Problems with the Site
justinmccandless.com has been down for the last few weeks, and a good amount of my entries are gone. This was due to domain.com, my ex-hosting company, canceling my hosting while I was in Austria after a failed payment due to a change of credit cards. This makes sense, but they also permanently deleted my databases, which wasn't cool.
Thankfully, I had backed up my database in the middle of summer 2009 after realizing the tragedy that would be if I ever lost my database. Along with the help of a few entries lying around my computers as text files, and the miracle working Firefox extension Lazarus, I also plan to recover at least a few more entries. I'll be working on patching up the site, recovering entries, and trying to transition to a started Version 6 of the site going forward.
Some good did come out of this misfortune, though. For one, I learned to religiously back up my databases. I also was able to change hosting, which I had been thinking about for awhile until this provided me the perfect opportunity. I now have my own virtual cloud server from Rackspace, which is working out quite nicely so far. I basically have my own Ubuntu server, with root access, that I can set up and manage 100% myself, for about the same price as before. After picking up some basic sysadmin stuff at my internship this summer (more on this shortly, there was so much I wanted to write but couldn't due to this site being down), I much prefer being to install my own packages, manage Apache on my own, and not have to go through a dumbed down browser interface. Plus I can use the server for many things besides web hosting.
Anyway, old posts will return soon, new posts will be written soon, and hopefully I'll get this site in shape shortly.