TNI Blog

I just created a new website at http://www.funtodo.org.

First of all, many thanks to Mike, James, Mike, Herrick and Nick (and of course, Josh…)for the feedback and technical help. Nick was a lifesaver with helping me figure out how to include header/footer files with PHP. That would have been such a pain if I hadn’t had those.

First thing you’ll notice is the site still needs a lot of work. It needs to be database-driven with a detail page for each activity listed. I’m just NOT doing that manually for each entry. Huh-uh. No way. Also I need to clean up the design a bit more, set off the sidebar for readability and add some more graphics and photos for different things.

But I’d love your feedback. Please send your thoughts along and give me some feedback (positive and negative). Or if you know of something to add to the calendar, send it my way.

Our department is creating new marketing material for recruiting on college campuses. The other day they were taking a bunch of pictures and I was asked to model for them. You can see the amazing results here. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page and check out my hot modeling skillz.

I’m a model. You know what I mean? And I do my little turn on the catwalk… well, I haven’t had a chance to work the catwalk yet, but give it time.

In case you hadn’t noticed.  I added some AdSense ads to the blog.  I’ve wanted to set up an AdSense account for a while and finally got around to it.  This blog (and my personal blog) are my test subjects.  So far I’ve made $1.17.  Not bad.  Thanks to all of you who helped me test out the ads.  Once I start making real money with this blog, we’ll incorporate TNI again and share in the wealth!

Anderev posted this CNNMoney.com link on the TNI mailing list.  Apparently Microsoft is (still) looking to sue Linux distributors and Linux users.  I’m hesitant to post this though because in so doing, I’m sure I’m violating numerous Microsoft patents.

Here’s to hoping Microsoft sues a number of open-source distributors with the same results as SCO.

We were going to have a mini-TNI reunion last Saturday. I was planning to meet up with heathm and nickmo at the RSL game. I was really, really looking forward to it. But it didn’t turn out.

Anybody else want to join us if we go another time?

Who would have thought that this ragtag bunch of guys would have become so educated?

Several master’s degrees under way, several bachelor’s done or on the way, etc.

It would be fun to know the average graduating GPA of TNI at OHS. And then take reimda (the outlier) out of the equation and recalculate. That would be good times.

Just wanted to say congrats to all of you for how far you’ve come in the last few years. It really is amazing how much you’ve all accomplished.

I use IPCop for my router/firewall. I really like. It’s easy to install and has a nice user interface. It has support for DHCP, DNS, proxy http transparently (or explicitly if you want the hassle), built in support for Snort, port forwarding, VPN support, runs on Linux, and much more.

One of the features of IPCop is that it will produce traffic graphs for you. I thought it would be cool to make my traffic graphs publicly available. I figured it would be easy to just use mod_proxy to forward requests to my firewall to fetch the graphs. Unfortunately, mod_proxy forwards the HTTP Authentication down to the browser and doesn’t let you specify the HTTP authentication credentials in the proxy configuration.

So I decided to just set up a cron job that runs every hour and downloads the graphs to my web server. It’s not as cool as mod_proxy but it only took a few minutes to set up and it works just fine.

The “Traffic on RED” means that it’s the traffic for the red network interface. With IPCop, the red interface is the public facing interface, the green interface is the internal NATed interface (not shown because in my case it’s just the inverse of the red graphs) and the orange interface is the DMZ. I have an orange interface but nothing’s plugged into it so I didn’t bother to show graphs of nothingness.

The graphs are shown below. Push refresh every hour to watch them change. If you were to run some type of DoS attack, you could watch the graphs peak. I’m not suggesting you launch a DoS attack. I’m just saying…

Can’t we all relate to this guy’s complaints of being “the computer guy”?  Fortunately, after moving I haven’t had to fix any one’s computers in my ward.  I would like to keep it that way.  It’s not that I mind helping people.  It’s just that helping people with their computer is a like a virus.  If you do it once, it spreads very quickly and soon you have the whole neighborhood calling you for tech support.  Anyway, I found the link humorous and thought the rest of you would too.

Hey guys. Cool blog! Wanna play chess?

Marianne and I have been planning a little trip away for the last little while and just hit on a winning idea! We’re planning to go down to the Shakespearean Festival sometime this summer or autumn. We’re hoping to talk the hubbies into two nights away to really get a good trip, but we’re open to any and all suggestions.

Any and all TNI wives are invited to join us–the more, the merrier! Please email us or call us or reply here if you want to join in the fun. Let us know when you prefer, how long, etc. Marianne is unavailable the end of August/beginning of September. As soon as we know who wants to come, we can start figuring out details like travel to and from, hotel rooms, etc.

 Woohoo!