Here’s the rules:
1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
From the main site blog…
Yet, increasingly, jurors are reluctant to convict someone without it, a phenomenon the criminal justice community is calling the “CSI effect.â€
From the LiveJournal…
They should be switched back by now, so hopefully I can retest with that one user…
| You are a Social Liberal (78% permissive) and an… Economic Moderate (56% permissive) You are best described as a:
Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid |
Hrm. I wasn’t aware I fell quite in that spectrum. I’ll be the first to say I’m a social liberal, but I would have considered myself an economic conservative. Oh, well…
Well, if you have absolutely no interest in listening to me prattle on about servers, you can go right ahead and skip this post. :-)
I had planned on doing some upgrades to my servers this past weekend. Obviously, with the storm coming through, that didn’t happen… which is a bit irritating. A couple of weeks ago, Slackware Linux 10.2 was released, and I was planning on upgrading my two main servers up to it. I can’t do it this weekend, though… Fight Night is on Monday, and I can’t risk a botched upgrade keeping me offline until then. I’ll probably do the upgrade a week from Saturday; fortunately all of the user data (including mailboxes) is kept on a separate hard drive from the operating system itself. It’ll just be a bit of a pain to get all of my server software recompiled and operational.
On the other hand, we did manage to make the “datacenter” area of the house look a lot nicer a week ago last Sunday. While I was at Fry’s the previous day, I managed to get my hands on a four-port KVM switch with cables that was on sale for $35. So, we ended up moving my test server out of another room, and putting it with the two main servers. We also cleaned up all the cables, got them organized and tied down, and now the setup looks a lot neater. The only disadvantage that we found was that having three servers on that APC BackUPS Pro 350 doesn’t exactly work. I had managed to trip a breaker while reheating pizza in my room’s microwave, and the UPS didn’t even last a minute before giving out. I’ll probably have to pick up a BackUPS Pro 1000 or something over the next week or two. For now, though, the test server is just plugged into a surge suppressor; it doesn’t need to be on 24/7. Oh, well.
I had a bit of fun with servers last night, too. With the release of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, the Mortal Kombat Online server was seriously dragging under the weight of the extra traffic. I ended up doing some research on fine-tuning the Apache (webserver) and MySQL (database) installs, and after taking a look at the configuration settings on both, I came to a rather nasty revelation. Apparently, as part of my desperate and frantic efforts to get the server working during the first days of the botched V.7 upgrade, I had made some serious screwups with the Apache installs. For example, the system was generating more spare processes than maximum allowed client connections. In other words, the system had a LOT of spare Apache processes running that would never be used. I ended up scaling that back and making it a lot more sane. I also tweaked some of the cache settings for MySQL. The end result was that the MK Online site started being a LOT more responsive. We’ll see if this keeps up, but if it does, it’s certainly a weight off our own shoulders. One of the problems with running site software developed in-house is that if stuff goes wrong, it’s up to you to figure out how to fix it.
Anyway, enough of this… I need to go check on a few things here at the office. Fun…
Well, things have pretty much returned to normal around here, for the most part. I’m back at my desk, listening to stuff on iTunes, waiting for support requests to come in via email and/or the phone. Most of my coworkers have come back to work, and life goes on.
It’s actually a bit of a relief, in a way. It’s just been a bit off the past week or so. Even yesterday felt that way; then again, I had arranged with my boss that I would be working from home because I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d be able to get gas. I did get some around lunchtime, after Mom told me the Shell station at the entrance to my neighborhood was serving customers. I wasn’t really missed per se, as my laptop was on the corporate VPN and my office phone was forwarded to my cell phone. I was able to get work done without any issues. It’s just… it feels more like work now that I’m back in my office. Weird as it might be to say, at least everything seems to be back on the straight and narrow.
Oh, Louie called me last night… turns out he didn’t get out of town after all. He got as far as Conroe before giving up and heading back to his apartment. Just as well… he got less effects from the hurricane than I did. Heh.
At this point now, the big thing I have to look forward to is Fight Night. For those of you not aware of it, Fight Night is MK Online’s series of chats with celebrities in the world of Mortal Kombat. The next Fight Night chat is Monday, and it’s with the development team of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. I don’t mind saying, it’s going to be a strain… I’m the one who has to maintain the technical side of things while Scott Howell hosts the event and handles the questions from the fans, plus does the main interaction with the team. Usually after Fight Nights I end up taking a month leave of absence from the site, as the strain gets to me and I need to take a break. I guess I should look on the bright side… ]{0MBAT would have had to have taken my place had Hurricane Rita made me unavailable for the event, and the way he was worrying over it, he would have had a coronary by the time the night was over. :-)
Anyway, I’ll probably have a post a bit later concerning servers and related matters, so unless you don’t mind my tech talk feel free to pass that one up. For now, I need to go get my retractable network cable from Anderson (who I let borrow it when I left Villahermosa)… fun fun.
Well, Malia had made a couple of posts discussing my status.
All in all, we’re good here. The power came back on 45 minutes ago, which means the worst effect of the storm on us was the fact that we lost power for 23 hours. We got high winds and some rain, but by 5 PM it had cleared out and we even had blue skies. The damage was also very minimal.
And now, I’m off to sleep in blessed air conditioning. :-)
Here I am… rock you like a hurricane…
I don’t know why that song just popped into my head. Then again, I’ve always liked the Scorpions’ music.
Anyway, as it stands, I think I’m not in too bad of a position. I was in Villahermosa, Mexico earlier this week in order to do a site survey; I had originally scheduled myself to come back this morning, but after getting word of how nasty the storm was going to be, I decided to come home a day early. I got home yesterday morning, but ended up having to rush straight to work to pick up some tapes to take to the datacenter. After making sure all computer equipment would be safe, I went to the datacenter and replaced tapes so we didn’t need to go back anytime soon for that reason. From there… I went home. Bleh. The evacuations had already started, so what would normally have been a 45 minute drive instead became a three and a half hour drive.
I didn’t even bother going into work today; there really would have been no point. The roads are so backed up it’s unbelievable. Louie had called me last night to tell me he was going to Oklahoma City, but that he was leaving this morning at 4-5 AM because traffic would hopefully have eased off. I’m betting he’s back at his apartment now. One of our neighbors had planned to go up to Oklahoma City for her father’s birthday, but she came back after giving up on the traffic. It’s insane; people are getting heatstroke out there for lack of water, and cars are running out of gas idling in the highways.
As for us? We’re boarding up and hunkering down. I spent today helping Mom and Dad prepare the house for the oncoming storm, and also taking care of a couple of work related issues. We survived Alicia and Allison in this house; we’ll see what happens as far as Rita goes. I’m not entirely worried, mainly because there’s no point. We’ll take it as it comes and what happens, happens. I’m also set as far as communications go; granted, my main site and personal email accounts will be knocked out when (not really if) the power goes out. On the other hand, I’ll have my Blackberry with me and it’s fully charged, so even if heavy load on the voice lines prevents calls from getting through, I’ll still have access to my work email. Furthermore, in case of emergency, I unlocked my old Nokia 3650 phone from its T-Mobile-only restriction and its battery is charged to full; if we need an extra cell phone with a charged battery, that one is available to us.
So… when the storm comes through, we’ll see what happens. We’re boarded up, we’re going to make final preparations tomorrow, and we’ll ride it out. In the event that the DSL service gets knocked out, I’ll try and send an email to Missy and Malia letting them know how I am, and they might post something in their journals.
… damn, and I just looked at the TV. Traffic is STILL a nightmare on I-45 North at the Woodlands.
Anyway, catch you all after this blows over.
Well. I’ll have a few words on the hurricane, but first… a bit of humour.
http://www.maverickmedia.co.uk/bloodonthecarpet
Aren’t you glad your business meetings aren’t like this? :-)
Apparently I’ve been tagged to do this 20 facts about me thing by Demmie. Well, here goes…
Start: 12:52 PM
Write 20 things about yourself. Then tag as many people as it take minutes for you to write these 20 things.
1) About the only food I dislike is Mexican food. I’ve begun tolerating it as of late, but generally tend to avoid it.
2) I’m a big Star Trek fan, but said fandom died down a great deal thanks to Enterprise and Voyager.
3) I’ve gotten to meet several of the people responsible for making the Mortal Kombat series of games, which is my favorite.
4) I provide email services for my friends, family, and my Dad’s companies.
5) I started learning Linux after my friend Sinc introduced me to it. Now he comes to me for Linux advice.
6) My parents are from England. Most people who hear that think I’m British. I’m not; I was born outside of Chicago. I do supposedly qualify for dual citizenship.
7) My left eye is a lot stronger than my right eye. In fact, I didn’t start needing contacts in my left eye until I was 26 or 27.
8) I enjoy playing poker, and have gotten to the final table in my friend Michael’s last two Texas hold-em tournaments.
9) I much prefer British comedy to American comedy. Must be the Brit in me.
10) I’m the only one in my lunch group at work who will gladly go to an Indian restaurant.
11) I might be a Mortal Kombat fan, but the Japanese kanji seen on the banner of my site and my LJ and forum icons is actually inspired by Akuma from Street Fighter.
12) My personal website had a message that said it was under renovation for something like nine years because I couldn’t think of anything better to do with it.
13) I’m far heavier than I look. Most people think I’m 20 pounds or so lighter than I really am. I’m hoping that it’s muscle causing the discrepancy. ;-)
14) I had never been to Vegas prior to May 2004. Now I try to go at least twice a year.
15) When I travel, I carry a Game Boy Advance with me. It’s the only time I use portable game systems, too. My current favorite portable game is Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.
16) I enjoy listening to dance/house music (on the satellite music station) or 80s music (via Club 977) as background noise when on my PC.
17) I routinely listen to Overclocked Remixes as background music as well. What can I say… I enjoy videogame music.
18) Before I got into computers, I was in training to be a classical musician. I think I’m better off with computers, though I miss music sometimes.
19) I enjoy singing karaoke, and have yet to sing the same song twice.
20) I have Asperger’s Syndrome. However, I only learned this within the past year.
Finish: 1:03 PM.
Okay, so, 11 people. I’ll tag ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jenndolari, missyanthrope, scotters83, ACJ, draugr, foxbaby, shifter_, shinnokxz, badm0j0, tygerlander, and Sean MC.
Okay, the music department at the high school which serves this area (which is now headed up by one of my former band directors) has started a new fundraiser. Apparently, for $30 a year, they’ll put an American flag in your yard for all of the standard patriotic holidays, like Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans’ Day, Presidents’ Day, and Patriot Day. (I’m guessing the latter is the new name for September 11th. I must have missed that memo.) That’s nice and dandy. I have no problem with that.
However, they decided that the best way to get the word out about their fundraiser would be to put a flag in everyone’s front yard Saturday morning, along with an envelope and a flyer explaining the fundraiser and saying they’d pick the flags up on September 13th. Now, if these were understated hand-held flags like this one realtor puts in yards every July 4th, I’d have no problem. These, however, are full-size flags on 10-foot-tall poles. I for one didn’t exactly like the idea of someone putting this thing in our lawn without our permission.
Dad ended up moving it elsewhere. If they gripe, well… that’s their tough shit. We didn’t have permission to move it? You didn’t have permission to put it on our property in the first place.
Oh, well… obviously we’re not taking part in this fundraiser. If the flags had been half the size they were or had asked our permission first, maybe we would have. Hopefully they realize this wasn’t the best way to go about this and don’t do it again… *shrug*
