The thing about cell phones

I suppose every generation has its "thing". You know, that flash trend that seems to become the standard by which everyone values themselves (and others). There are some that are universal and timeless (at least as we Americans go) like houses, cars, jewelry, etc. More nefarious, and often hilarious, are these "status products" that the average joe puts way too much faith and effort into in order to make him/herself seem and feel more important/cool/wealthy/interesting etc.

I am continually fascinated by the sociology surrounding cellphones. There are so many factions of cell phone users that I hope anthropologists in the future end up thinking of them as tribes. I can only imagine them trying to dissect the various practices of each sect and their meanings/origins. For instance, take the Nextel people. These people feel compelled to not only have a cell phone, they want it to function like a walkie-talkie too. How this is any different from a standard cellphone with a speaker phone, I really don't get, but the Nextel People are insistent that they NEED a walkie talkie feature. Perhaps is some technologically chic trucker thing, you know, kind of CB radio for the 2000's. One of my favorite things is when you see some moron with one of these having an inanely ordinary conversation with someone else (usually meandering down the aisle of the grocery store) discussing something really important, like listing off the things he/she is walking by to the person on the other end. I'm also amused when these people can't work the volume of the walkie-talkie portion of the cellphone right, so as a result, they end up having to hold the phone up to their ear so they can hear the other person's replies. Then they move the phone toward their mouth to answer the person. How the hell is that any different than a regular cell phone, even without a speakerphone? Maybe it's some desire for the world to overhear their conversation (although, if that's is, couldn't they talk about something more interesting than "well, Kraft mayonaisse is $1.79, but Miracle Whip is on sale for $1.59")?

While we're on Nextel, I think they were the first ones to start what has become THE symbol of being someone important in the corporate world, the BlackBerry . I tell you, people in the corporate world (in which my "straight"/day job in unfortunately entrenched) treat these things like they are a hotline to the President. I get such joy out of watching these imbeciles look at their BlackBerries so very urgently in mid-sentence with other colleagues as if they've just received launch codes from the Pentagon. These people must not realize how totally transparent they are. Maybe they don't know that we've all figured out that the email they're just received is just another SPAM message about hot, naked co-eds, or a read receipt from some message they sent earlier. In other words, people, we are not impressed. So what? Your phone beeps when an email hits your inbox...spectacular! Will wonders never cease? But these people think that we all believe that they are so important, that they must receive updates via BlackBerry of the current coordinates of every satellite in geosynchronous orbit around our planet.

My other favorite thing about BlackBerries is the people who have them, but can't understand how to work them. I swear, I used to work for a Commercial Real Estate company and we ran a huge Datacenter  for a MAJOR computer company (think Ross Perot). At one point this company decided it was imperative that all their Hardware Planning staff, Network Engineers, SysAdmins, carry BlackBerries. I promise you, none of these people could figure them out. These were people who could completely take apart and rebuild Tape Silos , and they couldn't work BlackBerries!! There were people that spoke fluent COBOL  and worked on AS/400 computers all day, but they were baffled by how to turn on/off ringers for their email, IM's, etc. These types are really the cream of the BlackBerry Crop. Not only do they think that we're impressed that they have a gadget strapped to them that beeps contstantly, but they think that we don't see the look of utter bewilderment as they randomly push buttons, turn scroll wheels, and click things trying to get it to stop beeping. They seem to think that we are unaware that they have no idea what that last beep was for nor do they know how many emails/IM's they have received. Priceless!!

Then there are those Bluetooth people. These are truly the dregs of society. These people don't have enough money to go full on BlackBerry, so they're gonna dazzle us with their Uhura schtick. Why are these things even necessary? Similar to my not underanding why people think they need walkie-talkies, I don't get why these people think they need both hands free. Moreover, they rarely use both hands for anything because (drumroll please) one hand is holding the earpice closer to their ear!! You know, kind of like, oh I don't know, A REGULAR CELLPHONE!! Geez, people, if you're going to attempt to impress is with this thing, at least use it like it's supposed to be used. Don't press it into your ear canal with one hand. Then it just looks like you're trying to dislodge some ear wax that's gotten out of control. And those of you who have mastered the hands free thing, we're no fans of yours either. It's really not amusing anymore to make eye contact when walking into a room, continue with your conversation (via your Bluetooth) and then act annoyed if we (unaware that you are wearing a Bluetooth) assume you're speaking to us. I mean, come on, isn't this a little much? If you wanna impress me, get a little R2D2 and have a conversation via Hologram with Princess Leah, then I'll be impressed.

Those of you with the "poor man's" Bluetooth, the Hands Free Device , please stop holding the cord so the little "microphone bud" is closer to your mouth. It looks so friggin silly when you do that. It's as pointless as the Nextel people and the Bluetooth people. If you don't know how to set it up to truly use it "hands free", then why bother? Is holding the whole cellphone to your ear too much work? Is it just easier to dangle that little cord in front of your face? If you're going to hold something up to your face, but don't want it to be your cellphone, go for one of These Babies . If you're gonna go, go with style. I mean, talk about going "old school".

Whoops, gotta go, my cell phone's ringing..........(just kidding)

This pesky RSS buisiness

Well, since I'm documenting my own learning curve, I figured I'd bring you into the loop on my latest thoughts relating to all things Mikeiscool . As some of you may know, I've only recently taken the plunge into adding an actual functioning blog to my site. In addition to learning more than I expected to learn about blog software/hosting/design, I'm now studying the tip of the RSS iceburg.

For those uninitiated, RSS is an acronymn that stands for a number of things, depending on who you ask, but "Really Simple Syndication" seems to be a popular choice. Bascially, an RSS feed/channel is a way of letting the various search engines out on the internet that your blog is out there, and gives a brief summary of its contents and most recent submissions. It never occurred to me that there would be a special method of referencing specifically a blog versus the usual methods of getting your website listed on a search engine. I'm quickly realizing the potential value of having added a blog to this page. I didn't know that a dynamic page (like a blog) along with some well placed RSS feeds could drive more traffic to a site.

You must understand, I'm a musician first (see also "starving artist") and the primary reason I even began making a website was so that I could have at least a "semi-pro" website to send people to if they were interested in licensing some music from me. I write songs and compose soundscapes constantly, and have many that area available for licensing. Once I got my page up, I began the arduous journey of trying to get it listed on the search engines. Well, like most things in life, I found that "for a fee" I could have that done for me. But as a "starving artist" and a new dad, I am not able to spend money to get to the top of Google . Plus, I don't need to be at the top, but if someone searches for "music composer" or something, I'd at least like to be mentioned somewhere in their results.

Well, now I'm realizing that if I have a marginally interesting and topical blog, if I can properly submit my RSS feeds, I might stand an even better chance of being able to be found if someone in the world searches for "mikeiscool" or "mikeiscool productions" etc etc. (By the way, I picked this domain name as a toungue-in-cheek attempt to find a domain name that wasn't already taken. I thought it'd be funny to see if it was taken, so when I saw it was free, I grabbed it). While I concur that the design of RSS files is "really simple", this business of submitting them is not. This is most likely due to the fact that there are so many people out there trying to rig the system so they can spam the hell out of anyone they want, that the process of RSS submision had to be made into the epic saga that is has been.

The other interesting portion of this working experiment should be seeing what (if anything) changes to my site traffic, and if my antique of a webserver can handle it. You wouldn't believe the hardware (term used loosely) I'm using to host my page. Perhaps I'll familiarize you with my own Hal 9000 in a future blog. Well thanks for tuning in. I'm off to give Lily her bottle.

Mikeiscool is Fully Operational

Well, after much sweat, a few tears, and fortunately no blood, I've managed to get my little corner of cyberspace in presentable shape. I'm happy to announce that in addition to several decent looking web pages, I now have a functioning email system, as well as this enormously entertaining and insightful blog that you're reading (that's right, dammit, you're VERY entertained). Originally (as some of you may have read), I was trying to run my own email server locally, but found that my ISP won't allow that. So I chose RegisterFly to host it for me. It occurred to me, after realizing I had little choice but to go with a "hosted" solution, that this would actually provide me a way of accessing my mail when I'm away from home. I was shooting for this with some of my email server install attempts, but had pretty much abandoned it as one of the potential causes of trouble before I realized the problem was my ISP.

So, when I started looking into the whole blog thing, I was considering going with a "hosted" option as well. I didn't really like that, mind you. I don't know why, maybe it's the geek in me, but I just don't care for the idea of my stuff sitting on someone else's server. It's not like I'm trading corporate secrets or have the Colonel's secret 11 herbs and spices list stashed somewhere, but I just like to be in full control of my site and I feel that I'm somewhat limited in that when it's hosted somewhere else. I guess I also feel the potential of some company arbitrarily changing what they charge for their "hosted" services, and if all my cyber-eggs are in their binary-basket, well I'm gonna have to pony up the dough. Anyway, I found Blogger which appeared to be free and would let me access it from anywhere. However, I couldn't make it cooperate with my FTP client (and no, I still don't know why, but it's definitely a Blogger problem, ProFTP rules!). So, as I've mentioned earlier, I found Thingamablog , and I love it. The issue became, well if it lives on my server, how do I post to it when I'm not at my server? The solution? LogMeIn ! Now I can just connect to one of my network computers, compose my blog, and use the FTP function that's built into Thingamablog  to push it over to my server. It may sound convoluted to you, but it works for me.

Anyway, I'm glad to be up and running. Check out all of Mikeiscool , especially the Music Page . If any of you reading this are in need of any music for commercial use, please feel free to contact me at mike@mikeiscool.net and I'll get back in touch with you. I compose music of many different varieties and styles. My stuff's been on The Sopranos so, hey man, I've got a little "street cred". Thanks for visiting, and drop me a line if you dig the tunes.

While I'm on the Subject of Hassles

Since I'm obviously pent up, and am in need of venting, let me tell you a little about the saga of mikeiscool email! If you thought reading about my adventures in blog-ville were tedious, you ain't seen nothing yet.

I'd say, conservatively, I've been trying (in vain) to get an email server set up on my domain here at mikeiscool  for at least 3 months. I had managed to get my DNS settings set up properly, which took several attempts and multiple checks via these guys to ensure I was right. I started with Sendmail and Postfix since it seems that most people like that combination of SMTP-POP servers. Well, I couldn't get it to work at all. I couldn't send or receive any mail. I read somewhere that Sendmail sometimes didn't like sharing with Postfix (something about competing for listening on port 25) so I uninstalled it. That left me with Postfix only, and I set up my email client to accept delivered mail via local "Spool" delivery. Still nothing. I then read that my ISP (bellsouth) blocks outgoing port 25 to prevent spammers from getting internet accounts and just using the crap out of them to clog the world's email boxes. I could understand that, so I found a workaround using "RelayHost" in Postfix. I set up Postfix to send outgoing messages from my box through Bellsouth's SMTP server, and it worked I could send messages from mikeiscool and they'd get delivered (even outside my LAN, wooohooooo!).

At this point, I was sure it was only a matter of time, since obviously, the only problem would have been that, right? Wrong. Try as I might, I couldn't get Postfix to receive any mail. I'd send stuff to myself from my bellsouth email, yahoo email, my work email, even from mikeiscool  email to itself, and I couldn't receive anything. Now, all the documentation and conversation you see on Postfix will tell you that it's simple and easy to configure and that the directions are a piece of cake and you'd have to be a moron not to be able to figure it out. Well, similarly to the wild world of blogs (actually, much much worse) I have a different interpretation. I think the so called "HowTo's" and "FAQ's" are written by uber-geeks for uber-geeks. I'm sorry, but there's nothing easy/simple/quick about :

I mean, what the hell is that? This is but one of a myriad configuration parameters' instructions that are considered "clear". Whatever!!

So, I continued my search for open source, free MTA's (mail transfer agents) and stumbled across Hula . I gotta say, this sucker's pretty slick. It's got a nice GUI to administer it as well as a similarly nice GUI for the webmail interface. I was able to get it up and going on my server pretty quickly. I was able to punch holes in my firewalls to let me access both the administrative portal and the webmail portal from out on the net, but alas, I still couldn't get this sucker to receive mail. In fact, I lost the ability to send mail on it too, but I probably could've figured out how to enter the RelayHost function in it as well, but I started with receiving mail as my focus, and I wasn't gonna let up until I figured it out.

I tried everything. I installed different versions of it (9 to be exact) since with Linux, sometimes the older the build, the more compatible it'll be (particularly when your hardware is an antique like my server). Some of them wouldn't even start, but several did with the same frustrating results. I was able to get it running and access the portals, but no mail. Dammit, what was the deal? I stuck my whole server outside my firewall, naked in a DMZ, exposed to all the big bad viruses of the world thinking it was a firewall issue, but nope, nothing. I thought it was my DNS settings at my registrar, but nope, they were good too. I could ping my mail server, and I'd just get messages saying it couldn't find a service running on that address/port. I spent every luch hour from work and an hour or so each night after work (and sometimes the weekends) trying to get this sucker running and still nothing. I was getting so frustrated. I started googling for phrases like "i hate postfix" "email sucks" "mta's that are easy" anything. Then I started seeing posts on various geek boards about similar problems with all the clients I'd tried. I started to realize it wasn't just me. Then I read a post (and I wish I could remember who/where but I don't) saying that their ISP blocked INCOMING port 25 as well as OUTGOING. I started looking into it and, sure enough, so does my ISP, bellsouth.

This makes no sense to me at all. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, your email is essentially sent from machine to machine across the internet on a "port" called 25. It's the default port for SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). A port is essentially, an extension of your IP address that tells the internet traffic exactly how to connect to your computer's NIC card. Now, bellsouth blocking outbound port 25, I get. I hear ya. I understand you don't want every idiot with a computer sending out ads for Viagra, I understand that, I can live with it, especially since you let us VALID, PAYING users relay through your SMTP server. But what I don't get, is why the heck they'd block incoming port 25. Why do they care if I'm RECEIVING mail at my IP address? What business is it of theirs? Why isn't it allowed that I can LISTEN on port 25 and receive emails directed at my domain? I just simply don't understand the logic.

Well, if I looked into it, I'm sure (for a fee) they'd "unlock" port 25 for me, but screw that. So I started looking for email "hosting" companies. I started looking for DNS redirect services that could take a request for port 25 at my domain and redirect it to another port (say 26) and I'd just change my server settings. But, to be honest, after literally months of screwing around trying to get it to work, I was over it. So I found a company called RegisterFly . I'm now trying to get my email set up through them so that if someone sends an email to me at mikeiscool I'll actually get it. We're still going around and around trying to understand each other. As it stands now, I supposedly have an email box set up with them, but they're being really unclear on how exactly I'm supposed to set up my MX record on my DNS. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that they register/host domains and their related DNS info as well and they'd like me to switch to them, but I've already payed for a year at my current registrar 123registrations .

Hopefully, I'll have this sucker wrapped up soon and will have a (somewhat) fully functional website complete with email sending/receiving capabilities. I don't know if any of you out there have ever toyed with the idea of hosting your own website/email, but I'll tell you it's not for the faint of heart, and requires some serious patience and persistence. Good luck if you're diving in. I guess that's all on the wild world of emails for now.

The long battle for decent blogging tools.

Ok, I'm the first guy to admit that I'm a computer geek. I have a pretty good background in the field, as well as several years of schooling. I'm the sole maintainer/builder of my site, have some basic programming skills, and am generally just a technically adept guy particularly where computers and all things related to them are involved.

So, when I decided that my website might benefit from some dynamic content, I figured a blog page might be nice. I started looking into what it takes to actually build and maintain a blog, and I gotta tell ya, it is entirely too complicated. Bear in mind, I'm pretty adept at computers/internetworking/web design, so when I'm saying that it's too compicated, I mean just that. I feel badly for anyone who's a beginner trying to start one of these. My biggest beef is, there is no simple way to start a blog that isn't "hosted". That is, if you don't mind your blog sitting on someone else's server and thus subject to their size/content/formatting rules, no problem. If, however, you have your own server/domain and you want your blog to reside on it, buckle up for a long drive.

The most obvious choice (I thought) would be Blogger . Their package is supposed to be able to publish your blog to your own FTP server. Well, I tried it, numerous different ways, and I could never get it to publish to my server. Yes I had my firewall ports open for PASV FTP, yes I had my FTP client configured properly, yes I had the "Publish" settings on Blogger's site configured properly....it just flat out wouldn't work. I'd get time-out errors. My FTP logs would show that a session was opened via Blogger, but nothing would transfer. I could FTP in to my box from anywhere on the net via Firefox but for some reason, Blogger just wouldn't do it.

So, I started looking around for other clients/hosts that allowed for so called "remote hosting". Let me tell you, it's slim pickings. There were several clients out there, most of which had to run as, essentially, another server on my Linux box. Now, I admit, despite being a computer geek, I am still learning the finer points of Linux. I'll speak about my experiences/thoughts on Linux in another entry (especially for those of you who aren't familiar with it, but it rules!!) Anyway, I wasn't quite sure how to install deploy some of the other requirements that came along with some of the "Open Source" Linux clients (i.e. MySQL, Python, PERL, etc). So I started looking for Windows clients (I know you other geeks out there are blasting me for even mentioning Windows, but despite my love of Linux, I still need Windows for a few applications, particularly pro-audio stuff).

I tried several of these Windows packages, and most had ridiculous costs associated with them. Sure they were pretty, robust, and had many more features than I needed, but all I wanted was a way to ramble and post.....DONE. Finally I found Thingamablog . I LOVE IT. It's small, it's simple, it lives on my Windows box, it plays very nicely with my FTP client, it's fast, it has nice templates with it (like the lovely SlashDot template you see here....yes I did that intentionally....I told you I was a computer geek). In short, it is exactly what I was looking for. It's sad that it took so long to find. I literally had to look for a few weeks to find it. So if anyone out there is in a similar situation, give them a shot, I really recommend them.

Well, that's enough for now. Lily's gonna need a bottle soon, and I don't want her to get cranky.

And we're off

This will theoretically be the first post on my new blog page. We'll cross our fingers and see if it works or not.