If I keep saying any minute now, I will be correct eventually.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day!   

We are just finishing up the conversion and putting a little lipstick on the pig. It will be worth giving us a little time to make sure the basic functionalities are working well and that performance is acceptable before opening the floodgates, or trickle gates as the case may be. Either way for better or worse the time is near.

The guy with his hands in the rack is Arcanis.

I actually have the domain pcgamesforum.com and had it forwarded to the site. A crafty way of getting the traffic from those urls without attracting the attention of the webfilters.

I can feel the pressure building. It could happen any moment now.......

Dear God, what have you people done?  First GG goes, then OO, then GT goes unstable... now my favorite hockey blog is off the map with a '403 Forbidden' for the last 48 hours!

Is the whole Internet unstable now?  Did somebody reverse the polarity on the tachyon generator?  WHAT IS GOING ON?

When was GT unstable? Been rock solid for me in recent memory.

Well the forums are functioning again now. We will probably not put them back online until we upgrade phpbb. Could be a fathers day present. I may end up spending a chunk of the day playing GTA4 or Silent Hunter IV.

Rip

Someone from the Powers That Be at OO should have the time to make update posts in the forums.  As has been pointed out many times - many times - many times in this thread simple communications can calm people down very easily.  I can understand that Rip might not have the time to post here, but I'm assuming Rip has time to e-mail someone from OO.  I have no clue who is or isn't doing what, but the communications break down is hard to comprehend. 

I'm also not sure what the secrecy is all about regarding the mystery person who will be taking on a new leadership role at OO.  Are the names hidden to protect the innocent?  Or just to keep the bitching away? 

But I don't e-mail them very often. Our main way of communicating was a forum on OO just for us. I don't send e-mail updates to hardly anyone. I verbally communicate with my staff and direct them to update customers. Most of them have had zero knowledge of OO. I spend all of time in meetings, on the road, or doing things that get billed. What is needed is a communicator directly involved in my operations that can find out things on there own and communicate with my staff, that understands the technology and work that goes on behind the scenes. I haven't named the person because i think it more appropriate for them to make the announcement etc. the person is a gamingtrend member though. Plus it is fun seeing if anyone will figure it out.

This person will really be about the future of OO not so much about getting us back up. That is very near already.

Rip

At first I was upset but supportive.  Then I was sad but patient.  Now, I am all WTF? and SRSLY!

I don't mean to be unappreciative of all the hard work put into this but someone at least update the placeholder page FFS; it's been more than a month.

Sorry to disrupt the peaceful vibe going on in this thread now.  Rant done.

I don't blame you.  This thread is way off topic of late and an update from Gedd & company would be appreciated, since last we heard was about what was hoped to be accomplished last weekend.  Not sure why Rip didn't say anything about what is up as he's posted a few times this week.

maybe because there was no news?

I'd argue that is news.  Look, one of the complaints has been a lack of communication.  Over a week ago we got an update that made some specific references.  If they'd showed up Monday with a post and said "sorry, we didn't get as much done as we wanted" no one would be upset. 

In other words, people just want to know things are moving forward.

By the way, thanks Rip for the update today. 

Except hitting forums and making such announcements takes more time than most realize, and I am already spending time working on this stuff that I probably should be using doing stuff I can bill $100/hr for. That is why I am trying to offload it to others. Keeping things running as far as network and hardware are not a substantial additional burden to me, but configuring servers and making public relations communications are. I simply lack the time.

Sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like I expected you to be doing the updates.  I think Gedd & the staff need to be doing updates. 

And, I don't think it requires visiting multiple forums.  Other than changing the temp page once in a while, an announcement here or Popehat is probably sufficient (someone will mention it on the other board).  So, that doesn't seem like a big issue to me.

Don't be sorry. I want to hear what people actually think. The problem is that gedd and the guys don't know what is going on a lot of the time and have had practically no access or knowledge of my internal network. Sometimes I don't know what is getting done for some time when I ask someone on my staff to do something "if they have time" which is how most of this stuff is qualified. I may not even see or speak to some of them for days. That is the hope for the new admin chief is to give him a much greater level of access into my network and able to contact my staff via a number of methods. If that doesn't work well I may try to put some of my staff members on the team directly. Although I am hesitant to do that as I can't allow it to detract from the work that feeds us.

Anyway much stuff is back online and I am just fighting some php/mysql errors, as soon as that is overcome gedd will be working some magic to allow us to open the doors back up. We will then move into the future planning to prevent downtime and see if we can do any new and cool stuff that may bring in new blood and broaden our appeal.

The other staff members have little to bear in blame for the situation though. they have not got a lot more info from me than everyone else and are just as frustrated. This is why I am trying to figure out a way to make things work without depending on me to do things that I know I simply will not be able to. I am not one to contact people and give them updates. I am more of a receiving of updates person, and delegate to other to communicate in the other direction. At least most of the time.

At first I was upset but supportive.  Then I was sad but patient.  Now, I am all WTF? and SRSLY!

I don't mean to be unappreciative of all the hard work put into this but someone at least update the placeholder page FFS; it's been more than a month.

Sorry to disrupt the peaceful vibe going on in this thread now.  Rant done.

I don't blame you.  This thread is way off topic of late and an update from Gedd & company would be appreciated, since last we heard was about what was hoped to be accomplished last weekend.  Not sure why Rip didn't say anything about what is up as he's posted a few times this week.

maybe because there was no news?

I'd argue that is news.  Look, one of the complaints has been a lack of communication.  Over a week ago we got an update that made some specific references.  If they'd showed up Monday with a post and said "sorry, we didn't get as much done as we wanted" no one would be upset. 

In other words, people just want to know things are moving forward.

By the way, thanks Rip for the update today. 

Except hitting forums and making such announcements takes more time than most realize, and I am already spending time working on this stuff that I probably should be using doing stuff I can bill $100/hr for. That is why I am trying to offload it to others. Keeping things running as far as network and hardware are not a substantial additional burden to me, but configuring servers and making public relations communications are. I simply lack the time.

I can only give away that this person doesn't reside in the United States.

I'm in charge of OO now? Cause if I am I'd like to know, so you know I can do more in one hour than everyone else has done in two months,

I, and I suspect many others, don't particularly give a damn about the backlog of other OO posts that existed before the crash by now - I think we just want an OO forum back. Even then a useful backup of the previous OO could be made in due time. Really, what's the goddamn delay? I know it doesn't take this fucking long to get a simple forum together, though maybe it does if you're relying on Rip.

CSL, a bit too rough, bro. I know many are upset with this situation. Some have thrown the towel on OO coming back. A few of us are still keeping the faith that the site will be reborn sometime this summer. But we have to keep cool about this. There's no need to harsh about this. We don't want to widen a rift that was caused in the first place by an accidental server meltdown.

The rift wasn't caused by the server meltdown.  It was caused by the handling thereof.

Servers don't kill online communities, admins do.

When handled properly there should be no server meltdown. The fact that the server was able to go down without plans to have a plan to load a recent backup and get the site back up within a few hours is the problem. There is no communication/handling issue if that is done properly. There can never be a good plan of keeping people happy when things are down. Look at rackspace fire and in specific subsim.com among others being down for a few days. Communication was just what you guys have/had called for. Still there are tons of people up in arms. The best answer is a plan that prevents the outage. That is what I aim for.

Just to be clear. This person isn't in charge of OO, they are to be in charge of administration, security, and backup of the server. The same staff make the executive decisions concerning OO.

Not much to update. I have been working on it some overnight. We just didn't get as much done as we hoped last weekend. I am trying to let the new server admin announce himself when he is ready and comfortable with where we are and has a plan he wishes to articulate. I am stepping back  from the leading the admin of the server on down so I can better provide for the stuff upstream from there. Like the network, infrastructure, hardware, and places to back data up to etc. Hopefully having a team between what I do and the staff who operate and oversee content will allow the stuff in between to be done better and improve communication of disasters and downtime for work to be done. The person who has stepped forward to head that up has not been shy of being critical of the way it has been handled and was willing to stand behind that criticism by taking the reigns to do it right. I can only give away that this person doesn't reside in the United States.

Here's a nice quick and easy Thin Spaguetti recipe I learned a couple of months ago. Very tasty with a nice side of grilled chicken.

snip

I could use a good Manicotti recipe.

I oblige!

snip

 

Hopefully it will still be good without spinach or mushrooms...yuck!

Post again quick, LordMortis!  The thread's veering dangerously close to being on-topic!

I take it back!  Let's go back to complaining about how long the OO reboot is taking!

That was totally CeeKay who brougth that up, not me.

He should not even be allowed in this thread anymore. He doesn't have an OO bookmark.

well, I just did it.  My bookmark to OO is gone.  I just won't have the time for it anymore.  I also killed my link to Popehat-  other than the lost game it really doesn't feel like home so I'm done there too.  CeeKay is now a GT exclusive!

Sounds like my cue.


Now where did I put those keys.

We are so far off topic that I can't even SEE the topic from here, but...

I think the topic changed itself over a short time.

Nice. Darwinian thread evolution.

Hopefully, Rip and co will be succesful with their OO database restore this weekend. Otherwise, I wonder how long before this thread turns into people swapping recipes and discussing casual car repairs.

I could use a good Manicotti recipe.

On a related note,

Why is it that we sometimes design devices that require power and that we design that power to have a level control and we design that level control to exceed the maximum reasonable potential for the device?

Why would you make a radio (or amp or whatever) and have the power level go to ten on them where ten is designed to exceed what the amp or speakers can handle?  Why is the accelerator in your car explicitly designed to give enough vroom to red line and blow your engine?  And yet on a lawn mower where you don't control the throttle as you driving, they put a governor on the engine.     And at the same time, they're smart enough make High on my oven not kick out so much flame that I burn down my house.  They know enough to make high my electric mixer not burn out the mixer motor.  (They don't however sell a "cheap" mixer with enough strong enough motor to mix gingerbread.  Kiss that thirty bucks as well as an expensive batch o' gingerbread goodbye.  I hate you, molasses.)  Yet sure enough if I go to charge a battery on high, I'll melt the transformer on the charger every time I walk away.

Not everything does that. My Kawasaki ZX-10r will go 187mph in 5th gear and noses into the redline. But in 6th it will still only go 187mph and falls short of the redline. I hate being protected from myself.

In other OO related news, could it be that Crowley is finally facing justice and/or has been identified?

Trial jurors were scheduled to travel Wednesday afternoon to the 9th Circuit's Southern California building in suburban Pasadena to view the movies, which depict bestiality and fetishes involving feces and urine. The panel includes eight men and six women. Two will be designated alternates later in the trial.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,365701,00.html

Just to add the is a person known by many who has been seated as the Director of Octopusland Security. Once confirmations are complete we shall never be threatened by disaster/terror strikes again.

We have a VM up and old content already expanded to folders there. I am hopefull we may have some major progress this weekend. Pray to the overlords!

This thread reminds me of MTV. Started off fine but after awhile it turned to crap. Now I don't watch except when I'm flipping channels.

It has jumped the shark so many times that they are now building a bridge.  However, despite all the comments earlier from Rip, et al that they realize that communication is really important, the communications have dried up again.  Besides the rare "it will be back soon" comment that never turns out to be true.  I'm really starting to get bitter about this, and I don't know why!

I would suggest that it is because if OO dies and no one can provide verification then we will never know who lost the ThreadKillah contest.

Well, if OO dies, I would imagine Rip wins.

Hmmmm?

I like GT, but OO sneaked under the Websense radar.  There is much to be said that...

Funny thing is I am a websense partner. Maybe I should turn it in for filtering?   

Or maybe you should unblock GT.  Damned websense.  Oh sure, it's ok for all the armchair quarterbacks to spend their ENTIRE day playing fantasy football, but videogames?  Oh that's for kids - websense it.

That is what you get for putting gaming in the url

Should have called it Dragondorks or something.

I like GT, but OO sneaked under the Websense radar.  There is much to be said that...

Funny thing is I am a websense partner. Maybe I should turn it in for filtering?   

I see people!

Cardboard cutouts, they've not moved in twenty minutes!

Note to self. Move the cardboard workers every few minutes.

 

Is that the whole datacentre? I should upload some pics of ours sometime.

About 50% of it. We use most of it like office space though. At one time the whole thing was nothing but rack when Ocean Energy had it. I should have a few more cameras in soon and you will be able to see the rest.

anytime I look through the camera there's no one there, so I'm not convinced Rip isn't an actual AI running the show there.

That is just the room where the servers are. I don't work in there much. No way I would have you clowns watching over my back as I work. The only way you could watch me all day is if we mount a camera on the back of my ZX-10R and even then it would probably just be a blur except for when some cop is writing me a ticket.

Here's a radical idea.  Instead of running off and trying to create a new front page from scratch, why don't you stay here.  I'm talking about creating a true sister site relationship like Gone Gold and Console Gold back in the day.

That seems awfully unfair to ATB, who's just waiting for the OO people to leave.  Where would ATB go if they stay here?

He can't very well go to the Popehat forum, because I've banned him there.  Sometimes I unban him, just so that I can experience the pleasure of banning him all over again.

http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/

 

ANyway time to jusp on the new ZX-10r and spped over to Tampicos for a burrito and margarita and will be back at the office in a few.

Don't forget to change the Polaroid on the web cam. I've seen the same picture of the office since you posted the link.

Saturday dude. The only one that went in there today was me. You can't tell the stuff I moved around? I guess we will need to have a contest to see who can spot stuff as it moves.

OK sent Zaxxon FTP info for the almost 2GB OO tarball and will work on providing a linux VM for OO this afternoon. I am sure staff will need all the linux admin assistance that we can muster as I will have limited time for several days yet. ANyway time to jusp on the new ZX-10r and spped over to Tampicos for a burrito and margarita and will be back at the office in a few.

You have NO idea what sort of time commitment it takes to run a front page, and it is like herding wet cats trying to keep a staff of volunteers.  If you go this route, good luck.

Some of us absolutely understand the time commitment it takes to run a vibrant front page.  It's no coincidence that I haven't gotten more involved in OO's front page resurgence.  This is in no way meant as any disrespect to those that did work on OO's front page--they all put a lot of work into it, and with the lackluster support it received from the community after the initial content was up, I'm not sure that it could have been any more successful. 

I do agree that some form of front page is a requirement for OO to live much longer.  Even if nearly everyone comes back--something virtually guaranteed not to happen, unfortunately--we're at this point a small community, and getting smaller by the week.  Blackhawk's comments are right on the money.  The site's focus needs to be determined, a solid plan for frequent, quality content agreed upon, and either a large cadre of contributors or a small but extremely dedicated group (a la PopeHat's) need to get producing content.  Whether this will happen or not, I don't know.  But it's a certainty that OO is a dwindling community without some form of new poster attraction.

To those who have just offered to contribute, no disrespect intended, but I'm not certain you've all thought that through.  We had a lot of people offer to contribute when we first put a front page up.  Once it was up and the reality of the commitment became clear, nearly everyone disappeared.  Those that are offering, ask yourselves--

1) Do you have a clear idea of what you could contribute?  What format this contribution would take?
2) Are you capable of contributing quality material?   
2) How frequently are you prepared to put forth a quality contribution?   How much time would you need to invest into each contribution? 
3) Once the initial rush of publishing your contribution passes and the 'fun' waxes and wanes periodically, what will keep you coming back to contribute quality work?

It's been my experience after years of managing a similar site that very nearly everyone interested in contributing will fail at answering these questions adequately.  Again--no disrespect intended to anyone here; I'm just putting my experiences out there and hopefully getting some people to think things through before making a commitment they may not fully understand.

And of course a lot of work would need to go into determining the focus, format, and organization of any possible front page prior to anything happening at all...

and why exactly would it matter to me if OO was to no longer consume space and bandwidth from my resources? What exactly is it that I stand to lose? If anything my life would be much easier without any need to concern myself with OO. I don't have a single customer who I receive more than a couple hundred dollars a year that comes from website/domain hosting. The revenues combined from such don't even pay the fees to be able to accept VISA/MC/AMEX. The only reason I even bother is because I care. I have nothing to be gained financially from the life or death of OO. Mr. Fed singlehandedly doubled last years revenue with a single donation.

This is quite a revealing post.  I can appreciate that OO isn't the top priority in your life.  Certainly, you have all the right to prioritize the work that puts food on your table.  I don't think anyone here (or on OO) expected you to drop everything and get OO back up.  But your words after this event hit do not at all jive with your words prior to the crash.  If OO truly was such a big burden, then perhaps you should have taken people up on the many offers of donations that were given during OO's years of existence, and/or brought the issue up with the staff.  Again, I'm very grateful for the time and resources you've donated to OO--and to my own sites.  But frankly you've pulled a 180-degree turn in your (public) attitude toward the community, and I wish we'd known where you stood before the crash happened so that we could have planned more prudently.  Not that I'm absolving the staff of blame here; certainly we should have been better prepared than we were. 

Valid point. Obviously miscommunication on my part. Of course remember communication takes time as well. Ask my grandmother who hasn't gotten a phone call in 6 months. I'm not trying to make excuses just give out as much info as possible as I get time. Often my intentions become impossible due to unforeseen events and just as often poor planning and execution on my part. As I said I have no problem taking a ton of blame, just want to be as open and as possible and try to find the best path going forward that limits dependence on my time as it is spotty and unpredictable.

Tareeq,

This is what people are responding to when they talk about the lack of communication.  Godhugh was "in the loop" so when he says what he says, it's hard to give Rip anymore benefits of the doubt.  And at least one other person "in the loop" has confirmed this.

Sadly I think Rip has vacated the premises, and I don't think we'll ever see OO again, at least not with all it's history. I want to say some things that I know I shouldn't, so I won't. I'll just let people read my mind.

I don't disagree. Rip's disappearance, not even communicating with myself or other staff, is probably the most disappointing thing about this for me. I'd really just like to get the data back at this point.

Anyway, as Gedd mentioned, we are discussing if and how we could bring OO back up without the history. We're still discussing hosting options right now, so it's still very preliminary.

Again, it's very odd to me that Rip was silent for such a long period and suddenly makes a breakthrough just as Godhugh and others start working on a successor site.

No breakthrough just the end of the month. Either I had to get everything moved or pay for both circuits for another month. No conspiracy just the nature of monthly billing practices.

First, thanks Rip for all you've done. 

I'll be honest and say that I don't really understand all the delays or think they were justified, nor do I think the lack of communication can be justified.  Also, I find it odd that suddenly things are moving forward just when the community has decided to pursue other options.  If you'd been upfront with us two months ago with the reality of how long this was going to take, I'd have a lot more sympathy.  But maybe I'm being unrealistic about the realities of the situation.  I'm not claiming to have a technical understanding of what happened, but I do respect some of the people who have posted that they do and have also questioned this process.

To the mods or whomever is running the show, lets take what Rip has apparently recovered and move on with the new hosting plan.

and why exactly would it matter to me if OO was to no longer consume space and bandwidth from my resources? What exactly is it that I stand to lose? If anything my life would be much easier without any need to concern myself with OO. I don't have a single customer who I receive more than a couple hundred dollars a year that comes from website/domain hosting. The revenues combined from such don't even pay the fees to be able to accept VISA/MC/AMEX. The only reason I even bother is because I care. I have nothing to be gained financially from the life or death of OO. Mr. Fed singlehandedly doubled last years revenue with a single donation.

OK guys just when you thought I had passed, here I am back for a driveby.

The database should be extracted in the next few hours and a link sent to a handful of staff members who can redistribute at there leisure. I intend to offer hosting/server/bandwidth resources to all that have had it. The price will remain the same...free. I have even renewed domains for those that can't renew because of registration panel access issues. Any domains registered through me are in fact enom registrations and can be accessed directly through enom if one understands how or asks for help, or transfer to another service. I am going to be limited on interaction and handholding going forward and will focus any hosting offerings to VM servers of your favorite linux distro with a weekly or monthly snapshot.

To be clear I don't run a hosting business I simply offered some hosting as a courtesy at insanely low to no charge. There will be little to no additional freebies going forward because I have exploding amounts of what I do offer which is offsite backup, network consulting, forensic examination, data recovery, and most recently virtualization consultation. We have exploded to seven employees from three and still can barely keep up with demand for services at 60-120 dollars per hour. I simply can't afford to dedicate manhours to work not generating substantial revenue. I will continue to provide access to the community through responsible parties with the requisite skills and who use the resources responsibly. All those with such are encouraged to contact me and I will provide them with contact info for the appropriate members of my staff. I don't have the time to read all my e-mails many days of late let alone make rounds of the boards or game. I will not however go underground no matter how much I am dragged through the mud for not doing or communicating enough. I very much would like to hear from people who do have time and would use the resources I offer providing to the community that which I can no longer find time.

For those just wanting to look and see if I am moving around switches, servers, or just pacing the back forty of the datacenter have a look here. http://webcam.byteguru.net I hope to add some more cameras soon as well. We should finish removing all resources from the old fiber link this weekend (saving me $1300/mnth) and will begin to focus on finishing off all recovery and domain moving next week with any luck.

KD feel free to let people vent a little I have no expectation of protection and would rather hear what people feel than to have everyone feel censored into cutting me some kind of slack. If when the staff get OO rolling again I would rather see everyone stop by there to trash me than to not bother going back at all, so save some venom for the party.

Before I took on OO we looked at a server at ev1 and it was going to be $100/mnth. That didn't include any disaster planning, backup, or anything else. Just a basic celeron linux system with like 80gb of space and something like 250-300GB of traffic a month.

Anyway got several static sites up. Got staff members access to a copy of the html directory when we went down (1.19GB). Anyone wanting in fromnt of the line putting up sites be sure to PM/e-mail me. Everyone please pass along. I still don't have a press secretary:(

I'm done for tonight. Time for a 3-4 hour nap.

Rip

BTW as an example of my days lately. Yesterday afternoon while riding my Ninja 500 you will rember I got a while back (15k on it so far) had just changed the oil 300 miles ago last week. Sudden loss of torque...out of gas? A little easrly... pull the clutch..noise...look down to find oil all over the back tire. Get off look underneath. Oil plug gone. Thank god dealer has done all maint. They check it out. Got some damage. SO I am working on trading it for a KZ-10R. After looking at new bike this afternoon on way home with wife and son....rear ended..and so on. Just a snippet of typical days for me the last couple months.

If what doesn't kill me makes me stronger I am one strong mofo!

 

 

You realize the downtime isn't because of an upgrade, but rather because of the hardware failure and needing to rebuild the server and site, right?

I know this is a hobby, not a business, and I appreciate Rip's hard work. But the fact remains if one of my servers went down, I had no disaster recovery plan, and it took me a month to rebuild it, I'd be fired without a moment's hesitation. I hate to even say that because it sounds ungrateful for Rip's volunteering of hosting the site, but as a network admin I can't help but think it.

I feel the same way. IMO, this has gotten beyond the point of ridiculous. I have nothing personal against Rip at all, but others have already offered to host the site. It's quite obviously a low point in his priorities, which is fine, but I'd suggest letting someone else handle OO from now on. His comments along the lines of "it's just a forum, lighten up" I think are indicative of his thought processes on this issue.

A lot of people have expressed their concern about losing their favorite community, and well, I just don't understand what could take a month. I really don't. The community may have been effectively killed - if not, it's probably getting close to that. That said, GT is a great community in it's own right, and I'd be happy hanging out here.

I appreciate that he's hosting it for free, but personally, I'd rather pay than to see something like this happen again.

It has taken a month because it is a matter of restriping many gigabytes of data by hand on the side while working 12 hours a day on other fires that must be complete or my customers who actually do pay me would fire me. I have just made a .zip file of thee OO content and am currently placing it online for staff to access, and we can proceed upgrading forum software or whatever at anyones convenience. But if you are volunteering to become the patron saint of OO and carry the financial and technical responsibilities of keeping the data flowing just let me know where to send the keys. It is amazing how many people are now suggesting how much they are/have been willing to do, but when I posted a message in meta just looking for anyone who wanted to lend a admin hand at working server maint for OO I didn't get a single response.

It is however possible that OO could be up and running where it left off by morning. That is/was/will be a staff decision.Personally I long for the days of being able to enjoy OO without dragging the burden of making decisions about how much money/time I can afford to scrape from my demanding life/career without having to wonder if the enjoyment/love however large is enough to justify the questionable sacrifices I continue to make for it. I guess I should just be glad it hasn't caused me to expend legal resources defending some IP issues or anything from the site.

As I have already admitted I got caught with my pants down just backing up the server every month or so. Not that this is unusual for hosting companies. They just reimage the server back to square one and tell you to restore a backup, or load a backup for you "if you were paying for backup" Of course they usually keep all the account info in other places that are backed more frequently. The control panel I used actually provided every single account with a means of performing their own automated backups.Simply few did it. I was simply only hosting 40 domains or so using that system. All my larger hosting stuff have dedicated machines and the customer provides for their own backups etc. It would have been an easy and simple answer to reload backups. I am/was just determined to not lose any user content. I haven't and won't.

I am also taking my time to do the rebuild the right way. I will move to a more functional system and will acocunt for failover, backup, and even bit level snapshotting if desired. None of it will be free anymore other than pure static web pages without SQL or advanced functions. It will be done right, but only at a profit.

Anyone who has anything that was/is hosted with me that needs info from their site or would like to work with me on getting their content moved or back online contact me by e-mail rip at byteguru dot net.

I will try to remain available here as well for as long as I can keep the wheels turning tonight. Probably 3AM or so.

Rip

Trying to get the server converted to VMware. The pain in the ass never wants to end. Not as easy as doing windows servers and system was. It is my destiny to face a struggle for every little bit of progress I make. I am really hoping to figure it out tonight.

Rip

+1 more to that string of binary for all you do Rip.

Rip, invite me to one of those damn lan parties you hold!
Even though Lisa probably hates me lol =D

Lisa hates everyone. It is one of her charms!

I need to have one at the datacenter this summer so everyone can watch us on the security cameras

Me and the uber rig will be there.  I just have to make sure I have said game.

Perhaps we could make our own. The kill Zaxxon quest or somesuch.   

Last time we tar balled it I think it was about 500MB.

Is that all?  Well, if for whatever reason QP's hosting falls through, I will gladly host it for a while.  I currently have just over 2GB of storage with no transfer limits that I'm not using.  As long as I don't need the space, it's yours.

Sounds like next time we go down we will have a big fight over who's backup gets used.

Rip, invite me to one of those damn lan parties you hold!
Even though Lisa probably hates me lol =D

Lisa hates everyone. It is one of her charms!

I need to have one at the datacenter this summer so everyone can watch us on the security cameras

Thanks for the update, Rip, as well as the PM.  Whether we show it around here or not, we're all very appreciative of all you do and have done for OO.  And as another IT person who has been through the joys of all-nighters more than once, I know how frustrating it can be to have to bang your head against the wall working to resolve issues once your brain has passed the point of no return. 

I think this is where the misunderstanding comes from. All the hosting I have revenues combined with absolutely nothing removed for costs could not buy my family one dinner at Ruth''s Chris. I have this stuff in a multi-million dollar data center because of the work I do for my clients that pay me that many times over a day. If it were about customers and business I would have thrown all my servers out the door years ago. I do the hosting for fun, and I want to do it better and not have an event like this recur. It will never be something I will be able to consider a very profitable endeavor.

This is something that should have been plainly communicated all over NavigatorHosting.com long before this outage.  Had I known just how low a priority it was, I wouldn't be hosting anything important there.  That's not a knock against you, Rip, just plain truth. 

So I had to take care of the big stuff first. I have been working on recovering the data for the server though with every waking moment I can spare. I doubt I will recall very much of my daughters birthday last weekend because I was beat from trying to recover the data from my server. Because I was unwilling to accept going back to a backup a few months old. I knew there was no damage to the drives and I knew reconstructing them was possible. Sometimes it is like people forget it is just a damn forum, go out and get some fresh air already. I used to work for a telcom carrier and we had peoples phones down for three weeks. Thousands of them. Think anyone went without sleep to get them back on? Fat chance.

Not meant for you but just venting at the massive appreciation for my labors. Geez.

Again, we do appreciate your labors.  But the problem here, at least for me, wasn't even necessarily with the outage itself.  Shit happens.  Obviously an outage of this duration is a Big Deal no matter how unimportant the sites being hosted, but the Dude abides.  The near total lack of communication is the kicker from my perspective.  Whether Navigator is your bread-and-butter or in the red every day of the year, it's a business that reflects on you, and on those of us who have placed in your hands the Internet presence of others who trust us.  Frankly, the absolute lack of any communication on this outage to paying customers is totally unacceptable.  It boggles my mind that you're even attempting to explain it away.   

But enough venting--IT-person-with-sites-hosted-on-Navigator mode off, OO participant mode back on.  Your efforts at restoring the data so a year's worth of OO history wasn't lost are most certainly appreciated, as is the continued server space and bandwitdh availability. 

Admittedly I didn't have a good list of contacts or anyone to lead up PR on such an event. Hard to dedicate resources to a very unprofitable business segment. I should have just closed the hosting down long ago, the margins are the suck no matter how good you are at it. Shame because from a technical perspective I find it fascinating.