Slackerbit.ch

Wow, this blog has been deserted for quite a while…
Anyway, as a followup to my last entry, I am no longer jobless. Since the beginning of the year, I am now a freelance web developer.
This move also calls for a server upgrade, since my old (or rather, current) server has not been the most reliable. So I’m also going to switch hosting companies. I found one that offers quite beefy servers, reasonable free traffic and a wide range of distros to choose from.
Unfortunately, that is kind of a problem. My server distro of choice so far was Red Hat 7.3: stable, reliable, and I could get qmail and bgware RPMs at Bruce Guenter’s site. But Red Hat 7.3 has been EOLd at the end of December 2003, so there will be no more official security updates from Red Hat for that distro. And the newest release, 9, will be EOLd at the end of April this year.
Now Red Hat only offers the free Fedora linux (bleeding edge, new release every 6 month, 12 month lifetime) and the Enterprise Linux line (5 years lifetime). Unfortunately, the Enterprise ES version for small and mid-size servers costs $349 a year, which I just cannot afford at the moment.
I tried out Debian on my test server at home, because that would be the next logical step, but, alas, I got used to the Red Hat way. So, here’s the plan:

• Get Red Hat 9 on the new server
• switch from qmail to postfix
• hope that by 2004-04-30, Fedora Legacy is up to speed
• and if Fedora Legacy is not up to speed, find a vendor like Progeny for commercial support

The qmail-to-postfix switch is almost done on my testserver, I have been able replicate almost all functionality of the old qmail/vpopmail setup, and postfix even offers some more stuff, like TLS for SMTP. With a MySQL backend, I now have POP3, IMAP and SMTP-AUTH working, all that remains to be done is to write a few perl scripts for easy domain and account management and a qmailadmin-like web frontend.

Since getting everything to work smoothly together required getting the info from a few websites, I’m going to document it, so it will be all in one place.

It’s all or nothing,
and nothing’s all I ever get
Everytime I turn it on,
I burn it up and burn it out

It’s always something,
there’s always something going wrong
That’s the only guarantee,
that’s what this is all about

It’s a never ending attack,
everything’s a lie and that’s a fact
Life is a lemon
and I want my money back

Meat Loaf – Life is a lemon and I want my money back

Commuting to work this morning, I realized something while watching the bustling outside:

Crazy is the new sane

I mean, it feels like almost everyone out there has gone apeshit, and no one really cares.

Yes, I am still alive.
I was just struck with a nasty cold, which sucked all blogging energy out of me. And now I once again have an empty frontpage.
Major Suckage

You know, one of these days I’m going to annihilate this whole fucking planet…

Found in my referrer logs:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=my+karma
If you have to look for it on the internet, you’re in deep trouble.

How am I ever gonna make it big on Blogshares if this blog keeps shriveling up to one measly entry on the front page?

Dammit, I need action, adventure, excitement. With lots of photo opportunities, if possible.

Maybe I should become a pirate. Blogging the Seven Seas, taking from the rich and converting it all to rum, or something like that…

This rant…needs more coffee!

Came across Kingdomality today, and took the personality profile test, just for shits and giggles.
According to them, I am a Black Knight. I can live with that…

“It’s not like I’m using. It’s like my body’s developed this massive drug chocolate deficiency.”

With apologies to William Gibson.

Mark, on April 10, 2003:

Now to go learn something about investing.

Same Mark, the next day:

100 shares buys you a week on the front page, above the fold somewhere.

Might be worth a try, though…