Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - January 2003

A hard man is good to beat

December

Happy New year to everyone! We haven't had any snow yet. It's been a warm winter so far, some rain,

New and updated Galleries

Galleries added this month.

The Library

I did a Christmas story, which involves the acquisition of all the chocolate in the world. It's another Mwynwen/Linda Daventry story.

Stories added this month.

Listen with Diana the Valkyrie

Nothing new

The Movie Theatre

Movies added this month.

Shopping Mall

StoneColdMail

The email service is free to members. And there is no advertising

The Server Farm

The good news is that I've recovered Older Server number 3. And there's now Older Server number 6; it got filled up, and I put a new "current server2 in place.

I now have three copies of each older server; having two copies wasn't enough. The main reason why a single backup isn't enough, is the unreliability of hard drives. Too many of them fail, too frequently. The worst drive I've been using is the Maxtor 160gb drive; on 21 December, I had two fail at the same time. I've got about a dozen of these failed drives now.

With the current news, I have *four* copies. The hope is that I can survive multiple failures without any impact on people's ability to access. And with the main web site, I have four copies too.

Freya's hard disk filled up. That's the server that carries chat and message boards. It's because of the "file upload" feature in the chatroom; so much stuff got uploaded, it filled the disk. Thaty meant there was no room for chat, etc, so the chatroom was down for an hour or two. Not a big problem; I've cleared off the drive now. But it means that the message board statistics were partly hosed.

I've been having several small problems. First, with the Maxtor 160s, which seem to be dying in droves. And they also develop bad sectors, which eventually leads to the file system getting hosed, and I have to reformat and reload that drive. With several hundred gigabytes on a drive-set, that can take a long time, maybe a week of continuous copying. I now have a few dozen of these drives, and I'm expecting more failures. As you might have guessed, I'm not buying any more!

The other failures are memory. I've found that memory deteriorates with age, and eventually you start to get little memory errors. This can crash a process (that's what's been happening to Acola, with the news-gathering and to Kitty) or it can crash the whole server. Either way, the answer is to A) replace the memory and B) give the new memory a thorough test before putting the server back into action.

Most of my servers are working fine, out of the 60 or so, there's not usually more than a few giving trouble at any one time. But obviously, I want them all to be working; a server that isn't working, is just taking up space. Worse - if I need to constantly babysit these servers, how can I sleep easy? I need servers that will run for *months* at a time without any intervention. Most of my servers are like that, it's just these news machines right now.

I've definitively moved on to Pentium 4. I bought a motherboard for checking out, found power supplies that have the vital extra cable and fit in the small cases (1U, 1.75 inch high) I use, found CPU fans that fit in those small cases. I need a motherboard that has Lan and video on-board, because I can only put one expansion card in (because of the smallness of the case). I wanted a board that could handle 533 MHz chips, because that's the way things are going now. I found the Gigabyte 8IGML-T, it looked good. I bought one, made up a computer, it worked. I ran it for a month, and it was good. So I went to buy a couple more, and guess what? I couldn't get them any more - all my usual suppliers told me "a few weeks", which means they can't actually get them. Grrrr!

So I did some more research, and I found the AOpen MX46-533V, which seemed to have the same features, plus it has ATA133 on the motherboard, which means I won't have to use an expansion card. Will that still be around in a few months? I don't know. Hey, you folks who make motherboards - I do understand that you need to keep making better ones, but could you make the same old ones too for a couple of years? I don't want to have every single computer based on a different board, please?

So, my plan is, Linda comes back to Valkyrie Central (Linda stopped working as soon as I shipped her out). Also Kitty (memory problem) and Sarah (problems with drives, the 160 Maxtors again). News2 will come back (works fine, but only has 72 gb, which isn't anywhere like enough today). I'll replace them with four Pentium 4 servers, in 1U cases. I'll probably use the 250gb Maxtors. Are those any good? I don't know. There's only one way to find out, though.

So, I bought a couple of the MX46-533V boards, and four memory sticks, and I built up the computers, then tested the emory sticks. Two of those memory sticks were hopelessly bad, one at a very occasional fault, and one was OK. My god! Don't they test this stuff?

So I'm changing the brand of memory I'm buying, maybe that will help. I'm going to try "Crucial" memory, they claim that they test every stick that they sell. And they claim that what I've been buying is the rejects. Well, it certainly feels like some of them were pulled out of the waste bin.

I'm also going to try the MX4GER motherboard. That has an Intel chipset, and I've been told that they are more reliable than the Via chipset that goes in the MX46-533V.

Reliability. I've heard of it.

Cameras

The Newsgroups

We're back to four Newsthumbs servers. Actually, that means a lot more than four, because each one has a couple of backup servers.

Spams of the Month

I don't make these up. These are actual spams sent to me, which just strike me as funny. I don't include their contact details - go find your own spammers!

New! Virus of the Month. Each month, I get sent hundreds of viruses. I don't know which ones they are, I've stopped bothering to identify them. So I don't know what they might do to a Windows computer - but I do know that it's safe if you don't open the attachements.

Occasionally, there can be something amusing about the virus, and I'll summarise those here.

Eat and Be Thin or the Holidays

Hmm, I get to choose one or the other?

YOU WILL BE MORE ATTRACTIVE THAN YOU EVER HAVE!

Learn English Now! Ask Me How!

A Bear Under Every Tree!

A bare what? Oh. Oh, that sort of bear.

You can grow your own money tree

Right, I knew that. I'll just trade my cow for your five beans ...

Sleep With An Angel Once... You'll Never Sleep Alone Again

I have a feeling that angels aren't allowed to do that.

Do not show ugly website to people! Make cool website.

Do not show atrocious grammar to people. Make good grammar.

a better,unique way to make pasta this holiday

Valkyrie, your Kiev Chicken is ready

Oh yum yum, with loads of butter, I hope?

Unique locking lid makes cooking a snap

Can I cook Kiev Chicken in it?

Is your dog tired?

Oh yes. In fact he's ... DOG TIRED!!!

Virus of the month

This file is copyright 2000

So why are you sending it to everyone via your virus?

Sponsorships

We currently have several running; Nicole Bass, Andrulla Blanchette, Sheila Burgess, Christine Envall, Marilyn Perret, Julia Santana, Peggy Schoolcraft, Larisa Hakobyan.

We're also sponsoring individual events, and funding athletes to go to events with grant dollars.

We're also doing free hosting and free bandwidth for many of our sponsored women. Bandwidth can mount up to a large bill when you're running a popular web site.

And we've sponsored Heather Foster, Kara Bohigian, Priscilla Ribic, KerryAnn Allen, Linda Cusmano and Jodi Miller.

Interview

BUFFALO'S MELANIE GRANADA ADDS RIPE MUSCLE INCHES AT AGE 51

By Wessex Man

Buffalo, New York -- After losing about 100 pounds in weight in her late 40s Melanie Granada is emerging as one of the more spectactular mature female bodybuilders in the United States. She's a punchy outdoor lady, unmarried, who is attracting attention which looks well-deserved. She's a light-weight 122-125 pounder in contest condition, but her biceps are more and more eye-catching.

"At age 51 I do have mature muscle memory so I have plenty of time to get better. I have a lot of health problems that I have to fight all the time, a liver problem and a thyroid problem, but I keep plugging," she told me in an interview. "It takes me longer but that's still an incentive to work harder and workthruit." (Note the "workthruit" abbreviation. This is part of Melanie's e-mail address WORKTHRUIT@aol.com).

Melanie, who is 5' 4" tall, is a muscular street light mechanic In Buffalo, near Niagara Falls, who took up bodybuilding only five years ago. She almost died from a bleeding ulcer in 1996. Melanie at that time was hugely overweight but the following year she found her way into a Gold's Gym and started working under trainer Julie Gregoire.

"I found a trainer who was my motivator and mentor, so it began. After a couple of years and 100 pounds in weight loss, I started feeling better about myself and the self-assurance started emerging. So did the compliments about my weight loss and how different I looked and acted. Still the same me but only more confident."

Since developing her muscular profile Melanie has won a string of bodybuilding awards. She's placed well since 1999 in such contests as the Mr/Ms Buffalo and the Can-Am. Melanie came first in her classes in the Northern States Super Natural in the current year.

"I hope to be ready to compete again by March 2003. I hope to do the Northern States Super Natural again, still looking for the overall title."

"I'm always striving to add more muscle," she adds. "My legs need to grow into the loose skin from so much weight loss. That will take a few more years, but my priorities are to stay symmetrical and balanced. I don't feel that I've reached my maximum size or definition yet. You can always get better and grow, through persistence and patience...."

"My career helps my training. I'm a construction worker. I put in new residential street lights. We pull the wire, dig the trenches and put up the poles and light fixtures. So I am working my body all the time. I get tired sometimes but I never quit training. A few breaks here and there but that's it."

I asked Melanie about the reaction of ordinary people to her muscled physique in public places such as beaches, shops and crowded streets.

"It's kind of cool. I get a lot of comments on my big guns (biceps), and comments on the street about finally seeing a woman in construction who looks the part....I havn't gotten any negative feedback, only from women who don't know any better. All in all the response has been positive. I sure get a lot more guys talking to me these days."

We discussed how much weight she's training with. "Bench press 140 pounds ... but havn't checked that one out in a long while. Probably more by now. That was last year. In the squat I've done 220, but I never do just one rep, and I have worn out discs in my lower back so I don't push it."

"Leg press 350. I use 50 pound dumb-bells for my chest press, usually 8-10 reps. I curl biceps with a 55 pound straight bar. Again for reps, not just one rep."

"Those weights are nothing compared to other bodybuilders, but it's just fine for me."

Melanie also looked at why bodybuilding is such a new sport for women. "Only one in 1,000 women can actually do the bodybuilding thing. It takes discipline and dedication, along with a lot of sacrifice.....Women are so afraid to put on muscle. Most of them never will. Most will tone beautifully but not bulk up. Only the obsessed dedicated ones will, and that is still not acceptable in all parts of the world. It's the old mindset that women should stay home and make babies and take care of their man. NOT for me."

The Clubhouse

New Message Board

• Shannon Logan

In the Chatroom

The Message Board statistics got a bit messed up, see under Servers for why.

Chatter of the month

alphacentaurian and boomer are way ahead of the others.

On the Message Boards

This month, we had 4215 posts to the boards, I think that's a record.

Back Page

Fun with fraudsters

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

At the end of October 2002, there were about 603,000 pictures (33 gigabytes), 81 gigabytes of video, 6600 text files (mostly stories) and a total of about 114 gigabytes.

To the Magic Carpet