So now that I’ve got my laptop hooked up to the tv, I can actually watch movies and enjoy them. I grabbed media portal and installed it on my laptop. So far it looks pretty damn good. I customized it a little with a few plugins and a new skin (need to change the background, it’s a bit risque right now).

After awhile though I got tired of walking to the laptop now that’s it is across the room instead of next to the bed. I bought a Media center remote off someone for 20 bucks and hooked it up so it’s easier to control. Unfortunately my laptop sucks and I can’t do the super cool power it on with the remote, only power it off. That’s pretty much it for now. I’m going to start building my actual media center sometime this month (still waiting for Intel to release the motherboard). I was originally planning on going with linux. The big deciding factor will be whether or not I can output video over hdmi to the tv. If I can’t, I’m going to scrap it and go with windows and load mediaportal on there. I’m really hoping I can use linux since I want a remote shell so I can move all the services I run on my desktop over to it.

I also finally got a usenet account. Downloading via torrents works, but the speed varies too much. Plus I’m on a 6Mb connection that limits the amount of seeding I can do. I grabbed a 4GB file last night and it took about 1.5Hours, as opposed to a couple days. It’s only $12/month, so it is definently worth it. I’m looking into a seed account on a website someone told me about, I’m doing a trial right now to see if I like it, and right now it’s pretty sweet. The biggest downside I can see is I have to wait for the download to finish, then when it’s down I download it again to my computer, fortunately it’s at full speed.

So I figured out why Bluehost did a sudden server migration on me without any warning.

I sorta forgot to add a flag and exclusion to the full backup script. I didn’t tell it to ignore symbolic links and the backup directory. On the account site, it backs up all the directories in the home directory. There are a couple links to logs, cache, and then there’s also a link called www that points to public_html.

So not only did it backup public_html twice, it also backed up the backups.

I noticed this last night when I started the weekly backup on my machine that pulls down the backups and the full backup was 27GB.

A couple weeks ago a board on my dads site was hacked and pretty much demolished. Apparently it was hacked into on Tuesday/Wednsday. I didn’t find out until Thursday night when my aunt mentioned it in passing.

Friday after work I went and took a look at it real quick. I opened up the url to the board and it wasn’t functioning at all, php errors all over the place. At right about that time I got a call from Helen asking if I could pick someone up from the bus station and give them a ride down to tacoma for a board meeting they had this weekend. Faced with the decision of what was obviously going to be a long process that would stretch late into the night vs hanging out with Helen and the Circle K district board, I opted to go hang out with them.

Saturday morning rolled around. I got up extra early to work on it, I remoted into the server and started poking around. Files were moved around, odd names were all over the place. A quick check of the bash history showed they hadn’t gotten the password for the account. I changed the ftp password on the board account just to be safe. Right after that I got a phone call. Was an odd one, the number was 12 digits long. I answered it anyways. Turned out to be the man who ran the forum, he was in the UAE. I spoke to him briefly, he had a database backup from May 9, he was going to upload it so I could do a restore. I emailed him the new password (not very secure, but what the hell) and he started
to work on uploading it. I had a full site-backup from April 27 that I had made for kicks, since we didn’t have anything really backed up, it included logs, built-in mail account, site backups, databases, everything. I considered using the database backup in that one, but didn’t, since he forum admin had a more recent backup.

I continued to poke around the files, everything was in complete disarray. I restored the board files using my April 27 backup, so all that was needed was a database. I poked around a little, then bummed for a bit while I waited. I got an email from motasim, he was having trouble transferring the file up. the ftp client kept timing out. I recommended a few clients and he tried them all with no luck. Finally I suggested he compress it with winrar. He grabbed the client, compressed and uploaded the file quickly.

This is where the fun began. Everytime I tried restoring the database, I would get a duplicate line error message from mysql. I spent literally 2 whole days trying to get that database to restore. Finally Sunday night I grabbed my April 27 backup and tried that one.

Worked flawlessly.

Suddenly we had a perfectly functional forum. But motasim wanted to have the most up to date backup, so I tried merging the two databases. It sort of worked. The threads were all there but there were more php errors caused by incomplete tables and entries. Finally, I restored the April 27 database, uploaded it somewhere motasim could get it and let him play with it.

He finally settled for the April 27 backup. I posted on the forum softwares support site, contacted their support, after speaking with them it was apparent that Motasims May 9 backup was corrupt, there wasn’t anything we could do about that.

After having dealt with all of that, I started reading up on creating backups. I setup my own backup procedures overnight and implemented them. I quickly found out that bluehosts cron doesn’t like the $ $(date). I posted on their forum and someone helped me whip up a perl script. I’ll post it here in case someone stumbles upon this post devastated by their website having gone down without backups:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $fileOrFolder = $ARGV[0] or die “You forgot to specify a file or folder name!”; #The name of the file or folder provided during execution of the script
my $upper = “U$fileOrFolder”; #Convert the file or folder name to uppercase for the label

my $date = `date +%Y_%m_%d`; #Store the date in a variable
chomp($date); #Remove the new line that gets added at the end

print `tar—cvvzhlf “/foo/backups/$fileOrFolder-$date.tar.gz” /foo/$fileOrFolder—atime-preserve—label $upper`;

Simply put, I set it up to backup the individual sites based on the folder I specified when the script ran. I use another one slightly modified for full backups, and another for sql backups. There were a few hiccups with getting them running, but they’re working beautifully.

Unfortunately, one side-effect I hadn’t considered was that when these backups ran, they created gigabytes of backups. Our account was on a server that had a 50GB limitation. We had setup this account several years ago, and Bluehost had since upgraded the plan we were on with more generous limitations. The most recent being unlimited disk space. If we had wanted, we could contact bluehost and have them move us to another server.

The disadvantage of that would be downtime, so I never bothered with that. However, apparently when the backups ran, they got an alert of some sort. So without any warning, they moved us to a new server last night around midnight. All our domains went down for a good 8 hours, and when they finally came back up, php wasn’t functioning properly for another 4.

So the moral of this story? Schedule your backups, and make sure your host doesn’t decide to randomly upgrade you without warning by making sure you don’t randomly create gigabytes of files in the course of a day.

I finally reinstalled Kubuntu from KDE4 RC. It was pretty much broken to all hell and I hated it. KDE3 is working a lot better, but I’m still getting crashes :/

I also realized that I should really start backing my config files, as I had to setup samba all over again at least 3 times, which really sucked. So without further ado, here’s another random how to:

Configuring Samba for Public Access

Read the rest of this entry »

Things got a wee bit busier then I would have liked. I’ve been working at Tommy Bahama on the weekends, so my personal life has been practically non-existent outside of Helen and a couple other people. My work with the Ubuntu US Teams has been put on hold too because I can’t attend any GSLUG meetings to stay on top of things.
I’ve finally finished my on-campus classes. I’m currently taking CCNA classes online, so it’s a bit easier. I’m taking a quarter off while I finish up some stuff from last quarter.
To add on to that, I’ve finally handed off Circle K to some pretty capable people, I’m still there though, just serving in advisor capacity, but they’ve got a good handle on things.



That’s a really brief overview of how things have been. For some more up to date stuff, I’m leaving Tommy Bahama, I want my life back, and I don’t want to end up working in retail support for the next few years. A good chunk of the experience I have gained from there is in retail systems, and I want to be working in technology systems, or at least something that’s a bit more widespread or has more security.

I enjoyed working with the people there, I just didn’t see them, if ever. I only saw them when I came in on my own time, so that doesn’t even count. All my communication was through phone and I’ve seen less then 30 people on the weekends since I started.
So a few weeks ago I decided to start job hunting. It started out as just looking around to see what was out there, but when I realized that for only a slight variation in job duties, I could make significantly more. Plus I was really not challenged at all by the job, everything I did was incredibly mundane and basic, the tickets I got that were more interesting, I couldn’t complete due to lack of resources. And to add onto it, I’ve slowly been going into debt since I have been making barely over rent+bills.


Anyways, after interviewing for a few weeks with little results (was even interviewing with Google at one point, but the interview process was 3 months), I got a call from a staffing agency I had interviewed with a couple years ago. I chatted with them on the phone a little then came in for a quick update on things then I had an interview on Monday with Alaska Airlines, and I got the job!
I’m really excited to be working there, today was my first day and everyone I’m working with is really awesome. Everyone I work with really knows what they are doing and it felt wonderful to actually be able to speak to them without having to dumb things down, I loved it. I also didn’t have to be reserved and quiet until I got my bearings, I pretty much hit the ground running and was chatting it up with everyone within my first two hours there. So far it seems like it’s going to be a great place to work.

There’s going to be a learning curve though, they use different software for pretty much everything, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to learn it all quickly, Lisa, one of the people who works there, walked me through some of it and I understood it fairly quickly. I even got to go out in the field and do a repair on my own. My manager, Matt, seems to have a lot of confidence in me already, which feels absolutely incredible, there’s no second guessing or asking if I can handle it, when the issue came up, he just said “Let Ahmed do it, I know he can handle it.”



That’s what has been going on so far, I’m really hoping this becomes a permanent job for me, I’m currently a contractor, but I’m going to do my best to make myself known and to impress them more then ever before.



By the way, here’s a picture of my in the cockpit of a flight simulator. That’s right, I got to do a take-off and landing of a 737 jet at sea-tac airport, and then a landing at the Juno, Alaska airport.

Been crazy busy this past month, work+school+Circle K=hectic. Although I have a lot more free time, I spend it working on random projects and Circle K stuff. I’m actually taking a mid-term test a day early just so I can go to a project for my club and get us some money.

I discovered a website awhile back called Silent PC Review while looking up reviews on motherboards. I’ve since then become addicted to their website, reading up on ways to silence my computer. The fan on my video card is obscenely loud (I tested this by stopping it, computer noise dropped quite a bit) as is the Power supply (I bought it while my other one is on RMA, should get back to me Wednesday). I bought a replacement fan/heatsink for the video card, and one for the CPU (It’s the stock one and doesn’t do a very good job at cooling, I got a ninja, which has the option of being passive, I’ve got a 120mm fan behind it so i think it’ll work.)

Hopefully those will get to me Wednesday so I can finally shut up my computer in one fell swoop!

Well, I’ve moved out of the noisy house in bellevue at long last. I moved out to West Seattle (which seems a bit counter productive) to a small studio in the basement of an elderly couples house. It’s actually a really nice place, It’s about 2 blocks away from the ferry, I can literally walk straight down to the beach from where I live, and I can watch the sunset if I wanted to.
The couple who live in the house are really awesome people, they’re both 80 and look 60, and are still moving about. It’s fun talking to them (a couple days ago I was working on their computer when Helen came over, she came up and had tea with Ann, the woman there, while I was working on it), and it’s a nice quiet place. I think I’m actually going to enjoy living here
I spent the last week of September moving (hence the lack of posting), and got all the big things moved on the last day (that day was a big mess).
For a while my room was 80% boxes and 20% space, but I’ve now shaved that down to a 60/40 ratio. Hopefully I’ll be able to get it down to 40/60 in the next few days (I’ve got A LOT of stuff). I’m planning on donating everything I don’t use, I’m trying to hold onto less stuff I don’t use often.

Class has started and it’s been fairly uneventful. The marketing class is kinda blegh right now, the instructor isn’t really all that clear when she hands out an assignment, so I tend to get confused about what the assignment is (but I just email brandon and he usually knows what it is). The IT103 class is pretty easy, It’s all online and I have to use this software that came with the book for the assessments, and it’s painfully easy. The only big gripe I have about it is that it doesn’t run in linux, and wine is going to take some tweaking to get it running properly.

Circle K is finally starting to pick up, I got a secretary this week! So far I have Me and King as The President (we’re co-presidents), Eric as the VP, and Cecilia is the Secretary. We just need to hunt down a treasurer and then we should be good to go for a full-board. Our meeting this past week went fairly well, Eric is going to come to S3 next week which is freaking awesome (I’ve been the only member to pretty much all of the past events, it kinda sucks), We just need to work on member recruitment (I’m going to start throwing up flyer’s on Monday, I was going to do it last week but I still haven’t unpacked the printer >.<) but I’m confident that we should be able to get some more members into our club and start working on Projects, I’ve asked Eric to get in touch with the JRC and see what they’re up to. Hopefully in the next couple weeks we will be able to visit the bellevue noon club (I might end up going to the sunrisers alone since it is so early).

So that’s basically everything that has been going on, it’s picked up now that school has started and I think it’s going to be a fun year!

Over on reddit, where I tend to spend a lot of my time, anonymgirl posted an article about the girls in the boston/cambridge area. People commented on it and one guy said he’d be interested in doing this everything, random reddit meetups. Well, I replied saying I’d help do this in seattle. Someone replied saying they would be at pax as an enforcer, and so we’re hoping to get a group of redditors to wear pins at PAX! We created an article on reddit about it, and I’m going to buy some buttons for PAX too. Oberon, the guy who’s the enforcer, posted on the enforcer boards to check on intrest in buttons. If you’re going to be at PAX and want a button, let me know! It’s a buck for each button, which is cheaper then buying them yourself.

Finally got my new video card yesterday, it’s a 7800GT. Huge improvement over my 6600 that I had before. Went from player stalker at 20fps (which dropped to like 7 when I fired a gun) to 80-100, 80-90 when I raised the graphics. I grabbed the Bioshock game demo last night and played it, was pretty damn sweet; story is a bit messed up, but gameplay is pretty sweet.

Over the weekend me and Helen went up to B-ham to visit friends, we went and saw Ashley, then went to a party at the mint, wasn’t too interesting, we left after about 2 hours. We went back to Ashleys apartment where we were staying and played Mariokart. I got a hold of Mantis and he came over and hung out for a bit too, we had to go back to his house to grab some more controllers for the N64. Was pretty damn sweet (although I kept getting distracted while playing, and Ashleys tv is hella tiny).

As for the job search, I haven’t really given it much effort. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I shouldn’t work this coming quarter. I have to get Circle K off the ground, and the only jobs I can find are full-time and that wouldn’t work out since I’d have to have meetings during the day, a couple classes I’ll need to take are in the middle of the day 4 days a week, and I’ll have to take them eventually. Plus my current job ends in september, so I can just work till then and afterwards have my parents pay for everything (they’ve kinda been wanting to do that for awhile).

All the interviews I’ve gone to have gone fairly well, but I haven’t gotten a job offer yet (would be getting a lot if I change my monster profile to looking for full-time jobs, but I got tired of answering phone calls from recruiters about jobs in nebraska), had a couple interesting ones, one at a web host and another for a small vc. I suppose I should write up a new cover letter and send out my resume to ads on craigslist, but I don’t really have the motivation.

I found out yesterday that the contract for my job is running out, and it probably won’t be renewed. My Contract will more or less end in October, so I’ve got a little less then 3 months left on my job. The chances of my contract being extended again are very slim, since the company has 3 or 4 people left to hire for the year, and they probably don’t think IT needs another one, and if they do, they’ll most likely get a Systems Engineer or something.

I’m also looking into moving to Seattle, since I currently work there and plan on going to UW next fall (however, I’m not so sure about moving to Seattle if my job ends in October and I have no idea where I’ll be working next). I’m hoping to spend no more then 700 on rent, from the looks of it I may get lucky with a place that includes utilities. There are a bunch of places available right now, but I’m currently broke after having had to pay a bunch of bills, rent, and ICON all in the same week (In other words, a little over 1,000 bucks, and I make about 1,200 a month). I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to continue going to events this pricey since they tend to screw with my budget quite a bit, plus Eric sucks at managing the bills, leaves them to pile up and then asks me to pay them all at once (I paid bills for may, then 2 weeks later I have to pay for june, he already has the one for July but is sitting on it). Richard is gone too, so the bills are even more right now. The gas bill should be a lot less though, since I shut off the heater last month as it would turn on every 15 minutes even when the house was plenty warm. But I’m looking at paying around 100 for gas, no idea what the other stuff will be yet.

I’ve started selling off stuff I don’t need, various computer parts I’ve collected over the past year I no longer use. Hopefully that’ll get me enough money to pay deposit on an apartment. I started looking last week, but I stopped since any place I would find I wouldn’t be able to have since I can’t pay for them. I’m going to wait until I have at least 800 on hand first, then I’ll start looking (probably next weekend I guess). As long as no surprise payments come up I should be able to make it though the month and have enough to move out in the end of August. Only problem with that is my current lease ends in September, so if I’m lucky, Alex will find someone to move in when I leave. I think he has  a friend who said he would move in when I left, so that should take care of things.

Classes start in September too, my dad wants me to meet with an advisor so I can make sure I’ll transfer to UW easily. I’m guessing I won’t since I’ve been working on a useless AA in Tech Support for the past year and a half that will just fulfill the stupid AA or 4 year requirement recruiters put on job listings. I’m still not 100% sure why I’m in college, BCC is total suck, starting a Circle K there sucks (gotta get time off to recruit for that damn club), hopefully I’ll get it rolling this fall.

I’m still a little clueless about what I’m doing right now, I’m working for an awesome company, I’ve got a few projects going there right now and I more or less control my schedule, when I leave it’s going to be a pain finding another job that will work for me, as I’m going to be going to college so I’ll need a part-time job.