A painful learning process with Ubuntu, virtual servers and the inner workings of WordPress
I have been keeping this blog since 2004. I’ve written well over 1,000 entries including a year of blogging from Baghdad, Iraq. This blog has become a combination diary, political screed and memory lane for me. Needless to say, I’ve been extremely irritated that the blog crashes every other day. I’ve switched hosting providers three times now trying to get the issue corrected. Finally, I decided enough was enough.
After countless hours of troubleshooting my conclusion was that CPanel on CentOS is what has been causing my WordPress blog crashes.
I bit the bullet and created an Ubuntu virtual server using the LAMP stack at my hosting provider VPS.net. After two weeks of trial and error learning, I’ve migrated my entire blog from a CPanel managed environment to one where I am controlling everything using FTP (Filezilla) and SSH (putty).
I’ve had numerous problems with Apache mod_rewrite, setting up an FTP server from a command line and so on. For others who might be trying to setup and install their own WordPress instance or migrate an existing WordPress blog at the most basic levels, here are some links I think you may find useful.
Useful links for setting up or migrating WordPress to an Ubuntu server
HOWTO : Create a FTP server with user access (proftpd) – Ubuntu Forums
How to set up a mail server on a GNU / Linux system
Migrate WordPress to a new server or directory | Richard Castera
Moving WordPress « WordPress Codex
Editing wp-config.php « WordPress Codex
WordPress SuperCache-Plus plugin | The Murmatrons
Police officers should be held to a higher standard
Former Chattanooga police officer Kenneth Freeman should be in jail. Freeman has been re-fired by the Chattanooga City Council but that’s not enough. Police officers shouldn’t be held to a lower standard of conduct than private citizens, they should be held to a higher standard.
After five hours in front of the Chattanooga City Council, fired Chattanooga police officer Kenneth Freeman will stay that way. Fired.
First, a little history of Freeman’s story. Last summer, Freeman was relieved of his duties amid domestic assault allegations. Authorities told us then that they responded to a apartment complex on Mountain Creek Road. That’s where Rose Blanks told police that she and Freeman were arguing. That’s when she says Freeman threatened her.
He was fired in August after an Internal Affairs investigation into several different incidents. Police spokesperson Sgt. Jerry Weary said one of those incidents, “..alcohol was involved and he was found to have been carrying a firearm at the time which he consumed alcohol.” She said investigators at Internal Affairs were actually looking into two cases involving three violations of department policy and procedures. “One was for turning in overtime sheets for time he had not worked,” Sgt. Weary explained. Weary added that amounted to fraud, among other things. “And then the third was for conduct unbecoming,” Sgt. Weary said.
Peace officers should never be allowed to hide behind a badge, a department or a flag. An armed peace officer who shoves an old Wal-Mart greeter is not a professional, he is a criminal.
In one case, Officer Freeman was investigated for consuming alcohol while armed, carrying an unauthorized off-duty firearm and conformance to law. In the second case, he was investigated for insubordination and two complaints of conduct unbecoming an officer, police spokeswoman Sgt. Jerri Weary said in a news release.
Three complaints were sustained — consuming alcohol while armed, conduct unbecoming an officer relating to fraud by turning in hours not worked and carrying an unauthorized off-duty firearm, she said. His termination is effective immediately but he can appeal the decision to the Chattanooga City Council, Sgt. Weary said.
Officer Freeman served a 28-day suspension earlier this year after an internal affairs investigation that he exhibited conduct unbecoming an officer, improper procedure and excessive use of force in connection with an assault of a Wal-Mart greeter.
If I did all the things listed in bold, I would be going to jail. Kenneth Freeman got fired. That’s getting off easy. While I think it’s great that Mr. Freeman no longer has the ability to hide behind a uniform, gun and badge I believe he should be held to the same criminal penalties that I would be times two. If an armed police officers abuses his or her authority the penalty should be doubled. Frankly, I’d like to give Kenneth Freeman a good shove. He violated the trust placed in him by the citizens of Chattanooga acting through their proxies. He abused his authority. Kenneth Freeman should pay a heavier price for his criminal behavior.
Criminally incompetent oversight of incompetent criminals
A lot of dollars are being wasted and stolen in Iraq and Afghanistan. The amounts are staggering. One of the primary avenues for theft, waste, fraud and abuse of these funds which may eventually have to be paid back by your children and grandchildren is that much of the day to day war effort is being undertaken by private contractors who under perform and over bill the government. Since the government forcibly passes the costs of the wars on to the public taxpayers end up footing the bill for frittering away billions of dollars to ship people from all over the world to dusty guard towers where they can sleep in uncomfortable chairs.
Demand for contractor services is heavy, while oversight of their work isn’t. That means problems often aren’t discovered until long after the payments have been made.
A major trouble spot is the business systems and procedures that companies use to bill the government. The numbers are eye-popping. Defense auditors have found at least $6 billion in questionable charges generated by sloppy accounting or, worse, contractors trying to bilk the military.
Yet, the Pentagon has done a poor job of recovering the money and forcing companies to improve, according to the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting. The panel cites dysfunction among auditors and contract managers, a shortage of personnel and a failure to be more confrontational with contractors who don’t measure up.
To be fair, I never saw a guard sleeping when I was in Iraq from 2005-2006. I did, however, see lots and lots of examples of money being wasted on ridiculous projects. Retrofitting conference rooms that were perfectly serviceable at a cost of millions per room is one example that immediately springs to mind. I sat in several meetings where we discussed spending money just to keep budgets at their current levels or to justify increasing them in the coming fiscal year. This is how government thinks.
In late 2007, the military belatedly began paying attention. Numerous contract violations were found, several of them serious, leading to a flood of what contracting officials call corrective action requests. Last fall, the Army Criminal Investigation Command opened an inquiry to determine if Combat Support Associates overbilled the government. The case is ongoing.
While the army says it is breaking up many of the abused private contracts into smaller more manageable pieces maybe the key is to minimize the use of private contractors to fight America’s wars. It might also be helpful if the government considered reducing the size of the war fighting machines it has created in the first place. I’m pretty sure Obama has been a great disappointment thus far to those who hoped for any change in foreign policy regarding how we win wars. After all, you are still paying for contractors to collect money and build nothing in return while empty job sites are guarded by imported private contractors being paid six figures to sleep in uncomfortable chairs. Open your pocketbook and smile at the man with one hand out and the other hand resting lightly on his gun.
Chew them up and spit them out
Why anyone would want to wage war on behalf of his or her country is beyond me. I’ve done it and certainly don’t look forward to any repeat performances. Military service is a Catch-22. They tell you you’re a hero and then treat you like a criminal. They tell you the martial profession is honorable and then treat you like scum.
Sergeant Jermaine Nelson is pending court martial at Camp Pendleton for murder. He could receive life imprisonment.
This is all over speculation, innuendo and testimony from events that happened in Fallujah more than four years ago. Let me ask you this. Why would anyone sign up for the Marines and volunteer for combat missions if they have a high chance of being charged with murder after the battle? I sure as hell wouldn’t. If someone has been shooting at me all day and killing those around me it is highly unlikely that they are going to survive close contact with me.
Yes, there are rules of engagements. Yes, prisoners should be treated humanely. But this is war. War cannot be won without warriors. If you treat your warrior class like your peasant class your chance of winning conflicts declines on a rapidly sliding scale. This should make every American in uniform ask him or herself who is going to get their back when they have bullets coming downrange at them? What sort of welcome are they going to receive when they get home? How many years later will it be when the same people who started the war they fought in come to arrest them for fighting in it?
Bureaucrats make the rules that soldiers live and die by. Bureaucrats judge how the rules were followed. I’d like to all hand to hand missions in America’s next war fought by bureaucrats. They’ve earned the honor.
