So the web server was down all weekend.

I came home at 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning to find the power in my living room off. This happens frequently because we blow fuses while running to A/C units in the apartment. Normally, if I’m around to replace the fuse, I can do so before the UPS battery dies on the server. However, if I were say, out partying until 6:00 a.m., well…I don’t fix it in time and the server goes down.

Saturday morning however, it didn’t want to come back up. It appears like the motherboard died for some reason.

I was in no state to fix it at 6:00 a.m., so I went to bed for a few hours…then got up at about 11:30 to reports that it was supposed to be like 105 degrees and 80% humidity or some such nonsense. So phone calls were made, a handle of tequila was purchased, and off to the beach we went…

I got home from the beach at 10:30 p.m. or so, and didn’t want to work on it then either. So I went to bed.

When I woke up Sunday morning, they were predicting another scorching hot sonofbitch day. So I went and had breakfast with a friend, went to the gym, and then retreated to a cool swimming hole with an awesome, frighteningly high rope swing. We stayed there until we got hungry, and moved to another park with grills where we grilled some chicken breasts and corn. Stayed there until about 6:00 p.m. then came back to town, got dressed (in clean, dry clothes) and went to Margaritas for a beer. One turned into two, which turned into 4 at 3 different bars….and the next thing I knew it was 11:30 p.m….so we all went home and went to bed.

I realize this was gross negligence of the server and all that…but hey, priorities man. Let’s see here, tequila, girls in bikini’s, and a DJ on the beach or working on a web server? I’m sure you can understand. The growing pains of your webmaster getting an actual life…go figure…

Anyway. Today I’ve moved the disks back into our old server and booted it up, and it started with no problems…so here we are. Slightly slower than previously, but stable and functional again.

How to Win Any Argument On the Internet

Funny stuff.

I bought my plane tickets for my summer trip to Oregon today. I’m there August 4th through August 16th. They weren’t too expensive, but my return flight back to here is going to suck balls. I fly from Redmond, to Portland, to S.F. to Chicago, to Hartford. And I start at 6:00pm…putting me into Hartford at 10:30 the following morning. Fun times.

I haven’t been posting, because I’ve been busy. Literally. It may be hard to believe, but I’ve been doing all sorts of stuff that doesn’t involve the computer. My ankle is pretty much better, so I’ve been biking, canoeing, going to the beach, going to the gym, partying downtown, grilling at the park, partying at friends houses…all sorts of things. It’s kinda turned into a mission among a couple friends to try and spend as little time at home as possible..and it’s really fun…so I probably won’t be posting much for a while…maybe when it starts to get cold I will.

Not like anyone is reading this anyway..

I actually went a whole weekend without even checking for new posts on The Tribe for the first time since it’s inception I think…crazy..

Overheard in New York

A collection of street wisdom, as overheard in various places around NYC. Really funny stuff.

Includes such greats as:

“Girl #1: It looked like you were getting pretty close with that guy on the dance floor.
Girl #2: I know! He was putting his dick all up in my ass like he knew me or something.”

–11th between 3rd & 4th

Or..

“Black dude #1: Shut up, nigga.
Black dude #2: What the fuck. Don’t call me nigga. I’m Puerto Rican. Call me a spic.
Black dude #3: Stop using that offensive language! No wonder everyone on this train is staring at us. We are all God’s children. We all bleed the same. Aren’t we all god’s children?
White woman: Pardon?
Black dude #3: Aren’t we all god’s children?
White woman: Well, yes.
Black dude #3: You see!”

–1 train

Check out this steaming pile of dung.

They took it upon themselves to answer this woman’s survey about what feminism means to them. Their original answers, and the follow-ups to the original post, really manage to illuminate their utter bigotry, and I hate to say, downright stupidity.

Anyway…a good read, if your blood pressure feels a little too low. Feministe is a pretty good blog to read anyhow, just on general prinicples, but the whole survey and right-wing nutjob followup is a really a great highlight.

I think I may very well have to buy this: The BBS Documentary

It’s really crazy to think back to the BBS days, which really didn’t seem that long ago, and which I was very sad to see go.

You can always head over to “The Cult of the Dead Cow” if you want to take a trip down nostalgia lane along with me. Also, www.textfiles.com contains an impressive archive of the old BBS text files of yore. I used to stay up all night long on my 386 w/ 4MB of ram and read all sorts of crazy things on local BBS’s, or playing Barren Realms Elite, Legend of the Red Dragon, or Tradewars. Before the internet, you could even dial up to an O.D.O.T BBS to get weather and road condition reports from all over the state…

I’m not alone in my nostalgia either…searching the web turns up many people expressing a similar sadness over the demise of the BBS scene…such as this article, or or this one at the cDc.

While there is vastly more information on the internet, and it’s reachable at a much greater speed, it’s got a hollow feeling that can never compete with hearing your modem dial for the five millionth time and finaly get a carrier instead of a busy signal so that you can respond to your friends posts, and get your daily door game fix.

Oh well, all good things come to pass I guess.

A very apt quote from one of the above linked articles:

“We experienced the golden age. The problem with golden ages is that it is a description used after it is over. The net will probably never return to the good old days but small pockets of freedom will always exist, like hidden oases.” - Stein Gjoen

For me anyway…

“Well, it took a lot of work to be the ass that I am
And I’m real damn sure that anyone can, equally easily fuck you over.”

-Isaac Brock

So I just got back from a 4.5 hour trip to the hospital to get my foot checked out.

After a week of insisting to anyone that asked that it was just sprained, the onlookers frightened gazes combined with their repeated quick drawings of breathe made me think maybe I just have an incredible pain threshold and my foot really is broken.

So I broke down and went to the hospital, because while I can walk fairly normally, it did still hurt, and didn’t feel like any sprain I’ve ever had before. I also read some scary stuff about fractures in the ankle causing tingling and bruising in the toes, which I have been experiencing. Also, that sometimes you can totally tear tendons and their nerve endings, thus eliminating most of the pain. So I got scared and went to the Hospital.

4.5 hours later I have acquired a nice little air-brace for my foot, and some impressive looks from some doctors. The doctor actually told me it’s the worst sprain she’s ever seen that didn’t involve broken bones, and that I had a “very impressive amount of swelling to be able to walk that well.” Also, from what she says, it’s actual multiple sprains..as in many stretched and pulled tendons and ligaments, which explains the bruising all around my foot, rather than in one area.

From what we talked about, we’ve somewhat pieced together that I either must have sprained it the first time trying to yank it out of the toe-clip, then fell of the cliff and sprained it another direction on impact, or yanked it out of the toe-clip (possibly slightly spraining it) then slammed it to the ground in an attempt to stop myself from falling off the cliff, then fell and sprained it either a second or third time on impact.

Fun times. She said I should be able to ride again in about a week though (if I feel up to it, and the swelling has subsided), so that’s good. She recommended against hiking or running anytime soon though. And much like the doctor I had when I fractured my knee, said that I should probably consider swimming or more biking for excercise as this ankle will from now on be pretty much permanantly weaker. Combined with my permanently weaker left knee, if means I have TWO permanently weak appendages. But even so, I still have 3 that are strong.