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musings of mark since 2001

After trying out a lot of different web server log analyzers, I’ve decided to forego the expensive ones with all the bells and whistles and instead opt out for the open source and free Analog program. It’s fast and anything that your log saves can be made into some sort of report. The fancy log analyzers mostly did the who is look ups automatically, something that is easy enough to do yourself with the Arin database. You will see a pattern after a few months of reports, and trends tend to count more than raw numbers. Analog gives out a lot plain old raw data in easy to convert formats for the techno minded as well.
I’ve decided to offer the Analog results to all my clients that host with me free of charge. I think it’s more valuable if they spend the small amount of time to understand what the results actually mean and gain real insight to their web site than the small amount I could make charging for it. If someone wants me to give them an executive summary every report, then would be the time to charge a bit of a monthly fee.
Looks like summer is finally going to break out all over in Vancouver. Another day of sunshine and almost time to cut the grass again, go for a bike ride instead though this afternoon just in case the blue sky goes away tomorrow!

Another day in the rain for Vancouver, although they are promising a brighter weekend. No go for Paul Tracy in the Indy 500, them’s the breaks as they say – and second place ain’t that bad really…
George Bush isn’t getting very far with his travels abroad, the rest of the world still sees them as a warmongering, pollution-spewing, unfree-trading, terrorist-obsessing bully and I don’t think anything other than a total sea change in their foreign policies will change that view. I know there are a lot of farmers and lumbermen in Canada that share the same outlook.
Still waiting on the down payment and initial content for the American Laser Centers web site. Sure would be nice to get started on that, everything else is kind of waiting on it but what can you do….

Memorial Day in the United States today, time to dog out those BBQ’s! Indianapolis 500 yesterday and watched Paul Tracy pass the leader on the next to the last lap as the yellow flag came out. The guy ahead of him (last year’s winner) was easy to pass at that point as he was almost out of gas and if the yellow had not come out he probably wouldn’t have even finished the race. As it turns out, the last lap ended up going around with Tracy stuck behind him as the officials decided that even though Tracy was ahead at the time the yellow flag came out, no one really saw it except for the millions on TV and he was put back to second place. Just another example of American arrogance I suppose. Speaking of which, Bush doesn’t seem to be getting the reception he would like on his world travels, and the scary part is that he doesn’t seem to even care. His agenda is building up to fight the war in Iraq that his Daddy couldn’t finish and nothing is going to stop him from that. Still no sign of Osama bin Laden of course, even as commando squads are mopping up villages a la Vietnam and the locals are crying after they leave that children are being hurt and all the men are being taken way. Looks like they traded one despot for another, I bet lots of ‘em would like to have their Taliban Warriors back again, at least a person knew where they stood.

Hopefully, I’m just getting over a bad chest cold and not on the verge of pneumonia this week. My fault I suppose, after visiting a buddy I didn’t wash my hands as usual so any doorknob is a suspect in this case. Had a real nice visit with my brother John on Friday last, he did some good networking at the conference he was attending in Vancouver also. Going to cut this short, I’ve been able to work a little more today at least…

My brother John Groen, senior partner for Groen Stephens & Klinge is coming up for a conference in Vancouver which means that I will get a little visit too. Not sure what the conference is about, something to with the law anyways eh…
New Gbomb out there, this time it’s against Verisign and their atrocious way of handling domain name transfers. All the other registrars that I have used employ a user name and password system to protect the domains from being transferred to the wrong person which works very well, is easy to use and fairly secure. Verisign uses facsimile transmissions which are easily faked and that is what happened to Hoopla.com. Click the Verisign link to get the full story.