OK, so I had a fun ass day. Yesterday I sent a message to the GNHLUG folks so I could get a recommendation on an IMAP server. I got a few and had to decide between Dovecot and Courier. Both are open source solutions and the winner will be running on my Debian Etch (Linux for those that don’t know) box (which is in a VMware virtual machine).

I decided to implement IMAP so that I could hit my mail from multiple clients instead of just mutt. While I have no problem just using mutt, I can’t ask Natalie to. It’s a console program (no pretty clicky menus) and driven by keyboard shortcuts that have meaning for me and nobody else in the world. I have an email folder that gets all of the notifications of online statements from all of the people we have to give our money to each month. I want her to be able to look at it if she chooses. Yeah, I could forward messages to her mail account or go about this any other number of ways, but setting up a mail server gives me other benee’s and it’s just fun to play with this stuff.

I won’t bore you with the details of configuring the server or making the config changes I needed in my mail clients, but I will tell you that I went with Dovecot and that both mutt and Thunderbird are amazingly flexible and powerful tools. I loved them before, I want to marry them now.

Since I’ve been using mutt for a couple of years now, I’ve grown very accustomed to managing email from 9 accounts (and a lot of it) with folders in one program. I’ve got it set up so that a particular email address and PGP key is selected based on what folder I’m composing/replying to messages in. It’s VERY handy. I never have to worry about which email address is responding to what list or friend. As long as my mail filtering is working properly, my client does the work. That all probably sounds confusing, so as an example, if I’m replying to a message in my Gmail folder, then the program knows that I want to reply with my @gmail.com address and the corresponding PGP key. I wanted the same capability in my GUI client. Enter Thunderbird and the “Enigmail” and “Folder Account” add-ons. It allows me to do just that, I simply need to select which identity to assign to a particular folder and I’m done. It really is that easy. It takes a few minutes to configure your identities and the GPG keys that go with them, a few changes to folder properties and BAM!

Folks, try doing that with Outlook. I’ll wait… Oh you couldn’t? Not surprising, MS doesn’t think you want to use PGP so it’s not an option. Never mind how common and effective it is. You’ll have to go out and buy PGP Desktop. No thanks, I’ll stick with the open source programs that have great devs & users who contribute to the project. The combination just produces far superior tools. That’s *almost* all from the Outlook bashing front for today, but there’ll prolly be more later. I’ve been using it at work for a few weeks now and it SUCKS. The ONLY thing it does right is integrate mail and calendaring if you have a MAPI backend, other than that… meh. There, now that really is the last of the OL smash for today.

So I now have all I wanted from my mail server and I’m super pleased. It took almost no time to set up. It would have gone even faster if I had any sed or shell scripting skills. Ahh well, something to work on.

OK, here’s the deal. I’m asking family and friends (whomever may be reading this) to give us a hand. Natalie and I need to decide whether or not to hang this sign above the entrance to the family room. One of us is for it, and the other is unsure. Please take a look at the pics and let me know what you think in the comments of this post (just click where it gives the count of the comments directly under this entry). Take whatever you like into consideration, the color, the text, up to you. If we hang it, it’ll be centered between the top of the door and the ceiling. We’d REALLY appreciate your input.

In other news, we’re making a LOT of progress with the painting. We’ve completed the sitting room, the dining room (we’re having the room measured for a new carpet as well) and we’re into the kitchen now. That’s the room that’s taking forever, we’re removing the border and most of of the wall is trim and detail work. It’s coming along though, we’ve got 2-3 more weeks before completion and I can’t wait – well, 2-3 more weeks if we can pick a color for the room…

EDIT:  Above was a link to a Knight Rider 2008 trailer on youtube which is no longer available; if you really need to see something similar go to http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Knight+Rider+2008&search_type=

Was this necessary?

At least they aren’t trying to pass it off as a new version of the original, it’s not Michael Knight and it’s a new KITT (Knight Industries Three Thousand). When will they learn that sometimes it’s best to leave things as is. There’s a longer clip available here for those interested.

Long live the Hoff!

If all of the blocks off to the right (RSS, Comments, Archives, etc) are pushed all the way down to the bottom of the page, then you’re using Internet Explorer and deserve to have a hard time navigating sites. Download and install Firefox from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ for a better Internet Experience.

I found a few good themes this morning thanks to Smashing Magazine’s 100 Excellent Free Wordpress Themes. I actually found two that I really liked, I put the visually fun one here on this site and a clean easy to read one on Linux Neophyte.

That story couldn’t have come at a better time, I was hating the WP themes I’d been using on both sites and had almost no luck at all finding anything decent on http://themes.wordpress.net/. Oh and navigating that site SUCKS! It really needs an overhaul.

Anyway, if you use WP and want something new, check out the story above

I completely forgot to mention one of the things I enjoyed about my visit to NY. I was able to finally go into a Duane Reade’s pharmacy. I hear about it all the time on the O&A show and it kinda became a destination for me. Yeah, I do realize just how pathetic making a trip to a NY pharmacy important is and I don’t care.

Oh the verdict, it’s just like any Walgreens you’d find around here.

I also heard a security guard in Duane’s use the term “on line” as in, if you go downstairs, you won’t have to wait long on line. I think that’s a New Yorkism. I hear that from O&A as well, around here (if you don’t know) we say “in line”.

There was no point to mentioning that, it just interested me.

Now that I read it, there’s no real point to this whole post. meh, it’s my pointless ramble and that’s all that matters.