Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - June 2001

A hard man is good to beat

May

All the trees have burst into full-throated flower - there's pink and white, yellow and red. And green green green. Oh to be in England, now that Spring is here!

New and updated Galleries

Galleries added this month.

The Library

Stories added this month.

Listen with Diana the Valkyrie

The Movie Theatre

Movies added this month.

Servers

I changed the server for mpgs; it used to be Joan at www.thevalkyrie.com in New York, but now the same links take you to Tilly (in Maryland). The password is, of course, the same, and most people I think didn't even notice the difference. But a couple of people had to explain to their browsers that Tilly was the same password, then they were OK.

In making the change, I found a way to speed up access to the Newsthumbs on Uschi. This won't affect most people, it will only improve the speed for people on high speed links.

I've also made the Valkyrie Server Mark Four. The Mark 2 is a big box, holding about a terabyte. The Mark 3 is a smaller box, used to front-end the Mark 2s. The Mark 4 will be a very thin box, less than two inches thick, because space at server farms can be expensive. The first one will replace Hilda, who has been acting a bit flaky, and is now in place.

Cameras

No news.

The Newsgroups

Working fine.

Spam of the Month

You'd think that someone writing an advertisement would try to make it comprehensible, wouldn't you?

Looking seriously at B2B now or in the near future?  APS
(Advanced Planning and Scheduling) technologies give you that
visibility to manage your supply chain and maintain an edge over
your competitors.

APS replaces the MRPII functions in your existing ERP system with
REAL TIME, IMMEDIATE INFORMATION to allow you to work in "ATP"
(Available To Promise) and "CTP" (Capable To Promise) mode.  It
is important to note that it does not replace your existing ERP
system in which you typically have made a heavy investment, it
ENHANCES your system.  The latest technological changes and
demands are beginning to make MRP II obsolete.

Well, as one who isn't even using MRP I, I'm relieved to hear that MPR II is going obsolete. Anyone know where I can get MRP III?

On the other hand, the usual term for incomprehensible gobble-de-gook is "Double Dutch". Catch an eyeful of this ...

Beste Webmaster,

Na een grondige beschouwing van uw goed gebouwde website
http://www.thevalkyrie.com/,
raden we u van harte aan om ons onderstaande voorstel grondig te lezen
en in beschouwing te nemen (het is gratis, zonder kosten en risico).


Geld verdienen op het Internet is niet eenvoudig. Maar toch is het mogelijk
extra inkomen te verwerven door uw aanwezigheid op het Internet,
of u nu een multi-national bent, of gewoon een homepage op het Internet heeft.

And lots and lots more of that. What are they selling? Well - I don't even speak Single Dutch, so I'll probably never know. And a final entry:

How To Make $14,874.27 per month QUICKLY on the Net...with NO
          $$$Money!        ?

By the way, thanks to all the spammers who send me entries for the spam-of-the-month competition. Your efforts are appreciated.

Sponsorships

New sponsorship! Michelle Tuggle, based in Hawaii, who will be competing in the NPC Nationals in Vegas in July.

We currently have ten running; Nicole Bass, Andrulla Blanchette, Sheila Burgess, Christine Envall, Marilyn Perret, Julia Santana, Peggy Schoolcraft, Gaily, Larisa Hakobyan and Michelle Tuggle.

Understanding the Internet - popups

A popup is when you surf a site, and another window appears, with an advert in it. A persistent popup is one that, when you close that window, another one pops up. And so on.

Popups are getting worse. There was a time when only porn sites did popups, but now they're all over. When I go to the site for the Financial Times (I need to look up exchange rates), there's always a popup. And now there's the "pop-under", which is a popup that puts itself underneath the other windows, so you don't notice it until you start to clear up your desktop. And there's exit popups, which only pop up when you leave a site (the reasoning is, he's going anyway, we might as well annoy him).

The popup problem is caused by advertisers wanting to attract your attention. First there were banner ads, but those weren't effective enough. Now there's ads in the middle of articles, junk all over the place that slows down page loading. And there's these infernal popups.

In order for popups to work, they have to use javascript. And you can disable javascript. Of course, if you do, then there's other stuff that won't work. But you might at least want to disable it sometimes. Here's how.

Netscape 4.5

Edit ... preferences ... Advanced. Then you can see the check box for Enabling Javascript and java.

Internet Explorer 5

Tools ... internet options ... Security ... custom level. Then you can see the buttons for Java and "Active content". Also disable "ActiveX", because that's what Microsoft call javascript. Look here: How to Disable Active Content in Internet Explorer

This web site

You'll be glad to hear that my web site is entirely free from popups, and free from banners, except my banner (that's there to give a unified look-and-feel), and other people's banners which are all in the section "Banner links", which you can visit or not, as you please.

The Clubhouse

In the Chatroom

The big news is - Gaily and LPD are getting married. They met in the chatroom, they did much of their courting in the chatroom, and they first met at an event; the Arnold in Columbus. They're planning to live in Chicago.

Chatter of the month

Gaily retains her rightful place as Top Chatter, but only just. Jabber is hard on her heels, with me not far behind.

You'll find Gaily there most mornings as she gets ready to start her day, holding the Morning Chatroom KaffeeKlatsch.

On the Message Boards

Welcome to Sondra Fass and her new board. Also Mile High Mikayla.

Back Page

If you've been wondering what some of the folks who post on the Message Boards look like, here's some pictures

I checked the site statistics that Sandra counts up each night.

At the end of May 2001, there were about 373,000 pictures (18.7 gigabytes), 51 gigabytes of video, 4700 text files (mostly stories) and a total of about 71 gigabytes.

On Vnews, the Current Newsthumbs server, there's the NewsThumbs, which is 4.4 million pictures in 305 gigabytes and 6.2 million text files, a total of 321 gigabytes.

There's now three newsthumbs servers.

server	Million pictures	gigabytes	Million Text files	gigabytes	Million total files	gigabytes
Latest	4.4	305	6.2	14	10.7	321
Older	7.7	471	11.6	29	19.6	545
Oldest	7.5	497	11.2	25	18.7	522
Total	19.6	1273	29.0	68	49.0	1388

To the Magic Carpet