Tensai no Monogatari

So, while playing with the many widely varied settings on mine and Erin's blogs today. I noticed an option called "Blog-by-email". Basically it allows you to designate an email account that the system will monitor. Whenever an email is received with a specific tag in the subject line, the contents of that email are inserted as a post into the blog.

This really isn't anything new, and its not all that exciting, but I decided to try it anyway. Come to find out, as it has been written for our blog engine, it works really well with email services which are not google. This is a problem because, as everyone knows, denson.cc email is available through google apps.

Anyway, to make a long story short (I know my tech stories are always too long), I finally got it working with gmail. The fix wasn't all that hard, just took a while to find.

While in the process of fixing it, I noticed that the original developer had started implementing a method of posting from cell phones. Not navigating to the web page on your cell phone mind you, actually sending a text message to the previously designated email address. He had setup the framework to make text-blogging possible but hadn't actually written any of the code. So I wrote it for him, and... Walla!

I can now post from my cell phone. Exciting eh?... I know, I'm lame.

This post is coming from my cell phone. Don't expect too many of these, It's too hard to type.

So, the updates to the blog are beginning to slow down again. But never fear, things are planned for the upcoming months that will definitely be worth blogging about. In the mean time, there is soccer.

Our fall season started off pretty rough with a 7-0 loss to the #1 ranked team in our league. I know what you're thinking, "But Paul, Why didn't you just score some goals and win rather than losing so badly?" I tried I tell you! And I suffered for it. My arm nearly fell off a couple of weeks later as a result of my injuries. Never-the-less, we continued to play.

The next week we won 4-1, thanks to a couple of goals from some "borrowed" team mates. A win is a win though right?

The third game was tough. It was late in the afternoon on a hot day. We had 7 guys show up (1 goalie, 5 on the field, 1 sub) and 4 girls (all 4 on the field, no subs). The other team had a full team with several subs for both the guys and girls. At one point, one of the guys on our team had a good shot at the goal, but it bounced off the cross-bar. I fought off a defender and followed it up with a header which also bounced off the cross-bar. What are the odds of two shots hitting the cross-bar in like 5 seconds? I'd say no more than 2 or 3 tops. We ended up losing 2-0.

The fourth and most recent game was last Saturday. We had to wake up at 6:45 to make it to the fields on time. We were sure grumbling about that while getting ready, but it was definitely worth it to play in the cooler temperatures! We had the same number of players as the previous game, no subs for the girls, one sub for the guys. But we played much better. We ended up winning 3-1. The defeat knocked the other team out of a three-way tie for first place. Hooray for us!

We're now looking forward to this Saturday's game. We might even have a full team! But we won't get our hopes up too high yet.

On a similar note, Erin and I had to re-work the details of our soccer/running deal. The original deal stated that Erin would play soccer with me (the Saturday games I've been writing about) if I would go running with her (twice a week around the neighborhood, or on the treadmill). For a while it worked out great, until I found out that I can play indoor soccer on Tuesdays with some guys after work at a gym near my building, and outdoor with another group on Wednesdays. Slowly our deal turned into, Erin runs while I play soccer with ARL guys, and we both play soccer on Saturdays, completely nullifying the original purpose of our deal.

The new deal states that I have to run with Erin on Thursday night in order to play soccer the next Tuesday. And I have to run with her again on Monday in order to play on Wednesday. That arrangement guarantees we both get our non-soccer running in, and the Saturday games mean that Erin still plays with me!

So far its working great! We are motivated by the fact that with all this running, we will eventually turn into ultra-healthy and athletic super heroes. Like on the show, Heroes. At least that's my motivation for running. The soccer I'd do for free. Erin's motivation seems to comes from the fact that she's a great person who is trying to be good and exercise. Crazy eh?

In other news... we uh... well... I've got nothing.

So, I've had an email server running on denson.cc before, and even provided a few family members with addresses @denson.cc. For a while it worked well enough, but it was never completely reliable. What do you expect from a P3-667MHz running Exchange Server 2003 with a single home DSL line as the one and only connection?

Consider the reliability, stability, connectivity, abnormality, and the plain lack of email-ality issues to be 100% solved! I recently created a google apps domain account for denson.cc!

-======= Q&A=======-
Q: What does this mean for you?
A: Absolutely nothing! Unless you happen to have or want an @denson.cc email address.

Q: What does an @denson.cc email address offer/come with?
A: Since the service is provided via google apps, you're basically registering a gmail account. Its nearly exactly like any other gmail account, except that your email address is whatever@denson.cc rather than whatever@gmail.com.

Just like in gmail, you'll get an inbox with approximately 6-7GB of storage, a calendar, a customizable start page, access to google talk/chat, and a google docs account.

Everyone with an @denson.cc address will be automatically added as a contact for email and chat!

Q: If I have an @denson.cc email address, how do I access those services?
A: Because the google apps account is tied to the denson.cc domain, you'll be able to access them at their respective web addresses.

Start Page -> http://start.denson.cc
Email -> http://mail.denson.cc
Calendar -> http://calendar.denson.cc
Documents -> http://docs.denson.cc

Q: I like to use Outlook/Outlook Express/Thunderbird/etc. for my email. Will that still work?
A: Yes! You can use any standard email client to access @denson.cc email via either POP3 or SMTP.

Q: I still question the reliability and/or stability of your server.
A: I would too! But that's ok! @denson.cc email is actually hosted by google in their enterprise data centers. The email, calendar info, docs, etc. never even touch the little micro-server running in our apartment.

If the power goes our here in our home, or even if I turn off our server for weeks at a time (it has happened before) it won't matter at all. @denson.cc email will continue to function 100% without a stumble, hiccup, or fart. (Oops, phrase-oligy mistake there probably, -editor)

Even if Erin and I sell all of our possessions to buy a sailboat and go live in the Caribbean without an internet connection for hundreds of miles (as if we'd be able to afford a boat even after selling all of our possessions..), it wouldn't matter. @denson.cc would still be completely functional and available.

Q: What about spam?
A: Google provides enterprise class spam filters to help weed out the unwanted email. You can also create custom black-lists to prevent getting email from those pesky identity thieves.

Q: This all sounds good, but I already have an email address.
A: No worries. If you don't want/need an @denson.cc address, it won't hurt my feelings...

However, in case you are slightly interested. Google provides several (easy) methods to collect email from all of your various accounts into your denson.cc inbox. Conversely, you can forward @denson.cc email to another address of your choice.

The little server in our apartment is still managing the denson.cc websites, and I'm still working on those, but for the time being, denson.cc can provide a quick, easy way for everyone to keep in touch (non-Denson's included). If your interested, let me know.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the new soccer season was upon us. Our first game was last Saturday and it didn't go exactly according to plan. It turns out that coed teams require no more than 5 guys be on the field at any given time. I.e. There should ideally be 5 guys, 5 girls, and 1 goalie (guy or girl) on the field playing for your team every game. If you're teams is short a guy, you can replace him with a girl, but that doesn't work the other way around. If your team is short a girl, you cannot replace here with a guy, you simply play one player short. Unfortunately, our team only has 5 girls registered total, and it's virtually inevitable that one or more will miss any given game.

This last Saturday we only had three girls to start with. One more showed up at about half time, but by then the damage done. The problems were compounded by the fact that a large number of our team is new, so we've never really played together before, and the team we played against is one of the best in Division 3. Anyway, we lost 7-0. That was a horrible start to a season after a first place finish last spring.

Its not all bad though! I got away with a cool bruise!

Pretty nice eh? Here's to hoping that the next game will be better!

In other news, its Erin's birthday this weekend! We're currently planning an un-birthday birthday bash for this Saturday evening. (It's an un-birthday event because her birthday is actually Sunday.)

This weekend will be even more special though, because it will be marked by our first tropical storm here in Texas. The fading hurricane Ike should be fairly nearby right about the time we start celebrating. I'm pretty sure we'll get a good rainstorm and 30-40mph winds out of it, but I wouldn't expect much more than that. I think Erin is secretly more excited for the storm than she is her birthday, but either way it'll be a fun weekend.