lvidmar

Working on the layout…

Content again? It’s been a while, but I threw up a couple pages of content. Made a nifty list of all the albums I’ve got on CD or otherwise for my music section (more will be there eventually), and put my links and portfolio pages back up. Once I get my resumé current again, that will be up as well. Enjoy.

If you’ve visited the site a few times, you may or may not notice some of the minor changes I’ve been periodically making. I’ve been working more behind the scenes on my individual archive template, I showed some of you to try to get some feedback, the rest of you will see it when it’s done. I also have some spiffy photos from my winter break in Arizona that will come with that update. If something just looks completely broken (besides the archive templates.. I know about those) let me know. If you don’t know how to get ahold of me, go away. 🙂

Took about a half hour, but I got this main page validating again, XHTML 1.0 Strict. It looks right in gecko and webcore browsers. I’ll find out on Monday what it looks like in MS Exploiter.

I’m kinda sorta looking for a new web host. Eryxma just isn’t quite working for me. Way back in 2002 when I signed up, several sites they host went down for a long period of time (because they were relocating servers or something)… fast forward to 2004 and their ENTIRE network has been down for multiple hours on at least 2 occasions… also in between these occurances my website was hacked into, and they made no apparent effort to track down the intruder or to patch my system. Needless to say, I’m less than pleased with them. Currently looking into Dreamhost, 1-and-1, and seeing if some friends of mine are going in on a rackspace server somewhere. Any suggestions, please gimme a shout!

Windows security = Oxymoron?

disclaimer: my cynicism on this topic will tend to exagerate things a little bit.

Tonight at work we had our “Windoze sucks, it’s users are incompetant, and we need to accomodate them anyways” seminar. Essentially talking about what needs to be done before people are “allowed” on the campus network.

Windoze XP SP2 will supposedly make it the OS it “should have been” in the first place, what took so long? And holy shit, a 400+MB upgrade?? That’s disturbing! Not that I’ll trust a microsloth branded anti-virus, pop-up-blocker, or firewall anyways. Now, I’m not saying the entire world needs to use Macs… just that the best solution to computer and network security is DIVERSITY. If everyone was using a different operating system, these viruses and worms would have a much harder time propagating themselves.

I am sufficiently content using an operating system that doesn’t need to be anti-virus’d, and severely patched before getting on any form of network… and I also don’t mind not needing to remove hundreds of pieces of spyware from my computer once a month or so.

On a very positive note, we were told that we can push people away from IE/outlook* onto different and better applications. Especially Mozilla/FireFox (web browsers), and Thunderbird (e-mail client). Though I would also be comfortable setting users up with Opera (another browser), or Eudora (another e-mail client). Seriosly folks, try some of this software out, use whatever you like, but realize that microsloth’s “integration” is it’s greatest downfall, and using another application is a big step in the right direction.

Microsloth.

Microsoft is an amazing entity isn’t it? They put out the worst flea-ridden piece of garbage, call it Windoze, and millions of people use it mindlessly. Well this just caught my eye.. According to my callendar it’s now February, 2004. They just now are releasing a CD that patches things up to October, 2003. Oh, and feel free to wait a month for delivery. Microsoft is dumb.

It makes me sick. People buy PC computer because it’s cheap, and then go whining to their tech support people when they open an e-mail, or simply contract a windoze killing worm from just being connected to the internet. I have no problem helping people out, and nudging them in the right direction (installing anti-virus software, and not using Explorer to touch the web, or Outlook anything to read e-mail, etc) and of course plugging Macs whenever possible.

Spyware? What’s that? Don’t get me started. One of the PC’s where I work got a nice going over by SpyBot today, with well over 100 pieces of spyware on it. People that work here aren’t stupid, though some of the software we play with during idle time might not be the best.

Have you hugged a geek today?