Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - March 2003
A hard man is good to beat
The snowdrops are in full flood, and a few crocuses are starting to sing. The daffodils are just a promise for the future
Galleries added this month.
Stories added this month.
Movies added this month.
The email service is free to members. And there is no advertising
You'll have noticed various new web sites appearing in the female muscle area. And you might have noticed a certain family resemblance between them. As if they were made using the same cookie cutter.
What's happening, is that some of the members of this web site have decided (with some help and encouragement from me) to set up their own web sites. In some cases, this is being done by the women in whose name the site runs (for example, Nicole Bass, Andrulla Blanchette, Amanda Dunbar, Peggy Schoolcraft). In other cases it's being done by guys like Boomer, Fistman, Kandor, Socrates and Tre. Here's a list of sites that I host on my server.
In all those cases, I'm providing the hosting and the bandwidth, plus the security (I see about 1000 attacks per week on my servers, and that's without the ones I don't even bother to log, which would be whole lot more). In some of these sites, I provide the "Valkyrie Instant Web Site" software, which makes it easy for even a "Computer Dummy" to set up and maintain a web site (you don't need to know HTML, you don't need a webmaster), and that's the reason for the cookie cutter similarity in appearance. In some cases, I trade these services for a supply of pictures of the woman whose web site it is, so she gets an income out of her web site and zero costs, and I get pictures for my web site members. In other cases, there's a revenue sharing agreement. Everyone gains.
The offer is still open (and there's more sites in the pipeline). So if you're interested in putting up a web site to help you put bread on the table, and you think that you can supply the content, but the details of making a site has left you reluctant to go to the trouble, email me and maybe we can get something going. I'm not going to tell you that there's huge amounts of money to be made at no effort; you will have to take time to create pictures, which means organising photo shoots and/or going to events, and the number of people who join that web site will depend on how good people think it is. But I can offer to do the hosting, and the "Valkyrie Instant Web Site" software, for zero up-front costs.
Imagine that you can't use your credit card; not because it's maxed out, but because your government has forbidden you to use it.
Imagine that you go to the bank to get some of the money that you have on deposit there, and they tell you "No, you can't have your money back just now, try again later".
Imagine that you no longer know what money is worth, or even if it is actually worth anything at all.
This is the situation faced by our friends in Latin America. In Venezuela, the government has passed a new law, telling their citizens that they cannot buy anything outside the country. They cannot pay in cash, check, money order or credit card.
You can download a short video explaining this situation.
What can you do about it? Nothing. But try to make sure that *your* government doesn't screw up so badly as to get you into this awful situation.
I built three more servers like Alice, Belle and Carol - these are Delia, Edina and Fluff. One will replace Belle, one will replace Joyce, who has been suffering from occasional hangs, and then needs me to cycle power several times to get her back up, and the third one is because out of every few computers I install, one stops working fairly soon. Also, Tania has proven to be reliable enough for me to take her up to Watford.
I also acquired some remote power cyclers. The ones that I currently use work fine, but they take up a lot of space in my cabinet, and get in the way when I need to get at things. These new ones mount vertically, so they'll be completely out of the way. I got them second hand from an ISP that went out of business. The poor economic situation means trouble all round, but every cloud has a silver lining.
When I unplugged each server to plug it into the new power cycler, Daffy wouldn't come back up again. It turned out to be a dead power supply. That's now at Chesham, waiting to be taken back to Watford. The problem with Belle turned out to be a dead 250 gb drive; replacing that meant that Belle is also ready for taking back to Watford.
A couple of days after the trip to Watford, Carol died. Carol was the front-line Newsthumbs server. So I swapped Alice in to take over. But the swap-over was made a lot more difficult, because Sadie chose that exact moment to die, too. And Sadie is my terminal server; I usually have a couple of dozen virtual terminals open to various computers, and without Sadie, I was a bit stuck. That also turned out to be a dead power supply, so Sadie's back in action, but I've added two new terminal servers, Lizzy and Talia. Lizzy is a refugee from Watford, and Talia is another computer like Sadie, but has been out of action for several months, because I didn't know what the problem was. Inspired by Daffy and Sadie, I tried replacing the power supply, and that worked. Heh. At a cost of maybe $15, the computer's back in action.
The NNTP (news) software that I've been using is Dnews. It's excellent software, but it has a licensing scheme that means that although I've purchased three licenses, I have a problem every time I want to take it off one computer and put it on another. So I spent some time learning how to install the free software innd, which seems to be excellent, there's no licence needed, but learning how to install it wasn't easy.
I've ordered another DSL line. I currently have two sites, Watford and Chesham. At Watford, I have a 100 megabit line, that's equivalent to two T3's, which is why the site runs fast. But at Chesham, I only have a 2 megabit line, so I only put small stuff there. I also do backups across that line, from Watford to Chesham.
Recently, the volume of news has grown so much, that most days I see over 100,000 pictures. One day I had 150,000. This means that the daily backup is taking around 24 hours, sometimes more! Obviously, if it takes more than 24 hours on a regular basis, I'll gradually fall behind in the backups.
I have a 0.5 megabit DSL, and I've been using that for over a year to help with the backups. Now I've decided it's time to upgrade that to 2 megabit, so I've put in the order for it. It's really cheap bandwidth, but A) it's not as reliable as my beautiful 2mbit "Megastream", and B) that 2 mbit is *inbound*, so I can't use it for running a web server from. But inbound is exactly what I need for the backups.
This higher volume of newsthumbs, also means that servers get filled up faster. Where a server used to take six months to get filled, now it's more like three. So, it's looking like every three months now, the current news server will become the next "older news server", and a new server will take it's place as the current news server. This shouldn't have much impact on surfers, but if it suddenly looks like all the last few months news have disappeared, now you know. It hasn't gone, it's just on an "Older news server". You can always find stuff via the Newsthumbs Magic Carpet
The Mavica that Boomer bought and send to Tex, is now in Chesham. I'll find a use for it!
I'm getting 100,000 pictures per day (or more) on a lot of days, now. More to look at!
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.
Get Paid to drive your own car
Somewhere, someone is going to fall for this scam, whatever it is.
I am Mrs. Jumobi Abiola, a God fearing person in sorrow, one of the widows of late M.K.O Abiola, Nigeria's foremost politician, businessman and philantropist. I sincerely need your assistance, but I want you to bear in mind that this has to be strictly confidential. I sincerely need your assistance to take custodian of the sum of Eighteen Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars (U.S$18.5m). This money was given to me by my late husband, Chief M.K.O.Abiola] for safekeeping after the Presidential Election campaign. After his death in 1998, there was confusion in the entire Abiola family as regards sharing of the family assets and moreso, there is envy and jealousy as it was obvious that I was my husband's favourite wife, while he was alive. As soon as he passed away, coupled with the fact that, what i have and what is due to me might be taking away from me by greedy family relations whose reasons would be both!
ering on family tradition and ethics, I decided to deposit the money with a security company Lome, Togo in West Africa, with the help of my late husband's friend (Col. Adamu Bello rtd.) who was a member of the Provisional Ruling Council (PRC) of the government in power then. I am prepared to compensate you with 15% of the total sum after the successful completion of the transaction.
My son, Bimbola Abiola will be in charge of this transaction; he stays far away from the family Villa. He will be giving you more information as regards these transaction. He is my only son and we share secrets.
Please respond as soon as you get this mail and please it is important that you send your private phone and fax numbers to me so that i can forward them to the security company after an attorney must have change and legalize all the papers to your name if you are willing to assist me.
The Director of the security company has assured me that the funds will get to you in your country through Diplomatic Courier services. They can deliver to you in America, Europe, Asia and far East. He assured me that the consignment can be deliver to your door step. As soon as the consignment gets to them, they will give you a call.
As soon as you assured me of your willingness to assist me,with the information i requested of you,my son will forward you all the necessary papers that will empower you to claim this consignment on myhalf.i.e:1. Power of attorney, 2. Certificate of deposit, 3. Change of Ownership certificate to your name .
I intends investing a larger percentage of this funds into a profitable business venture with you as a partner if this funds gets into your costudy in the next couple of days. Please, i will be needing your scan international passport as a security to my funds. My attorney has advised i should have it from you. I would not want you to disappiont me please for God's sake.
God will always be there for you at your time of need.
Thanks and God Bless.
Mrs.Jumobi Abiola.
Don't read it as an offer of money, read it as literature. I think a lot of work goes into
wording these letters, and some of them are worth reading.
Feeling Sluggish? Try the patch!
The cabbage patch?
Wishing ii egsb x tkrd
And a Merry Egsb Tkrd to you too.
Space Shuttle Columbia Official U.S. Dollar!
Sigh. An even more horrible thought is, someone might actually buy from this spam.
PLEASE READ IMMEDIATELY - VERY IMPORTANT
Not a virus, actually. A chain email. See below.
Hello,
Looking for some Hardcore mind boggling action ?
Install the attached browser software and browse
across millions of paid hardcore sex sites for free.
Using the software you can safely and easily browse
across most of the hardcore XXX paid sites across the
internet for free. Using it you can also clean all
traces of your web browsing from your computer.
Note:The attached browser software is made exclusivley
for demo only. You can use the software for a limited
time of 35 days after which you have to register it
at our official website for its furthur use.
Regards,
Admin.
And what is enclosed is W32/Yaha.k@MM virus. The same virus is send to me quite frequently, there's a variety of wonderful offers in the accompanying email.
At least once per week, someone sends me a chain email. I always write back and ask to be tken off their list of people to send chain emails to. If they argue about this, I explain why the particular chain email they just sent is harmful, and why they should not have sent it.
There's one going round which purports to be a petition against the possible war in Iraq. Apparently, the UN has asked for as many people as possible to sign it.
Well. What reached me, was a list of names, and their locations (city, country). How convincing would you find it, if someone sent you a list of a million names and locations, and claimed that "they've all signed it"? Not in the slightest, right? I mean, I could spend five minutes writing a program that would take another five minutes to generate a million names and locations. So, wrote back my usual email, asking to be taken off the sender's list for sending chain emails to.
The reply was in terms of "but this is such a worthy cause". So I answered, and my answer was, basically, "That's not the point, the point is that this is a hoax". I went to the UN web site, and this hoax was specifically mentioned. The way the UN works, they *cannot* listen to individuals, they can *only* listen to governments. If you want something from the UN, you *have* to ask your government to ask for it.
What's the damage? Well, for a start, people who genuinely have an opinion to express about a possible war, think that they've expressed it. And they haven't expressed it to anyone who can make a difference. What they should do, of course, is write (on paper, not email) to their local politician. Member of Parliament, Congress delegate, whatever. The effect of that chain email, is actually to stifle dissent to a war, by chanelling that dissent into a form that will never be heard.
There's another one going around, which tells you that the sender might have sent you a virus, and tells you to look for a file called jdbgmgr.exe and to delete it. And, of course, to tell all your friends. Other versions of this chain email name other files that are part of your Windows system.
I would guess that a great many people would assume that this email is true, and go ahead and do what it says. The damage, of course, is that you just deleted part of your Windows operating system. And any peculiarities that occur from now on, you'll probably put down to "the aftereffects of the virus I just got rid of", whereas actually, your system isn't working right because you just deleted part of Windows. The whole email is a hoax
Here's Diana the Valkyrie's Four Rules about chain emails.
That's my Four Rules about chain emails. Tell all your friends :-)
We currently have several running; Nicole Bass, Andrulla Blanchette, Sheila Burgess, Christine Envall, Marilyn Perret, Peggy Schoolcraft, Larisa Hakobyan, Steph Parks.
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.
New Message Board
Member | Posts |
| alphacentaurian | 5033 |
| lament2syn | 4082 |
| mikeac | 3913 |
| pamela69 | 3548 |
| Diana the Valkyrie | 3271 |
| boomer444 | 3259 |
| tre1313 | 3143 |
| gman292 | 3004 |
| GrappleJack | 2805 |
| mit19237 | 2405 |
| jabb6328 | 2092 |
| rainer0000 | 2043 |
| amzfan1 | 2028 |
| TomNine | 1732 |
| manc1973 | 1703 |
| hiram2000 | 1632 |
| buffy18976 | 1569 |
| JohnDavis | 1546 |
| amanda333 | 1532 |
| ginny2442 | 1403 |
alphacentaurian, TKO and mikeac are ahead of the others.
This month, we had 4104 posts to the boards.
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| Politics and Economics is, of course, discussing the possible future war against Iraq, also the Death Penalty for minors. Female bodybuilders got into a big discussion about the design of web sites. | I edged out Steve333 by a very short margin. |
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 | Most read Board of the month | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Fistman's Photos, followed by Female bodybuilders | TomNine got knocked out of his usual first place by the TwoPossums TV and pictures board. |
I bet you always wanted to know what causes hiccups
I checked the site statistics that Sandra counts up each night.
At the end of February 2003, there were about 609,000 pictures (33 gigabytes), 86 gigabytes of video, 6700 text files (mostly stories) and a total of about 120 gigabytes.