Killer Rockstar Rankings 1. Toby Rand - Rebel Yell
2. Lukas Rosi - Lithium
3. Magni - I Alone
4. Ryan Star - Clocks
5. Storm Large - Bring me To Life
6. Dilana - Mother Mother

It was a totally awesome episode of Rockstar this week. And by the way Tara ... even if it had been on at the same time ... House would be worth missing to watch Rockstar ... hands down.

Toby was out in front in my opinion. He sang great. It was an awesome song. And his stage performance was head and shoulders above everyone else. He got some honeys up dancing with him. He got the crowd singing with him ... it was great. Lukas had an awesome song. He performed great, sang to the audience the whole set. Brought the house down. Some of his vocals go a little bit wonky, but he has such great performance he gets my appreciation. Magni gave an over the top performance compared to previous. He also had an awesome song. He moved around and was captivating. Ryan started out behind the piano, and I thought ... "again? ... change it up man". He did surprise me by ditching the piano and jumping on top of it. I don't really like Coldplay much so I was not impressed by the song much. Then he went back to the piano again ... I thought he stepped it up ... I guess the same old is what he is about. He can wail like a champ ... he's got a set of pipes on him. Storm looked great and she can sing, but I didn't care much for her singing on this song. I think I was also a little bored with this song ... since it has already been done twice by other performers. It was a little played out. Dilana was last. Dave raved about her performance ... I disagree. I admit I'm a Dilana hater. Her voice was terrible tonight. She sounded like Steve Erkle meets Buckcherry. I also really really dislike the song she got. She was not in the initial bottom three. I think cutting Magni's head when she smashed the glass lost her some points with the legion of junior high kids, regardless of what comforting things Tommy Lee, and Dave Navarro say to her.

I predict Dilana will live this week ... might be in the bottom 3, but I have faith in the tweenie idiots to make sure she isn't. I predict Storm bites the dust. She was by far below the other performers.  ¶ 10:52:00 PM 0 comments

  It's nice to be right I said Patrice was going home ... and so she did tonight.

"Dilana ... I gotta ask ... what the hell were you thinking?!?!?!?!" ... Dava Navaro is my favorite person in the world right now.

It was so hilarious ... they showed a ton of clips from the past week showing Dilana being an ultra bitch ... and she got nailed for it ... the other singers don't like her ... I don't think Dave likes her ... and they didn't even ask Supernova about her ... which in my mind means they were beyond unimpressed. The crowd actually booed her. IT WAS AWESOME! And still she couldn't even suck it up and just move on ... she actully tried to defend herself.

Magni ripped it up playing Jimi Hendrix - Fire. Toby fired up the joint with Stone Temple Pilots - Plush. Patrice picked a song by the Pretenders ... as I said before ... her music style jsut isn't there for this band ... she's too poppy. Oh well ... I'd still nail her. ;-)

I predict Dilana lands in the bottom 3 next week.  ¶ 10:07:00 PM 0 comments

  Oracle Installer, Postgrey & Broke Back Italy So I've been getting some grief about not bloggin much. "Your blog is all about that Rockstar show now". Yeah yeah ... I realize the work / life details have been missing recently, but I just haven't been motivated to actually reflect on what's been going on the last month.

something I have been waiting to write about is my abhorment of the Oracle installer on windows. For a client they connect to a production Oracle database locally and run Crystal Reports on it. So SSH tunnels through PuTTY, and CR is bad enough. Installing and setting up Oracle on their new systems was enlightening.

Several pages of documentation left by the previous head geek to the boss geek, and passed on the worker geek (me), to try and help the lemming geeks set this all up. Pages of fixes for windows running on Pentium 4 machines and fixes to get the applications to launch from the start menu ... yes ... you have to hack things to get their applications to launch from the menu.

You need to pass -nojit to the java options in order for things to work properly. Oh and the net assistant gets launched during the installation, but it hangs, and you have to manually kill it. But the install still works, and go on your way kludging things. Bizarre! Not to mention after you are all done we had to manually edit tnsnames.ora to remove the appended local domain which is magically appended during the install. Whatever. I know what to do ... the instructions are noted and altered to our specific needs ... done.

So I've been back in the land of SPAM again. Some sticks have been poking in my sides. After some discussion with a new colleague, he mentioned something about "greylisting". I said I would look into it. Greylisting is when unknown messages are received by a mail server, it will reject with a temporary failure (450) and to try again later. The idea is that most spam is not through legitimate servers that will make a second attempt. So if we never hear back, no spam. In the case of valid email, the original server will requeue and try again later.

I found "postgrey" which is a greylisting daemon built to integrate with postfix. So I tried it out. Luckily there is a great ubuntu (debian) package available. apt-get install postgrey, edit a couple of files to set my timeout, and max age values, and add a single policy to the postfix smtp_recipient_restrictions. Immediate results. My personal mail server I was getting about 140-170 spam mails per day. In the 6 days since I turned this on I have received a total of 15 SPAM messages (all of which were caught by spamassassin). That's a decrease of 98.3% of my SPAM. WOW! Gregg had a reduction of 100% of SPAM for the short period after we set it up on his personal server. We quickly installed on the fortress servers. I install on L&Y ... and they have been _RAVING_ about the reduction in SPAM. Jack said to me ... what happened to the 30 crap emails in my inbox this morning ... I'm not getting them anymore? ;-) We just installed on another client. Gregg said to me ... "Why doesn't everyone do this?"

We do realize that legitimate emails will be delayed for a short time. And potentially quite some time depending upon the originating mail server's queue times. But the benefits _way_ cripple the disadvantage of a few late emails. And after a configurable amount of successful challenge and response runs, the sending servers become whitelisted, and they are not challenged any more. There is also a postgreyreport utility to analyze the logs and see who is getting the spam and from where it is coming. Nifty.

So the other night I went out to meet some people. Rhonda and Courtney were our mystery guests on the pub crawl a year ago. Rhonda was back in town from Italy for the weekend, and I went to meet them at Kilkenny's. It was good to see Courtney as well and not just have a IM relationship with her ... she does actually exist! I met some of their friends, and it was a relaxing night all around. We were discussing a friend of mine who is an actor. Court was skeptical of the story of "actor", but it's true. He's in a real movie produced by George Clooney. Speak of the devil he phoned me while we were at the pub. I talked to him briefly and got some news from him, that he has another role in a new production. I had to tell John the news and we laughed only because we know our best friend. I put it to John like this ... do you think he is more a Heath Ledger, or Jake Gyllenhal type?  ¶ 12:20:00 AM 0 comments

  Rockstar rankings 1. Toby - layla
2. Magni - Smells like teen spirit
3. Ryan - Back of your car
4. Lukas - All these things ...
5. Storm - Cryin
6. Dilana - Every breath you take
7. Patrice - Beautiful thing


Alright ... I know I skipped last weeks Rockstar, but I was late getting home from poker with the guys, and I missed Sayra's performance ... not that I apparently missed much ... but I felt it would be unfair to comment without watching the entire group.

I made sure to catch the whole show this week ... despite the TV stations from messing up my times. It was on global at 8:00, and CBS @ 11:00, instead of both at 10:00 like it should be. Whatever.

I have to say ... people bug me ... they are so dishonest. IMO Toby should have been canned a couple of times ... but all the tweenie girls think he's hot and vote a jakillion times online. Just like everyone saying Dilana is sooooo awesome. Honestly ... she's done nothing special since her cyndi lauper cover. And now she has attitude because she's been getting good placings, and sang with the band. I hope she comes in second ... so close yet so far or something.

Anyways ... I thought Toby rightfully deserves an awesome vote this week. He performed an awesome version of Layla ... musically I was indifferent, but showmanship puts him up in the top. Magni rocked the house as usual ... awesome song too. Lukas was brilliant again ... I agree he turns around too much on stage ... but that can be a habit to break. Ryan had an energetic performance, and his original song was really good. I'd need to hear it some more to give a better critique, but I like what little I got to hear. Storm performaed Cryin ... a song I've always liked, and did a good job. She didn't turn my head doing it ... but someone has to land in the bottom. The band raved about Dilana ... I thought it was boring. And her little boo-hoo I don't talk to my mom and that's her favorite song was pathetic. But as per usual ... the legions of musically inept junior high kids will go gaga for it. Dilana is what Brittney Spears will be in 10 years. Patrice ... my girl ... see at least I'm honest about it. I'm rooting for her and always have been, but her original song is as far from Supernova as you can get. It was more along the lines of Train / Counting Crows. I predict she's out like a gay bartender tomorrow night.  ¶ 12:06:00 AM 0 comments

  This weeks Rockstar rankings 1. Magni - The Dolphin's Cry by Live
2. Storm - We Are the Champions by Queen
3. Lukas - Creep by Radiohead
4. Patrice - Instant Karma by John Lennon
5. Dilana - Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who w/ Gilby on guitar
6. Josh - Interstate Love Song by Stone Temple Pilots w/ Tommy on drums
7. Ryan - Paint It Black by Rolling Stones
8. Toby - Burning Down The House by Talking Heads
9. Jill - Mother Mother by Tracy Bonham
10. Zayra - All The Young Dudes by David Bowie/Mott The Hoople

Magni brought the house down this week. I love Live to begin with, but he gave an incredible perforamce ... encore for sure. Storm kept it less crazy for a second week. She sang her heart out on the Queen song though. Lukas let the voice wail out as well. Dilana thought she was setting him up to fail, and he kicked some serious ass ... including hers in my opinion. The close up on her after his performance was priceless. Patrice really picked up her game. She looked like she was having so much fun up there, and she wasn't trying too hard like in the last couple of performances. Dilana gave an O.K. performance but she really didn't wow me like a couple of weeks ago. I think Dave navaro hyped her up too much, I mean it wasn't that great of a song, and maybe the singers want to make the best performance possible and that wouldn't be it for them. Josh finally rocked it up a bit. His head twitchy bobbing thing bugs me though ... I could never buy a CD from Tommy Lee fronted by Josh. The band / crowd seemed to really like Ryans performance of Paint It Black. It was not bad, but I didn't like parts of his singing ... inconsistent ... some was awesome though. Toby started out O.K. then went gimicky with a megaphone ... I didn't think it was terrible, but I didn't care for it, and neither did the band. Jill still annoys the hell out of me ... and she's the screechy queen. Zayra played the part in costume ... but she isn't very talented musically ... or vocally ... plus it's hard to understand her ... I'd rather listen to Canibal Corpse. I predict she is heading home tonight.  ¶ 8:08:00 PM 0 comments

  My Rockstar Supernova Rankings 1. Ryan - Losing My Religion
2. Dilana - Can't Get Enough
3. Dana - Teenage Wasteland
4. Storm - Changes
5. Patrice - Higher Ground
6. Magni - Clocks
7. Lukas - Celebrity Skin
8. Zayra - 867-5309 Jenny
9. Josh - Santeria
10. Toby - Pennyroyal Tea
11. Jill - Don't You Forget

That's my official opinion from best to worst. Ryan was absolutely amazing ... piano solo, and killer vocals. Dilana was smokin ... great crowd performance. I personally thought Dana rocked the house down ... but I also totally love the song she did ... and she did perform _way_ better this week. Storm really changed it up ... I think Jason Newstead wants to nail her ... but she is hot! My Girl Patrice kicked some ass with Tommy on the kit. I don't think she'll win in the end ... she's a little too "fake" in her performances ... but a killer voice! I hate coldplay ... so I wasn't overly impressed by Magni's performance ... but credit where it's due ... he performed well. I didn't think Lukas was overly bad ... but no where near previous performances. He seemed nervous this round. I was surprised by Zayra ... her changes seemed to work punking up the tune ... still think she's done within the next few weeks. Josh's performance was unique, but he's just not what they are looking for, and he knows it ... he's too faggy. I'll admit that Toby had a hard slot right after Dilana's killer performance and no break ... he just couldn't compete ... plus he just plain annoys me. Jill irritates the fuck out of me ... and this is two weeks in a row she got slammed by the group. Dave Navaro was ruthless ... I loved it : "It was that performance where people get up and go to the bathroom ... or get a beer". HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  ¶ 12:11:00 AM 0 comments