Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - March 2005
A hard man is good to beat
There's been some snow; February is the coldest month. But the snowdrops are flourishing, the crocuses are out, and the daffodils are budding. You can see my garden; that's a live image, so if it's black, that means it's night-time in England.
That's the view from my window. If you refresh it a few times, you'll see the trees waving in the wind, unless there's no wind. If you're lucky, you'll see birds pecking on the grass; pigeons usually, some blackbirds. If you're a bit more lucky, you'll see ducks in the duckpond, squirrels or the black-and-white cat who seems to own the garden. If you're *really* lucky, you'll see rabbits, foxes or mountjack deer. If you're not lucky, then it's night time in England, and you'll see nothing whatsoever.
As I write this, I can see three pigeons strolling around.
Galleries added this month.
Stories added this month.
Nothing new
Movies added this month.
Running smoothly
More on the earth leakage issue. I decided that the scalable solution is to use isolating transformers.
I divide the servers up into groups that use ten or so amps, that's 2.4 kilowatts. That's because in the UK, the standard wiring is designed for 13 amps, and so are the plugs, fuses and so on. So, I have UPSes that handle 13 amps, and those fan out to the actual computers. What I'm doing now, is putting a 13 amp isolating transformer between the UPS and the mains power supply. This means that the mains power supply can't see any earth leakage, the isolating transformers isolate it.
Isolating transformers of this size (they weigh about 20 kilograms) are expensive, about £300 each. So I've been watching Ebay, because they're just a hunk of iron and copper, and a used one is just as good as a new one. Mid-February, I bid for one, and the vendor turned out to have several, so I bought half a dozen at £50 each. I think the earth leakage problem is now solved for the next few years.
Hoody keeps crashing. Hoody isn't actually in use, it's one of the standby spares at Watford. So, no big problem.
A bit worse, though - Fleur crashed and died. Fleur is one of the news digester servers, so is actually active. But I have these twinned; each server has a backup, running in parallel. Fleur is one of the backups, so all I needed to do, was configure one of the standby spares to take over from Fleur.
The second in this series, so it's probably worth explaining why I'm writing it.
In this newsletter, I've been doing regular articles on "Understanding the internet", and my series "The Server Farm", all about life down on the farm. This series addresses another need that I see - the need to understand people a bit better than we already do.
People are complicated, and we're all different. In writing my "Wendy" stories, I've looked at how humans might appear to someone who isn't one, and I can add "weird" to the list. We do things like lie to ourselves, which you might have thought was impossible - but we do it. And we don't come with a manual, which is one of Wendy's problems - she was just dropped on us, and has to find out how we work by observation. Me too. No-one gave me a manual. I just got dumped into this life, and had to figure out for myself how to work it. Of course, parents do what they can, but I'd guess that everyone's mother tells her kids to say "please" and "thank you".
Today, I got an email I very often get - someone forgot their password. So the email said "Forgot password", and that was it. No "I'm sorry to bother you but", and no "Could you please". And I didn't like it. Sure, I answered the question, but I didn't like it. And I bet you wouldn't either.
So, what's the point of these extra words "sorry", "excuse me", "please" and "thank you"? They are an acknowledgement of my existence. They say "I recognise that you probably have more fun things to do that handle my little problem, but ... " And the effect of these words is out of all proportion to the cost. It costs very little to say "please", but the effect can be that the person you're asking, might make some extra effort, even a small one, that leads to you being more likely to get what you want.
Now, isn't that worth having? And isn't that what your Momma told you?
The Verizon problem is fixed for me. I found a way to tell Verizon that they should receive emails from me, and they agreed. If anyone else has the problem of not being able to send email to Verizon customers, email me and I'll tell you how to fix it.
Nothing new. Boomer bought a new lens for his Canon camera, only to find that the particular model he has, takes a different sort of lens to the one that all other Canons take. Oops.
I don't make these up, although the comments on the spams are mine, of course. 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!
By the way, if you're using StoneColdMail
(which is free to web site members) then you won't see most of these spams, they'll be delivered
into your "Spam" folder.
Get Paid for what you think
I think you should stop sending me spam.
This mail will definitely be coming to you as a surprise, but i must
crave your indulgence to introduce myself to you.
I am Miss Marah sadija, former mistress to the son (Qusay) of the
Iraqi former leader, Saddam Hussein.
I am an Ethiopian, by birth and i am presently in a refugee camp in
Zimbabwe, where the living conditions are unbearable.
I do not wish to take your time with a lenghty mail, but i have to
put this proposal to you so that you can assist me.
While i was still in contact with Qusay,he made a deposit in my
name to a security firm in Spain, which has an affiliate branch in
Amsterdam.
This deposit was made in my name and the secret code and necessary
documents are presently in the possession of an attorney, presently in
London.
This deposit was made in the form of a consigment and the content is
a considerable amount of money in United state dollars which i cannot
disclose to you for security purposes, until you have confirmed your
willingness to assist me.
I would be pleased and grateful to you if you could assist me in
collecting this consignment on my behalf from the security firm in
Spain,upon which i will be offering you a percentage for your efforts.
The attorney in London, will arrange an authority to release and pay
in your name which you will tender to the security firm coupled with
all necessary documents that will back up your claims in collecting
this consignment on my behalf.
I have to stop here now as your response will determine our
subsequent corresspondence. Please feel free to dis-regard this
proposal if it is not in line with your principles.
Allah bless you,
Marah Sadija.
I reproduce this one in full because it's such a fine specimen of the genre.
This may be our last attempt to contact you,
I can but hope.
This company is going to explode.
Everybody duck!
Claim your Complimentary Vacuum
Vacuum is the absence of matter, and there's as much free vacuum as anyone would want.
We've sponsored lots of the women; Nicole Bass, Andrulla Blanchette, Sheila Burgess, Christine Envall, Marilyn Perret, Peggy Schoolcraft, Larisa Hakobyan, Steph Parks.
We're also sponsoring individual events such as the Femsport Valkyrie Festival, and the New York Muscle Club, 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. Also Anita Ramsey and Rhonda Dethlefs.
Member | Posts |
| tre1313 | 3794 |
| madman3579 | 3582 |
| boomerflex | 3221 |
| TomNine | 2771 |
| hiram2000 | 2254 |
| buffy18976 | 2156 |
| Diana the Valkyrie | 1733 |
| Jabber | 1723 |
| GrappleJack | 1665 |
| shad349 | 1566 |
| jcc115 | 1356 |
| Jerroll | 1299 |
| trjo2075 | 1226 |
| micha74 | 1207 |
| gaily304 | 1128 |
| 0l0l0l0 | 1053 |
| mit19237 | 990 |
| rainer0000 | 885 |
| fistman | 832 |
| coachrandy | 741 |
Tre is still ahead of Madman.
This month we had 3373 posts to the boards.
A new message board, LA Melanie's Women and Couples Discussing Real Contacts, it's about wrestling.
Most posted Board of the month | Poster of the month | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Boomer's sports has dropped back below politics; those two are by far the most popular. | Zig, boomer and Steve are still the Titanic Three, now joined by BOLTOFLOVE. |
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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| It's all about FBBs and pictures. | The Grinch didn't get the stats! |
It seems like other folks use hamster-powered computers, too.
Next thing, we need to teach hamsters to dance
If you want to get your very own realhamster, you can order one here
I checked the site statistics that Sandra counts up each night.
At the end of February 2005, there were about 740,000 pictures (48 gigabytes), 158 gigabytes of video, 9000 text files (mostly stories) and a total of about 207 gigabytes. There's over 100 million pictures altogether in Newsthumbs. How many web sites do you know that have 100 million pictures?
