Posts

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Dreamhost hosted website backup

Janicek.com was hacked sometime in the very early morning yesterday. Janicek.com has been hacked a few times in its years. In the past, I would contact Dreamhost‘s technical support and say, “My site was hacked. Can you fix it for me?” And they would.

This time I wrote and said, “Hey, my site was hacked. How do I fix it?”

Dreamhost takes full backup “snapshots” of your data twice hourly, twice daily and twice weekly. How’s that for getting your money’s worth?

So if you’re website is hosted by Dreamhost and you get hacked:

Telnet into your account
Windows: Start>Run> “telnet www.yourdomain.com” (without quotes)
Login will be the same as your FTP username and password
Or you can use PuTTy

OS X: Terminal

Here are Dreamhost’s instructions…

Steps for restoring data on your own :

    1. cd into the hidden directory named .snapshot (it will not show up in any directory listing at all, but it’s there)
    2. Choose how far back you would like to go ( hourly.0 is one hour ago, hourly.1 is two hours ago, nightly.0 is one day ago, nightly.1 is two days ago, weekly.0 it one week ago, weekly.1 is two weeks ago )
    3. Copy the restored file to where you want it (using the unix cp command). You’re done!

I had to reacquaint myself with the Unix command line…

cd yourdomain.com
cd .snapshot (note “.”)
cd nightly.1 (or however far back you need to go)
ls (to see your data files)
cp index.html /home/.server/user/domain.com/folder

Let me know if you need help. Or you can contact the Happy Help You Recover Your Data Team at Dreamhost.

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Important to do list

I have to keep lists for myself. I’m pretty good about keeping a mental list but I usually write things down for safe keeping and so I can actually scratch something off of my list. I really like my Ta-da List but I find myself using that for personal “honey-do” projects that are usually reserved for weekends. Most always I have a peice of paper in my left front pocket. I might need to run over to HoPot and I can’t call up my Ta-da List there.

This was on my tangible list today:

    Test setting up a client pharmacy domain in Plesk
    Determine if there is a RDA for Choline
    Pick socks up off floor in bedroom
    Cat puke

Well I’m here to tell you that I found time to clean cat puke but not time to set up a client test domain. I’m a family man – family comes first. ;-)

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Fun with showroom salespeople

Mom, Elise and I went to Star Furniture in Houston on Saturday afternoon. Elise found a bedroom set that she liked. I liked it. Mom liked it. Elise and I decided to buy at least the bed. A saleswoman approached us. After introductions I asked if there were having any same as cash specials. She said, “No, but if you pay cash you will receive a 12% discount.”

12% is a nice discount and we would prefer to pay with cash but at that juncture, we didn’t have that much cash in our checking account.

I next asked if she could discount the bed as the footboard and a deep scratch on the top. She walked over to her point of sale kiosk and called her manager. We continued to inspect the bed. A few moments later she came back and told us that we would receive an additional 5% for the scratch in the furniture (the floor model was the last in their inventory).

Elise asked the saleswoman if we could have a few minutes to talk about it. She obliged. We talked about it and decided we didn’t need to spend the cash right then. We thanked the saleswoman and said we weren’t going to make a purchase today.

We continued to walk through the store. I was quick to notice a big poster that read, “Pay cash and receive a 12% discount OR take advantage of our two years no interest and no payments.”

We walked around the store some more (a 110,000 square-foot showroom) to see if we could find another bedroom set we liked. We decided we like the one we all had originally agreed upon. We walked back to that wing of the store and decided to go ahead and get the dresser as well.

We walked downstairs and had the business center page our salesperson. She came downstairs and I told her we’d like to buy the bed and dresser with the two years same as cash. We filled out the credit paperwork. Before she took our application, Elise asked to make sure that the 5% discount was applied to the purchase. We all heard her – she said, “Are you going to make sure to apply the 5% discount?” To which she replied, “Oh yes, of course. It will be on your receipt.” She then left and processed our approval. She came back with the the bill of sale which required our signatures. Elise noticed no 5% discount. She asked the saleswoman where the discount was.

“Oh, I thought you said you didn’t want the discount!”

Elise responded, “Why would we not want the discount?!”

Saleswoman’s response: “I don’t know. I was wondering that myself.”

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Weekend with the parents

We spent this past weekend visiting my parents. We got to mom & dad’s around 7:30, said our quick hellos and hopped in the car again to drive up the road for catfish at Crossroads. Crossroads’ catfish always makes for a treat and is comfort food for me.

After dinner we went back to the house and we gave dad his belated birthday present. After belated birthday present opening, mom, dad and Elise endulged in homemade ice cream and cobbler. Everyone eventually fizzled out and went to bed. I stayed up, went outside and looked at Mars in the eastern sky. I thought about life, Mars, life, life, where my life is going, where Elise’s and my lives are going, if I left the toilet seat up for the cats so they could get water, I checked my armor, thought about life a little more and went for bed. Before settling in I softly asked Elise if she wanted to see Mars. She said, “Josh… See Mars?… You’re obviously stoned from the peyote so you and Jimi Hendrix need to put your guitars away for the night, you need to take Jimi home so he can take his kid to T-ball practice in the morning and you should brush your teeth and get some sleep.”

She got up and I showed her the bright orange glow in the eastern sky. She said, “Wow! That’s Mars?” To which I said, “Yes!” Elise then checked her armor and went straight back to bed.

Dad woke me up on Saturday morning so we could run the coax cable from the attic, down through the wall to the TV so mom could watch one show and record another….

My parents have been really up on television technology as of late. Last year they bought a large, flat panel DLP television for the living room. They subscribed to a digital satellite TV service and last week they acquired a new DLP TV for the den. Mom has been working on setting up the TV in the living room so they could watch one show while recording another on their DVR.

Enter Josh: I was up in the attic with an electric drill, flashlight, string, coax coupling kits, pliers and yards of coax wire. An attic in Texas turns into an oven at 10 a.m. in August. With the help of everyone I eventually ran the coax from the attic and through the wall to the TV in the living room.

The remainder of Saturday was cooking. Mom and I made homemade Salsa Verde. Mom went on to make garden grown spinach with balsamic vinegar, peas and a salad with purple onions, walnuts, Mandarin oranges, goat cheese with a sweet balsamic dressing. Dad marinated and grilled 1.76″ inch (yes, I measured) ribeyes. Dinner was awesome.

On Sunday Elise and I slept in. Around 1 p.m. the girls and I drove to Katy where I picked up a new e-Machines AMD64 Windows box for the office. We then drove around Houston in search for furniture. We had lunch at Panera in Memorial City and eventually we found a great bed and dresser for our bedroom at Star Furniture. We weren’t really in the market for new furniture but by chance we found a pretty good deal, aside from the terrible sales experience we had to endure.

We didn’t get home until almost 7 p.m. and had to immediately hit the road.

Another weekend that quickly blew by!

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T3

T3
Josh cooks for the girls

Tejashri, Jenny, Christine, Tonja, Cyndi, Michelle and Elise had a girls’ night in at our house last night. Last month Christine, Kim and Elise decided that the girls needed to maintain regular get-togethers once a month. Christine and Cyndi decided on the name: Third Thursday Thenoritas. One of them has a speech impediment.

For the first girls’ night out I was volunteered to do a cooking demonstration. This was the menu I prepared:

    MexiCoffee Rubbed Smoked Pork Tenderloin Medallions topped with a Grilled Corn and Chardonnay Cream Aioli

    Grilled Asparagus Fence with a Butter & Balsamic Reduction

    Smashed Mashers

    Café Amoré Crème Brûlée

Thankfully the girls were chumming it up most of the evening so I wasn’t on the spot all night. Unfortunately the meal didn’t go as well as I wanted. The pork was too done, I didn’t like the asparagus, my first corn chardonnay sauce congealed and I put too much beer in the potatoes which didn’t leave room for cream.

Pork
MexiCoffee pork loin

I think the girls liked the food. I wasn’t happy with the meal but all of the estrogen floating about the house kept my spirits up and eventually made my boobs tender.

It’s hard to cook a good meal for more than a handful of people. Next time I’ll definitely need a sous chef. Elise helped me as best she could but I hadn’t organized myself enough to account for help. I was expecting to do everything on my own and realized that I needed help only after it was too late.

The crème brûlée was well received. It was actually refered to as “orgasmic” – it’s hard not to blush when you’re the only guy in a dining room full of women and that word is used.

So… I’m glad the girls had fun. I tried to join their group for next month’s outing but was quickly denied. So I’m going to start organizing another Godfather Club meeting. First on the agenda is to see if Alexandra will come over and show us how to make crème brûlée.

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Search gammut




This illustration is an actual pie chart generated in my web server statistics software. It clearly indicates that Janicek.com serves a wealth of information on topics that vary significantly. Janicek.com is a cornicopia of useful information.

    Big: Adjectives & English Translations
    Janicek: Slovakian Geneology
    Keg: Food & Drink
    Jokes: Humor
    Ball: Sports & Recreation or Male Anatomy
    Triathlon: Sports & Recreation
    Training: Sports & Recreaction or Al Queda Summer Camps
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Austin Radio and the Little Beat

Ever since returning from Cabo I’ve tried to maintain the “no worries” mantra. It really sucks to come home to anti-Bush bumper stickers, road rage, death in the news, a war, money, radio and everything else that we subconciously hyper-consume on a daily basis.

I spend a lot of time on the road. I used to think I liked listening to talk radio in the mornings. Not NPR. NPR is depressing. I used to channel flip between Austin’s KLBJ-FM Dudley & Bob show and the syndicated Howard Stern show. The Dudley & Bob show is sophomoric and to the best of my knowledge is the only “funny” local morning talk show. I listen more to Stern now because when you get past the boob and ass bits, I think he can be funny at times. But most of the time I have talk radio on for noise. Half the time I’m not really even listening.

Enter Podcasts. I read about Podcasts when they started gaining popularity and you could subscribe to them with your RSS Podcast applications. I downloaded a couple of them and gained no interest. Podcasts are modern day’s pirate radio. Most are not much unlike watching cable access – geared towards a very limited audience and generally very badly produced (I’m not complaining – I know if I tried to produce a Podcast, it would be terrible). We can all now subscribe to Podcasts from the iTunes Music Store. Last month I subscribed to a few new Podcasts to see if I could actually find a few that I would actually enjoy. After returning from Cabo I wanted to stay in that paradise state of mind so I subscribed to shows like HawaiiUp and Beach Talk for my commutes to and from work. They just couldn’t hold my interest.

So I don’t feel much like subscribing to Podcasts anymore. If anyone knows my sense of humor and personality and know of a Podcast that I might like, let me know.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from David Sadof. David had a weekly talk show on KLOL in Houston that I used to listen to religiously. He e-mailed me to let me know that he was back on the airwaves in Houston. Well, I live in Austin so I can’t really listen to him. I wrote him back and asked if he thought about producing a Podcast. He said he hadn’t fully researched it but apparently it’s being considered. That would be very cool – I would definitely subscribe to his Podcast.

An interesting thing about David Sadof: He was the first to interview Eddie Vedder about the meaning of Pearl Jam’s song “Jeremy“.

So I would subscribe to Sadof’s Podcast (hint hint). If they were still around, I would subscribe to the Stevens & Pruett Podcast. Funny, both are out of Houston. Austin needs something. Maybe I’ll start my own Podcast.

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A date and a tough brisket

On Friday night I took Elise out on a date. I woke up on Friday morning, got ready for work, kissed Elise goodbye and told her we were going out to dinner that night.

My wife loves Italian food so I planned on taking her to Vespaio. We got to the restaurant at a quarter to nine and there was a two and a half hour wait. We turned around with no back up plan. We ended up at the Tree House Italian Grill on S. Congress. Elise had the roasted pork loin and I had the veal saltimbocca. The food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. We should have waited until midnight to eat at Vespaio.

On Saturday we shopped for deck furniture.

I woke up early on Sunday set on smoking my first brisket. For many years I have sought true culinary enlightenment. I am a die hard Texan. I have never smoked a brisket.

I bought a small brisket the last time we went grocery shopping because the cut of meat looked so nice. It also provided me the opportunity to learn to smoke a brisket.

I did a little research last week and found what seemed like a great way to smoke meat. We don’t own an electric burner or have any spare terracotta pots so some supplies were needed.

While shopping on Saturday I looked for pots, grates and burners. I couldn’t seem to put together the smoker. We held off on shopping makeshift smoker supplies as we were deck furniture shopping. I decided to hold off on Sunday morning to get my supplies.

I woke myself early on Sunday with a vision. It wasn’t necessary to buy anything. I could make my own electric smoker. I wrapped my electric crockpot in foil and put it on the bottom of our gas grill. I ran an extension cord and plugged the crockpot in, put wood chips in crockpot, cranked it up and waited. I put the brisket in the grill and monitored the temperature with the remote thermometer that Steve and Joanne gave me for Christmas.

A few hours later, no smoke. An hour later, no smoke. My temperature was perfect but no smoke. I didn’t want to bake my brisket. If I did I would have done it in the oven and not out in the 100-degree outside heat.

My brisket needed smoke pronto. I hopped in the truck and headed to the ol’ HoPot. My plan was to buy a chiminea or a vase-like terracotta pot that would pipe smoke from its top. I would then use some sort of tubing to channel the smoke into the gas grill. I figured this would require some complex engineering, beer and duct tape.

I walked into HoPot and realized that this project would 1) be too involved 2) relatively expensive and 3) look pretty white trash. So I took the money I would have spent and put it toward a pre-assembled Char-Broil smoker. Man, that thing smokes.

Earlier that morning I rubbed the brisket with salt, pepper, coriander, cumin, paprika, cayenne, garlic, fennel, brown sugar and coffee. I was envisioning the perfect brisket.

My first smoked brisket looked great but it was tough. Now it is my goal to smoke a tender, melt-in-your mouth brisket. I’m completely open to suggestions…


Smoke ring

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Breakfast

I hate breakfast. Back in 1996 I had an oral surgeon crack the front of my upper jaw back into place before the Novocaine set in. That was more fun than any breakfast I’ve ever had.

I’ve never been a big fan of breakfast, but now I just don’t like it. It’s not so much breakfast itself, it’s the foods that are generally involved.

I woke up this morning and started smoking a brisket. That’s why I’m wasting a post on breakfast foods – because I woke up early, cranked up some Jimi Hendrix and started toking on the Angus dooby. No, really, I have a slab of beef on the grill with a makeshift electric smoker (more on that in a later post). I decided to cook a standard American breakfast for the wife and myself: scrambled eggs, toast and bacon.

What’s with scrambled eggs? Chicken embryos that are quickly stirred into a yellow snot and heated to the point where they become a solid that have no signficant protein strands to make worthy of even chewing. And the taste – how would you describe the taste of scrambled eggs? Eggy? So we add salt and pepper so we can eat salty and peppery eggy nothingness that requires little more than a tongue and gums to pass through the food tube and into the stomach. I know there are dietary values of eggs but that’s not the point. I’m going on 30-years-old and I’m questioning the really important issues these days.

Toast? It’s really just a big crouton. Not much flavor there either if you’re using plain ol’ bread. Most people put butter on their toast. That takes so much time. And what if you just pulled a stick of butter from the freezer? How are you going to butter your toast? Now you have to chisel shards of butter into some sort of vessel so you can microwave it. You microwave your butter and now you have soup because it’s early in the morning and you don’t want to take the time to reprogram the microwave so it cooks at 24.67% power. Now you have to pour your salted milk fat soup onto your crouton so you have a soggy peice of charred bread that has the same consistency of your salty, peppery eggs.

What about jams and jellies? Some call it “preserves” – those are “preservatives” – so you have a soggy crouton with a sweet, gelatinous embalming fluid spread atop.

I cooked bacon. Now I like me some bacon. Bacon’s probably the best invention since the pig. But what is bacon? It’s pork belly. A fried-up swine’s digestive sack that’s 86.42% fat and pumped full of water, sodium nitrite and phosphates.

When I think of food, I don’t think of waffles, French toast, toast, bagels, pancakes, scones, fritters, scrambled eggs, Girl Scout cookies or Pine Sol.

For breakfast yesterday I had barbecued pulled pork butt, a beef rib and blackened chicken with a jerk barbecue sauce. Then I went outside and worked on my motorcycle. That’s breakfast in my book.

Brunch? Don’t get me started.

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Deck Furniture Shopping

Elise and I spent all day shopping for deck furniture. We searched south Austin for manufacturer-direct locations with no luck. We did however witness a middle-aged woman on a pocket scooter tooling around the sidewalks. It was hilarious… I can’t put it into words, you had to have been there. Not but ten minutes later we saw a guy riding an old mountain bike while carrying a chainsaw. I kid you not. Man, this town is so awesome.

So we drove down 71 and stopped in at L&L Furniture to find patio furniture that was way out of our price range. Swivel rocker chairs were ~$500. We looked around the store and found our way out relatively quickly.

We drove down 620 and stopped in at Chair King. The prices were similar to L&L’s. Next we stopped at Sandy’s Burger Hut for two lousy, overcooked burgers. Then it was futher north up 620 and we drove by two other places that were similar in price range for furniture. We drove down 183 to 360 and stopped at the Container Store so I could get a desk drawer. No desk drawer. Nothing good from this outing thus far aside from crappy burgers.

We drove down 360 to Barton Creek Square to look for furniture at Sears. Nothing good there. Onto Garden Ridge. Nothing at the GR other than Christmas decorations. Remember, it’s August… time to start thinking about Christmas at Garden Ridge. Then to the ol’ HoPot on Brodie Ln. Nothing there. Then to Wal-Mart. We were exhausted and about ready to settle on anything at this point. Elise saw some wicker furniture that she thought she could settle on. I personally don’t like wicker. I decided that we would go back to the Chair King and pay a huge amount of money for deck furniture.

Back to the Chair King we go. Keep in mind we’ve circled the entire city of Austin in search of furniture – six hours have gone by and all we have are crappy hamburgers sitting in our stomachs. We’re at the point where we just want to buy something to make it a fruitful day out and be done with deck furniture shopping.

We get to Chair King and check everything out again. We look and look and look. I finally sit down at a display with a 72″x 42″ boat table with two high-back swivel rockers and four dining chairs. All have back and bottom cushions and they’re awesome. Price? $2,459. For patio furniture. There were some other set ups that were similar but these were, what we thought, the most comfortable. I spent a month building a deck so we could have fun with friends out in the backyard. I figured I’d make an investment in furniture as well.

We were both tired and done looking at patio furniture. I wanted to be done with this shopping outing. I have no problems spending money (luckily I married who I married) and was ready to spend $2,500 on stupid furniture that sits outside to get moldy and rot just so I could get home in time to watch Cops.

My wife said, “I’m not going to do what we did in Cabo. So, NO!”

I concurred. We walked away. I’m glad I listened to my wife.

We headed back down 620 and as a last ditch effort we stopped at the HoPot in Lakeway. We walked out to the garden section and found a display set of chairs and a rectangular table. This End of Summer sale was marked down 50%. The only problem was the set was missing one chair. So I had the HoPot kid go ask his manager if they could take $50 off the set since it was missing the one chair (yeah, me, Mr. Bargain Hunter who was about to drop $2,500 on patio furniture). The discount was approved contingent upon us taking the set tonight.

We loaded up the truck with a big, rectangular table and five fine rocker chairs for $200.

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Mac ‘n’ Cheese

This is probably going to make John’s weekend and get a reaction from my mom that wouldn’t be much unlike telling her I’ve decided to become a lesbian…

I think I’m going to switch. I came home this evening and turned on the PC in the office so I could print an e-mail. “Can’t access mail.janicek.com”. I checked the LAN settings. “Limited or no connectivity”.

I power cycled the modem and router. No luck. I swapped CAT5 cable. No dice. I had the iBook in the office with me so I could research my dilema. I found a couple websites that I thought might help.

So I download the Windows registry patch on the iBook, load it onto my thumbdrive (instant process) and inserted the thumbdrive into the PC to open the .reg file (not-instant process). I install the registry update and reboot the computer. I pinged Google and got a response. I opened Thunderbird and retrieved my e-mail veeerrrrry slllllllloooooowllllly. I tried to open the e-mail that I wanted to print. I think it’s still retrieving as I type (on the iBook).

For kicks and giggles I opened Firefox. I have Google.com set as my home page. Google’s header image is still trying to load. You know Google.com, that search engine website with the graphic intense 10k header image!

The Windows PC in the office is a great machine. It has a 2.8GHz Intel processor, 1GB RAM, a couple huge hard drives. Windows XP SP2 had to be installed a few times for the system to work like it should… but it’s all been a royal pain in the ass. What makes a pain in the ass royal anyway?

I couldn’t begin to tell you how many phone conversations and e-mails between my mom and I involve reinstalling XP or reformatting a drive. My mom’s a computer nerd/wiz, by the way.

So I’ve decided that I’ve done my time. I’ve built computers from the ground up. I’ve troubleshooted hardware, software and networks. I’ve collectively spent more time working on Windows-based computers that I have actually using them.

It’s true, Macs just work. (shut up John)

Without going into great detail, I can vividly remember the last September when Elise gave me the iBook. I plugged it in, turned it on and it just worked. The first thing I did was opened Safari and started surfing. I think OS X’s Network Utility popped up and asked me if I wanted to join my wireless network. Since then everything has been smooth sailing. The iBook did crash once… that was when John was doing something Super-Mac-nerdy on it.

I’ve really grown to enjoy the Mac experience since having purchased an iCurve and an Apple keyboard. I’ve never owned a notebook computer so getting 1) my first Mac and 2) my first notebook made for some frustration – primarily due to unfamiliarity with a trackpad. Now that I can use the iBook in a desktop environment the experience has been more than great.

I’ve really enjoyed having an iBook and have even been seriously considering a Bluetooth dongle mod (if that’s not a cool name for a rock band, I don’t know what is).

So what ties us to Windows? Familiarity? Market share? Compatability? Microsoft Office? I can use my Mac for anything. I bring it to the office all the time. I don’t have Quickbooks installed so I don’t do company finances, but I could. I have Microsoft Office on the iBook so I can open, edit and create anything work- or home-related.

My Fulfillment Manager asked me on Tuesday what she should purchase as far as a laptop. She said, “Josh, what kind of laptop would you buy?” I asked if it was for her. She said yes. I sold her on a new 15″ iBook. She was worried about things like Microsoft Office, e-mail, usabilty, etc. She’s going to the Barton Creek Apple store tomorrow and buying one. Her “friend” (I don’t know if he’s a boyfriend) received the advice I dispensed and researched new iBook because, so I’ve been told, he’s a computer nerd. Now he’s thinking about getting one as well.

So I’ve decided that I’m going to wait until Apple begins shipping units with Intel microprocessors and most likely get myself a nice, large iMac.

With said new iMac I’m going to use GarageBand to produce Bluetooth Dongle Mod’s first single.

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Refurbished Airport Express

I bought an Airport Express almost a year ago because I’ve always liked to play music on the stereo from a computer. In the past six months the AE has been like a dog with a gimp leg – it cut out on my so much that I pretty much gave up on it. Well, the gimp-legged dog died on me while we were on vacation (when we got back I noticed that the green light wasn’t on). I took the dog to the Apple store and after a week and half, I had a refurbished Airport Express. After a quick setup using OS X’s Airport Setup Assistant I’m streaming music to the stereo again.

I’m dualy excited because now I can now run speakers out onto the deck. I almost had Elise convinced that we needed an Altec Lansing IM7. She told me to hold off to see if I could work something out by running speaker wires from the stereo in the living room out to the deck. Now that I have a rejuvinated Airport Express I can have tunes out on the deck. This weekend’s project will involve running speaker wire through the attic to the outside.

[an hour later: The AE is ‘skipping’ again. I posted a thread on MacNN’s Forum (after fabricating an aluminum foil satallite dish to bounce back cordless phone signals) to see why I can’t get constant streaming music. I hope I get a better response than this.]