Spider Chat

TeleFinder Chat from Tuesday, January 19, 1999 11 AM PST.

In attendance:

From Spider Island: Rusty Tucker

Sysops: Donald McHose, mikael fredriksson, Bob Nunn,

Rusty Tucker : same here
Bob Nunn : Reworking my Web Site. Tried the tab thing but don't like what I have so far.
Bob Nunn : It is forcing me to rethink how it is organized though. It sorta grew without a plan.
Rusty Tucker : I'm not going to be able to make the Daytime Tues. chats for a while -- so it looks like the Thursday PM chat will be my primary chat time.
Rusty Tucker : Sounds good BN -- I need to do the same here.
Bob Nunn : Will be okay, I think most would show if everyone was regular. Maybe even a few more. Just need to advertise.
Donald McHose joined the chat.
Rusty Tucker : Welcome to the chat Donald!
mikael fredriksson : RT I mailed you a sample picture from the chart plugin going nuts....
Rusty Tucker : thx
Rusty Tucker : my chart plugin crashed today, are they pix from my site?
mikael fredriksson : no from mine
Rusty Tucker : that looks fine, what's wrong with it?
Rusty Tucker : oh I c
mikael fredriksson : when I tried to restart the www server in the menu it bombed
Rusty Tucker : the "forecast" merely extrapolates the hour to date data to a full hour
Donald McHose : Hey there , Hi there , Ho there ! How's it going?
Donald McHose : You took down the cam sites.
Donald McHose : Boy is there a lag time today from here.30 seconds from send to post.
Donald McHose : More like a minute lag...hmmmm hell nuthins getting thru.
Rusty Tucker : you must have had a lot of his in the first few seconds of started up
mikael fredriksson : no this happens after a few days (have seen it 2 times on my system )
Rusty Tucker : the tv's back online
Rusty Tucker : hmm -- I'll keep a eye on mine then too
mikael fredriksson : It happens after 7-8 days or around 10000 hits I think
Rusty Tucker : ok -- I'll try and simulate the total number of hits then
Donald McHose : Boy talk about latent packets ;-)
Rusty Tucker : do you have a std log from your crash Mikael?
mikael fredriksson : sorry no it was rebooted by a ADB watchdog
Rusty Tucker : Is the latest Windows client working well for everyone ?
Bob Nunn : I haven't had anyone tell me they have tried it. Will get some reports this week.
Rusty Tucker : Great - I'd like to make it part of the shipping package as soon as possible.
Bob Nunn : I have two employees that have PCs at home and I make them try it. They were just out with the holidays or they would have already.
Rusty Tucker : :)
Rusty Tucker : crack that whip!
Donald McHose : Is the installer finished ? If so I'll grab it in the AM early
Rusty Tucker : This version installs itself
Bob Nunn : Yep, I don't know why it is so hard to get people to report on the thing. I see plenty who download it.
Donald McHose : great. its a done deal
Bob Nunn : I guess no news is good news to some extent. But you really need them to thrash thru the menu's etc.
Rusty Tucker : They probably don't run into any problems, or they're conditioned to have low expectations :)
Bob Nunn : Perhaps. Glad just to get it to run?? ;-)
Rusty Tucker : The one thing I fixed in this B2 was a relatively obscure command.
Rusty Tucker : I'm always amazed with Windows S/w that runs right out of the box
Rusty Tucker : too much stuff has too many dependencies on obscure DLLs and so on
Rusty Tucker : Mikael, you should run my StartLog program to recover more quickly from system crashes and it will grab a log too.
Rusty Tucker : reminds me that I should run it too! :)
mikael fredriksson : My system is auto rebooted and crash detected by a HW dongle + program I used to use your program but it sometimes got stuck in Macsbug...
mikael fredriksson : after a crash
Rusty Tucker : yes, you should use both the software and HW restarter
mikael fredriksson : OK
Rusty Tucker : the software restarts the Mac Immediately, instead of waiting for a time out.
Rusty Tucker : but as you know, sometimes is gets stuck in Macsbugs, or the crash is so bad that Macsbugs can't reboot the Mac. You need the fallback to the hardware solution in those cases.
Bob Nunn : Its a shame everyone can't have a PowerKey pro. It restarts even if it thinks its going to get hung.
Rusty Tucker : What about Rebound? That's a cheaper solution right?
Rusty Tucker : I think its just the restart stuff, no power mgmt?
mikael fredriksson : I use a MacCoach its from the Netherlands around USD100
Bob Nunn : I think so too. The Power Restart stuff is what does the work. The evil is of course it does it sometimes when it is not hung. Your PI helps though.
Donald McHose : Is any body seeing any problems with any server stuff( like memory-n-such ) with the latest release.I don't want to be a liar Friday.Goin for $$...Still will cop a Rebound or PowerKey pro though ;-)
Rusty Tucker : I still don't understand that one.. have you talked to the Sophisticated Circuits guys about it?
Bob Nunn : Yep, It has been a long while. It is hard to diagnose for them without duplicating the software etc. Since it is so infrequent now I don't worry about it.
Rusty Tucker : I see. There's probably a weird timing thing
Rusty Tucker : like if a long search in File Maker causes the PowerKey to miss a tickle or something.
Bob Nunn : I am sure of that now. I think perhaps the closer we get to x the less problem will be.
Rusty Tucker : I think my PI sends multiple tickles per time period, so even if a couple get missed you don't get a false restart
Bob Nunn : I have the timer set at max. I can make it happen with Norton or Retro for example. Anything that hogs the processor for a long time. Sucking news is most likely to kill me anymore.
Rusty Tucker : ahh
Bob Nunn : Since I have the groups smaller the only trouble I have is if it misses a day or two. Other than that it finishes too quick to cause trouble.
Rusty Tucker : what program hogs the CPU sucking news?
Rusty Tucker : NNTP Sucker?
Donald McHose : I have been studying Steve Jobs Q-Time flicks.I have the moves down now ! I'll take Bobs last quote as a clue on stability.
Bob Nunn : My backups are to hard drive and that makes retro fast enough now. Lollipop. Jim Smiths program.
Bob Nunn : I haven't had to touch my machine for months now. No hard hangs. I had a hard hang on Wang's this morning but that is probably the first time in months. PowerKey failed to restart it. Had to do it manually.
Rusty Tucker : he must have a spot where he forgot to call GNE while waiting for something to happen.
Rusty Tucker : I have retro go to tape :( lots of hang time there!
Bob Nunn : Play them the HAL apple ad.
Bob Nunn : Have you seen the outpost.com commercials where they fire gerbils thru the o in outpost?
Donald McHose : ;)
Rusty Tucker : no :) just the wolves attacking the band
Bob Nunn : The gerbils are definitely the best. They finally make it and sirens go off.
Donald McHose : Latest humor going off here is a knock off on a Harry Chapman called " Cat Food " a cat in the cradle " wav type short.Heard it ?
Bob Nunn : I better run.. Send me the logs please and I will watch for the announcement about the chats. Check out my web site the next few. Should have it reorganized.
Rusty Tucker : will do
Bob Nunn left the chat.
Rusty Tucker : c-ya Bob Nunn
Donald McHose : Oh well catch ya'll later.Thursday?...........hmmmmm
Rusty Tucker : Thurs.
Donald McHose left the chat.
Rusty Tucker : c-ya Donald McHose
mikael fredriksson : Any idea about the chart bug?
Rusty Tucker : no, I'll have to test it.
Rusty Tucker : I think I;ve used it under those circumstances though ( > 10K hits > 7 days online )
mikael fredriksson : it was 7 days then the chart went strange but only bombs when I try to restart www server in the TF menu
Rusty Tucker : ok
mikael fredriksson : We have to see next week on my system (7 days....) ;)
Rusty Tucker : ok see ya