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This is the main blog for Mike McBride Online, where you can keep track of everything I'm in to in one place.
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| Saturday, March 30, 2002
Updates! I just posted an update to the News Aggregator Showdon article today. Here's what I added: "Additional followup: Upon further investigation, I discovered one major flaw with Newzcrawler, the permalinks don't seem to work on many blog RSS feeds.It's not enough to sway me to the other choice but it's troubling. I also tried, on the recommendation of one of my visitors, a free aggregator called Feedreader. Seems like it might be worth a try so off I go and download it. First strike, no way to set it to run using a proxy server and a firewall. So it will have to wait until the weekend when I'm at home and can use it there without the proxy. Get it downloaded and it seems to be similar to Newzcrawler, same sort of folder layout, ability to add you own feeds, only a handful of default feeds, but does pick up feeds from weblogs.com and other blog "portals". The permalinks even work! It doesn't have some of the advanced features of Newzcrawler but seems like it'll be a good simple solution. And then it happened. The program crashed. It commited an illegal operation. Then it crashed again 1 minute after I restarted it. After restarting the PC this time, it locked up. Three strikes and you're out! It had some promise, but wasn't stable on my PC. Your's may be different, of course, but I'm sticking with my first choice, Newzcrawler. Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 1:56 PM | 0 comments | 
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Friday, March 29, 2002
Reruns rock! I never thought I'd actually have reason to think that reruns rock, but yesterday Call for Help, the TechTV show, aired a rerun of the show where they did a story on Evan Williams from Blogger. This is also the show that came with a follow up story about Chris Pirillo's favorite blogs, in which this humble entry was one of the ten named. So now that the show is being aired again and is the lead story on their website, I'm getting a bunch of traffic from there. Welcome one and all, hope you enjoy your stay and will come back and enrich this little community with your feedback from time to time! Of course, the first time the show aired and the blogs were mentioned in Lockergnome, my wonderful hosting company went offline the very next day for 24 hours, pretty much ruining any momentum the traffic might have generated. Here's hoping the new host doesn't do the same thing! Hey have you noticed that Yahoo Groups has changed their "spam" policy to opt-out instead of opt-in and have reset everyone's preferences to sign you up for spam mail, and snail mail and telephone solicitations as well, if you've ever purchased anything there and they have that information. Go and change those preferences in your Account Info now! Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 8:36 AM | 0 comments |
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Thursday, March 28, 2002
Anyone want some scrap metal? We have a handful of old systems laying around at work, systems and monitors that don't work, in actuality. According to the Ohio State EPA we are now to be considered a "Hazardous Waste Generator", and must, by law, find a way to recycle the systems and monitors. Obviously, we don't have the ability, in our little office building, to recycle the scrap metal of the machines, so my new duty is finding someone who will take this stuff off our hands. I'm on the prowl for a scrap metal dealer or some such place that will actually take the stuff without charging us for it, as opposed to the places who we'd have to pay to come take the stuff. (Wouldn't the head honchos love that expense.."Oh I need you to reimburse me for this expense I incurred in trying to junk our old systems, because I had to pay someone to take them!" *L*) So, I add yet another hat to my job description, "Junk and Scrap Metal Dealer". I think I need an MP3 of the theme from Sanford & Son to play while I try to accomplish this task. Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 1:56 PM | 0 comments |
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Here I come to save the day... Or at least to save your PC from spyware! Yes, AdAware version 5.7 has just been released. (Thanks to Lockergnome Tech Specialist for the tip) If you're new to the world of spyware, what AdAware will do is scan your PC for any files, cookies, programs, registry entries, etc. that companies are using to track you, and give you the option to clean it all up in one fell swoop. Of course then, the programs that had the spyware bundled in may not work anymore, so you've got to consider that, but IMHO, I'd rather not use any program that was tracking me or spying on me! It looks as though the 50 XP tips e-book that I was telling you about has broadened into GnomeTomes, a collection of e-books that are $5 each and contain 50 tips of a specific subject. Interesting. (Thanks to Meryl for the pointer.) A virtual walk through the forums today shows that they're getting some use. There's some interesting conversations starting about privacy, tech support, THC and others. Come share your opinions on these weighty matters, the more the merrier! Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 9:22 AM | 0 comments |
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Wednesday, March 27, 2002
Stats and stuff I'm trying some new stuff with the stats, AGAIN! Since I didn't like the stats that Ready Hosting used, I traded in, so to speak. I gave up that program in exchange for having the raw server logs dumped into my ftp directory. Then I downloaded copies of Analog and Report Magic to my PC. I just download the log files to my PC and run those two to get some decent reports locally. It's all tweakable, which is cool. I just need to learn and tweak it to fit my needs, but it should give me the accurate numbers I'm looking for. It won't however, give me referrers, because their are no referrers listed in the server logs! It does have search terms though, which is sort of bizarre. So the plan, for today, is to continue using StatcounteX the way I am, which will give me a good idea of referrers, and use the new setup to get the real, live, actual numbers. It won't work forever, the more people using XP, the more I might miss some referrers. But I'll have the right numbers! *L* Man, I'm just never happy with reports, am I? Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 8:25 PM | 0 comments |
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Another entry? Dan wrote to tell me about another possible entry into the Freeware News Aggregator Comparison. It's called Free Reader. Alas, the review will be slightly delayed because said program does not appear to have any options to tell it to connect using a firewall and proxy. So I'll have to wait until I have some home time to try it out. That would be strike one against the program, by the way! Also on that front, I noticed something odd about the way Newzcrawler shows the RSS feed from this site. The permalinks don't work! If you click on the title of an entry to go to the site, it doesn't take you here. However, if you click on an outside link, like the one above to the Newzcrawler site, it will take you there! I'm sure it's just something in the RSS feed, as it only appears in certain blogs but other sites work fine. Perhaps when the permanent feed from BloggerPro is working, it'll be different. Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 11:36 AM | 0 comments |
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Is it Friday yet? Looks like we got a few copies of the W32.Gibe virus floating in last night. All of the attachments were stripped at the email gateway (Our ISP finally did something right!), but I was impressed with this one. It seems like most of the attachments disguised as something else have stuff in the email that totally gives it away. They're not written very well, and maybe it's because the virus writers aren't native English speakers in most cases, or they are just not interested in spelling and grammer. Either way it's usually a dead give away. But this one came in disguised as a Microsoft Security Alert and was actually written like an MS Security alert. The only give away is that MS would have you go download it, they would never send an attachment, at least I hope not! Jevon, here's the thing about Web Services: the web designers and other folks ned to keep in mind business realities. In some areas web services can be a huge help, but in some others, the 'net is still too new and too unreliable for my business processes to be on it. You want to use web services to feed me news in RSS feeds, or security alerts, fine. You want me to use Access online to get at my customer data? No freakin' way! If I can't access my customer database because 1) Our ISP is having problems, 2) Your ISP is having problems 3) your servers are having problems 4) Some unknown entity between my network and your web server is having problems 5)Your network got hacked and the data is gone, etc., I'm going to have huge problems. Right now it sits on a server that is literally right behind my head as I type this, the data and the software used to access it are completely under my control. I'm not giving control of that to anyone but me. I am not a web designer or web programmer by vocation. It's a hobby and it's something I'm still learning about as I go along. I am a PC/Network guy by vocation so I come at the web from a slightly different, perhaps more cynical, perspective. Yes, web services could open up some new opportunities but it could also introduce a heck of a lot more problems. Most of the problems I have now are not business critical, unless there's a network outage, but that's my problem that I can fix and I have built-in procedures to make sure that people can still get large parts of their jobs done, no matter what happens. I move things online, with a rental software plan and suddenly the web services company has control of everything. I haven't yet found any company I would trust that much. Now if you could let me do my own web services over the intranet, we might have a common ground, but, thus far, there hasn't been anything in that area that's a big improvement over what I can do now. Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 9:14 AM | 0 comments |
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Tuesday, March 26, 2002
News tidbits Thanks to Robyn, I learned that not only can you use X10 cameras to spy on your kids or the babysitter, or your good looking houseguests, but lots of other folks could be tapping into those images as well! Hmm might want to think twice about what you're doing in front of the X10, eh? It will be interesting to see how Chris Pirillo's e-book does. It's an interesting idea, pool together 50 tips about a subject, XP in this case, and push it out as an e-book at 5 bucks a pop. I'm curious to see how it sells. This article compares current proposed US legislation to the USSR. Hmm maybe he read my comparison to Cuba? :) Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 3:21 PM | 0 comments |
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Lovely forms I just spent a good chunk of my morning filling out insurance forms, aren't I lucky? Since we're probably switching health insurance carriers here at work, everyone got to fill out applications and brief medical histories for the new place. Let's see I woke up this morning to freezing rain and ice, went through that to get to work and fill out insurance forms, could this day get any better? I doubt it! Anyway, in other news: Yes, Geek, you are infamous, at least around here. :) Also, to answer your question, I point to you and support you for a couple of reasons; one I like what you have to say, it's relevant to what I'm trying to do here, which is educate and entertain people. Second, you've done a lot with comments and links and such to support what's going on here, which gives this place a sense of community that I'm totally looking for, so I like to repay that whenever I can, and lastly it's nice to be able to say that while I may be a geek, I'm not the Geek. *L* On a side note, I'm still waiting for the day when someone meets me in person and says "Oh you're THAT Mike McBride, I read your blog all the time!" Then I'll feel like I'm infamous as well. :) I added the two new forums this morning that I mentioned last night. I'm not sure how this will go, but we'll throw them out there and see if people want to use them to discuss things. It's all trial and error at this point! Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 10:27 AM | 0 comments |
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Monday, March 25, 2002
Forums Looks like a few people who are in the middle of the THC saga are straggling in to the forums. That's cool, I hope they can find some info from each other there! The infamous Geek also stopped in to suggest some possible forum topics, one about privacy/legislation and one actually about blogging. I'm going to sleep on those and think about how to add some of this stuff in over there before working on it tomorrow. Any else got any ideas? Leave a comment here, or on the forums if you do! I also noticed that when I use a local path on a link, like I did above, it doesn't work in the email and RSS feeds because you're not on the local site! Keep that in mind if you follow a link and don't appear to go anywhere. Of course it's also possible that I have the link wrong too. Usually I'll get that corrected after the email goes out, so come here if the email seems to have link problems! Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 10:08 PM | 0 comments |
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Hmm Cuba Bans PC Sales to Public Let's see, in Cuba you can't buy a computer because the government is afraid you'll use it in subversive ways, but in the US, according to Senator Hollings, et al., you will only be allowed to buy the computers that have the technology to make sure you don't do something subversive like infringe copyrights. Which one is the free democracy again? Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 2:27 PM | 0 comments |
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Monday morning stuff Overheard at Saturday night's hockey game: "Dude, you'd never catch me in New York or Washington or any place like that, those are just targets for terrorists, it could happen anytime, you never know" 5 minutes later from the same person: "Well they're just over-reacting to this girl getting killed at the game, I mean how often does something like that happen, it shouldn't keep anyone from going, and they should just let it go already" The fact that this apparently well-educated gentleman doesn't see the inconsistency in these two statements makes me think they need more logic courses in college! In other news: The problems I'm having with the stats are on hold for now. I need to refresh my brain after this weekend so I'm just sort of ignoring it for now. The Bravenet counter is a band-aid for now, as it will at least give me some idea of how many people I'm missing from the on-site numbers, but I'll not be satisfied until I have something on-site that I can depend on. We'll see if I can get that anytime soon. From today's Langalist comes news that, "In order to provide a more effective e-mail service and control spam, AT&T Broadband Internet limits the number of e-mails you can send per day as well as the number of recipients to which you can send the same message." So you pay for broadband and they tell you how many emails you can send out per day, regardless of whether they are the same message or not? Wow, what a rip off. This is what happens when broadband competition goes away, the big media companies simply limit services to avoid having to spend money on upgrades. After all, where else are you going to go for broadband if you don't like it? OK, off to do my Monday database work! Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 11:13 AM | 0 comments |
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Sunday, March 24, 2002
Doc does it again! Since he explains and links to things about the Hollings bill, and the internet radio fees better than I ever will, go over to Doc Searls' site and get all the latest information about these horrible laws! He does a wonderful job of keeping us all informed about this stuff on a regular basis, but this post is even more full of information than usual! Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 2:34 PM | 0 comments |
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My brain hurts.. I think maybe I strained a muscle in my cranium somewhere with all this work the last few days. Let's recap, shall we? In the past few days I've added an RSS feed, an Email subscription list, forums, downloaded two freeware news aggregators, tested them and wrote up an article reviewing them, spent countless hours going over the scripts for the statistics, to no avail, and spent a few more hours evaluating other potential stats scripts, in case I can't figure out what's going on with these. (To no conclusions as of yet) And I spent some time cleaning up some of the database stuff that you won't see, but that bugged me when dealing with them. So now I'm realizing that I've not even read other blogs or paid any attention to the outside world except for the 3 hours I spent at the Blue Jackets game last night. Luckily, it's a weekend and I probably haven't missed much. Anyway, I hope that all of these prove to be useful to some folks. That'd make it worth all the extra effort! And it would encourage me to keep improving on it, as of now some of it is a little rough around the edges. So I'm off to catch up on some blogs then to a family gathering to celebrate my brother's 17th birthday and finally to come home and meet up with my wife, who's been visiting her family all weekend, and spending some quality time with her. See ya'! Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 1:15 PM | 0 comments |
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New addition I've gone ahead and added a Forum system on the site. I didn't necessarily feel like it was needed as far as the core audience here, but seeing as how the promise of That Hosting Company working again, that I thought we had Weds., has dissipated, I'm setting it up and spreading the word that their current and former customers can use it at a place to meet and communicate. That's not to say I wouldn't like to see anyone contribute to either the hosting topic or the IT work topic that are currently open, but it's not something I'm going to hold my breath about. I hope it helps those of you still trying to deal with THC! Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 1:09 AM | 0 comments |
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My Other Projects:
My Child Abuse Blog
Many Faces of Mike McBride's Facebook Page |
