The Ramblings of an Incoherent Administrator

insanity and I are heading to visit my Family in VA in a few hours. We will have laptops if anything goes wrong, but if the site is just running a bit slow, please bare with us. Chances are its doing the backups and such and will clear up in a bit. We will be near the Lynchburg (specifically Blue Ridge) area of Virginia. Anyone got any suggestions on things to do or see?

This is a post by email test

We are not winning this election right now, in fact, we are way far behind. We really need to get out the vote. Please don't spam, but let everyone you know here know that if they want my voice on the board that they need to get out and vote.

http://community.livejournal.com/vote_squeaky/1289.html

If you are interested in my candidacy for the LiveJournal Advisory Board, please visit the above link.

I have decided to nominate myself for the LJ Advisory board. As we do run the GPL version of the LJ Source code here, I feel that it would be in InsaneJournal's and every other "LJ Clone" out there's best interest to have our voice on the panel.

If you agree with me and want to get my name on the ballot. Go here and support me if you feel that I deserve to be on the ballot for this board.

If I actually do manage to get nominated I will post something to announcements

Edit:
It appears that I already have the 100 comments necessary for nomination, but please keep commenting your support (only once per user please). That way at the very least LJ will see that it's users also want support for sites outside of LJ that use it's codebase. And that the FOSS (Free Open Source Software) movement is still alive and well!

Okay,

We are very close to picking a new hosting provider. One is considerably more expensive than the other, but what they are offering us is 100% top notch service. The problem is that if we choose them we will not be able to keep our paid accounts the same price. We will raise them to $20/6mo or $35/year. If we pick the other provider, which is not as well known, and isn't offering us the same level of service we will not have to raise prices at all.

Please fill out this poll on what you all would want. Would you be willing to pay more for a more reliable InsaneJournal. Granted the cheaper option may never go down, but we will defiantly have more room to grow with the more expensive option.

Edit: I do want to note that once we get settled in and the paid accounts are coming in at a decent pace then we will consider lowering the prices back to a reasonable level.

Please spread word of this poll around as I want to get as many answers as possible. Also, when you do spread word of it, please don't encourage anyone to vote any particular way as I really do want honest answers.

Poll #1421 New Hosting Questions
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

What hosting option should I pick

Here is a quick and dirty version of what happened. I will post a detailed account to annoucements later. I am posting this here for rumor control.

Monday
- Called host inquiring about how to cancel servers under contract (databases were still under contract web servers were not). Was informed by faxing in a form I could cancel the contract. I was led to believe that I would be able to cancel servers separately at a later date.
- I faxed the form to get the ball rolling.

Tuesday
- Woke up to multiple text messages and email stating site was down. Logged into to hosting control panel to see both servers deleted.
- Called support to try to end cancelation, they informed me that only billing can handle that and billing is only open M-F 9-5
- Called billing and was told that the forms I sent in were for server termination and they did just that without emailing or calling me. I gave them quite a piece of my mind, but was told that they did nothing wrong. Even though their rep gave me bad info.
- Eventually got ahold of support and managed to get them to save my hard drives from the old servers.
- Had to order new database servers

Wednesday
- New database servers were finally ready
- After wrangling with support for about 4 hours I got the old drives in the new servers
- Got servers up and cleaned the databases and made backups of them immediatly
- Brought site up
- Fixed error with 1 webserver causing issues

I made the donation to Safe Harbor today, and also submitted the paperwork to have my work match the donation. They sounded thrilled to have this money.

Also they seem to be doing really well. The community really came together for them and now they have a temporary clinic back open.

You can find more information about them as well as make your own donation to them at http://safeharbor.jupiterdaily.com

http://safeharbor.jupiterdaily.com/

Safe harbor animal rescue in Jupiter, Florida caught on fire in the early hours this morning. They are in desperate need of donations, foster homes, and adoptions. Right now all of their animals are in cages in the parking lot.

If you are in South Florida and have room for an animal, even just a temporary home, I urge you to head to the rescue and do what you can. If you have money or a skilled trade to donate, please contact them and let them no you are willing to help.

Safe Harbor is a non profit, no kill shelter, the only no kill shelter in the area that I am aware of, so any animals that they cannot find homes for will go to a kill shelter and from there who knows what will happen.

http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/dorktower/archive.asp?nextform=viewcomic&id=1312

That's freaking sweet!

This is one for wrestling fans. I need to come up with a name for the new IJ server. I always name my server after silly wrestling gimmicks. Here are examples of server names that I have had

shockmaster
blazer (i.e. "The Blue Blazer" aka Owen Hart)
warrior (i.e. "The Ultimate Warrior)
chyna

Edit: I've been thinking all day, and bossman is what stuck in my head. So it has been dubbed!

Okay, just so everyone knows what happened and what is going to happen. Yesterday I tried to bring the old IJ server up as a second webserver to help the load. There were some problems with libraries causing a lot of things to break. So I rolled the change back, unfortunately I had to clear out some S1 style customizations so some of your journals may look funny. If you go back to the customize page you should be able to reset all of your style options.

Today I just ordered a new server to move IJ to. This one has about 4x the horsepower are the current one, so it will help alleviate the load. We are going to be moving the site to the newer bigger server asap. We don't forsee any issues, but we do recommend that you backup any icons and keep note of any S1 customizations.

I want to thank EVERYONE for coming over here and having patience with our growing pains. If you talk to anyone who came over in the June/July migration, they will tell you that we had the same growing pains, but we were able to move to a bigger server and weather the storm.

I've gotten an email with someone showing evidence that the site is having loading issues. Problem is I can't duplicate anyh of them or find any other problems or evidence of problems. Anyone else seeing the site timing out, and if so when?

YARRR!

Hey I am going to be in Atlanta all next week and I was wondering if anyone knows of any place to get a good meal. There has got to be at least 1 or 2 of you on my f-list that live in or around there.

Specifically I'm looking for local Atlanta places not generic national type chain places. Also one thing specificly I need to find is a good place to get some really spicy buffalo wings.

Today is one of our most active volunteer's birthday. Everyone please wish surreal a happy birthday today!

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/145027.shtml?5day?large#contents

For those of you that don't know. I live in West Palm Beach, FL. Don't worry though the server InsaneJournal runs on lives far far away from hurricanes and other coastal issues.

Check out this post by insanity (my wonderful wife). She wants to see all of your Tweak icons.