Author Archives: Matt Simpson

Zero-Seven Random Weekend

Destination RandomThis is a message to inform Karla, Greg and Jocelyn that you have been chosen to participate in a random event, code-named Zero-Seven Random Weekend. While the details of the event will not be disclosed you will need to know a few things in order to complete the weekend successfully, safely and enjoyably.

  • The date of the event will be e-mailed to you separately.
  • You will not likely be getting a lot of sleep during the time that we are away. Please rest up before we leave and prepare yourself for a low-sleep situation as best you can. This means very early mornings and likely very late nights. This is not a relaxing event, be forewarned.
  • You must have a valid drivers licence and it must not expire before June 30th, 2007. If it does, you must renew it long before hand in order to attend. Please check your expiry date to ensure this.
  • You must have a valid health card with you (of course) in case of emergency. Again, please check your expiry date to ensure it is valid.
  • You must bring comfortable footwear as we will be doing a lot of walking and there are big hills. Not necessarily hiking boots, but something comfortable.
  • You need 3 days worth of your “normal” clothing. I recommend a backpack and / or small bag that you can carry with you without getting too frustrated if you need to carry it for several hours at a time.
  • You may want to bring a bathing suit (not required, up to you).
  • You will want to bring your camera.
  • You will need to have some money with you. Bring some cash, maybe $50.00-ish. You can use credit cards in some cases.
  • Make sure you bring your sense of adventure, it will be a pretty fun weekend.

The name of the event says it all… Random Weekend. I am sure that it is technically possible to figure out parts of what is planned for the weekend, but part of the fun is the unknown, right! Ponder it for a while, perhaps discuss it, but don’t overburden yourself. Let me take care of the details.

Energy-Star, Local Super Hero?

The other day I was on my way home from work (at dusk) and I noticed that the outside lights on my house were unusually bright? I mean, I had purchased 40 watt smaller incandescent bulbs quite some time ago and all-of-a-sudden they were uber-bright? Upon further examination, they were new compact fluorescent bulbs, which I have in the interior of my house.

I happened to glance next door and noticed my neighbor had the same bulbs in her fixtures, so I figured that she was being nice and energy efficient and replaced mine as well. Mystery solved, or so I thought…

Later that night after it got dark, I happened to glance out my front window and look down the street to find that nearly every house had the exact same uber-bright energy efficient bulbs in their outdoor light fixtures.

Is there some sort of energy-star, replacing our light-bulbs? It’s a mystery I tell you, a mystery. I’m not upset or anything like that, I’m happy… who do I thank? Is this a good Samaritan or my tax dollars at work?

DigitalOrphans Update

At approximately 3:05PM EDT today (Wednesday, March 21st, 2007) websrv01 encountered unexpected server downtime that lasted approximately 20 – 25 minutes. The cause of the downtime is currently unknown, a hard reboot of the server was required in order to restore service to the server.

We will post more information as to the cause after we determine what happened. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Haiku-to-time

A haiku dedicated to my favourite PHP function, strtotime():

oh strtotime() bliss
a function creating ease
such simplicity

DigitalOrphans Update v2.3

This is a notice to inform you that there are scheduled server maintenance updates planned for both websrv01 and websrv02 which will take place tonight, Thursday, March 8th at 10:00PM EST.

These updates will encompass all available Redhat Linux Updates, as well as prepare the server for Sunday’s new Daylight Savings Time changes. At the same time, we will be upgrading PHP on both servers: websrv01 will be upgraded to PHP 4.4.6 and websrv02 will be upgraded to PHP 5.2.1.

Downtime for this update should be minimal, around 3 – 5 minutes for the servers to be rebooted.

DigitalOrphans Update v2.2

A quick notice to let everyone know that tonight (Thursday, February 8th, 2007) between 10:00PM EST and 11:00PM EST there was network problems at our data centre, which affected both websrv01 and websrv02 as well as the entire iWeb network. The problem was intermittent, but prominent and did impact all services on our servers during this time.

All network activity is now considered back to normal operation. If you experience any other problems, please let me know.

Karla Fall Down Go Boom

Just thought I’d blog about Karla’s spill last week. She was running down the stairs to catch me before I left to work (to tell me that Castro was not dead) and missed a stair and fell right on her tail bone.

She’s been laid up on the couch now for 3 days and a bit… huge bruise. Sorry guys… no pics 😀

You can catch Karla’s side of the story here if you’d like.

An English Adventure 2006-07

This Christmas, for the first time in our lives, my wife and I travelled over the chilly North Atlantic to see for ourselves what the “Old World” really felt like. The first purpose of our journey I suppose, was to visit my adventurous younger sister, who about five months ago moved from Canada to Peterborough, England for a job opportunity. Having my sister in Peterborough was fantastic, because it allowed us not only to see where and how she lives, but also because it ended up saving us quite a bit of money, which in turn allowed us to stay for nearly three weeks. The second purpose of our trip was business; I intended on meeting a few colleagues, with whom I do ListMessenger-related business with, as well as a web-hosting client of mine.
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DigitalOrphans Update v2.1

Important message for e-mail users on both websrv01 and websrv02
who use the POP3 mail protocol and any e-mail client (such as Outlook,
Thunderbird, Eudora, etc) which send e-mail through either of our servers.

Today we have removed the ability on both mail servers to allow
“pop3-before-smtp” authentication for sending e-mail. Previously, if you
had your e-mail client setup to check your e-mail using the POP3 protocol,
you were then able to send e-mail messages for a period of 20 minutes
before needing to check your e-mail again.

This was causing problems with e-mail users that have virus infected
Windows machines, which were then free to send their spam through our
server for a period of 20 minutes (until the POP Lock was re-enabled).

If you previous did not have your e-mail client setup to use SMTP
Authentication, then you will need to reconfigure your client to enable
SMTP Authentication before attempting to send mail through the server.

The Bends

I can somewhat giggle about it now, but half an hour ago I was some upset. On the way into my house this afternoon, I tripped on the step and knocked my 12″ Powerbook G4 a bit on the step above. It was in my nice thick neoprene laptop bag and the bump wasn’t that hard, so I didn’t thing much of it. Tonight I went to work on a few things and found that my beautiful aluminum Apple case had a large bend in it, and there was also a few small ripples. 🙁

After freaking out for a second I shut off the machine and found that the top left corner of the laptop (about 1/3 of the machine) was in fact bent out about 1 cm. Yeah, so my computer now had a good curve to it, which made the battery not sit flush in the bottom.

I ended up carefully bending it back into position with careful pressure on the wound, and it’s now straighter than ever (it never did seem to sit flat before).

I was initially peeved about the aluminum actually bending, but I suppose with the -20 degrees Celsius weather today that a plastic PC laptop would have been destroyed. Gotta love Apple.