Alright, I do some work for the webhosting company Steadfast Networks. They offer shared hosting virtural and dedicated servers, along with colocation.

Each has its own level of ‘management.’
Shared hosting is controlled completely by Steadfast, so they are the ones messing around with Apache (a very popular web server program mostly run on linux) and making sure that it is working smoothly.
The VPSes have ‘full management’, so you get all the help you need making sure Apache is working properly.
There is a dedicated server ‘fully managed’ offering too, which costs you $80/month more than the cost of ‘basic management’ servers

Now here comes the fun:
‘Basic Management’ Dedicated Servers get 1 hour of system administration, then they pay $80/hr for help
And colocation customers, well, they pay $80/hr for basically everything

So, what happens with all those $80/hr fees for the ‘Basic Managed’ Dedicated and colocation customers?

One of the better HR ideas I have ever heard of.

Say we are talking about 150 billed man hours in a month, at $80/hr that is $12,000
Steadfast pockets $6000 and puts the other $6000 up on the board

Say 10 techs work there, that is $600 apiece. Split evenly. (these are made-up numbers)

Here is the fun: If you show up to work late (you have a 10 minute grace period) you are billed $1 per minute.. if you don’t come in for an hour (and don’t have a really good excuse) you just lost $50 from your $600, putting you at $550… oh no

Then this happens to another person, only he is a half hour late, so that is $20 off that person’s $600, so they are at $570…

And the pot is at $70.00

At the end of the month management talks amongst themselves and declares which employee was the ‘employee of the month’, and if that employee was never late (which is likely to happen if you are employee of the month) walks home with $670 in his pocket.

But with 10 techs, I can assure you that that person would be leaving with more than just $670

So, 2 benefits here: Be a great employee that stands out, and don’t show up late.

I love it!

I was elected Tuesday to a Loyola’s Student Affairs Unified Planning Committee as part of Shared Governance.

I was elected by Unified Student Government… sweet!

On the committee there are 4 undergraduate students, one graduate student, two staff members, two faculty members, and one representative from the VP of Student Affairs office (who happens to be the Dean of Students, but it doesn’t have to be.)

What does this all mean? Well, I’m only 90% sure… but from what I have been able to tell I am 1 of 10 people at the university that can vote on/bring up proposed policy changes in regards to student affairs and then send them to be implemented. If they are not properly implemented or implemented in a manor that pleases the committee, the committee can appeal to the president of the university directly for him to take action. Of course, if it is a MAJOR thing then it goes up to the Board of Trustees, but the only way I could see the board having to pay attention to our committee would be if there was a request to change the student fees.

Here is a situation that I could see possibly coming up:
Loyola offers new apartment style housing, with 12 month leases, that students can take advantage of if they pay for it. Now, this is a new style of housing, so a lot of the other rules about what happens in housing probably wouldn’t apply the same way. The student handbook needs to be updated. The student affairs committee would take a look at the situation, ask for information from people involved in the project, look at things like insurance, upkeep costs and what other schools do in similar situations and then the UPC would request to amend the student handbook to reflect these new policies. These resolutions are passed by the committee, the VP of students does a quick once over and it is added to the handbook.

Now, say the VP of Students says “no way, we are NOT allowing people to paint their walls”, we can go to the president and say “the VP of Students doesn’t want people to be able to paint their walls, but these students are entering into 12 month contracts for basically apartments, so as long as they switch it back to white in 12 months we think it will be OK.” The President would look at the situation, gather information, and most likely implement the UPCs agenda. The UPC represents the opinion of all the parts of the university (students, faculty and staff), so if the president says no he is basically saying no to every person in the university.

But it isn’t just willy nilly, things like the mission of the university and what is best for all people need to be part of the discussion. For example, condom distribution… uhh… not gonna happen at a catholic university. Not saying it isn’t a really good idea, but very ‘un-catholic’ (not to mention it would be shot down immediately by the president if he even heard of it being approved, no matter if people started knocking on his door (a door I can see right now from my window) at 3AM every night)

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Alright, I am on this site that has some files they sell for a small fortune apiece
And they have an entirely flash based interface… and let you preview the files before you buy them
You have to have a valid login to download the files… but that login just flips a switch in the flash file from ‘this person can not see the links to the high quality download’ to ‘this person can see the links to the high quality download’

And that is the only protection they have on their high quality files.

Think of it this way: I want you to buy a movie of mine. I have the super high quality version I’m selling and I have a preview version. I store the super high quality version as nickcatalano.com/highquality/file1.avi , and I store the preview file as nickcatalano.com/lowquality/file1.avi … The public gets to see /lowquality/file1.avi … So all I have to do is change /lowquality/ to /highquality/ and I can get the high quality video.. and that applys to file2.avi, file3.avi, and file500.avi… there are copies in both /lowquality/ and /highquality/

And there is no password protection on /highquality/ itself

Kinda stupid, isn’t it?

I won’t name the site, what they do or any more information about how to take the files… I’m sure a lot of work went into the high quality files and they deserve to be paid for their work. And there is no real way to prevent people from getting copies of the low quality files no matter what they do… But I reported it to them and hopefully they fix the problem before someone with more malicious intent does something

I was in Best Buy yesterday to compare 2 TVs that I was looking at… Both are 42″, 1080p, made by Panasonic and are plasmas… but each has slightly different cosmetic/input details (one has a hidden speaker and a VGA input and the other doesn’t.) Since you cannot send 1920×1080 signals over VGA to these TVs and you can send a digital signal through a DVI-D to HDMI cable, there is little useful function of the VGA input. On the tags it says there is a contrast difference, but this difference is only available if you setup a feature that changes the settings of the TV based on the light in your room, a feature that a lot of people turn off.

I could have lived with just the associates pointing me to the TV models I wanted to see, but they decided to stick around me and try to convince me that the more expensive one was ‘better.’ I started listing off the differences and it was like deers in a headlight… He decided to shake my hand as he ran off, insisting that he was NOT working on commission but obviously pushing for me to buy something. Pushing REALLY hard.

I went to the one that is a bit more expensive and watched a white-sox game on it. Very nice, although I couldn’t notice the difference between 720p and 1080p plasmas at 42 inches. Another associate came by and started pressuring me that I could save $200 by signing up for DirecTV… He showed me this 8.5 x 11″ paper, pushing it in my face. I told him ‘no, i’m ok, I don’t need that but thanks.’ And he kept going down the list… ‘No, i’m ok’… and he kept going

I just wanted to compare the two TVs damnit!

So I checked my cell phone for the time, noted that I had a few minutes, and decided to start a game I like to call: ‘you are an idiot, and that is why you work at best buy’

I started asking him questions that I knew the answer to, and when he told me something that was wrong I asked “but isn’t it true that…” and he had to back up and agree with me. This went on for a few minutes and I could tell he was getting VERY uncomfortable having a customer correct him about stuff he was supposeto know about, but I kept asking questions so obviously he couldn’t just leave me… He decided to bring out the extended warranty… and started by saying ‘we will fix ANYTHING that is wrong with it’ and made the mistake of saying ‘even dead pixels.’ Ding! “So you are saying if there is even ONE dead pixel you will fix it”, “yes”, “Seriously? ONE dead pixel”, “yes, ANYTHING”, “ONE dead pixel? You are willing to sell me a warranty that fixes ONE dead pixel”, (annoyed) “of course”

At this point I was getting a bit loud as his supervisor walked by… see, they don’t do one dead pixel, it has to be 2 or more… (which is still pretty good, but not worth $300) and his supervisor stopped and got annoyed that his employee was giving false information… So now not only did I have this dude who kept pressuring me being corrected by me about products he is supposeto know everything about, I had his SUPERVISOR telling him he was wrong and was about to sell something that Best Buy wouldn’t cover… HAH!

This went on for a bit longer until I got tired and let him go… before shaking my hand again.

If I worked there I would get fired so quick, not for being an ass but for refusing to upsell all of the crap they want people to buy.

Oh, and evidently they will install your XBox 360 games for you too (click img to view orig story this is from)…

I went to the grocery store yesterday to get a few things… While there I went by a refrigerator with orange juice in it

I picked up some of this “Simply Orange” brand orange-juice… I kinda like the taste over Tropicana (the stuff in the boxes) and it isn’t really all that much different in price.

I opened it this morning to pour myself a glass and on the label it states prominently: Not From Concentrate

Now this is just crazy. All ‘concentrate’ contains is orange juice without the water. It takes up less volume (so it is cheaper to transport) and it stays fresh longer. And anyone who thinks that there is a taste difference is crazy.

Anyways, I still like the taste… especially of the kind that has medium pulp. Maybe it is the box they put the Tropicana in doesn’t stay as fresh as the plastic of SO? Or they make it different?

Whatever, my point still stands.