My original PSA about what was to happen being lost in the rebuild let me surmise!  On Sunday August 1 the server that this site and The Old Dog Barks underwent a major upgrade as in a complete replacement!

The Workstation grade machine was removed and an Honest-To-God purpose built Server was put in it’s place!  For those of you who might care the new machine is a Dell 1600 with 1 Terabyte of initial storage on board.  It has two 2.0 G Processors and the power supplies and cooling of a real server!

Hopefully this will be the last major upheaval for a while!  BTW in the process we are on the very latest versions of both Fedora and WordPress making my life much easier!

Posted: August 1st, 2010 under Novel Ideas, by OldDog.
Comments: none

No, just overworked and underpaid!  After weeks and weeks of trying to keep this company afloat suddenly we have work out the ass!

I am currently involved in trying to getting a new PBX on line for a customer!  This is just called time consuming not difficult.  I do nothing that could be called Rocket Science just Common Sense!

This site shall resume new content soon.

Posted: June 13th, 2010 under Novel Ideas, by OldDog.
Comments: none

There are several sites on the Intertubes that are going quasi wacko because they are updating with Beta versions of WordPress!

Not going to happen around here!

We only upgrade when a stable release comes out!  Now over at Wes’s place you can see the Beta changes taking place.  That is under the direct control of the WordPress nerds themselves.  Changes do not occur here until they come out in a stable release. not a Beta.

I neither have the time or the brains to be a BETA DEVELOPER!  I barely have time to keep this conglomeration of  sites on the ‘tubes!

This is in reply to an e-mail received earlier today!

Posted: May 7th, 2010 under Novel Ideas, by OldDog.
Comments: 1

Well before I descend into the Hell of trying to teach the toughest class I teach while still trying to do R&D, I have some traffic.

A new Tale of the Interregnum is up.  This sets up the Force structure I need for DIM and leaves I think only two more to do.

So I give you CSM, Your’e Fired!

Posted: April 18th, 2010 under Novel Ideas, by OldDog.
Comments: none

Some explanation for my drought around here is probably in order. I can sum it up in this manner; the PCP, Linux and no Industry Standards!

The PCP has a project going that requires me to work on off-site backup for encrypted LARGE files structures. This just happens to fit into what I want to do here at the casa for my server farm as well as Wes’s place!

The software as it turns out is simply a BITCH! I do not complain there as the big pain with it is security and the type of files the PCP project calls for require this level of pain.

Testing is turning out to be a real pain in the posterior. The host server is Linux based (they don’t trust Microshaft, how odd /snark off) and to test in a non-live environment requires multiple Network Interface Cards (NIC) in each machine. This is no problem in a new machine, take the default eth0 (Linux for NIC 0) and drive on.

Ya think it’s that easy on an existing machine, silly you! You stick in the new NIC in an existing machine and fire it back up and the world goes discontinuous. The names and code assignments for the two NICs depends upon the Linux flavor, the processor type of the machine, the bus structure of the machine, the brand of the machine and within the brand who wrote the BIOS. AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!

Run to the Linux Forums and mailing lists and yell for help. The responses run a gamut from useless to frankly insulting!

Response 1 Exceedingly detailed and probably very helpful to someone running that version of Linux! Mark this as failure to read the full post!

Response 2 Exceedingly detailed and probably helpful to someone running that particular brand of machine. Mark this a failure to read the full post.

Response 3 Multiple paragraphs about how I am an idiot to ask this simple question, not one bit of info! Mark this as an asshole who probably does not know shit!

Response 4 (Many of these) Good detailed info about how the detection process works and the huge number of files have to be edited to make this work. These outline hours of work required on machines that cannot be on the Net during the process.

As you may guess Response 4 is the only case that is any help at all. This leads to the last and killer problem.

Every freaking one of these servers are functioning on the Net. Thus I can only work on each at the oddball hours when I can schedule down time. One of these is olddog.name the host for this site.

This is the reason I have been fairly quiet and there have been some oddball outages around here lately. Hopefully I will get this solved shortly.

Of course on top of everything else, I have a Technician Class to teach the week of the 19^th. Oh Joy freaking Joy!

I could off course just back up the existing machines and start with a fresh install of each! OUCH, I just slapped my own silly self!

Posted: April 14th, 2010 under Novel Ideas, by OldDog.
Comments: none

Over at Wes’s place he has up a good discussion of the different ways that information is put out in Sci-Fi novels.  Over here I use the Weber approach of  ”Make a Short Story Out of It” as it is easier for me.

Wes preffers the approach used by one of the legends in the field.  Like I said, good reading go on over there.

Posted: March 30th, 2010 under Novel Ideas, by OldDog.
Comments: none

Well, even under the pressure at the PCP the dam is slowly breaking through what I need in place before I get serious about DIM.

Herewith , I put in some concepts I need and try to do something good for a sadly neglected character!

So take a look at “You Have No Idea”.

Posted: March 29th, 2010 under Novel Ideas, by OldDog.
Comments: none

The following picture shamelessly stolen from cmblake6′s place is a perfect encapsulation of where I am right know.

Three projects going on at once at the PCP and my entire day is a desperate balancing act between the three. Any creative effort I have left is barely enough to maintain contact with my grandkids.

Hopefully this will slow down soon!

(Cross Posted at The Old Dog Barks)

Posted: March 27th, 2010 under Off Target, by OldDog.
Comments: none

You figure out what is causing it.

Well, it turned out in my case to be a sudden realization that I was trying to plot something that the storyline had no background for.   To put the background information in the book would have created what David Weber sneers at as an “Infodump”  and those get boring fast.

Then it dawned on me that I had started “Tales of the Interregnum” for a reason and I had let that slip.

This is the first of the missing tales that will fill in the info I need to plot the rest of the second book.  There will be several more hopefully in rapid order as the BLOCK has broken!

Thus “Somebody’s Got to Do It”

Posted: March 9th, 2010 under Novel Ideas, by OldDog.
Comments: 2

Explanation over here.   I try not to use that kind of language over here!

OK, OK!  Only when I have good reason!

Posted: February 15th, 2010 under Novel Ideas, by OldDog.
Comments: none