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Arby the Gold: 12/25/2005 - 9/14/2007
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Newsies Posted: 5
Comments Left: 11
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2007-09-15 08:40:32 with 3 Comments
My friends, I have a sad bit of news to relate this morning. Arby the Gold, that Fantail Goldfish turned Website Administrator passed away sometime in the evening of September 14th, 2007. He was fed late that evening and, while awake and moving, he did not seem interested in the food.
That food remains at the top of the tank this morning, but Arby no longer dwells within it. He has moved on to that great, filter-equipped tank in the sky. My first pet, Arby has always lived the life of a special-needs child. When fed, he would invariably spend the next half a day of significantly less density than the water around him. When not fed, he would hang out at the bottom of the tank in an apparent state of 'sleep'. But we loved him for his handicaps and he certainly made up for it being such a beautiful amber little guy.
Arby's burial was nothing if not emotional. We did not feel comfortable damning him to the eternal pit of stench that is assuredly our septic tank (I've never been there), and so we chose to bury him outside, and immediately at that. I went to a baseball game that night, and so it was already nearly midnight. I found our rusty shovel and started searching for a place with good light. We tried three places throughout the yard, but each seemed invariably filled with impassable rocks. We settled on the last one.
It was a very strange feeling, setting him carefully in the carrying spoon, watching for even the slightest bit of movement. Even setting him into the ground was difficult because the shadows were playing with us, trying to convince us that Arby was both alive and wanting to live. Once the dirt had begun to cover him, though, we knew that he was indeed quite gone, and even before I had finished covering him I began to miss him.
That's all that I can think to say; the story as I know it is here on this page. The tank is here, empty and is coldly waiting for a replacement fish. It has no way of knowing that we will actually be replacing the tank entirely, and that tank will contain not one fish but possibly two or three. I would be happy to know that Arby was the only "single" fish I ever had, but we'll see.
Arby, rest in peace, floating eternally at equilibrium in that tank in the clouds, always full and never cold.
Arby the Gold.
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Newsies Posted: 5
Comments Left: 11
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2007-04-05 09:36:37 with 2 Comments
Well, we're finally back up after the recent break-in at The Blow Me Down. Yes, "hackers" did make it into the server for malicious purposes. Yes we're sure it was an intentional attempt at violating our server and not some random unexplainable occurence. There are logs, there is evidence, and there were consequences.
Really, the auto-attacking script that was sent against us did its job well to a point. But the Mac Mini is on a different processor than it was expecting, and the compromised applications that it replaced ended up being invalid on the system. I've come across this problem before, because closed-source applications rarely compile their binaries for this processor and so I'm stuck unless it's open source.
The backup went pretty smoothly! All users are here for the most part... there's just one glitch I've seen thus far. Most avatars are gone. This is my fault; on Linux, the folder "Tristan" is not the same as the folder named "tristan". Lots of people log in with various differences in their capitalization of their user name, and when you upload an avatar you upload it to a folder created with that name.
So like Shane for instance. Usually he logs in as "Shane", but when he created his account and uploaded his avatar, he logged in as "shane", creating two folders, only one of which contains an avatar.
But I backed up the website to the Mac Mini, where "Shane" actually equals "shane". Therefore, only one of them could make it over.
If this affects you, please take the time to upload a new avatar. I'm very sorry for the bug. At least we're on the water again. We'll invest some time into some security measures to make sure we're not hit by the same hacker again.
Arby
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With Regards to our Recent Downtime
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Newsies Posted: 5
Comments Left: 11
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2007-03-13 19:26:06 with 2 Comments
How ironic it is that I should put a post about the awesome amount of traffic The Blow Me Down is getting and then suddenly the site disappears for a week. No warning was given, it was only lame and sad.
The site went down after a final evening of solid performance. Then, the next morning, the crew awoke to discover an inability to get access to the net. The computers were fine. The network was fine. And when the Macbook Pro was plugged into the cable modem directly, even the internet seemed a go.
That placed the problem square at the Mac Mini. For some reason, it decided it didn't need to route network traffic anymore. And despite my best efforts, repairs could not be realized.
I told Tristan to suck it up and buy a router, so he did. But "Next Day" apparently means "Whatever, suckers" and we didn't get the router until Friday.
Yeah, Friday.
So theoretically, that means the website could have been back by Friday night! Even Saturday. But no, Tristan and Amanda ended up playing games, neglecting the website. Neglecting me and the wonderous traffic that will surely cease and ne'er return thanks to him. Good going Tristan. You're super awesome. Anyway, I climbed out of my tank myself and juryrigged a solution. The Mac Mini is still the web server, but its routing job is done by the shiny new router. Should be more stable, so long as the power doesn't go out.
Arby
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Interested Marine-Related Net Traffic!
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Newsies Posted: 5
Comments Left: 11
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2007-03-05 15:26:58 with 2 Comments
Hey everyone. Since Pete put his pictures up on the website, I can see an increase in net traffic. A lot of people, respectively anyway, have been coming from ClassicGlasspars.com. Check it out!
Thanks Pete, for the increased traffic! If anyone else wants to drop pictures on here for that purpose, feel free! I love extra traffic! Just make sure the link goes to the actual PAGE containing the picture, not just to the picture itself!
Regards,
Arby & Staff
PS: To clarify, the top picture is filtered on Glasspar traffic, the second one is all site traffic in the past week.
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Newsies Posted: 5
Comments Left: 11
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2006-12-20 09:27:14 with 2 Comments
Hey everyone. Sorry about the last day or so. It appeared, for a day, that ZoneEdit had canned our website for the day by mistake. It was the only connection we could draw between the other website maintainers. But now it appears that the Blow Me Down is back on the waters and Brian's Blood Bulletin is still offline.
To compliment the unscheduled downtime we are going to have a bit of scheduled downtime today and possibly part of tomorrow as the Mac Mini makes its way to its new home in Port Hadlock.
Hopefully we'll be back up by tomorrow morning at our new location! Wish us the best of luck! I know how important this website is to some of you.
Wettest Regards,
Arby
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Archives
September, 2007
April, 20072007-04-05 09:36:37
(Retired) Arby The Gold
Newsie Post
Bloody Pirates!!
March, 2007
December, 20062006-12-20 09:27:14
(Retired) Arby The Gold
Newsie Post
Scheduled Downtime
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