lwood

All right, folks. The hard drive containing your e-mail, web sites, and so on came out of everything is intact. That's the important thing, that's from the "breathe; ok, now, keep breathing..." department.

The "aieeeeeeee" class news is that, right now, as I am copying the data, the source drive pauses every once in awhile.

When it pauses, it makes clicking noises.

Hear that? That's all the geeks on my flist groaning. If you watch, they are also making back-luck-aversion and o-god-i-can't-look gestures.

It's the sound of incipient complete hard drive failure, with the likelihood of complete failure increasing every time the hard drive is powered off and on.

Or, well, probably every time it clicks, too. The clicky hard drive? Not your friend. At all.

Happily the data is still copying over, and happily most critical stuff has been backed up on my friend Eric's machine. Joyously, the copying appears to be going well...except for the stalling.

Weird-Ass Woo Department: The "lorien" wight has already been moved to the new chassis, and the network stang will get real blood this time so it doesn't suck my UPS dry. Again.

Yeah. Any y'all feel so inclined, light a candle for my boy lorien, would you? we'll get through the night, but every little bit and all that.

Once the target drive is re-ensconced, we can work on reconfiguration. I don't know if it'll be able to go online tonight or not. We'll see.

-- Lorrie

-- Lorrie (click-cluck, click, click, click-clonk...)

Current Mood: geeky

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

emberleo.livejournal.com

Who is the Patron Saint of Computers? I know Santa Clara gets Television...

--Ember-who-has-been-digging-into-santo-candles-lately--

From:

emberleo.livejournal.com

Aha!

--Ember--

From:

lwood.livejournal.com

Yeah, except nobody believes St. Isidore, because geeks already have one we made up ourselves (http://vidicon.dandello.net/)--although, as good bet-hedgers, we don't mind Isidore, either...

-- Lorrie

From:

digitalsidhe.livejournal.com

Some small bits of energy sent for the Lorien wight. What's a stang? I might recognize the concept, but definitely not by that particular name.

Is the new chassis eventually going to a colo, or will Lorien continue to reside at Snug Harbor?

By the way, I think some of your users want to know what's up with recent incoming mail.

Overall, it seems my reaction gets my "mystical woo-woo" userpic, rather than one of my techy ones. See? You are not alone in applying mystical woo to computers.

From:

lwood.livejournal.com

Physically, it's a rat skull painted with Stuff and set onna stick, the whole stood on a pedestal engraven with More Stuff.

Originally erected as a cursing-pole against some (userspace) hackers, but also with a protective component against more of the same.

The new chassis is a cute little 1U blade and will, yes, eventually be relocating to a proper colo, now that

countgeiger works for one and can do that. 8-)

The mail "should" all be politely queueing up on the backup mail relay...we'll see how well that works. 8-/

Thanks.

-- Lorrie

From:

wolfs-daugher.livejournal.com

All the yahoogroups stuff has been bouncing, rather than waiting politely.

Sparrow

From:

lwood.livejournal.com

I know--now.

While I'm happy to have gone to Asilomar for its own sake, that couldn't have been timed worse if they'd tried...

I'm sorry. All I can do is to get what I've got back online so you can take a copy of your e-mail and move it somewhere more reliable.

-- Lorrie

From:

digitalsidhe.livejournal.com

Okay, so a stang is sort of like defenses, possibly defenses that will fight back? Maybe a bit like a mirror shield?

From:

lwood.livejournal.com

Most strictly speaking, a stang is "an animal head onna stick".

The most frequently seen version of this in The Lore&trade: is the niðstongg, or "cursing pole": one takes the headonnastick and writes highly insulting verse all down it explaining Who Done You Wrong, and Why They Suck. The intended effect is that people (in the broadest possible sense) will either heed your well-wrought verse or be scared by the ooky oogy (fresh, steenky) head and in any case, your enemy will lose all his luck and come to a bad end.

The general case is more broadly applicable: the idea is that one calls/constructs/asks/??? a spirit amenable to your aims and the task into the given physical construct for the charged task.

I was hacked--userspace only--a couple years ago: an old, unpatched PHP vulnerability was exploited. After trawling the logs, I quickly realized that forensics would do me little good; the kiddies were, intelligently, coming from all over. While I could, theoretically, call in the authorities, I also knew that the chance of anything happening was quite low--but the chance of, shall we say, "Imperial...entanglements" was quite high. Insufficient cost:benefit ratio.

But!

Having exhausted all physical attempts to seek compensation for my wrong, I felt quite justified taking matters into my own hands. Heathens, you may recall, do not apply to the Wiccan Rede--while the counsel runs that it's best to be polite and respectful to people as a default, it further goes that if one is smote, smitebacks are encouraged.

Or, in short:

Dammit, am I a seiðkona or aren't I!?

Reckoned I was.

So I whipped 'round to the Bone Room in search of a mouse skull. Well, they were too small; I went for a rat instead, and then other Fun with Supplies:

acrylic paint in Circuit Board Green and Circuit Trace Gold

Fine golden wire for "whiskers" that I wound up not using (too much of a pita to attach)

A gob of poster tack

A couple packages of polymer clay (FIMO) in a tasteful stonegrained blue.

A Palm Pilot stylus

I painted up the skull in green, traced the lines in gold, added some bindrunes (magical sigils from the heathen context). A wad of poster goop went into the bottom to support the Palm stylus, so now I had "head onna stick".

Now the rest of it:

I sat down and composed some verse that was highly insulting to my attackers, declared the height, width, and breadth of their enormous non-eliteness and overall suckitude, a side shout-out to the general affirmation of my server, then lastly sent out the call/built the thingy/named and specified/??? the wight that would chase the asshats down and protect the server against further incursion. I published the whole thing in a heathen magazine (with footnotes and references like a good little recon, and pictures because

dpaxson asked) and, lastly, took the same Palm stylus and used it to scribe the most significant verses into the mashed-out disc of FIMO before baking it to set.

Then I assembled the whole thing and realized it really needed something to juice it up. In fine old school fashion, I was going to get my lancets and blood it.

The day I was going to, the UPS to which the server was connected died. Blew its battery. Boom.

"Well," I allowed, "I guess you jolly well blooded yourself, then!"

Haven't been hacked since--but I also keep a closer eye on my OS updates, because magic is fine and magic is great, but the best way to get water uphill is still a pump.

-- Lorrie

From:

digitalsidhe.livejournal.com

Ah, I see. A stang isn't a purpose, it's a method. Okay.

Cool story.

No worries about not following the Rede; the Rede is just one of the many reasons why I'm not Wiccan. I'm still not much on baneful magicks in my own practice, but I don't wig out when others do them.

And I suspect I'd love to see this item or the pictures.

From:

lwood.livejournal.com

Ah, I see. A stang isn't a purpose, it's a method. Okay.

Well, it's an object, a head onna stick. Making it "go" is the method, which would be the usual folk magical mix of readily recognizable and highly idiosyncratic.

I'm still not much on baneful magicks in my own practice, but I don't wig out when others do them.

I'm not much on it either--but, as I outlined above, I had already tried, and exhausted, ordinary methods before resorting to non-ordinary ones.

And I suspect I'd love to see this item or the pictures.

It doesn't leave my house, but one of these days, I should post the article. 8-)

Hm, now the question is what to do about it when it goes to the colo. I suspect the thing to do will be to take the most significant material component--the skull--and quietly slip it into the case. The whole fimo-and-stylus affair can't be put in the cabinet, it would Cause Talk.

-- Lorrie