Word of advice

Don't run Windows 2003 on Xen (open source version). That is all. Thank you

Command of the Day

ssh-copy-id , I hate myself for only finding out about this command 2 days ago and painlessly copying my ssh key to hosts in such a crappy manual method. I'm embarrassed I didn't even bother scripting the process before finding out about this command.

From man page...

ssh-copy-id - install your public key in a remote machine's autho-
rized_keys

Doctor Office ideas

Doctor's waiting rooms have so much potential for some sort of product to be placed in there to occupy peoples time while they wait for sometimes hours at a time to see a doctor. I went to a dermatologist about 6 months ago that actually had 3 computers setup for people to use while you waited, but I don't see that working in a place where people are actually sick and spreading germs. This was one of those posh dermatologists who really just wants you to come in for some cosmetic work and not cause you have some strange mole on you that looks like its smiling at you. People are often left to sitting there watching a tv on mute, or reading scientific America's latest article on how the polar bears are causing the ice caps to melt (this may not have been the exact subject).

It seems like the Doctor's office is a prime place for some sort of marketing product to be placed, could be something that involves interacting with other patients waiting or just on an individual basis. I see people fidgeting with their blackberrys bored out of their mind and trying to text anyone who will respond.

I think for city environments Doctor offices should implement some sort of buzzer system like restaurants have to let you know that your table is ready. You sign in, get your buzzer, and you can walk around within a 5 block radius , if you aren't too ill, and not be cramped up in a small room reading about polar bears causing global warming. This would reduce the amount of people going up to the poor receptionist asking when they will be seen by the doctor and lead to less anxiety in the waiting room for patients.

Another enhancement that I think ALL Doctor's should get together and sort out are some universal fucking new patient forms. It's so mind numbing having to fill out the same shit anytime you goto a new Dr but often repeating that information multiple times on different forms (How many times do you need my insurance information and home address?) I should be able to go into any Dr office with my universal forms already filled out, hand them to the receptionist and maybe only fill out one form as to why I'm seeing the Dr there today (Not like ANY Dr ever reads this btw). The forms would include all my insurance information, my health history, any allergies, medications I'm on and any other revelant information that every Dr office in the world asks for but uses a different form.

Sound pollution

I must finally reveal to the world my secret for the solution to help curb NYC sound pollution and hope someone out there somehow finds a way to get this done. The solution... ::drumroll:: is to track taxi cab horn usage and impose fines based on excessive horn use. I know , I know I'm a genius , stop it, please. In my ignorant mind about cars, it seems simple enough to create a device that would activate anytime the horn is pushed, record the datetime, and record the duration of the honk. You can give the taxis some sort of quota for honk time, maybe even impose a point system based on the time of day?

Right now I'd say a majority of the time (just based on my own personal experience) that a taxi uses it's horn, its either excessive or just serves no purpose but to release anger. I know the horn is primarily a safety device to warn of impending danger and get another drivers attention but when I have to hear a taxi driver hold onto his horn for 20 seconds at a time outside my window, it makes me want to setup a sniper rifle and take them out one a time (joking ECHELON). NYC would benefit from some extra cash from all the crazy cabbies and neighborhoods will all be a little more quieter. So someone please do this and give me credit, thanks.

smokeping's whacky source

I'll first start off by saying I think smokeping is a great program and Tobi Oetiker is a great programmer whose contributions to the community have been great and in no way could I ever create MRTG or RRDTool. But.... After downloading the source to smokeping today and trying to configure it to run, I was completely shocked at how poorly it was put together. It's clear that Tobi did not bother with making his code easy to run on any other system but his own with constant absolute paths to his own home directories on his personal machine! His own documentation and install notes are vague at best and I can't figure out why he did not use relative paths at all in the source. While you do have to edit most files anyway to reflect where your RRD perl libraries are and your perl location, I just find it very odd that he left the paths in like that. Even his example configuration file is catered to his machine and his network making it confusing to delete out what is not needed.

BIND zone file management

Anyone out there have any recommendations for managing zone files in BIND? It seems the general consensus is that people just end up using home grown systems. A lot of the web based projects out there are either abadoned or use strictly a database backend which is nice but it adds another layer of complexity, and a failure point. I'd like to be able to switch back and forth between using the management system and being able to do an inline search and replace if need be , on my zone files.

Instruction booklets for furniture

Since moving into the city I've had to assemble a lot of furniture from ikea and other various places. Today while putting together snack tables from bed bath & beyond I believe I discovered my source of why I hate putting this crap together, the instructions.

You see in order to save money on printing costs places like Ikea use picture only instruction manuals so they don't need to translate every booklet into every language where they ship to. Ok, that's fine , and anyway you don't need much verbal explanation when it comes to fitting round pegs into round holes, you just need to know which is the proper hole to place said peg in.

Here is where Ikea, and all those other places fail , they lie to you in the number of steps it takes to assemble. "This drawer assembles in 3 easy steps!", fuck you, step 1 has me placing 10 screws in and involves 5 separate pieces , step 1 should only involve one smooth motion of me inserting one item into another, bam step 1 is over with, now lets take a look at step 2. Got 5 screws? 5 separate steps. Stop with these shortcuts. When you have 453 things happening in step 1 the picture becomes a massive scribble of fail. I have yet to completely assemble anything 100% correctly that involved picture steps , my ikea draw has a piece on backwards and one of my side tables is missing a few screws, but as long as they don't collapse on me without warning, I'll feel mildly content.