Yes, Yes & Yes

[Smirks]

YES, I know the board was down today
YES, I am in a bad mood
YES, the board is back up now

Please, I don't need PM's, emails, AIM chats telling me the board is down. I RUN THIS PLACE, MOST LIKELY I KNOW BEFORE YOU DO!

Over the past few days I've been given alot of responsibility I probably wasn't ready for yet. For almost a year this place had been a very mellow place with just a handfull of regular visitors. It will take time for me (and the other regulars) to get used to what has happened. Will I? I think I will, but it's too early to say.

Since the sudden surge I've been getting the vibe from alot of you that I now somehow owe this place to all of you, or even owe you something. Remember, I don't. No one told me to put it here. I didn't make this board once I saw Synergy was having problems, it was here long before those problems (and even the trolls were there). I run this place in my spare time, with my money and for NO PROFIT! Remember that.

Does this mean I don't want you to come here? NO, I DO want you to come here. I do want this place to become active, but I do have one request. Please stop talking badly about Synergy. This place isn't supposed to be a refugee camp for people kicked out of there. It is a forum to discuss Pearl Jam mostly, however other things can be discussed. This place can have other fans besides synergists here. If you find some, don't be rude to them.... we all have a common bond, and that is PJ.

My ramblings aren't in any particular order. I'm writing my thoughts that come to mind. I think I'm done now... and I'm in the proccess of composing some rules and guidlines for this place. The more people you have, the more courruption you can have and along with that rules must be put into place and followed. If you have a problem with any of this, you can leave... go somewhere else.

Have a most excellent day.

Chris

[pages_in_a_book]

I'm only a day old here, but I figured that this was a spare-time-side-project kind of site. I definitely appreciate what you're doing here, and I feel I can speak for many of us when i give you a WHOLE-HEARTED THANK YOU for volunteering your time, energy, and money to this endeavor.

As far as Synergy bashing goes...I'm not a refugee, at least not in a kicked-out sort of way, but I do feel, after my one-day-trial, that this board has captured a great deal of the warmth, atmosphere, and sense of community that Synergy has been missing for some time now. I'll probably end up spending more time here than at Synergy, but it's because I embrace the positives here, not because I'm rejecting anything negative about Synergy.

gimme time

[pages_in_a_book]

Educate us please! Or, maybe everyone else has been educated...educate ME please. I've noticed that pics and animated gifs and all sorts of wackiness are activated on this page....does loading down posts with pics drag down YOUR server, bandwidth, etc? I'm not sure how all of that's networked in the background...if we want to give *you* a break, should we lay low on the pics and such?

In short, what can WE do to make your life easier, to say implicitly in everything we do here "thank you Smirks, we're trying to make this as enjoyable and trouble-free for YOU as you do for US?"

Let us know...educate us!

gimme time

[RrVwMirror]

hey smirks....

I think you know how some of us feel about this place....we have been thanking you for a long time....

no, you owe us nothing....in fact WE OWE YOU.....
WE OWE YOU RESPECT....it is the least we can do when we are here....I agree about the Synergy bashing....it must stop...and the very reason for the rules you have to lay down are the same reasons synergy has rules.....we are all adults here....we should all be able to understand that.....

so thank you once again....you have given us a great forum....and I for one appreciate all you have done!

[RogueTrader]

Thanks Smirks.....

What sort of server are you running this baby on? I know the problems over at Synergy started because they were having server problems. The fact that there are so many replies to a single message can choke a server (due to the partitioning that must take place) and if you are on a smaller server than the Synergy people (an i would assume that you are) the more people who come over, the more problems you will have.

I know you know....just for everyone else's benefit. I thought the Mods should have been a little more clear on why they were booting people, but I suspect that the consumption of the server space and the decline in performance was at the root of it.

Give us a few technical details and it may all help us understand how to respect your place

Thanks again, mate

M

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25 in 30 Days, Makes this room feel like home

[Smirks]

The site runs on a linux server... before the surge its resources were adequate, but I've just purchased some extra hardware to hopefully last a little longer before I can build or buy a new server (I'm lookin at the new purdy Sun box....yummmm), anyway.... I just bought an extra 40 gig hard drive for the database and some extra ram too. Hopefully that'll last for a while.

[RogueTrader]

Hmmmm.....you ARE gonna run out soon aren't you.....maybe you should set a maximum age to the old posts......maybe no more than 20 pages of previous posts. I know that this is what was helping to choke the Synergy board.

I was at Detusche Bank in Tokyo yesterday, in their machine room....they have these two big fat Sun E10000 boxes that are waiting to go into production....(Pentium 4 chips - the 1.4 gb ones, 2x[8x18.2] hdd's and 1gb of RAM each)....maybe i could convince them to house your board....or if you could come up with USD1.5mm, i know where you can buy a used one....one previous owner (a little old lady who oly used it to surf to her grand kids photo album site, on Sundays) and still in excellent condition.

Sorry I can be more helpful......

M

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25 in 30 Days, Makes this room feel like home

[Smirks]

Not *THAT* soon....right now the database is only taking up about 2 megs .... yes, I was shocked when I saw that too.... but I've checked over and over again.... it's all text and 2 meg for almost 5,000 posts (not including PMs) means with 40 gig I should be golden for YEARS!

As far as the rest of it goes, the server only has 64 meg of RAM.... that'll jump up to 128 as soon as the new shit comes in later this week. On the performance front I just need to get the board scripts to work happy with mod_perl so it can maintain persistant db connections instead of making a new connection for each call.... right now that is what is causing most of the load on the server....

Once I get all that squared away I think everything will be good for a good while, and it should give me more than enough time to save some cash to build a new server. This place will probably never have the problems synergy does, only beacause that board has millions of posts and thousands upon thousands of users.

[13throwcenter]

*13 covers her eyes and runs out of the room*



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[anotherchild]

*note to self, no more Syn city bashings*

oh and Smirks........WE LOVE YOU!!!! thank you so much for starting this board, it is lovely!
please don't be in a bad mood, there is too much love here for you to be in a bad mood.
oooooo i'm so happy i can get back on here, missed you all.

[13throwcenter]

so, other than the synergy bashing (can we still call it syn city?) is what we have been doing so far okay? I mean the chit-chat we do? Or is that not cool here either?
I think most of us just want a place where we can hang and have fun with other PJ lovin fools, you know? Whether the topic is PJ or someone's sick dog.... we just want a place to hang.

I'm not sure why you feel like we think you owe us something, Smirks.... maybe you feel like you owe us something? (sorry, psych major) I know I for one certainly don't feel like you owe us anything... but when your board goes down, I think it is a natural reaction for people to say "what's up?" I know I had several pm's, emails and messages at CJWM asking me about it, and it's not even my friggin place!!!

anyway, we love ya smirksey 'ol boy, even if your hair is gonna be all funky colors. :P



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[Smirks]

Once things drop off page 1 people tend to forget them or not see them....

back on up to the top

[hedonist]

You got it, Smirks...I don't think you'll find much in the way of bashing coming from me.......

Hope your mood's improved some.........

[eva7]

Hi Smirks, I'm new here so maybe it is early for me to express my opinion...I guess it is tough to manage a board like this and I totally appreciate what you're doing here...But anyway, from the posts I read, let me ask you what makes you feel people give you the feeling you owe'em something???? ...That just surprised me. If that is true (is it???)it is a real bad feeling....And about the Synergy posts I have to say I understand your point, the thing can start to be boring...but I also think it is normal to talk about it 'cause, you know, it is not only matter of Synergy, to me it is a general problem of respect to people and anyway I don't think there's nothing wrong just in talking about it...That's the "official" PJ board and it is all really weird and disappointing...so i just find normal if people talk about it...unless, as you say, it becomes overwhelming and boring...I just wish you to have a better day today and that your bad past day is over!!!! Thanks so much for allowing us to meet on your board, I'm very happy about it. Love to you.
Eva

[northwoodsamyII]

hey everyone...i think this request is easily fullfilled...Smirks' place, althought here for a while now, feels like a new chance to be positive, to be friendly, to be respectful, to be the adults we all claim to be. Sooo, smirks, you know how I feel, i pm'd you about it with my thanks and such ( hope that's ok..).

that said- Viva La Pearl Jam or somethin corny like that!

/images/smile.gif

Your poster child for bannishment

[Smirks]

I replied to your PM Amy....

...and I dunno how I feel about calling Synergy "Syn City", as that would imply that there is something wrong with it. Now, since only *some* of us feel something is wrong with it I think we should all refer to it with its proper name: Synergy.

With that said... I don't mean talking about Synergy is a big no-no, I mean quite the opposite. I'm sure many of you recall people who read both Synergy, MFC and Amp-J would sometimes bring news from one or all post it there... that's fine. I just don't want posts saying "ahh, Synergy blows dirty goats and Mod x 2 is a slimey booger." ... you know, stuff like that. /images/smile.gif

Ps- I'm feeling somewhat better today..... JUST DON'T FUCK W/ ME! /images/wink.gif

joking

[Highway23]

glad to see you're in a better mood there Smirksy. We're all here because of you, and we respect whatever you have to say. Ain't no one going to fuck with you. If they do, I'll fuck with them /images/wink.gif hehehe...have a good one...and thanks again for everything /images/cool.gif

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[Hund]

It always felt like home here...

[oblio]

Sorry chris,I have a very warped
sense of humor(as I'll bet you had already
guessed-lol

It isn't dirty goats that have all the
fun!!

http://www.funnypics.dhs.org/images/blow_fish.gif

And never is heard,a discouraging word!!!

/images/smile.gif Hope you are feeling better smirks./images/smile.gif

"what's so good about goodbye?,
what's so fair about farewell?"-l.robin

[RrVwMirror]

holy shit oblio.....you kill me!!!

/images/smile.gif /images/blush.gif /images/shocked.gif /images/wink.gif

best laugh I've had in a long time!

[brokenarrow]

well actually Smirks......I would recommend a

'Giga plaster fully loaded with 25,000,000 bites of mega ram pegged up with 5,300 of ping-o-bytes that can handle 36,000 Vrms up to the V dc of a PSB224 and a chassey on the side....'

it can also slice through this tin can and STILL slice a tomato with ease!/images/wink.gif

Thanks Smirks.....you owe us nothing.....as was said, everyone owes YOU respect!/images/cool.gif/images/cool.gif/images/cool.gif


oh and Smirks? Did you know that your board was down yesterday for a while?/images/wink.gif
love, broken>

[Smirks]

Hmm...thanks for the reccomendation broken...

Ps- Yes I know :) @#^%!*$

[brokenarrow]

/images/smile.gif


Yeah but Smirks..................
...........................................
.......................did 'ya smile?

hee....hee........

some things NEVER change my friend!/images/wink.gif
run out and get you one of them thar things....

[13throwcenter]

oblio, where the FUCK do you come up with this stuff?

uh, on second thought, nevermind, i don't wanna know!!!



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