Following my previous post about the $700K+ check, I looked up some information on the site. From the site’s copyright notice at the bottom the site have been running since 2001. However check this out, traffic graph from Alexa:
As you can see, it’s not a while for the site to gain traffic and visitor’s trust. Time is a critical factor indeed, for a site to become successful. And never give up 😉
It’s official. This morning at home I switched on my machine, browsed on LiewCF, saw some posts, followed a link, and fell off my chair.
I am talking about this post.
The check’s total value is $901,733.84 (Canadian Dollars). That’s the check for 2 months. This guy would be a millionaire already if he is in Malaysia. Just think of that… more than RM1 million monthly! It’s not really weird since his site has been up since 2001.
This is really a good spirit lifter, especially since my own AdSense earning is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay lower than that.
Go to cheques-gallery.blogspot.com to see more checks.
I will send mine in when the value will not embarrass me 😉
I’ve received a bad news a couple of weeks ago, that one of my good friend from college has been diagnosed with Leukemia. I was shocked and wished it was not true, as it was unconfirmed.
Today I had the opportunity to contact his wife who is working in the same company as me, and asked a bit about him. I don’t want to pester her too much as I know it must be a very miserable period for her. She has confirmed that he is indeed diagnosed and confirmed to have Leukemia.
I asked her whether we can visit to give him our support for him to go through but he’s still too weak and prone to infections. He must be going through hell now, with chemotherapy and stuff. Poor guy. I sent my regards via her and asked her to let me know when we can visit.
I really wish that he will get better very soon. This guy have a little girl, and a family to support. God willing.
Well it felt like yesterday since 2007 came and said hello to us. And now it’s already the end of February? Wow. One of my favorite thing about February is that anyone who was born on the 29th of February actually grow older slower, only one fourth of the normal person 😉
Have any one of you actually reached your goals or resolution for 2007 yet? Well some might have done so well, like some bloggers I see in the Internet are actually already claiming themselves to be ProBlogger. Well there’s nothing wrong with that, good for them! It’s not like there exist any kind of authority to award the title. No, being a ProBlogger is not my target, although one of the reasons I blog is to improve my writing skills. I dream of writing a book someday, maybe.
Alright, so I wish everyone a happy March, a happy April, and be happy all year round!
It has almost been 5 years since I have subscribed to Yahoo! Mail Plus and I am really satisfied with the service. With POP3 and SMTP access, I couldn’t be happier. Furthermore the ability to add disposable email addresses to combat SPAM from not-so-trusted sites is really useful.
Yesterday I tried to send an email to a friend via SMTP and the connection failed. Well, I thought it was a glitch somewhere and didn’t really care so I saved the message as draft. However, checking email via POP3 still works fine.
When I tried again today, I still can’t connect. The first thing I checked is the POP & SMTP help in Yahoo! Mail. Indeed, Yahoo! now have SSL support for both POP3 and SMTP (port 995 and 465 respectively). Cool. I didn’t realize when Yahoo! had this available but this is a good news. Nobody can sniff my email communications on the line anymore.
I changed my Thunderbird settings to use SSL for sending and receiving, and all is working fine now.
I also realized that Yahoo! never disabled the non-SSL SMTP port 25. I wonder why Thunderbird failed to connect earlier. Oh well, maybe that’s just a sign to let me know that SSL is available 🙂
For the non-technical readers, SSL enables encryption for the communication between your machine and the server. Yes, the similar technology as HTTPS for browsers.
AGLOCO – simply a weird abbreviation that I am curious to check it out.
What is AGLOCO?
Simply put, AGLOCO is an Internet marketing tool for us to use in order to earn money. Advertisers, search companies, online merchants, businesses, etc. will pay for traffic and attention.
AGLOCO will work in the same way as Spedia did, using a toolbar while you browse the Internet. This bar is called Viewbar. However the concept is a little bit different where you’ll get actual shares of AGLOCO and also of course, referral commission. As I remembered back then my wife did get paid by Spedia, I think this program is also worth it and it costs nothing. You’ll be browsing the Internet anyway, wouldn’t you?
AGLOCO pays members for two things: sharing a part of the desktop space (the Viewbar), and increasing the network. It’s pretty logic, as I can see. I am not really interested in all the numbers for now.
OK then you would ask what’s the rationale behind it? Well, the toolbar of course will keep track of what you browse and gather the data for marketing purposes. It’s all about data mining. It’s the same concept as those bonus cards you use to gather points (i.e. BonusLink and RealRewards in Malaysia). They all have links to a central database and gather data. So now you have it, it’s not for nothing. You are willing to share something precious to the data miners and they will pay you back.
Leaving the network or uninstalling the bar is always an option if I think it’s not worth to have the bar floating around and not so much earnings later. The bottom line is earning a couple of bucks more per month wouldn’t hurt, would it?
The Viewbar, however is scheduled to be released in March and currently in limited Beta mode. Give it a try, sign up now (ref).
Hey, did anyone realize that there’s an upgrade available? Or February is the busiest time for everyone?
WordPress 2.1 is upgraded to 2.1.1 while WordPress 2.0.7 is upgraded to 2.0.9.
Files changed in 2.1.1 from 2.1:
Files changed from 2.0.7 to 2.0.9 (version 2.0.8 was tagged for Debian, but never announced):
This time I not going to upgrade yet, as if something is broken I can’t fix it right away 😀
It has been quite a while I have the chance to update this blog. February is the busiest month ever for myself, and I still have a week to go until it all ends.
I have not been sleeping well since I am on 24×7 standby and holding a pager. Indeed, life is hard. I even dozed off at my desk with my home PC, my home laptop, and my work laptop. Luckily the VPN connection is working quite okay otherwise I would have to drive to the office every time I get paged.
It’s not that I am complaining or anything, just to let you know what happened to this blog. Actually you can see the pattern – from 40 posts in December 2006, the number decreased to 26 in January 2007. And this month I am not even sure I can pass the 10 post milestone.
I think after February I am going to claim all the time-off I can get due to out of office hour work, and finish up many pending tasks.
Until next time, see you guys around.
Have you ever heard of the browser named Iceweasel? Of course not, if you’re not using Debian. One of my machine at home is running a Debian Etch installation (my torrent box), and a few days ago I ran apt-get upgrade to upgrade the packages.
I was quite annoyed at first, as it’s trying to install a new package (not to mention the huge size) but I let it anyway. Earlier today I launched the web browser in my Xfce and Iceweasel was loading…
Iceweasel is a rebranded Firefox, and exist in 2 independent projects: one by Gnuzilla, and the other one by Debian.
Iceweasel was created since Mozilla demanded that Debian complies to some of the policies and terms that Debian finds unacceptable.
The other products are also re branded. Thunderbird became Icedove and Seamonkey became Iceape.
The current release of Gnuzilla IceWeasel is based on the 1.5.0.7 version of Mozilla Firefox, while the current version of Debian Iceweasel is based on the 2.0.0.1 release of Firefox.
The most obvious reason for this name change was that Mozilla demanded that Debian retain all branding from Mozilla if they were to continue using the Firefox name. However, because of the Debian Free Software Guidelines that said no non-free artwork and plugins are allowed, they were unable to comply. This generic, non-branded icon on the right was used for Firefox in Debian.
What I can see so far is that only the name changed. All of my plugins can still be used and upgraded normally. As for my active machines, however I always use the extracted package from Mozilla so there would be no way I would realize about the existence of Iceweasel.
Iceweasel. Cute name?
While updating my phone using SEUS today, SEUS crashed in the midst of downloading the phone firmware and now the phone is dead. Looks like a trip to the service center is needed… 🙁
This is like my 7th time updating the phone firmware but like they say, there’s always a first time in everything. I’m not too worried though, as only the firmware is missing. I just hope they can restore it in one day without having to leave it. My poor baby…
Following the case I wrote about Exabytes’ disappointing respond to my notification, I received an email from the Director of Business Development saying how sorry they are about the incident.
By responding to a customer without being asked is indeed a very beneficial action towards a business. Customers feel happy that there exists someone inside the company who actually cares (even if they don’t really). It’s a good business practice and kudos to Exabytes.
I suddenly remembered I watched a video once by Ron Kauffman, and he explained how good customer service can overcome product defects. I agree with him 100%, if not more.
One little, meaningful email from my mailbox:
This is a formal notice to owners of domains which have been registered through eNom via its reseller, RegisterFly.com.
YOU MUST TAKE ACTION NOW TO RETAIN FULL MANAGEMENT RIGHTS TO YOUR DOMAIN NAME.
Although you purchased your name at RegisterFly, eNom is the actual registrar of record for your domains. As we are severing our relationship with RegisterFly, we are aware that this may have an impact on you as the domain owner.
Therefore we would like to offer this opportunity to assist you in securing control of your domain name directly with eNom.Over the last year, eNom has become aware of an increasing number of complaints from dissatisfied RegisterFly customers.
As an eNom reseller, RegisterFly is contractually bound to adhere to certain standards of customer service in a speedy and diligent manner. Therefore, effective immediately, we have terminated RegisterFly as a reseller of domain names through eNom.
eNom has come to its senses, as when people buy domains from RegisterFly, eNom’s name gets displayed as well. It used to be like that; now RegisterFly is a fully accredited registrar by its own. The question is, isn’t there any control or qualification rules needed by ICANN to allow a company to be an accredited ICANN registrar?
Update: It turns out that when the domains are transferred to eNom we get an extended renewal for free! A domain I had which expired on the 17th Jan 2007 was renewed even though I was ready to let it go. Maybe this is a sign, and I should do something with that domain?
Update: It turns out that the domains are indeed expired. They keep it for themselves, the expired date shown on a whois query is one year later but the system says it’s expired. 🙂
For the next couple of weeks I may not be able to write so much, due to the fact that I am on 24×7 standby duty at work. This only happens like every 3 months, so I am OK with it.
On another development I have received quite a number of invitations for interviews by referral and immediate employments. Too many junctions ahead, and I have to clear up my head to think and make the best choice for the future. The highest paying company does not mean the best place to work in.
I wrote a plugin to import everything that can be found from the feeds Blogger provides. Many people has emailed me since asking me why I would do such a thing, as Blogger is a great platform for bloggers. This is my answer to all of those questions.
Why do you write this script/plugin?
A simple answer to this is that my better half wanted to migrate to WordPress and she has accidentally accepted the offer to upgrade to the New Blogger (Blogger Beta back then). Next, I was looking for ways to maintain my coding skills in PHP as for the past 3 years I have been working in System Administration and security.
Do you hate Blogger/Google that much?
No I don’t hate them. In fact, I love Google so much that I am willing to work for them if given the chance 😉 I love all Google products, but when it comes to blogging I feel restricted using Blogger. I migrated my blog from that system when it had only two posts. I hope Google does not think I hate them (perhaps that’s why my pagerank stays static).
Why don’t you integrate the Haloscan import into your plugin?
Why should I re-invent the wheel? Justin has written a very good tool to do this.
Do you think it’s suitable to call it a plugin?
No. Other plugins will be used and upgraded as time goes but for this one, you can remove it after you’ve finished importing. Call it a disposable plugin if you desire.
Will this plugin work forever?
No. If Google decides to change a tag inside the feeds, the whole plugin will fall apart. When that time comes, I might or might not have the time to provide an immediate fix. So if you want to do it, I suggest not to wait.
I’ll add my answers from time to time to this post, if I receive any more. Till then, have a nice weekend.
Between 00:20 to 02:10 Malaysian time (16:20 to 18:10 GMT) the Apache service on the server hosting this site was down. I know that only Apache was down due to the fact that I can’t access the webites using the web browser but I can access FTP, SSH, SMTP, and POP. Here’s what I put inside the form for Exabytes technical support:
Hi
We can’t access the site using HTTP. Apache may be down. I can access FTP, SMTP, SSH, and POP. I realized that there was a problem with the network at the data center as described in https://support.exabytes.com/index.php?_m=news&_a=viewnews&newsid=209 but this problem will cause outages on all services, not only HTTP.
Just letting you know as you may not realize Apache is down.
Thank you.
And the reply I received surprised me:
Dear Ady,
At the moment, our network had high latency.
Our network engineers are currently working on this issue.
You may refer to:
https://support.exabytes.com/index.php?_m=news&_a=viewnews&newsid=209If you have any enquiries, please do not hesitate to contact. Thank You.
Best Regards,
KM Chow
………………………………..
System Engineer,
Exa Bytes Network Sdn Bhd
With an excellent customer support record so far (at least for myself), I was surprised that this Engineer (?) can’t read well. He shouldn’t have repeated the URL I already mentioned. This somehow implies that the customer can’t read and the reply really looks like a template.
I am hosting at Exabytes Malaysia due to the fact that the customer support is fast, and my access to the server is very fast. But right now I am thinking of moving my blog elsewhere. Too bad some of other sites I host here must stay due to the fact that they are targeted to Malaysian customers and the access is fast.