deandra.homeip.net

I'm looking back on why we decided to replace our fleet of SonicWalls after only a couple years in service, and all the reasons suddenly came flooding back to me. I wasn't going to go into too much detail, but hey, it's filler, and it might be useful to someone.

I've got a bunch of inane useless stuff to blahg about today, so I log onto my site to discover.... I've been SPAMMED!

Where there is an avenue for user-submitted content, spammers will never be far behind. There are various methods that can be employed to combat the infestation, the most well-known of which is the dreaded CAPTCHA. Fortunately, for me, the traffic to this site is so low that I can settle for requiring administrative approval for all new accounts.

Tonight I had the grand privilege of backing the trailer into its final camping spot.
This final leg was far more interesting than any previous. I actually got to climb hills, gear down for the descents, steer around corners, and curse at idiot drivers instead of simply lazily passing them.

Weather happens fast in Regina. The violent rainstorm that blew through last night disappeared as quickly as it arrived. After a quick breakfast of eggs and toast, we broke camp and set off with the morning sun at our backs. The morning coffee was made in a percolator; the first such I've had in many years. Funny-tasting as it was, it provided me all the caffiene I needed to get going.

Dawn broke in a cloudless sky and the sun began hastily burning off the dew on the windows. Sometime during the night, a trucker had backed in two stalls away and slept there, engine idling, but the insulation in the trailer was so good that the rumbling diesel didn't wake me.

By the end of the third day, we'd accomplished our primary goal: the collection of the Scamp trailer from the factory at Backus.

The end of the second day of driving found us in Morris, MB. The lack of EVDO data coverage didn't really upset me, as we drove through a province and a half without seeing much of interest. Just more bugs on the windshield.

Well, Kimi Raikonnen made it to the pole for the French Grand Prix, and we made it as far as Lloydminster on our first day. I am surprisingly alert after burning through nearly a thousand kilometers in about ten and a half hours. My back is a little sore from being stuck in the driver's seat for so long, and I smell a little ripe, but other than that I'm none the worse for wear.

We found a decent motel on the frontage road, and we're going to settle in and get some rest so we can do it all over again tomorrow. First, though, we need to clean the guts off the windshield...

So the first ten of our new batch of firewalls arrived earlier this week, and I've begun deploying them.

When I say firewalls, I actually mean "computers I'm going to use as firewalls". These are PowerEdge T105 machines with a dual-core Opteron and 4GB RAM. They actually outperform nearly all the other servers in the district, but they are unsuitable for this purpose due to their lack of hot-pluggable drives or power supplies. However, these machines are remarkably inexpensive for a server-class machine and are perfectly suited for the role of a Linux-based firewall and VPN gateway.

Contrary to what everyone thinks, I haven't actually forgotten about my website. In fact, since I am able to add content from my new Blackberry Curve, I'll be using this site to blog about my trip.

I'll be taking pictures with my Blackberry to throw onto Facebook, and I'll also be taking my Canon S3 for "good" photos - however those won't be available until I return - I won't have computer access during the trip.