New Developments

Wednesday, Jan 28 2002. Put a bid in for a new server to handle the massive load we've been subjected to. Coming soon: 4-processor Compaq with a raid disk array and 4 G of RAM. Of course, the processors are pentium pro 200's and the "disk array" consists of five 4.2 G hard drives. I'm sure Kirsten will be delighted when the ninety-pound 2X2X3 foot bohemeth is delivered. I'm not sure what to do about powering the beast. I might just keep it outside under the deck. That way, the concrete pavement can act as a heat sink for my mighty quad, and there is an unused outlet down there.	Here you see me anguished, for I am outbid. It seems you may also see the contents of my sinuses.
Saturday, February 2, 2002. As always happens on ebay, I lost the auction. Seems a whole buncha people wanted to scoop up these things for their screaming websites, too. I've other bids out there, and we'll see if anything comes to fruition. I won't be so hasty in promising a yet-to-be purchased server to the finucane dot org browsing public.	A mighty prospect for the finucane dot org server farm.
Monday, February 4, 2002. Finucane dot org might be down for a little while tonight. I'm upgrading to Windows XP. BAM!
Monday, February 4, 2002.(only later) Needless to say, the producers of Finucane dot org are not a happy camper. It lookes like somebody vomitted on my desktop. And why the hell would they change the font on notepad? Thank God its possible to revert to the Windows 3.1 look and feel.	An unhappy camper considers his bootleg copy of XP.
Wednesday, February 6, 2002. So I won my bid for the Compaq quad processor. Kirsten can't wait for it to arrive. A site this content-rich, she insists, demands at least four Pentium Pros. The Organization promises to keep its public updated on developments on the server front. In the meantime, XP is doing OK. My soundcard's driver for XP crashes the OS so for the time being, Finucane dot org will have to do without multimedia-enhanced gaming. I got rid of the trash "scheme", and reverted to Win2K style. My theory is MS developers (there's probably about six of them; the rest are Project Managers --read "salesmen"--and corporate lawyers), had a bunch of unused graphics left over from the never-released BobOS and were forced to throw that in in the last minute. Otherwise, XP would be Win2K with more bugs.
Wednesday, February 6, 2002. I noticed safeweb.com has undergone a facelift to follow the latest trends. That means they rescinded on their old look and I can exploit their work without fear of repurcussion.	Finucane dot org's legal team breathes a collective sigh of relief while concentrating on her wormbox.
Wednesday, February 6, 2002. Finucane dot org is embattled from another front: its own legal team is threatening to "pull the plug" on our servers. We were given an ultimatum to represent the Organizational pets in a more pleasant light. Finucane dot org stands behind the first ammendment, though, and will back down only when the Orginization's Founding Fathers roll like tumbleweed in their mass grave. Do you think Cambodian villiagers suspected of harboring Green Berets cowed to the irrational whimsey of Pol Pot's execution gangs? I was going to wax more graphic and include some images of skulls in the jungle, but during my research I found a webpage along the same vein that dispirited me.
Sunday, February 10, 2002. This has been a tough weekend for Finucane dot org. The management apologizes for our three day outage. We were the victim of eco-terrorism. The authorities have been notified and given Ben Harmon's home address. Our crack IT team has been working on the issue almost non-stop. The following excerpts from the crack IT team's log book will clarify matters to the Organization's clamorous public. 08Feb02 0900 --IT arises from slumber. Finucane dot org screaming as always. 08Feb02 0930 -- IT pulls on socks and notices closet lights flickering. Pokes head into server room and observers flickering lights and that server farm is not running. Flips off lights and exits room. 08Feb02 0945 -- IT goes to his side job, neglecting to restart the server farm. 08Feb02 1730 -- Kirsten comes home from kindergarten and informs IT that the server farm is not running. IT patiently explains the vaguaries of 24X7 guaranteed uptime (viz: flickering lights negate any prospect thereof), and steps her through starting the machine, refusing to enable the sound card driver (failing to do so freezes the OS), and running Apache. She also copies some more Content of her students from the camera to our web presence. Kirsten at this time announces, "DSL is down." IT promises to get right on it. 08Feb02 1830 -- The IT staff of Finucane dot org leaves for Las Vegas. 10Feb02 1230 -- IT returns from Vegas to find Finucane dot org STILL offline. Team gets right on it. 10Feb01 1630 -- IT wakes from his nap and determines hub was "fried" in the brownout. Pulls cable from router a little more taut so it can reach the ethernet card. Server shoved out from under desk to facilitate plugin procedure.	The offending hardware: Fried by eco-terrorists.
Friday, February 15, 2002. Trying times once again for the Finucane dot org IT Staff. Indeed, it has been a test for us all; from the lowliest middle-management paper suffling goon to the most acclaimed middle-management e-Enabler, the Finucane dot org Team--for that's what we are, a "Team"--has been locked in a collossal struggle to keep ourselves competitive in the dot org arena. Bottom line is my freeware personal firewall tends to be infinitely restrictive whenever I turn my back, and our IP address changed. These issues will be nevermore once the mighty quad shows up.	A dim closeup of the ether-netsphere. Our cable has been damaged where we smash it in the window
Friday, June 05, 2003. Ummmm.... Haven't updated for a while. The quad, needless to say, was something of a bust. My former housemate ended up taking it to the dump and paying to have it demolished. Long story short, dogpiss and 10 year old server technology don't mix. The Organization is now hosted OffSite by fourbucks.com. We had a stint running on the Organization's backup linux POS (thanks, junker--the hard drive is kaput), and the Legal Team's XP machine. It actually ran pretty OK on the XP box. Only trouble is, now that we've gone back into the Unix (or unix-like) fold, all our links are broken. So far the 4$ service has been an improvement over the Finucane dot Org crack IT staff. The Legal Team, by the way, is marrying the crack IT staff.	I have nothing to say for myself.
Thursday, January 21, 2004. I read a little about the Google prioritization scheme. Seems although I am nearly top of the totem right now, all that can change in a heartbeat if google doesn't check my site frequently enough. I have been complacent too long. You will find lovely new links on the index page. Google has a great new math service I found accidently when trying to find how many Bytes are in 256 MB. Hint: the answer is not 256x10^6.	This is me winning winter goalstice in 2001. goaltimate.com is the fourth ranked site in a google search for "Travis Finucane".
Tuesday (early), October 19, 2004. Shucking my hard-won reputation of a clean, content-driven blogsitemaster, I've slapped a background image of the Declaration on my homepage. Mostly because the phrase "When in the course of human events" sings in my miserable head when I'm bored. But also because of the whole liberty thing. I've had it up to here with the gumment Quartering large bodies of armed troops among me. If their bodies weren't so large, nor armed as they are (with one on either side in a grotesque parody of a quartered octopus -- it's obscene), I wouldn't find the injury such an usurpation. Incidentally, I'm off my Google kick, mostly as a result of reading (not taking, mind you) the Google Aptitute Test. I will not artificially inflate its page rank by linking it here. Shurfice it to say, the smarmy band of mensa wannabes deserves my most sneering contempt--and nothing more!	Here's a picture of a bicycle at my friend Adam's house. Nice, huh?