Can you believe it? %*&@^}!#$* Machlink! For those of you who don’t know, Machlink is my ISP. They also host my web page; but not for much longer - I have chosen a web host, just haven’t purchased and migrated yet. They were compromised because, well, in my opinion they don’t know what they are doing. A high school kid broke in and sent an email to all the ISP users telling them exactly how he broke in and how Machlink should fix it. Don’t know if they have fixed it or not. And to think, I was accused of being a security risk because I run a commenting system on my blog that uses PHP scripts! The funny thing is they don’t know who did the hack and don’t know where the hack gained access.
The thing is, they run their web servers on Sun’s Solaris OS. This is a great and secure OS…….if it is set up properly, if it is managed properly, and if it is kept up to date. They are running Solaris v5.8 (it said that in the message the kid sent); the current version is Solaris v9. What’s up with that? If Solaris is too expensive to keep up to date then get Linux. If you have trouble with Linux, get IIS (in my opinion, that would truly be foolish). Geez, get SOMETHING that is up to date! I spend about $40 a month for this service - do you think I’ll get refunded the days that they are down? I think NOT.
It’s been down since the hack and now is slower than before. Any of their services that require authentication were down: web server and email. Yeah, we could still browse the internet, just not any Machlink sites. ICDSoft, here I come. $65 for a year with 333 Mb of web space, 5 subdomains and unlimited email accounts. Hopefully by next weekend I’ll be migrated.

Haven’t done this in a while because the Friday Fives have really sucked. However, this is a good one (at least question 5!) So, without further ado, the Friday Five:

1. Who is your favorite singer/musician? Why?
It’s hard to beat Stevie Ray Vaughan. He was arguably the best blues guitarist of my lifetime, but didn’t really have a ton of rips trying to prove it over and over (Steven Vai?) He was simply great. Also, you can’t deny that Eric Clapton is one of the best. Singer? Wow. I really like Noah Hunt of the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band, but also like Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. It’s really hard to pick just one.

2. What one singer/musician can you not stand? Why?
Don’t know that I have only ONE. Bob Dylan makes my skin crawl because he can’t sing; he writes great songs, but he should get someone else to sing them. To expand on this, I’d go with many of the country acts that are out there (country music is an oxymoron).

3. If your favorite singer wasn’t in the music business, do you think you would still like him/her as a person?
I find this a hard question to answer as I don’t personally know any of the singers in any of the bands I like. If I don’t know them now, how can I say if I’d like them without them being in the music business?

4. Have you been to any concerts? If yes, who put on the best show?
Jeez - 47 and lived through the ’70’s. Have I been to concerts? DUH! I like the show Styx puts on - I saw them in college and then again just last year. They still rock. Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band puts on a good show. A great local band that puts on a GREAT show is Cheese Pizza. If you are in the midwest and can make one of their shows, I’d advise it. They are highly entertaining.

5. What are your thoughts on downloading free music online vs. purchasing albums? Do you feel the RIAA is right in its pursuit to stop people from dowloading free music?
I feel the RIAA is what is screwing up music today. As Moby says, “We will all look back in shame at a time when eleven year old girls decide what is music”. Music today is too much marketing and not enough substance. If it came down to the world coming to and end unless Brittney Spears could sing a song, I’ll be kissing my ass goodbye. I mean really, there is so much formula out there today that there is no room for a decent band to break in. THAT is why P2P and downloading of free music will succeed. Check out what Moby thinks about computers and music here and here.

I found out what was wrong! Turns out it was a bad DIMM. You know….memory module. I found an entry on a gamer’s board with an entry similar to one of the errors I was experiencing. The poster said it turned out to be an error in the RAM and they had found it out using a free memory testing utility called DocMem. Well, one small download and boot-disk creation later, I found that the DIMM I was using was bad. Off to Best Buy we went to get new RAM. And now….voila! It works! Breezomatic is now with her PC and the church has a nice, quick computer for creating bulletins and newsletters with. Boy, though, did that give me a headache!

Jeez, has my luck been bad lately or what? Check out these two separate but related incidents:
1. The hard drive on my daughter’s PC dies. No problem, it’s over six years old and has had a lot of use over the years. It started in my PC and has cascaded to hers. OK, let’s order a new one. So, I go out to Surplus Computers and pick up a nice OEM 20Gb hard drive. It gets in and I can’t load squat on it. I try Windows 2000 in about six or seven different configurations with no luck. I try Windows 98SE in two or three ways and again, no luck. Just for kicks and giggles, I try Mandrake Linux 9.1 and again, NO LUCK. Heck, I can’t even format the sucker. So, I get with them and get a return. I now have another hard drive and it seemed to do the same thing, except that I COULD install Linux (after repeated tries of Windows 2000 and 98SE).
2. The church wanted to upgrade the PC for the pastor. They had a Gateway 2000 (don’t even get me started on that!) with a Pentium 133, 24Mb RAM and a 1.2Gb hard drive. OLD, OLD, OLD!! So, I said I could upgrade it for cost. I order a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and hard drive. (Biostar, Athlon 1600XP, 256Mb, 20Gb) The Biostar won’t even boot; gives me the CPU Savior’s warning siren and no other activity. So, I exchange the motherboard for a Soyo. Now it boots fine, but the same thing that’s going on with Breezomatic’s PC is going on with this one. Can’t load Windows 2000 or Windows 98SE.
I’ve been on the MS site and found NOTHING that helps. I’ve searched the web and again found NOTHING. Oh man, I hope that I can get out of this rut. I didn’t have these problems when I built my nephew’s PC for college last month. Maybe I’m just due.

It truly is a sad day - Robyn has temporarily shut down her site “Ain’t Too Proud to Blog“. I have enjoyed reading her site, although this summer has been an on-again/off-again situation from my end. Robyn has had one of the most prolific blogs; not only has she published quantity but quality. She always seems to have a lot to say and most of it is thought-provoking and interesting. She has said she will come back in October to publish the 2nd Annual Boobie-thon. For those of you who don’t know, it was a great success last year raising over $1250 for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
I for one will mourn her loss from this space. She was an inspiration to me for having a quality site with quality content. I can only hope that my site can grow to what hers was when she put it on hold. Robyn, if you read this I’m not ass-kissing here, either!!

1. What housekeeping chore(s) do you hate doing the most?
Dusting. My mom never dusted (of course we lived on a gravel road and if you dusted, 5 minutes later it didn’t look like you did.) I still don’t see the point.

2. Are there any that you like or don’t mind doing?
I don’t mind doing the laundry. I can watch a movie with minimal interruption and get the laundry done at the same time — including any hangups on the outside clothes line.

3. Do you have a routine throughout the week or just clean as it’s needed?
We sort of have a routine. Each evening either KC or I make supper; the other one cleans up afterward. (I usually cook so I don’t HAVE to do dishes!) Also each weekend we do laundry and give the house a general cleanup/touchup.

4. Do you have any odd cleaning/housekeeping quirks or rules?
Not really. If I do them all the time and don’t really see any differences in the way KC or I do them, are they quirks?

5. What was the last thing you cleaned?
I did the dishes earlier tonight.

Can you believe it? Another Labor Day party of my dad’s come and gone! It was a great time except for one factor (the one we couldn’t control at all): the weather. We had rain all day; not a hard, driving rain, but a gentle sprinkle just enough to make it a bother to go outside but not enough to mess up the entire day.
Dad’s got a large meat smoker, so we had smoked pork loin, smoked turkey and smoked chicken (KC and I supplied the turkey and chicken). Let me tell you, that smoker does a great job with a nice load of apple wood to do the cooking! I ate myself silly (as usual) and it was all good. Others who came out brought out some dish; there was macaroni salad, corn casserole, seven layer salad, brownies, cookies, spanish rice, chips and dips, homemade rolls, green bean casserole, fruit salad, melon and a lot of other things that I just couldn’t try. After a while, I simply couldn’t eat any more.
Of course, to wash it all down we had Leinenkugel’s and some other GOOD beers. For those that didn’t want the good stuff we also had Old Style Lite. And there was also some wine, hard lemonade, and (of course) soda, water, juice and KoolAid. Never let it be said that we didn’t cater to all age groups!
Ed took some pictures and posted them here. Looks like quite a few! I wanted to get an inexpensive digital camera, but never did get into Wal-Mart with the urge to buy. I’ve been looking at a Vivitar that is less than $50 and can take over 100 before downloading has to take place. I simply haven’t bought it. Just lazy I guess.