From LiveJournal.com: "Update #2, 10:11 pm (PST): So far so good. Things are checking out, but we're being paranoid. A few annoying issues, but nothing that's not fixable. We're going to be buying a bunch of rack-mount UPS units on Monday so this doesn't happen again. In the past we've always trusted Internap's insanely redundant power and UPS systems, but now that this has happened to us twice, we realize the first time wasn't a total freak coincidence. C'est la vie."

This one is a little scary:

Update #1, 7:35 pm PST: we're up on 'dirty' power for now (it works, but it's unreliable), and we're working to assess the state of the databases. The worst thing we could do right now is rush the site up in an unreliable state. We're checking all the hardware and data, making sure everything's consistent. Where it's not, we'll be restoring from recent backups and replaying all the changes since that time, to get to the current point in time, but in good shape. We'll be providing more technical details later, for those curious, on the power failure (when we learn more), the database details, and the recovery process. For now, please be patient. We'll be working all weekend on this if we have to.

Work all weekend if we have to. Gee, how long is this outage going to last?

Gee no wonder the new FBI case management software doesn't work, if they are filling it with this kind of crap.

I wish James Earl Jones could have came by and done my answering machine message while he was in town yesterday.

I tried to add this journal to Blogshares. I wonder if it will work.

FBI may scrap $170 million project

What a waste. I saw video of this system this morning on the news, and it appears to be an Access data base. I hope I'm wrong and they used something like SQL or Oracle, but it looked like something anyone could have thrown together. The firm that build this piece of crap should never be paid one red cent.

The outage message on LiveJournal has been updated and now reads:

Our data center (Internap) lost all its power, including redundant backup power, for some unknown reason. (unknown to me, at least) We're currently dealing with bringing our 100+ servers back online. Not fun. We're not happy about this. Sorry... :-/ More details later.

Scientists See High Likelihood of ET Visitors

Whoa.

Decades ago, it was physicist Enrico Fermi who pondered the issue of extraterrestrial civilizations with fellow theorists over lunch, generating the famous quip: "Where are they?" That question later became central to debates about the cosmological census count of other star folk and possible extraterrestrial (ET) visitors from afar.

Fermi's brooding on the topic was later labeled "Fermi's paradox". It is a well-traveled tale from the 1950's when the scientist broached the subject in discussions with colleagues in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Thoughts regarding the probability of earthlike planets, the rise of highly advanced civilizations "out there", and interstellar travel -- these remain fodder for trying to respond to Fermi's paradox even today.

Now a team of American scientists note that recent astrophysical discoveries suggest that we should find ourselves in the midst of one or more extraterrestrial civilizations. Moreover, they argue it is a mistake to reject all UFO reports since some evidence for the theoretically-predicted extraterrestrial visitors might just be found there.

The researchers make their proposal in the January/February 2005 issue of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS).

Doc Searls took a picture of the recent landslides in La Conchita. The picture was taken from an airplane on approach to Santa Barbara. Doc's post helps show the larger geological context of the event.

I'm posting this to my Slashdot journal, and will copy it to my LiveJournal went they get their servers back up. Maybe will all that Six Apart cash they can look into colocation. For now there is a statement on LiveJournal which reads:

Our data center (Internap) lost all its power, including redundant backup power. We're currently dealing with bringing our 100+ servers back online. Not fun. We're not happy about this. Sorry... :-/ More details later.

The status.livjournal.com site says:

Power is back up at Internap, but we're in the process of bring back our 100+ servers.

My real blog is here Now go read it.

I can now keep a weblog in for different places: Live Journal, Blogger, Slashdot,, and MacSlash. It's like a might be missing one. I also keep a copy of my Live Journal on my personal website. I find this over abundant opportunity to blog interesting.

I'm 59 percent finished with GTA Vice City. I guess I'll move on to The Simpsons: HIT AND RUN next.

I just realized you can't post images to the Slashdot Journal System. Must be something to do with Slashcode.

According to a statement from Microsoft, the company will license SCO's Unix patents and the source code. That code is at the heart of a $1 billion lawsuit between SCO and IBM, which is aggressively pushing Linux as an alternative to Windows in corporate back shops. This would mean that Microsoft would own the original AT&T Unix code. It's unclear what they would actually do with it. SCO has been screaming for cash, but continuing to sue people they claim is using their code, including IBM. Microsoft hates Linux and the Free Software Movement. They might use this acquisition as a tool to sue the many different companies providing Linux distributions in an attempt to kill Linux. There is no telling what the evil minds in Redmond are up to, but this sounds like a plot to kill or cripple Linux.