Welcome to my Home Server

This site is currently under development and will undoubtedly remain somewhat that way forever, due to the transient nature of what it is intended to discuss and present. The sites theme (appearance and behavior) is the same as my school server. Why? Because I like its appearance and I really like its performance and functionality. It works well with my restricted upload bandwidth connection and also provide lots of screen real estate for presentation of content. If you have any trouble understanding how to use this site just click the Help Button on the Nav Bar or the Question Mark Button in the upper right corner of the screen.

Questions about the site that you may have will probably include, "What's this site about?" and "Why is it here?". The questions are simple, but unfortunately, as with many simple questions the answers aren't. The bulk of the rest of this page will try to provide somewhat detailed answers.

First: One reason this site is here is to provide backup basic resource access for my students. Unfortunately, my home Internet connection tends to be somewhat more reliable than the colleges. It typically recovers much quicker after a power outage. I do not have the cooling issues to deal with that the campus server room can. The structure of my network is much more static than the colleges and I make all decisions about how it works. (I have a real pet peeve here. Network administrative and engineering decisions should be made by Network Administrators and Engineers not general administrators and managers.) Student resources that will be accessible from here include links to outside resources, some articles relevant to courses I teach, a few resource downloads, some articles about more advanced questions that I get asked often, code samples, How To articles and occasionally presentation backups. Things that won't or can't be accessible include college legal documents, such as syllabi and policy statements, and high bandwidth items such as pdf documents, programs, etc.. Putting it simply, if you're a student of mine, one reason this site is here is to help you.

Second: It provides me with a forum for presenting issues about which I have concern. It provides me with a place where I can describe my opinions about things that would be inappropriate on my school server. This includes subjects such as DRM (Digital Rights Management), software based commercial invasion of privacy, software defect by design, software marketing by extortion, subliminal advertising on television and more. There are a large number of big brother type technological issues out there and this site provides me with a place to present some of them and provide an opinion.

Third: Everybody needs to vent and just rant occasionally. I'm no different. You will sometimes find a serious rant buried somewhere in the site and what it says will typically be very unflattering to someone or some entity.

Fourth: This site is in part about protecting yourself from and striking back at corporate greed, particularly that in the software and media industries. Major players in these industries, like those in many others, will do whatever they can get away with to make more money and they are horribly under regulated. While, what they are doing may not be as bad as what some major pharmaceutical, oil, chemical and defense corporations are doing, i.e. they're not killing people, just robbing them, it is still wrong. You'll eventually find some, hopefully helpful, links and how to articles here on making your PC safer, more functional, and backing up media in the least expensive way possible.

Note: If you're fed up with dealing with the impact of this corporate greed stuff like I am, start voting against it. Any politician that even smells like they've been influenced by corporate lobbying needs to be voted out. Corporate lobbying needs to be banned. Respond first with your vote, then look at other means!

Fifth: It is here to hopefully, save me some time. There are some questions that I get asked a lot more often than I like. With luck, providing answers to some of them here, will reduce the frequency with which they are asked.

Finally: Something really should to be at the sites base URL. The server hosting this site is my and sometimes others, test server. It has to be accessible from the Internet and should not be handing out 404 error messages when an attempt is made to access the default site.

Enjoy the site, JimD

P.S. You're probably wondering what the site name is about. It's partially a dedication to a deceased co-worker that had the audacity to name his site area51. You might as well hang out a sign saying "Try to Attack Me!". The 42 is a joke from "A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy". 42 is supposed to be the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything, but it simply leads to another question. What does it mean?