I am now bench pressing 185 lbs and squatting 200 lbs. My power clean has gone up to 120 lbs while the shoulder presses are 100 lbs (all of these at five repetitions). Mark Rippetoe’s Staring Strength routine totally kicks ass and I really recommend that everyone try this out at least once, you won’t regret it. Anyone who’s looking to get stronger should follow it as Rippetoe knows what he’s talking about. The book I purchased was worth every penny.
All posts by Saro
Back to School
I started school last night, this time pursuing Computer Science. My first class, Discrete Mathematics, was a bore and a half. I did Boolean Logic 3 years ago at John Abbott College, yet I am doomed to repeat it all over. Although, I did meet someone interesting in my class, so perhaps going to the course won’t be so bad after all.
Let’s see how I’ll be able to juggle full-time work with 4 courses. Most likely not well.
Las Vegas, a review
Saturday night at 12:30 AM, my friends and I drove to Burlington International Airport to catch a flight to JFK (New York) at 6:45 AM. The drive itself was 1 hour and 30 minutes, so we ended up getting to BTV very early. After a 4-5 hour wait along with a 45 minute delay, we boarded the aircraft and finally departed to JFK. One thing I have to say is that I hate propeller airplanes. It was pitch dark outside and we were about 14 people on board a cold aircraft. After a scary flight, the next plane was a proper jet-engine powered aircraft, heading straight to Vegas. It had comfortable vinyl seats with LCD screens for every passenger (mounted in every seat’s headrest). This flight was probably the second best one I’ve taken. The flight attendants made me switch seats because two people “had to” sit together. The flight attendant, in return, gave me a free beer and headphones to my 3 other friends for the trouble, along with a free movie (or else you had to pay for ’em). Woot!
Getting off the plane, I entered McCarran International Airport only to be greeted by a multitude of slot machines. I thought this was pretty fucked up, having slot machines in an airport and all. This was only the beginning of my Vegas experience. Fetching our bags, my friends and I cabbed it to Harrah’s hotel on the strip. Our room was pretty standard as far as hotel rooms go. It’s not like we were going to spend our time in there anyway.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the first thing we did when we dropped our bags off in the room was grab a quick bite to eat and head straight to the roulette tables. I think I made a quick 20 or 40$ before I called it quits for that session. Dave and Alex broke even I believe, while Joe made about a hundred dollars. Now, before we begin this adventure of gaming, you should know that Joe is the luckiest person I know, but he doesn’t stop until he gets what he wants. That said, the rest of us didn’t know what the hell he wanted. He had made over 100 dollars yet he wasn’t pleased. We told him to stop for now till we switch casinos. He disapproved that idea by nodding his head. He pretty much bet all his money and broke even. “Whatever” we thought, better to break even than to lose! The next few days, however, was quite a ride with Joe.
Stepping off the gambling topic for now (we’ll get back to that story in a few) we saw all the big hotels and casinos: The Mirage, Mandalay Bay, Bellagio, Paris, Treasure Island, Luxor and The Venetian. They’re all very nice, but they all have the same thing in common: a gaming floor that is impossible to escape or bypass. If you plan on finding washrooms in a casino, good luck. You’ll lose a few dollars along the way.
I witnessed quite a few crazy stunts in Vegas. Here’s an unordered list:
- I saw an old man with a reading novel walk up to a roulette table and deposit fifteen (15) 100$ bills on the table as if it was nothing. In return, he received fifteen 100$ casino chips. He went back to reading his novel for about 10 minutes when suddenly, he dumped all fifteen of his chips on the colour black. Faces around the table were rocked. The man went back to reading his novel, peacefully. In a matter of seconds, the man made 1500$. He collected his chips and walked off with his novel. The dealers shouted his name (since he was deaf) asking him if he would like to exchange his chips for 500$ ones. Oh yeah, the dealers knew him well too. His name was Jerry.
- Countless stories of loss were told by random people around tables. “I lost two grand last night. I have to make up for it.” was the general statement. These people ended up losing another grand while we played.
I have to say that every slot machine player out there is a zombie. Day and night, they’ll spend countless hours and money on a machine without budging. Quite a scene I must admit.
Joe made 850$ with his last 20$ bill at the roulette table. It was beautiful.
This post will be edited in the future as I add more to it.
LayeredTech Hosting
For more than a year, I have been hosting my servers with LayeredTech. These guys are professional, efficient and affordable. Now, the following rant about them means nothing about their quality service; rather, this is about the miscommunication that occurred between the company and myself. The story goes something like this.
December 19th: Sometime in the afternoon, I take a look at the server email logs and notice that the log size has reached 8 megabytes in size. Upon examination, I realized sendmail was being used, resulting in an open-relay for spammers. I quickly delete the binary and symlink sendmail to Exim. I noticed the suspicious logging activity stop. This, of course, was an “error” on my part, as I didn’t then look at the Exim mainlog to make sure the suspicious activity had stopped completely.
At about 6 PM, my dad tells me he is receiving spam from the contact form page we had setup for visitors to download our programs from. I quickly shrugged it off and told my dad “I guess they’re just spamming us through the form, whatever.” Big mistake for leaving it at that.
At about 8 PM, my dad is still complaining, and he told me to come check it out in detail this time. I take a look at realize that the contact form was being used for spamming by a spammer. Without thinking twice, I rush downstairs to my computer and completely delete the form. *phew* I think to myself. I then realize there’s over 10,000+ emails queued up in Exim, ready to be delivered to poor folks. Quickly, I read the documentation on Exim on how to manipulate the queue! I come across a command called “exiqgrep” which allows you to go through the queue. Along with the main binary “exim”, I simply remove all the queue emails, whether they were good or bad. Note: I then realized there was a front-end script in Direct Admin control panel that manipulated the queue without needing for the command prompt.
Now that the queue was cleared, I decided it was time to hit the sack. Little did I know, however, that all this time LayeredTech was sending ME emails, warning about a disconnection that was about to take place in an hour or two. Of course, I didn’t get those emails because my server was smart enough to tag them as junk, resulting them being ignored. It also didn’t help that I was sleeping at the time, so no way in hell would I notice anything suspicious.
A few hours later, LayeredTech disconnects my server.
At 7:30 AM today (December 20th) I get a call from my site partner, only to realize myself that the sites and email accounts were not working. I shoot off an email to LayeredTech asking for a quick reboot, unbeknownst that my server was cut off by the Abuse Department because of the spam. I quickly get a reply saying to contact the abuse department. Shit.
Within half an hour, the situation gets resolved when I let them know that it was the contact form being abused that resulted in the spam. Thankfully, the staff at LayeredTech understood the problem and reconnected my server, stating that the support ticket will now close. All is well I thought.
At about 6 PM, after about 10+ hours the issue was closed, I get another call from my site partner. The sites and email accounts are down yet again. What the heck is it now?
I login the ticketing system setup by LayeredTech again and realize the spamming ticket issue is still open. I skim through the ticket to realize a technician had re-disconnected my server because the issue was still open, and he wasn’t sure if I deleted the contact form or not. Jesus, what do you think I did with the form, announce it to everyone about a vulnerability on my server? Frustrated and furious, I shoot off a few emails stating how I’m considering moving my business to another host since they shut my server down without any proper warnings. “At least call me” I tell them. Minutes later, the technician replies back saying he had sent me 3 emails and that was sufficient for a warning. To make it short, he reconnected my server and told me to check the support ticket portal next time.
This whole thing really ticked me off. It was after this incident I noticed that my server was blacklisting LayeredTech support emails, only because the email they sent me contained various spam terms, like “Viagra” and miscellaneous pharmaceutical garbage. Sigh.
Anyway, matter is done and over with. I told the host to contact my cell phone next time they decide to disconnect my server. I still love LayeredTech, of course.
That Great Site
I had a vision today in the car, so I must write this down before I lose the momentum and idea of it.
I must start the “That Site” network with my domains. I must also write a site detailing about the Starting Strength routine by Mark Rippetoe, as few people have been searching for it and coming to my site to see what it’s about. That information alone is worth quite a bit.
I need to buy some white boards to plan my ideas out in the basement. I plan to turn my work area into a think thank-like lab. Perhaps my friends can come over every now and then and make use of my basement this way. SaroMedia Labs, anyone? 🙂
I also need to work on Holiday Sources… the template system awaits.
More thoughts to follow.