new server

i’m in the middle of a Tracy-less period, so i’m spending my time geeking around. i upgraded my server — faster CPU, more RAM, more drive space, newer Red Hat distro. this is something i had planned for a while but never really got around to it. the only money i had to spend was on the CPU (AMD Duron 800 which can be had for less than $50 — sick!). everything else i had already from previous upgrades. i started yesterday, after having a killer breakfast with Tracy (more details on this later), spending most of it just assembling the hardware. today i got the OS installed and spent most of the day migrating all the data from Genma to Happosai — i have a Ranma 1/2 naming scheme for my network =). it took me a while to get NAT running. since RH7.1 comes with kernel 2.4, i wanted to use the IPtables way of doing IP masquerading. it was a no go, as i got some funky error messages. i checked on deja.com and there are several other people with the exact same errors i’ve been getting, so it’s not just me. i’ll research that later. i wanted to get running fairly quickly, so i fell back to my old IPchains-based firewall script. doesn’t have as many bells and whistles, but it does the job. i also realized i have tons of old PC parts laying around — a handful of motherboards, CPUs, sound cards, modems, RAM sticks, hard drives, cases. i gotta see if there’s a place i can donate these parts to, like a children’s charity or something. granted, these aren’t the fastest parts out there, but i’d hate to see these go to waste. i just have to make sure that there’s no old MS software on it, as i don’t them to get them to get busted. anyways, about that breakfast. i met up with Tracy in Orange County (she was on her way to pick up her friend at LAX) and we ate at The Original Pancake House. i had their signature Apple Pancake… sooo good!