The kind folks at CloudFlare sent me a shirt. Thanks for the shirt and for powering my DNS needs!
My daughter, Parker, is mesmerized by the cloud. 
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Peanut. Popcorn. Ice cream. Cupcakes. Candy canes.
Feb 11, ’11
10:47 AM
A friend of mine is allergic to peanuts. For the longest time, I continually ‘forgot’ that she is allergic and would offer her peanut butter cookies, Ben & Jerry peanut butter crunch ice cream, and other peanut-based food items. Her frustration with me and others who couldn’t remember her deathly allergic reaction increased. It was noticeable. And I finally resolved to etch her allergy into my mind.
In our house, popcorn is king. The king of pop! No movie shall be watched without a bowl full of the stuff. A few bowls, actually. I like mine hot. Michelle likes hers not hot.
You know what goes well with popcorn? Cupcakes. A four-pack of cupcakes by Just Desserts goes for about $8 at the local grocery store. Whatever they put in those cupcakes is dangerous as I no longer even pay attention to the price. If I enter the store, I’m leaving with cupcakes.
This past holiday was the first xmas time with our new-born daughter. Though she was only about a month old, we wanted a tree and stockings and misc jolly flare around the ol’ house. One day, I picked up some candy canes and deposited one cane per family member into said stockings. One candy cane for baby Parker. One candy cane for Michelle. One candy cane for Milo the Terrible (our crazy French Bulldog), and one candy cane for me.
The ants thought that the candy canes were for them.
Thanks to Randy Murray for the inspiration for this post. Thanks to Michelle for the five words.
Simplifying by Reducing Mac User Accounts
Feb 10, ’11
10:29 PM
I’ve got a bunch of Macs. Why? Well, I guess I’m a Mac-Rat. They just seem to multiply. I’ve got a Mac Mini. Wait, two Mac Minis. An Air. An old PowerBook. An old iMac. A Cube. An old iBook. And don’t get me started on my iOS devices.
I’ve got a user account on each of the Macs. Why? I’m stupid, that’s why. Well, I thought I was being smart but really I’ve just created a major headache for myself.
Sync this. Sync that. I’m not sure how I managed before Dropbox to be honest. But even Dropbox can’t create the peace I now seek. I’ve over-complicated things and now I will simplify things.
Tonight I removed all files from the Mac mini that my wife, Michelle uses. Michelle, it’s all yers. Have fun. I won’t be pushing you out of your chair anymore or taking over your screen with Screen Sharing. After I am positive all my personal files are removed, I’m going to delete my user account. One down, a crap-load to go.
My goal is simple. Mac Mini at work. MacBook Air for everything else. There’s still a bit of user management and file syncing I’ll have to do but reducing my number of accounts to two from a zillion has got to help.
DNS and Me
Feb 9, ’11
10:12 PM
Years ago, I ran a humble web hosting company called Web Surf Hawaii. I was fully immersed in the web back then and an eager beaver to learn everything I could about the net.
As part of my hosting learning process I resolved to take control of everything from DNS records on down to creating web pages. So, I bought myself a copy of DNS and BIND
It was a powerful thing to be able to harness control over domains. If I wanted a subdomain, I just made it happen. I didn’t have to file a ticket with my host or even use their web interface. I can’t even recall what that process was like back then, honestly.
Once I gave up Web Surf Hawaii, around 2001, I stopped monkeying around with DNS records and moved on to other things.
Now that I’ve got something brewing around hosting rivers of news, my interest and need for control over my domains has resurfaced. I wanted to point a subdomain to my EC2 server and had to file a ticket with my host in order to accomplish it. Hmph. Thankfully, my host suggested that I should give CloudFlare a try if I wanted more control over my domains. I took a look and was impressed. In one fell swoop, I transferred my DNS records for ten domains over to CloudFlare. Now, I’m creating A records and marveling at the power of doing it myself once again.
CloudFlare does much more than I had imagined. All I wanted was to be able to create my own A records but CloudFlare can help me with so much more like monitoring traffic, keeping spammers at bay, speeding up my sites, and more.
It feels good to be back in charge again. Filing a ticket to have someone else do something I can do myself is silly. Time to get my chops back in order.
Beautiful River of News
Feb 8, ’11
9:11 AM
Last night, Dave flipped a switch and gave us the means to turn our rivers of news into a beautiful design. This new design is easy on the eyes, easy to customize, and more befitting of the kind of offering I’d like to provide to my users.
There is a Full/Compact button near the top which toggles the first portion of the post on or off. I prefer to see the first part of the post rather than just the title but it’s nice to have the option.
I’m going to play with the colors and other bits to be sure I can modify the design to my liking. It’s close already but I’m a natural born tinkerer.
Here’s a screenshot of my river of news. What do you think?
