August IPSC and 2-gun results
The results are in for this month’s IPSC and 2-gun matches at SEG.
First IPSC:
This was the most fun IPSC match I’ve shot. Did it show in my scores? Well, not really. In my division (Single Stack) there were only four shooters. I placed second, behind an A class shooter, and ahead of a C class and a U class.
Overall, across divisions and classes, I placed 9th out of 28 shooters. That’s not my best showing to be sure, but most of the 8 shooters who finished ahead of me are serious trigger-pullers who I wouldn’t expect to beat. I am also getting better with the STI; my reloads were much smoother and my shot groups better. I need alot more practice, then I think my times will start going down.
Next, 2-gun:
Fortunately I forgot to bring my camera, because that 2-gun match was a disaster. I started hosing; I’d see the guy before me shoot the stage real fast, and I’d feel like I should too, so I’d hose down the targets with multiple shots in rapid succession, but I went too fast and accuracy suffered. Badly. On the fourth stage I force myself to slow down, and did much better accuracy-wise (but shot it in a glacial 7+ seconds).
I came in 5th overall out of 29 shooters, so I guess alot of other guys had a bad night too. Again, everyone who beat me is a great shooter whom I wouldn’t expect to beat, as are some of the guys who placed after me, so as much as I was dissatisfied with my performance, apparently it could’ve been worse.
The 2-gun results are here
Moved from FutureHosting to Linode
Yesterday I finally snapped. I grew weary of all the problems I’ve had with FutureHosting. From niggling annoyances to serious issues, I’ve not had fun with FutureHosting. I currently have two VPS instances with them: one is a web server, and the other a database server. They host apocryph.org and a couple of side projects. Even one of those instances would be way overkill for the load I put on them; I got two because that was the cheapest way to get more space, which in the end I didn’t need anyway.
Let me recount some of the indignities:
Indignities of FutureHosting
Their ‘managed’ VPS instances all come with some sort of web-based control panel. At first I went with DirectAdmin because I didn’t know better. I didn’t like that. I then was running cPanel. There are two blog posts on apocryph.org regarding the extent to which cPanel blows, so draw your own conclusion about how that went. But even setting aside the suckiness of particular web-based control panels, these boxes weren’t set up the way I like, and since they’re managed you can’t exactly rip them apart and put them together again. It’s partly my fault for going with a managed instance, but it’s also their fault to building images that are so constrictive. They are clearly meant for end users running web sites with little to no sysadmin background, not developers who like to hack their own shit all the time.
Then there are little annoyances. Like, when I sudo on one of their boxes, this warning comes up: audit_log_user_command(): Connection refused. Why does that happen? I have no idea, but it’s the way the images were built. Or the fact that there are approximately a million different web-based systems for doing different things. Want to add a domain to your site? Well, log in to Parallels and add the domain so their DNS infrastructure knows about it. Then log in to the panel on the web server box to provision an account there. Then log into the panel on the database server to provision a database. Did that fail? Log in to the support system to open a ticket, then log in to the WHM panel on the box to restart apache. For the love of God, how many disparate web systems can you patch together?
Tickets ‘EMS-417155′ and ’JJT-975910′, in which seemly at random I would find my web server ‘raz’ unable to connect to the MySQL server ‘lio’. This went on for days, and got escalated up to the CEO. It turned out much later that when I fiddled with the firewall controls I fiddled with the Parallels firewall not the built-in Linux APF firewall, and these don’t go well together. Before they figured this out, I moved lio to another instance, this one running Ubuntu and without any control panel. That was a fun hassle.
Ticket ‘BYG-486778′ nicely summarizes what it’s like to work with FutureHosting support. For the most part they are able to solve problems quickly, but when my server suddenly stops working, I want to know more than ‘it’s fixed now’; I want to know what happened, and if it was my fault how I can avoid doing it again. Getting that from FutureHosting is like pulling teeth. Here’s the exchange from that ticket:
Adam Nelson (Mr. Adam Nelson)
Posted On: 03 Mar 2009 02:53 PM
I’m experiencing an outage on port 80 for apocryph.org and the other domains hosted on raz. I ran into this over the weekend, and cleared it up with a reboot, but it has returned and I want to determine the root cause.I’ve already tried disabling the APF firewall with apf -f, and the problem remains. To see the problem, go to http://apocryph.org. For me, the request times out.
I’ve checked resources on the box; everything seems fine. I didn’t see anything untoward in the logs either. I’m pretty sure a reboot will fix this, but I want a root cause explanation.
Thanks,
Adam
Nate
Posted On: 03 Mar 2009 04:02 PM
Dear Adam,This has been taken care of. Please check http://72.44.80.85.
Let us know, if you need any further assistance.
—-
Apache is functioning normally
—-
Best Regards,Nate
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizwww.fhstatus.com is an off-network site which will provide system status for all nodes. If there is a problem with a node or network issue, it is updated with any information available from our technicians.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Although we maintain backups of standard VPSs, you should always make backups of all your data.
Nate
Posted On: 03 Mar 2009 04:16 PM
Dear Adam,I have forgot to explain you the fix. The previous instance of apache was hung and I have killed the process ID of apache and restarted apache.
PS : I haven’t rebooted the server.
Best Regards,
Nate
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizwww.fhstatus.com is an off-network site which will provide system status for all nodes. If there is a problem with a node or network issue, it is updated with any information available from our technicians.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Although we maintain backups of standard VPSs, you should always make backups of all your data.
Adam Nelson (Mr. Adam Nelson)
Posted On: 03 Mar 2009 05:34 PM
Ok, thanks for the update.Why would apache hang and how can I keep that from happening? I’m also surprised I didn’t get an outage alert since I thought the HTTP monitor was still active from my last serious problem that Vik was helping with.
Nate
Posted On: 03 Mar 2009 05:47 PM
Dear Adam,Apache was not down on the server, It was hung. So, you haven’t received the outage mail.
It might have occurred due to high access or something like that.
Best Regards,Nate
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizwww.fhstatus.com is an off-network site which will provide system status for all nodes. If there is a problem with a node or network issue, it is updated with any information available from our technicians.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Although we maintain backups of standard VPSs, you should always make backups of all your data.
Adam Nelson (Mr. Adam Nelson)
Posted On: 06 Mar 2009 04:34 PM
My site appears to be down again. This is becoming untenable. I need to know what is causing the hang, and I REALLY need to understand why a tool that monitors for web site outages would not detect an outage that takes the form of a hung web server.Any assistance is appreciated.
Thanks,
Adam
Nate
Posted On: 06 Mar 2009 04:37 PM
Dear Adam,Your ticket has been assigned and is being reviewed. An update will be available shortly.
Best Regards,
Nate
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizwww.fhstatus.com is an off-network site which will provide system status for all nodes. If there is a problem with a node or network issue, it is updated with any information available from our technicians.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Although we maintain backups of standard VPSs, you should always make backups of all your data.
Nate
Posted On: 06 Mar 2009 05:49 PM
Dear Adam,Httpd is up now. I am investigating the detailed cause and will keep you updated.
Best Regards,Nate
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizwww.fhstatus.com is an off-network site which will provide system status for all nodes. If there is a problem with a node or network issue, it is updated with any information available from our technicians.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Although we maintain backups of standard VPSs, you should always make backups of all your data.
Nate
Posted On: 06 Mar 2009 07:01 PM
Dear Adam,The listen variable was set in correct in the apache configuration file. I have corrected it now and also there were some semaphore arrays on the server, have killed it now.
Apache is running fine now. Let us know, if the problem persists.
Best Regards,
Nate
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizwww.fhstatus.com is an off-network site which will provide system status for all nodes. If there is a problem with a node or network issue, it is updated with any information available from our technicians.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Although we maintain backups of standard VPSs, you should always make backups of all your data.
Adam Nelson (Mr. Adam Nelson)
Posted On: 18 Mar 2009 11:33 AM
This has happened twice since the ticket was closed. I restarted apache myself last time, but this has become unacceptable. I need to know two things from support:1. Why is Apache hanging? It didn’t do this for months until now. What’s changed?
2. Why is your supposed HTTP monitoring not noticing that my website is going down? It’s not a high-traffic site, so it could have been down for days. What good is HTTP monitoring that only detects closed ports and not hung services?
I hate to be difficult about this, but this is completely unacceptable. Please address both concerns above. If they are not addressed, be advised I will take them up with Vik Patel directly.
Nick
Posted On: 18 Mar 2009 12:30 PM
Hello Adam,I will look into this and get back to you with updates.
Best Regards,
Nick
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizCustomers with unmanaged VPSs will receive only hardware and network support.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Remember, you should always make backups of all your data.
Nick
Posted On: 18 Mar 2009 12:44 PM
Hello Adam,Another process was using port 80 hence apache was not starting. I have killed that process to start apache.
Please let us know the ticket ID of your monitoring ticket. I am not able to find monitoring ticket for your VPS.Best Regards,
Nick
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizCustomers with unmanaged VPSs will receive only hardware and network support.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Remember, you should always make backups of all your data.
Adam Nelson (Mr. Adam Nelson)
Posted On: 18 Mar 2009 01:32 PM
Nick:
I’m sorry but that is not acceptable. What other process? Why was it using port 80? How did it take over port 80 while httpd was listening on it? Most importantly, how do I make this stop happening?I don’t think there’s a monitoring ticket. Vik put monitoring on the box when I was having problems with the firewall interfering with MySQL connections a while back.
Nick
Posted On: 18 Mar 2009 02:35 PM
Hello Adam,I can understand your concern. It generally happens when httpd tried to start, some other process was already listening on 80. But that process shows as httpd*. The multiple instances of httpd running is normal.
It should not happen again. If the problem persists then we will recompile apache.
Regarding monitoring, Vik must have enabled monitoring for mysql and not apache. I will suggest you to enable free apache monitoring. Please open new ticket for monitoring with following details. This ticket will keep the record of your apache monitoring.
As you have a managed VPS, included as part of the managed service is monitoring for apache failures. If you have ordered an upgraded monitoring package to monitor other services please provide us with a list of services you would like monitored.
The basic monitoring package included with managed VPSs will monitor Apache only via the primary IP address. If you would like a domain name monitored or other services, such as MySQL, DNS, POP3, SMTP, IMAP, please order an upgraded monitoring package.
If you have selected an upgraded monitoring package for more than one service, please update this ticket with the services you would like monitored.
Please note, it takes up to 48 hours for the VPS to be added to our monitoring system.
Please submit the following information:
IP of server:
Hostname of server:
Root password of server:
Control Panel URL:
Control Panel Password:
If upgraded monitoring, what services do you want monitored? (i.e. apache, ftp, dns, mysql, domain):Note: If you change your root password at anytime, update this ticket with the new password.
Best Regards,
Nick
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizCustomers with unmanaged VPSs will receive only hardware and network support.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Remember, you should always make backups of all your data.
Adam Nelson (Mr. Adam Nelson)
Posted On: 18 Mar 2009 03:38 PM
I’ve opened a new ticket to request monitoring.I’m going to need more root cause analysis than that. You say multiple httpd processes are normal (which I understand), and yet an ‘httpd*’ process took over port 80. Why?
You say this should not happen again, yet it’s been happening for weeks. What did you change and why do you think that will fix it? Why do you think recompiling apache will fix it?
I’m trying to be civil, but sometimes getting detailed answers from support is like pulling teeth. Is there anyone you can escalate this to?
Steve
Posted On: 18 Mar 2009 05:26 PM
Hello,Recompiling Apache will updated server software and it will reset Apache to work on port 80. Your apocryph.org is working fine. I will have my senior admin to look into this if still the issue is persists.
Please let me know if you have any other questions regarding this.
Thank you,
Steve
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizCustomers with unmanaged VPSs will receive only hardware and network support.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Remember, you should always make backups of all your data.
There you have it. I still don’t know what happened. They did set up HTTP monitoring, and every month or two it reports an outage and they bounce the service. Why does it hang? No idea. Who cares, really, since bouncing it solves the problem? I mean, why investigate the root cause of a repeated outage when you can just bounce the service and hope it doesn’t happen again?
The ticket that finally pushed me over the edge was ‘YXN-886538′. I discovered apocryph.org was failing to load with an error establishing database connection. Nevermind their monitoring was supposed to check the text of the response to detect this case; I’m used to that sort of disappointment. Here’s the blow-by-blow:
Adam Nelson (Mr. Adam Nelson)
Posted On: 19 Aug 2009 01:15 PM
My personal website, apocryph.org, hosted on my VPS raz.bulshytt.com, is once again failing to load with “Error establishing a database connection” errors. I thought there was a monitor in place to detect this condition.I noticed I got two alerts last night about both raz and lio going down, but they are both up now. The only problem I can see is apocryph.org being down.
George
Posted On: 19 Aug 2009 01:18 PM
Dear Adam,I am checking this now and will get back to you shortly.
Thank you,
George
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizCustomers with unmanaged VPSs will receive only hardware and network support.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Remember, you should always make backups of all your data.
George
Posted On: 19 Aug 2009 02:06 PM
Dear Adam,I can see apocryph.org is a wordpress site which is using the “anelson_apocryphwp”database but I couldn’t find any such database in mysql.
Please upload the backup of the database anelson_apocryphwp to your home directory so that we shall restore it.
Thank you,
George
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizCustomers with unmanaged VPSs will receive only hardware and network support.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Remember, you should always make backups of all your data.
Adam Nelson (Mr. Adam Nelson)
Posted On: 19 Aug 2009 02:14 PM
That is incorrect; I have verified once again that the database exists.As I noted in the ticket, the database is not hosted on raz. WordPress runs on raz, and points to a MySQL database on lio. I just logged in to verify the database is there.
Whatever the problem is, it’s not a missing database.
George
Posted On: 19 Aug 2009 03:01 PM
Dear Adam,Thanks for the update. I am working this issue and will get back to you shortly.
Thank you,
George
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizCustomers with unmanaged VPSs will receive only hardware and network support.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Remember, you should always make backups of all your data.
George
Posted On: 19 Aug 2009 04:14 PM
Dear Adam,The issue should be fixed now. The webpage apocryph.org is pulling up fine from our end.
Please verify it from your end and let us know if you need any further assistance.
Thank you,
George
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizCustomers with unmanaged VPSs will receive only hardware and network support.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Remember, you should always make backups of all your data.
Adam Nelson
Posted On: 19 Aug 2009 05:35 PM
Thanks George, I can confirm it’s fixed now.Can you explain what happened that took it down? I’d like to
understand the failure case.Adam
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 5:14 PM, George wrote:
> Dear Adam,
>
> The issue should be fixed now. The webpage apocryph.org is pulling up fine
> from our end.
>
> Please verify it from your end and let us know if you need any further
> assistance.
>
>
> Thank you,
>
> George
>
> Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
> http://survey.futurehosting.biz
>
> Customers with unmanaged VPSs will receive only hardware and network
> support.
>
> Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
>
> Remember, you should always make backups of all your data.
>
> Ticket Details
> Ticket ID: YXN-886538
> Department: Support
> Priority: Important
> Status: On Hold
>
George
Posted On: 19 Aug 2009 05:45 PM
Dear Adam,Thanks for the update.
I have granted the privileges to the database anelson_apocryphwp for the database user anelson_apowp in the server. So the website is pulling up fine now.
Please let us know if you need any further assistance.
Thank you,
George
Please complete our customer satisfaction survey:
http://survey.futurehosting.bizCustomers with unmanaged VPSs will receive only hardware and network support.
Please keep one issue per ticket to avoid any potential errors.
Remember, you should always make backups of all your data.
It should be noted that I am not retarded. Specifically, I know how to grant privs on a database to a MySQL user. That’s how come apocryph.org was working for weeks prior to my opening this ticket. I hadn’t so much as logged in to the cPanel instance, so it’s unlikely I fucked something up. And yet, for no reason, the database connection started failing.
I figured out later after support closed this ticket that their stupid Parallels system for adding domain names to their DNS has an awesome feature whereby the RDNS entry for a given host’s IP address is whatever domain you added last. One thing I did to recently was add a few of my domain names to their DNS. I had meant to provision virtual hosts for them but didn’t get around to it; all I changed was adding these domains and some A entries to their DNS infrastructure.
Unfortunately, MySQL is a craptastic clusterfuck of stupid design decisions, the most awesomest of which being host-based authentication. The user ‘mysqlblows’@'localhost’ is a completely different account from ‘mysqlblows’@'apocryph.org’. Because of this, when MySQL gets a connection from another host, it does a reverse DNS lookup to get that host’s name, then uses that to figure out what user account is being used. When I added these domains, that stopped being ‘wordpress’@'raz.bulshytt.com’, and started to be ‘wordpress’@’someotherdomain’, hence the failure.
It’s not FutureHosting’s fault that MySQL blows. But it is their fault that their DNS system is so fubar, and it’s definitely their fault that their support guys don’t factor this in when dealing with a customer’s MySQL connectivity problems.
Once I discovered this, I opened another ticket to have them fix RDNS. Their tech initially claimed there was some web-based control panel where I could configure my own RDNS. When I asked him where it was, he realized that, in fact, individual users cannot control their RDNS entries, and a ticket is required instead.
Moving to Linode
Originally I wanted to go with Slicehost. They are clearly developer-oriented, and they wrote their own admin panel so everything is integrated. They did all this in Rails, which I like. However, Rackspace acquired them back in ‘08, and I didn’t hear as rave reviews on WHT after that. Every time I did see someone talk about Slicehost, they mentioned Linode in the same breath, so I took a peek at them. Wow.
It was like going from a patchwork of old DOS boxes to a fancy Google datacenter. They also have a hand-rolled web interface, and man is it sweet. They have a great rep, and discount offers are impossible to find, which tells me they don’t need to race to the bottom on price like discount hosters do. They even have a frickin’ API with which you can provision and de-provision instances. They effectively have day-by-day billing, so I could clone my box to another instance, try out a patch or bit of code or whatever, then drop the instance on the same day, paying only for that day’s use. It’s like EC2 with a bit more hosting infrastructure in place.
I also took the opportunity to stop paying $70/mo for two boxes when I don’t need them. Now I’m on a $38/mo plan that gives me 300GB of transfer a month, 25GB of storage, and 540MB of RAM. This is actually more expensive than FutureHosting; I was paying more because I foolishly bought more capacity than I realistically needed and didn’t want the hassle of combining the two instances together. Still, it’s not that much more than FutureHosting considering what you get.
So what do you get, besides a neat web panel and a frickin’ API? Well, when I provisioned my instance, I got to pick from tons of distros. I went with Ubuntu Jaunty x64, but there were tons of 32- and 64-bit options. The box provisioned in approximately 3 seconds, and then I was in. And it was amazing. Apache wasn’t there. MySQL wasn’t there. Freaking ‘dig’ wasn’t there. The box was completely barren. It had vi and the binutils; that was pretty much it. I hadn’t had this degree of freedom since I had a colo box. I could configure the box exactly to my tastes.
This might sound like a downgrade. Why pay more for a VPS that you have to setup and configure yourself? Why not use a easy pointy-clicky dick-hosting web panel like cPanel? For the majority of commodity web hosting consumers, there’s no good answer; go with what’s cheap and easy. However, for developers and guys who like to run their own boxes, it’s a breath of fresh air. Back on FutureHosting I _hated_ the way domains and subdomains were implemented for a user, but I couldn’t change it or cPanel would have a stroke. Here, I can set things up however I want.
I’m also back to the command line. There’s no shitty web GUI to provision databases, or users, or virtual hosts. I use the web interface to provision instances, add domains to their DNS infrastructure, change RDNS entries (HA! you hear that FutureHosting?), and open tickets. Everything on the box, I do over an SSH shell the way God intended.
Sure, I could buy a cPanel license and install it on my box. If I was retarded.
I’ve been on Linode for about 24 hours. It’s entirely possible I could discover all sorts of horrible gotchas and problems in the future. But for right now, life is good.
August IPSC at SEG
It’s Wednesday, and that means another shooting event at SEG. Tonight was IPSC, and I felt good about my performance. All the stages tonight were more elaborate and fun than usual; I had a great time.
Here I am shooting stage 1, which included four pepper poppers painted into some cardboard. It’s something different anyway. I think I cleaned this one:
Next up is stage 2, which covered alot of ground and 12 targets. It was a blast, even without the pun:
Stage 3 was also neat, as it involved two reloads and lots of shooting from the kneeling position.
Sadly stage 4 didn’t get filmed due to a camera glitch. It was a quick stage starting from a seated position with an unloaded gun. I had to load while running to the firing line, then shoot around a wall at four targets. I almost cleaned it but got one charlie.
2-gun and IDPA results
The results are finally up for the July 2-gun and August IDPA matches.
My first 2-gun match went well. I placed 4th overall (there were no divisions or classes; this was an outlaw IDPA-style match), behind some really good shooters. I was happy.
The IDPA match was the first time I ran my STI Ranger II, and it showed. I wasn’t as controlled with followup shots, and I was slow on reloads. I just need more practice, though; it’s a great gun. I took 1st place in my class (Unclassified) and division (ESP), out of a handful of shooters. Looking at times across divisions (which officially IDPA doesn’t do) I see 7 out of nearly 50 shooters who shot faster times than me. I could’ve done better, but I was down alot of points due to aforementioned lack of practice with the new gun.
2-gun results: 22 July 2009 SEG 2-gun match results. IDPA results: 5 August 2009 SEG IDPA match results.
July 2-gun and August IDPA shoot videos
I’ve started shooting video of myself shooting (that sounds awkward), to help me review my performance and identify areas for improvement (basically all of them at this point). I’ve uploaded them to Flickr.
22 July 2009 2-gun match
Stage 1. I didn’t shoot this very well. It was the first stage I ever shot in rifle competition, and as usual I rushed it:
Stage 2. I did a bit better on this one I think.
Stage 3. I shot this fast and I cleaned it (down 0). No one was more surprised than me:
Stage 4. I could’ve hustled a bit more, and towards the end I hesitated while deciding to take additional shots, which hurt my time:
Here’s a still I captured, which I think I’ll use for a profile pic:
5-August IDPA match
Stage 1. I ran this one pretty fast, but accuracy was marginal. I need to slow down:
Stage 2. This one was pretty good:
Stage 3. This stage was really fun:
Stage 4. El Presidente. I balls this stage up bad. I was in such a rush, I forgot to put the second round in the second target, so I had to go back. S-L-O-W DOWN!
Mostly positive encounter with Fairfax County police
A couple weeks ago I was alone at home one night, trying to figure out the security system in my new house. I ran it in test mode so I could tell if I had the correct code or not, and it seemed to pass the test. Satisfied, I then went out front to work on the motion-sensing lights, which seemed to not be sensing much of anything lately. Surefire light in hand, I was poking around the control panel behind the light when a Fairfax County Police cruiser rolled up.
As a carry permit holder I am acutely aware of certain things one does and does not do when cops are about, so I approached the cop with hands visibly empty at my sides and greeted him. He said they received a holdup alarm from this address. Doh!
Keep in mind I do not pay for monitoring services, and there is no landline phone hooked up, so I have no idea how running test mode on the alarm would’ve contacted the police, but here they were. I explained the situation, and the officer asked if I had any ID to prove I was in fact the homeowner.
At this point, I had a choice. I could go all Henry Gates on him, with righteous indignation at this fascist thug demanding my papers on my own damned property, or I could play ball. In this case, though, I think an alarm code from a registered alarm passes probable cause muster, and thus puts a number of investigatory tools on the table which otherwise would run afoul of the Fourth Amendment. Rather than getting into an “I know my rights” argument, I figured it was in my best interest to cooperate.
This would’ve been a bit easier had I not been armed. Since my wallet and my gun are more or less in the same place, I took care to calmly notify the officer that I had a carry permit and was carrying a concealed handgun on my right hip, right above my wallet pocket. He calmly moved his hand to the butt of his sidearm while I slowly and deliberately got out my wallet to produce my driver’s license.
That would’ve been it except I just moved here and my license has a different address on it. He wanted something to prove I lived here, so I offered to get a piece of mail sent to me at this address. I entered the house through the garage door, and the officer followed me, uninvited. I’ve heard of this trick before, and I instructed him to wait where he was while I went downstairs to get the mail. This was probably the wrong time for him to see all my gun and hookah paraphernalia strewn about the basement.
Upon producing the document, he was satisfied. There was a false alarm report he had to fill out, and he gave me contact info for the alarm company, and that was that.
Things I was afraid would happen but didn’t:
- Handcuffed for ‘my protection’
- Extra-legal search of my person
- Seizure of my sidearm, either permanently or to run the serial #
- Pet killed
This was my first LEO encounter whilst carrying, and I think it went well.
Learning to hate cpanel (or, getting subversion HTTP interface working with cpanel)
At least a couple of readers have emailed me to point out my SVN repository has been down for a number of weeks. It’s not that I haven’t been trying to get it back up, but it’s been a struggle. As of this morning, it’s finally back online. If you care what the trouble was, read on.
I recently had to move one of my VPS instances from an Ubuntu box with no fancy pointy-clicky web admin interface to a CentOS box running cPanel. I’d heard lots of people raving about cPanel, so I figured it’d be a nice to have. Little did I know.
cPanel works by creating a web interface for nigh on every aspect of running a web host. With cPanel, chances are if you do anything the way you would a vanilla Linux box, you’re doing it wrong. This goes double for anything pertaining to Apache configuration.
I’ve installed SVN and its corresponding Apache module probably at least a dozen times on a blend of Linux and FreeBSD boxes over the years. Every time it’s been among the easiest, most brainless installs I’ve had to do. I stupidly thought cPanel wouldn’t change that. But of course it did.
First off, you can’t just recompile apache from source the way you normally would. cPanel uses what they jokingly call ‘EasyApache’, where ‘easy’ here means ‘opposite of the Apache you’re used to, and way less flexible’. To their credit, things that the cPanel guys thought of are pretty easy with EasyApache. There’s both a web and console GUI for rebuilding Apache that lets you pick what modules to compile in, what version of Apache and PHP to build, and what MPM you want to use. No problem there, once I figured out I needed to use the script.
But then the trouble started. I downloaded SVN, and ran configure on it:
sudo ./configure --with-apxs=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs --with-apr=/usr/local/apache/bin/apr-1-config --with-apr-util=/home/cpeasyapache/src/httpd-2.2.11/srclib/apr-util
Note I had to run this as root because some of the source I needed was in the home directory of another user, cpeasyapache. Nice.
configure noted that I was missing neon and sqlite, so I downloaded the source tarballs referenced in configure’s output, and away we went. It built fine, and sudo make install was uneventful.
At this point I’d already noticed that editing the httpd.conf file directly was Not Cool with cPanel. I noticed this because there’s a massive warning comment block at the top of the file. Instead you use the web interface to edit various include files pulled in by the main conf file. LoadModule calls belong in the ‘Pre Main’ include, which you can edit from the WHM control panel. (Side note: cPanel has two web interfaces on two different ports: 2086 is the WHM interface for configuring the whole box as root; port 2082 is for non-privileged users to configure domains and databases and stuff).
Here’s what I put in the Pre Main include for Apache 2.2.11:
<IfModule mod_dav.c>
LoadModule dav_svn_module modules/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module modules/mod_authz_svn.so
</IfModule>
Since the SVN make install already put the relevant modules in the modules directory, saving this include file and automatically restarting the Apache service worked in as much as apachectl -d DUMP_MODULES listed the two SVN modules as loaded.
Next, I had to figure out where to put the Location entry for my svn.apocryph.org virtual host. I found this article which explained how global and vhost-specific custom directives can be added. In my case my SVN domain was an add-on domain for my existing user account, so I created a svn.conf file at /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/anelson/svn.anelson.bulshytt.com that went a little something like this:
# Configure subversion to handle the /svn stuff
<Location /svn>
DAV svn
SVNPath /var/svn/repos
# how to authenticate a user
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Subversion repository"
AuthUserFile /etc/svn-auth-file
# For any operations other than these, require an authenticated user.
<LimitExcept GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT>
Require valid-user
</LimitExcept>
</Location>
Obviously I used htpasswd to create the /etc/svn-auth-file file.
This all seemed straightforward, then I ran /scripts/verify_vhost_includes as per the above article, and I got this:
Testing /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/anelson/svn.anelson.bulshytt.com/svn.conf...FAILED
No changes made without --commit flag
I then tried it with the --show-test-output switch:
Testing /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/anelson/svn.anelson.bulshytt.com/svn.conf...FAILED
No changes made without --commit flag
[TEST RESULTS]
Syntax error on line 3 of /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/anelson/svn.anelson.bulshytt.com/svn.conf:
Unknown DAV provider: svn
[/TEST RESULTS]
‘Unknown DAV provider’? But I verified the SVN modules are loaded! Tons of googling mostly yields assclowns who forgot the LoadModule directive, but that’s not me. Finally I ran across this guy bitching in the cpanel forums. He’s having the exact same problem. The responses from the cPanel guys are telling. Basically since the SVN module isn’t one they thought of, that makes this a ‘custom’ configuration that would require an EasyApache Custom Module to make work right. Fuck that. What happened to ‘Easy’?
The good news is this excerpt:
If we only use /scripts/ensure_vhost_includes –user=domain and restart apache, subversion works perfectly, but wonder why the “DAV svn” is not recognize as valid?
Interesting. So the change will fail to verify, but if you force the include anyway, everything works? Let’s try it:
/scripts/ensure_vhost_includes --user=username
/scripts/rebuildhttpdconf
/scripts/restartsrv_httpd
Voila! svn.apocryph.org/svn now shows the SVN repository. But there are downsides:
- The EasyApache builder doesn’t know about the SVN modules, so whenever I rebuild Apache the two modules will be clobbered, which will cause my Pre Main include modifications to fail to load the SVN modules. So to rebuild I’ll have to comment out those LoadModule lines, rebuild, repeat the ‘make install’ command for SVN, then restore the LoadModule lines.
- the verify_vhost_includes script will always complain about the change I made for my svn.apocryph.org vhost. If I forget I did this, I might make some other vhost change down the road and scratch my head wondering why this SVN stuff that’s worked forever isn’t working now
- It took fucking hours to get going, with absolutely zero official documentation from cPanel
At this point, if I had the ability to move my VPS instance again, to a host without cPanel, I absolutely would. It gets in my way at every step of the way, and the pointy-clicky GUI bullshit is nearly worthless to me as it either automates things I already can do comfortably with the command line, or makes simplifying assumptions that don’t meet my requirements.
UPDATE: After I posted this I tried to commit to the repository, only to discover I could not. Any attempts to commit first prompted me for my credentials, as expected, but when creds were provided I got this failure:
Commit failed (details follow):
Server sent unexpected return value (403 Forbidden)
in response to PUT request for
'/svn/!svn/wrk/d3def008-ccd0-11dd-88ba-e715122b690d/test.txt'
This despite having correct file system permissions. I Googled around and found another guy, also on a VPS as it happens, who solved this by adding
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
I tried adding that to the Location block in my svn.conf file, and sure enough that did the trick. But why? My sense is there’s some module or security setting that’s blocking PUT requests, but I can’t imagine what it would be. Remind me again why this managed VPS thing is better than building my own VPS from scratch?
Home Buying Experience – AAR
I recently bought my first home, after renting for my entire adult life. I’ve been eyeing a home purchase since 2003, but until the recent cratering of home prices I felt the NoVA market was overheated. I ended up getting a nice 5br 3200 ft/2 house in NoVA for what I believe to be a reasonable sum, but the experience was hellatious, so I will recount it for my future reference.
Home Search
The first hassle is the search for a possible home. There are of course tons of listings, but the damned real-estate industry (by which I mean Realtors) has a monopoly on listings with their MLS listing system, and not surprisingly they get it wrong.
I have some very particular requirements for a home, and I would like to search for. For example, the architectural style of the home, the size of the lot, the presence or absence of hardwood floors, fireplaces, basements, gas appliances, etc. Usually these are covered in the narrative description of the house, but the actual fields for this purpose are often not populated accurately. This makes it hard to configure automated search agents to find possible homes.
The second problem is the impenetrable jargon used by realtors to pretend a house isn’t shit. Things like ‘charming’, ‘cozy’, ‘huge potential’ obviously mean ‘beat to shit; run do not walk’, but since every listing will be written by the person who stands to make a fat commission if they can trick you into buying it, you’ll never read things like “bathrooms need a ton of work” or “roof needs immediate replacement” or “applicances upgraded after WWII”.
The third problem is the photographs taken of the home. I get that realtors can’t be expected to shoot like a professional photographer, but for the love of God, don’t they have an incentive to show the actual house? Showing up with a cheap digital point-and-shoot with a 38mm equilvalent wide angle zoom and snapping a few half-assed shots of the front and each room simply doesn’t cut it. Then they have the balls to slap these shit photos together into a slideshow and call it a ‘virtual tour’! ”Virtual tour”!? It’s a fucking powerpoint of your shit photos! That’s not a tour!
Home Purchasing
So let’s say you’ve defied the odds and found a few houses that seem to not suck. You go to see them. Now the fun really starts.
At first, if I ran across a house listing with an asking price way up in the suborbital altitude range, I would simply ignore it. However, soon there weren’t any houses left. Apparently, you have to know that sellers for the most part smoke crack, particularly when deciding how much they should get for their house. You have to play a game with them, wherein you feign disinterest, highlight all the things that suck about the property, and put in a low-ball offer. They counter with another suborbital offer, you counter with a slightly higher one, and back, and forth, and back, and forth.
With each offer, you wonder if this will be the one they accept, or if this will be the one that makes them walk, or if someone else will come in with an offer of just a few thousand more and nab the property. You hear from their realtor about all the interest they’re getting, and what a great deal it is, and how it won’t last long.
In my case, the sellers started with an astronomical figure of $535,000. I offered $470,000. Hilarity ensued. We went back and forth multiple times, me pointing out all the stuff I’d have to do to the house to get it ready for me, them pointing out how absolutely awesome it was and paying absolutely no heed to the economic reality of the area housing market. I finally put an exploding offer on the table for $500,000 with $10,000 of seller subsidy. 12 hours after the deadline passed, they accepted, and so did I.
At first, I thought that meant it was done and I was buying a house. Um, no.
Contingencies
Once you have a ratified sales contract, it’s not so much that you’ve agreed to buy a house, but that you agree to agree to buy a house. I insisted on contingencies for home inspection, financing, termites, and the usual appraisal and title contingencies. There’s a fixed amount of time after which you must remove the contingency, so you’re on a clock, but no one else in the process seems to be. Unfortunately, everyone involved in the process gets paid for little to no work of usually shoddy quality, and they don’t give a shit that you’re on a tight schedule.
Realtor
I do not like realtors. I never have. I remember as a young child in the 80s being exposed to realtors my parents used, and instictively disliking them. They’re like car salesmen, but with a facade of integrity and competence.
The first realtor I used, Marguerite, meant well and worked hard, but was very difficult to communicate with, not least because of what I am absolutely certain was a moderate developmental disability. My preference for communicating via standard English in email seemed particularly problematic. She must’ve felt I was equally slow, as every conversation with her would result in the same points being made repeatedly in slightly different ways, and any of my questions being met with a vagueness and uncertainty that would surely be the envy of any politician.
While she was useful in drafting an offer that favored my interests over those of the buyer, once the offer was written her value to the process became less clear. She couldn’t tell me whether the price I was paying was high, low, or just right, and provided very little guidance during negotiations.
Shortly before the sellers finally ratified the contract, Marguerite went out of the picture for a combination of health and legal reasons, and appointed a colleague, George, to take her place. Her colleague was similar to her in competence, English comprehension, and value to the process. Ostensibly the Realtor is there as your agent to act on your behalf, but I found myself calling him to tell him when to follow up and how I wanted the deal structured. In fact, I’m quite certain I would’ve worked just as hard and fretted just as much had I no realtor after the initial contract was written.
Once the offer was accepted, the realtor was useless. I made my own home inspection and radon testing arrangements, I had the roof examined and an estimate obtained, I negotiated with the sellers for some additional subsidy, and I coordinated with the lender. Not worth the thousands of dollars he was eventually paid in commission, to be sure.
Home Inspection
The home inspection is one thing I definitely got right. I ignored my realtor’s recommendation and went with JD Grewell, who by all accounts is a god among home inspecting men. I made an appointment with him, rescheduled it because the seller decided she needed to sleep that day, and finally met him on the agreedupon morning. He didn’t say much, but he was incredibly thorough. After three hours, I had his written report, and I’d learned alot about my prospective house. Most of the problems he found were either minor or stuff I already knew, but there was one surprise: the roof was in terrible shape. By his estimate, if it wasn’t already leaking it would start by the winter.
I had a roof guy come out to provide a written estimate. He came back with $8150, so I came back to the seller demanding an additional seller subsidy for the roof. Or, I should say, I told the realtor to go back to the seller. I don’t know what he said exactly, but the seller was not amused, offered $2k towards the roof, and insisted there was ‘no fat’ on that number. The realtor must’ve know how much he’d fail at this, as he prepared me before I got the seller’s response that I should expect them to pay only a fraction of the new roof cost, since I would benefit from it more. Who’s side is this guy on anyway?
I finally did what I should’ve done in the first place, and composed a long email to the seller via the listing agent, explaning why I wanted additional money, that the roof was in need of absolutely immediate replacement, and offering to accept half of the cost of the new roof, or $4075. He agreed.
Mortgage Broker
Another complicated and stressful part of the home buying process is the financing. At first I assumed I would go with USAA for the lending, but they were less than helpful, and did not offer any loan products that would work with the purchase I was trying to make.
I poked around and finally looked at the brokers on Zillow, sorted by satisfaction rating. #2 in the country at the time was Greg Darlin at Choice Finance in Rockville. I submitted a request for a quote, and there was immediately some confusion when I called back into the Choice Finance main number to check the status. Apparently he has his ‘own system’ separate from the other brokers at Choice Finance.
Once I got that straightened out and spoke with him on the phone, he walked me through all the myriad financing options, and told me to call him back when I decided what I wanted to do or if I had questions. My impression of him on the phone is that of an experienced salesman with deep knowledge of his field, but I certainly didn’t trust him.
I poked around a bit on the ‘net, reading about mortgage brokers and how they can be useful or disastrous. I made sure I understood how they were compensated, then asked him to explain his compensation to me cold. What he told me and what I’d read lined up, so he passed the first test.
Once I decided to do an FHA jumbo loan, he walked me through the various lenders. He seemed to know which ones would be able to close on time and which ones wouldn’t (or some of them were more profitable than others; I guess I have no way of knowing). In the end he came up with three or four lenders with rates in the same ballpark and a good probability of closing on time. I chose Sierra Pacific at a 5.5% rate, which I got by paying 1.5 points. At the time it was competitive with rate quotes I was seeing elsewhere.
Once I settled on the lender, things with Greg went pretty smoothly, however I very often had to repeat details like how long I worked at my job, and more than once I had to re-send various documents. My impression was that he was very busy and lost track of details of specific clients, which irritated me greatly. However, considering USAA was so swamped they kept me on hold for over an hour before I got through to a person to answer a question, I figured this is just the reality of the industry right now, and resigned myself to one more indignity in a process which was already trying my sanity.
Things went fine until we started to get close to closing. Somewhere in the broker/lender/underwriter process, things broke down. The second appraisal wasn’t ordered, or wasn’t reviewed, or wasn’t approved, or something. There were delays getting documentation. The day of my closing, 7 July, loomed. And passed. They ended up being ready the next day, 8 July, so as closing delays go it wasn’t too bad, but it was a very stressful couple of days.
Which brings me to the last bit of this process: settlement
Settlement
Settlement seems like a great business to be in. You make a list of things you can charge for, like ‘attorney fee’, ‘lawer fee’, ‘paralegal fee’, ‘binder fee’, ‘postage fee’, ‘delivery fee’, ‘handling fee’, ‘review fee’, ‘administrative fee’, ‘recording fee’, ‘miscelaneous assorted other fee’, ‘fee fee’, etc. You then charge these fees and in return handle some paperwork. Too easy. Or so it seemed.
I foolishly went with George’s recommendation and chose The Settlement Group for the settlement company. Their prices were much higher than the company Marguerite had recommended, but I had George’s assurance that TSG would match those prices. At closing I showed up with copies of all of George’s emails and the two price lists, and to my great surprise the HUD 1 form did not reflect any of the agreedupon price adjustments. Once I caught it, the TSG people didn’t even have the competiting price list they were supposed to be matching; they had to borrow my copy.
At settlement I got a call from Greg the mortgage broker, who was upset that TSG had refused to let him review the HUD 1, claiming the lender had approved it. He insisted, and found a litany of errors, some in my favor, some not. He had to go back and forth with TSG to get a corrected version printed out.
After I reviewed the numbers as much as I could and squeezed out all the graft I could find, it was time to get around to signing the documents. Oh, my, the documents. Thankfully most of them had been included in the loan packet Greg sent weeks earlier, so I’d already read and signed them for him; I just signed them again. Those I had not seen before I read. This was apparently unusual, as there was much shifting in chairs and distracting me with idle conversation, but I sure as fuck wasn’t about to blindly sign documents just because the people who had conveniently ‘forgot’ the terms of our agreement suggested I do so.
At one point, I signed a document affirming that I understood the Federal Housing Authority, by subsidizing my loan, was not guaranteeing the house would go up in value. Really. In fact, I’d say 25% of the paper I signed wasn’t legally obligating me to something, but rather affirming that I’d been given this or that stupid government disclosure.
Eventually the pile of signed documents was sufficiently high to satisfy the pantheon of greater and lesser gods of bureaucracy, and I was allowed to leave with the keys to my new house. At last, all the bullshit was over. Or so I thought.
I got a call from Greg a couple days later, saying there was a problem with the loan packet sent on to Sierra Pacific. Apparently the TSG notary had an expired seal, and had not renewed her commission with the state. Instead, she’d stamped the documents with her seal, and made hand-written corrections to the seal to reference another notary’s name and commission #. This was unacceptable to the investors to whom Sierra Pacific would sell the loan, and was in direct violation of the closing instructions which had been provided to TSG. The lender was upset and threatening to demand their money back. George and TSG lept into excuse-making action, and a finger-pointing match ensued.
To this day I do now know what happened or how it was resolved. I got a statement from Sierra Pacific with information about where and went to send my first mortgage payment, so it seems they straighted it out. I’ve not heard from George or Greg again since then.
Closing Thoughts
The process of finding, buying, and settling on a house was probably the most Byzantine, frustrating, stressful processes I have ever undergone. It is littered with actors of little competence, high disinterest, and no accountability. It is expensive, time-consuming, and there is a real risk it will be all for naught. The actual move (which will be covered in a separate AAR) is even more hellatious.
However, now that I have all that behind me and am typing this up in my new office, in my new house, with no shared walls and much greater freedom, I can honestly say I’m glad I went through the process. And, I never want to go through it again.
Happy Birthday to me
Today is my 29th birthday. I’m really getting old. I was supposed to be rich and retired by now. Oh well. At least I bought my first home before my 29th birthday.