Well, gang, today’s going to be a busy day. But first, the weekend.

Went to see American Wedding and liked it quite a bit. It wasn’t by any means original - I mean, you’ve got the first two, and this is a sequel - but it was enjoyable.

Watched a few DVDs at home, washed the car, did the usual house-oriented stuff. Nothing too exciting.

Today, though, is going to be a big day.

First, we have my “Programming Windows Apps in C#” test, which I don’t anticipate being too difficult, but I’m always leery of things that seem too easy.

And second, I’ve got space on a new server and I’m going to try to move the blog over there. I don’t think it should be too hard - basically a copy/paste style operation - but, again, I’m leery of things that seem too easy.

Anyway, the net result of that all is that I’m a little anxious. Plus, I probably won’t post again (and will be turning off the comments feature so the site can’t change) until I’ve gotten the site moved over, which should hopefully be by the end of the day. I’ll throw redirectors and notices up here for folks that have stuff bookmarked to ensure that everyone can get back here.

Wish me luck!

Okay, here’s another of my million dollar ideas that I had yesterday in the car:

You know how you can go to sex shops and joke gift shops and get that penis-shaped pasta? Well, what do you put on that pasta when you want to eat it?

The Answer: Bearded Clam Sauce

You read it here first, folks. Just get a bunch of cans of prepackaged white clam sauce, slap a new label on (or, better, partner with the manufacturer), and voila! you’re a millionaire.

Jenn told me that if we had the money to throw away, I could hire a full-time personal assistant to follow me around in a French maid outfit. This, my friends, is the key.

Well, folks, things seem to have worked out reasonably well for me today. I have:

• Passed my Windows Application Programming in C# test
• Moved my site over to my friend Marty’s box
• Not eaten anything but Sour Skittles all day long

The Test: I actually thought I failed this while I was taking it. Seriously. There were 58 questions, and only around 35 of them were on my practice test. The rest were pulled out of someone’s ass and I had no clue on them. Obviously I’m a skilled guesser (thank God they’re multiple choice tests) because I passed. Honestly, I don’t care how I passed, as long as I did. So, moving on to the next test, right?

The Site: If you’re here reading this, you can see that the site move went acceptably. I’ve put up a redirector page for folks whose name servers haven’t updated to the new location. Hopefully that will propagate through within the next day or three. Regardless, I’m here now, with some ample breathing space, meaning I can post pictures of my stupid neighbors and their fucking Titanic car parked in the fire lane and all the other shit that gets my goat. I’m stoked, and you should be, too.

Sour Skittles: I think they speak for themselves. Though I should probably take some time and eat something substantial.

All in all, not a bad day. Now maybe I should get some work done…

The day started off so well, then about halfway through took the biggest nosedive in the world.

I’m working on building up a new corporate web server at work to replace the existing site and server with. It’s a Windows 2003 box that it took me like three days just to build and secure (it was locked down, man) and get so it could be remotely administered from our corporate network yet not be a threat if it was compromised. It was solid.

Well, we put some security patches on it that came out recently and the web server portion of the machine started denying everyone access to the site. I mean, not even ask you for username and password - just straight up denying you access.

After fucking around with it for like two hours, I come to find out that it’s a sort of “intelligence” that’s been built into the system.

For the technical: The machine was a domain controller (on its own domain) with a one-way trust between our corporate domain and itself. The machine also ran IIS for the web site stuff. It turns out the security patches we did (or something related, though I couldn’t say what) made it so that only Administrators were allowed to log on locally to the box. Even if the Domain Controller Security Policy said otherwise. Even if everything else - all other policies and settings - said otherwise. It just wouldn’t let anyone in. That includes the IUSR_MACHINENAME anonymous user account. Which means you can’t run an anonymously accessed web site on a domain controller - even if you want to - unless the anonymous user account is a local administrator. Fucking brilliance.

For the non-technical: Microsoft decided to make things more “secure” by not allowing you to “accidentally” do certain things. Even if you specifically want to do those things.

Thank you very much, Microsoft.

So now I have to build up a whole new domain controller machine and a whole new web server, reconfigure and re-secure both machines, reinstall the web site (thankfully written in ASP.NET so it’s easy to deploy), and hopefully be back at square one by the end of next week.

Bah. How irritating is that?!

I started off this morning by waking up at 6:00a to my stupid fucking downstairs neighbors starting up their “classic” convertible 70’s Cadillac and revving the engine for a few minutes, then shutting it off and going back inside. Nice.

That, of course, put me in a bad mood, which is not uncommon for me in the morning since, frankly, I hate waking up. I’m not a big morning person. I can stay up all night long if I know I don’t have to get up early for work the next day. But this was a worse than usual style mood, which is bad news. I didn’t expect much from the day.

So far, though, the day is very pleasantly surprising me. I think my friend Marty is going to hook me up with some space on his server, which would allow me to post pictures of things like my stupid downstairs neighbors’ car, which would be altogether too enriching for the lives of my readers. I like that.

I got my Amazon Associates kickback gift certificate in email - a whopping $11.05 this quarter, mostly generated from me ordering things through my own damn site thank you very much - and I do have to say that free money in the mail is never frowned upon in my household. Rock on.

Of course, I promptly used that $11.05 while pre-ordering Alias: Season 2 and Angel: Season 2, both sets I have been waiting for with baited breath, neither of which I realized were coming out. Good times there.

And, last, but not least, I’ve scheduled my 070-316 test, “Developing and Implementing Windows-Based Applications with Microsoft Visual C# .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET,” to occur this coming Monday at 11:15a, since I have been studying the questions on the practice test and they all make some weird sort of natural sense, like I might actually know on some instinctual level the answers to the questions. Seriously, the practice test is almost unreal in its relative ease, compared to the last test I took. After talking to another guy who has used practice test software from the same company as the practice test I’m looking at, he says that his practice test was pretty dead-on for what he saw on the actual exam. If that’s the case, I’m thinking I should pass without too much issue. I don’t want to get overconfident, but after looking at the practice test… I can’t help but smile. So - Monday. We’ll see what happens there.

And that’s all just up until now. It’s only… uh… 10:39a by my clock (will probably be a little later by the time this gets posted, but still), and things are going swimmingly.

Nobody’d best come over and fuck up my mood or I’m going to be busting some caps.