Duckies Blog

So, I built a new server :D

http://blog.duklabs.com/?p=44

That's the full write up of it, in short though, it's an AMD Server with 4x1tb drives.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/duk242/3484847055/sizes/o/in/set-72157617461436934/
There's the server
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/dvd/Universal/Caprica/Caprica4.jpg
I named her Zoe, after her ^^

Anyway, with every new server comes the getting rid of the old one.

I figured I'd do this post to thank my old server, Alanna for all the hard work she's done.

Here's her stats:
Hostname: Alanna - OS: Linux 2.4.33.3/i686 - Distro: Slackware 11.0.0 - CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 (1693.755 MHz) - Processes: 47 - Uptime: 13d 48m - Users: 1 - Load Average: 0.00 - Memory Usage: 72.14MB/502.93MB (14.34%) - Disk Usage: 14.56GB/18.60GB (78.31%)

Her best uptime was a little over 200 days.

Throughout her life, she has been a Web Server, KDX server and a Teamspeak server.
I ended up closing the KDX server after a few months, the web server part of it stayed alive for a long time until I decided to fork out for some real hosting and Teamspeak was going until the very end.
I moved Teamspeak off to another server (now there's no lag!).

Alanna will now spend some time perhaps under my bed gathering dust. If anyone wants her, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Thanks for all the good work Alanna, you will be missed :)

Ducky

So, 5 months after installing Server 2008, I figure I'll try an antivirus scan.

I haven't been running with antivirus since I installed it, AVG refused to install on Server 2008 so I didn't bother.

Here's what I got after running the Panda Security Active Scan (note: great way to check for viruses that your antivirus didn't pick up).



Note: All the found threats I already knew about and are just keygens/cracks for random stuff.

Ducky

I started my own Tech Blog :D

http://blog.duklabs.com/

See See!!

It's all about IT stuff that happens at school :)

...in conclusion, Tomato Sauce is about 74% as good as Salsa dip when it comes to Nachos.

Rawr, I'm in Sydney on Holidays :D

No internet atm, and I'm ultra bored...

So lets see, drove here, my sister and I taking turns with our L's for most of the way.
We opened our pressies on the 23rd, so mum n dad didn't have to take them in the car here (of course, saves time etc). I got a new pair of shoes (srsly didn't want new shoes, my normal runners are absolute beasts when it comes to shoes). I also got a set of screwdrivers... It's silly how I think that I should be getting good things for christmas every year. It is a pointless holiday and I'm a pretty selfish guy (I didn't buy anyone a present this year). I just don't understand why I'm feeling so disappointed.
Not to mention, I'm a pretty hard guy to buy for. All I wanted for christmas was a girlfriend (well, that's what Mum suggested anyway :P ).

Because we were having christmas at my aunties place, we had to live through my 2 adopted cousins getting their presents. This started off with 2 big "family" presents, an XBox 360 AND a Nintendo Wii. Lucky buggers. Then they got numerous other presents as well.

I got a DVD of all the American Pie movies from my aunt (although I already have them all in average quality pirated version, I kinda do like this present (absolutely shits over the puzzle I got like 5 years ago from a different aunt)) and an iTunes gift card ($20) from my sister.
The gift card works out even better now that I've decided to buy an iPhone. A christmas present from me to me :P Of course, went to buy it today (boxing day) and all the Optus shops were closed.... So disappointed :(

Hoping to go buy an iPhone tomorrow :D

Ducky

At least I have my baby bear...

I'm lonely :(

Work has been busy lately, we just bought 34 new laptops so I have to put them all in then move the old ones somewhere else and put all them in too. 3 School Days worth of work...

Since I got back from Earthcore with Bianca, she's dropped off the face of the earth. She's in Canberra at the moment living with Adam and Steve so she probably doesn't have internet yet. I texted her saying hi, but didn't get a reply. She's probably busy.

I didn't realise though, now she's gone, I don't really have anyone left to talk to. Ness is hardly around anymore to chat to and well... that's about everyone.


For some better news though, I ordered a TV Tuner card + a new mobo + ram + CPU for my media PC. I'm planning on making it purdy and nice and then people will see it and be like "oh I like that very much", even though I don't really watch TV much...

Today I saved a lizard.
He was cruisin about in my computer lab setting up these laptops when there was a little teeny lizard on the ground. I picked him up with some paper and took him out to the garden, showed a little kinder kid the lizard too :)


Ducky

tl;dr version: Went to doof in Victoria, lots of wonderful music had fun.

Long Version
Day 1 - Monday Morning: Woke up mega early to start driving down to Victoria with Bianca, almost forgot our tickets :O
Got to Canberra to stay with Bianca's Cousin, Sarah and her boyfriend Paul.
Day 2 - Tuesday: Went to see Bianca's friends Adam and Steve and the house that she's moving to. It's a little unit with a creaky floor, but not too bad :)
Day 3 - Wednesday: Went shopping and got to see Jess from Obernet :D:D She's a little stranger than I thought, but still cool nonetheless =] After that we went and saw the Australia Movie... It was ok, not great though.
Day 4 - Thursday: Drove from Canberra to Melbourne to stay with my Auntie Liz in Melbourne.
Day 5 - Friday: Drove to Earthcore :D We were using my Dad's GPS and put in the coordinates and it lead us right there :) Set up our tent and stuff.
Turns out a lot of the main international artists had cancelled because of an internet rumour to do with the whole thing being cancelled. So, Aes Dana never turned up :(
It got VERY cold..... very........
Day 6 - Saturday: I got to bed some time in the night because it was way too cold.
It was really hard to get out of bed during the day because it was freezing cold all day.
In the afternoon the music was getting pretty crap to I went to bed pretty early.
Day 7 - Sunday: Juno Reactor was playing at 4am, so I woke up then to go see them, it was really cold. I had 2 jumpers on too :o
Juno was alright, not really dancing music though, they were really.... religious like, was kinda weird.
After Juno there was other decent music so it was all good :)
It really heated up too, it went from 2 jumpers and freezing to wearing a tshirt in under an hour.
We left around 1pm to get to Albury that night to stay with Bianca's Auntie.
Day 8 - Monday: Drove from Albury to Canberra to stay with her friends Steve and Adam.
Day 9 - Tuesday: Drove from Canberra to Port Macquarie to stay with her grandparents.
Day 10 - Wednesday: Drove Home ^_^ Yay

The end :D

What's it all about anyway?

It's been a long time since I made a post here...
Figured I'd do something weird and explain a theory on human relations.

I like to think of it like trading with someone, the simplest form of relationship, say, buying an ice cream off an ice cream seller.
I trade my $2 for an Ice Cream. This sort of relationship is very simple. If you think the ice cream is worth $2 and if he thinks he's making enough money out of the $2 ice cream, then everyone is happy.
What if you throw a smile into the mix though?
If you buy a $2 ice cream, and he gives you the ice cream AND a nice smile, could you be ripping the ice cream man off? A smile is a pretty nice thing. If an ice cream man smiles at you, you should smile back. Else he might feel like you're ripping him off.
If you smile at him first and he doesn't smile back, then you could be getting ripped off, you're paying him your $2 AND a smile.

Of course, this example is absurd.

Lets remove money from the equation.

I meet a girl, her name is Amanda. Now Amanda isn't a very nice girl she likes to lead people on and so on.
Everyone knows I'm good with computers, she invites me over to her place and asks me to fix her computer. Of course, I like this Amanda girl, so I'll fix her computer. At this point you're thinking "Well, now she owes you right?"
Yep, she does. I'm not saying that now she has to fuck me, I'm just saying, she's in a sort of Moral debt. She's obliged to return something back to me.

Or lets go one the other way, I meet a girl, Adria, she loves me and does everything she can to be with me. Me being me, I offer her all I have, but what I have to offer pales in comparison to everything she has given me. I'm morally in debt to her, but, how do I pay her back when I've given everything I've got.

So now I feel awkward, I've got this girl who I just can't give her enough and I feel bad about it. At the same time, there's Amanda, I don't feel too happy towards her either, cause she's using me.
Seems I'm not feeling too great either way I go?

Now here's where the whole good person bad person kicks in.
If you could assign a value to everything, lets say with Amanda, I've given her 300 points worth of what she wants, and she's given me 100 points. That's leaves me with a standing of +200 points.
The next girl, Adria. She's given me 600 points, and I've only been able to give her 200 points back. Leaving me at -400 points.

This puts me at a total overall of: -200 points

This means I'm a bad person.

One big flaw of my whole idea however is that different people place different values on everything.
Adria might think that letting me talk to her at all is worth 400 points, and letting me come over to her house is worth another 500 points. Me fixing her computer, a measly 100 points worth. Leaving me with a standing of -800 points.
This makes her look like she's a VERY nice person.


So, what's my point you ask?

Well, 2 points.
First of all, I'm saving up points. People ask me "Can you do this for me?" maybe they're big favours, maybe they're small favours. But they're things that put me ahead.
Is the other person aware that they now owe me? Or do they feel comfortable with leaving me being ahead of them in the grand scales of life?
Secondly, in trying to be nice to everyone and accruing all these "points" with people, does that mean that I'll have a whole group of people all over the place, all of them owing me in some way.
I feel kind of awkward and bad about that.

Then of course, in everyone else's eyes, I've been using them, they all think they're nice people too.

I know, this post is weird, I was lying in bed last night unable to sleep so I was thinking about this and a girl I loaned $100 to.
I loaned her $100 so she could go to a party, I knew deep down that she probably wasn't going to pay me back.
Her owing me $100 means I've got power over her, she owes me.

Nice people can have power too :)


That'll do with the rambling... Just had to type it out somewhere...

Ducky.
ps. remind me to do a post about what's going on in my life... There's some nice interesting stuff happening :)

EDIT: The whole power idea came to me near the end of this piece, I'm nice because I like being a nice person and that I hope people will treat me nice back. Not for power.
I was merely pointing out that power *could* be a driving factor of seemingly nice people.