building nagios host to monitor websensors

I've been wanting to log data from the esensors networked temperature and humidity sensors for quite a while, and wanted to be able to present that data as a view that my users can easily get at.

This article on integration of Nagios, MRTG, and the eSensors unit looks very interesting. It was written in 2004, but should still be relevant with my unit.

I have never completed a Nagios installation before, so this should be interesting.

Weights or Cardio

Was reading this article on cardio versus weight training for weight loss.

Personally i want to be big, but i cant shake the burning desire to be rid of this gut. So for the short term I'm going to break my schedule up as follows

MWF: heavy circuit lifting, with cardio to follow (30 minutes on the bike)
TW: full on cardio: 45 minutes on the stationary bike in the morning, a 15 minute run in the evenings.

Weekends are off, but where possible i'd like to work in pushups and the standard 8 minute abs type workouts.

Damn, my arms still hurt like hell from yesterday. But my legs and abs seem to be recovering fairly fast. My appetite got huge, but so far I have avoided the fast food.

Thinking about buying a DVD player

I seriously dont want to buy another dvd player, but there's something to be said for plugging something in and just KNOWING that it's going to work.

Phillips standalone player

This one has built in DivX support, which may be interesting for playing some occasional divx format media that I come across.

And it's only $49.00

The reason I want to do this at all is that while my PC is perfectly capable of playing DVDs, I always have it taken apart in one form or another, and sometimes I just want to watch a movie.

Zimbra 4.5.5 is out, fixed outlook outbox bug

Zimbra 4.5.5 is out, which includes a long awaited fix to their outlook connector. I would every few weeks or so, get a user coming to me to complain that there was a message stuck in their outbox.

They finally fixed it to where large messages that fail to be delivered are not retried, giving the user a chance to delete them from their outbox and get outgoing mail processing back on track.

Zimbra 4.5.5 release notes

Now, if i can find out where these random "There was an error processing your message, please contact your System Administrator" messages are coming from, i'll be all set.

I've been working very hard to try and become more involved in the Zimbra forums and bugzilla, even though we're probably going to be migrating to Exchange for other reasons a bit down the pipe.

New speakers for the XJ

Installed 4 of these speakers this afternoon.

Didnt use the grill's though, the bling factor was a bit too high, as was the cheeziness rating.

They sound really really decent though for $59/pair speakers (currently 39.99 on sale at crutchfield.com).



Taking apart my doors i found 5 year old alpine speakers. I don't even know if they are that worn out, but they arent as loud as the kicker's I just put in. The problems with those speakers could have been simply related to poor installation.

Failed: dana 35 axle shaft replacement.

The Dana 35 is truly, well, the Dana 35 of axles. It sucks, completely and utterly.

We fought to remove an axle shaft for an hour this afternoon, but the pin that holds the carrier assembly together would not be removed. It is about 20 years old, but removal should at least be possible. Since the carrier holds the axles in, and the axles hold the carrier in, there's no way to remove anything.

The axle as a whole is pretty much a wash at this point. With a bent axle shaft i'll just be tossing it in the garbage.

Image from: http://www.800-923-jeep.com/techCorner/axle_id.cfm

turning one consulting client into many

Read a thoughtful and interesting post on turning one consulting client into many over at friends in tech this morning.

The article talks about the natural way of building a network of clients, by treating people right and getting referrals. It's a zero advertising budget way to build up your rolodex, and has customers coming to you. It beats cold calling any day.

One of my good friends Nathan has been doing computer consulting off and on for quite a long time, and another good friend Marco Carag does design work freelance as well. The three of us have had many discussions on the dangers of overbooking yourself, especially when you have a day job that you have to give priority to.

VPN Woes

Working from home this afternoon, and the VPN totally sucks. This shit has to be reorganized. I cant believe i've let my users deal with this crap.

I'm using PPTP VPN through a m0n0wall box, and the performance is pretty horrific.