October 16th, 2011

What I Look for in a Laptop

After having a slight scare with the “h” key on my trusty Vostro 1400 (the key mechanism was binding slightly so that it had to be firmly pressed from the top to register), I began casually perusing the laptop market to see what was available.

Since I’ve had this laptop for over 3 years now, it is nearing the end of its normal service life. Lithium Ion batteries are only good for 3 to 5 years. Based on previous experience, I probably have about a year left before the battery stops holding a charge. Even though I could just buy a replacement battery, getting something new may be a better alternate (already have a fatigue crack near the ExpressCard slot).

October 14th, 2011

Breadcrumb NavXT 4.0 Alpha

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

Grab it while it is still warm! Breadcrumb NavXT 4.0 Alpha is now available, in SVN Trunk. It has been several years since Breadcrumb NavXT has had an Alpha/Beta release. With the underlying changes in the settings structure, it seemed appropriate to have an informal Alpha release in addition to a formal Beta release.

Note that this is Alpha quality software, not all features that will be in 4.0 have been implemented yet. Several features slated for 4.0 have not been implemented yet. Some features in the settings page are not working currently do to changes in WordPress 3.3 (waiting for 3.3 to stabilize). The plan is to use the new Help menu constructs to proved better documentation within the plugin. Additionally, the Import/Export/Reset tab needs a new home, most likely under the new Help menu.

This would be a good time to note that Breadcrumb NavXT 4.0 will require WordPress 3.3. Finally, SVN Trunk will be usable (non-broken) from today until after 4.0 is released. If you find any bugs/PHP errors/PHP warnings, please report them in the comments section of this post.

Grab the Alpha/SVN trunk version of Breadcrumb NavXT.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

October 14th, 2011

Anatomy of an Outage – Part 2

Posted by John Havlik in Weblogs.us

From 3:15AM CDT to 6:05PM CDT, on Friday, September 30th, 2011 Weblogs.us experienced an outage on one of its servers. This is part two of two the story behind the outage, which covers the the events of Friday (e.g. fixing the mess).

October 7th, 2011

Anatomy of an Outage – Part 1

Posted by John Havlik in Weblogs.us

From 3:15AM CDT to 6:05PM CDT, on Friday, September 30th, 2011 Weblogs.us experienced an outage on one of its servers. It all stemmed from a simple support request, and a very hacky fix implemented back in July (while I was on vacation). This is part one of the story behind the outage, and you can blame me for it.

September 6th, 2011

Lian Li PC-A05NB Mod

Posted by John Havlik in General

The last official project of the summer was a quick mod to my Lian Li PC-A05NB case. For those not familiar with the case, the PSU sits in the bottom front of the case. The case is designed with airflow from in the back to exiting from the front (reverse of all other cases). Before I upgraded to a Core i7, my Core 2 Duo system was experiencing some heat related issues due to exhaust issues through the front.