Monthly Archives: June 2008

Other weekend catchups

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We went to the auction sale on Saturday morning at a 180 year old farm house near here. There were soooo many blackflies out that we checked out the items and wussed out and dashed back to the blackfly-free zone in the car.

The farm house was a humble little thing and there weren’t too many valuables there. I was most intrigued by the bags and scrapbooks of old photos from the area – photos that are almost 100 years old. I really hope a museum ends up with them. Who could auction off their family history like that? There were many from logging camps and saw mills. Some of the names were written on them – many of them were common last names around here still.

After that we went down to the old town of Goldenville that is just passed Sherbrooke. It was once bigger than Sherbrooke we hear, but there are very few houses left. It was a gold mining town. We could see piles of rock and mine tailings all over. Some areas were fenced off with Ministry of Health signs warning people to stay away.

I found this information about Goldenville on the Internet: “In the 11 years (1861-1872) Goldenville produced 62,000 ounces of FINE GOLD from about 60,000 tons of ore crushed. The rough rule was: 10 tons of waste rock for one tone of crushable ore. Thus some 600,000 tons of waste rock had to be mined-out during these years. For the 80 years (1861 – 1942) production of 210,000 ounces of gold, the total removal of waste rock would have been about two million tons. Hence the appearance of huge mounds of waste rock “dumps” throughout the community.” The population of Goldenville peaked with 1,000 people in 1870.

Jeff spotted this guy on someone’s overgrown front lawn in Goldenville. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a male pheasant in person before!

Pheasant in Goldenville

In the afternoon the rain came in and we went to New Glasgow to watch Indiana Jones. It was okay. One of the storyline was so predictable – I had it figured out right away. The main quest of the movie was really hokey, but there was some good action scenes. I think if you intend to see it, you might as well go see it in the theatre. 3 stars out of 5.

Whew, I’m all caught up on my blogging now. Now I can get some work done!

Oh, by the way, if you hosers don’t start leaving me comments, I’ll stop allowing you to read my blog!

Server Outage

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So I promised I’d tell you why my websites were offline for a couple days.

My server is a leased server that lives in a data centre in Houston, Texas that is owned by The Planet. On Saturday evening there was an EXPLOSION in the underground conduit that brings all the power into the data centre where 9,000 servers are housed. The explosion blew out 3 interior walls around the electrical room. Thankfully no one was injured. I chose this data centre because it has security, fire suppression systems, and back-up power generators. The fire department on the scene refused to authorize the start up of any back-up power generators because the explosion and fire was electrical in nature.

No one plans for a situation like this one. Who would have thought of an explosion!?! I do have my own back-up plan in emergencies. Every night I zip up all the accounts on my server and back them up to a server in another state. I knew, even if the servers were all damaged in Houston, that I would be okay because I had all my data up to the night before and I could purchase another server and restore it.

It was not clear during the beginning of the outage just how long we would be without power to our servers. We did find out early on that all the servers appeared to be fine and hadn’t incurred any physical damage.

I debated on restoring my sites on a new server, but if the outage is short, by the time I had everything set up to go, the DNS changes submitted, I might cause myself more down time by switching to another server. There is also the problem of having 2 versions of a database. Many of my websites run with a database back-end. Having 2 versions of a the same database on 2 servers is a horrible data management scenario.

I soon found out that my server was in Phase 2 of the data centre, and that is was actually on the second floor. This meant that my server, and the other 6000 on the top floor, would be the first back in business.

In a data centre, you can’t just switch on 6,000 computers as soon as the power kicks in. Because the electrical infrastructure coming into the building was destroyed, we would be relying on their built in generators. First that power has to be tested so that it is stable and clean power. Surges would damage more equipment. Then they have to restore the air conditioning systems. There is a lot of heat generated by 6000 servers! By 4am on Monday my server showed signs of life. It was up and down a bit as they restored power to the network, but my server started up fine with no issues. About 10% of the second floor had some troubles restarting. Sometimes computers don’t always restart well when their power had been abruptly cut off.

My server is still running on back-up power from their generators. It is being refuelled twice a day I hear. The 3000 servers on the first floor are taking longer to get started up due to the damage to the infrastructure. They had to use an external generator that turned out to be faulty so a new one had to be brought on site. Now the electrical conduit and electrical room has to be rebuilt before we can go back on regular power.

Some people are ranting and raving and making real fools of themselves. This wasn’t something predictable or scheduled. The world won’t end if my sites and my clients sites are down for a couple days over a weekend. If my sites were more important, then I would have to have a full back-up server in another facility that didn’t just store my nightly zip copies. It would have to be running a carbon copy that was synced to the first one so any changes and updates were replicated to the back-up server. It might be something I consider down the road, but not right now.

The company that monitors my server for me, HostGator, is rumoured to be providing an entire month free because of the downtime incurred. I am passing this along and giving my few hosting clients a free month for any inconvenience.

Many people are ready to jump ship to another company. I think the opposite. What data centre would be more prepared for an emergency after this than this one? I think I’ll stay.

Our Walk for Dog Guides

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A special thank-you to our last sponsor, my cousin Meaghen Stock!!

On Sunday it was a rainy dark day, but the rain held off for our walk!

There weren’t too many people out – maybe 20 people and 10 dogs? There were people of all abilities, sizes, and ages. We met at the Lion’s Club House and we were given a pin from Purina that says “They’ll never walk alone”. I put Monty on one of Winger & Surf’s 4 foot red leashes we used for therapy work. It’s nicer for a walk with other dogs so I didn’t have to wrap the leash around my hand as many times as a 6 foot leash.

There were 2 other golden retrievers – each walked by young girl. One said her dog Kramer always had to lead the pack so she kept running up behind us. I told her I had the same problem! We tried to let them walk at the same pace, but then they just sniffed each other and were tripping us up so I let her go by and joined a later pack.

The walk lasted about 45 minutes. We headed down to Main Street and stopped at an Ultramar gas station where they had water and milkbones. After a break we walked over a block and headed back.

The two ladies who were on the walk with their dog guide both won prizes for raising the most money. One of the young girls was the third place winner!

I got a little gift bag with a Purina bandanna for Monty, a treat bone for Monty, a $5 coupon for a farm and pet supply store, and a little red leash.

Here is a picture of Monty and I after the walk.

This is a photo of Monty & I after the Dog Guide Walk

Security Alarm?

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When I got home from work at 4:30 there was a security siren going off across the lake. It was still going off when we went to town at 5:30. It’s now 9:44pm and it is STILL going off.

I don’t know what cottage it is coming from, or why the people walking around over there this afternoon didn’t do anything about it, but now that it is dark and approaching bed time I’m starting to realize we might be sleeping listening to this damn alarm tonight.

I’m pretty sure there are people staying at one of those cottages now. I can’t imagine why they are not doing something.

I’m guessing that this siren is not attached to a security company alarm system. Now might be a great time to rob them for real.

The Terry Fox Van

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Jeff and I headed back into town after work today to see the van that Terry Fox lived in for 4.5 months in 1980 during his Marathon of Hope.

If you don’t know who Terry Fox was – please read his story – http://www.terryfoxrun.org/english/about%20terry%20fox/default.asp?s=1

This 1980 Ford Econoline van was often seen behind Terry as he ran a marathon a day with his prosthetic leg. The van was used to carry supplies, monitor Terry’s running mileage, collect donations and slow down traffic.

The van was recently found in Vancouver. It had been used by a vacationing couple for awhile, and then a heavy metal band toured with it. It was relatively unchanged in all those years, but it was on the way to the junkyard. It was completely rusted out in the bottom.

Ford Canada put in 1,000 hours to totally restore the van. They dismantled and reassembled every piece of the van.

I was a little disappointed by the small turnout, but maybe this trip will be like the Marathon of Hope – it also started with smaller crowds here in the east. Hopefully by the time the van arrives in Ontario there are bigger crowds and bigger donations.

Here are some of the photos we took:

Here is the van coming up Main Street:
Terry Fox Van

Terry Fox Van

Terry Fox Van

Fred Fox, Terry Fox’s brother, has been travelling in the van since they began in Newfoundland. He will be with the van into New Brunswick. He spoke a few words to us and talked to the media, posed for photos with families, and with an elderly man who posed for his photo with Terry in front of the same van on the same spot on the street back in 1980.

Terry Fox Van

Terry Fox Van

Can you imagine living in here?
Terry Fox Van

I’d want a far more comfortable mattress to rest on after I just ran a marathon, and had to run another one in the morning.
Terry Fox Van

Terry Fox Van

The M.C. wanted to pose for my picture. I have no idea who he was.
Terry Fox Van

Look at the dash board! I hope they make it to the Pacific!

Terry Fox Van