Friday, July 3, 2009

Errrr...about that whole future thing...

So apparently my VPS machine isn't up to snuff yet? I'm not sure where the problem is, but it's down for now, so I've removed the redirect (and placed one to here).

If Wil Wheaton can be in exile, so can I, by gum! Maybe it's best to think of this as the "Old World". That makes it sound more enjoyable, huh?

Anyway, it makes a great sort of backup. Sorry about the issues, I'm working on them now.

Extra special thanks to one person who went way above the call of duty in letting me know, and I really appreciate it. I'll post his name if he wants to fess up to it :-)

Welcome to the future!

If you're reading this via RSS reader, I invite you to come visit the new blog! I've got all sorts of enhancements available here, so come check it out!

Lets do an overview of what's new. First, instead of being hosted on blogger's servers, I've got a VPS for the site, and the domain name is www.standalone-sysadmin.com now. Since there are tons of links going to the old site, I've implemented an http meta redirect to a php script that I write. It parses the referrer information and sends the user to the correct page on this site.

The big RSS icon in the top right hand corner of the page links to the feedburner stream. If you subscribe via RSS (and as of today, that's 585 of you out there just at Google Reader), please update your RSS feed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/standalone-sysadmin/rWoU.

The "commentators" box on the right hand side examines user comments, checks the email addresses, and looks them up at Gravatar, the globally recognized avatar database. I've noticed that more and more sites seem to be using it, so if you haven't setup your email over there, maybe you should check into it.

Everything else should be pretty straight forward. I've enabled OpenID logins for those of you who want to use them. The only recurring issue is slowness on the machine. I've talked to the hosting people about that, and when a bigger server opens up, I'll migrate to that. The VPS has 512MB of RAM right now. If this becomes a major problem, I'll temporarily move the blog back to blogger, but I'm hoping that isn't going to be an issue. Let me know if you find it to be.

So that's it. Feel free to leave feedback! Thanks!

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Update with the hiring and an upcoming blog update

A while back, I talked about hiring another administrator. That process is currently happening and progressing nicely.

If anyone reading the blog applied, thank you. If you didn't receive a call, it is probably because you were far more overqualified than we were looking for. It's a sign of the bad economy that we're having people with 20 years experience applying for junior positions. I hope this turns around for everyone's sake.


Also, even longer ago, I presented a survey which asked an optional open-ended question. What would you do to improve the blog. Well, I hope you're not too attached to how this blog looks right now, because some time over the weekend, it's going to change quite a bit. This new iteration will require you to update the URL for the RSS feed if you're a subscriber.

To facilitate an easier transition, I'm going to be continuing to publish articles here in addition to the new site, so RSS subscribers who haven't caught the news aren't left in the dark. You will automatically be redirected to the new site if you visit this address, though. My plan for it is to be seamless for people visiting, and nearly painless for subscribers. I have no doubt that you'll let me know how it affects you and if something isn't working.

Here's where the fun begins...

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

New Article: Manage Stress Before It Kills You

My newest column is up at Simple Talk Exchange. It's called "Manage Stress Before it Kills You.

It starts out with a true-to-life story of something that happened to me one night. It was scary, but it did let me know that something was wrong. My advice is to manage your stress before it gets to this point, because it isn't an enjoyable experience.

Please make sure to vote up the article if you like it! Thanks!