I Fucking hate AT&T.

So as you may or may not have noticed, the site has been down for nearly exactly three months now. It was due to AT&T stripping me of my static IP's for no discernable reason whatsoever. I've paid my bill on time for five years now, and never really had an issue, except every now and then they force a refresh of their 'sticky' IP's. Then one day, three months ago the server became unresponsive. As I am a sysadmin 7 days a week, I find it hard to even touch a computer when I get home. After about two months, (and a sidelong comment from my brother, who's site I host on this server as well), I decided to take a look. It turned out not to be the horrid curse this server has with disks, as the machine was just hummin along.

Anyhow, I determined that the douchebags at AT&T without notice, reason or provocation just took my IP's and left me one front end IP that fluctuated between x.x.x.118 and x.x.x.119.  The web server,  and the only one in use, was x.x.x.116. Now I payed nearly $70 a month for that block of 5 'sticky' IPs. I can see now why they're sticky......

Moving swiftly onward, I decided that since AT&T had fucked me over twice in the past, one severely that I almost lost my job over (My own idiotic fault unlike this time) I was going to do something about it. It was their unwillingness to work with me about the payments putting me in a position to pay off a nearly $4000 phone bill immediately, that originally harvested this animosity for AT&T. I was 25 at the time, and a bailbondsman. I didn't have that kind of cash just laying around to blow on a phone bill. Needless to say after that I held some venemous thoughts towards them.

Then the AT&T cell phone I had at the time stopped working (because I left it in a puddle of beer on a bartop). They refused to replace it, and I had to pay $200 to terminate their contract because they wouldn't replace my phone, even with the cheapest model. These days if you drop your phone into a pile of vomit, stew it around with a stick, piss on it, then jump up and down on it, the insurance will replace it with the newest model.

Then five years ago I signed up for SBC Yahoo DSL, and got it for a pretty good deal. Then got a static IP package that was pretty cheap. Then AT&T bought them, and the rest is history.

Goddamn motherfucking bastards.

To sum it up, I didn't even bother to call them. i just switched providers, and got the line up today. WeBeGeeky is back from the dead for the fifth time BOO YA bitches!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As well, Webegeeky's 3rd anniversary is coming up in August.  I'll have something special planned.

OH OH OH, Also I got the old site working tip top. All the articles, the old forum, and everything are up and running again, so if you want to use that site, have at it. The link is on the left, or click here.

I abso-f**king-loutely hate Microsoft right now. If I was standing next to their coporate headquaters I would probably firebomb it. They have made me look the fool for the last time, and I've had enough. Big Bad Bill, I like your philanthropy, and some of your company morals, but all in all your products suck. There is always some little caviat your goddamn design team throws into your product that makes things like migration or upgrade such a gigantic f**king pain in my ass. I have had three projects taken away from me this year alone, because not only do your engineers do stupid things to your products, they neglect to document them. If EVER I get a chance to recommend a product for a corporate environment, I will be looking to open source first from here on out. The fact that EVERYTHING costs money, even fixing problems that your team created, makes my job that much harder. So in celebration of your douchebaggery, here is a link that my co-worked just sent me.

Now today's entry will be in honor of how much you suck and how much the free versions of all your crappy software rule. Good luck and good riddance:

Open Office - The open source version of office : Totally compatible with office and getting better by the day. I see once in a blue moon an exploit for this office suite. I see about 10 a day for ms office. Hmm, I wonder which one is supported better?

Ubuntu - The Operating System that rOxOrZ your sOxOrZ : Ubuntu is by far the easiest version of Linux to use. It's got a debian core which means you can use apt-get install and it's got really nice skins, in the event you get tired of the same old stuff. It's well supported by a vast community and they will send you a free CD. What more can you ask for? OSX I guess.

Dia - The open source alternative to Visio : Yaaay. I like visio, but I like free and open source much better. I have to admit, I've had few problems with visio, except the fact that it's a beast and the files it creates are HUGE. Dia is a good alternative and runs cross platform.

PDFCreator - Not an ms alternative, but nonetheless : I've never used it personally, I'm not hugely dependent on PDF's so I use the readers, but I know some people are sticklers for their PDF's.

Mozilla - This is a group, not a product : And they make AWESOME alternatives to Outlook and Internet Explorer. Firefox and Thunderbird are wonderful alternatives to the products of the beast. They do take a little adjustment time if you're never used them, but it's worth it to get a product that 'works.'

KOffice - A wonderful alternative to MS office, if you're using the KDE desktop environment : This also has a great full featured set including Visio, and Project. Give it a whirl and see if it meets your needs.

MySQL - A FREE SQL database : It's got SOME limitations, but all in all works great for backend LAMP installs and much more. I've been using MySQL for this website for three years now and it's easy to administrate and has never failed me once.

Fedora - The open source version of Red Hat : Well it makes a great server platform and has all the gusto Red Hat has. It's also much more reliable than Server 2003 as far as I've seen it. I've had lots of problems with my windows servers and their applications and sometimes had to completely re-install the windows products due to corruption. I've never had that happen to a Linux/Open source combination.

Joomla - A content management system : A lot like my least favorite program right now Share Point Services. Except that Joomla is awesome, easy to use, easy to migrate and upgrade easy to find plugins for easy to install and all around stable.

OSAlt - A website that delivers Open Source alternatives : Well now, I probably should have just posted that link, as it has a much more robust list of MS alternatives, but hey, you get my point right?