Housekeeping

I'm having technical difficulties, but for once it has nothing to do with the server.  My laptop is having an episode of the vapors, and it's probably going to take me until Monday to get everything formatted and re-installed and restored from backup.  Luckily, I don't think I've lost anything except a weekend.

So I hope you're enjoying yours!

There are two main streams of ancient Chinese philosophy based upon two patriarchs, Lao Zi and Kong Zi (aka Confucius).  Lao Zi is the great libertarian writer accredited with the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching).  The Dao De Jing is a deep and insightful theoretical work that is sometimes compared with the Sermon on the Mount.   The Chinese refer to the Dao De Jing as being "Lao Zi".  There are numerous English translations - the one by Jane English and Jia-Fu Feng is particularly poetic and lovely - but it is interesting and amazing to note the complex style of the original Chinese which is extremely terse and efficient, and to note the plethora of words in English which are required to cause an approximation of the meaning expressed in just a handful of Chinese characters.

Kong Zi (Confucius) is less theoretical and more practical, and directs his efforts at the action of day to day events and specific advices.

Like many writings of ancient wisdom, the texts of Laozi and Kongzi are quite well preserved and modern copies can be compared to very ancient copies found in tombs and similar archeologic attestments.  The fact that such ancient writings have been so carefully preserved through the ages indicates that these writings have been long held by the preservers to have significant value for the future generations.

The sayings of Kongzi are numerous enough that there are web widgets that can display a different saying each day. 

Today's saying by Confucius is "The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home."

There are 2 lines of discussion that seem obvious to me:

1.  What is the relevancy of writings of "ancient wisdom" to us today?  Are they truth or just obsolete B.S.?

2.  What are the threats to the integrity of the home, if any? & What, if anything can be done to undo or lessen the impact of those threats?

The site has been down for several hours.  My hosting company is looking into it, but it appears to have been a problem with the security package I have installed on the server to prevent breaches and hacking, and the problem may have been caused, ironically enough, by some sort of security attack.

Sorry for the downtime.  We're looking into the problem further to work on preventing it in the future.

Ross Perot has a new (at least it's new to me) website with some educational information including a

slide show on federal revenues and spending and projections for the future.

This link tells it all

I stayed away from IP.com this weekend, partly as a test to see how many trolls would show up in my absence to ruin otherwise constructive discussions.

Given what I've seen from over the weekend, and given my schedule over the next few weeks, I am now taking the draconian step of moderating all comments from unregistered users.  Unregistered users are still welcome to comment, but their comments will not appear in a thread until and unless approved by an administrator.  Registered users are free to comment without moderation.

Thank you, and I apologize for taking this step, which I hoped would never be necessary.

There's a new ad, over on the right, for IlliniShuttle.com. Please check it out.

If any of you are interested in advertising on IP.com or know of someone who might be interested, rates are insanely cheap.

Please email me for more information.

Thanks.

If you want to bitch, whine, complain or gripe about me and/or the site, please do so here, rather than threadjacking any other discussions.

Comments containing profanity will be deleted.

For some reason, the anti-spam software has been picking up lots of false positives today. 

If you submit a comment and it doesn't appear, it's probably hung up in the filter.  I'll be checking the moderation queue every now and then, but feel free to email me if you think something of yours is being held.

Thanks.

I've upgraded the site to Drupal 5.7, and all of the site's modules to their latest versions, in preparation for the major upgrade to Drupal 6.x.

If you notice any strangeness, please let me know.

A big "Thank you!" to our latest donors to IlliniPundit.com.  I've updated the supporters' page.

The new server seems to be doing OK.  We had a problem with picture/file uploads at the beginning of the week, but I think I've fixed that.

We're still having some DNS errors, and some people are getting an intermittant "server not found" when trying to access the site.  I'm no expert, but I've asked for some help in looking into the issue.

Please let me know if you're having any other problems or issues.

Thanks.

Everything seems to be running well on the new server.  (Mark is certainly taking advantage of all the new space we have for uploading!)

I'm going to be doing some maintenance this afternoon which may temporarily impact server performance.  If you notice some slowness, it's my fault, but I don't think this can wait.

Thanks.

IP.com has migrated to our new server, about 24 hours earlier than I'd planned. 

You shouldn't notice any difference other than improved speed and reliability, hopefully.  I've got a couple more images from this week's Friday Funnies that I need to re-upload, but everything else appears to have made the move.  Please let me know if you have any problems or notice anything unusual.

If this server seems to be working well, in a week or so I'm going to play around with upgrading the site's software to Drupal 6.1.

Have a great Easter.

UPDATE: The remaining images have uploaded, so everything should appear exactly as it was.  Please let me know any feedback you have.  Thanks.

I've test-migrated IlliniPundit.com to my new server, and was wondering if anyone here would be willing to take a look and see if anything is broken.  This is not a site software (Drupal) upgrade, but merely a migration.  Once everything migrates successfully, then I'll try to upgrade to Drupal 6.1.

Please go over there, try posting and commenting and browsing and searching.  Please let me know if you find any problems, and what you think about that server's performance as compared to this one.  I'll be checking comments on both sites until the final migration (which will hopefully occur Sunday evening) so you can leave feedback comments either on this post, or anywhere over there, or via email.

You can view the test-site here. 

Please give it a try and let me know what you think.

Sorry for the brief downtime tonight.  I was test-migrating everything from here to the new server, and I (of course) screwed something up.

Good thing there's lots of basketball to watch.

UPDATE:  If you notice anything broken - in particular, links that take you to "404 error" pages - please let me know.  Thanks.  I hoping to be able to migrate for good this weekend, and I'm hoping you'll be pleased by the new server's performance.  It's been breathtaking on my test sites, but of course I've not yet been able to test it with any sort of traffic.  I'm dying to see how it will handle a few hundred simultaneous users.

ewjohnson is now banned from IlliniPundit.com.  His trolling tonight, despite my requests that he control himself, was the last straw.

Any attempts by him to post or comment, under his username or another username or anonymously, will be removed.  If you see a post or comment from him, please ignore it until I can get around to deleting it.  Responses to his comments and posts will also be removed.  He's here seeking attention, and he will not get it.

Thank you, and I'm sorry that it's come to this.  Please share feedback or objections in comments or via email.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a responsive, helpful local hosting company?

Right now I have three different hosting companies - one for IP.com, one for personal stuff, and one for clients.   Each has been OK, but not great.  IP.com, for example, has had a number of "service unavailable" problems that I can't figure out.

I'd like to move everything to a single host, and I'm going to need some technical help in doing so.  I'm willing to pay, of course, but I need to make sure that I'm getting the resources and support I need to not only run IP.com but also a number of other sites, including sites for clients/friends, etc.

Any recommendations?  Please feel free to post them in comments, or email me directly if you'd prefer.

Thanks. (Sorry for another housekeeping post.)

The great folks at Drupal, which is the software used to publish this site, have just released a major upgrade to v6.0.  I'm going to start playing around with it on a test site before upgrading here, while also waiting for the bugs to get ironed out of the new release. 

We will upgrade here as soon as practicable, as I'm very excited about some of the new features, and that upgrade may include some policy changes.  Specifically, I'm thinking of requiring registration or a valid email address to comment, as well as allowing universal access to the front page.

If anyone has any suggestions or ideas for site features or policies (or any old suggestions that I've been ignoring) now would be a great time for me to see if I can implement them.  I've always said that this site is only as good as the commenters make it, so your input is very much wanted and your ideas will absolutely be considered.

Of course, if anyone has knowledge in CSS or mySQL and wants to help, I'd love any assistance I can get.  I had a great helper when IP.com first switched to Drupal 4.x over a year ago, but everything else I've learned the hard way.  :-)

If you changed your username for a reason, please email me to discuss.

If you changed your username for no reason, please go back to your old username.

Thanks.

UPDATE: if you comment anonymously, I'm just going to delete all of them.  I want your original username back on your posts and comments so people know what they're dealing with, and so I can more easily delete your worst stuff.

It's not me, and it's not you. It's the hosting service. They're looking into it. Sorry.

UPDATE:  after a few hours of frustration, things seem to be better now.  Thanks.