Author: Murray Todd Williams

I live in Austin, Texas. I'm enthusiastic about food, wine, programming (especially Scala), tennis and politics. I've worked for Accenture for over 12 years where I'm a Product Manager for suite of analytical business applications.

Server migration complete… I hope.

This morning I got up, went to Spanish class where I had my first test. (I did okay. There are only two things I think I got wrong, but there were also 5 bonus point questions, so with luck I’ll eek out an A.) Then I did some housekeeping for the Stonewall Young Democrats (database stuff) and then I did the final push to get everything migrated over to the new Colocated server.

Man O Man am I drained!

This morning I got up, went to Spanish class where I had my first test. (I did okay. There are only two things I think I got wrong, but there were also 5 bonus point questions, so with luck I’ll eek out an A.) Then I did some housekeeping for the Stonewall Young Democrats (database stuff) and then I did the final push to get everything migrated over to the new Colocated server.

And the last 10 hours were spent fighting with Postfix to get the e-mail all set up properly—and securely.

I’ve still got to keep in touch with my various hosting “clients” to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. There’s always one or two subtle items I can’t remember. But I’ve got to say, I’m looking forward to retiring the “old” server that’s been running in my living room for the past 2 years. One of the fans (or maybe a bearing on a disk drive) was starting to vibrate badly. This machine has had a good life. It’s time to move on.

iChat/iSight and Postgres Memory Bug

Basically, an attempt to initiate a video chat would die with a cryptic—and misleading—message: Disconnected from Video Chat because: Can’t get video from the camera. The problem could only be solved by rebooting the computer.

I’m posting this on a blog entry, not because I think my loyal blog readers are going to be interested by it, but someone out there on the web might run into this issue, and some googling suggests that nobody has reported on it.

There were two strange software failures going on recently, both of them quite troublesome, and it took until today to realize they were directly related.

On the one hand, I noticed that three people (who now work distantly together) were having problems with iChat on their G5 computers. Basically, an attempt to initiate a video chat would die with a cryptic—and misleading—message: Disconnected from Video Chat because: Can’t get video from the camera. The problem could only be solved by rebooting the computer.
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Answering the Question: Which Computer to Buy?

Over the past year I’ve faced so many people asking the question of which computer they should buy, it’s been dizzying. A lot of people have been asking as they measure whether to jump over to the Mac platform, and others just need to pick up some sort of replacement.

Over the past year I’ve faced so many people asking the question of which computer they should buy, it’s been dizzying. A lot of people have been asking as they measure whether to jump over to the Mac platform, and others just need to pick up some sort of replacement.

Also this weekend I faced explaining to Mom that her beloved (and 10 year old) IBM Aptiva probably needed to get thrown away. It broke her heart to see it go and wanted me to see if there was any way to fix it up so that it could be inherited by some disadvantaged person or maybe someone’s toddlers.

I spent a few hours reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling OS/2 (the Operating System that had originally come with it) and I too felt pangs of nostalgia and wished more live could be breathed into the machine. But alas, it didn’t even have an ethernet port, it was filled with the maximum amount of supported RAM (24 Megs) and the most modern version of Windows that could fit on it was maybe Windows 98.

Mom ended up on the phone for about an hour seeing if there was any place she could donate the computer, or failing that any way to get the garbage men to pick it up. (Turns out they’ll do it for a $5 fee.)

So I’ve decided to write a short mini-article and—who knows—someone surfing the blogosphere may come to this entry pondering these issues. I think I’ve got a pretty easy-to-understand and concise couple of answers.
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Life, Organization & JBoss

One of the things I’d wanted to do was to publish more Web articles. They’re cool things; they give me more opportunity to “give back” to the Open Source geek community, and they also bring in new web traffic to my site. This is a good thing.

Today has been spent madly trying to get more order into my life. Yesterday I got a white board installed in my room. I admit it: I’m a white-board whore. Give me 8 colored markers and a white board, and I’ll succumb to this compulsive need to always fill it with organizational stuff.

So I wrote down all the big “to-dos” in the (currently) major categories of my life. (If you’ve been reading my blog for over a year, you’ve seen me do this twice before.) One of the things I’d wanted to do was to publish more Web articles. They’re cool things; they give me more opportunity to “give back” to the Open Source geek community, and they also bring in new web traffic to my site. This is a good thing.

So among a dozen other things, I collected some preexisting notes I’d put together from some research & experimentation I’ve done earlier this month, and I’ve completed about 80% of a new web article on Building Your Own JBoss Configuration. Man, it feels good to write. I know whatever happens in my life, there’ll be a part of me that is writing!

Life is Nominal on the Blog Front

Well, it turns out much of my problem was not getting some of the scripting done right in the “turing test” spam filter.

Well, it turns out much of my problem was not getting some of the scripting done right in the “turing test” spam filter. (Repeating the funny numbers.) I haven’t had a bad spam post in about a week, so all is better. I’d still love to get my hands on these people, but as I think I reported earlier, it looks like they are in India.