spargelkohl

From 2004 through yesterday I was an InstantSSL/Comodo web server SSL certificate customer. I have a small, non-commercial site requiring secure connections and InstantSSL fit the bill 5 years ago.

During the 2007 renewal they had changed their validation requirements such that I had to make a cosmetic change to my domain whois information to match the address exactly on my credit card statement. No biggie.

During this year's round of validation they took my money then sprang their new requirements on me. They no no longer accept credit card statements for address validation. The only things I have that match my whois address are two credit cards (and of course my domain registrations and my 5-year customer history but those don't count either).

I asked whether they had a lower-assurance option with validation requirements I could make but I got no direct answers, just more repeats of their validation rules no matter whether I escalated to my "account manager" or not. I was clear what I wanted it for, that I would not change my whois address, and that I did not have the major utility bills at the whois address that they were requesting.

Finally I tried again with the account manager to start anew, spelling everything out again and asking for help directing me to a product which had been hinted at whose validation requirements I could meet. After a couple of days I got a response that her manager had told her that I should call the validation department again and ask them. Maddening. I had been over the same thing many times by now, but I called last night anyway. Yes, I waited until the night before the certificate was to expire.

Well I apparently missed their business hours. So then I looked for alternatives and quickly found GoDaddy, which had a certificate that works perfectly for me. It was much cheaper and the only validation requirement was confirmation from the admin contact in the whois record. Despite some graylisting delays receiving the confirmation request, the whole process from hitting the GoDaddy web site to installing the certificates on the server took less time than some of my interactions with Comodo/InstantSSL.

So if you are a hobbyist and/or aren't using SSL for business purposes, I suggest checking out GoDaddy. I have about a day under my belt as their customer, but it's been exactly what I expected and I appreciate the total lack of hassle.

Bye-bye, Comodo/InstantSSL. Thanks for wasting my time. Thanks for not valuing me enough as a customer to keep me. I should not have had to battle with you. Oh, and I'll be looking for a prompt refund.

Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com

Today I walked a new hiking loop in Highland Park. Yay! That's a big deal around these parts--Highland Park does not have an extensive trail system.  This was part of a 2-hour walking and hiking session with my son in his Baby Björn today.

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Thanks to anyone who has been working on these new trails!

Colin & Mingo had a new podcast with new "live" recordings last week.  Check it out.

We wrote summaries of more of our older podcasts too.  Those are now all on Colin & Mingo's facebook page (notes):

• Geoff Collens Interviews Thurm Glupston
• Geoff Collens Interviews Gerard the Pastry Chef
• Holiday Music from Colin & Mingo
• Maxwell Montes Preview and Re-Preview
• Summer Trax

Please feel free to become a "fan" of Colin & Mingo on Facebook and comment on the podcast summaries!

Colin & Mingo started podcasting almost five years ago and will resume creating new ones in August. We have a lot more "fans" (in the Facebook sense) now, so we're continuing a review of our old podcasts to let everyone catch up.

( Read all about it... )

Listen to the podcast: www.trovish.org/cm/pod/20050725-1.mp3

Listen to Mutated Dream in all its 30-minute glory: www.archive.org/details/WarningToATeenageGirl

Subscribe to our podcasts: www.trovish.org/cm/pod/mb.xml

New trail being blazed in Highland Park--starts just below the pool.
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Colin & Mingo started podcasting almost five years ago and are planning to resume creating new podcasts in the near future.  We have a lot more "fans" (in the Facebook sense) now, so we're going to review the old podcasts to let everyone catch up.

( Read more... )

Listen to the podcast: www.trovish.org/cm/pod/20050718-3.mp3

Subscribe to our podcasts: www.trovish.org/cm/pod/mb.xml

One score and three years ago, Colin & Mingo recorded new audio tracks called "Ad Absurdum" (5:34) and "Phrenology" (2:16) during the recording sessions "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare". This post goes into some detail about these tracks (and the "more popular" versions that appeared on "Swamp King of the World" in 1987).

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My daughter looked intently at this container of sunscreen, then declared that it read "doggie, don't eat my underwear."
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This script creates a RAMFS disk with an HFS+ partition on it and mounts it so it is visible in the MacOS X filesystem (including the Finder).

The example script in the hdid(8) man page did not work for me on MacOS 10.5.7. Making the required minimal changes to make it work at all resulted in a volume that could not be cleanly unmounted.

If you are searching for such a script, feel free to use this one for any purpose with no strings attached (and no warranty). Let me know if you improve it.

I was unable to find a working script to do this and only have basic Mac OS X programming knowledge, so this was a learning exercise as well.

Enjoy.

#!/bin/bash

# The volume name will be based on the string "RAMFS" and the number
# of days since the epoch.
DAY=$(($(date +%s)/86400))
VOLNAME="RAMFS-${DAY}"

# The size of the RAMFS disk (in 512K blocks)
NUMBLOCKS=128000

# Use hdid to create the raw RAMDISK
myrdev=`hdid -nomount ram://${NUMBLOCKS}`

# Use diskutil to partition the RAMDISK and create an HFS+ filesystem
# on the only partition.  (Noisy output)
diskutil partitionDisk $(basename ${myrdev}) 1 HFS+ "${VOLNAME}" "100%"

# Use hdiutil to mount (attach) the partition on the RAMDISK
mydev=`echo $myrdev | sed -e 's#/rdisk#/disk#g;'`
hdiutil attach $mydev

# Make the mounted filesytem private.  (Any other ACLs to munge?)
# (Can we get the mount point some reliable way?)
mountpoint=/Volumes/${VOLNAME}
chmod 0700 ${mountpoint}

echo "run \"hdiutil detach ${mydev}\" when done or use Finder to \"eject\" ${VOLNAME}"

Practice makes perfect. She experiments with buckling Robbie in the car seat.
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We enjoyed a walk in the woods this morning. On our way to the playground now.
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Daddy's car is fun!
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We went for a family walk and Heather led us to the park. What a surprise!
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After almost a week, our son is doing very well.  So is mommy!

At a pediatrician appointment on Friday he had lost about 5 oz of his birth weight, but the doctor figured he was already on his way back up.  We have an appointment this week to make sure.

The little guy's been very well-behaved too.  He doesn't like having a poopy diaper much--and doesn't like the process of having it changed either.  But this evening he was a perfect gentleman during his diaper change.

He really does sleep most of the time still.  When he's up though, he's up.

I'm going back to work this week.  We'll see how that works out!

Her first professional haircut. Just a little trim around the edges, please.
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This hat is somewhat big for 4-day-old Todd.
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The bill of her hat is placed strategically to block the sun.
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Today we watched a man feed the ducks, walked and played in the sand, and went to the playground. A template for many days to come.
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