If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough. - Mario Andretti

Monday, October 05, 2009

Well, earlier today I thought we were getting DDOS’d, but it turns out that today’s server hiccup was caused by fixing one the other night.  Someone at the hosting service optimized something for me and forgot to comment out a line, and eventually, like Michael Moore at a Chinese buffet, it consumed all the resources. Should be good now. Sorry about that everyone! You may now resume your schadenfreude at a lame-duck President with more than three years left in his term. :)

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Soon after we lost Lee, Jim came up with the idea of a “Best of Lee” segment, an occasional reposting of some of Lee’s more brilliant writings.  We’d like to try this out soon.  So use this thread to make nominations—any post that you think would be worth bringing up again.  Permalink URL’s are great, but even just a “I loved that post where Lee made fun of Sean Penn while he was in Iran” would be useful.

Update: from JimK

My thanks to Hal for this...I’ve been sort of putting RTFTLC in a box on the shelf, so to speak, because it’s really hard to deal with, even still. I think I got through those first few weeks based on nothing more than shock and a sense of wanting to hold the community together. Obviously since then I have been slacking as well as getting ready to go back to school (at age 39!), and you guys have been carrying the RTFTLC water admirably. SO...first of all thank you to all the writers and commenters and even you lurking readers. BTW, comment, you lurkers. I see you there.  Speak up! :)

Secondly, I think that this is so very Lee to do...keep the memory going by finding the best and funniest (which were often also the dirtiest) shit he wrote and laughing heartily at one of the world’s great personalities.  I will spend some time this weekend combing archives for my personal faves to nominate.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

(This post will stay sticky for a week, please scroll down for new posts)

I thought I would take a sec to remind everyone about the server drive and explain a couple of things. Bulk of the post is below the fold to as not to clutter up the front page too much…

First of all, SOOOO MANY THANKS to everyone that has donated so far. You have no idea how much it helps. Lee used to split the cost with me, and when we lost him, it not only took a bite out of my soul, but now it’s eating my wallet. Your help is so frigging amazing and I thank each and every one of you (some I have, and I owe a BUNCH of you some email, I know!)

Secondly,a few folks have offered up cheaper hosting solutions, so I wanted to let you all know why I keep this box at this monthly price:

1. It’s a bit high, but I get almost total freedom from Softlayer. They have only bothered me about content three times, and all three times I was clearly in the wrong (I was violating copyright. Mostly with pics of boobs owned by Playboy). They received DMCA takedown notices and passed them along. Otherwise, they could not care less what I do. That is pretty nice.
2. Really stable datacenter. You’ll notice that some of the big political blogs all disappear together fairly often.  There’s a couple of hosts out there they all use, and they crash with alarming regularity. I get pretty consistent service.
3. Most service tickets are free. Many of the discount hosts charge $5, $10, even $20 PER incident. It’s how they offer such cheap hosting. I only pay if I ask them to do something extra, and then it’s only $3 per ticket. Basic service is free, and OS reloads, upgrades, add-ons etc.? $3. Gotta love that.
4. The hardware is pretty solid. I can’t add any as it is not a co-lo but their box, so donated hardware wouldn’t help much either unfortunately.

So yeah...the monthly rate is higher than I could get elsewhere but I really feel like I get decent service for the cost, and if you’ve been around since the old old days you’ll know how important that is! We were up and down like a yo-yo before I switched to Softlayer.

Also, you may have noticed the $1500 goal. I picked that number because it represents 6 months of server fees. That would take a huge load off my wallet’s shoulders and allow me to breathe a lot easier for at least a year or so. Hopefully we can reach the goal. If you have a blog, please help out by making a post that links back here. Or if you have an in with a much more important blogger out there who could help us publicize the server drive...email them for us? An Insta-lanche wouldn’t go amiss. :)

Obama ain’t payin’ our bills, apparently he knows we didn’t vote for him. So spread the word!

Close this post...

Saturday, May 30, 2009

(This post will stay sticky for a week, please scroll down for new posts)

I’m afraid it’s that time again...time for a server drive. With Lee’s passing, the entire cost of the server is now on my shoulders, and times - as they are for everyone I’m sure - are tight.  Blogads are a thin trickle these days, not nearly enough to pay for the server.  And so I’m coming to all of you hat in hand.  If you find any value in any of the sites I host, please consider a small donation. Every penny will go directly to the cost of paying for the $250 a month this machine and the associated bandwidth costs me.

Right Thinking
Right Thoughts
Made of Awesome
Wasting Time WIth Alex
Moorewatch
The Victorious Opposition

So if you are a fan of any of these sites, consider sending maybe the cost of a beer or two. The cost of a couple of beers, when multipled by a group of you, could keep us going for months. Unfortunately we only have Paypal as a donation solution, since Amazon closed their donation/payment program. Hopefully that’s okay for most people.

I wish there was a way to express to all of you how little I like doing this.  Some day I will either be rich or Supreme Ruler of the Universe and then I’ll host everyone’s websites for free. :)

Friday, May 29, 2009

Join me in welcoming AlexinCT, someone who has been quietly blogging for years and was a regular around here for awhile. Alex will be our last addition for now (unless Para says he wants to get back in the Thunderdome!), and I hope we now have a group that will have various opinions all across and around the center-to-right end of the spectrum. I think we’re never going to agree on all the details, but we all have the same basic desire; to get The Man off our damn backs and keep him off the backs of future generations.

How weird is it that conservatives and libertarians have to be the new hippies? The hippies are now power-mad and running things into the ground and we have to be the new “rebels.”

I’ll start. STEAL THIS BLOG.  Imagine me saying it while wearing an American flag shirt and looking like I haven’t showered in a week.