1.  The shortfalls of Godaddy Virtual Dedicated Servers (VDS also known as VPS).
2. What was tried and why it failed (FreeBSD)

Section 1 – The shortfalls of Godaddy Virtual Dedicated Servers.

Godaddy’s VDS (The basic cheap package) claims to have everything you need to get your server up and running.  For the most part that is true.  My experience has been with Centos 5 and RHEL 7.  Being cheap that I am, I went with the free simple control panel.

So I ended up with about 12 domains (long story), Most of them see no traffic and never got set up, so I figure I’ll just throw a page up there and forward the traffic here.  I set up my website, hooked the forwards, and went to bed.  The next day I wake up, point IE to my website, and see a page cannot be found.  Hmm…  Turns out I can’t connect to it to service it either.  I had to log into Godaddy’s control panel and “Request a power cycle”.  A power cycle takes “Between 5 and 30 minutes” to complete but usually had my server back up and running within 10 minutes.

After doing this 3 times a week, suffering with a server that had the stability of an epileptic at a night club, I got pissed.  I gave Godaddy a call.  Godaddy told me that my server was using more than the 256 Megs of memory I purchased with my server, and that my best solution would be to upgrade.  What the hell, I thought the point of using linux to run a server was because it was small and lean and didn’t need a whole lot of memory to run, And this asshole tells me that my server is using more memory than in necessary to run 1 website that sees 25 hits a day?  The basic server I purchased to run 1 website (which is what it was designed for and was marketed as being capable of running so much more) was not even able to do that? This was unacceptable.

I started digging and my investigation revealed that my nice lean linux machine was using more than 200 Megs of ram to run the free “Simple Control Panel”.  The hell was Godaddy thinking. (I found a lot of information from http://www.colinmcnamara.com/why-godaddy-linux-virtual-dedicated-hosting-sucks-how-to-fix-it/ , gotta give credit where it’s due). 

Turns out that the control panel is coded in the memory hungry java. Saying Java is better because its cross platform compatible is like saying anal sex is better because its cross gender compatible.  So following the instructions in Colin’s blog, I was able to ssh into my server, Turn off Simple Control panel as well as tomcat, And all my problems went away.  For a little while.  I’m told tomcat is part of the problem, and very few people will ever need to use it (and you will hopefully know who you are), but when I reprovisioned my server to RHEL 7, Tomcat was available but not turned on so if your Linux ssh throws you an error when you try to disable it, you can probably safely ignore it.

You can do it with these commands (Colin’s blog goes into way more detail):
Log in to your favorite ssh software.  I use putty available at: http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/putty.exe because its small, quick, free, and its probably the only one you will ever need.  This is also the software Colin recommends in his blog, but I have been using it for years.  If you need better directions see Colin’s Blog, its easier than retyping everthing here.  I don’t recommend using the simple control panel ssh because it may crash on you when you disable simple control panel.  Not sure, haven’t tested that theory, but you never know.  Run the following commands (Ignore parenthesis):
su - root (puts you into super user mode aka the “root” user)
/etc/init.d/turbopanel stop (stops simple control panel)
/etc/init.d/tomcat55 stop (stops tomcat)
chkconfig turbopanel off (disables turbopanel from starting with the server)
chkconfig tomcat55 off (same thing but for tomcat).

Colin’s guide goes into installing a program called memhog that will clean up the memory used by turbopanel, but in theory a server restart will do the same.  The memhog method means you won’t have to restart your server.  If you want to install it type this into your ssh window:

yum install numactl (Installs memhog)
memhog 200m (runs memhog to clear up unused memory)

The reason Colin recommends installing memhog, its small, doesn’t stay running, and Colin says you can simply turn on Simple control panel when you need to use it.  The only caveat to this is that simple control panel will fill up your memory again.  Then you need to run memhog again.  I recommend a different solution.  Webmin.  Webmin is a different front end that doesn’t hog all your memory, and will allow you to administer your website quite easily.  With your ssh open (and still logged in), type:

rpm -i http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.510-1.noarch.rpm

If you highlight the command, and hit copy, and right click on your Putty screen, putty will paste the command in there.  That small paragraph is 1 command.  RPM will install webmin, and fire it up.  The only difference is that when you need to log into your server, you change your port to 10000, instead of 9999.  For example 97.74.x.x:10000 instead of 97.74.x.x:9999 (which shows up when you log into simple control panel).

So now godaddy will stop crashing.  Excellent.  A few weeks later, my email stopped working, and it turned out that somehow my sendmail program had been deleted.  Maybe I got hacked, who knows.  So after spending 3 days trying to restore my email server, I gave up.  Apparently the email server files are included with Linux, but god help you if you lose them.

So I decided that since Godaddy’s server was sad to begin with, I would try something new and better: BSD.  BSD is unix, and is supposedly bulletproof.  It’s set it and forget it software.  I’m told installing it is a walk in the park.  I was also told configuring it was like trying to break out of prison with a toothpick: Once you have a hole in the wall you’re home free, but getting that hole there is gonna be a bitch.

This leads me to Section 2: What I tried and Why it failed. 

1. Plan your character.
2. Starting Stats.
3. Recommended Quests
4. The Importance of bobbleheads and Stats explained in detail.
5. Books.
6. Summary.

Section 1 – Plan Your Character

Fire up your favorite spread sheet program.  I’ve made you a nice little file with all the perks layed out (including quest perks/Comma Seperated Values so it should be compatable with everything):
http://www.ngook.com/files/perks.csv (Right Click Save As). This file is All The perks you can get in the game.
http://www.ngook.com/files/usefulperks.csv This File has all the perks with the useless ones (mentioned below) removed.  I recommend just getting this one but I included the other one so you can decide if you want any of the useless perks.

This file is my build.  Blank lines are wildcards (I pick a perk based on how I felt and which way the wind was blowing):
http://www.ngook.com/files/mybuild.csv

Now I’m going to list completely USELESS perks and the reason why:

Daddy’s Boy/Girl, Gun nut, little leaguer, Thief, Swift Learner, Scoundrel, Size Matters, Impartial Mediation, Tag!: These add points to stats only. We can do that with books (and we will top them all out) without wasting a perk on them.

Swift Learner: Once you are at level 30 this perk is pointless.

Night Person: Your Intelligence will be topped out by the end of this guide.  Actually, your intelligence should be topped out by level 2.  This will not do anything because you will already have 10 points in the stats it affects.

Here and Now: Just a plain waste… Especially if you scrap metal your way to 30.

Infiltrator / Computer Whiz: If you haven’t figured out how to back out of a hack before locking yourself out and trying again, you are a retard.  If you save before you force a lock you can reload.  These are “convenience” perks but there’s better things to get.

Solar Powered: You will have 10 str, and 1 hp every 10 seconds?  Really? At 536 health it will take you 2680 seconds to get to full health from half health.  Thats 44 minutes of your charactor just standing… doing nothing…  Use a stimpack… Find a bed.  If it was 1 health a second it would be useful… but its totally gimped.  Also there is only 1440 seconds worth of daylight in the game (6am to 6pm is your solar powered perks span, and the game operates at a rate of 2 seconds to 1 game minute means 12 hours a day * 60 Min to an hour * 2 seconds to the minute = 1440.  The game cycle is a 48 minute cycle.  This means a level 30 character can be brought down to half health, and allowed to stand in the sunlight from 6am to 6pm game time (24 minutes) would be brought up to just more than 75 percent health.  Then 24 minutes later after the night cycle ends you can stand there for another 20 minutes and heal.  WTF were you thinking Bethesda…?  Do you offer your employees’ cars as a bonus for doing good work only for that employee to find out that the car tops out at 3.5 mph?  Somebody should really get fired over this perk…  ok maybe if we weren’t going to top out strength it *might* have some use… but the health regen shouldn’t even be there.  Either commit or back out, but don’t stand around like an alzheimer patient on a freeway trying to remember which side he was trying to cross to.  Ok I’m done with my rant on retarded gimping of perks.

Deep Sleep: Gives you an xp bonus for 8 hours in any bed slept in. At level 30 you won’t be earning xp, and you can always sleep in your own bed if that extra 10% means that much to you.

Devil’s Highway, Escalator to Heaven, Karmic Rebalance: Karma can be altered without waisting a perk on it.  Spend money in a church to go up, enslave raiders to bring it down (its like 100 points per enslave it’ll get you down quick).

No Weakness: At level 30 you will have 10 in everything so this is a waste.

Party Boy / Girl, Chem Resistant, Chemist: Even if you do get addicted to alcohol/Chems… My first lab and cure yourself as necessary.  Also at level 30 the effects of alcohol/Chems will not be there because your stats are topped out, so no point in taking chems in the first place.

Nerves of steel: Your Ap fills up pretty fast as it is… same problem as solar powered… +1 ap every 10 seconds… I’m usually completely refilled on my action points at about 15 seconds or so…  1 point?  really?!  If you get grim reapers sprint (very cool perk) you get full action points anyways if you make a kill in vats.

Rad Absorption, Rad tolerance: My first Infirmiry.  Same problem as solar powered… -1 rad every 20 seconds… really?  It could be useful if it wasn’t retardedly gimped. Rad tolerance is useless if you go home every once in a while and hit up the med kit.

Matter of opinion perks (Some may find useful, some may not):

Explorer: You don’t NEED to know where everything is.  But god damned its handy (I love this perk).

Warmonger: A convenience Perk as you can always go through the game and get schematics.  Has a bonus tho: You don’t need to give up 30 nuka quantums to that one bitch for the 3rd schematic for the nuka grenade.

You cannot get Nuclear Anomaly with this guide because level 30 perk will be “Almost Perfect”.

Required Perks: Almost Perfect.
Recommended Perk: Educated, Comprehension.

Note the requirements to get the perks you want.  You need to meet them before you can get the perk, so on previous levels you will need to level up certain skills.  I recommend you delete the lines of the perks you don’t want, compress them (like I did) and print it.  Follow it.

Next: Section 2 – Starting Stats

To perform this glitch you will need the following:
6 ScrapMetal
2 Stealth boys OR high sneak (luck doesn’t hurt either).  Stealth boys still recommended.

The Quick Guide

This will take you about 10-20 minutes to accomplish, but it is well worth it (at least if you want to speed level to 20 or 30)
The quick guide is as follows:
1. Sell 6 scrap metal to Protector Casdin (2 at a time/Fort Independence).  Your Reward Doesn’t Matter (except grenades as they add weight, but they won’t affect the glitch).
2. Stealth boy.
3. Save.
4. Steal (pickpocket) 6 scrap metal (all of it).  If you fail here Reload the save.
5. Sell (or drop) 4 scrap metal.
6. Save (your stealthboy should still be active).
7. Try and swipe his rifle.
8. Sell him scrap metal until he has about 25 Percent more than you want.
9. Wait for 73 hours.
10. Fast travel SOMEWHERE ELSE.  Then back.
11. Stealth boy.
12. Save.
13. Steal most of the scrap back.  Reload save if necessary.  Stealing it back a chunk at a time (IE 50 at a time) will not work.  It will glitch on the “last” chunk you stole, even if you didn’t exit the pickpocket screen. Success depends on luck as well, and at a luck of 5, I find that if I hit the Left trigger once when selecting how much scrap to steal, I am successful (approx 150ish). So try to steal back approx 75 percent of what you sold him, if it’s over 100.  I did 250 and stole back 200 successfully.  If you can get your luck up this will help.
14. Save.
15.  Drop all but 2 pieces of scrap metal
16. Steal his rifle. You will get caught.
18. Never pick up scrap metal again.
If done properly you should have an invisible scrap metal in your inventory equal to what you were able to steal minus 2. You can level up with Walter in about 10 minutes with the take all my scrap metal dialog option. I went from 10 to 30 and got about 119000 caps as well, so not bad.

The Complete Glitch Explained (as best as I can figure)

Now starts the in depth part of the guide with technical descriptions (for those of you who are curious or simply want to understand the glitch).

1. Sell 6 scrap metal to Protector Casdin (2 at a time/Fort Independence).  Your Reward Doesn’t Matter (except grenades as they add weight, but they won’t affect the glitch).  6 is the minimum but any even number above 6 will work.  I tried it with 4 and the game said no (PC Version).  6 is recommended for step 1 as its quick and easy.  After you sell it to Casdin make sure you have none in your inventory.  At this point the game assigns ownership of the scrap metal to Casdin.

2. Stealth Boy.  Ups your sneak to 100 and makes a cloak field, which makes it a hell of a lot easier to steal back your scrap metal.

3. Save. If you fail pickpocketing you will need to reload your save.  I also save after popping the stealthboy so I don’t have to re-pop it if I fail the steal and need to reload.

4. Steal (pickpocket) all the scrap metal he has on him.  If you fail here Reload the save.  At this point the scrap-metal’s ownership is assigned to Casdin, and the game keeps track of how much you stole from him (6).

5. Sell or drop 4 scrap metal (or all of it except for 2 pieces).  You need to keep 2 in your inventory.  Remember the game sells in groups of 2 to Casdin.  If you’re stingy, sell. If you’re lazy, drop.

6. Save (your stealthboy should still be active.  You will know because if you bring up your pipboy you can see through most of it).

7. Get caught stealing. When you get caught stealing the game causes the character to take back what you stole.  However, it takes back the original amount stolen (so long as you kept at least 2, it seems that if you only have 1, it just says “Scrap metal removed” instead of “### Pieces of Scrap Metal Removed”.  So it takes back the 6 scrapmetal you stole and subtracts it from what you have in your inventory (2).  So the game subtracts 6 scrap metal instead of 2 leaving you with -4 scrap metal.  The game is not equipped to handle this negative, non-zero value, so it treats it like a positive value (+4) but since it’s negative, it doesn’t put the scrap metal in your inventory (it’s invisible and weightless), but when you come across someone who wants your scrap metal (Casdin, Walter, that ghoul in underworld, the ammo press if you have the pit add-on, etc) the game uses that value.  The reason it works well, is because the game takes that value, and subtracts it from itself when you use scrap metal for something, and it still has a negative value, and therefore leaves the number alone.  The value is permanent if you never pick up another piece of scrap metal again.  I theorize that the game uses a seperate value dedicated to the amount of scrap metal you have, and it rely’s on this number before it does anything like remove it from your inventory. 

8. Sell him scrap metal until he has more than 200 (202, 204… etc) or approx 33% more than you want (If you want 150 glitched, sell him 200)  as 150 is 75% of 200, and 200 is 133% of 150.  We are using the scrap metal glitch to create more scrap metal to use so we can do the scrap metal glitch with more scrap.  Cleaver huh?  I find that you will be much more successful in stealing back approx 75% of the scrap metal that he has in his inventory.  The best I was able to get was 250 in his inventory and I was able to steal 80 percent (after many fails) or about 200 leaving me with a 198 glitched scrap metal in my inventory.  The second time I did this I went to 200 but could not successfully steal more than 150 (at 1 time).  This must be done in 1 go (you cannot do it multiple times, even if you don’t exit the pickpocket screen, as the game will use the last amount stolen for the glitch.  Example: You steal 202 scrap in chunks of 50, 50, 50, and 52.  The game will glitch on the 52 scrap you stole last).

9. Wait for 73 hours. The reason for this is the game resets a lot of variables every 72 hours.  Start laying waste to the citizens of Rivet City? Guards all up in your business? Wait 72 hours and its “Good to see ya.”  These people have the attention span of a ham sandwich.  Anyways if you get caught pickpocketing Casdin 2 times in a 72 hour period he gets all “That’s not yours” and “I’m gonna murder me a mothaf…”, well, all butt-hurt anyways.  He’s very difficult to sell to when he’s trying to kill you.  Wait 72 hours and he forgets you stole his scrap metal and helped him look for it like a tweaker. I add an hour to be thorough. but in theory it should be fine.

10. Fast travel somewhere else.  If you do not leave the area it will continue to tell you that Casdin already caught you pickpocketing him.  Fast traveling from Fort Independence to Fort Independence will not work.  I just went to Megaton and then Immediatelly back.  You will probably need to do this to keep track of the values in step 8 (I just counted each time I saw 5.56 on the screen until I hit 100, remember it sells in units of 2).

From here on out you are basically repeating the glitch.
11. Stealth Boy. It has worn off by this point.
12. Save.

13. Steal back that 75% we talked about.  Reload save if necessary. Stealing chunks at a time will not work, it must be in 1 go. The more weight you steal the higher your odds of getting caught, but this seem’s to be offset by the total amount of weight.

14. Save.
15.  Drop all but 2 pieces of scrap.  I figured out that you do not need to sell it back to him like so many other guides say, as long as you have more than 1 stolen scrap in your inventory the game will “remove” what you stole leaving you with the negative number. If you keep only 1 piece of scrap it will simply say “Scrap metal removed” instead of “### pieces of scrap metal removed” and it won’t glitch.
16. Save.
17. Try and swipe his rifle.
18. Never pick up scrap metal again.
Go see Walter.  Level up.  Repeatedly.

Additional Notes: 
1. I have tried to drop 1 piece of scrap metal (so that i only had 1 in the inventory) so that way when the number got removed, it would be negative an extra number (ie it would remove 6 and 4 from 1 leaving a negative 5 or 5 scrap metal (the first value, the second value, after dropping 1) but it did not work.
2. This guide is nice because you don’t need a high investment to get a high return.
3. The Stealth Boys are optional (But damned convenient and you will reload less).
4. Please don’t copy this, just link to it.  This way my server will pay for itself (hopefully… one day).

Note:  This guide assumes you have internet on the infected pc, or have a thumb drive that you can copy these programs to and from to get them onto the infected pc.  It also assumes the infected pc is bootable.  If it is not, then goto Virus alert 2.  It should also be noted that since viruses can protect themselves, a majority of viruses (that can be prevented) can defend themselves if they get on your system before the antivirus software does.  This method is effective about 20 percent of the time, but does not require cracking open the case when it works.

Ok so for starters, you can call me on my bullshit “level” chart.  Just like the governments “Terror Alert Level”, I made it up.  I am refering to a virus that has a low difficulty removal level and your system has probably been infected because you have no antivirus on it.  Since you are here I assume you missed my guide on prevention.  Moving on, we have 3 steps to removing a weak virus from your system.  If this doesn’t work, then proceed to my guide on level 2 removal.

Next: Step 1: Anti-virus.

So perhaps you have heard horror stories, from friends or colleagues, about that bad new virus that just came out.  Maybe you have had a virus on your pc in the past, and you paid the neighbor kid 20 bucks to get rid of it.  Maybe someone on the news said something about the ‘next big virus’ to hit pc’s (or perhaps it was on the news anchors pc, and now because of it, the story she was working on is lost forever and she had to report about something, right?). So everyone runs out to the local pc store to pick up a copy of [name of antivirus product here] because they get all flipped out over it.  Good news, YOU can ease your finger off the panic button.  A little prevention can go along way.

Part 1: (Free) Antivirus Software.  You would be surprised at how many people have released to the public, free antivirus software.  I recommend avg (http://free.avg.com) , because that’s what I use, and I have had good experiences with it.  It’s also pretty popular (#1 result in google if you type in “free antivirus”).  I used a product called Antivir from a company called avira, and the software was good as well, but every day when it updated the virus definitions, it would pop up a window to tell me what it was doing and the window would also have an add in it to get Antivir pro.  I do not like annoying things, and when my antivirus cannot update quietly, it has to go.  If you download and don’t like avg, feel free to look around for other antivirus software.

Difficulty Level: Stealing Candy from small Children.

Im going to compress what took me 3 days into about an hour of your time.

Step 1: Go get (and install) a copy of Virtual Box.

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Its Like vmware or virtual pc but its free and works great. I chose amd64 on windows as a host os. It didnt care that im using an intel processor, but if your using a 32 bit processor you will want that one instead. Get whatever your host os is.  I’m told that vmware and/or virtualpc have free versions available, but I have not investigated this.  It theory it shouldn’t matter, so use whatever you want.

Step 2: Use N-lite on your copy of xp to remove wmp from the install. You can also get rid of a lot of unnecessary junk and make the xplite machine boot and run smooth and fast.

http://www.nliteos.com/download.html

Alternatively you can go download a copy of tinyxp (legal as long as you own a copy of xp… people give me old pcs so i have a stack of cdkeys in a drawer somewhere). If you go the tiny xp route make sure the install you choose doesnt have wmp installed on it. Im not linking any tinyxp dls for obvious reasons.

Step 3: Set up virtual box with the basics. Nothing special here. Make sure you have a network adapter set up and set it to nat. I gave mine a 10 gig hd and 512 megs of ram. Also make sure you have a shared folder with full access. Under cd-rom, select image and choose the image file for your xp install or tiny xp image file (ie xplite.iso or whatever you named yours). Start the emulation and install xp onto the box.

if your guest os network adapter throws an error (check the device manager) change the image file in the cd drive to the vboxguestaddons.iso file, and in device manager hit update driver and goto cdrom drive(most likely D)\32Bit\Windows\3rdParty\AMD_PCnet and use that driver.
Also autoplay (install the addons) as it allows things like seamless transition from host to guest os with the mouse.

To get to your shared folder (on virtual machine) goto network places, entire network, virtualbox shared folders, and then i like to right click on the folders and hit map network drive… it puts it in the my computer section for ease of access. Dump all your necessary download files into this folder (on host machine) and drag them to desktop on guest machine. You can also use your browser on guest os to download directly.

We will refer to your desktop pc as the host os and the virtual one running inside virtual box as the guest os.
Restart guest os.