ARGGGH.

In two months time, I’ve had two different servers I was using to web
host die on me, and lose weeks of work and site updates.

First a drive on www.gimp.org died, taking 2 months worth
of updates with it (www.japanairband.com was vhosted on
that box).

So then I decide to move to a commercial web provider.
(www.alwayswebhosting.com if you want to know who
to avoid).

Un fucking beliveable. Apparently the
guys running the site were complete fucking morons,
and the box got compromised. And the last good backup
was a month ago aka, before I moved the site there.
Un fucking beliveable. So, basically, all those
changes I made in the last month are gone. The
daily backups arent available because the server
was compromised and the colo want allow
the box to be brought backup (which is
relatively sane, but still… mount the disk
read-only on an admin box somewhere and let
me try to rescue my content off of it)

So, basically, expect the site to be
down for a week or so, as I move to different
providers, and wait for DNS to propagate again.
The fucking morons running the site were running
a known exploitable printer server on that machine.
Why the fuck they were running a print server on
a fucking dedicated webhosting box I have no idea.
And to make it even more annoying, if they had
just used the damn software I work on every
fucking day to keep the box up to date, it wouldnt
of happened.

And of course, I’m a huge fucking moron
and didnt have local backups of the updated
content and web apps. Not to mention not
thinking about checking to see if they
were complete fucking retards and were running
LPR with a fucking year old known exploit.

I cant belive I’m going to have to go and recreate
that fucking mess again. Argh.

List of open source debuggers, decompilers,
executable viewers, etc

I have fairly limited understanding of binary formats and the like, but find
the concept of tools to aid reverse engineering fascinating. Tools to
do it well have to do several interesting things, not the least of which
is presenting a huge amount of information in a useful and meaningful
fashion. There is also a certain amount of “magic” in creating something
from nothing (in these cases, source code from bins, or creating symbol
tables from stripped binaries, etc).

I’ve been using a new hosting provider for all of about three weeks now,
and they have already been down for most of today. So much for
4 9’s. Awesome.

Started reading “Neverwhere” last night. Suppose I need to finish
it tonight, otherwise I’ll lose interest and never finish it. First
Neil Gaiman I’ve read, but after having approximately everyone
I know suggest I read something of his, I finally caved.

Got to go up to Viginia to help my sister move this weekend.
If history repeats itself it will be 90-100F outside like the last
5 or 6 times. Should be um, fun.

well, I got a new scanner. What the heck. It even seems to work
under linux pretty well. Took about 15 minutes from opening the
box to doing decent color scans. Not bad. A epson Perfiction 1650 Photo
if anyone is curious.

So, heres the first fruits of the new scanner. A scan of
a doofle from a 4 hour meeting.

So it was a productive meeting after all.

artbots.org
Neat.

National Novel Writing Month

A “challenge” to write a novel in a month. Sounds like fun. I even already
know what my opening line is going to be:

It was the best of dark and stormy nights, it was the worse of dark and
stormy nights...

Almost forgot the weirdest bit of the weekend. Watching the
“promotional video” for a Winston-Salem band
Smash Alley Underground

It is truly bizarre, as a quick browse of the website would indicate. Basically,
it’s a hair metal band intent on fame. They created this bizarre promo
video in their basement with the intent of getting signed. It’s like
a cross between driver 23,
Jesco: The Dancing Outlaw,
and a bit of Spinal Tap.

I would never believe it was true except for I know people who know the
guy the video focus on, and some of the Winston shots are recognizable.

Bizarre.

Ever notice that when you learn something new, it seems to pop
up everywhere for the next couple of weeks.

About a week or so ago, while browsing symbols.com, I
noticed a couple references to hobo signs. The page didnt
have much info, but I found more by googling. Okay, hobo
signs. Intersting.

Then I go to borders and am browsing a book I was thinking
about reading, a collection of symbols by Henry Dreyfus.
Of course, hobo signs are in there, no surprise.

Go visit some friends on saturday, one of the books on
the shelves is another symbol collection book. I pull it
out and before I even open it, a friend starts talking about
the hobo symbols in the back.

And to top it off. There was a hobo symbol reference
on last nights simpsons.

Spent the weekend in Winston-Salem, and as usual, it was
interesting.

Got in to town Friday a bit earlier than I expected (not much traffic)
so went down to the Gallery Crawl downtown to meet some friends.
Caught scott from Japan Air and a few other friends playing some
pseudo bluegrass in a store/gallery window.

Then wandered over to Ziggy’s for the big local showcase. Missed
the first band, Hectoralis, but heard they were pretty good. Tommy
Gun were up next, and were entertaining as always.
Wafer
Thin was up nest. Guitarist/Singer Brent is the one that did all
the leg work to put the show together.

Japan Air followed and were great as always. Kind of a weird
set since it was a stripped down commando setup (no keyboards,
etc). Cramming stuff into a 45 minute set was interesting (average
song length for this guys is about 6 minutes…)

All in all, a good show. Ran into someone who recognized me
from middle school who I didn’t remember at all. With my voice
and name, that tends to happen a lot.

Saturday was odd as well. Went out to see a Shriners parade.
They must of forgotten to include the goat sacrifice float.
A odd parade to say the least.

Then while wandering around downtown with Dave from
Japan Air, we had a homeless guy ask us for money,
and to prove he needed the money, so us his court
appearance papers. The reason for the court appearance?
He broke into The Garage, a club ran by another friend
and the place Japan Air used to practice. Weird.

Sunday night the Guiford College radio station (90.9) played
some live recordings from the show so headed over to
Doug from Tommy Gun’s place to listen to the show with
the Japan Air and Wafer Thin guys.

Picked up some used cd’s at the Winston Record
Exchange (miles davis/panthalassa, vernon reid/mistake
identity, sun ra/space is the place, ozric tentacles/arboescence)

know
your local muffler man

The Fucking Champs were excellent. One of the biggest crowds
I’ve seen at Kings.

Hoping to get out of an endless meeting a little early to make
it to Winston-Salem for the Japan Air and friends show.