I had a wonderful time back at the end of 2020 talking with James Law at Grantbook around various challenges in the nonprofit space around selection and implementing systems. The whole series Grantbook did on this with all the guests is excellent. I’m honored to be a little part of it all.
Microsoft Teams on Debian Linux Install Fix
MS Teams Download From Microsoft Quick post here but if you are having issues playing an install of Microsoft Teams Desktop application for Linux on a Debian Buster system, like I initially was, it could be due to the use of su and sudo. I have always, just out of habit, immediately prefer dropping to root on all things when needed, but that is not helpful in Debian on default paths, etc. So...
Dark Fiber Setup Back at Lick-Wilmerding with Monkeybrains
Here are pics from way back when Alex and Rudy at Monkeybrains figured-out how to snag access to the old Earthlink dark fiber nearby for Lick-Wilmerding and to open a line of sight access point for Excelsior and Ingleside in SF. I was the Director of IT at Lick-Wilmerding at the time. We were struggling with bandwidth and were excited to partner with Alex and Rudy in addition to making something...
Seen Around San Francisco
Salvaging some old pictures from the pile of old Mergy.org files to continue sharing from years gone by around San Francisco. Most of these were taken from around 2008-2014-ish. Mount Davidson old petrified treeSt. Francis fountain car accidentOcean Beach car surferScary driveway parking sign in MissionWaldo in Glen ParkThe Pope Room at old Buca Di BeppoErlich Bachman in Masonic trafficDarth...
Fred Mergy Page Fixed, Updated
Many years ago, I created a page on my old site so if people were searching for my late father, they would find him. Over the many years, I’ve always received queries and comments from people that played and worked with my father in the Bay Area jazz scene in the 1960s through to the 1980s. The page was broken but as WordPress tech improved and I could drop all the various audio and image...
New Year, New Mergy Dot Org!
After maintaining ~15+ years of hacked together and patched versions/updates of Linux, Apache, mysql, php and WordPress, I purged a lot of junk and the maze of crazy configs over the holiday break. As we all move into 2021 and out of the mess that was 2020, I felt a purge was needed.
On to new and better things!
Images People Hot-Linked Forever Off The Site
For whatever reason, people hot-linked these images off my old website for years so posting them back if they still need them for something. Please comment or let me know if you have and what was the purpose. It’s cool. Honestly, just want to know.
Favorite Maker Faire Memories Over The Years
Here are some pics from various years hitting Maker Faire in San Mateo and the East Bay.
Dark room mechsCombat GnomesHuge motorized flyerfrom 2012?Steam areasThought it was Ren FaireMiles O’Brien doing interviewsThe big rock swingFire sculpture mechsMore Combat GnomesHippy elementPuppet sculpturesLive from the Tesla StageMore motorized mechs
Using fail2ban To Mitigate Excessive Apache 403, 404, 500, and 503 Attacks
I finally spent some time last weekend to address the botnets attacking my site and specifically looking for known exploits, bad WordPress plugins, and just general random stuff. I should disclaimer that messing around and systematically blocking hosts viewing your website generating 404s may or may not make sense for you. If you create a fail2ban filter, jail, and start picking off hosts that...
#OKTANE20 Session: A Solutions-based Approach to IT Management
I had a fun with with the #ImpactCloud partners at Box and Okta going over the IT Systems Heatmap and providing a little overview of our Box structure at Oktane20.
Here is the recording from that session: