Alan Gutierrez

My server, ljubljana.blogometer.com, will sometimes hang after receiving too many requests. I don’t want it to keep me from getting in via ssh, so I’ve written a rather drastic shell program to monitor the server. It fetches the blogometer.com home page using curl. If it takes longer than three seconds, it blocks port 80. This is run by cron every minute. The script will write out the output of the programs ps ax and free. I’ve not been able to figure out what’s really causing the server to choke with that output so I’ve added top -n 5 -b and tail -n 500 /var/log/httpd/access_log. I’m open to any suggestions of commands to add to this snapshot.

Looking at Ed Trelinski’s blog I see that FeedBurner is now offering email subscriptions. I’m going to stick with FeedBlitz for the email of my feeds for the time being.

I found a Susan B. in my change this morning. Did someone give it to me in lieu of a paper dollar or did they mistake it for a quarter? She was short lived. The date is 1979. The new Sacagawea dollar now competes with a series of presidential dollars. It strikes me that our misogynist society cannot stomach women on their currency, they must retaliate with the 43 big men. Lovely Lady Liberty is on the reverse of the presidential coins, of course. I adore her, but she’s awful quiet. Statuesque is our feminine ideal.

Not in Firefox, at least.

Why doesn’t my Macintosh’s dictionary recognize the widely accepted spelling of okay? It bothers me that this word is not in my computers dictionary. No one likes to be corrected, especially when they know they are right.

Via Mr. Gloomy Pants who found it via Suspect Device. The 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007 from the Buffalo Beast.

Don’t Fear Starbucks is an article about how Starbucks drives the sales in independent coffee shops by introducing more customers to blended coffee beverages. I thought that I might shoot this off into an email to Robert Thompson of Fair Grinds, but I thought it would be more interesting to see how long it takes him to find this post and comment. The article does describe Starbucks’ predatory monopolistic practices. (Personally, I think that Starbucks is an embarrassingly pasty white aberration of American culture.)

Billy Welliver just wrapped up the Wedding Journal on Cox 10. I’m watching public access tonight. Interviews with Entergy executives, videos of weddings, a Cox representative touring the town asking people questions and buying their dinner. I’m listening to a fellow tell me about Cox Plugged In and the History Art Contest. Deadline has passed for submissions. Confusing, yet fun.