Monthly Archives: May 2008

Global Warming is a bunch of BS!!

Exactly what I just said, it’s all a bunch of bull-poop!!

It’s May 28th and I’ve got to have my furnace on, it’s going to be in the 30s tonight.. the Fracking 30’s!!! That’s just a few degrees above freezing and it’s a few days before JUNE!!!!!!!

I thought Global Warming meant that it was getting warmer not COLDER!

But wait I could bet that if you mentioned something like this to one of those experts they’d tell you it’s cold BECAUSE of Global Warming, and I could also bet that if it was going to be 100 degrees tonight they would also say it’s because of global warming….

the average low according to the almanac is 53F, and the record low was 35F in 1971

May 28th and the upper 30’s for tonight… there’s something wrong with the science there, if it’s actually getting warmer then it shouldn’t be in the 30’s a few days before June

This sucks, yesterday I was sweating, today I’m freezing.. let me guess, that’s because of global warming right?

Finally an update..

Yes it’s been a few days since I’ve updated I know…

I’m just so busy, I spent all day friday and all day saturday redoing my steps, I’ve got sunburn on top of my sunburn and the interesting thing is that my face only has sunburn on one side really, just a little on the left side. My right side neck is is all burnt as well and I’ve got an interesting tan line from my sunglasses and you can see where I had my gloves on as well.

But the steps are basically done, the main part is anyway, once I got to the top I found that they’re crooked… since the concrete was really bad I had to do the very top step as well, but that wasn’t very safe, there would be a nice 1 1/2″ bump from the wood right there on the top so I decided to cover the landing as well with wood, kinda like a platform on top. When I started it I found that the top step was crooked, I lined up the planks with the top one and started running them back but since the top step wasn’t square everything the planks on the landing are crooked now so now I have to figure out some way to make them straight.

I have wooden steps going up to my porch that will need replaced as well eventually, but what I think I’m going to do is remove the riser and run the wood planks under the first step so that you won’t notice how crooked they are, sort of an optical illusion type deal. I’ve got lots of extra wood cuts so I can play around with it to get it looking correct

so I was thinking just how much this little project cost me, about $350 in materials and so far close to 17 hours in labor, billing out at $25 per hour that comes out to more in labor than the materials cost, but still the cheapest quote I got for having someone redo my steps fully, ripping them out and re-pouring the concrete was about $5,000, so I think I’m coming out ahead. I guess it’s  a good thing I have the tools and knowledge to do this sort of stuff…

One big change will be in the winter though, you can’t use regular rock salt on wooden steps so I have to get the more expensive calcium stuff, and of course once per year I’ll need to hit them with Thompsons Water Seal, if I maintain them they’ll last pretty much forever

yeah I’m more than a geek…

‘Broom Smoke’ an at…

If you’re not from Pittsburgh you don’t understand the ‘an at’..

but anyway, so the people who had this house before us decided to add an addition to the house, it’s small room that is the laundry room, room enough for washer/dryer a little space to walk around and some shelves and cupboards, it’s off of the kitchen. It’s, I would estimate 10 feet x 15 feet, Nice idea but bad design, it’s actually a ‘real addition’ to the house, they knocked out some bricks, added a couple doors, plumbing and that’s it.. no heat at all, so every year the pipes would freeze, so of course they burst over the winter and ruined the floor and wall so I’m in process of repairing it.

The floor, well it was bad when we moved in, but throw a nice rug down and it’s fine, one of those things that I’ll get too eventually… well eventually is here, I decided to take a closer look at the damage and it’s not repairable without a whole lot of work and money, the floor that is, the walls are an easy fix, some drywall/paint and it’s done.

So I decided to just refinish the original hard wood flooring in the kitchen, three sub floors, two sets of tiles and one layer of linoleum later I’ve gotten down to the wood and surprisingly it’s not that bad, all of those layers protected it from the water. There were slight watermarks but they sanded right out with no problems, there is a funky patch in the back corner but no one will see it as the shelves and fridge will be there anyway so I’m not too worried about it.

Anyway I was doing a bit of this work on Saturday while my kids were home, and my 2 yr old thought it was really cool and watched me most of the time doing this, he says I broke the kitchen and floor… anyway I was sweeping up and of course there was dust there as well, a lot of dust actually and the baby was watching me and he says ‘daddy, you made broom smoke!’  Kids are a trip, especially him, he just comes up with the wildest things..

anyway, I’m just extremely busy, but then again when am I not? I’m also in process of redoing my steps as well, they’re concrete and I’m averaging every two years I need to repair them, it’s getting tedious and annoying. So I’m trying a new approach, I went and spent a few hundred dollars on treated wood planks to cover the steps with, those things are expensive at $13 a piece. Of course though that’s not the only expense, I needed special screws for the wood, and tapcons (special concrete anchor screws) and some liquid nails as well to be safe! Now I just need it to stop raining for a few days so I can get the steps done!

Oh well..

A new server…NOT!

So, I went and purchased a VPS server, only to run into all kinds of problems with it.. I spent close to $400 on this thing and it’s junk…  in the companies advertising for the VPS, they failed to mention that it only comes with 128mb of ram which is not even enough to run Plesk/Virtouzzo control panel…

From my research you need a minimum of 256mb for the control panel to run decently and then that doesn’t leave much for the rest of the site and services like email etc

so I made the site live and it was down every 5 minutes and I had to reboot the server numerous times… I called them before I made the site live and specifically asked what would happen if I went over the 128mb of ram and had to use the ‘burstable’ ram of up to 1gig, they told me that the site would just slow down a bit until resources were freed up.. not true from what I found out.

I had the site in one window and the control panel in another window on different monitors, in the cpanel I was monitoring the resources usage, and sure enough I hit 100% very quickly with the ram, then hit 100% with the swap, of burstable ram, well the site didn’t slow down it crashed, all the services just shut down and it needed re-booted, so either the tech support was lying to me or just didn’t have a clue what he was talking about..

so of course I figured out the problem, not enough ram, called them over 8 hours ago to talk to them about the problem, and ask how much would it be to upgrade the ram.. it’s a simple question really, but no one could answer me on the phone and I still have not heard back yet either

as of now that version of the site is essentially offline and only accessible through the IP address, but yet it still crashes.. with no visitors it crashes, that’s amazing really…

so I’m back on a shared hosting account, at least it runs…

Finally site is fixed…

So finally, this site is not listed as possibly harming your computer…

That was a fun, interesting process… I still think it’s quite flawed, but I guess with any new system there are bound to be flaws..

What pisses me off the most though is that even if you know who hacked you the hackers ISP won’t do anything about it, but yet Google and the likes are more than happy to jump and essentially convict the owner of the site for distributing malware/badware or whatever…

Here’s the final email response from StopBadware.org, who works with Google to put these wonderfual labels on sites:

“We have received and processed your request for review of your website, kristoferbrozio.com/.  Google’s most recent test of your website found no badware behaviors on the site.  As such, the Google warning page for your site has either already been removed or should be removed shortly.  In addition, if your site has been listed in our Badware Website Clearinghouse, we will remove your site from the Clearinghouse list.

Sometimes website owners are confused about why Google placed a warning in the search results for their site.  In many cases, a website run by an innocent site owner has been hacked by a malicious third party, causing the site to distribute badware without the site owner’s knowledge.  If your site was distributing badware because it has been hacked, then simply removing the bad code from your site is not enough to keep your site clean in the future.  You will also need to work with your hosting provider to fix all security vulnerabilities associated with your site.

Please note that we will be retesting your website at periodic intervals in order to monitor that it remains free from badware.  If we find that you are hosting or distributing badware in the future, the reviews process may take considerably longer than the original review.”

Answers to commonly asked questions from site owners who are the subject of Google warnings can be found at:  http://stopbadware.org/home/faq#partnerwarnings
For tips on keeping your website clean and secure, please visit:  http://stopbadware.org/home/security

I like how it says that they’ll be re-testing my site at periodic intervals and that the process will take longer the next time… longer than a month eh? great, something to look forward to then…

It still feels to me like it assumes your guilt, like ‘we’re going to be keeping an eye on you!’

blah…

Noctua NH-C12P CPU cooler

OK..  I have been like dying to let the proverbial cat out of the bag for the last couple of weeks… but today is the day I can officially let it loose.. DragonSteelMods is the official US launch partner for Noctua.

today we’ve posted the only US based review of their newest cooler, this thing is amazing, it has the lowest temps out of all of the coolers I’ve tested on my Quad-Core CPU,  at first I didn’t believe the testing results so I took it all apart and re-tested it again and then tested it again… it’s small and it’s the best so far..

read the full review HERE

Site Re-Design and still BLAH!

So, I’ve completed the re-design of DragonSteelMods, and fully SEO’d it finally… it’s time to get serious now… next week I believe we’ll be starting the migration process to a new host as well, a much speedier one that should change things quite a bit..

and as for this site, well i finally heard back about the review about it being listed as possibly harming your computer, well it still is now.. they found another one.. what I don’t quite understand is why they didn’t tell me about the other instance int he first place?!?! Why keep going back and forth like this, just tell me what the problem is and I’ll fix it already…

ah well..