Other Worlds and Lands, or OWL, is a new channel devoted to science fiction and fantasy. It's just getting off the ground, but we've got forums, and periodic live chats, for getting suggestions and feedback from the public.

If Live Journal keeps failing to let me post, I may just give up on them and go back to posting here.

Our new T1 has been installed and we've now got web and email service using it (as well as 1 of 2 DNS servers). Pretty sweet. Now I just need to get more hosting customers to help pay for it. :-)

...took out 3 ethernet switches. I only had 1 spare sitting around... Not sure how it zapped them when I had surge suppressors on all the computers and switch power supplies.

So, it turns out, WalMart is the only place open at 10:15pm on a Sunday night with computer equipment. They had some 10/100 hubs (not switches, but good enough for now).

When we get home, it turns out we also need a new dial-up modem (WalMart only had internals, which I intend never to buy). But at least our LAN is back up and running.

But once again steeds.com and our other domains are down for a while (until sometime tomorrow).

Update: I forgot I had a modem in my IBM Thinkpad. It's one of those crappy "WinModems" that almost never work under Linux, but in this case, IBM released drivers. Go IBM! :-) So, for the time being, my plucky little Thinkpad is our gateway to the Internet. (Well, for the static IP addresses, anyway.)

Well, now that Crosslink has reconnected us, they have a major network outage themselves (between their outlying POPs, and their main HQ - tried dialing their HQ access, but got BUSY signals, suprise, suprise).

Gaaaaaaaa!

I'll be glad to be rid of them. I liked them a long time as they were flexible and gave me the features I needed without requiring me to buy a big fancy plan. But they have entirely too many outages between their POPs and HQ.

Jenny and I found a pretty darned good price on a T1, and so far we've lined up enough customers to almost cover the cost of service (subtracting the cost of our existing service).

So, if anyone wants good, Unix-based web/mail hosting (we'll be using some mix of Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD), go to steedshosting.net to see prices and sign up.

In the future, someone needs to continue to remind me how easy IP addresses are to mistype. Yeah, ok, most of the time you use hostnames, and therefore avoid typing IP addresses. But when you are setting up DNS files, sometimes having to type an IP address.

I found two different places where I'd mistyped my IP address when reconfiguring DNS for my domains (one was in DNS zone file, and the other was at the domain registrar (GoDaddy rocks!)) which had prevented me from being back in service probably a day or two ago.

Gaaaaaaa!

So, I'm getting email again, and I presume our web sites are back online again. Even mail which was queued up at our ISP on their backup MX host is coming through. Yay!

It seems that some of my changes from last night are working (e.g. you can send email to, and view web pages at, staubly.net), but others aren't (for example, staubly.org, steeds.com).

I thought it was just because staubly.net was the first domain I changed over, and others hadn't propogated yet. Or, it was less widely used, therefor wasn't in local DNS caches.

Gaaa... sometimes I hate networks.

Update: For the next week or so, please use the address vicky at staubly dot net to email me.

Update: Nevermind, my email is back.

Ok, I control most of my domains' DNS, except steeds.com, of which I should have taken control a while ago. So, with judicial use of DNS updates, port forwarding, and a temporary abuse of Comcast's TOS, I may be able to get us up again within a day or so (allowing for DNS cache TTL).

If I manage it, it will be through the supreme goodness of GoDaddy and Comcast. And fuck Crosslink for cutting me off without some warning.

I suppose that's to be expected when you don't pay your ISP for nearly 5 months.

I am not a poor person. I make enough to satisfy most people. However, I have some expensives I have no business having. And I think it's time to make some changes in my life to lower the occurance of unexpected expenses (and other drama).

Steeds will be back up on April 7th, if not before. I apologize for any inconvenience.