place of nathan.

This afternoon I spent some time testing my MacBook Pro on the New Hope network. With the whole Vista thing (resource hog), I’ve been debating for months if I should:
1. Migrate to Vista
2. Stock up on XP and stick with XP until Vista SP3 comes out.
3. Switch to Ubuntu/Linux.
4. Slow (3-4 year) migration to Mac.

Option 3 is out, because our membership database, Roll Call, does not run on a Ubuntu version (yeah, I am well aware there are workarounds for this), and also a big lack of drivers and native software.
Option 2 is probably not the best, because this would require a significant investment in antiquated software technology. And I don’t believe investing in antiquated technology is a wise investment of our limited church funds.

Which leaves me with two viable options:
Migrate to Vista.
Migrate to Mac.

As I explore what I need to migrate to Mac, it seems to look more and more tempting all the time. The biggest issue I may likely face is buy-in. Literally 0% of my users here (myself excluded) use a mac on a regular basis, and I think it would generally scare the majority of my users–which is why I would do a slow migration.

Oh, what to do, what to do…

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I have installed a new anti-content theft plugin on this blog. Please let me know if you notice anything not working.
Darn plagiarizing auto-bots!

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As I mentioned yesterday, more on Joomla! today.

As you may recall, I’ve mentioned Joomla! a few times here. Today, you get to see the fruits of my labors. I am the official Joomla! forum’s February Member of the Month! I got this cool Joomla! t-shirt, which I’m wearing today (with a blazer on top of it, of course).

This week (and the next several), I am undertaking the task of converting our website from the Joomla! 1.0.x codebase to 1.5, which is a significant migration. My first task if to test it (done), and then create a new template–yeah–www.NewHope.in is getting a major overhaul in the next few months, then more testing, more tweaking, more testing, and then the real migration.

This is a big project, lots of testing before the real migration happens. It will be fun! I’ll let you know when the new site is live.

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Today I was upgrading a test site on our server, and I accidentally sent the files to New Hope’s live site instead.

The result?
I crashed our website for about 20 minutes until I wised up and was able to restore the files via backup.
O Crap.

So, I have the website back up and running, and now I am working on restoring the rest of what I screwed up so badly…
O, the joy of upgrading.

On the test site, I am working on upgrading our website from the Joomla! 1.0.x codebase to the 1.5.x codebase. This is a considerable upgrade, and it isn’t fully compatible–you actually cannot ‘upgrade,’ but you have to ‘migrate.’ 1.5 is pretty nice and fixes a lot of the limiting errors we’ve faced in the 1.0.x codebase for some time.

More Joomla! news tomorrow…

UPDATE: 20 minutes after posting this, I literally did the exact same thing again.

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This week I’ve been slowly working on implementing some upgrades to our network. This includes a couple new pieces of software I’m pretty proud of, including a new 24-port Gigabit switch and a new 1.5 TB Network Attached Storage Device. I’ve included a couple photos here for your enjoyment.

I am in the process of converting from a mixed ethernet/fast ethernet network to full gigabit ethernet. Just a couple of our machines currently even have a gigabit ethernet card in them, so I need to install some new cards in the coming weeks.

The NAS device, which provides 1.5 TB (that’s 1,500 GB) of redundant storage plus automatic backups of all our client machines. I am excited about this device because we will never have to worry about loosing a bunch of data ever again (this has happened before–what a nightmare!)
This 1.5 TB should be enough for our network for the next 24 months or so. At that time, I plan on buying an additional NAS device to run alongside the existing. Of course, by that time it should be hundreds of TB, if not petabytes (PB)

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I have a 5-port 10-BaseT Ethernet hub lying around here, from a recent upgrade.
Anybody want it? It’s free (you pay shipping, or you can pick it up).

NOTE: 10-BaseT is pretty old technology, but still, it is a hub and it is free. First come, first serve!

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Microsoft if attempting to push through a ’standard’ which is invalid code (Something Microsoft is notorious for doing anyway.)
If ISO (International Organization for Standardization) adopts a standard which directly is invalid to other standards, what good are standards? We could be in for trouble…

Microsoft could lose billions of dollars (they are already starting to lose millions) if this standard is not adopted, so you can believe they are fighting for the adoption.
But then the purist (those who believe a standard should be a standard and not a ‘general guidance’ who are opposed.

Me? I’m against the passing of a standard which allows the compromise of already existing standards!

Join the petition to stop ISO from adopting the OOXML ’standard’.

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So here’s a screenshot of my Windows XP machine’s new look. Do you like it?

Before this facelift, my desktop had literally 50 icons on it. (Unfortunately, I forgot to take a ‘before’ screenshot!) Last Wednesday, my mom sat down on my computer, and she had problems finding the browser button.
‘Enough.’ I thought, and I got rid of the annoying Windows taskbar, deleted all the desktop icons and installed RocketDock, which is the dock you see at the bottom of this new screenshot. On the dock I have all my most-used shortcuts: My Computer, My Documents, Network Drives | Firefox, Safari, Opera, IE7, Thunderbird | InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop | Notpad++, Excel, PowerPoint, Word | Roll Call, MediaFace, Juicer2(PTK) | FileZilla and some settings, Recyle bin and the clock!

I have fallen in love with the dock since I purchased a mac for my business several months ago. The dock is just so nice…everything I need, right there!

Now, before you’re all like, ‘What? You’re still on a 4:3 screen instead of a 16:9 screen?,’ please realize I have two side-by-side 4:3 screens, so I’m really running at a 16:6, which is considerably more ‘wide’ than your precious 16:9 screen. If I had two 16:9 screens, I would be at 16:4.5, which is a bit too wide for me…
So I’ll be keeping my 4:3 screens, at least for a while.

And to reinforce, I do suggest you implement a dock on your Windows XP or Vista machine. It’s well-worth it, and I think you’ll be happy you did.

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On my sidebar, I have a section called ‘Most Popular Posts,’ which lists the most popular posts. ‘Popular’ is determined by a complex mathematical formula (which I won’t bore you with the details).

Ever since I installed the Popularity Plugin I’m using, my scientific evidence for speaking in tongues? has been top of the list. WAY on top of the list. Nothing was even close.

Until now…
My post Joomla! forums hit 100,000 users is quickly catching up. Very quickly, actually.
Interesting thing is, the Joomla! forums surpassing 100,000 is old news–the post is from April. In late November, the Joomla! forums topped 150,000 forum members, and at the time of this writing is currently 154,413 members. Also note Joomla! project lead Johan Janssens left the only comment on that post…

Old news sells, apparently.

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This past weekend, the winter weather outside was simply horrible!

When I arrived at New Hope at 8:25 a.m., the weather wasn’t too bad. It was freezing rain a bit, but nothing too bad. At 9:30, I walked outside to find 1/4″ ice on my car, and the sidewalks very slick from ice.

The freezing rain continued to worsen as the morning progressed.

Off and on over the past two months, we have told our people at New Hope they can find out if we cancel a service by logging on to NewHope.in or calling in to the office and listen to the recorded greeting, and I honestly wondered what the response rate would be to our driving people to the website.
Well, on Sunday, our website traffic was up 450% of the daily average for the previous 30 days. In fact, traffic was more than twice as high as our highest day of traffic ever, which was a peak from an invite drive we did earlier this year.

So…driving people to the website worked. I was very thrilled to know people respond when we drive them to the website.
Yes! I would like to move toward driving people more to the web for even more information, and I think our gathered data confirms people are willing to go to the web for their info…

Did any of my readers here log on to check the status this weekend?

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So, I would consider myself at least somewhat of a techie. I’m normally pretty quick at troubleshooting.

Well, I just installed a new wireless router at my home, and couldn’t get the notebook to connect to the Internet. It connected just fine to the router, accepted the password, but wouldn’t let me on the network.

After over 60 minutes of troubleshooting, I finally got it working. Stupid me…all it needed was upgraded firmware on the router. I knew I needed to upgrade the firmware, but for some reason, I assume it wasn’t needed yet…

Needless to say, I hope I will learn my lesson and not have to mess that much in the future!

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