10 June 2023

Why Buzzkill(.org) went Paid

TLDR; buzzkill.org and DF Crafts.net are in the same workspace because I started a business. Read on for all the weird not so technical stuff that happened that caused it.

Yep. I did a whole bunch of confusing crap.

So it started way way way way way way back in the day, Google workspace was called something else. Maybe Google Apps, I don’t even remember. Suffice it to say it had a different name.

For the sake of this article: it’s Google Workspace.

I had two domains set up on what is now Google Workspace: buzzkill.org and crazedsanity.com. each had their own setup. I had a whole bunch of licenses. Crazedsanity.com was one that I used for all the aliases that I could use to obscure my real email address. Spam. Special account names.

Now, before Dain starts laughing about how many email addresses that I have, that domain actually had only one. There’s also the catch-all, which basically I never really looked at… Except when I wanted to take a laugh at the patterns I saw in spam.

Then there’s Buzzkill.org. It’s short for Buzzkill Productions Unlimited. A business name that has been sitting with me since… Well, a long time ago. Since I had the “.com” version that got stolen out from underneath me due to a whole bunch of technical crap. I didn’t pay for it because of aggravation and principle… Because I missed paying like 20 bucks by 2 days, and I didn’t want to sit in court forever with the company that could hold me in court forever until I eventually gave up and just let what happened happen anyway.

At one point I tried to start a business from that name. It didn’t work out, because I didn’t have a salesperson.

I didn’t have a salesperson because I didn’t ask the right question to the right people. And I don’t handle rejection well, especially when I get flustered.

But I digress.

Buzzkill.org was for a little while a business. Then I gave up on that dream… Like, I literally said ” Fuck it ” and asked anybody that if they wanted an account there. Because it’s a cool name… I mean, I thought it was.

We had that sort of unofficial motto: “accept no limitations,” (copywronged 1996-ish).

Then it, again, this idea of a business was started up again. This time, it was my mom’s idea.

Anyway. DF Crafts LLC was born.

I played around with a whole bunch of stuff. WordPress. WordPress with its own cart system using things recommended to me by this great little advertisement agency called KK Bold.

Anyway, one of the Workspaces needed to be personal. The other needed to be a business. Things happened. I logged in through different browser profiles. Account cross-linking happened.

I got confused. I got frustrated. I tried to avoid paying too much by doing a bunch of complicated bullshit.

Then, a light seem to happen. Google indicated to me that my billing would be delayed for years, possibly indefinitely.

So finally, I figured out how to get my one Workspace to remain free. The other one, being a business, is paid. Unfortunately, the billing is not delayed…

This website? This is not a business.

Can you hear that Google? Microsoft? Bing? Random spiderweb thing that’s listening to my personal shoutbox?

I’ll probably write up something humorous and more cohesive on my private shout box, aka my Patreon page (patreon.com/crazedbuzz). If you want to peek at it, subscribe. Or ask for a cheaper rate if you are unsure. And if you’re upset? I’ll refund your damn money. I’m easy. Wink.

PS: If you were wronged by losing your email from one of my domains? You can always just ask me to get it back via patreons free contact system, or by my socials, or by my phone number, or… Send smoked signals to my friends, they will probably relay the information to me.

PPS: if you haven’t figured out how to ask me for things? I mean, I can always wait until somebody figures out how to do wireless brain to brain communications. Lol… ? (Shudder)

Category: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Why Buzzkill(.org) went Paid
14 July 2022

Buzzkill’s (Crazed)Sanity

After having used “Google Apps”–Gmail for domains–for free basically since it became available, I’m now switching to the paid version. It is now called Google Workspace.

I have a couple of domains affected by it: crazedsanity.com and buzzkill.org. They both have email, and they both have email aliases / groups.

To save money, I’m consolidating the domains into one workspace. If you have an account on either domain and wish to keep it, you should contact me, or go pay for the appropriate level on my Patreon page.

I have to pay a bunch for each account, and there’s always some administrative stuff to do. So paying for it helps me justify the cost.

The transition.

The final domain will be buzzkill.org. If you have an account on both domains, you can retrieve the CS email from the BK domain.

For your troubles, you’ll get a bunch of cool stuff:

  • Google Drive space (30 Gb)
  • Custom and secure email
  • 100 participant video meetings

Want to get more? Go for the higher next level membership! You get voting power!

Expect some outages

As with most big changes, there will likely be some delays for things like email delivery. If you use the account for chat or other things, you may experience some downtime.

Not just for existing users

Don’t have a BK or CS email? Become a member on Patreon and you can get one!

There’s other stuff, too. Check out the membership levels for more!

Category: System Administration | Comments Off on Buzzkill’s (Crazed)Sanity
23 June 2022

It’s World Hydration Day!

Be sure to drink water when you’re out in the sun sweating a lot! In my present circumstance, I drink tons of water–gallons–when I’m out in the sun all day in 90 plus degrees weather with high humidity.

Also, if there’s a state that is an actual hell because of weather? I agree with my mom that my nomination of choice would be Nebraska. Very hot but extremely humid as well. It looks real nice, and sometimes there’s even a wind, but then that humidity just wraps it’s arms around you and pulls you to the ground as you grasp your final breaths for that sweet, sweet feel of a breeze. Lol.

Category: Did you know, Health, Uncategorized | Comments Off on It’s World Hydration Day!
31 October 2021

Why Logging Is Important

Why you need logging before you realize you’ll need it. Because when the user says, “I ran into an error…” but then fails to tell you the details, or the order of events leading up to it, and even the error itself, logging would save you.

Instead of saying, “well, let me know if you run into it again, and write down the exact error and everything you did before it happened,” you can say, “alright, I can see what happened after I just looked in the logs.”

Category: Code, held in drafts too long, Rant, System Administration | Comments Off on Why Logging Is Important
25 October 2021

Development, Automation, and Saving Time

(Note to the reader: this post has actually been a draft for a number of years.)

I’m a developer. I write code. Also, I’m just one guy with limited resources, so I can’t be spending a bunch of time testing my code in a bunch of different environments, or making sure that every single little change I make doesn’t have some unknown catastrophic ripple effect.

So I automate my life. I take advantage of freely-available tools. As much as possible.

How, you ask?

Self-Hosting Isn’t Worth It (sometimes).

First off, I don’t bother trying to do everything myself. I used to host my own code repository (a really, REALLY long time ago), and this took excess time to:

  1. setup
  2. configure
  3. maintain
  4. work with (use)
  5. keep updated
  6. handle security crap like SSL (you know, changing the website to https://….)

So I use GitHub. I’ve used SourceForge.net in the past, and it was alright for my first everyone-can-see-it code repository, but GitHub just feels nicer to work with. Going from SVN to Git was a hell of a learning curve, but totally worth it (yes, SourceForge now supports Git, but not when I switched). All my code gets out into the world, others can see it, and I get a tiny bit of exposure.

That said: self-hosting is a lot cheaper, if you’re willing to sacrifice time for money (like if you’re a poor nerd 🤓).

Continuous Integration is Very Important.

Unit testing helps avoid introducing bugs that have a nasty ripple effect. I’m not that great at getting massive code coverage with it, but I’m getting better at it.

The other thing is that, really, I can only directly (read: easily) test with the version of PHP available to me. Which is usually the newest version. And my server, or the servers that would potentially use my code, don’t necessarily have that new of a version… so I need to have something test against those old versions. That’s where Travis-CI comes into play.

So I setup the GitHub repository to work with Travis-CI. Every time I push something to GitHub, Travis-CI gets notified. They spin up a fresh new virtual server for each version of PHP that I declared my code to be compatible with. And they run all my tests in that environment. Oh, and they email me the results. WIN.

Semantic Versioning is Important.

Putting readable, easy-to-understand version numbers in the code makes life easier. Well, usually, except when I fall into “version hell,” where this project requires that project which requires another project, and none of them can decide on a version of a related project that they both like. Yuck.

Anyway, I’ll probably write more on this later. Maybe. If you’re lucky. (And I have time… Which is basically never.)

Category: Code, PHP, Rant, Software Development, System Administration | Comments Off on Development, Automation, and Saving Time
21 October 2021

Self Promotion

I was talking to one of my co-workers the other day, and the topic of self-promotion came up. I was telling him all about how he had to get better at telling others how good he is at creating digital music… and then I realized that I was horrible at it.

So this post is here for promoting me.

Hi, my name is Dan, and I’m a geek.

I’ve done a lot of geeky things.

I’m Self-Taught.

All the programming and system administration capabilities I possess have been achieved through determination. No formal education has furthered that. No classes. No certifications. (I did go to college for a while, and technically I have a 2.96 GPA, but I never finished because they failed me for bogus reasons; I think I have like three credits or six credits left to get my Associate’s degree.)

I’ve been programming since the turn of the millennium, mostly on web applications. I taught myself PHP.

I learned system administration because it interested me, and because there was a need at the place I worked. I watched the owner peck away at a console until I learned the password and gave myself access. I officially became system administrator through sheer force of will. Within a few months, I was administering two dozen servers, with all but a couple of them running various flavors of Linux.

I learned PHP through reading and experimentation.

Is there more to the story? Yes. Quite honestly, this story has been in my drafts since 2014… So it has been time to publish it for a while. So, for better or worse, here it is / was. Lol.

Category: History, PHP, System Administration, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Self Promotion
17 October 2021

Pedal Cars: How To Save The World

… and why Elon Musk should hire me.

(Disclaimer: this is a living document; I’ve posted it on the Internet to prove I came up with it first. And because I want to make money saving the world.)

If there is one single concept in this document that somebody should definitely start doing on a massive scale is to make stuff large-scale from styrofoam. And making power from burning garbage like the Swedes.

Or was it harvesting the methane from cow farts to make fuel? It might be that one.

On to the super-well-fleshed-out idea in bullet points.

The Bits

  • pedaling in the driveway:
    –> hyper-efficient pedaling
    –> how to power the heater (esp. during winter)
    –> how to power the AC (yep, you gotta pedal)
  • wheels that have wheels: how momentum can power your heater (and AC)
  • integrating non-custom electronics to make a smart(er) car
    –> using your phone…
    –>> mirror display onto bigger display (touchscreen)
    –>> load (custom?) app
    –> using old tablets
  • building (a body) using styrofoam
    –> the styrofoam collection facility/system
    –> melting it into hard plastic
    –> pour into molds (considerations for extracting the acetone)
  • powering the plant using garbage
    –> burn it like the Swedes
    –> SUPER NEGATIVE CARBON FOOTPRINT (Super Green – the Ruby Rodd story)
  • Making it cool(er)
    –> round tires (a car that literally turns on a dime)
    –> heads-up display: how to reflect a screen onto the windshield (safely)
    –> seats that slide out (for old people)
    –> transform(er)ing seats for wheelchair accessiblity
    –> heated seats, because winter.
    –> cameras all over for visibility (night + thermal vision)
    –> windows that are actually solar panels
    –> solar panels on the roof: how to make solar panels sexy (and durable)
    –> blind spot monitoring
  • Features I “stole” (off the Internet[?])
    –> automatic high beams
    –> heated steering wheel (and North Dakota needs it)
    –> intelligent “keys” / remote starting options (powered by Linux?)
    –>> using FOBs that use encrypted signals
    –>> intelligent scheduling: keeping your car un-frozen in the Coming Ice Age
    –> FOBs that combine fingerprint + proximity (+phone)
    –>> considerations for lost phones and asshole “hacker” thieves
  • (Really)Weird shit that might work
    –> using cow farts to fuel the “gas” engine
    –> buoyancy and sealed engine compartment: how Dante’s Peak will save you in a flood
Category: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Pedal Cars: How To Save The World
12 July 2021

A Confusing Murder

“I think you’re lying.”

Those were the last words that John Sylvester would hear. A moment after the words touched his ears, he grew a large hole right in the middle of his face, with a much larger hole in the back of his head.

“WHAT IN THE BURNING HELLS?!?”

“What?”

Alex’s eyes opened wider—though it seemed nearly impossible that they could get any larger—as he shook his head and his hands in exasperation. “What do you mean, ‘what’? You blew a hole in John’s face!”

“Yes,” Owyn said matter-of-factly.

Alex shook with some combination of confusion and exasperation. “Why?” He looked at the body laying on the floor, just below the splatter of gray matter on the wall.

“He was sweating.”

“WHAT?”

Owyn’s brow furrowed slightly. “I do not understand your confusion. The man was sweating.”

Alex shook with confusion and frustration. He threw his hands in the air. “WHY WOULD YOU SHOOT SOMEONE BECAUSE THEY WERE SWEATING???”

Owyn nodded in understanding, giving a slight smile. “Liars sweat.”

Alex began a slow nod in mock understanding. “Ah, I see. So you shot him.”

“Yes, of course. I don’t know why we’re still talking about this.”

“Well, first,” he said, throwing a passive-aggressive finger in the air, “dead people don’t flaming TALK.” Another finger in the air, counting the transgressions. “Second,” he said, pointing at the man’s ruined face, “there’s another kind of person that sweats.”

Owyn’s head turned sideways very slightly, almost like a dog.

Fat people sweat!” He slapped the massive belly of the dead man, not breaking eye contact. “And this fat bastard is about five pounds short of a flaming BUICK!”

Category: Short Story | Comments Off on A Confusing Murder