Lair of the Wolf

Not much has been going on in my world, or so it feels.. but so much has gone on around me, that I want to say something about here. Let's see.. in my life, the biggest event relate to fun things like hardware death (in the server that runs this website.) First it was its power supply (the fan to be exact), which has been replaced, and now its the video card fan, doh. Nothing like waking up to the smell of hot electrics to make your morning. *sigh*

Katrina. Say the name and now you instantly visualize death and destruction. A week ago, you might have had no thought at all, (or perhaps, think of "Katrina and the Waves" the 80s band with the song "Walking on Sunshine", oh, the irony.) I'm not sure what I was shocked more at, the level of damage that the storm did, and the stories and pictures of the suffering of all those people. Or the outpouring of support on a personal-level from people. For me, the latter hit me before the former.

Following the storm monday morning, the Ace and TJ show, which airs on a local radio station here in Charlotte, and has several affliate stations around the southeast, stayed on the air in an effort to start collecting donations and goods to send down to those who were affected along the gulf coast. They started with a single semi-truck trailer, to fill with water and supplies, by the end of the first day, one, became two, and by the end of Wednesday, 15 loaded semi-trucks along with $250,000+ were sent off on their journey to those in need.

It was the stories that made listening to it so meaningful to me, and the way people just came out in support. Starting their own unrelated efforts, groups of people all over the area started working to collect goods to send, and the stations parking lot filled with supplies and trucks.

The most memorable stories from the people calling in and e-mailing were..
An e-mail from a solider in Iraq, who heard about what was going on from his mother, who donated his entire months pay of $6,000.
A mother calling in, after her and her two year old daughter saw footage on TV of somebodys house flooded and with a tree through it, and her daughter asks her, Can we give them a new house?
Countless stories of children giving money, from things like the tooth-fairy or a planned trip to disneyworld.

I blog these stories here, even though i'm not particularly good conveying the impact (or in some cases, remembering in enough detail to get the words right, etc.) because I believe that the good does outway the bad, and despite all the awful stories of whats going on down there, we will move forward and rebuld.

Don't lose sight of the people, for the politics. Its the people who need our help.

All alone in the dark
No walls no windows
Trying hard to define
Heaven from hell
Standing out in the rain
With just one shadow
Nothing to see or believe
Beyond myself
See my life going by
Each moment I'm alive
I keep reaching out, holding on, hoping

Somewhere in my life
There's one light burning
I feel it like my heart beating inside
Somewhere in the night
There's one light burning

All alone with my fears
No words are spoken
A story yet to be told
Locked in my mind
Hope is somewhere ahead
Shining brightly
But the past is always following close behind
See my life going by, each moment I'm alive
I keep reaching out, holding on, hoping

Somewhere in my life
There's one light burning
I feel it like my heart beating inside
Somewhere in the night
There's one light burning!
Glowing in your eyes
Lighting up the sky
Leading the way
One light burning

Somewhere in my life
There's one light burning
I feel it like my heart beating inside
Somewhere in the night
There's one light burning
Glowing in your eyes
Lighting up the sky
Leading the way, leading the way...

Somewhere in my life
There's one light burning
I feel it like my heart beating inside
Somewhere in the night
There's one light burning
Glowing in your eyes
Lighting up the sky
Leading the way, leading the way...

-- Richie Sambora (Stranger in this Town, 1991)

Dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, The men and women of the military fighting overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to anyone suffering around the world. You're not alone.

Die Mozilla.org-like blue header blob, and not entirely realistic above-the-cloud footer..

Greetings 10 minute hack that's more personal than anything i've had up here in the last year...

Also, jumbled the blogroll a bit..

More soon, including more to the hardware death story...
In short, if you can't reach this site, there's a good chance its server is down. I'll get it back up when I walk past it again. ;-)

Well, the site should be back to being normal now. The new hardware for the server is installed and things are looking good. :-)

So, last I mentioned the situation it was a dying video card fan. (this after the dead PSU fan.) Well, as it turns out, the dead PSU fan had a bit of collateral damage. That damage being its motherboard. Some portion of the chipset on the board is unhappy now. (which advertises itself in the form of the PCI network card disconnecting, USB bus problems, and random crashing on everything from video to file copies.) Of course, this being a Dual P3-1ghz system, replacing the motherboard alone isn't exactly an option.. so..
Tazdevil got the following new hardware... :-)
Abit NF8-V Pro (Socket 754/nVidia nForce 3 250gb chipset motherboard, w/ Gigabit Ethernet and Audio OnBoard)
AMD Athlon 64 3400+ (2.4ghz, Socket 754)
1GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (DDR400)
nVidia GeForce FX 5500 (AGP 8x) - Dual-Display + TV Out. (to replace the card with the dead fan)
Antec Smartpower 350w ATX PSU (m/n: SL350) (replace the dead PSU)

Some of the old hardware will go to mysticowl to beef up that system. (should make Suse 9.3 happier too.)

The full specifications of both machines as it stands now are updated on the Network page.