Category: Computers

Pave Paradise and Put Up More Data Centers

Posted on by chappyshi

It griefs me to see how much the area by my office has changed.  My office is in a data center in a complex of four buildings, nearby is what was once the Verizon HQ which has a few large building, and Amazon has data centers in the area.  As of this time last year, there were 6.5 million square feet, about 107 acres, of data center floor space in my area, which is Ashburn, VA, one of the wealthiest areas of the country w/ very high property values.  The fact that there are so many data centers here already makes it cheaper to build more data centers in the area.  With the property values as they are, the fact that companies can afford to host data centers here means they must be making a good profit though one of the reasons they do build here is because we have some of the cheapest electricity in the country.  Why that would be I don’t know.

As Ed can attest to, there was a fair amount of undeveloped land in the area….not virgin forest by any stretch of the imagination but there were maybe 500 acres of unused land.  As I watch day by day and month by month, construction (or destruction) vehicles, rip up the trees and bushes to clear the land to build more data centers.  It was particularly unsettling to watch, as I sat at a stop light near my office, the destruction of some very lovely flowering trees.  More than likely, that section of land will be cleared by the end of this coming week.

I don’t understand why we need all these data centers.  What is all this data for?  Where is it coming from…besides Facebook?  What good is all this data?  Can it really make life better for humanity?  I doubt it.  And what about the damage to the environment.  We’ll see more erosion, convert less carbon dioxide to oxygen, diminish habitat for God’s creatures, and certainly not improve the views.  It takes power to run all these computers in the data centers.  Then it takes power to cool down the computers in the data centers.  As of last year, there was 676 megawatts of commissioned power for data center use in Ashburn.

I don’t know what that means really or how it translates into say… powering homes.  I am still trying to figure that one out.  I do know that it seems like a waste of resources.  As regards that data, I am not keeping my personally created files out there in someone’s data center so whatever all this is for, it isn’t benefiting me.  Given that, is it really benefiting that many of us that is worth the expense and resources.  I would venture to say no.

One Year at My New Job

Posted on by chappyshi

Last night marked one complete year at my job w/ Lockheed Martin Automated Flight Service Station.  I have been working the service desk and network operation/security center…on 12-hour night watches for most of the last six months.  I started as a contractor and got signed on full time w/ LM in late April.  The schedule and hard work have payed off.  I have been in line for a promotion to a systems administrator type position for a few months now.

I look forward to the change and opportunity to get back more heavily into Windows and Linux systems administration since that is more my background than help desk and NOC support.  I also will be glad to get back on to a day schedule that will be mostly Mon-Fri with flex time and telecommuting.  The down side is that I will have on call duty but that isn’t anything I haven’t dealt with in previous IT jobs.

My superiors seem to have a lot of faith in me and my coworkers respect me.  I hope to be able to return those feelings by helping our group to grow with increased training, organization, and communication.  Wish me luck!

Order Disorder

Posted on by chappyshi

I ordered concert tickets earlier this evening.  It costs less, for me, $2.75 vice $4.75, to have them snail mailed to me than to have them emailed…  What is up with that?  The seller has  to pay for the ink, paper, and postage for snail mail and for next to nothing to email.  Apparently most people  pay no attention and just have the tickets emailed to themselves at nearly twice the price of having them sent via the postal service.  Ticket sellers are…wait for it…winning!

Lost Emails

Posted on by chappyshi

Last night before going to work I noticed that I hadn’t got any email since about 1500.  Not that I get that much email but it seemed a bit odd.  This morning after work and early this afternoon when I got up, I still had no new mail.  I checked my quota on my mail hosting service and had used less than half of my quota.  I saw from my Gmail account that forwards mail to my hosting service that my forwards were getting rejected due to a full mail box.

Well that was puzzling.  After contacting tech support, I found that I had not used up the physical capacity of my mail box but had reached the limit of the number of messages I could have in my mailbox, which was 3000.  The tech kindly upped my quota to 6000.

I asked him what good the record of physical usage was if the quota was based both on that and the number of messages.  He said that I had to monitor the number of messages in my account via webmail.  I asked if there was any kind of alerting to let users know when they were nearing either quota and was told that there was not.

Thankfully, I am not trying to run a business using this email because the lost emails could cost me money.  I think I would have to change hosting services were I to have a business dependent on email.  I think that my hosting service needs to reconsider its approach.

Anyhow, I did not get email for about 24 hours starting yesterday at 1500 so I you sent me an email between then and now, please resend it.

Just Another Web Scam…Read the Fine Print

Posted on by chappyshi

Watch out for these guys.  I am not sure how they got me but they have been getting me for quite a while.  I am likely to flush $350 down the toilet because I wasn’t watching a credit card I almost never use.  I take the blame for that definitely but I still want my money back from these assholes:

MVQ*24PROTECTPLUS

Here is their “claim to fame,” “raison d’existence,” or really their “how can we screw you now without you knowing it until we have sucked some bucks out of you” statement:

“24 Protect Plus members can enjoy greater peace of mind through a variety of benefits designed to provide greater security and protection for their homes, family members, finances, pets, cars and more.  As a 24Protect Plus member, you can protect your family budget as well, thanks to more than $1,500 in savings each membership year.”

What the hell does that mean?  I obviously missed a check box somewhere and/or did not read the fine print and, as I well admit, didn’t look at my credit card statement carefully enough.  Nonetheless, I cannot see how any responsible enforcer of business law could find a reason why anyone would sign up for this “service.”  Look at the web site…what services are they providing that one would pay a monthly fee for?

I tried to get some money back from these assholes but will be lucky if I get 20% out of it.  I will be taking this one further because there are certainly others out there that have been sucked in to the same scam.  And I don’t like taking it without lube…

Passwords In the Clear

Posted on by chappyshi

I was recently reminded of a work incident that occurred a few years ago whenn I needed to retrieve a forgotten password.  The coworker/system, instead of generating a new password and emailing it to me and forcing me to immediately change it, brought the password up in the clear.  I use, shall we say, racy, embarrassing passwords.  They haven’t been compromised and I remember them but I don’t want others to know what they are for the obvious reason that they are passwords but for the less obvious reason that the might be construed as very weird.

So it is weird and bad enough if one of your coworkers pulls up a password which embarrasses you.  The other day I was at the library and…yep…you got it.  I ask to see if I can view a history of books that I have checked out and the female librarian asks for my card number.  I give it to her and as she is saying “the default password is “111111” which I had changed at first logon, she is somehow pulling up my account with my “not for public consumption  password” and telling me that I have such and such checked out.

Well  I know what I had currently checked out.  I wanted to see a history of all of the books I had checked out.  I think that they can’t keep that info for privacy reasons though I may be wrong about that.  NTL, the librarian said that they might not be able to store all that info due to storage limitations.  I kind of doubt that because all you need are a few fields like a card number linked to a user name, and every book that had been checked out on that card number.  That database would not require that many fields and take up that much disk space in my estimation.

The bottom line is why do we still have major databases systems out there that store passwords in the clear?  If you are a system administrator and can reset passwords, whether or not the password is in the clear is no matter.  But if you are a hacker, it is a different story.  No serious computer system should store passwords in the clear!

Coppermine Photo Album Bug 2, Not!

Posted on by chappyshi

I thought I had another bug in my Coppermine Photo Album but after much research, a backup of my web site and database, and an upgrade of my photo album software  I found that I had just screwed up.

When batch uploading files to my site I got the error “no new file was found.”  Finally, and embarrassingly enough, I realized that I had created the server folder containing my new photos using spaces and symbols in the name which is a definite no no as far as I am concerned.  I have used filenames sans symbols and spaces for years considering that they were an unnecessary complication in the world of 0’s and 1’s.

After removing the  offending spaces and symbols, I was easily able to publish my photos.  The PHP software that I use for my photo album just couldn’t handle the offending characters.

Coppermine Photo Album Bug 1

Posted on by chappyshi

I am not convinced of this yet but it appears that I cannot post photos that have no “EXIF” data to my Coppermine photo album.  I have not found confirmation that that is a problem yet on the Web but it is a problem for me.

Photos batch processed using Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 lose their “EXIF” info and can’t seem to be published to my Coppermine photo album.