Prime Time Communications; Oh, Really?

I’m looking for an internet connection faster than my 7mbps/768kbps DSL line.  The upload speed is just way too low (as I do big remote backups and the like).  I’ve looked around at fiber solutions but haven’t been able to find one that comes to my area.

Today I stumbled upon Prime Time Communications and thought I’d contact them about availability in my area.  I filled out their availability form and clicked “submit.”  404 – Object not found.

So I filled out their support form and included my availability request as well as a note about how the availability form didn’t work.  When I clicked “submit” it went to a completely blank (i.e., no source to the page at all) page.  I tried again just in case, and it did the same thing.

“Wow, this is not good.”  Next I tried to call their phone number.  It started ringing after about 15 seconds (strange for a phone), rang about 4 times, and then a recording came on and announced something like, “All lines are unavailable.”

Prime Time Communications really doesn’t want to be bothered apparently.

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Carol of the Bells

Lehi Children’s Choir’s 2009 Christmas tour’s performance of Carol of the Bells at the American Fork tabernacle.

Ubuntu 9.10; Arg!

I’m a long-time ubuntu user, starting back in the Hoary Hedgehog (5.04) days.  I have a file server that has been upgraded from 7.04 (or was it 6.10?) without much incidence (besides openldap woes, but that has happened every time so I’ve given up on clean upgrades there).

All that has changed with my latest upgrade to 9.10.

JavaScript and Prototypal Inheritance

It’s beautiful in its simplicity. Objects simply inheriting from other objects. Who needs classes?!

Migrating from Gmail to Google Apps

You’ve probably already seen the POP solution for migrating or importing gmail email to your shiny new google apps email. But then you’ll lose tags and original dates and stuff. Blech. This is a much better solution if you have access to a linux box. This originally came from the thamtech blog along with a couple of really helpful comments. I cleaned it up a bit and made it a step-by-step guide for ubuntu (but it should work elsewhere).

Module “xgi” Does Not Exist after Upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10

My Dell SC430 has an integrated card that worked with the Xorg auto-detection in 9.04. But in 9.10 it for some reason tries to load an “xgi” driver that doesn’t exist. After some research I found that xgi chipsets are supported by the sis driver. So I told Xorg to use that in the Section “Device” section:


Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "sis"
EndSection


Now X works again!

Self-signed Certificates

Note that this is from a previous page I had that I’m republishing here as the machine that hosted that old page is now gone. There are some things that need to be clarified, but for now it is what it is.

Why become your own CA? Sure there are a lot of instructions out there that show you how to create self-signed certificates, but if you have a number of servers you’re doing this for, you’d have to give the certs out to those who want to use them for each and every service. This way you don’t. You only have to give them the public CA certificate and all of the certs you sign with your CA key will be acceptable to them. Besides, it’s fun for everyone involved.

Mac Stuff

Well, if I have to use a Mac at work then I may as well have a little fun.

Quicksilver and iTerm Bookmark Integration

I wanted to make it easy to launch ssh’ing to hosts from quicksilver. I couldn’t find a really clean way to do it so I put together some ideas out there for myself. This is the result.

Leading People in the Tech Industry

Throughout my career so far in the tech industry I’ve had various opportunities all at varying degrees to fill leadership roles. It’s interesting how each organization I’ve been in has different ways of dividing up the leadership responsibilities. It can become overwhelming to not only carve out what those responsibilities are but also how to fulfill them effectively.