The Quasi-Indefatigable Xenolith Server Returns

After a wrestling match with AT&T U-verse, the long stretch of server-less-ness has finally come to an end. If you thought http://qix.me, http://quix.us, gopher://qix.me, http://shetlandic.info, and all the rest had disappeared into the fading purple of the World-Wide-Web sunset, you were wrong. It lives on!

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

We have a house under contract in Oklahoma City and the plan is to close on it and move in by the end of February. Not too long thereafter in March 2014, I hope to have the server back on-line (likely with far better bandwidth than previously) and resume regular operations.

Extended Downtime

If you have noticed that http://qix.me and gopher://qix.me have been off-line, that is because my family has relocated to Oklahoma and our situation is too fluid for now to allow for a decent internet connection for the home server.  I have no idea when this will be remedied.

Home Server Reborn!

I actually reactivated this blog as a bit of a replacement to the old web/gopher server I used at home. I was using an old POS board that used old laptop hard drives that are very very fragile and everything that was transferred to them was ultimately lost to little stuff. I have upgraded that system to be totally solid state, but I haven't put it back into service for now.

Instead, I am now using an old consumer minitower with a software RAID in it, which should solve my worries about losing data again (at least for a while). For now, I am populating the server with some very, very old data that was backed up eons ago, some of which was on the previous server and some that never was, so things are a bit different.  Explore away!

So, I expect to continue the blog for a bit as a replacement, but with some interesting stuff on the home server that are probably unique due to their age.

The Great (Yet Premature) Down-sizing

It was almost a week ago when some spare hard drives, disturbed by my shuffling about in preparation for our upcoming move, dropped from a cabinet onto the open-faced motherboard that served as my web and gopher server for the past year.  The debris dislodged the sound card and jarred the hard drive enough to gouge the surface and totally ruin the drive.  I typically have a none-too-recent backup of the drive, but I have had to shuffle around the backup drives to put my daughter Shayna back into service, so the backup drive had been recently formatted and EVERYTHING is now lost!!

Fortunately, I had been slowly moving most of my core documents to cloud servers, so all of what I would consider to be the really important stuff has weathered this storm.  The server itself is back in service and there is a web and gopher server running, but they are both quite empty for now.  Both the old podcasts are totally gone, which is a bit sad, but it would probably be just as well that I render most of the information that went into the podcasts into far more concise text, probably for posting in the future on this blog.

Frankly, there were likely some very dangerous recordings and essays on the server that probably were very outdated and really needed to be removed.  It isn't good to have too much of your uncensored self out on the public web anyway.  It was okay when no one really looked at the site, but with job changes, moving, and graduate school in the offing, there was a good chance that something damning that I have said/wrote in the past could come back to haunt me!  I am quite prepared to attribute the falling hard drives event to a fortuitous act of God and be grateful for the happening...

If you go clicking on links to the old QuIX properties, I hope you are not too disappointed at the lack of objects to browse.  Life happens!

Navigiary Begins

After years of effort and trying to walk away from the thing, the first book of the Navigiary series: Escape, is finally out and available on the Kindle store.

There is also another blog that I have just for Navigiary. Surprisingly, I also allow commenting on that blog as well!

See what I have been working on all these years but know that Escape is but an introduction - the meat of the story is yet to come!

Amazon Store Updates

I added a whole new section to my Amazon store just for Terry Gilliam films that I really like.

Someday, I want to go to a place or live in a neighborhood where everyone understands Gilliam.  I think I might be happy in a place like that!

I am Harry Tuttle as well

A while back, I talked about my George Bailey circumstances.  Of course, some people will get confused and say that I am some sort of altruistic credit union sort, which I can be on the odd Thursday.

Archibald (Harry) Tuttle

I am more like Archibald (Harry) Tuttle, the rogue heating engineer in the Terry Gilliam movie "Brazil".

Harry Tuttle: Listen, this old system of yours could be on fire and I couldn't even turn on the kitchen tap without filling out a 27b/6... Bloody paperwork.
Sam Lowry: I suppose one has to expect a certain amount.
Harry Tuttle: Why? I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there's trouble, a man alone. Now they got the whole country sectioned off, you can't make a move without a form.

Like me, he tends to be competent, efficient, quietly conspiratorial, and appropriately paranoid.  Harry understands how his world really works and has found his own ways to cope that work well enough, although against all social norms.  Above all else, Harry Tuttle seems to eek out happiness and authentic purpose in a stupid and superficial world!  What a great guy!

I Remain George Bailey

Well, I pulled a stunt with NHS Shetland and my job application and found out that I didn't even make the short-list for consideration.  Ah, well.

So, now I have a perfectly good passport and no where to go with it!  Perhaps something will come up that will still need it.

I guess my days as another modern-day George Bailey will continue for a while longer!

Yes, I have about the same outlook at George Bailey, knowing I could do bigger things than this but trying (often unsuccessfully) to deal with other constraints that both keep me down and help to ground me in a more honorable life.  I just love the dichotomies of life!

If I Were My Wife, I Would Hate Me

I got up this morning and I was depressed.

I recently applied for a job in Shetland and I have jerked myself back and forth ever since about whether I should take the job or not.  Of course, I haven't heard back yet from the HR folks, but it is a bit early for that, along with being a bit early to be making all these interesting plans as if I have already been offered the job!

So, the roller coaster ride begins.  I get happy and excited about a new challenge.  I get down because it might not happen.  I get happy and excited that it has every chance of happening!  I get down because it seems like the problem might be with the UK Border Office and I don't want to mess with that.  I get happy because stupider people than me do this everyday and they get through the Border Office gauntlet successfully.  I get down because my research tells me that my son Matt is too old and I see no way that they will let him in the country.  On and on I go with the roller coaster ride and my poor wife Lisa must just want to run away sometimes and find more stable people to live with.

I need to remind myself to thank Lisa for putting up with me.  I think I already did.  Numerous times.  This morning.

However, I think that it would be a nice gesture to actually not force her onto the Jason Nemrow Ride-O-Insanity so often.  Just to be a little kinder.

Of course, I wouldn't be this creative and philosophical nutcase if I didn't do the roller-coaster and I wouldn't be as entertaining to everyone.  I must say that even Lisa laughed at my travails this morning, so the humor value must make up somewhat for the whiplash!

Oh, the agony!!

A Transition

Well, I have finally decided to enter the blogging world, after many years doing websites.  We will see how this format works for me (and perhaps you).  I will be gradually adding things as I figure out how I want to do this.  I will definitely be changing the format of this blog, you can be sure!

For the interim, you can look at my website.  Also, if you have some ability for it, you can check out my far more dangerous gopher site.

Until next time...