This is a tale of a newbie sysadmin (me!) and a server (a Zabbix server). It is a tale of disk space woes, long queries, huge databases, and Oracle tomfoolery.
Thankfully I was successful in fixing the problem (I hope!) with some changes to the database. Nevertheless, it has been a stressful week. Here’s the story.
So…. I missed a blog post for the week of 1/24 – 1/30 (hey, it was my birthday, give me a break) and for the week of 1/31 to 2/6 (because I actually just forgot) so I’m going to try and do 3 posts in a week this week (or two posts a week for the next two weeks).
This first post is gonna be a filler post, just because I honestly can’t think of anything to truly talk about, so I’m gonna talk about some generic things.
We primarily selected SolarWinds Web Help Desk because of the rich feature set and low price point. When we were doing comparisons of the different suites available, we wanted to find an easy to deploy, feature rich, and inexpensive solution. Web Help Desk met all these criteria. Talking with their sales and support staff prior to the purchase helped us seal the deal. We did a 30 day trial in-house and found that it had every feature we wanted (including the import email system to enter comments on tickets). Additionally we found a large forum with lots of users who have been posting tweaks and configuration guides to get the most performance out of the system. Overall, it was just the best choice for us.
This is more for my sake than for yours, but I am posting it here because it’s been a while since I’ve said anything.
Games To Be Reviewed!
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (XBox One)
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (XBox One)
Borderlands: The Pre Sequel (PC)
So far I’ve only played Borderlands, but Middle Earth and the new CoD sit on my table waiting to be played.
That combined with Dragon Age: Inquisition, Halo 5, and the Halo Master Chief Collection (both XBox One titles) means November is going to be a VERY busy month.
Looking forward to it.
Also, I’ll be doing a “state of the gaming nation” post later, where I talk about what’s been going on in the gaming world lately.
Looking forward to that a lot.
Game on folks.
Game on.
Even more news: Dropbox claims that the account usernames and passwords leaked on PasteBin (see the previous article here) aren’t from Dropbox, but from unrelated services.
I still (and Dropbox does too) strongly recommend you activate 2-factor authentication.
-M
—
Some common sense is greatly appreciated. Good job Microsoft.
Sunday was a gorgeous day, and in spite of my meh-ish mood I decided to go take some photos.
Here’s a Photosynth Panorama of the Rutgers Gardens in New Brunswick, NJ. Link here, in case the embedded viewer isn’t working: Linky!
A new month, a new OpenSSL Vulnerability. I miss the days of just using the internet, not hosting things on the internet.
Ugh.
You can test your websites here: Dashlane OpenSSL CCS Injection test.
You can read about the vulnerability a lot of places:
For those on older versions of Ubuntu Server, like I was, you can follow this guide to get yourself to a version of Ubuntu that can install the latest OpenSSL Libraries: here.
What a morning.
Hey Web Developers.
I know we’re all about engaging our web site visitors and getting them to like, tweet, or otherwise drive traffic to your webpage, but can we talk a bit?
If you’re using the standard like button for your page, just check to see what your page looks like from a place that blocks social media like Facebook.
Here’s what i see whenever I try and read an article on TheVerge.
Notice: the huge grey bars covering the content? Those are poorly designed/implemented Facebook like/share buttons. They cover the meat and potatoes of the website: the actual content. It drives users crazy. More importantly, it drives people away from your site. Just because someone is at work doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to view your site and read the content.
Here’s what a normal implementation should look like:
Notice the difference? The Like button is there, visible. It doesn’t cover the content of the page. It doesn’t flow beyond the size of the actual button. Clicking it would result in a block page, as expected, because Facebook is blocked. It doesn’t affect the readability or usability of the page though. This is IMPORTANT.
The easiest way to fix this is to host the Like/Share button icon on your own web server. This way your users don’t need to install something like Facebook Blocker ( http://webgraph.com/resources/facebookblocker/ ) just to read an article.
Thanks!
Hello everyone! I mentioned yesterday how I was going to build a guide to show you how to start mining and saving up Dogecoin, and I apologize for not posting it yesterday. It was a longgggg day at work and after my workout at home I was thoroughly wiped. So after sitting and thinking on the idea, I decided to split it up into multiple posts across multiple days. Today I will bring you step 1: Getting A Wallet! To the moon!
Without further delay, here’s what you need to do:
Stay tuned, sometime over the next few days I will make a post about how to start mining the simple way: CPU mining in a pool. Follow up will be accelerated GPU mining in a pool.
I heavily recommend you mine in a pool. Solo mining is not really worth it, unless you have a LOT of hardware on hand. The pool I use is Coinium, and it’s a great little place with fairly regular block discoveries and good pay.
Good luck, newbie Shibe!