The site was down for a few hours today while Piper and I fought off some reaper bots. We firewalled their ISPs, all of which were in China, and while we were at it, we firewalled out some spammers, too. Took about four hours of solid work.

The rumors of BCs demise were greatly exaggerated. :)

Hugs,
Erin

Hi Everyone!

The site was up and down frequently today, the problem finally turned out to be a badly behaving server on the same subnet with us at the server farm, not one of our servers. Sheesh!

Hugs,
Erin

Kindle Hatbox

Apparently, when enough people discovered the new watcher feature to keep you notified about new comments on posts, it broke the system. For now, we've had to turn watcher off. Sorry.

Wolfpacks have a hierarchy of respect, obligation and deference. At the top of this hierarchy are the Alpha Wolves, usually a mated pair but sometimes a single individual. At the bottom of the structure is the Omega Wolf. The Omega eats last and is chased and bitten by all the wolves higher up in the structure.

If the Omega wolf dies or leaves the pack, a new Omega ends up being chosen quickly and is not always the wolf that was formerly the one just above the old Omega.

At least one of these ordinary tips will make your life easier...

http://shialabeowulf.tumblr.com/post/33670447154/99-life-hac...

First night this winter it actually got below freezing here and my furnace went out at 10 p.m. last night. I didn't get to sleep until the dog got under the covers with me about 2 a.m. because SHE was cold.

Got the repairman outside looking at it now, if it's an electrical problem, he should have it fixed soon. If it's the heat exchanger, well, that furnace is old enough to have run for president against John McCain. Third party ticket though, so no hope of winning.

Got to take Cuddles to her eye checkup in an hour, looking forward to the heater in the Nissan.

Daniel is the artist on the webcomics I work on, Quillian and Sam Valentine. He's also a sculptor of some skill. He did these beautiful little figurines of the characters Alistair and Zook from the strip I write and draw myself, Alistair2Zook. Click on the image to go to the (partial) online archive of the strip.

Story comments, in case anyone wondered, are for commentary on the story and the writing thereof. They are not for speculation on whether the author had the right to post the story, or for guesses about the writer's political opinions, mental states or educational status. Nor are they for inflammatory comments about current social climates or current affairs. Note the qualifier there, inflammatory.

Due to a hardware failure on another server, and the need to test hardware. One of our servers (Eva) which is the primary Star Stuff server, is going to be taken offline.

The last five days or so, I've had a sinus headache. This has been aggravated by the continuing changes in air pressure as several mild storm fronts moved through the area. But it's better today.

Sephrena will probably not be on tonight as she has just got out of the hospital after flu with a high fever and an emergency trip. She's home now but is probably going to be in bed for a few days, recovering.

Please think of her, she does a lot of behind the scenes work here.

Hugs,
Erin

PW which provides and manages most of our ad space is down, probably due to connectivity problems or power since they are in Toronto but I don't know where their servers are.

Writer's Digest has extended the deadline for their short fiction contest, you have until October 31, 2012 to make entries in six categories. There are no limits to how many entries you can make. Grand Prize is $2500 and a trip and other goodies. Six First Prizes are $500 each. There is a fee for entry.

http://www.writersdigest.com/popularfictionawards

Hugs,
Erin

A week ago Monday we equaled the number of stories and chapters that FictionMania has archived and by Thursday we had definitely passed their mark, currently we have about 40 more stories than they are showing, though both sites have seen new stories posted in the past week.

Thanks everyone!

Hugs,
Erin

Made dinner tonight. Just stirred up some stuff I had and ate it. Actually, this recipe made enough for about three meals.

Just a quick FYI....

I'm working on MySQL and a few other things on the pirmary and 2ndary servers...

BigCloset, TGLibrary, Stardust and OTHER sites could be a bit flakey tonite....

Here's the link: http://www.gocomics.com/herbandjamaal/2012/09/10

Not the usual strip to imply something like that which makes it funnier. :)

Hugs,
Erin