Oh No -- Bits Blown Away!
Update 10-18-2007 1645 hrs PDT
What wind?
(Power is currently out... running on non-mains power... The midgets
on the treadmill are doing wonders)
Thanks!
----The System Admin
Binary Sauna
Update 5-31-2007 1930 hrs PDT
Hot weather and worn fans. It's amazing that things that are not designed for 24x7x365
run-time... Those consumer items which are designed to run for X hours -- only run for
X hours. What ever happened to the days of paying 2 bits for a nugget of gold good
enough to retire on, spend insanely unwisely and still have enough to pass on to the kids
and grandkids?
The system is back up after some hardware replacement (cooling fans... Some more cooling
fans). The machine has returned to a nice breezy oasis from the Digital Sahara wasteland
which it had become causing the hardware to scream like a little girl and shut down in
the hot weather we've been having locally.
Not bad uptime for not being on anything close to enterprise-class redundant hardware.
This is especially impressive when most service providers have guaranteed downtime which
they don't calculate into their uptime standards. By the way, my scheduled downtime is
only when I'm not around in enough time to switch to gen power from mains when the power
is out... or when the hardware completely craps out and/or cooks to the thermal shut-down
point.
You gotta love new hardware... Back in the day -- hardware shut itself down due to thermal
excess only after the magic smoke was released. Usually capacitors released something
else as well.
Thanks!
----The System Admin
If Your Banner Stays Erected for More than 4 Hours...
Update 4-04-2007 2200 hrs PDT
...or you experience pain in your banner, seek professional medical
assistance immediately.
From: Arcady <arcady@sg1archive.com>
To: Steve <admin@robinkh.com>
Subject:Re: Site problems
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2007 02:53:06 -0500 (00:53 PDT)
There's something wrong with your image. When I paste in the URL for
any other (valid) image, the form works fine.
Uh. Yeah. Sure. Tell me how the graphic displays fine in IE and Mozilla. Now,
Granted... IE isn't the most stringent on standards. I would have loved details
on HOW my image doesn't meet the JPEG Standard.
But alas... Nothing. The interesting thing... The web board doesn't fully read
the graphic. It uses a JPEG library to check the size and that's about it.
It's only interested in the URL until that check anyway -- and it's complaining
about the lack of an URL. So whether the banner's a banner, a picture of my
ass in TIFF format, or a copy of the Stargate Theme played on a Kazoo in Vorbis
format -- it should tell me that I'm dumb and uploading a non-JPEG file, not
that there's NO LINK.
So good at assisting in troubleshooting -- I was asleep for the first and
the second e-mail... I received the other response...
From: Arcady <arcady@sg1archive.com>
To: Steve <admin@robinkh.com>
Subject: Re: Re: Site problems
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2007 06:02:17 -0500 (04:02 PDT)
Okay, I figured out the reason why your banner wouldn't work. There is an
error in my site which for some reason does not allow images with a -
(dash) in them. I inserted your URL manually and now it works. I'll see
about
getting the bug fixed.
BTW, everyone's stats were reset to zero last night. We're starting over
from scratch.
Arcady
Ah... Sloppy input validation... So sloppy that an LA $20 hooker on Broadway
would even exclaim "Mmm Mmm, that is NASTY!" Okay. Understandable. But still
no apology? No "Oops I made a mistake"?? Not even a sound bite of Britney's
"Oops I did it again" (outside of my head)???
And here I was prepared to make a speech about giving birth to Arcady's
children if I was equipped with a uterus... Begging to see if simply cloning
Arcady instead would suffice as providing offspring. Just waiting to use that
statement to exclaim how great it was dealing with Arcady. Nope. Nothing.
Just an aftertaste similar to a shot of tequila after blowing Chunks (Chunks
was the dog's name).
But then I took some comfort in spelunking into the headers of the e-mail --
a good way to gauge the ability of your communicative other party... I see
why there's such a cold snide demeanor.
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2)
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2)
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=Apple-Mail-7--191158327
Ah... The possibilities are:
-
An Arteest on a Mac
-
An Idiot on the Mac for lack of being able to use anything else
(not really likely)
-
Someone on a Mac because "it's perfect and secure" (likely)
-
Mac user who insists He/She is truly a BSD User (highly likely)
-
Combination of all above (Extremely Likely)
(by the way... even a computer with no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse, no
internet connection and buried in your back yard in concrete is not 100%
secure). I'm not one to randomly poke fun at someone -- but the lack of
insight, due diligence, respect, and common courtesy required that I
respond. The best two training tools are pain and embarrassment. I'll get
to the pain later.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against the Macintosh. Hell -- I own a one. I
use whatever's best suited and handy... whether it's Mac OS Classic or OS X,
Solaris, Linux, OpenBSD or FreeBSD, WinDoze desktops, Windows NT Server, 2000,
or even 2003 -- or the dreaded Vista... They all work if you apply them
correctly... I just like poking fun at the snide stupidity that keeps others
from really reaching any real level of competency in life that adds to the
enjoyment of others.
Nothing quite like a trouble-shooting session with a colleague that's quite
similar to smashing one's own kiwis with a ball ping hammer. Dude, thanks for the assist. But I
was lucky.. 'cause I had a spoon in my hand. (the reference occurs at 6 minutes 47
seconds for those slower individuals).
Thanks!
----The System Admin
Oh.. I Bent My Banner
Update 4-03-2007 2100 hrs
Looks like the form for SG1Archive doesn't like my browser, nor Robin's...
or it's all horked up. For your reading pleasure, the e-mail thread is below.
We'll get a banner back up on their Top Sites page ASAP whenever
they get back to us regarding why we're inept at clicking on Submit.
From: Steve
To: arcady@sg1archive.com
Cc: robin@robinkh.com
Subject: Re: Site problems
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 20:45:59 -0700
Arcady,
I have modified the original banner which was 465x56px at a whopping
17.66KB
(18081 bytes) and have modified the link to http://www.robinkh.com/images/
banner17187176-468x60.jpg
This banner is now the IAB-recognized standard
size 468x60 and weighs in
at 6.26KB (6412 bytes).
I've confirmed that this can be successfully deep-linked to directly on my
network as well as bouncing through anonymouse. I've confirmed that the
banner
is of correct size. When prompted for the URL, I get the following when
I
submit:
Error!
You forgot to:
Enter a valid banner. Leave it blank
if you don't have one. It must be
smaller than 468x60
Please go back and fix those errors.
Based on this -- you'd think it was obvious I should use the *first*
banner
specified with the smaller size.... When doing this -- I get the same:
Error!
You forgot to:
Enter a valid banner. Leave it blank
if you don't have one. It must be
smaller than 468x60
Please go back and fix those errors
It seems that index.php which this form posts to is not picking up the urlbanner
field. Can you please remedy this and let me know when your site will
properly
take a post?
I'm utilizing the following Browser (as scraped from the web logs): "Mozilla/5.0
(X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3"
Once this input form is fixed, I will be more than happy to specify the
banner
to use. Currently -- all I can tell is that either 1) your site is broken,
or
2) your site doesn't like how my particular browser is posting the data...
However, this is reproing on Firefox on Robin's machine. I just tested
this
and it also repros in IE6 on Windows. I would venture a guess that
it's
assumption 1 -- but I don't have access to your machines to confirm. :-)
Again, please let me know when you've got this problem tackled and I will
resubmit with due prejudice.
Thanks Much!
----Steve
On Tue, 2007-04-03 at 20:29 -0800, Robin K Harper wrote:
This is a forwarded message
>
>From: Arcady <arcady@sg1archive.com>
>To: Robin K H <robin@robinkh.com>
>Date: Tuesday, April 3, 2007, 3:12:18 PM
>Subject: Site problems
>
>
>===8<==============Original message text===============
>
>Hello,
>
>
>I have found an error in the code of the topsite page, which was
causing
>random sites to lose ratings info. I believe I have corrected it. Your site
>has been reinstated. But please do not accuse me of being unfair. I
have
>removed several sites for cheating. Usually they don't even bother to email
>me and ask why, so that's why I looked into this.
>
>
>You're going to need to provide a banner URL at 468x60, since I do not
>wish to continue paying for the bandwidth for your banner.
>
>
>Regards,
>
>Arcady
>
>
>
We'll see what happens...
----The System Admin
Updated Site Recovery Status
Update 12-05-2006 0015 hrs
New Server hardware is installed. The site is now back on the original
hardware. Thank you for your patients while getting this hardware switched
out.
Please feel free to continue browsing the original site by clicking
Here.
Thanks!
----The System Admin
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