I recently upgraded from Tiger to Leopard (the newest Mac OS). The upgrade went VERY smoothly. I chose the basic "upgrade" path rather than the "archive and install" bloat or "scorched earth" start over again. I did this because I do web development on my Mac, and I didn't want to reinstall all that stuff. Yes - I know, most (all?) of it is in /usr/local, but still.

Leopard ships with Apache2 rather than the Apache 1.x version that was in Tiger. This is great, except that Apache hates me.

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I posted a few weeks ago about the troubles I had with capistrano and CVS. I got the project converted from CVS to Subversion, but the versioning was all jacked up. No worries - I'll start with version 1 in svn.

Then we got busy working on the app.

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I have to thank someone very special for the reference: Haf-Haf. Those are long a's, btw -- not to be suggestive of a diminutive person.

So I took a departure from reality to discuss reality TV the other day. I have another departure to make. This balances things out, too, methinks.

I stumbled across this show on Discovery channel a few years ago. It was a Lazy Sunday, and like any good person who pretends to be smart roll through Discovery, National Geographic, TLC, CNN.

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I am training for another MS 150 Bike Tour. This is a fundraiser for the Multiple Sclerosis society. I ride in honor of my father-in-law who was diagnosed several years ago.

This will be my 4th ride. I have to admit that my training is not as fervent as it has been in years past. Life gets busy, and you have to make choices. I really love riding my bike. A lot. I LOVE my bike. I feel guilty missing so much time with the kids, though. My yard also suffers greatly.

I have done well with my fundraising in the past, which suprised me at first. The very first time I did it I made the Top 100 list -- I was the #53 fundraiser of the whole lot). I had never done any fundraising to speak of, so I didn't really know what I was doing.

I picked a different MS 150 to ride in, which was in a different time of the year. Last year I made the Top 100 for that one! Whoa.

This year I will get to ride with a special number, which is pretty cool.

I'm not sure if I will ride again next year. I may take a break. We'll see. For now it's time to get gerared up. That pun was intended.

Here is my fundraising link if you feel inclined to make a donation. Any amount is appreciated. http://www.ms150.org/edon.cfm?id=218793

I have to take a brief departure from reality into reality TV for a moment.

My wife watches The Bachelor, and I love my wife. I like spending time with her. So I usually watch along with her. The show is entertaining enough because it brings the crazy extra hard, at least in the beginning.

This year seemed like an especially nutty group of girls in the beginning, and it made for some good TV. That's the thing with this show is that it needs to be good TV, and crazy is easy to sell.

There are a few girls that tend to stand out, and some of them also stand out with the dude making the picks. This time around there is this cute, quiet girl from Loveland, CO, named Noelle.

I mention the Loveland thing because that was one of the things I noticed about her. Of all the places in Summit County that I've skied, Loveland is my favorite. I remember Bennett's Bowl being my favorite run.

As the weeks go on the crazy is thinned out, and we get to know these girls a little better.

What struck me about Noelle is that she is never involved in any of the bickering or other nonsense with the girls. She always carries herself very well -- she's just a decent human being who is on this crazy show.

So to that end I say stay classy Noelle. It will be a bummer if you don't make it all the way. I hope it won't be the last we see of you, though.

OK guys - mock me if you must.

But....

I don't want to be an administrator. I want to make the pretty pages that do the neat things. I don't want to worry about whether I have a hole in my firewall or deal with the Apache config stuff in general.

I spent the last 9 days playing with server config stuff rather than working on the apps that I have the hosting for. Don't get me wrong -- I had some good stuff in place. I just don't really know how secure it all is or how easy it will be to add additional domains to the setup. Apache whips me and security scares me.

I am impressed with the company and how quick the small slice that I had was. I also got a LOT of really good feedback from other SliceHost users.

I just wish they had a control panel that you could use to deal with the actual hosting bits if you wanted to. They do have a control panel, but it deals with very few details with the OS mainly.

So I have put in a request to upgrade to the PS service with DreamHost. I will still be subject to the filer issues they had recently. I will minimize my risk a little, though, by not hosting email with DH. Why would you when you can use Gmail for FREE? Gmail beats Squirrel Mail all day long. The DH IMAP and POP setup is a little squirrelly, too (ha ha).

I have learned more about the magic of DNS in the past few weeks. The DH issue was good in that respect.

So I have that going for me.

I participated in a lightening talk at the local Ruby Brigade meeting the other day. Nothing fancy - just a little recap on my Big Nerd Ranch experience.

The group is pretty smart, but I thought I was probably not the only nuby in the area, so it might be topical for someone else.

Here are the slides:

Background

I have 3 sites currently hosted with DreamHost. I actually had a fourth site that I was in the process of testing on DreamHost, but I pulled it back.

I have a handful of sites that are also hosted with Yahoo, Network Solutions, and 0catch.

There are things that I like about the control panels for Yahoo and DreamHost. I generally do not like the control panel for Network Solutions. It is not quite as bad, but very close, to GoDaddy's control panel that I fortunately no longer have to deal with.

There is another host company that I used a long time ago. They tried to rip me off, and I don't remember anything about their control panel. I can tell you, however, that ci host is the devil.

So I have some experience with a few different host companies.

In the near decade that I have been doing websites I have never had the week that I just finished....

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