So, I had:
– ColecoVision
– Sega Dreamcast
– PlayStation 2
Now, add to the list:
– Super Nintendo Entertainment System
I’ve got quite a few games for the SNES, some PS1 and PS2 games for the PS2, and four or five games for the ColecoVision. That’s a big enough library to work through for a while. I would like to pick up something for the DreamCast, though. The local independent gaming store didn’t have HydroThunder… I wonder if the intertubes have it.
I found two night-light replacement bulbs, wait, scratch that, LED night-light replacement bulbs, for the price of four incandescent. Each bulb has three LEDs in it.
This pleases me to no end.
TV/VCR combo with broken VCR – check.
Coleco Vision hooked to coax through adapter made by brother from twenty-five year old parts, powered up, and tested – check.
Video and stereo-to-mono y-adapter plugged into the front auxilliary port and into RCA/S-video switch box – check.
Sega Dreamcast plugged in, powered up, and tested – check.
PlayStation 2 plugged in, powered up, and tested – check.
And I thought getting rid of the SETI@Home graveyard would lessen the prevelance of ancient, and yet awesome, electronics in my basement cave. Huh. Now I’ve just got to get this SNES fixed…
Server, he has fallen! Please do the needful!
Looks like Snarl has suffered complete hard drive failure. No hard drive should make those noises, I’m just sayin’. Looks like my post-kid-bedtime activities involve swapping hard drives, installing bare-bones Debian, and installing BOINC.
Ironically, this is the first problem I’ve had with these ancient boxen since I went through and re-tested all of the RAM in the most sensitive of boxen – the Mac. I’m going to go through my HDs and find the smallest one that I can use, just because. :) I think I’ve got some 2GB drives in there somewhere…
For reference, Snarl is the second one in from the left.
Anything different around here? Well, I hope not. Though the last month or so have seen some major changes on the back end of the site.
We’re no longer hosted by LiquidWeb. Still being part of Michigan’s unemployed has brought monthly bills to the forefront. So, we’re now with a small, local start-up company called VPS4ALL. (Full disclosure – I’m one of the people starting it up.) Moving from a web-interface hosting solution to one that was command-line only really made me flex some geek muscles that had been out of practice.
All of the differences are behind the scenes, so to speak, in Linux Land, and I hope that it remains that way. If you notice any strangeness with the way that the site behaves, let me know. :)
A few weeks back, I posted this to a forum called Web Hosting Talk, and I thought that you might want to read it.
—
I’d like to introduce you to a new VPS company.
If those words strike terror into your heart, I understand. With all of the get-rich-quick fly-by-night operations (and I use that word loosely) that come and go, it’s difficult to see a new VPS company come onto the scene without cringing.
So, let me start our introduction off by letting you know that my partner and I are terrified. Mortified. Petrified of being seen as one of those fly-by-nights. We want to succeed, and we want to do it by offering a solid, reasonably priced product that’s backed by reliable knowledge and experience.
You can only prove your reliability and experience over time. Since we’re only now starting to offer services to the public, we’re left with the task of convincing you to take a risk on us. Not easy, especially with all of the get-rich-quick nonsense that’s out there.
Here goes anyway.
We’ve taken this rant to heart. We’ve set aside sufficient funds for business expenses to maintain our servers for the foreseeable future. What this means is that if we don’t don’t find a niche in the public market, we have the funds to continue operating while giving our customers the time they need to find other hosts and migrate their data.
We’re not expecting failure, we’re confronting the ugly possibilities first.
We are making a fundamental pledge to never oversell our servers. You get what you’re paying for, no more, never less.
We’re straightforward. Neither of us are tricky or salespeople, and sometimes we’re too blunt for our own good. If something breaks on our end, we’ll tell you what it is, why it happened, what we’re doing to make sure that it doesn’t happen again, and we’ll own up to our mistake. On the other side of that coin, if it’s something that’s outside of our control, we’ll tell you. We cannot bend the entire internet to our will, nor can we prevent backhoes from cutting fiber.
As an example of our straightforward candor, let me share a little bit about our setup. Both my partner and I reside in Lansing, MI. We’ve colocated our first server at Waveform Technology, in Troy, MI. We’re running Proxmox to manage virtualization and server clustering. We both see this as an opportunity to further our city and our state in their transition from auto manufacturing to technology services.
We’re both idealists, me more so than my partner. While there are harsh realities in the business world that must be faced, I believe that success can and will come without deception and without trickery. I don’t want to pillage my customers. If I did that, how could they pay me the next month? Or upgrade when the need arose? How could they recommend me to others in good faith?
We’ve got a collected 25+ years of professional experience when it comes to information technology. I have years of hosting-specific experience. I’ve seen how some providers do things, and I want to do better.
As the rant that I linked to earlier says, any customers should grill any possible host with questions. I look forward to being grilled, and welcome both the opportunity and challenge. We want you to take a risk on us. We’re sure that we’re up to it. So, hit us up, ask us questions, and pick the host that best fits your needs.
David M. Crampton, CEO
VPS4ALL
http://vps4all.net
dave@vps4all.net
SETI@Home Graveyard
Let us bow our head in remembrance of two valiant machines, Alpha Trion and Swoop. They were discovered to be non-functional upon the redeployment of the Graveyard. They were reliable… er… they were the first two in my rack-wanna-be shelf. Nemesis Prime has been re-purposed as Hunter’s computer, and will rejoin the Graveyard ranks when Hunter earns a connection to the internet. Bruticus is now my desktop, and it’s still crunching data. That left Slag and Snarl as the only boxes to redeploy in the basement. I’ve set up the other Compaq Presario media computer (the multimedia might of Pentium II with MMX!) as Sludge, and am thinking of setting up the ancient eMachine as Grimlock (Thanks, Matt!).
That basement room is much more clean now. I’m hoping that this trend continues.
Repercussions and Consquences
Doctor’s appointment today with the OB/GYN. Pictures of babies on the wall, pregnant women all around, happy expectant faces everywhere… wore hard on Nikki. Truth be told, on me as well. Things are progressing normally, the hormone count is way down and still falling. The loss, the hole, is still preventing things from returning to “normal”, but I don’t feel like I’m running from it.
Writing
What’s this writing thing of which you speak?
I hate cat puke.
I also dislike waking up with the knowledge that very bad dreams were going on all night long, but not remembering anything about them. Not to mention back and joint pain.
Rebuilding my SETI@Home Graveyard has begun. This is a good thing.
Highly entertained by YouTube videos that keep popping up in my RSS feeds and in my email.
Time to get the oldest ready for school and to find caffeine.