Last night ended up being a late night, but I ended up getting almost everything back online. I did a clean install of Ubuntu, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Things seem to be running alot more smoothly!

I'll keep an eye on the spam and hopefully it will die down some. I don't want to add in a CAPTCHA that is a PITA, but I may not have a choice.

Also, for the record, my contact form is inoperable at the moment because I have not setup my mail server yet. Last time I set it up, it took me forever and I have no idea how I even got it to work and I think it may have been part of my previous issue. I'm going to investigate some options before I get it set back up, so it may be awhile.

Man, it's been awhile! Unfortunately, this post isn't one I enjoy posting so I'll get to the point as quickly as possible.

Currently, my site gets pretty good numbers and I'm extremely happy about that fact. My biggest traffic seems to involve my jQuery posts and I still get comments on them from time to time. In the near future, I will be posting several more tutorials using jQuery 1.4. In fact, I've even written my first jQuery plug-in!

However, my server seems to be completely bugging out. I keep hitting around 90% CPU usage 12-14 times a day and it crashes my site. I just noticed that its basically been down the last 2 days. Since I manage my own server, and don't know a whole lot about how to troubleshoot them, I'm just going to do a clean install of everything. Given my time constraints, this is going to take a few days. I'm probably going to start this evening or sometime tomorrow and hope to everything back up by Monday morning.

Well, as many have probably noticed I haven't written anything in awhile. I've had a lot going on with my wife and 11 month old son and started school in August. I also recently had an operation which put me on the shelf for the last few weeks.

There is some good news though. My jQuery work has continued and so has my knowledge of the library. I have a backlog of several new tutorials I'd like to write which I hope to get to in the coming month(s). Then again the holidays are coming up, but I have some vacation time which I hope to use "wisely".

I've just been passed along an amazing deal for the upcoming release of the Windows 7 OS. All students will be able to grab a copy of this highly anticipated Windows release for a measely $29.99!

Best of all is the fact that you get to choose between Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional. Furthermore, you'll get to decide if you want 32- or 64-bit as well.

The price was too good not to pass along. Head on over to Win741 to take advantage of it. Promotion is running through the first of the year.

Using the Drupal Gravatar integration module, all comments will now be able to use your own avatar for all comments instead of the site default one.

While not really a huge deal, I think this will add a bit more personality to the site and bring the comments to life. It's a bit more appealing and personal when reading to actual put a face on someone than to see the standard icon.

So, if you have a Gravatar account, be sure to use that email address when commenting. Feel free to test it out below.

Oh and always, if you have anything else you'd like to see here, that might make the site more usable, please let me know. I'm working on a new CAPTCHA but it might be awhile before I get it implemented. It'll likely be a jQuery implementation instead of using the Drupal CAPTCHA module that I'm using now.