Forced time away from the blog
Posted by: Rich in Arizona, Notes from Gadget, Photo of the Day
Well, the blog was down for a while. Fortunately not due to hackers.
Instead my hosting company is currently relocating their server farm from one state to another. I’ve been receiving e-mails about the move for quite a while, but I’d never noted that there would be complete downtime. I assumed the cut would be a tandem operation with the original farm up, sync the new one, and then redirect traffic from old to new.
That’s how we used to do it in wireless. I planned a cut from Memphis TN to Little Rock, AR years ago. The new facility was built while the old one functioned away. Long Distance carriers were notified, code administrators, our database vendors, etc. Then one night everything came together. In a 6 hour window all traffic was repointed to the new switch, voicemail & prepaid cut over, SS7 networks, and pointers from the Long Distance folks were changed in one night (a hot cut). Ah, how I miss those days.
So, my web host did not do a hot cut. More like a warmed butter knife slowly sinking into a pat of butter, rather than a hot knife right through it. Wish they’d called me in, I would have helped plan a hot cut, and had fun doing it.
Since I haven’t had e-mail access or site access for more than 24 hours I had time available. But I still got to do tech stuff with my friend Gunny. Oh, by the way, Gunny pulled into town! Good to see him!
Today I set Gunny up with a PVR for his Macintosh. He’s busily copying old VHS tapes to his computer now. I just called him, and he’s 20 minutes away from finishing another one. It doesn’t help that he’s watching each one as he converts it! 
Once Gunny is completed and my friend Lars finishes with a file transfer (everyone is playing with tech today), we’ll head up into the Dells to take some more dusk photos (Lars just got his new Rebel XTi). Sadira has popped over, so it will be a good group walking out into the rocks once more.
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