Apr 04 2003
Such an exciting life
I spent most of today getting caught up with work. I’m enemployed, but I still have work to do. Such is the life of a sys admin when he’s doing web hosting. Too bad 90% of our customers don’t pay…
I spent most of today setting up DNS for all of them, then setting up the hosting space and the email servers. And while I was at it, fixing little things that were broken, cleaning up stuff. I had copied all domain files from the old server to the new server, but not all the domains had actually been migrated, so I went and cleaned out those that don’t reside on the new server. It was getting confusing remembering which serever was hosting which domains.
I need to come up with a CGI script so Thomas can just go to a web page on the in-house server, fill in a domain, and it will log into the DNS, mail and web servers and set them up without me having to touch anything.
I’m starting to fall behind in school. I left my homework for both my classes to the last minute, so they didn’t get done in time. And I got a 90% on my last quiz. I need to finish both labs that are already due, then do the two labs for this week this weekend. Luckily it’s all easy stuff. One of them will require actually going to the school computer lab though, since it requires equipment I don’t have here at home (a null modem cable, of all things).
I really need to find a job soon. Thomas was bugging me about money again today. The financial aid people at school are somewhat less than helpful. I gave them some paperwork they requested, only to have them give it back to me saying they didn’t understand my answers. What’s not to understand? I was unemployed. Therefor I made $0. That’s what I put on the form. I did my taxes and claimed an earned income credit, so I put that on the form. She couldn’t understand how I could have an earned income credit if I didn’t file a tax return. Obviously I filed a return, idiot!
People have gotten all bent out of shape on the Userfriendly fan list. A new user came on and started PGP signing his mail. I asked him politely to not do that when mailing this list. He did so again, and another user asked him to please trim his responses, as he had embedded a one line reply in the middle of a lot of quoting. I replied to that again asking the newbie to not PGP sign mail. All hell broke loose after that. A bunch of people who have been on the list forever and a day and know the rules jumped up and down demanding to know why this wasn’t allowed. Even the more technical people who understand how email and PGP worked didn’t get it. One even started calling it “dictatorial rules carried out by the admins” and pointing out that he had helped fund the renewel of the domain name registration and he was going to sign off if we didn’t “back down”. I came very close to invoking Godwin’s law on him and warning him to not let the door hit him on the butt on his way out. Luckily it seems to have blown over now.