Short version - I would highly recommend Site5 to anybody who needs an excellent, inexpensive hosting provider.

I use Site5 as my primary web host, including this blog. I've been a customer for about 3 years and have been very happy with their service. Even their cheapest plan has unlimited disk space and bandwidth, which is pretty awesome. I use their hostPro plan which only costs me $10/month because I pay by the year. I have about 58GiB of files on there now, most of that is my photos, and it's nice to know I don't have to worry about running out of space. You also get unlimited email accounts, databases, ftp accounts, etc. They have all the standard tools and software, and are pretty good about keeping them up to date. When I first signed up it was difficult to find a good PHP5 host, and so far I haven't had any real problems with Site5 and old software versions (excepting phpMyAdmin). They also give you shell access to your server, so for instance I can install a local copy of Pear if I need extra packages and not have to worry about contacting support. Their support is very good however, they respond to tickets very fast and usually know immediately what you're asking even for highly technical issues. I opened a ticket the other day about a small, random CGI script they used to provide but no longer do and they knew what I was talking about and suggested a workaround in about an hour. Another nice thing about the shell access is I can do my own backups (rsync over ssh FTW), though Site5 does backups too it's nice to have the extra protection. They provide 3 different webmail interfaces, as well as lots of spam filtering options. A custom cpanel interface which is very functional and easy to find stuff in (unlike stock cpanel which can be a pain sometimes). They do have an old version of phpMyAdmin which is buggy, I should probably open a ticket about that one of these days, I'm sure they'd fix it. They're good at notifying you via email about server outages. The server my account is on is fairly speedy, and not overloaded. Uptime is very good, they have a 99.9% guarantee (~9 hours/year). They took the server down earlier this month, not sure why but I don't have anything critical on my account anyway so a few hours downtime every year is perfectly acceptable to me.

In response to: Post Your Honest Site5 Review = $5 Credit

I wish I still had a cat!

Got the application for my CCW from AZ DPS today. I have to get fingerprint cards done which the Tempe Police won't do but Phoenix will. I'll probably go by there tomorrow morning for that. It turns out I don't have to take the firearms course because of my military training, I just need to submit a copy of my DD-214. The return envelope DPS gives you fits the fingerprint cards, and you're supposed to put the rest of the paperwork in there too but it's too small for a regular fold so I guess I'll have to fold it in fourths, odd. Hopefully it won't take too long to be processed, though I don't really plan to conceal carry my current handgun as it's kind of large for that, but the option is there.

Update: got my fingerprints today (Aug 20) and a cashier's check for the fee ($60) and mailed it off.

Today was the first day of my second semester back at ASU. Only one class, CSE120: Digital Design Fundamentals. The instructor seems cool, he was recommended and the class should be interesting. I took a very similar class at Devry my junior year in high school, so it'll be pretty much a refresher. Mike and Jon from my last semester CSE101 team (Team Badass) are in there too, as is the crazy kid. Steve from ENG102 is also in there though I sat next to him didn't get to know him much. Mostly EEE students, though a few CS/CSE and we were all in the back, haha! Three girls, one sat next to us and was pretty lost even though I thought the professor was fairly clear on what was going to happen this class. It has unscheduled labs which I find annoying, but hopefully the lab hours will be decent.

Tomorrow is the rest of the classes, MAT266, BIO181, and CSE205.

Oh, and the bike shocks worked fine. Still need to finish the front brakes (lost part of the cable) but it's rolling good!

Finally went down to Tucson to see my dad and fix my bike shocks. We had to machine replacement parts for the ones that were broken. You can see the green plastic piece in one picture, that was the old one. The new ones are made of aluminum. It was a heck of a lot of work and we had to file the threads by hand which took a lot of work but in the end it came out great.

So I finally got around to purchasing a Cisco service contract for a 7941 (only about $10) so I could download the firmware. I have two 7941's and one 7940, all with old SCCP firmware. They wouldn't flash right to the latest version (due to old signing certificates I believe) so I had to convert them to an old SIP version first, then finding newer versions they would recognize until I got to version 8, specifically 8.5(4) for the 7941's. I also had to spend a lot of time fiddling with the DHCP server, TFTP server, and the XML config files, what a pain. I finally got them all upgraded though. Then it was more SEP*.xml file magic until I got them authenticating to Asterisk. voip-info.org was a great help here. I didn't bother configuring the 7490 for Asterisk (should be simple), but the 7941's are good and can call each other without problems. Now what to do with them?

Took the required paperwork to ASU today so I can get the GI Bill payments started. I had been approved back in January but had already paid for the semester so didn't start the benefits yet. I should get my first check on September 1st and my tuition is taken care of already. Sweet!

I've been playing around with some wireless networking stuff lately. Small projects and digging through my collection of gear.

I added an external RP-SMA port to my netbook, bought a pigtail from Jefa Tech and mounted the jack where the Kensington lock would go. Took a bit of work and some dremelling, but it works and doesn't look too bad. I also put a new pigtail on my old 2.4ghz omni antenna with an RP-SMA instead of the goofy connector I used to use with the Orinoco card. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to make any difference to the signal received, I'm not sure why. I suppose I'll have to test range, though it definitely doesn't see any more APs around here (of which there are a lot). The antenna on my old setup had rather amazing range, I recall seeing a signal 5 miles away once.

I've also been playing with the pair of RouterBOARD 411 wireless setups I have. They're long range point to point rigs with high gain panel antennas, out door enclosures and mounts, POE, the whole 9 yards. Pretty nice gear but I don't really have a use for them. They don't have the license to be an AP so I can't use them for that, though the level 4 license is pretty cheap I'll probably just leave them as-is. I did upgrade them to the RouterOS 4.10 and reset them to default config so they're ready to go if I find a use for them.