Things I have had to give up this week:
Running
Class
Most of my homework
A good night's sleep
Archaeology reading group/beer hour tomorrow

Okay body, GET OVER IT, I am bored of attempting to sleep, attempting to write papers, and watching Buffy.

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

I did something this morning that I generally try to avoid doing. I murdered a spider.

Now I’m usually a “live and let live” kind of person when it comes to most household pests. There’s a few I don’t like inside the house and will work to eradicate if they invade, like ants, wasps and mice; but for the most part I’m pretty friendly to the arachnid population. After all, they help me out by taking out some of the less popular pests and I’m all for that. We even have a sort of a pet spider that hangs out by our back door. I named him Jack. Jack is darn cool for a spider and may have more intelligence than our mailman although that argument might not fly in a court of law or anything. Jack is awesome – just sayin’.

This morning I was getting ready to stumble into the shower when I saw a great big daddy long-legs hanging out in a fold of the shower curtain. Now if he had been on the outside, all would have been fine, but he had picked the wrong side of the curtain and I did not fancy taking a shower with ole leggy. I shook him down into the tub and tried to encourage him up and out, but he was being stubborn. It was like he was staking out the joint or something.

Well I am stubborn too, and not the least bit inclined to share my morning ablutions with the arachnid of the day so I turned the shower on figuring that he would run from the water. Nope, dude started to swim! As soon as he got free from the encroaching tide, he parked his little spidey-ass like he was enjoying a day at the beach. And it was this point, I am sad to report, that I lost my mind and bashed him to death with a shampoo bottle.

Yup, I am a spider-smashing biotch when you come between me and my shower. That is my only 10 minutes of solitude for the day. All who get in my way shall tremble!

i am tiiiired. during the day i'm feeling healthy and generally as happy as i've ever been 2 months after moving somewhere new (meaning i'm still very insecure about things but glad to be where i am). then i come home at night and i'm just exhausted and feel like i should be out at the bar trying to make friends or doing more homework or something instead of sitting at home wanting to go to sleep. but i also think i may be coming down with something right now, my throat hurts inexplicably and one of my classmates i hung out with last week was out sick today...perhaps i'll go to bed early and the sore throat and general feeling of lethargy will pass and leave me energetic and optimistic again. if only the insecurity would - but that's an adjustment that simply takes months, i know that from experience, it's just a matter of accepting it's there until it finally goes away. and hey, this is probably the least bad i've ever had it, thank goodness i live with friends.

Crown tourney was an absolute blast! I have never been a consort before and it's been so long since I've been to an event that I wasn't working, that even though I was "on" it was incredibly relaxing. I can't thank my household enough for the work they put in preparing for the event and taking care of us for the day. I don't feel remotely deserving of such devotion. bdeb looked dashing in our colors and I couldn't help but giggle a bit when he heralded in another couple while still wearing our household surcote.

I wish that I had had more time to visit with people I see only too rarely. Fortunately, lots of people came to visit our pavilion and share our hospitality (red velvet cake and hot coffee for the win!)

I'm terribly busy at work, but I'll try to write more later and link to some of the pictures that people have posted.

I'm sorry for the lack of posts and updates of late.  It's not even really that I have migrated over to Facebook like so many of my other friends, as I don't really update there that often either.  Part of it is that with my job as a floater, my schedule is so erratic and change so much that it's hard for me to get into any kind of routine for such mundane things as cleaning the apartment and doing laundry, much less blogging.  Usually, it has to wait until I have a day off, and then it largely depends on how much I have on my plate and how much I have to get done.  Needless to say, blogging isn't always at the top of the list.

In any case, check driftingfocus ' blog for updates on our life.  In short, lots of work on the motorcycle, some reenacting stuff, and life in general.  I'm trying to get back into sewing by helping K put together her Mongolian kit for the SCA, as well as working on some Civil War kits for a few events we have coming up in December and March.  In December, the QRF is going to be the reenactment of the Battle of Goldsboro Bridge (December, 1862), where we will be going as Starr's Battery, NC State Artillery.  In March we have the renactment of the Battle of Bentonville (March 1865) and we will be going as some pretty ragged-ass Federals, although I'm not sure which formation (I think I heard some Wisconsin formation, though I could be wrong).

So far, I have my brogans, a pair of trousers, a canteen and sling, two blanets, a haversack, a farbalicious shirt, and that's all.  I'm planning on making up some drawers to help stay warm, ordering some socks, as well as a hat and a kit for some kind of Confederate jacket (probably a NC state issue jacket, but I might just go with the generic commutation of 4-button jacket kit as well).  Need to get some eating utensils and make up a night cap as well.  At some point in the future I'll buy or make another shirt, and then convert my farb shirt into an undershirt, but right now that's pretty far down on the priority list. 

In any case, the Civil War is one of those periods that's always had limited interest for me.  Personally, I'm always wary of getting involved in reenacting periods in which people are still very much fighting the war in terms of ideology and so forth.  Fortunately, most of the guys in my unit are originally from California and those that aren't at least have a very complex view of the Civil War and take a dim view of the post-reconstruction "lost cause" mythos so prevalent in American society.  Which is just as well, as that way I can reenact the Confederate side without having to worry about fireside discussions regarding damnyanks and slavery.

Anywho, after doing some reaserch and the like, I figured it might help me ground my persona if I had an idea of who I was supposed to be recreating.  We are from the south and portraying a southern unit (at least, most of the time), but at the same time, one of the really unknown/forgotten aspects of the civil war is just how controversial the war was in the south, and how much localized resistance there was to it, especially in the more rural and rugged areas, away from the big cities, agricultural districs, population centers, and wealthy land magnates, whose stake in the survival of slavery and an independent south was greatest.  

I'm always kind of wary of people who get too much into the first-person aspect of reenacting, as then it always feel s alittle like LARPing to me.  However, I figure that having an idea for a backstory might not hurt, especially if we want to try to do a first-person thing for the tourists, or if we want to talk in character for a while.  So here goes.  I hope it's not too hokey or farby, as I get a lot of my ideas from Mark Twain novels.  Also, for more on draft resistance and opposition to the Confedearcy in the south (which had a demonstratably greater impact to the Confederate war effort than the Copperheads' activities in the north), see the following websites: The War Within the Confederacy, Blacksburg in the Civil War, and Peace Societies In The Confederacy.

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I am still alive, I promise. Work has jacked all my free time during the day and plans for Crown Tournament are using up all the evening hours that I can squeeze out - meager though they are.

There have been lots of doctor's visits for every member of the family over the last month. October was insane for co-pays and I'm about at my end limit with that mess.

For my part, I am simply not on the computer much. My eyes have taken a major turn for the worse and it's been kind of special trying to get the right combination of lenses/prisms to allow me to see. Using the computer has been a challenge. I live on advil, which they tell me is bad. I was hoping that having the netbook would help, but I'm really only using it to keep up with the office at the moment. *sigh*

Anyway, it's not that I have any less love for you all, but I'm not really reading OR writing much these days, or knitting for that matter. But things will get better. They always have.

It is a warm, windy Halloween. I have purchased candy and lit Allison's jack-o-lantern, and I've got two more hours before the party I'm headed to...come to me, children, come! I really hope we get some trick-or-treaters!

Edit: hmm. It has been half an hour and no kids yet. This makes me very pessimistic. And I do live on a dead end.

Edit: 8 PM and no kids. As Joanna says, "this neighborhood is full of students and old people." BOO NEIGHBORHOOD.

EDIT: If you're reading this, our maintenance is OVER! The problem was not found on our equipment, which means we'll have to work with our ISP to fix this small problem -- which also means another maintenance window in the future -- but at least we have eliminated our side.

Thank you everyone, and a special shout out to rekoil for giving me a great suggestion AND also the opportunity to feel like I've just called in to a local radio station.

Have a great day, night or afternoon wherever you may be.

---

Hi everyone, sorry for the late notice but I'm going to have to do some testing on 1 of our 4 internet circuits TONIGHT; Friday night or Saturday morning depending on which time zone you're in.

Most of us shouldn't notice any impact, though there may be some slowness or lag when I switch traffic on to our other ISP circuits and then another hit when I stop the tests. If a page won't load or times out, try hitting refresh 1 or 2 times and it should load then. If it doesn't work at all... trust me, I'll be typing really really really fast to try to undo whatever I just did. Hopefully you'll have some Halloween candy (if you're in the USA and celebrate that kind of thing) nearby to take away the bitterness of a small site outage. :(

Here's the handy-dandy Website That I Always Use to get a feel for when the maintenance will start in your area. Our site traffic historically dips on Friday afternoons until Saturday morning which is why we tend to pick this time for maintenance work.

( tech details )

status.livejournal.org will, of course be updated before and after the maintenance window. Or else marta will get mad at me. :D

bt

In response to user comments from last week, we want to let you know that we'll remain LJ cut-free for the next month in order to get more eyeballs on our evolving newsletter. As for product coverage, that continues to be our top priority. For more granular detail, however, we recommend you join lj_releases.

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Conquer Writer's Block

1. I find it easier to stand up for other people, and i wouldn't let it slide if they made a rude or hurtful comment.
2. Usually if a friend makes a racist or homophobic remark, I tend to let it slide. I think that while i would not say such things myself, I have no right to censor those around me.
3. This happens all of the time. I confront some relatives, but I refuse to if they are drunk or watch Fox News.
4. I'd let it slide if it was just a private remark... As much as I despise bigotry and intolerance, I know that you can't change people-they have to change themselves ...
5. Confront! confront! confront! Politely, but without equivocation.
6. SPEAK UP. Always, always, always speak up. Letting something slide lets ignorance win. No matter if it offends me directly, or someone else, I will confront the speaker and let them know that's not ok.
7. I don't get offended personally. As an immigrant, woman, gay and person of color if I took every single potentially offensive remark seriously I wouldn't get anything done.
8. I punch them in the balls. With my mind.
9. I do speak up, but often very timidly because I feel that I'm white and therefore I don't really have any authority to lecture someone on what's racist and what isn't...
10. Generally speaking, I do not let this shit fly, because it reduces me as a person, to this non-person and it replicates the destructive discourse that makes sure that sexual minorities, racial minorities, women, people with disabilities, trans people and every intersection thereof into something other than human... And sometimes... I'm just too tired to deal with it, so I roll my eyes, make a sarcastic remark and hope the conversation moves on quickly.

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