But here are some updates...

The battery backup system is working great. The only problem that I have so far is the noise from the fans. I'm going to put rubber feet under it to see if that will stop the noise. Karen has some really neat cables for me also. They will attach all the batteries together with only two cables. Cool.

The WISP has been running smooth also. Now that I'm doing MAC assignments, I don't have to worry about unauthorized systems on the network. I also get to turn people off when they don't pay. Funny how I'm getting checks before the due dates now. I do have a few people quitting the service though. I have others waiting.

Ping, our dog, is a great little puppy. Never poops on the floor. Usually makes it outside to pee. Doesn't annoy us too much. Sleeps most of the time when I'm working. Loves to play with her toys and go for walks. Loves to eat, that's for sure. Pretty much minds what you tell her. Very good dog. I think I'll keep her. She sure is getting big. I think she is twice the size of when we brought her home. She is about half the size of Sophie now. She is just a bundle of skin still, but starting to grow into it.

Jane got the flu a few days ago, then I got sick also. It didn't hit me too hard though. I've been popping Nightquil's and hopefully they've been helping. I've been working too much to really notice.

It's still cold here in Silver Springs, but just starting to get warmer. Like right now it's 36° where it would usually be 27°. Luck us. I can't wait for summer to come back. I want to get back out there and work on my Samurai.

Talking about the Samurai... I went last weekend to find another one for my project and there wasn't any for sale. Nothing around here at least. I did find a guy with a totally built one. He kept pushing CalMini for parts. I guess I'll have to post an add on Pirate or something for a frame and title. I should probably go down and get the title changed over for the one I have just in case.

Anyway, I guess I need to get back to work now.

Last night I added two more batteries to my battery array. Now I have four batteries running the backup power system. The Xantrex 1500 WATT inverter is going to drive me nuts though. The fans on it are so loud that I can hear them down the block. I've got to figure out some way to make them quiet. They are keeping Jane awake at night.

Any way, here is a better photo of the setup with all the batteries.

The new battery backup system is running and working well. Except for a few small problems...

First and the biggest problem is that the fan on the inverter is very loud. Too loud. At night we can hear it whirling. It's a double 1" fan. Smaller fans are usually louder. These are very loud. Since they are attached to the frame of the house, the sound carries all the way to the bedroom.

The second problem is that I don't have enough AMPs to run a full 120VAC. All I need to do is attach a few more batteries to the battery bank. Right now I only have two. I need at least four. This is easy to fix. I just need to buy two more batteries.

It's the weekend again! I didn't do any wheeling today. Mostly just hung around the house with the dogs. Johnny and Jane are doing their shopping today.

Yesterday I setup my new backup power system. I bolted it all together, stuck it under the house, and went to plug it in and realized that the plug is a 20AMP commercial. So I had to go to Lowe's today and buy one. Tomorrow we are going to run a new breaker, wire, and plug just for the power system. It's going to be nice. I still have to work out the grounding.

Rackspace charged us $8,840 for one year of managed hosting and 150GB a month. They want to charge us $480 a year for a 125MB hard drive upgrade. This is all on a white box server.

We can get the same service from Hurricane Electric for $5,400 a year and we get 300GB per month, up to six servers, and one time charges for hardware upgrades.

Rackspace is just ripping people off big time. I just can't see their justification for charging $480 for a $70 hard drive.

Here is what I think I should do. I should buy the colocation 7U rack from HE for $300 a month. That give me 300GB of 1Mb/s bandwidth and up to 6 servers. Then I should put my own equipment into the rack and manage it all myself.

Nobody supports FreeBSD and PostgreSQL anyway, so managed hosting is useless.

I'll setup a DB server, two web servers, and a backup/archive server. I can probable build all the hardware for under $2000. Now where am I going to get $2000....

We're back to freezing fog and no sun, and the forecast is the same all week.

The new puppy is here. Sophie is a bit jealous of her, but they are getting along just fine. Jane is making sure that the puppy is getting lots of love. Just wait until puppy turns into dog. ;-)

I did a little wheeling today. Up on top of the mountain the snow is still really deep, but very hard. we drove up to the towers and I stopped next to one of the buildings. There is a full size propane tank that just the top was sticking out. I was probably on about four feet of hard pack snow. We drove further up and out onto the snow across a field. Normally the field would take 15 minutes to cross because of all the rocks. I punched it and crossed it at like 25 MPH staying on top of the snow. It was real smooth that way. ;-) Lots of fun.

I guess tomorrow is work again. I need to hurry up and finish so I don't have to work anymore. ;-)

Another example of Microsoft's bad programming...

I'm sending HTML email with my new email system wrote in PHP. I made sure to follow the RFC standards for email. I tested in every email client I could get my hands on, except for one. MS Outlook. Not Outlook Express, but just Outlook.

The standards say that line ending termination should be \\r\\n (return, newline). This works in most email clients, but not in MS LookOut!. They require it to be just \\n (newline).

What MS Outlook does is display the raw HTML markup code in stead of the rendered display. So I had to break my code to make it work correctly. Fortunately it works correctly on all other clients so far even though it's broken.

Reason #19282746583228 to dump Microsoft.

Dad left for NC today. Sophie is here with me for the next two weeks. So I'm going to have lots of fun tor...er...playing with her. On Saturday we are going to pick up our new puppy. So we will have two doggies here.

If you didn't know, we are getting a little doggie named Ping, as in ping 192.168.1.1. 8^) She is one of those wrinkly dogs from China, Shar-Pei. The name "Shar-Pei" means "sand-skin", but translates more loosely as "rough, sandy coat" or "sandpaper-like coat". Not too cuddly sounding is it. Maybe she will turn out to be a good four wheeling dog. I'm for sure going to try and teach her to play fetch.

She kinda reminds me of a cross between a hound dog and a bull dog. I wonder how Sophie will like her. ;-o

Yesterday's adventures. We tried to get to the top of the mountain behind us, but that didn't work. So we went up to the top of the mountain on the other side of Silver Springs and we made it. Well, the roads were cleared, so it wasn't hard to do.

It's been foggy, cold, and just icky here for what seems like months. But on top of the mountain it was sunny, warm, and just nice. Amazing.

In the photo you can see the sun shining on the mountain tops. You can see the fog down in the valley where everyone lives.

I can't wait for the sun to come back.