... from about 10:20 pm Eastern till about 10:35, according to Pingdom, and I got an email from HostGator saying their nameserver failed. They restarted it and everything's fine.

Bad Hostgator.

I got emails about it. I got Facebook posts about it.

Only guess what? You weren't supposed to be on the forum anyway, at that time. You were supposed to be listening to R.C. Radio and our whackjob guest Paul Irey, who explained that the reason his report about the LFBC being a forgery is so professional is because he knew before he started that it had to be a forgery, so all he was looking for was confirmation; and he confirmed that has no credentials to be a forensic document examiner, no expertise, and has never testified in court. And he was rude and overbearing and condescending and you had to butt in forcefully or he wasn't going to let any of us get a word in edgewise. But he wants to come back on the show for another hour because he's not certain that his obnoxious and unprofessional explanations convinced us he's right, and he has some whackjob Kennedy assassination theory he wants to 'splain us too. So maybe we'll have him back, in about five billion years when the Sun goes red giant and burns the Earth to a crisp.

It was Thursday night at 10:20 Eastern time when the crash happened.
If you want to tell me something important on Thursday night between 9:00 and 11:00 Eastern time, call in to the show and tell me.
(347) 324-5546
Otherwise I'm unavailable.

Thank doG I was doing the show and not trying to use the forum. Whew!

Otherwise, I too might have been confronted with the fact that my life is an empty wasteland.




That's a joke, kids.
We all love the forum, and it's a living nightmare if it goes down for 15 minutes, I know that.

Anyway, this one ain't on me, and we're back and running, and we lost 0 posts, so it's all good.

Technical stuff here, but if the downtime was do to a nameserver failure... then of course you wouldn't lose any posts, because nothing was wrong with the server (computer) where the site is hosted. The problem was with the computer (nameserver) that gives directions to internet signals on how to find the site. So the site was probably sitting quite pretty by itself, having a very nice rest, wondering why all of the sudden there were no visitors.

True dat.

And if you had pointed your browser to the IP address of my VPS, 184.172.128.64, you probably could have continued using the site.

We had another incident, too.

In the ORYR thread, there was a serious hijack to discuss food. My moderator, realist, politely asked that the hijack be moved to the Recipes thread, and he helpfully gave a link, and it would have been good manners, not just in the spirit of keeping things in their proper place, to move the hijack to the Recipes thread, like he asked.

Instead, he was ignored. He wasn't just ignored. The threadjack didn't just continue as if he hadn't posted. It was worse than that.

Somebody posted a recipe. In the ORYR thread, instead of the Recipes thread, which realist had given the link for so you could find it easily. Was that supposed to be a big F.U. to my moderator? Because that's sure what it looked like to me.

We tolerate threadjacks up to a certain point -- I understand that most of you are Earthlngs and your minds tend to wander -- but it's getting ridiculous.

I moved all the posts about food from the ORYR thread to the Recipes thread. When a moderator asks you politely to stop a threadjack and move it to a more appropriate place, please comply. Thank you.

I had not seen it but thanks for moving it.

Did you notice that I threadjacked my own thread to talk about threadjacks?

After just two freakin' posts?




This sorta thing is for the pros only. Don't try it at home, kids.

I had to log off RC, chat and fogbow just before 10 because the abyssinians were toying with a firefly that got in the house and whatever that critter has on it or defense system, it made them drool like teething toddlers, so I missed document guy. I'll have to cue up the replay.

Yes, by all means, if you want to get seriously pissed off at a moron, catch the second hour of last night's show.

It will do wonders for your low blood pressure!





Little known sekrits, I tells you them, in case of future board problems:

I paid for an entirely different forum software a few months ago. It's called IPBoard, and it comes with professional support, not the kind of volunteer, catch-as-catch-can support you get with an open source software like phpBB.

To be honest, the phpBB support is pretty responsive, like 12 to 24 hours, but the IPBoard support is more like 3 or 4 hours, and you can get pissy if it isn't fast enough, 'cuz you're paying money for it.

Lately, Fogbow has been working almost perfectly. There are some little problems like crashed scripts, nothing too serious. What happened last night was a problem with the hosting company, not a problem with the software or the database or anything like that. So I am really, really hesitant to switch over to the IPBoard software, unless we have some serious problems. My philosophy is:

1. If it works, don't fix it.
2. If it moves and it's not supposed to move, use duct tape.
3. If it doesn't move and it's supposed to move, use WD40^®.

Guide your life with these three rules, and you will live well, grasshopper. Rule No. 1 applies here. So I'm in no rush to make the switch.

Another thing that IPBoard is good at is large databases and large forums. We've had a surge of traffic and not all of it comes from Corsi's attempts to give us publicity. Up until the end of March, we averaged about 300 posts a day. This month, we're averaging about 410 posts a day. We're about to break 200,000 total posts, and it will be a quarter of a million before you know it. By 2012, we're going to have to rent a warehouse. And 2012 isn't going to be boring, either.

So I have a test forum with the new software, so I can learn it. I practice when I find time. I'm teaching myself all the admin options. I'm reading the documentation so I feel like I have as much expertise with IPBoard as I do with phpBB. I'm going to be ready, if I need to make the change. I'll solicit a lot of input from the Beloved Herd, too, as I always do.

I'm getting close to making my point now ... I can feel it ... I can feel it ...

Here's the point:

If this forum shuts down or blows up or disappears for any reason, you can go check out the test forum, also known as the Planet Moonbat Forum for now.

Or you can just go over there and test stuff. It even has a chat room that holds up to 50 people. (If a 51st person tries to join, they'll have to wait until somebody leaves.)

Coupla words of warning:

• Don't get hooked on how it looks. I'm going to find a "skin" that resembles phpBB and looks like here.
• Don't write anything you want to keep. When and if I decide to make the switch, everything posted there and every member of the board will be deleted. There's a conversion process for converting this forum to IPBoard, but I'll delete the test forum.
• Don't ask me for all the bells and whistles. It has a "reputation" system that I think would suck for this group. That won't be implemented, and neither will a lot of other things. I want it to look and function almost exactly like this forum software so it isn't disorienting and you don't have a learning curve to use it.
• Don't bug me about switching over or not switching over. I won't ever do it unless we start having problems. See Rule No. 1 above. If we do have some problems crop up, and they're caused by the phpBB software, then I'll make the switch. Until then, it's just a playtoy.
• If Fogbow disappears like it did last night AND the cause is the same as what happened last night, the Planet Moonbat forum will also disappear. The problem last night was a nameserver that crashed. Both sites are hosted by HostGator. If a nameserver crashes, they'll both get zapped. If I have too many problems with HostGator, I'll consider moving to a new host company, but last night was the first problem ever, since September 2010. HostGator is a damn good hosting company so far.

On the bright side, if the phpBB software crashes for some OTHER reason, but the IPBoard forum still works, you can stay in touch with the rest of the herd, and I can give updates on whatever.

Enjoy.

You was beautiful

I have played with the new board and it has some nifty features but I have yet to find something that duplicates the "view new posts" feature here. That is a biggy for me.

The recipe poster was me (and it wasn't to share a recipe, but rather to explain a bit about a food culture), and maybe I missed realist's warning. I'm usually pretty good about hearing moderators warnings and abiding by them. I'm really sorry for not getting this one right.

OK here's my .02 about threadjacks, and I'm as guilty as sin about threadjacks. They don't bother me in the least. I find out at as many interesting things about people and things through threadjacks as I do with the serious legal discussions. As far as disrupting the flow of a topic, who cares? The discussions at Fogbow are more a meandering stream than an organized, disciplined debate. I love that. The mods and the dicktater have a really good sense for when things have gone too far out in the weeds and are very good at gently redirecting the topic back on course. Our mods and the dicktater are really good sports, and everyone should comply when a mod says, "ok, let's get back to XXXXX". Folks should also comply when another member says "alrightie then, how's about we get back to YYYYY". (However, it kind of tweaks my sense of fairplay when a threadjack is churning merrily along and someone who theretofore has been happily participating tells someone else who's just jumped in to get back on topic. )

I hate threadjacks, for the record, though I realize I'm in a teeny minority. If we want people coming here to learn the truth about Birtherism, we shouldn't make it so hard for them to find. If Fogbowers want to talk about chicken wings, no problem, like any other topic of interest, but it shouldn't be difficult to exercise a bit of self-control and take the discussion to a food thread before a moderator has to step in. That's my humble opinion, fwiw. I can understand why the mods don't keep up with it, though. It's a thankless task if the majority is determined.

But Addy, "if we want people coming here to learn the truth about Birtherism" we should direct them to the Home Page Project and the Birther Debunkers Wiki (and it would be nice to have more volunteers for both projects). Those are the two places chock-full of information that never gets hijacked.

By and large, I think the threadjacks are pretty minimal here -- compared to other places. It's just the nature of conversations. We are talking about one thing and then -- squirrel!

I think we do okay overall

In real life, I'm much worse.

Its called view new content RC. Not only does it find all posts but new images, files, messages, etc. Its a bit more intuitive in that it shows you all new content. Even when you post an article on the main pages. Foggy I'll have to explain to you how that works.

Fine. Just giving my opinion like anybody.

Please do register people so we can all test it out. I dont want to be alone here

Squirrel!!

Remember back when there was such a thing as phonograph needles, and right in the middle of a song sometimes they would skip across your vinyl record albums and start playing a different song?

People used to tell me all the time, "Your brain is skipping."



Hey, was that a squirrel in maru's post? One time I found a squirrel barely alive who'd been hit by a car, and I nursed him back to health.






THREADJACK!!!!!!

Bob Ross, give 'em the link to your IPBoard, and let 'em check that out too!

Okay lol. Alright if any of you guys are gamers feel free to drop by and see the functionality of the IPBoard. There's some stuff i still need to do with it but here:

Linky Link

Be warned though all mentions of the game Halo Reach turn into Halo Reacharound.

When we look at many Birfer and conspiracy sites, we find that comments are either disabled or heavily moderated. Threadjacks don't occur on those sites. The few sites that (sometimes) provide for open discussion tend to stay focused on the conspiracy theory, although that theory tends to expand to include other villains and disasters.

To me, that focus is a symptom of an obsession, not of discipline and mental acuity. It's the product of a dull mind. I'm almost never surprised when a Fogbower discovers something in a post that elicits an off-topic comment. Moreover, I love the honeypot called "Hijack this thread." It is one of the first places that I visit when I sign onto The Fogbow. It is not always necessary to start a new topic; the honeypot works fine for lots of things. Very often, it contains something that I am glad to have read. The current discussion about caring for people with disabilities such as Alzheimer's is both moving and inspirational.

Then again it could just be ADD of ADHD



I loved that dog!

When I couldn't log on, I checked Politijab, fearing an all out Birther denial of service attack. They were fine. And they lost no posts--oh, wait, Kimba, Verbalobe and Jez aside, there are no new June PJ posts.