as a "from". That's silly. Wait! There is more! In the body of this message is a link to click to get your card. http://192.168.0.0/ ... Numbers? In a web address? Well, it's possible, but no company in the 'business' of electronic greeting cards (and I dare say any business!) is going to do that. They'll want something like http://www.hallmark.com to promote their site! Two dead giveaways that something strange is afoot. Don't click it, trash it!

Here is another fun one from the web: You're surfing around the internet and suddenly, in your web browser, you see "YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED! CLICK HERE TO FIX!" Oh no! You must have picked something up! Woah, stop, think. Why would your web browser possibly be scanning your computer for viruses? And, if you have anti-virus/spyware installed, why didn't it catch the bug? These are two good reasons to never trust what you see while surfing the internet. Chances are you're going to click that and really get something bad when you were already fine, or some software is going to get installed and you'll be asked to pay for it since it obviously just fixed something. Stop. Think. Quit Clicking Everything You See.
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Posted by Steve Major on August 15, 2007 4:38:00 PM EDT #

vi Cheatsheet

Command Line Options:

vi file

Invoke vi on file
vi file1 file2 Invoke vi on files sequentially
view file or  vi -R file Invoke vi on file in read-only mode
vi -r file Recover file and recent edits after a crash
vi -t tag Look up tag and start editing at its definition
vi + file open file at last line
vi +n file open file at line no. n
vi -c command file open file , execute command (which is usually search command or line no. (POSIX)
vi +/pattern file open file directly at pattern
 

Marking Position
 mx mark current position as x
`x move cursor to mark x
`` return to previous mark or context
 'x move to beginning of line containing mark x
 '' return to beginning of line containing previous mark

Vi Commands
h, j, k, l left, down, up, right  
w, W, b, B forward and backward by a word
e, E end of word
), ( beginning of next, previous sentence
}, { beginning of next, previous paragraph
]], [[ beginning of next, previous section
0, $ first and last positions of current line
^ first nonblank character of the current line
+,  - first nonblank character of the next and previous lines
n | column n of current line
H, M, L Top, Middle, Last line of screen
nH, nL n number of lines after Tp line and before Last line
 

Line Number in Vi
ctrl G Display current line number
nG move to line number n
G move to last line in file
:n move to line n in file

Scrolling in Vi
ctrl F, ctrl B scroll Forward, Backward one screen
ctrl D, ctrl U scroll Down, Up one half screen
ctrl E, ctrl Y show one more line at Bottom, Top of window
ctrl L redraw screen without scrolling
z return, z., z- reposition line with cursor: to Top, Middle, Bottom of screen
 

Searching in Vi
/pattern, ?pattern search Forward, Backward for pattern
n, N repeat last search in Same , Opposite direction
/, ? repeat previous search Forward, Backward
fx, Fx search Forward, Backward for character x in current line
tx, Tx search Forward, Backward to character Before, After x in current line
; repeat previous current line search
, repeat previous current line search in opposite direction
 

Editing Commands
Insert
i, a insert text Before, After cursor
I, A insert text Before beginning, After end of line
o, O open new line for text Below, Above cursor
 
Yank (copy)
yw copy word
yy copy current line
"ayy copy current line into named buffer a (a-z). uppercase names append text
ymotion copy text between the cursor and the target of motion
p, P put copied text After, Before cursor
"aP put text from buffer a Before cursor (a-z)
Change
r replace character
cw change word
cc change current line
cmotion change text between the cursor and the target of motion
C change to end of line
R overwrite characters
S substitute: delete current line and insert new text
s substitute: delete character and insert new text
 
Other Commands
. repeat last edit command
u, U undo last edit, restore current line
J delete lines
Delete, Move
x delete character under cursor
X delete character before cursor
dw delete word
dd delete current line
dmotion delete text between the cursor and the target of motion
D delete to end of line
p, P put deleted text After, Before cursor
"np put text from delete buffer number n after cursor (for last 9 deletions)
 
ex edit commands
:m move lines
:co or :t copy lines
:.,$d delete from current line to end of file
:.,/pattern/co$  copy from current line through line containing pattern to end of file.
:30,60m0 move lines 30 through 60 to top of file
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Posted by Steve Major on August 11, 2007 2:31:00 PM EDT #

Time Warner Settings

IP: 72.43.24.138
Gateway: 72.43.24.137
Subnet: 255.255.255.252
DNS1: 24.92.226.11
DNS2: 24.92.226.12
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Posted by Steve Major on August 1, 2007 4:56:00 PM EDT #