I keed. However, I’m managing to stay busy. Check this out:

During last year’s ice storm, Nathan and I started a little Twitter account we called TriStateAlerts. We mainly just used it to share information about shelters, emergency services, and the availability of generators. We covered a few other things, like a chemical leak and also handled severe weather alerts when we could devote some time to watching a Google Earth display for new polygons and manually typing the information into TweetDeck. Naturally, this got old rather quickly.

For the 2010 severe weather season, Nathan and I committed to having the feed automated, and I accomplished this feat on April 7. I would have had it done earlier, but a strange thing is that one has to test in a live environment when doing something like this. You can’t just make it happen. This new system was by no means perfect, it was just a shell script that ran a PHP script every 20 (and later, 10) seconds to check for new warnings, put them in a database, and tweet them. Pretty simple, right?

Our main problem with this system was that its data source was something the National Weather Service still deems experimental — the Common Alerting Protocol. It’s super awesome, though. It’s based on Atom/XML, which makes CAP a dream to work with. I seriously got working code after hacking at it for seven hours. All praise aside, CAP is still experimental. On the night of April 7, the feeds didn’t update for at least 30 minutes. After a chat with the science operations officer at the Paducah, Kentucky NWS office on the subject, I realized that I should really not be using CAP at this point. In fact, during the big April 24 severe outbreak, the CAP feeds never worked. Not once.

By that time, I had started work on the next step in the evolution of our fledgling service. I’ve been playing with a nice little piece of software called PerlEMWIN on and off for about four years now. This mainly consisted of installing it on a server, letting it run while trashing the filesystem all the while. (That writeFile plugin is nasty sometimes.) EMWIN, or the Emergency Managers Weather Information Network, is a tried-and-true method of dispersing weather information. It’s a continuous stream, priority-driven (meaning a warning will interrupt the transmission of something like a radar image), and it’s an automated push technology. This sounded like what I needed! However, I didn’t know a lick of Perl, and how the hell was I going to integrate this whole thing?

Around this time, I had been introduced to the directors of the local emergency management agency, who, from what I gathered, were desperately in need of a solution to disseminate emergency information via the internet, mainly through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. After my first meeting with the deputy director, he was thrilled that we had built something with such a following and told me we had essentially done his work for him. Oh, and please PLEASE sign them up for whatever we’re offering. (More on that later.)

More meetings further developed my plans, and an entirely new platform materialized in my mind. This wasn’t going to be just a service I run out of my bedroom with Nathan somewhere off to the side furiously researching information. My EMWIN integration had just gotten a lot easier, now that I had a perspective of what the whole thing would do.

I spent the better part of a week, mostly late at night, sitting at my kitchen table hacking away at a plugin for PerlEMWIN that would do what I needed. I had absolutely no experience with Perl, and didn’t have a clue where to start. I’ve been doing PHP for over six years, so you’d think that would help. Not with me. I started reading.

One of my biggest obstacles to learning Perl before I just dove into it with this project was that I just, for some reason, could not find out or just couldn’t understand what @_ was. Seriously. That was it. Maybe I’m just older and wiser now, or maybe all those years of doing PHP taught me a little something about programming in general, but when I found the answer to this simple question I couldn’t help but feel pretty stupid. (For the record, @_ is an array that holds the arguments you pass to a function. It’s a lot more flexible than PHP or probably most any other related language, but it’s really confusing.)

After finally learning just what the hell @_ was, and looking at other plugins bundled with PerlEMWIN, I got to work. Line by line, my plugin materialized. When I didn’t understand something or just straight up didn’t know how to do something in Perl, I resisted the urge to just give up and go back to PHP, and pressed on. Over the course of a week, I picked up enough Perl to finish this plugin and even have it drop data into the same MySQL database my old PHP script pointed to. This left out one thing– the social networking side.

I decided to run back to PHP for this one, for two big reasons. First of all, the design of the overall platform had to include a way to post some stuff to some places. For example, if a local emergency management agency subscribed to our platform, we obviously wouldn’t want to have tornado warnings for three counties away posting to their Twitter feed. This mechanism had to be separated from the data ingestion module. Secondly, I had just written the backends for a Twitter app and Facebook app in PHP, and I wasn’t about to learn a completely new client library to do something I had already written code for. I could just as easily have the PerlEMWIN plugin notify the message center that something new had come, and it could do the rest. That’s exactly what I did.

We also needed some dedicated hardware to run this on, with all the plans we had, the ragtag way things were going would just not cut it for a reputable emergency information service like we wanted. I called an old boss of mine and asked if he still had some servers sitting around for sale. I bought a Sun Microsystems SunFire V40z with four processors and 8GB of RAM to run everything on, and worked out hosting with him. It’s always good to not burn bridges– you never know when you’ll get the hook up.

The platform had its first real test during the severe weather event of April 24. I had barely touched our new server haardware, things were working fine the way they were and with a rare high risk area issued for western Kentucky, that was no time for something to go wrong. Nathan and I were working at the emergency operations center that day, fresh from a meeting with a prospective media partner and ready to tweet. As the warnings started going up for the area, all four endpoints we were pushing data to remained silent. I had finished the PerlEMWIN module (sans Twitter/Facebook support) that morning and wanted to make sure it caught all the warnings, and deposited the right information into the database in the correct format before using it. I hadn’t touched the old code since the last severe weather event, so the only logical explanation for the failure was that the CAP feeds weren’t updating at all. Great first impression, guys!

While we were in a controlled panic over our Twitter feed, I started scrambling to get the EMWIN module linked up and running. This was complicated by what could be generously described as an intermittent internet connection at the courthouse. After sticking my SIM card from my phone (which remained disassembled on the table) in my computer, I whipped up a quick script that posted to our sandbox account to test things, and I ran it manually to make sure it would pull the relevant information from the database and post it. It worked! I pointed the script at the right channels and made one final edit to the PerlEMWIN plugin.

More warnings came in, and still the Twitter and Facebook pages were silent. The logfiles showed all the information coming in just fine, and there were numerous warnings in the database. The Perl plugin wasn’t launching this PHP script I had just written. The panic continued. Nathan resorted to posting warnings manually while I worked, slowly but furiously, on the problem at hand. I found the problem (current working directory confusion) and fixed it in time to post the last two severe thunderstorm warnings of the outbreak.

Since then, we’ve moved everything onto our new server and it’s currently colocated in Evansville. The outbreak this past weekend has a few great moments for us; but those warrant another blog entry sometime in the future.

Of course, that’s not to say that work in the accounting world isn’t a completely different ballgame anyway. We’re slammed to the max from January to mid-April, stress runs high and you tend to spend some late nights in the office.

I, thus far, have been spared this death sentence. In fact, today is quite a slow one in my department, which is a shame given that I’m essentially a one-man department. Few people pick up their tax returns on days they don’t get paid, and I’m a good enough tech that the network hasn’t been acting up. I could probably get away with not being in the office, but the bills wouldn’t get paid so here I am.

I’ve always learned a lot by the work I’ve done. When building a web site for a wheel and tire store, I learned more about rims than anyone probably could care. When building a dealer portal for a distributor of cabinetry, I learned a lot about cabinets. This time around, as a staff member at an accounting firm, I can finally learn about something that affects everyone and that everyone generally thinks about a lot – accounting and taxation. Not that I aspire to be the next big-shot tax and accounting master or anything (I am just fine behind the scenes where I am), but it helps to know a little something about everything you handle on a daily basis. I am fortunate to work with seven CPAs who are knowledgeable and can help me help them. Sometimes, I’m the only communication link between them and the software vendors.

I ramble a lot…

This didn’t sit well with the bossman, to say the least. He gave me the contact info for our sales rep, whom I promptly told, “bullshit”. Here’s the email I wrote– names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Good afternoon SALES REP, here’s what we have going on.

One of the main forms we use in APPLICATION is “KY Owensboro NP-1″, which is the Net Profit License Fee return for the City of Owensboro and Daviess County Fiscal Court. This is available online at http://www.owensboro.org/sites/default/files/finance/Net_Profit_Return.pdf. In APPLICATION, this is just one page, but the version available on the City’s web site also has several worksheet pages attached before the instructions section meant to be linked back to the first page.

If you take a look at “KY Owensboro NP-1A” (Amended Net License Fee), you will find that it is the same as the worksheets after the first page of KY Owensboro NP-1, with the word “Amended” added where necessary.

I have called APPLICATION support twice over the past couple of weeks and everyone I have spoken to has been very helpful. The editors insist these additional pages are not part of the return, but rather the instructions, and the one page already in APPLICATION is current and correct. No one at this firm disagrees with that, but the return form is nigh useless without these additional sheets. The impression I get from the editors’ response forwarded to me by SUPPORT REP this morning is not what I would expect from professionals who are there to help us and make our jobs easier. A lack of an update to this form is negatively impacting our firm’s productivity and greatly diminishing the value we see in APPLICATION.

If you could help us get an updated form into the software, I and many of my colleagues here would appreciate it very much.

Today I received an email telling me the form would be updated next week. Moral of the story: if you’re unhappy with something, talk to your sales rep. It’s their ass on the line and they will get shit DONE.

• Linux system administrator and engineer. I have not been using Linux in some form or another for the past five-plus years for nothing. I have learned quite a bit; it’s gotten to the point where I’ve mounted two servers running it in my house and I’m planning on adding a third soon. I know Red Hat Enterprise/Fedora/CentOS quite well, a good-sized chunk of Gentoo and a bit of Debian. I would love to be a systems guru for a medium-sized outfit and eventually get my RHCE (as someone told me yesterday regarding people’s obsession with MCSE and MCSE only, “do you work on computers, or just Windows?”) This opportunity may be presenting itself to me now and if things work out, I will be a happy boy.
• Voiceover artist. I’ve been told by many that I would be a good fit for such a job; I would believe it if I had any post-production skills. (And attracted the ladies just by opening my mouth, but that’s a completely unintentional side effect/not what I’m pursuing.) Just about the only things I’ve done in this sort of specialty are this internet radio station ID and… oh yeah, I recorded a rap song for my own business when I was running it. (Kudos to Nathan Seaton for writing the lyrics.)
• Anything in broadcasting. Actually, I may prefer radio more. I find I do better behind a mic… or a camera (never in front).

There you have it. Not only do I suck at ending these blog entries, I suck at tagging them therefore I will forgo it this time around.

A lot of things around me are falling apart. Common Technologies is all but gone and I’m the one tasked with making sure the hosting customers get somewhere they’re taken care of. This somewhere will probably be DreamHost for most of them. Others currently on a Windows server will be moved to a web host that provides Windows servers with Plesk 8.3, identical to our current setup. A couple of them will probably benefit from moving to a hosted Exchange solution for their insane volume of email. In all, I have around 28 accounts to put somewhere. I have a list written on the back of an envelope of all the clients. I’ll cross them off as I get them taken care of.

I think I know why I’m miserable lately. I have no free time. Back in the day I had plenty of time to sit around and write code all day/night. And the difference was the stuff that made me happy was my own stuff, as opposed to stuff that others wanted me to do for them. I sort of want to do this again, if only for a month or so. I think that’s all I can afford to do.

Anyway, I’ve moved both my rackmount servers to my house and I’m preparing to set up the network extraordinaire in my own home. I can’t do much in my own home network other than back up my files and have a place to offset video transcoding, but one thing I also want to do is get an Asterisk phone server set up. If you saw the horrid tangle of phone wires in the basement you would understand why. I’d like to slim it down to one line in the house plus another for emergency use only. I may use my 1U PowerEdge 350 for this. I just took a break from writing to start downloading the trixbox ISO image.

Since it’s inhumanely late I will now go to bed. And by ‘go to bed’ I mean go to the grocery store to get something to eat first.

I really need to design and order new business cards. I haven’t had any in a long time.

Jeff just called. Looks like I won’t need this to keep me occupied. Bai!

Along with this fresh new version of WordPress, I’ve installed a new theme. I like it… which is why I installed it. Still no ETA on the theme that matches the rest of my site. I’ve thought about making the entire site just the blog, because I’m so boring and uneventful that there’s nothing that anyone would possibly want to know about me.

Speaking of boring and uneventful (I’m working on those segues there, Zach), I applied for what most people would think is a boring and uneventful job this weekend. I’ll give it the uneventful part, but I’m sure I’ll be able to find something to do so it won’t be that boring. Pretty soon I’ll be your friendly nighttime front desk guy at Comfort Suites here in town. I’m totally not selling out on my techie lifestyle, but I would love to have just one job where I work on a schedule. I also kinda need a steady income so I can pay off Capital One (those bastards) and save some money and maybe save money as well. This will also be a great opportunity to work on those pesky social skills. After doing that for a few months at least, I’ll be Pimpmaster Flex!

…. but not really.

At work today, we received a fax from the National Republican Congressional Committee since the guy that runs the place is apparently a registered Rep. No problem with that, right? The NRCC is up to its usual tactics of extorting money out of small business owners by saying “oh, we love you, pay us some money and we’ll let you travel at your own expense to a dinner in Washington where you get to meet the missing link!”

Here’s a picture of one of the actual pages of the actual fax we received this afternoon:

If you look at the bottom of the page very carefully, you get this wonderful little message that reminds you of something you would have never known:

How nice of people who claim to be business savvy to remind thousands of people that they are not the government. It’s great that it wasn’t printed at government expense, but what about the fact it wasn’t printed at NRCC expense either? They’re riding on YOUR money. And this money isn’t even going to them. Do you know how much more printer ink costs than gasoline? Very few people are going to travel to this thing anyway, so why waste tons of paper and ink on trying to get people to go? Oh, right… the NRCC is getting a free ride. YOU pay for the tons of paper and ink.

I just figured I would point out this borderline injustice.

Yep. You know it. And for the third year in a row, I can honestly say my birthday sucked. I had to work… it was just like any other day. At least there’s hope for 21, which as of this writing is 358 days away and is the last one to have any meaning in life. I’ve had several offers to be taken out and get plastered. I… think I’ll pass. I feel old, too. It’s like a mid-life crisis at quarter-life. If I feel this old now, just imagine how bad it’ll be once I hit 40. Forget this. I’m having a party for my 21st birthday. The planning starts now!

I’m just going to touch on this briefly because I’m not a really mushy/emotional/sentimental guy and I don’t want to come across as such. HOWEVER… I got a text message from Nick at 2:39 PM on Friday that kinda hit hard.

Tim Russert is dead.

Russert was the best of the best, and he died while doing what he loved. This shouldn’t have been his time to go but he was probably in the best place to do so–surrounded by friends and colleagues who have been touched by his hard work all these years. Such a shame he was so excited about this election year. Barack Obama should dedicate his victory speech on November 4 to Mr. Russert’s memory. Hint hint. Okay, that’s my human segment. Onward!

I’m currently in the middle of yet another server migration. Our exodus to the Alphatek NOC here in Owensboro is bringing in a lot of new and exciting things. We have all our hosting accounts moved to two servers there, and our only dedicated server account is the next to be brought in. They have a dedicated server in Chicago, and I’m busy moving all their data to the new server here. When I was inevitably baffled by the fact that the server here was installing older versions of everything I had installed on the server in Chicago, I came to a shocking revelation. This new server ran CentOS 4.4. The one in Chicago? CentOS 5. I really hope this works… I’ll keep my trusty audience posted.

And finally, I’ve recently decided to make a major change in my life. It’s mainly to put a lot of things behind me and it requires me to change just about everything. Hopefully you notice once it happens. If not, you’re blind. As always, I’ll keep everyone posted.