jeffpollard.net

Div-Crazy

I just want to state for the record (again) that I HATE (with a burning passion) DIV tags. They don't render the same on all browsers and I can't seem to make them work here. It doesn't matter whether I specify a 400 or 500 pixel center content tag..it stays the exact same size. Infuriating.

CT Housecleaning

Another slow day at work allowed me to do some CustomTacos administrative housecleaning and stuff. Gotta love "...and stuff...". I found some really good advice on a forum somewhere that suggested some security precautions that I take to protect my server. See, this server is all me. I mean, I've got the ServerMatrix people watching my back in case someone breaks in (I think), but they're not actively checking my server for security holes. It's up to me. And it's kinda fun, actually. I patched up some possible security holes, turned off remote root login, and a bunch of other stuff that I can't write here because..well, it would defeat the purpose.

Tonight, I investigated why it seems like so many http requests are failing on the site. Lately, it seems like every page I load has at least 1 or 2 missing images...or the page doesn't load at all. It turns out that my watchdog senses were right on. Here's the skinny: I looked in my Apache error_log and found a recurring error that was pretty non-descript. A quick Google search on the error message told me that Apache was having trouble writing to a log file because it had gotten too big (2gb is the limit, apparently). Funny that it continued writing to a log file to tell me that a log file had gotten too big. That log file itself had grown to an enormous 75MB. After some searching around on my server, I found the offending log file. It was an error log for CustomTacos that was just over the 2gb limit. Weird. So, I removed the file and restarted Apache. All fixed.

But...why would that error log have grown so HUGE? There had to be a reason. I tweaked my log rotator script to rotate that log more often and then began watching the error log to watch the errors in real time as they were happening. I began seeing the same couple of files appearing in the error file. To make a long story short, I had forgotten a "/" in two lines in my include file for the entire site, so EVERY PAGE was generating 2 error lines for a file that Apache couldn't find. I left the live error log scrolling and went and fixed the error. When I came back, the scrolling had stopped. Pretty neat. I cleaned up a few more offending files and felt confident that my error log shouldn't grow that large again.

I swear, this could be a full-time job.

Not Quite Half-Done

Ok, so here's the new look. It's about 30% completed. In fact, this is about the only page that is (almost) done. There's still some small detail things I'll be changing on this page over the next couple of days. And, of course, updating the rest of the site. I sat here and browsed through my own site today. Ever do that? It was kinda funny. Nothing is really relevant anymore. Guess I have lots of work to do.

MT: Finally

I finally made the big switch over to Movable Type tonight. Call it boredom. Call it necessity. Call it smart, if nothing else. Greymatter served me well for nearly 3 years, but it was time to move to something with better options, not to mention support. Gotta love Movable Type.

So, yeh, the site looks a little funny right now. give me a day or two and things will REALLY start looking funny. I've got a bold new look for the site and a major reorganization of content. I'm looking forward to messin' with it.

See how bored I get while Olivia's away?

After the moves are over, and the kitty's gone...

Wow, what a busy and strange few weeks it's been since I last posted on here.

I finally decided that I wasn't getting a great web hosting deal anymore with OLM and purchased a dedicated server with ServerMatrix.com. OLM's price just weren't competitive anymore..at all. They still wanted to charge me over $100 for 50gb of monthly bandwidth, and a measly 4gb drive. Crazy. My new dedicated box has a terabyte (yes, that's 1000 gigabytes) of monthly bandwidth and a 40GB drive. It's a beast and it's been nothing but PERFECT since it was set up. They're now my web hosting company of choice.

So, the first site I moved over to the new server was this site, a few weeks ago. Everything went pretty smooth, so I next moved CustomTacos over. It also went fairly smooth, with only minor hiccups with my premium user's email accounts. Next, I finally got my new CustomTacos design up and running. Here's the old site compared to the new site:

Pretty big change. I also made some new desktop wallpapers and some other cool new stuff for the site. My users seem very pleased, which makes me happy.

So, I guess most of you heard about us finding that kitten two Fridays ago. Luckily (I think), we found a good home for little "squeeker" yesterday. My coworker's mother had a friend who was looking for a kitten. So, we somehow got in communication with each other and decided to meet at the Regency Square Mall parking lot last night to make the exchange. I knew it was going to be sad. It's tough NOT to get attached to such a sweet little animal after caring for her for a week and a half. She was so sweet and we're really going to miss her.

Work is back to normal now, which is great. In fact, if I had to guess, I'd say that our call volume might even be down from what it was before the big hardware and OS X switch. I was hoping this would be the case, since OS X tends to have less problems overall than 9.

So, Christmas is coming up and I have not done very much shopping. Anything I've done so far I've done online. I love shopping from the convenience of my house. :)

By the way, I moved Olivia's site over to my new server two nights ago, so she doesn't have to pay for her hosting anymore. Yay progress!

Oh, I just got a phone call from my coworker who found our kitten a home and said she talked to the lady who we gave the cat to today and she has named her "Lovey". How fitting. :)