March 2006 Archives

Well the day has finally come. Microsoft has finally found out the two names of the people that contributed to the final crash of the email server and why the database destroyed itself when normally it shouldn't have.

I don't want to say names online but one of the people no longer work here, but the other does in academics. I will be turning in their names to the Senior Staff in an hour and will listen to what they want me to do with their accounts.

There were two email attachments that contributed to it, One was a 100meg zip file that got bounced back and forth 4 times and the other was a 45meg attachment that was bounced three times. Each of these files contributed to the final destruction of the database. I guess this won't happen again since we no longer allow such large attachments.

Well I have mailed the Hard Drive to the Microsoft Representative in Houston today. Hopefully they will get it and some information back to me by Friday. The Upper Senior Staff is really breathing down my neck right now about when they will get names to the crash. I guess someone wants someone to help pay the 15K we spent on the revovery options that we ended going through.

Although I have to say that Battlefield 2 was a great game. EA has once again destroyed a game I liked to play. They destroyed it by putting out patches that made it unstable and then by putting out expansion packs that then made it even more unstable and then making us wait months while they came out with a patch to fix their patch. To top it all off, they decided to come out with an online expansion, where they didn't tell you in specific terms that if you were logged into their site and downloaded this upgrade for $10, you would only be able to play that account once you started your Battlefield 2 expansion. So needless to say. I am logged in as normal under a spacemanbob name which by default is the name I have on EA's site. Not the name I play on Battlefield. I download the expansion install it and then when I log in to Battlefield with my normal account it tells me that I need to purchase the expansion in order to play it.

This is all about EA wanting money from people that have already invested into the game. The EA Downloaded is the worst piece of crap around since it doesn't tell you that when you download and install this product you will be locked to that account when you want to play online. Yeah maybe they had it in fine print somewhere down the stupid user agreement but this is a major messup on their part.

I will no longer play BF because of this or buy their future expansions to this series. Maybe in the future I will buy the new one that is coming out, but I will no longer opt in to the online upgrade that locks you into playing one and only one character inside a game that allows you to create many accounts to play.

Got some information from Microsoft today. Looks like there were to people sending large file attachments at the same time. These were being bounced back due to virus scanning blocking them from going. Unfortunately Microsoft needs some other files from me. I have to save them to a portable hard drive and send it to the local Representative in Houston. This will probably take several more days to try to match up the files being sent to the users accounts.

I was asked about the progress on this at our Monday's Meeting with Senior Staff. They want to know if it is possible to know who these people were. They seem to be wanting to apply some corrective action against these two people if Microsoft can positively identify them. I feel a little hesitant about doing this since part of the database was already corrupt. Even though it was fixable, I don't want to hang two people out to dry, but I will do as I am told.

Just one more thing to put on my head, knowing that I can get them fired for destroying email data structure. Arghhhhhh!!!!!

Just got a call from Microsoft about some of the logfiles that they have from our crash. They say are saying that the database had a small corruption in one location, but that in-itself did not contribute to the total collapse of the system. They think they may be able to find out what caused it in a few more days but aren't holding out on this right now. The information they have is so jumbled up that they may not be able to figure out what happened.

They are still concerned of large files being sent around the time of the crash though and that they will try to see which files were in action right before and during the crash.

Well I am going through and updating things I should have been. These will be some simple ones till I can work on things this weekend.

I have added some 3D Images that I created based off of some of the Online Games I have played in. More will be added as I find them on my various Hard Drive Storage Units.

Stay tuned. More work and fun stuff to be posted as I go throughout hte day.

Well looks like we are all through the woods pretty much now. We have everyone moved to the new email server and I have things setup there pretty much in a new order so a crash like the one we had won't happen like it did last time. Then again we will need to get new hardware incase something on the server blows up but at least we won't loose data like we did or get it corrupted.

Speaking of which, I am still troubled by some issues that were happening the day of the corruption. I am having a tech at microsoft look into some of the files and transaction logs to see if there was any coorlation to files and the database selfdestructing. At this point I don't think it was possible for it to happen but we will see.

More progress on the Server installation and backups as the days move along.

Looks like I am going to need to spend some time revamping some of my pages. Some of the sites have put up scripts that no longer allow you to save an image or link to the webcam. This makes some of my pages obsolete in a way since I can no longer just show you how certain parts of the country look.

I'll be working on my weather page and some of the links to out of state webcams this weekend.

I have been trying to keep my Weather Station going but looks like the components are just not up to spec for more than three years. My Rain Gauge died a couple weeks ago and now my Thermostat and Heat indicator died.

I am going to have to revamp the Weather page until I can get a replacement unit.

Just a simple post to let you all know I am still here.

Update. The weather station has experienced a malfuntion in the Rain Gauge. Until I get a new one we won't be having any rain totals.