Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - October 2001
A hard man is good to beat
President Bush: "This will require our country to unite in steadfast determination and resolve. Freedom and democracy are under attack."
Secretary of State Powell: I think every civilized nation in the world recognizes that this was an assault not just against the United States, but against civilization.
New York Mayor Giuliani: We have to go back as much as possible, responsibly, to life and to business."
The news that dominated in September was, of course, the tragedy in NYC. Our hearts and tears are with the victims, and the city of New York. I'm donating all revenues from three of the shops in the Shopping Mall until the end of this year to the Red Cross.
Galleries added this month. Including some from the California State Fair, taken by AdT
Stories added this month.
New Dragon stories read by AdT
Movies added this month.
From September 11th, until December 31st, 2001, any payments made to me in buying videos from the:
will be donated 100% to the International Red Cross, in honour of the many thousands that died in New York.
What follows is a diary, written day by day, of the biggest relocation I've ever done. After I shopped around in June and July, looking for the best deal for my servers location, I found an excellent deal at Watford, which is less that twenty miles from me. Previously, the USA was the lowest cost place for a server farm; now the economics of the internet have changed so much (partly because of the great Internet Meltdown, I guess) that the lowest cost is here. There's so much over-capacity, that there's some really good deals around if you look carefully enough. In the middle of August, I signed a deal with the new hosting company, and on August 31st they told me they were ready for me to start installing.
On Monday 3rd September, it was Labor Day in the USA. It was very heavy labour day in England too; that was the day I set up my new location in Watford, UK. I've got a seven foot high, nineteen-inch rack at a major computer facility, where my computers can sit and get electricity with a diesel power generator to back up the mains power, air conditioning, and various on-site services.
On that Monday, we moved over a dozen computers to the new site (but the old computers were still operating, so no change in service). It took twelve exhausting hours to install them physically, electrically and networkally, including installing the remote control system that is based on some of the stuff that I developed for the Bionic Arm
When it was all done, I shot some video of it, you can see that (25 mb) here or else check out the RealVideo version
There's a total of 15 computers there, plus three switches, a firewall, power controls and the remote control system. Disk space totals over five terabytes.
On the 5th, there was an outage in the Washington area of the US. I wasn't ready to use the new site yet, but I thought, there's nothing to lose. So I switched the video over to Watford, and that worked fine.
On the 7th, I switched the chatroom to the UK; that was a preliminary to moving the main server from Joan to Jayne. Because the chat is live, moving it has to be done carefully; you can't have half the chatters on one server and half on another.
On the 8th, I set up the "50,000 Newsgroups" (I seem to have more than before). Also on the 8th I moved Hilda; that's where I do free hosting of other folks' sites, like WB270's wrestler list, Andrulla's web site, Sheila's and loads of others. If you run a web site that's in this subject area, you might contact me to see if I'll host you for free.
On the 9th, I moved the main web site from Joan in New York to Jayne in Watford. Joan has been performing flawlessly for three years now, but the 90 gigabytes that looked so huge in 1998, is about 88% filled, and so I had to make some change. I left Joan in place, though, in case I need to do a sudden switch-over. Joan is now my main backup. Jayne is just a front-end that you talk to (your browser calls her www.thevalkyrie.com). The actual data is stored on Fiona and Lorna; Lorna is there in case something bad happens to Fiona, so I can do a quick switch. The 9th and 10th were spent checking that Jayne was doing everything properly, and fixing minor problems with that.
On the 11th, no work got done here. The terrorist attacks were just too awful.
But life must go on. On the 12th, I moved the older news servers off a server that was giving problems, onto two servers that seem to be working OK now.
Up till the 13th, my server in New York had been working fine, even though it wasn't in use (I switched the load on the 9th). The facility there (based in Telehouse, Manhattan) had been running on their diesel generators. But on the 13th, at 6:30pm, Joan suddenly stopped responding. The whole site in NYC had gone silent; they didn't even send me an email, which means it must have been very bad. I decided not to add to their problems by trying to contact them, and waited. Eventually, I found out what had happened - the diesel generator had overheated, and they had to shut it down.
That had much wider impact than just me. Telehouse is a major communications hub on the internet, and possibly other things, I don't know. But a big chunk of the internet in that area went down then. In the chatroom, a few chatters lost access (because their ISPs lost connectivity), and when they logged back on a couple of minutes later, they said they were now using a different ISP.
So, on the 14th, Jayne in Watford was carrying the main load, no problem (except that my main backup in New York was off the air, so I was now relying 100% on Watford staying up.
Also on the 14th, Jayne got her first major attack. Any server on the net is attacked regularly; mostly minor attacks, sometimes major, sometimes really huge. Anyone who runs major servers on the net has defences in place (such as firewalls), even though we don't tend to describe our defences in detail (for obvious reasons). I watched as the attack unfolded, but I didn't do anything, I let my automated defences handle it. And they handled it fine. Until you've watched your systems handle a problem, you don't really know that they can.
The big thing I did on the 14th, was switch the main news to Watford. That was running out of Maryland before. I'd got the news-gatherer (NNTP) server running a week before. That used to be in a huge, 120 pound box. I took it out of that box, put it in a smaller, lighter case (it was still about 80 pounds). In Watford, I called it News3 (you can see it in the video, at the bottom of the rack). Above that are Bunny and Yenta, the terabyte-sized servers that hold the Newsthumbs, and feed off news3.
So, I created "vnews06". Vnews04 is the oldest server, vnews05 is the second oldest, and vnews06 became the third oldest. On vnews06, I have all the stuff that was previously on vnews. That's easy, it's just a new name for an old thing. And "vnews" became a name for Yenta (or Bunny, if Yenta feels off-colour and needs a rest; Bunny and Yenta are like twins). You don't talk to either Bunny or Yenta, your browser talks to vnews, just like before, but now vnews is just Karen in Watford wearing a hat, whereas before it was Uschi in Maryland wearing a hat. Karen is a front-end to the Newsthumbs, just like Jayne is to the rest of the web site.
When I read that lot back, it looks like I didn't explain it very well. It's a lot simpler than I'm explaining it. But the upshot, is that most Newsthumbs are now being served out of Watford. Now I have to let that settle down and fix any little problems I've created by the move.
On the 15th, the facility at NYC came back online, so Joan was up and running fine; Con Ed loaned them a generator. Well done to the folks at Telehouse NYC at a difficult time. But then the Con Ed generator ran out of fuel. So they got replenished, and got back online again.
On the 16th, I changed the Newsthumbs Server; it was over 95% filled. I switched over to the new servers I'd installed at Watford, and the previous servers became Older Server number three; vnews06. That changeover happened without any problems, apart from a few people asked "Where's the January to September stuff", so I had to show them.
On the 18th, I got hit by a triple whammy. It started with the servers loading zooming up for no good reason. I tried various things that didn't work; eventually I got the folks where I locate the servers, to swap out my switch (the thing that connects all the servers to the internet), and that dealt with the problem. Luckily, I have a spare switch just sitting there; well, it isn't luck, of course, it's planning.
At the same time, Yenta went down (Yenta is the main Newsthumbs server). Not a big problem, that's what Bunny is for, Bunny is like a twin to Yenta.
But then, most of the power feed to my rack of servers went dark, which meant that all those servers just crashed immediately. And that's very bad for a server (you'll have seen how Windows does a disk check when it's not shut down properly - Linux needs the same) because it means that anything it was in the middle of doing, gets lost.
It took a few hours to get them all back up and running, and it was pretty tricky. Of the dozen or so servers there, half needed some babying, and three of them needed a lot of coaxing to get them back up and running. While that was happening, I switched the main load to Joan in New York (thank you, NYC!). Eventually, I got everything straight, except Yenta still had a problem, and there's the faulty switch.
On the 20th, I visited Watford to try to fix Yenta, but I couldn't, so I took her back to the workshop. I took away the Cisco Switch, and left a new spare switch sitting there.
On the 22nd, I went back to Watford with Yenta fixed and ready to go, and also with Abbie, another terabyte server. Abbie will just sit there are a hot replacement for anything that decides to break.
On the 23rd, I reorganised the Older Newsthumbs servers. I managed two squeeze Older Servers 1 and 2 onto Judy (Judy was the first big server I made, back in December 2000), and I have Maggy as the front end to Judy. Also Xenia is a twin for Judy, in case of problems. A few days later, I added Zelda as a twin for Maggy, in case of problems. These aren't at Watford, they're at my other server farm in Chesham.
On the 25th, Rosie arrived, so I was able to set her up to be Older Server number 3, which releases Uschi and Penny in the US. Also, Ziggy, Tilly and Naomi arrived, but they already have equivalents here. I'll find some job for them, though!
On the 27th, Karen (most recent Newsthumbs) crashed for the second time. Once is unlucky, twice is too often. I tried running Casie as a clone for Karen, but Casie just couldn't take that size load. Because Tilly had come back from the US, I loaded Tilly up to be a replacement, and on the 29th, I installed Tilly and switched the load over to her. Surfers still access vnews.thevalkyrie.com, so there's no change visible. Tilly takes the load fine, and Karen will now be the backup server for Tilly.
The move isn't quite completed, at this point there's still a few servers in the US, most of which will be shipped to the UK. But it's pretty much completed, the entire load is now running out of Watford (with Joan in New York as a backup) and overall I'm pleased with the way it went. The real test of whether the move went well is this - before you read this article, did you realise that all this was happening?
No changes
The current news server filled up, so I changed that to be "Older Server number 3", and switched to a new news-server.
Learn the secrets of the TOP SEARCH ENGINIES, such as YAHOO!, GOOGLE, EXCITE, LYCOS and HOTBOT, and add 2,350 hits a day (or more) to your site!
Wow! 2,350 hits? So I'll then have, like, 1,002,350 hits? I'd be more impressed if you could spell "ENGINES".
Have you considered professional teeth whitening?
Yup - I think about it all the time.
Now you can BOOST your reception on any phone, pager, or two way radio for only $14.95!!!!! PLUS you get a FREE Radiation Sheild!
Well, you know, talking about a "Radiation Sheild" makes me glad I don't have a cell phone. But if I did have one, I'd probably prefer to buy from someone who at least knew how to spell "Shield".
6 Figures from home!
just a legit Incredible way for you to begin earning Great Money from Home
That's "incredible" as in "impossible to believe", right? OK, I'm with you there.
Direct Email Works! You're Reading This Email Right? Just Imagine That We Sent Out Another 9,999,999 Emails Like This One!
Just imagine I paid you a little visit and explained why I don't want another 9,999,999 emails like that one?
We currently have eight running; Nicole Bass, Andrulla Blanchette, Sheila Burgess, Christine Envall, Marilyn Perret, Julia Santana, Peggy Schoolcraft and Larisa Hakobyan. We're also sponsoring individual events, and funding athletes to go to events with grant dollars.
We're sponsoring Kim Callier to go to the 2001 Junior World Powerlifing competition in Sofia. Kim won the 2001 USAPL Collegiate National championship in the 148 lb weight class.
We're sponsoring Mayra Conde to go to the US Open Championships in Santa Cruz. She does No-Holds-Barred fighting, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
By Wessex Man
Valley State Prison for Women, California -- Sept 1st -- Ex-U.S. Marines strength athlete and and bodybuilder Sally McNeil has lost her latest battle with the U.S. courts of appeal. "I have sad and bad news to tell you," she wrote me in a recent letter.
Her appeal effort has been rejected by a Federal judge after earlier failures at lower levels in the court hierarchy. Her attorney is now taking her case, which is based on alleged misdirections from the bench at the original trial, to the 9th Federal Circuit in San Francisco.
The latest process could take another 18 months, she believes. Sally received a life sentence back in 1996 in a San Diego court after using a shotgun to slay her second husband, Ray McNeil, a Mr California, at their apartment in that area. Her two children from her first marriage were present when it happened.
The tragedy followed a tempetuous marriage. Sally has always maintained that Ray's heavy addiction to bodybuilding steroids and his related record of violence (roid rage) towards her were not taken properly into account at the trial.
"My case was riddled with blunders which my lawyer has found. But the idiot Higher Ups (the judges) won't admit to their blunders and the miscarriage of justice."
"I guess they want to see how hard I want to fight for my freedom. Now I'm going into the 9th Circuit ... I've finally made it to where they will give a me fair shot and not ignore other issues being excised out of my jury instructions, or lack of jury instructions for Voluntary Manslaughter."
"I'm sure the 9th Circuit court will be appalled at the injustice Judge Laura Hammes did in my case. I just don't understand why all the judges along the way will not admit that Judge Laura Hammes messed up," she told me. "What are they afraid of ?"
Meanwhile Sally continues to maintain her exceptional physical shape. The jail removed the weight training equipment from its gym several years ago, but she's running over 100 miles per month round the prison's track and exerts herself to the maximum.
"I'm sore again from starting back up my crazy leap frogs around the track. I feel it in my glutes. My spirits are high. I believe my lawyer has filed my Certificate of Appeal," she wrote in late August.
"It's still hot out here in Nowhere Land, the armpit of the U.S.A. I was really sweating yesterday after I finished my run and did my ab-wheel exercises, plus 440 yards of leaping around the track." The jail is located in a remote and drab region of California about 35 miles north of Fresno.
"I've started back up doing alternate dumb-bell curls....plus dips and squatting my room-mate who weighs 158 pounds. I can squat her 20 times or more. I've got my squatting rhythm back, so I'm sore and happy about it. It hurts so good."
Sally says she's typed a letter to the prison's Warden urging him to restore weights to the gym. She argues that pre-menopausal women need to exercise with weights to prevent osteoporosis (brittle bones).
Luckily Sally still has fans and supporters round the world, people who remember her bodybuilding, wrestling and strength sports achievements. Her high points included the U.S. Armed Services physique championship (female, middle weight) while in the Marines.
But her legal costs are considerable. Any contributions would be truly appreciated. Her 41st birthday falls on September 30th, so this could be a timely moment to encourage her with a card, letter or modest cheque.
She can be reached at this address:
Sally M. McNeil
W62688
Valley State Prison for Women
B4-1-3 LOW
P.O.Box 92
Chowchilla
California
93610--0092
United States of America
I noticed over a period of time earlier this year that my MSN Hotmail e-mail account was steadily being devoured by a growing cancer of unsolicited SPAM messages.
Three months ago I got fed up and activated the strictest Junk Mail Filter on my MSN Hotmail account, allowing ONLY those emails through which have a pre- existing entry in my address book (This seems to preclude printing my Hotmail address on any letters or business cards - they can't e-mail me if his/her address doesn't appear in my address book beforehand).
Purely on a whim a couple of days ago, I shut the Junk Mail Filter OFF to see what would happen. WHOA!! I just pulled my finger out of the dike! The deluge of spam was far worse than before!
Several of those spam messages were MSN-generated. I clicked onto "unsubscribe" and I got a pop-up with "Page Not Found". Is this your idea of a joke, Mr. Gates?
I have several web-based e-mail accounts and MSN HOTMAIL is my LEAST favourite! It's of limited use to me because I can't pass my addy along to someone else if I don't know his/her e-mail address ahead of time and enter it into my address book.
Mr. Gates, I see that being richer than God has caused you to quit caring about your customers and being competitive with your various Microsoft products. I'll give credit where credit is due; you do have some quality within your lineup of products, but my MSN Hotmail account is NOT one of them. I have some web-based e-mail accounts which get only one or two spam messages per month with NO filtering of any kind, so don't tell me that it's beyond your control. Let's not get complacent, Mr. Gates.
-AdT
New Message Boards:
Member | Posts |
| pamela69 | 5066 |
| mit19237 | 4171 |
| Diana the Valkyrie | 4142 |
| jabb6328 | 4044 |
| boomer444 | 3936 |
| TomNine | 3113 |
| 000wlt | 2892 |
| ginny2442 | 2746 |
| bad2thebone | 2602 |
| tre1313 | 2569 |
| gee1407 | 2040 |
| cry2cin | 1844 |
| envallc | 1782 |
| rdhdpwr150 | 1458 |
| mike1965 | 1349 |
| gaily304 | 1144 |
| stu666 | 969 |
| bertje25 | 958 |
| tam021 | 938 |
| bro5252 | 924 |
Pam Angel (Bratty Pam) has hit the top spot this month. MC, myself, jabber and Boomer share second place.
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| Muscle Growth and Female bodybuilders hit the headline this month. | Jabber is still the numero uno jabberer. But he's weakening; the next two people combined are actually generating more postings than the arch-jabberer. |
Mavis is counting the number of times the message list is checked for each board. This gives a very different picture from the one above.
Most listed Board of the month |
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| Fistissimo is still numero uno. I guess photos are a really significant interest :-) |
Good news for chocolate-lovers - you can use it to improve your cardiovascular system, and chocolate should be a significant part of a balanced diet.
You've probably often wondered what would happen if one million children started jumping up and down simultaneously.
I came across, and recommend, the Acts of Gord web site. It's written by the owner of a video game store, who is clearly involved with what he does, but he meets so many idiots ...
I checked the site statistics that Sandra counts up each night.
At the end of September 2001, there were about 400,000 pictures (21 gigabytes), 56 gigabytes of video, 5000 text files (mostly stories) and a total of about 77 gigabytes.
On Vnews, the Current Newsthumbs server, there's the NewsThumbs, which is 1.2 million pictures in 90 gigabytes and 2 million text files, a total of 96 gigabytes.
Newsthumbs is now 73 million files, 2 terabytes!
There's now four newsthumbs servers.
| server | Million pictures | gigabytes | Million Text files | gigabytes | Million total files | gigabytes |
| Latest | 1.2 | 90 | 2 | 5 | 3.5 | 96 |
| Older 1 | 7.7 | 471 | 11.6 | 29 | 19.6 | 545 |
| Older 2 | 7.5 | 497 | 11.2 | 25 | 18.7 | 522 |
| Older 3 | 12.0 | 839 | 19.0 | 43 | 31.0 | 884 |
| Total | 28.4 | 1897 | 43.8 | 102 | 72.8 | 2047 |