Archive for September, 2005
Well some updates, the rents made it back from Washington, had a good trip, my dad’s family was quite literally all there, his bro’s and sis were all on hand to visit and hang out for a few days - so he had a blast, and mom had fun too, got to meet my cousin’s kids, and other realitives she hasnt seen in ages, so she had a good time.
Some news on the title, my car got jacked up, basically it seems it has been jacked up - the front alignment was off, well at the parking garage downtown I managed to bump one of those cement pillars which prevent you from running into the building with my tire, well it knocked it out of wack pretty good - but $65 later, I am aligned, and good to go - smoothest drive I have had in a while.
Playing WOW right now (aka World of Warcraft for those non-geeky type people) - it’s a massive online game, doing some quests with my brother, but before that had to help out K&J get their server back online, looks like high-load, but they are online and opeational again, and I got some good experience on my WoW character 
MySpace is indeed a odd interesting place - seems I am slowly going to have a highschool reunion there lol - some new people found me such as Sandeep, Stacy, and a few others who if I was awake all the way and not half playing a video game mindlessly, I am sure I’d remember But its pretty cool, maybe have a bbq at the lake with everyone if I can convince someo f them to come back to btown 
Anywhoo - should wrap up, goto bed, yada yada yada. Night all.
Computer Users.
Let me clarify though - DIE HARDS. You know the type, OS touting prohets who claim switching to their all powerful operating system will do great things for your life, your wife and kids will come back, women or men will like your (in some OS cases, both will) and that Peace On Earth will become possible, all because you went to Mac, or wait, was it Linux? No No, your using that one with the multi-colored Window.
I may be biased on this as I do have the 3 major platforms (Linux/Mac/Windows) at my disposal, heck this right now is being written via Firefox using Ubuntu Linux, because it’s better? No, because my Windows box is doing email and allowing me to watch Conan O’Brien - I am just tired of prophets, someone who’s every solution is “You know, if you just used Gentoo, that’s soooo much easier” blah. To any computer user out there, NEVER, I say “NEVER” believe that lie, it is a bad bad thing that for years people have perpetuated to give brand XYZ dominance in the market.
The Truth? If your willing to take the time, money, effort, any OS can really fit any of your needs - For instance, Recording Studio - Linux, Windows, and Mac all offer solutions, granted Windows/Mac are more main stream in their support for devices like the 002 and other products which work on a USB or Firewire bus, if you REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to take the time to read/configure/compile, it could be accomplished on Linux - My favorite classic rumor “Graphics are so much better on a Mac” - Let’s see, Photoshop is made for Windows and Mac, throw in a free product like GIMP, and ol classic friends of Corel, you have lots of choices for all 3 platforms to choose from - need a high-end graphics card? Buy one.
I just find it more and more silly claims of Mac/Linux/Windows users claiming their OS is the best - you like it, I get it, but say why you like it - not gonna sell me when you say something foolish like “Well Mac’s can’t get viruses” - I could write a bash script that was say 2-3 lines, that if I told people was a “Quick Installer” would do the classic rm “fubar” and adios folders - if that’s not a virus, I am not sure what is - but touting your some super-cool “Virus” and “Vulnerability” free OS - is only asking bad people to do bad things to proove their abilities.
So my rant for this evening as I go into insane land of no-sleep, and too many things to catch up on - I will be using Linux/Windows/Mac through the evening, each has it’s task, each does something while I can’t do it on another,each can pick up the slack while one’s busy - if you want a good computer? Buy something in your budget, not something shiny, or that has a pengiun on it, or because Mr. Gates is standing behind you whispering sweet nothings into your ear - If you know windows? Good job, keep it up, you know Linux? Great, your a pioneer! If your a Mac User - awesome, your in a very calming OS - but flaunt what your OS can do, vs what other’s can’t - it’s a bad arguement, because if you know the OS, there’s a lot you can do with each to overcome any issue.
And with that, I pray sleep becomes me.. here’s to passing out. Night.
Well only one thing seemed right - make beandip at 1am. I had just got my sleep patterns to almost human hours! Oh the in-humanity of it all, but it already smells good, just waiting for the cheese to melt as the beef is already cooked, and beans tend to heat up quickly. Got some Mission Chips, and some sour cream to go with it - I keep forgetting though that I am here by myself this week, as I made 2lbs of meat and 2 cans of beans and a 1/4 of a block of cheese… mmm… must go eat now
Oh one more thing - a few updates.
1. Thanks for praying for Charity, she’s doing good, went through her procedure to get the tubes put in her ear without a hitch.
2. Thanks for praying for my rents, they are in washington having a good time.
3. Thanks for praying for my friend Julie’s dad, he is home now - there is cancer spread through his body, but the reason he had been acting oddly was one of his kidneys wasn’t doing too hot. They are putting him on extreme chemo, doctors aren’t too hopeful, but heck, prayer has power - so keep lifting them up - whole family definately needs it.
4. Servers - they were indeed spared, datacenters are still alive and kickin, tons of data transfered over the last 4 days, but I am sure as the week kicks back into gear, and the region stabalizes a bit more, things will clear up - as I have a few servers needing some tune-up, and a few more servers to bring online.
Okay, timer beeped, so cheese should be melted at 350F for 5m - should be more than enough to melt cheese and heat beans Night All.
So far the hurricane as not had any effect on the servers, I have been told facilities are already on generator power in the risk power goes out systems will continue to run, and there will be no risk of surges - but at this point it’s still anyone’s guess as to the offical direction of the storm.
I have slept some, but I have been working to keep an eye on servers - working on getting the last set of backups made last night, but it’s gigabytes and gigabyes of data, and I can only go so fast without entirely saturating the server - so it’s slow going, but so 50GB of information already backed up - but uncompressed its probably a ton as its round abouts 1.25GB (html is easy to compress) - but all in all things are going good - granting something is blowing in here, and some people who haven’t had the joy of experiencing earthquakes were a little shaken up the other day - but life goes on
Anywhoo, that’s my check in, I need to find some food, may have to venture out to Foodmax and get some grub… maybe a pizza… mmmm…
Well got back after lunch today and saw that the hurricane is offically down to a Category 4 huricane, which is definately a blessing - be nice if it just disappeared all together, but doesn’t look like that’s going to be happening any time soon. The internet connections here at home, the office, and shortly at companies in town who’s servers I manage - will all be pegged out for a few hours. I am currently downloading at about 6 megabit, which is fast, but sadly still not getting stuff as quickly as I’d like, but the good thing is I am getting offsite backups running smoothly to my drives around town.
As I was talking to folks online about the effect of the hurricane on the servers, I was gently rolled sideways in my chair! I felt was about a 2-3.0 quake, but as I am looking at the USGS’s website, it has 11 (oops now 12) quakes/aftershocks ranging from as low as 0.6->4.9 today, I am of course only really counting quakes form the 4.0/4.9 as that was felt here, and MSNBC noted to as far as LA. So things are shakin here
As for the pastrami sandwich, it was excellent - lunch was good, and I am still here working away, moving backups, rsyncing to 3rd party services, etc. working to get things safely backed up off-site should Texas get hit hard and require me to relocate clients elsewhere - continued prayers are still appriciated for my crew who’s on call, as well as the crews on-call at the datacenters who will be working to keep things online and operational.
As I am sure many of you know Rita is heading towards Texas - well these servers which power over 500+ sites I host, as well as several servers which house sites like CMCentral.com, PalmLoyal.com, and numerous other businesses and communities (much like this one), so there is a risk of outage as the hurricane reaches land.
I have been talking and foruming with my datacenter to discuss what plans are being made to handle it, and boy howdy, they have mobilized a lot, but still mothernature has a habbit of being more powerful than anything we have ever seen - but the company who manages the DC’s CEO has gotten additional massive generators, stockpile of fuel to power those generators, and a lot of on-call help as soon as folks can come back into the area.
So 2 fold, this is just a heads up, sites may be slow or unresponsive - but everything humanly possible is being done to insure backup power, internet connection stays valid, and data is kept safe.
However #2 - if the worst does indeed happen, steps are being taken as I type, backups from the last 2-3 days are being moved off that network to a remote location - this will allow me to restore servers at another datacenter as we wait for our hardware and resources to become available again.
Prayers are definately appriciated, the datacenter is keeping people on hand at each location to do what they can to make sure the lights stay on and facilties remain safe, so I am not only asking for prayers for me and my temporary staff of helpers - but as well as those manning the datacenter through the storm - it’s going to be a wild couple of days - and I am sure sleep will be few and far-between.
I’ll update with more if anything changes! Take care
Well today was a fair start of a day, however the afternoon was not the ‘greatest’ but it at least ended well - my phone went off at 1ish telling me my server had gone down, well to make matters worse in getting it back online, the datacenter where my servers is located is hugely backed up - they are on skeleton crew due to the hurricane evacuations. So what would of normally taken 1hr or so took nearly 6, a afternoon of sitting in a chatroom (as all circuts to Texas were busy) - I chatted with techs who kept asking me to remain patient as 150+ people’s sites were offline 
But the day didn’t end up horrible, I did get a bright spot in the morning as my Treo 650 arrived - oh it’s sooo awesome, features are awesome, great functionality - I feel like I am using my Tungsten, with the joys of BT & a phone Good times. I hope to do a more complete ‘offical’ review/thoughts later, but it’s midnight, I am dead after a day of server oddness - still not 100% sure what happened, but after the storm has passed this weekend, I think I am going to look at the budget after Car Insurance payment - and see if I can’t grab a extra server or two.
Oh pray for my niece Charity, she goes in tomorrow morning to get tubes in her ears - so prayers are appriciated. I am off to sleep.
Posted on 22 September '05 by Chuck Brown, under basic goodness, work. No Comments.
