Nothing To See Here

The web’s favorite funny man (or at least mine) made a little movie for Valentine’s Day. It will most definitely make you laugh.

This gets a bit confusing, so just read through the entire thing before throwing in your $.02. I have a domain that is currently parked with Go Daddy (Host 1). I would like to actually use this domain now. I was thinking about going with DreamHost (Host 2) for the web site and FastMail.FM (Host 3) for the email. I would like to keep Host 1 as the domain host because of their extensive DNS controls and don’t trust Host 2 with this. I will get a static IP with Host 2 and just change the MX record to Host 3 for email. Now, here’s my question: Can I just change the A record with Host 1 to reflect the IP of my site with Host 2 without running into problems? Go Daddy seems to think I can do this by changing the IP address in the A record to the static IP I get from Host 2.

I realize I could solve all of this by just sticking with one host, but I would prefer to do it this way unless it’s going to cause problems. Maybe I’m just crazy (or don’t fully understand how networks function).

UPDATE: I went ahead and did everything this afternoon and it all works just fine.

Howard Dean is good news for the democrats. This morning he was elected chairman of the DNC and this means the party will likely regroup and reorganize. I always liked Dean during the primaries and thought he had a really good chance at being a presidential candidate. He knew how to work in the trenches, he knew how to organize and most of all he knew how to rally the troops. He always came from the heart and seemed to be his own man. I’m looking forward to a better party over the coming years.

The Pazz & Jop Critics Poll has finally been posted. And to think I was tired of reading people’s top lists for 2004.

Last night I happened upon a well-written article on why and how to secure your email over a wireless network using SSH tunneling. I set it up immediately on my machine. I was also paging through the latest issue of Macworld and they had a fantastic feature on security. It never ceases to amaze me that people are so unaware of just how simple it is to secure stuff on your Mac (I’m not talking about PCs because I don’t deal with them very often). I would venture to guess that 90% of my clients don’t even know there is a built-in firewall in OS X. I was at a new client this afternoon and I went to make sure her firewall was on and sure enough, it wasn’t (Apple turns it off by default). She said, "I have a firewall?? How cool!" Apple’s built-in firewall is easy to use and there’s no excuse for not using it unless you have router. A few other easy tips that I try and implement when clients are open to them:

1. Set up your security preferences so that a password is required to wake from sleep or screen saver. You can set this up under the Security pane in System Preferences under OS X 10.3.x.
2. Use a good password for your system. By good, I mean difficult to guess and one that contains numbers and letters.
3. Use a separate password for your keychain. By default OS X uses the same password that you specified for the system. The easiest way for someone to get your passwords is to look in your keychain.

A little over a week ago, I was at A’s house getting some work done. Her living room overlooks the ocean and when I glanced up from my work, the ocean was gone. I couldn’t see much of anything. In a matter of about thirty minutes the temperature probably dropped 10-15 degrees. The marine layer rolled in and made everything kinda spooky. There’s not much in the way of weather in California, so it’s always a treat when stuff like this happens in the middle of… umm, winter.

Get this: I have 50 Gmail invotes to give away. I can’t imagine there are 50 people that need them, but I’m happy to send them to anyone. Got a friend, family member or enemy that you think would enjoy a Gmail account? Great, post their email address in the comments and I will get one out to them. Don’t worry, you’re email address is safe with me and will be deleted once the invitation has been sent.