November 19th,
2008
| *sigh* |
12:13 am |
I would of had emailpost working an hour ago if cryo wouldn't of tweaked
my config file.. :( :( :( :( :(
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October 6th,
2008
| Thoughts on the Acquisition |
10:34 pm |
You all have have by now seen the ![[info]](http://piktures.deadjournal.com/community.gif) new_shit post regarding Warped acquiring DJ.
Back in 2000 (or thereabouts), I was hanging out on the Warped IRC server when someone jokingly made a comment to start up DeadJournal.
I originally started it as a joke. People used it to rant and rave, so I kept it up. Borrowed some money from my parents to buy a server. One thing lead to another and at its peak DJ had 13 servers running the site you see today. I was in school back then, so I had the time to manage the server, do code upgrades, etc. It took a good chunk of my time/money, but it made people happy.
This site had made and destroyed friendships, allowed me to meet my wife, made me friends all over the planet that I would have never ever known. It has brought people together, broken people apart, and allowed people to record a past shell of what they once were.
Fast forward 8 years to today. The site hasn't had a code upgrade in 2+ years. The LJ code is light-years ahead of what you see here. Journal sites such as this have been stomped on by Facebook, Myspace, and other sites with billions of cash and hundreds of servers. However this site still trudges on funded only by the die-hard population who keep their paid accounts current (thank you!)
What little time I have that's not spent dispensing medication to people (oh, I'm a pharmacist if you haven't gotten that point) is spent waking up at 2am to fix dead hard drives and replacing aging equipment with DJ money that drizzles in. DJ doesn't make enough money for me to hire a full time admin. Yes, it (mostly) pays for its own upkeep, however DJ was never intended to pay my bills. This is a site thats ran on the love and dedication of myself, the volunteers (hi support people!) and the people who spend the money to make sure that the bills get paid and new hard drives get bought.
I was between a rock and a hard place and running this site began to take a toll on not only myself, but the people around me. Increased responsibility at work, myself getting married and hoping to start a family soon, etc whittled what time I had to dedicate to DJ fade more and more. I thought about shutting it down, but I just couldn't do it after seeing people flooding back here years after their accounts have sat untouched due to LJ policy changes. Add on a colocation facility (where the servers are kept) being bought out by yet another company makes the stress even higher as I don't know if I'll get a phone call one day saying I have 48 hours to find DJ a new home.
About 4 months ago, after knowing Bill Coldwell for 10+ years, I asked him if he would like to continue running DeadJournal. Ironically it was on his IRC server that the whole idea was started in motion. Of course, he agreed. I'm not pulling a 6A takeover like LJ where I get 4.5 hochillion dollars as they butcher the site. I just needed someone who works in the internet business to take over the administration and to help me get some of the features up and running that we want to see here.
The past weekend Bill and I (after 2 months of planning) moved DJ to Amazons EC2 server cluster. Huge facility, stable company, stable home. Bill can bring up servers that would cost me a years worth of paid account revenue in a few clicks. I don't have time to keep up on whats latest and greatest in the server-hosting world. He does.
I guess what I'm trying to say here, is that I hope you dont get the impression that I'm leaving DJ or disappearing. I've put 8 years of my life and thousands of hours, tears, sweat, and long nights into this place. I can't mentally handle running this site alone and keep what little sanity I have left. I've known Bill for ages, he's an extremely talented and great guy and it makes me happy that he gets to deal with the 2am crap while leaving me to do the fun stuff as my time allows.
So here's to another 8+ years of DJ!
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October 5th,
2008
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12:17 am |
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Its been such a long few days. :\
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October 4th,
2008
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10:00 am |
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I, for one, welcome our new DeadJournal S2 overlord.
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September 30th,
2008
| DeadJournal Downtime Notice |
10:49 pm |
Hi Everyone!
I'm Frank, and I run this place.
This coming Friday (10/3) night I'm going to be taking the site down for a few days. This is because we are moving the DJ servers to a new location. Thats right! We're moving on up, to the east side, to a Deluxe colocation in the sky!
Actually we're moving the site to Amazon's EC2 service. Not only will this give DJ huge amounts of bandwidth, but since everything will be ran on amazon's cluster there will be no more disk or hardware failures. Plus it'll take care of the packet loss issue.
Not only that, but we'll be able to add more "servers" just by issuing a few commands which means faster service. Also, since I wont have to "buy" additional hardware, we can look at enabling some features such as embedding youtube and other things. It will take a few days to move/sort things out (since as we speak people in china are retyping your journal entries on the new servers... Kidding) but it'll be worth it in the end. Things may be a bit rocky as we crank the site back up again, but we'll be sure to keep you posted as to exactly what is going on.
This is a huge jump/move for DJ, and I know it means a ton to the whole 10 people who still use this site :)
So this friday night, if DJ is down don't panic, its because we intentionally shut the site down so insure that we don't lose one emo journal entry.
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September 20th,
2008
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12:02 pm |
Packet loss really really sucks.
I should probably start to find a new home for DJ if the packet loss continues *sigh*. Pain in the ass.
I need to post more. I think i'm going to start having my wordpress site crosspost to LJ and here. At least you all will know that i'm still alive (and stuff).
Oh! Add me on twitter! http://www.twitter.com/scsi
:)
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August 18th,
2008
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08:11 am |
I was so waiting for the deadjournal 'happy birthday' email this morning. I never got it, so I thought something was broken.
It only emails people who have updated their journals within the past month. Thats why I havent gotten one. :( :(
I suck. :(
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June 21st,
2008
| Shadowrun v4.0 Backend |
01:56 pm |
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Originally published at cat /var/log/vadept.log. You can comment here or there. So I’ve been working on this backend for this Shadowrun RPG game that I’m planning to run in September. It’ll handle stuff like gear shopping, online inventory, individual vs group bank acounts, automatic job generation, etc.
If you are interesting in helping, its 100% php/mysql backend and I’ll accept any help I can get. Its a bit rough to post publically right this very moment, but if you’re interested let me know and i’ll shove the SVN repo somewhere for everyone to nab once I get it somewhat stable.
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May 23rd,
2008
| Fun Friday for Me |
10:47 pm |
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Originally published at cat /var/log/vadept.log. You can comment here or there. The Fiance is out of town, so obviously you would think that I would be out partying with my friends. However:
Friday (today) my day as been composed of:
1. Working a full day.
2. Coming home
3. Going to a sit down restaurant by myself. Sitting at a table by myself, and eating by myself without saying one word to anyone. Totally the most depressing thing I’ve ever done.
4. Sitting here at my computer drinking by myself while watching random videos on youtube and coding some php shit for a shadowrun game that I’m going to be running.
I swear, if I have any more fun my head will explode.
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May 13th,
2008
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07:38 pm |
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Man, 2 HD failures in servers within the past 1.5 weeks. I think I've lost what little sanity I had left.. :(
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March 13th,
2008
| Bleh |
08:38 am |
I wonder why I start most of these posts with "Bleh".
So, in case you havent heard. Ron proposed to Carina. Holy shit I cant believe it. I was there in Boston when those two first met. Hell, Carina and I shared a bed (while I sat in the hotel room and drank beer while all of them *waves hand over here* were trading mp3's).
Boston pics --> http://www.vadept.com/gallery/v/Outings/DJ_Boston_2003/
God that seems like such a long time ago. I guess it was. Now Carina moved to the states to be with him. Wierdness, I still cant wrap my brain around it.
Same thing with Nick and Ingrid. Met on here, and getting married. I've known nick for 10? years, since the old BBS days when he used to harass me on there.
Sorta makes me wonder how life would of been different if I went "eh, too much work" to the crazy idea of me starting this website. Or if I would have gotten bored with it and shut it down a year after it started. Hell, makes me wonder were I would be if I wouldn't of signed up for LJ and met the old LJ-crew and flew out to Portland where I met Tiffany.
Small decisions that have little to no bearing now but vastly effect your life later on down the road really interest me.
This is the most substansial DJ entry i've written all year. But don't feel bad DJ, I still love you, and I still check on you every day. If you check my LJ I really haven't been writing much of anything anymore.
ALTHOUGH if you've made it this far, go to http://www.vadept.com/2008/03/11/xbox-live-sucks#comments and read my story of how xbox live totally suspended my account for no reason, then comment to it saying how shitty they are. :)
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February 22nd,
2008
| |
07:01 pm |
Guess I should post in here once in a while since I do run the damn site.
Work has been kicking my ass. 400+ Rx's a day all this week. I feel like my head is going to explode. That + Server work = :(
Thats really it. Tiffany is in Oregon so I have been home alone the past week being bored and depressed. Fortunally she comes back on monday so I have to clean house.. :)
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February 7th,
2008
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08:30 am |
Bleh.
Yes, I'm still alive. :)
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January 19th,
2008
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11:09 am |
*sigh*
Happiness is not finding a nice red light (with accompanying siren) on one of your database server RAID arrays. :( So stressful. :(
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December 30th,
2007
| Bleh, still alive. |
11:45 pm |
Lets see, whats new and exciting in the land of Frank.
Oh, my mage character got killed tonight. Over a year of work, countless pages of downtime written (so far its 50+ pages last time i chekced) for a character that is now dead. Its hard for me to grasp him getting killed since he's almost died so many times. Oh well. Time to make a new one.
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November 22nd,
2007
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12:13 am |
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I"m still alive.. Barely.. :(
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November 8th,
2007
| One of the top things you dont want to hear from your colo provider |
10:58 pm |
"Uh.. There is this loud beeping coming from your cabinet.. Its really annoying, I think something died.. Better come check it out..."
Yeah, I shit my pants at the pharmacy at that point.. :(
Turns out it was a case fan that died in one of the machines.. Not as bad as it could have been but gave me quite a scare.
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October 25th,
2007
| Bleh. |
08:23 am |
I'm still alive. Barely.
Going to funeral today.
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October 19th,
2007
| |
07:24 am |
Back from vacation. It was nice. Of course to find out my great-uncle died later on last night was kinda a bummer.
:(
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