But seriously folks - Comcast has been jacking my rates ESPECIALLY over the last 4yrs like 25-30% per year. It was getting to be too much. I was in the waiting game for i3 Broadband to get my neighborhood wired up. They've been building out the local area for about 10yrs now. Last summer they finally got to our block.

The official switchover was Saturday the 25th. So far so good. You should notice an increase in speeds downloading from my site.

Where Comcast was providing asymmetrical 100/15Mb/s service, i3 is providing me symmetrical 100Mb/s service. (I don't need faster that that.)

So here we are. Yay moving IP addresses and VPN tunnels and DNS -- Oh boy!

(11 Dec, 2024)
You know. I look around at the fancy web pages and the CMSs that run them are nice. But also I like the websites that are NOT obviously served up by a CMS that's just using another template that so many others are using.

This website is 100% written by me. In 'vi' no less. And while I agree it looks goofy and outdated, That's no necessarily a bad thing. I dunno. At some point I'll figure out something to do with all this and then do it. Meanwhile, I have too many other tasks on the to-do list.

(17 Jul, 2024)
I know. I know. Beeeeeennnnn... Your website is so stale. I know.

I've slowly (I might die before I finish) moving the web server to new hardware with an OS update. I really kinda loathe what RedHat has done with CentOS... and honestly, I still look at the server setup and wonder if it's worth moving to Mint in a server role -- but Mint (Ubuntu/debian) doesn't do RAID1 boot/root drives. So if the system had a drive error, it would down for restore time rather than a drive failing and just getting swapped out. I dunno. (sigh) I just don't know.

And the move is almost done. So no time to experiment setting up something else. I want to free up the other hardware for that. Meanwhile, here we are -- 2024 and still in that transition.

(30 Jan, 2023)
Wow ... still a lot of dead links. (even more... )

Let's see... I need to apparently take out "SpamPoison.com" since it's disappeared. (Boo!)

And my weather links in Misc need to be updates as The Weather Channel appears to have moved them. (Boo!) But they are fixed now and I'm using the National Weather Service. So Nyah.

(1 Jun, 2021)
OMG! so many dead links. I need to do some cleaning.

(1 Feb, 2021)
I know. Right? 2021 -- "Where's your CMS based website Mr. Ben?"

Well, with CentOS getting snookered into being upstream from RHEL, I'm not sure I'll run it anymore. So now I have to look for another LTS distro for Linux.

And maybe CentOS Stream won't be so bad. I'll be keeping an eye on it.

But then there's also Rocky Linux (founder of CentOS starting up again) and that will be worth looking into.

(4 Mar, 2019)
Yes... Yes.. It's 2019. I've been so busy working on client projects and all the other things surrounding my daily business.... I've not posted much.

At some point, I want to move the site to a CMS... but even that is a project because there's so many things I've hand coded into this version of the site that I want to make sure I understand how to move over. (not just my content either.)

So many things to do... it's not just a task. Heheh...

(21 Jan, 2018)
OMG, it's 2018 already. I don't mean to be lame. Just so many things going on with clients and life that my website is not getting updated as much as I'd like it to. What I'd really like to do is update to a CMS at some point - but haven't even had time for that. In some ways, I'm amused this web backend code has been running in place now since 1997.

1997 people!! LoL... Anyway - back to work for me.

(20 Dec, 2016)
Wow -- what a busy year. I have so much to write about. So much to do (like convert this site to a CMS). In the meantime, work away I do.... coming up soon though, stay tuned for an article about why Garmin is becoming less and less a sensible choice for their electronics products.

(05 Jul, 2016)
I've decided I really need to add a section called "SupportSuck" that chronicles all the support calls with companies who just super FAIL at support.

Yes yes. I realize it's because companies do this on purpose. But when I call support, it's usually because I've found a legit problem the company would probably want to know about.

Just read this link in the New York Times about crappy tech support is a designed feature. It really puts context to why tech support is such a nightmare.

I'm currently working with TrendNet and Pelco about serious flaws in software they've written and the problems they're causing. So far, TrendNet web support has been as expected: Completely worthless. We'll see how Pelco does when they contact me back.

(23 Mar, 2015)
OMG - it's 2015! Where does the time go. I need to do some writing on this site. So much work. Hey! Anyone need a job? ;)

(14 Sep, 2014)
Hey! It's 2014 -- I've been busy.... sorry but haven't had time to post a lot here.

(18 Feb, 2013)
Wow - 2013 already!! Poof... just like that - 2012, gone!

And we survived! The Earth didn't just 'splode!!

(14 Jul, 2012)
OMG! Ben's running on new server hardware!!

Can I just say I love the fact that I can get multiple times the processing power on a fraction of the operating electrical power?

Yes, that's right -- The website has moved from

	Old Hardware	New Hardware
CPU	Dual 600MHz Pentium-III	Dual Core 1.8GHz Atom D525 w/HT
RAM	1GB	3GB
Storage	18GB SCSI-FW RAID1	160GB 3Gb/s SATA RAID1
OS	Fedora	CentOS
Chassis / Weight	3U Rackmount 50+lbs	1U Rackmount ~15lbs
Power Usage	150W (200W Peak)	< 50w (est)

Awesome.

(16 Mar, 2012)
Mmmm, need to update site - as always. Too many projects. Too little time.

Who wants to write some tech docs for me? :D

(31 Dec, 2011)
Happy 2012 everyone!

I would also like to say thanks for all the positive feedback users have sent to me on my techtips pages (most notably the Toshiba fix page).

I can guess how irritated you all were when you progressed through the potential repair process by people you can just tell don't care and just want their money for something Toshiba should know better about.

I'm glad you all got your TV's to work (and I know some did not because they had different models). I'm sorry I couldn't help in those cases.

I love hearing back from everyone. Happy New Year!

(8 Aug, 2011)
Wow! Time for a little cleanup.

Nothing to report for the moment. Busy with work.
Flying is fun. Need to do more.
A really crazy year for sure.

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