See my recent blog posts...
Chaos - it's not just a theory anymore. I've been very slowly rebuilding everything for the last week or so - Slowly because I just don't have the time right now for it to be fast. However, it will get done. CAUS is still offline but I hope to have it back up and running on its new hardware (and OS) by this weekend. Everything else is mostly working and I'll continue to tweak in the background as time goes on. Once again, thanks for your patience.
We've been having some trouble with the new server hardware (Sun x4150); specifically, it is rebooting periodically due to some kind of IPMI error. I have downloaded the latest firmware/BIOS updates which will hopefully fix the problem. There will be a service outage later tonight (around 21:00 Eastern Time) while I upgrade the host and service processors. Thanks for your patience.
Our upstream provider is terminating their news service as of September 9, 2008. This means that Pixin Research will no longer have a news feed, so our news server will unfortunately also be going away as of the same date. If there is sufficient demand for it, I will try to find a replacement. In the meantime or as an alternative, you might try Google Groups, or have a look at newsreaders.com to find a feed or web-based Usenet interface of your own. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Apologies for the unexpected downtime on Friday. A hardware failure brought down the firewall and it took a long time to rebuild. See this post for a full explanation. I have also installed a 900VA 450W UPS which should keep the servers and router running for about 30 minutes during a power failure.
I have temporarily disabled the community forums since they are not really being used, and I don't have much time for them at the moment. The rest of the community Unix system is still fully available. Want a free shell account? Hit the "get an account" link to your left!
Updated the TOS again because I had forgotten to include our anti-spam policy. Also, have you seen My New Favourite Animal? :)
This week's star is the mongoose
Another entry in the "cute carnivore" series, we have the mongoose. Some mongooses are fairly smart and can learn simple tricks. They can be kept as pets to control vermin. (Your landlord will love you.) Mongooses giggle when mating. (I haven't tried that myself but I suspect it wouldn't go over so well.) One of their coolest features is that they are immune to snake neurotoxins because they have acetylcholine receptors! I guess that's why mongooses are sometimes used to hunt or fight venomous snakes.
