So is my Father.

They started off with Myspace and quickly moved to Facebook.  After several friends requests from them (Yes, I used to maintain an Myspace and Yahoo account) I deleted my accounts.  “I don’t use those services” I told them.  I fear it is simply a matter of time until they make their way to Twitter, Tumblr, and Friendfeed.

I love my parents, I really do..but am I the only one creeped out by their entry into the online world?  I enjoyed having that feeling of being a young person, being able to say “Put it on my wall.” and watch them blank…and now? Now I have to explain these things to them and watch their eyes light us as they find another way to use a service they signed up for.

I remember the good old days..when my parent’s cell phones weighed 12lbs and had monochrome screens.  Now they carry Blackberrys and text more then they talk (”I’ll never use text messaging. If I want to say something, I’ll call someone up!”). I remember the eye rolls when I talked about tricked out servers with gigs of ram and terabytes of hard drive space.  Now, their home server is nearing 2tb of media and my Dad uses Bittorrent. I remember my mother fighting with VHS tapes to tape shows she was going to miss. Now, she fights with her DVR to delete shows she’ll never watch (Admittedly, this is my fault as I bought it for her.) I remember the flat out refusal of my Mother to allow a computer into the living room.  Now…one sits atop the media center, happily churning out tunes and movies.

I guess I just have to accept it, my parents are “nerds” now.

blackberrys, I, monochrome screens, Myspace, way Hide

Sadly, my trusty laptop didn’t survive the most recent move in my life.  Well, she kinda did….kinda.  She had 3-5 dead pixels in the top right corner of her screen.  This didnt bother me that much, and I let it slide…hoping it wouldn’t ever get worse…I was wrong.  I opened her up recently….big nasty black patch in the upper right corner.  Laptop rendered unusable.  First though was repair her..but due to her tablet nature, no one sells screens.  Well, with over 2k into her, I cant just trash her…hrrm…

A dilema in my nerdhouse as of late has been power consumption.  My nerdmate and I both have fairl beefy computer setups, with multiple LCDs to boot.  We’re pulling A LOT of juice down leaving the monsters on.  Why are we leaving them on?  Well, I am running torrents (100% LEGAL ones FYI!) and she..well…I dunno, just likes burning down rainforests to leave her computer on.  So I needed a low power solution to run my LEGAL torrents, as well as a few other tasks that I typically leave my PC on for.  Hrrm, my laptop uses VERY little power…hrrm..

Enter…the zombie server!  The laptop has risen from the dead to serve her purpose as a server!

Why did I want a home server?  Well besides the afforementioned torrents, I want to run a home media jukebox as well as other various and sundry things.

So, a brief how’d-he-do-it for now, a more detailed how to later.

• Installed a new OS ->Tried Fedora 11…failed with the hardware.  Ubuntu 9.04 works a treat.
• Installed a LAMP suit – Thats Linux Apache MySql PHP for the uninitiated out there
• Setup a firewall – Iptables, good stuff
• Setup some port forwarding
• Setup Dyndns.

Portforwarding AND a firewall?  Ubuntu as a server? ACCK!  Yes…I hear and feel your complaints a brewing.  Do not fret, because…well…I dont really care cause it works for me and I feel all cool and safe and stuff.  Feel free to do it your way!

For those that are happy with my way, look out for a howto in the next couple of days that will make you all silly happy with homeserver joy.

Fedora, firewall iptables, I, laptop, server, trusty laptop Hide