Welcome!

Welcome to my new and exciting Blog! I have an existing blog at Livejournal and I will import all of the old LJ entries into this blog. My old LJ blog was mainly a place to keep my midwest firends up to date on what was going on here in the DC area. Hopefully, now that I’ve moved to my very own server, I can expand beyond that role.

The server I’m using was my second homebrew computer that I built midway through college. It was a good gaming machine for its time, but lately it’s just been collecting dust. Time to put it to some good use!
Server specs:
kastner.mine.nu
Connected via Comcast Cable Internet Service
Fedora Core 4
Apache 2.0
MySQL 4.1
MovableType 3.2
Running on a 850MHz Athlon w/133MHz FSB
256MB RAM
GeForce2 MX 400 (32MB)
3×20GB HDDs (RAID 0/1 capable, but running independently)

I stored it in Julie’s utility closet in the basement, along with the router and the modem. It makes a nice, makeshift server closet!

My main motivations for the server are:
1.) I’m sick of paying $100 for the .Mac service, which I rarely use. My .Mac website never went anywhere because its services were mainly replaced by Flickr and my LiveJournal. The web drive .Mac gives you is only 250MB or so, but my own server offers me (potentially) 60GB. I can publish my calendars just as easily on my own server and backups are just as easy. Steve Jobs kept touting the extra features you get with .Mac, like software and antivirus. Well, most of the goodies weren’t that great and there’s no reason to run antivirus on a Mac.
2.) Time to move on from LiveJournal. I have more blogging friends and more topics besides life in DC to discuss. Things some of my LJ friends might not be interested in, but others will.
3.) Testbed for new technologies - such as a Wiki or other CMS I tried to push at work, and other such things.

So Enjoy!