Pam told me today about a guy that was hitting on her, this happens often, and in this case and previous cases when the guy sees that she has a wedding ring they immediately back off and say, sorry I didn’t realize that you are married.

Now Pam wasn’t leading them on, she is just nice like me. But it is nice to see that chivalry isn’t dead from the standpoint that people respect the institution of marriage and won’t disrupt it. Now I know that not everyone is like this, but it is refreshing to see that there are people out there that still act this way.

For Pam’s birthday we went to Catalina. Neither of us have been to the island and I have to say it was amazing. Imagine a beach community that is stuck in the 50s. No new developments via real estate, streets are clean, food is good, views breathtaking, things to do abundant, and a general overall feeling of happiness. That is Catalina in a nutshell.

We went to the Casino (not in the gambling sense, but in the old italian term sense). In the building was an old theatre decked out with an organ that we were fortunate enough to hear being played before the movie we went to see. Here is the exterior of the Casino:

The highlight of the trip was of course being able to have time with Pam, but the 2nd highlight was getting the top score for a football throwing game in the arcade. My legacy will stand on that island.

We also made it over to the island museum which had an exhibit on photos of the beatles and eric clapton as photographed by Pattie Boyd.

We made it up to the Wrigley Botanical Gardens too. For those of you who don’t know, Catalina island was once owned by William Wrigley Jr, who also owned Wrigley’s Gum and the Chicago Cubs.

We didn’t get a chance to see the bison on the island, but since it was really easy to get there (1 hour north to Dana Point, hop on boat, 1 hour 20 min boat ride) we’ll most likely go back again.

I put in my notice to leave MindTouch to start my own business in the beginning of April. A part of my new business is providing contract services to my clients. One of them being MindTouch. After a few webinars and trainings for MindTouch, they decided to offer me a new position at the company along the lines of a Sales Engineer for the sales team. After giving it some good thought, I decided to return to MindTouch in addition to running my company. My life goal is to be autonomous with my own company, but this is a role where I can have a big impact on the adoption of MindTouch and continue to help the company grow which is important to me.

I look forward to this new position and to working with the great people at MindTouch again.

This is a conversation that I had this morning with a customer service rep from a company who will remain nameless:

Rep: How are you doing today?
Me: Pretty good, it is overcast here but that is expected in May
Rep: It is raining here at the moment
Me: Oh yeah, where are you located?
Rep: Philippines
Me: Oh, ok
Rep: You know where that is?
Me: Yeah
Rep: Have you been here before?
Me: No
Rep: How do you know where it is?
Me: from a map

Glad my cartography classes didn’t fail me I at least know that the green stuff isn’t water (for those readers that have seen arrested development)

I’m setting up some servers that are restricted but still need to be monitored. In order to do this I setup an .htaccess file that denies traffic by default expect for IPs that are allowed. Here is the file that you can use to allow servers from pingdom but restrict everything else. Note you’ll have to add your own IP address and anyone else that wants to access the site:

order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from 83.140.19.38
allow from 67.228.213.178
allow from 208.43.68.59
allow from 94.46.240.121
allow from 72.46.130.42
allow from 173.248.147.18
allow from 173.204.85.217
allow from 84.246.230.247
allow from 212.84.74.156
allow from 64.141.100.136
allow from 178.255.152.2
allow from 64.237.55.3
allow from 178.255.155.2
allow from 178.255.153.2
allow from 178.255.154.2
allow from 96.31.66.245
allow from 82.103.128.63
allow from 67.205.112.79
allow from 78.136.27.223
allow from 67.192.120.134
allow from 207.97.207.200
allow from 207.218.231.170
allow from 95.211.87.85
allow from 83.170.113.102
allow from 74.52.50.50
allow from 74.53.193.66
allow from 204.152.200.42
allow from 85.25.176.167
allow from 174.34.162.242
allow from 70.32.40.2
allow from 174.34.156.130
allow from 69.59.28.19

Pingdom may change server IPs periodically so please confirm that the IP addresses are correct before adding them.