Chroder.com

The Webmaster-Talk database went boom this morning. I wake up to find a PM in my inbox on WT, from Tim, saying that the database is screwed up and he really needed to leave and if I could take care of it.

At that point, we had corrupted thread and post tables so no threads or posts were showing up. Not such a big deal, we should be able to revert to a backup that was taken the day before or maybe even repair the database. So after I read the PM, I go and run our repair scripts just in case it might fix the problem. It doesn’t. Not 5 minutes after I read the PM from Tim, the entire database goes kaput. You couldn’t even see our ‘forum closed’ error message.

So now I’m going into the Kualo support desk to take over where Tim left off. The guy there says he will restore the backup that we had from 11 hours prior. Thats great, I’m thinking. Not the best, but 11 hours isn’t too much. Then he comes back and says the backup from 11 hours ago was too corrupt to be restored! So we had to go all the way back to a backup made on the 26th! 11 hours not so bad, 5 days? Bad!

Alas, we are up and running (though not under the best circumstances). I just made an announcement explaining why everything is 5 days old. I wonder if any members are going to explode. I know how they’d feel (well, I know how I feel), but I hope they can understand it was unforeseen and out of our control.

Update 1
And just as I typed this up, our post table (amongst a couple others) is corrupt again! I think it’s time to move our mySQL server to another box.

Update 2 (8:00PM)
So everything should be fine now. The same backup from the 26th was repaired and restored. I’ve opened the forums and and I’m hoping nothing bad will happen. It’s been open for about 10 minutes and I don’t see any corruption, so I hope that means we’re home free.

I’m opening a new site soon called The New Tech (abbreviated to the uber-cool TNT ;-)). It’ll be a tech news/article/discussion type site. I’ve already got the domain name set up (www.thenewtech.com) and the vB forum (which will be used to contain news stories and whatnot).

So that’ll be taking up some of my time until a RC of vB3.5 is released which is when I’m going to finish porting over Webmaster-Talk hacks to the new system. Tim says he’s thinking of getting a designer to design a new style for us, so I’ll just have to skin vB. That is really good because I’ve been under the curse of Designers Block for about 4 months! My designs have never been top notch, but now they’re just hideous lol.

Other then that, I’ve finally completed the mandatory class hours for driving school and graduated with a 94%. I’m still waiting for the phone call to create appointments for the actual driving lessons. If all goes well, I should have my G2 in a few months. So that leaves me some time on the weekends to do various stuff. Stuff like fixing some bugs with my Wordpress plugins, which I have yet to plunge into.

Now I’m off to play poker!

Update: Well, I’ve got a “public preview” of the TNT forums up for everyone’s viewing pleasure. It is indeed a preview, thus there is still much to do. If you’re interested in tech, then sign up — could use some people to chat with

I’m going to driving school. I’ve got to go from 9:00am to 3:45pm for two weekends and I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so bored in my life.

My first day was yesterday, which was uber-boring, and seemed to last for ever. Probably because the content was really dry; about insurance and how the licensing system works etc. Today wasn’t as bad, but it’s still boring to cover one subject for almost 7 hours.

The instructor today thought I look like Harry Potter lol! He called me “Mr. Potter” and “HP” haha. I like him better then the instructor we had yesterday, who was pretty boring (on top of the boring content).

So after I finish the required classroom hours, I get to actually go out and drive with the instructor. And then after that, I can go for my G1-Exit drivers test. I don’t know how it’s done around the rest of the world, but here we use a “graduated licensing” system. That means there are three different levels of licensing:

• G1: The lowest level with lots of restrictions (have to drive with someone who has their G for >= 4 years, cannot carry any other passengers, no driving at night, no freeways, no blood alcohol content…). This gives us just enough room to practise with our parents, for example. You get this by writing a written test.
• G2: The second level has none of the restrictions except for the no BAC and you can only carry as many passengers as there are seat belts. To get this, you have to wait 12 months (or 8 months if you go to driving school) after you got the G1, then you have to go out and take the G1-exit drivers test.
• G: The final level, the “full” license with no restrictions. You get this after 12 months with your G2 and another, longer drivers test (called the G2-exit).

So for anyone to get their full G license, it’ll take them at least 18 months from the time they got their G1. Probably more since the drivers tests are usually back-logged.

So I’m going to driving school to reduce the time needed to get my G2 and to reduce the insurance (insurance goes down by a max of 45% if you go to driving school). Those saved 4 months and money savings are worth my boredom I think! I hope I pass my G1-exit test, the instructor told us only about 55% pass it, and only about 22% pass the G2-exit test. If you don’t pass the first time, you can take it again but that costs money and you’ll probably have to wait weeks for another appointment.

A vulnerability in XML-RPC libs can be scary for us bloggers (or any other PHP app which uses the libs). The story was Slashdotted today, but a lot of scripts were patched before. Wordpress released it’s fix in the form of version 1.5.1.3 on June 29th — update now

I haven’t read up on the vulns (yet) so I don’t know the extent of damage it could cause, but just thought I’d call attention to it.