Yes that right my boy is finally here in the real world!

Here are the stats:

Name: Johhny Arthur Collins III
BDay: 8/6/06 at 3:51pm MST
Weight: 7lbs 9 ounces
Height: 20.5"

Now here is an interesting factoid about his birthday, it just so happens to be the same day that the first Atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. AND what was the nickname of that bomb??? Kinda scarry but it was called "Little Boy"…hmm hope he doesnt turn out to be a nuclear scientist…that would be creapy

Here he is in case you missed the large opening picture 

There are alot more pictures in the gallery, go check them out!

Yeah yeah I know its been a while since the last post, I have been busy. BUT for a good reason…

I got my VW running again, and this time she is running very good. In fact it passed AZ emissions testing  with no problems. I am posting up some pictures in my gallery of my VW rust bucket, its ugly and rusty but she is a blast to drive…even Steph has been digging it (easier for a pregnant woman to get in and out of).

I have some plans for her yet to be finalized but I will post to inform you when I do get a plan together.

ALSO I posted some pics of Steph to the gallery to show her "progress" my boy is making her get big…yet I dont think its quite over yet!! hehe

-out

Well I feel dirty…I have tasted the DarkSide and I am kinda digging it. I have tried Linux on my desktop instead of FreeBSD. I feel ashamed.

NOW dont get me wrong I will NOT use Linux on my servers, I have nothing against Linux but I find FreeBSD far more superior in terms of servers. I have been using Linux since Slackware2 (I think that was around 1997) Then I became a FreeBSD convert around 1999-2000, since then I have been using it for everything, servers, desktop, laptop you name it. I dabble in Linux from time to time just to keep up on things since some of my clients run Linux, so I still need to maintain Linux servers, but thats far and few between.

Recently I have been having some compatabilities issues on the desktop use of FreeBSD, mostly in terms of multimedia and web browsing which is important for my work since I deal with alot of multimedia sites. So I got frustrated and decided to give a Linux distro I have never used a try. The distro is called "Ubuntu", so far I am impressed with how easy they have made the setup, plus all of the multimedia problems I have been having are gone. Here is some observations I had setting up the distro

(these observations are coming for a die hard command-line guy, so I am kinda biased)

Install was fine, partitioning was kinda clunky, single CD install, pretty simple (i would prefer a cli partition editor)
Boot up was a bit slower that my other FreeBSD boxes, which I can deal with.
Default colors are terrible, brown would not be my first choice.
NO ROOT ACCESS, they decided to disable root in preferance of  "sudo", easily changed with "sudo passwd root"
Package system was alien to me, but then again you cant beat the bsd ports system.
Default Apps were nice.
A third party app named "Automatix" made multimedia setup easy as a snap.
Gnome window manager takes a minute to adjust to (im a kde guy, yes I know they have kubuntu)
ALL of my hardware worked including my cheap ass ati tv-wonder VE capture card.

So far those are the standout things, basically everything has worked so far. I hate to admit it but its working better on the desktop than FreeBSD, well I must go and punish myself now. I will write more about it when I test it more with work.

-out

I took some quick pics of my new AP setup for my office connection. I had to hack the Linksys WRT54G into fitting into this little N.E.M.A box, basically all I had to do was create mounts and solder on an N-Bulkhead connection to the left antenna socket. The WRT54G is running the DD-WRT v23 firmware. So far I am pushing a solid 5.5Mbps upload & download over 2Miles, all with the help of 24dbi "grill" antennas. I am still tweaking to say the least. (the WRT54G’s have a slight ACK timing issue, but some quick hacks with a util called "dctrl" seemed to improve things)

Heres the box (I blanked the IP sticker to protect the guilty)
Click for full size image

Here is the full mast now

I am going to write up a full howto this weekend since it might help some people out on the DD-WRT forums.

later

Well I am finally getting around to building a new mail server and I used a guide that I have somewhat used in the past. (actually I did the same setup about a year before this guide appeared on OpenBSD) This guide makes setting up a full featured mail server quite easy. Includes clamav, spamassassin, virtual domains, mailing lists, sql support, and full web interface.

Here it is: http://www.qmailrocks.com

The guide is quite decent but for FreeBSD there are a few pitfalls I came across, most of which were easily cured by a quick “pkg_add -r” or a quick hop to /usr/ports. I will be doing another mail server here in a few weeks so I will detail it all out, maybe it will help those that get stuck!

While I am in server redo mode I am also building a new DNS server set. BIND is gone!! I am switching all of our DNS over to DJBDNS (finally). Let me tell you Dan Bernstein sure knows how to code easy software! (not to mention secure) only problem I will have is migration, it will take awhile to unkink my 7 years of bind usage! If you run a BIND server check out DJBDNS you won’t regret it!

Also if you are a FreeBSD admin don’t do what I did and forget to add the NIC driver to the kernel when compiling remotely, here is an excerpt:

NS1# cd ../../compile/NS1 ; make depend ; make install ; reboot
<cutout compile junk>
Connection to 192.168.10.18 closed.
ialone@GreatMaju:~$ ssh ialone@192.168.10.18
ssh: connect to host 192.168.10.18 port 22: No route to host
ialone@GreatMaju:~$

Damm time to run to the NOC, and “uncomment” #device fxp0, hehe fun day!

Well the first post in a new blog is alway so cheesy. What exactly should you say in a first post?
Suppose I could always do a Slashdot kinda thing:

Anonymous Coward: HAHAHA First post bitches

But like thier moniker says “Coward”, but that another story. Anyhoo this is the new site, gallery is currently going through a complete re-build and should be up shortly, code gallery is also being constructed as we speak as well. Hopefully I will be a little more on time with updates on this version of the site. Well see…