Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - February 2002
A hard man is good to beat
On January 1, the Euro became the common currency of Europe. Except in the UK. I cannot believe that we're so stupid. We did this before, when the EEC was first formed, and we stayed out until it was clear that this was simply not an option for us, then we joined, and had to crawl to De Gaulle to get entry. So now, we're the only country in Europe (apart from a couple of small ones) that doesn't have the Euro as a currency.
One of the major economic advantages that the 50 United States have is the common currency of the dollar (alongside a common language and a customs union). Could you imagine what it would be like if each state had it's own currency, and you had to change currency as you moved around, or if you bought something from another state? Can you imagine, every time I import something from outside the UK, Her Majesty's customs inspectors have to get a look to check whether it's A) legal to import it, and B) how much import duty do I have to pay on it?
Now, at last, Europe has a customs union (the EEC) and a common currency, and the dolts that run the UK have decided not to be part of it. They wibble on about "sovereignty" - actually, I'd rather the politicians weren't able to play games with the currency.
Well, as you can imagine, I'm not going along with that, and anyone who wants to pay their membership subscription in Euros will be just as welcome as in any other currency. And I feel sure that other UK business won't be turning customers away either. If you want the details of how to pay by cash, check or Money Order, here's how
I predict that within a few years, our wise politicians will decide "Well, now it's time to change over to the Euro" and we'll do what we should have done on January 1, 2002.
Faugh!
Some good news, though. The snowdrops have started to flower, and I've even started to see daffodils along the roadside! So, spring is almost here.
Galleries added this month.
Stories added this month.
Nothing new
Movies added this month.
We raised $1150 for the Red Cross via the sales in the Shopping Mall.
The main thing this month, was I bought a nineteen inch rack. That's a standardised cabinet for putting computers into. It means that instead of having servers all over the floor, I can have then in a much smaller (but more vertical) space. The servers I installed there, amount to six terabytes of disk space. It's all of the older Newsthumbs servers, plus my server for doing backups.
It looks very neat and tidy, and impressive. And, like the Tardis, it's a lot bigger inside than you'd think. And because all the computers are enclosed, a lot of the noise (fans whirring) is muffled out. But I have a slight concern about how hot it might get in there, so I installed a couple of temperature sensors, so I can get an alert if it starts getting hot in there.
I like it a lot. I've ordered another one!
I also set up a mirror for the main (stories, pictures and video) web site, so if Watford goes dark, I can switch to that. I was doing that in New York, but A) there's now too much for that server, I'd have to replace it, and B) it's costing me a fair bit to have a server there and doing nothing (I have to pay for the rack space and bandwidth whether I use it or not). Whereas if I have it here, then while it's doing nothing, it isn't much of a cost. And I also have a second server to switch to in Watford, in case the site is working, but the server goes down.
On January 24, faithful old Joan was completely filled with data. That 90 gigabytes that looked so big in August 1998, and which has served the site so well, is no longer enough. Joan hasn't been the main server for some months now, I've just kept her in place as a backup server (and she was used a couple of times, when the Watford site went dark). That 300 Mhz processor and 256 mb of memory that looked so powerful 3 1/2 years ago, is now a bit ho-hum. Now I have a different backup server, and so Joan is going to be recalled back to Valkyrie Central for reloading with the latest version of Linux, and continuing service in a less demanding role. And I'll be closing my co-location in New York; with the main site in Watford that I opened on September 4 2001, I just can't justify the cost of the additional location. Sorry, New York, but your costs are just too high compared with Watford.
Near the end of January, Bunny died. And I couldn't even start her up, she had a kernel panic, which means "something is so badly wrong, I can't tell you what the problem is". I couldn't even boot from a floppy disk. I think it's likely to be a hardware issue.
No big problem, Bunny is just the backup for Yenta (main newsthumbs server), and as long as Yenta is fine, Bunny never gets used. So, I started to build Sarah, a replacement for Bunny, so I could put Sarah in place, and take Bunny back to Valkyrie Central for examination and repair.
But on January 30, disaster struck! Yenta failed. Yenta somehow turned all her data files to porridge, and I couldn't rescue them. And in this situation, my plan is supposed to be to switch over to the backup for Yenta. But that's Bunny, and Bunny wasn't working.
Fortunately, I've been copying all Yenta's files (about half a terabyte) onto Abbie. So I switched the load over to Abbie, reformatted Yenta, and when that was complete, and the Newsthumbs were loaded for January 30, I switched back to Yenta as the main server, and Abbie became "Older server number 4".
Sarah went to Watford on January 31 to replace Bunny as per plan; Bunny, when repaired, will be Abbie's backup.
A couple of interesting things about Sarah. She's the first server I've built using the new 160 gb drives from Maxtor, and she has eight of them. Sadly, there's a 137gb limitation that means I only get 1056 gb instead of the 1280 gb I was hoping for. But Sarah is in a 2U case; only 3 1/2 inches high! To get a terabyte into such a small case, is pretty neat. When I started building big servers, I was putting 640gb into a 5U case, that's about half as much disk space in 2.5 times as much physical space. And I've found out how to get the full 160 gb from those drives, you have to use a Promise card. Trouble is, there isn't room in Sarah's case for two more cards. Oh well - next time I build a server, I'll know about this issue, and I think I can take care of it. I might even be able to do that within a 2U case - a motherboard I've ordered might make that possible.
Nothing new
No changes. Stuff keeps coming in! See above for the shenanigans I had at the end of January. Remember you can still check and search the four "Older servers"
How do I decide on which are the Spams of the Month? Well, if the message is
especially irrelevant, or the hype is especially hyper, or there's a spelling mistake
that makes it say something other than what the spammer intended, or if it just plain tickles my funnybone.
By the way, if you want to know what products are being spammed - I haven't a clue. I don't
read that part of it.
This email could change your life...
But, sadly, I deleted it unread. I guess I'll have to continue my life as it is.
Dramatically Enhances Organism
Huh?
Say Goodby To Spam
Goodby, Spam. Goodnight, Gracie.
STREET BISHOPS, a U.S. based international ministry, has the authority to
ORDAIN you this week.
Sounds good to me. For only $29 I can be a bishop. I've always wanted to be
a bishop; wear the chasuble, carry the mitre, move diagonally, all that stuff.
How much if I want to be a Pope?
THIRSTY COLLEGE GIRLS
I have a limited interest in watching other people drinking.
We strongly oppose the use of SPAM email
Me too. Wait a minute - how come you're sending me spam, then?
I have been receiving emails saying that I'm contributing to the "moral decay
of society" by ...
Me too.
I've eliminated the scams...how about you?
Me too.
We currently have several running; Nicole Bass, Andrulla Blanchette, Sheila Burgess, Christine Envall, Marilyn Perret, Julia Santana, Peggy Schoolcraft, Larisa Hakobyan and the Iron Valkyrie.
We're also sponsoring individual events, and funding athletes to go to events with grant dollars.
The Valkyrie Playoffs. We did an audition, and you can see the pictures of the thirteen women that we shot. And now the fun starts, because you can vote for your favourite (members only). And it's worth voting, because A) the winner of the vote gets a full fee-paid still and video shoot ($$$ in her hands), and B) we get a lot more pictures of her on the web site.
Voting continued till December 31. The winner, by a clear margin, was Christine Marie.
We're sponsoring Roseanne Blackburn to go to the Canadian West Naturals. Roseanne plans to turn pro in the sport of boxing sometime in the latter part of 2001. Check out her Galleries on this web site.
We're sponsoring Kathy Connors to the USA in Vegas this July.
Everyone uses Microsoft Word, right? So if you want to send a document, that's the way to do it, right? Plus the formatting is preserved, right? Wrong.
Recently, I was sent a two-megabyte file by someone. It took ages to download, and when it arrived, it turned out to contain a couple of paragraphs of text, and a huge corporate logo file. Of course, I didn't load it into Word. How do I know whether it has a virus or not? I have a recent virus checker, but these days, viruses pop up and spread faster than anyone can update.
Some people I know tell me that when someone sends them a Word document as an attachment, they just delete it unread. If the sender can't be bothered to send something they can read without jumping through hoops, then the receiver can't be bothered to jump through hoops in order to read it.
I can't take that position. So I convert any DOC file into plain text, then I can load the text. It means that all formatting is lost, and also any possible virus macros.
When someone sends me something to be put up on the web site, then I have to convert any DOC files, because browsers can't handle them. It has to be plain text, or HTML. So, if you just spent a while in making it look just right in Word, that was all wasted, because it isn't going to look anything like that after I converted it.
Here's what I tell people when they send me a Word document (thanks to RMS for the basis of this).
You sent the attachment in Microsoft Word format, so it is hard for me to read. If you send people plain text or HTML, then people can read it more easily.
Distributing documents in Word format is bad for you and for others. You can't be sure what they will look like if someone views them with a different version of Word; they may not work at all.
Receiving Word attachments is bad for you because they can carry viruses (see http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/acro.html). That's why I won't use Word to read incoming documents. It's either that, or choose a good antivirus, and update it *every day*. Why every day? Because there's just too many viruses new on the scene each day, and it has to take the antivirus companies a while to deal with each new one, plus they need to take the time to test the updates. I get sent a couple of dozen viruses per week. I don't want to have to clean up my Windows machine just because a new virus spread within a day of getting out, and the antiviruses detected it a few days later.
Sending Word attachments is bad for you, because a Word document normally includes hidden information about the author, anyone can find out stuff about you. Maybe your real name, address, who you work for. I've seen all that in Word documents.
See http://www.microsystems.com/Shares_Well.htm for more info. I don't usually look inside Word documents, but when I do, there's nearly always information about you that maybe you'd rather not be giving out to everyone you send a Word document to.
Converting the file to HTML is simple. Open the document, click on File, then Save As, and in the Save As Type strip box at the bottom of the box, choose HTML Document or Web Page. Then choose Save. You can then attach the new HTML document instead of your Word document. Note that versions of Word change in inconsistent ways -- if you see slightly different menu item names, please try them.
To convert to plain text is almost the same -- instead of HTML Document, choose Text Only or Text Document as the Save As Type.
Or here's a *really* easy way. Load your document into word, then hit Ctrl-A (that highlights all the text) then Ctrl-C (that copies it to the clipboard). Then go to your emailer, and put the cursor where you would type your text, and hit Ctrl-V (that pastes it into your emailer). Then you send the email. If you do it that way, everyone will be able to read what you've sent.
I've noticed an increasing tendency for people to send big emails, when they want to say a few words. This happens when you tell your emailer to use "stationery" (background graphics). Maybe your emailer can display that the way you see it, but mine can't, and a whole bunch of other people won't see what you see. Recently, I got a 30kb email because someone included a block of marble with the email. That's a bit like including a brick in each letter you put in the post.
But surely this is harmless? Yes and no. I don't have any real problem with it, except sometimes people include so much junk I have to search to find the actual message amongst the GIFs, JPGs, "business cards", and other kibble. But some people have a mailbox from an outfit like Hotmail, or from their ISP, and their mailbox has a size limit, and once that is reached, all email to them is rejected and bounces back to the sender. So, your block of marble sits there in their mailbox until they read and delete it, and could be preventing some important piece of email from getting to them.
Also, some people have the "HTML" option selected on their mails. So, each email they send out is actually send out in duplicate, once as plain text, once as HTML. And guess what - not all emailers can display html.
So, leave out the "stationery", leave out the "business card", leave out the HTML. Leave out everything, please except what it is you want to say, plus a copy of what you're replying to (that's a courtesy, it saves the person you're mailing from having to dig back and find what it is you're answering, so you quote the relevant parts in your reply).
And by the way, speaking of mailbox size limits - check your mailbox. Here's a correspondence I just had:
... and please reply email me as fast as you can ...
So I did, with the info he wanted. Immediately, the answer came back (I've xxxed out the name, because this is actually very very common, I get a few each day) ...