June 20, 2009 - Reading time: ~1 minute

Well, this video explains why we have to bleed out our anus to make CSS sites and HTML emails work with IE and AOL.

October 29, 2008 - Reading time: 2 minutes

Trick or Treat! Since it’s Halloween, I thought it’d be funny to see what other tech tips are out there. So, here is the tale of my obligatory Google search for our site’s prized search term: “Tech Tips for Us”

Tech Tips for Catholic Teens — Ah, yes, FINALLY someone did what we’ve been meaning to do as a sub-domain for years! Why visit “catholic_teen.tipsfor.us” when you have “https://catholictechtips.stblogs.com/”? Other than the obviously strange preclusion about the target audience, the perfunctory cross fav.icon, and the notable omission about the hottest techie action for altar boys, the blog looks suspiciously similar to our own…

https://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/sql-injection.html This is a good site for people wanting to understand how to protect from MySQL database vulnerabilities… the Wiki article is also pretty good. I wrote a little article about MySQL Security that seemed a bit too geeky for this blog (I know, I know… I’m disappointing the fans). I think my favorite story about a site getting owned was when the Dremel site (famous for their moto-tool) was hacked via SQL-injection and the homepage ended up being replaced with an image of a Goatse-pumpkin. (Appropriately, the pumpkin was carved with a Dremel Moto-tool). Watch out boys and girls! SQL injection is not pretty!

LifeHacker.com — hey, this site looks legit. They even have a seasonal article about Do-It-Yourself Facial Prosthetics! They also have lots of old-school artwork with airships — the kind with little propellers that you see in Miyazaki films or in Smashing Pumpkins videos. I LOVE THAT!

October 8, 2008 - Reading time: ~1 minute

Well, some days you need some tips, some days you need some humor. Today is a day when I need to laugh at something, because I just got a phone call from the Dow Jones Industrial average… it said “go F@#% yourself!” So… the article I’m linking to only makes sense if you know something about Linux, but I thought it was pretty hilarious: Run as Root

Running as root will change your life. People will no longer cut you off in the lunch line, and if you tell someone to go screw themselves, don’t be surprised if they actually do it.

People or Things that Ran as Root

• Chuck Norris
• Trogdor
• That guy who took a picture of himself every day for 6 years
• Hurricane Katrina
• The 1968 Toronto Maple Leafs
• Large Hadron Collidor

August 9, 2008 - Reading time: ~1 minute

For anyone who has ever worked tech support, I post this video for you. And Dad, if the printer breaks again, I love you, but fix the @#$% thing yourself.

September 30, 2007 - Reading time: 5 minutes

Almost exactly one year ago, I became a member of the Digg community. My life was perfectly fine beforehand, or so I thought. To me, Digg was just another news site, and I suspected I would occasionally scan it for interesting articles and then be on my merry way, giving Digg no more than five minutes of my time per day. Boy was I wrong!

Now, my life is forever changed. My eyes have been opened. I’ve swallowed the “red” pill. Before my Digg addiction, I was a happily married man in the early stages of my career, a fairly-devout Christian, a Windows-using Republican, and a technology enthusiast. I’m still a technology enthusiast, but since Digg overtook my life, a few things have changed.

For starters, Digg taught me that Microsoft Windows is a crap operating system, and Bill Gates is the anti-Christ. Or was it Steve Ballmer? One never knows…. So, I switched to Linux, but not just any Linux. The collective wisdom of the pre-pubescents who populate Digg informed me again and again that Ubuntu is the best Linux. Naturally, whenever I see any word resembling Ubuntu in an upcoming story, I froth at the mouth in a rabid digging frenzy! Ubuntu = Dugg. No other Linux matters. Read more