Richy's Random Ramblings – Page 163 – Random ramblings and ravings of Richy B

Work: Slow, bad and then Extremely Good

February 3, 2003

Well today was an interesting day at work. First hour or so was quite quiet (mainly responding to any technical helpdesk enquiries that were logged over the weekend and just following up on a few things), but then things started to get just a little bit busier… Then one of our main servers failed 🙁 It’s the one we’ve been having a few problems with. We hoped that the RAM swap-out would have sorted the issue, but it died big time again today and we were without it for an hour or so. Proactive action is being taken though – we (more technically, me) are moving the critical files off that server on to one of our spares (the helpdesk and client system) and I’m planning on getting some really severe logging systems running on the server. By really severe, I mean regular system snapshots to let us know exactly what is happening, monitors running in case pre-determined levels are exceeded yadda yadda yadda. I was hoping it wouldn’t be necessary, but we do need to find the cause of this fault ASAP. Yes, our customers don’t pay a lot to be hosted on the server (it’s one of the cheapest hosting plans available to my knowledge) and we don’t offer a SLA (Service Level Agreement) so technically we can just let the box “die” and be done with it – but that’s not good for our customers and since our major form of advertising is “word of mouth” – downtime ain’t good for us!

After the server came back up (and we got full email capabilities back) I had loads of work come in. I had sent out emails on Thursday, Friday and this morning saying “I need approval on this/I need these details” for a number of our search engine optimisation customers and they all decided to get back to me in the same time frame. Grrr. Combine that with ‘standard’ customer side of things I’m involved with (I seem to be getting “respond to this potential customer with your standard marketing gumff” style emails from my boss) and I was overloaded!

Guess That Movie: XX: Die Hard 3

February 3, 2003

3 Comments

[Guess That Movie 20] The last round of Guess That Movie was won by Lord Nikon herself – Kymberlie R. McGuire – who correctly recognised Lisa Blair (I doubt she’s any relation to Linda Blair ) who lived at 26 East 7th Street, Apartment 16 (telephone number 555-4817) appearing around the 43rd minute of the movie Hackers . Yes, I’ve watched that movie plenty of times – but I’m still surprised how Kymberlie managed to recognise it within 7 minutes – that’s just 2 minutes of the current record – as it’s not a major character (I think she just says “What?” in the movie).

Anyway, Kymberlie’s got herself another 100 points moving her up four positions in the score chart to fourth place (with 120 total points). Will she do any better with this screenshot or will someone else guess it first?.

A: Die Hard 3: Die Hard With A Vengence . Correctly guessed by Ph33r_m3

Guess That Movie: XIX: Hackers

February 3, 2003

3 Comments

[Guess That Movie Round 19] As promised here’s round 19 of the popular Guess That Movie contest!

The scores are quite close with Ph33r_m3 having 490 points, LD 380 and “Super Beastmaster” have 280 – but it’s possible for anyone to guess this image and move into the lead. Prizes will NOT be awarded until the end of round 27 (in another 8 images time): this will give everyone a chance to try and get to the magical “500 prize point” and for me to confirm the scores. A word of warning though – at the moment I’m not sure if Guess That Movie will continue using the present prize/score structure after round 27: I’m in the process of creating a new site just for Guess That Movie and the scoring system may be subject to change… So guess now and win!

All you’ve got to do is to recognise which movie the small screen shot on the left was taken from – place your guess in the comments and wait for me to go “yea” or “neigh”. Did I hear some one ask for a clue? Ok – the character who appears in this screen shot lives on the East end of a street….

A: Hackers . Correctly guessed by Kymberlie R. McGuire

Snippet: Make Mental Note

February 2, 2003

News: Space Shuttle Columbia Breaks Up II

February 1, 2003

2 Comments

Continued coverage of the Space Shuttle Columbia breaking up:

The image for this entry (which you can click on to enlarge) is from the National Weather Service Radar (Long Range Base Reflectivity) for the Dallas/Fort Worth (Texas) area at the time of the shuttle crash. The area in red is the path the shuttle took (it’s indicated in red as that portion of the image is an hour old at 1622 UTC).

Columbia was launched on the 16th of January on a science mission (where it orbited the Earth for sixteen days), but mainly made headline news because of the presence of the first Israeli astronaut (48 year old Ilan Ramon). His family was staying in the USA, and a Israeli embassy crew have been sent to assist the family. President Bush has called the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to update him on current known facts. There are NO suspicions of any terrorist related activity (the FBI have stated that they are not involved in any investigations) – despite some media reports.

Debris from the shuttle have been found over 120 miles of Texas – people are being warned NOT to approach or touch the debris but the contact the authorities – toxic fumes are generated during re-entry that are hazardous to health (that’s why when a shuttle lands, the “approach crew” are wearing bio-hazard suits). Witnesses in North Texas have said they heard a “big bang” around 2.16UTC (9.16am Texas time) which was around the time that contact with the shuttle was lost and the time at which the shuttle was due to land. It had just begun its re-entry procedure when contact was lost.

It is not known what, if any, affect this disaster will have on the International Space Station where there are currently 3 crewmembers (Commander Ken Bowersox, Flight Engineer Nikolai Budarin and NASA ISS Science Officer Don Pettit) – but this is the first time in 42 years that NASA has lost a space crew during the landing stage (the most hazardous and dangerous phrase of any mission).

Shortly after Columbia was launched on the 16th, a piece of insulating foam on its external fuel tank came off and hit the left wing of the shuttle. At the time Leroy Cain (the lead flight director at Mission Control) assured reported that engineers had concluded that any damage to the wing was considered minor and posed no safety hazard – no major damage was suspected to have been made to the 20,000 thermal tiles that help protect the shuttle’s aluminium shell from the hour-long re-entry temperatures which can go as high as 1,600 degrees C (3,000 F).

Neil has a good photograph of the crew, Dave is providing good news coverage, Joni Electric (a Texan) has some good coverage, Nacanowhere also has some good Texan related coverage along with a photograph of some of the debris and Meredith has a few thoughts on the Columbia disaster.