Annals of the Homestarmy

Spicing up the blog with a classic from the "safe" archives at The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Why must they torment me so?

From CNN:

According to the circular, Wal-Mart's so-called doorbuster deals offered between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. ET will include a 50-inch Samsung plasma HDTV ($798), Magnavox Blu-ray player ($128), Xbox 360 ($199) sold with free Guitar Hero III Legends of Rock game and wireless guitar, HP Pavilion desktop computer ($398) and a UniFlame gas grill ($175).

In addition, Wal-Mart's Black Friday ad shows a GE microwave for $25, children's clothing priced between $4 and $8 and a variety of toys, including a Hannah Montana doll for $10 or less.

I really wanted that Hannah Montana doll too.

XMission Outage
---------------

XMission experienced a serious outage while we were performing some
standard UPS maintenance today. The outage affected all services and
started at approximately 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 11th. Network
services for many were partially restored by about 2:30 p.m. but some
other services required a lot of attention and took much longer.

Details
-------
About 40% of our data center, including our server room, suffered a power
outage when a technician flipped a mislabled breaker during some standard
maintenance on one of our 3 UPS units. Although the power outage was
momentary, servers and routers often respond very poorly to losing power
and sometimes take extensive work to come back up. Unfortunately, such was
the case today with many systems.

Seriously Affected Systems
--------------------------
** An important router, which some connections and servers rely on,
required extensive attention from our network administrators.

** DNS (Domain Name Service) was sporadic for some customers for over an
hour.

** Email services were down for over 5 hours.

** Web hosting suffered the longest outage because our NetApp storage
appliance which houses all customer files and web sites lost multiple
hard drives. As a result, we are currently restoring files to our new
NetApp 2020 from our November 9th backup, which will take many hours
yet to complete. We recently purchased this new NetApp and were merely
days away from getting it online.

Conclusion
----------
Today's outage was exascerbated by multiple systems responding poorly to
losing power. In spite of the holiday, our systems administrators were on
site within minutes and continue to work tirelessly to restore all
services. In the end, we should have performed this maintenance on a day
when our systems administrators were on site because problems can arise no
matter how carefully you proceed.

There's been a lot of water cooler talk at my place of employment about the various (state) constitutional amendments passed around the country this week. I found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' response worth a read. Here's the link.

For those who can't be bothered, here's a snippet:

We hope that now and in the future all parties involved in this issue will be well informed and act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility toward those with a different position. No one on any side of the question should be vilified, intimidated, harassed or subject to erroneous information.

It is important to understand that this issue for the Church has always been about the sacred and divine institution of marriage — a union between a man and a woman.

Allegations of bigotry or persecution made against the Church were and are simply wrong. The Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage neither constitutes nor condones any kind of hostility toward gays and lesbians. Even more, the Church does not object to rights for same-sex couples regarding hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights, so long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family or the constitutional rights of churches.

Due to the popularity of Youtube and Hulu, Joost has gone from a P2P format to streaming flash video. You can watch a LOT of TV here.

Original Transformers

G.I. Joe

He-Man and She-Ra

Bleach

The Tick

Bewitched

even Babylon 5

The Watchmen?

There's a new trailer up, with some additional footage, but mostly just the first trailer with scenes in a different order. Still the same Smashing Pumpkins song - which, for the record, I like.

The Stupid Gamer adds:

I have some ideas on how to spruce up the trailers

Announcer: In a world...where superheroes have been outlawed, one man sets his sights on changing the course of history. Now, it's up to some old superheroes to put on their tights one more time to save civilization...but who will watch...THE WATCHMEN?

If not that, this...

[spunky, upbeat music] One of their friends has been murdered, so it's up to a group of outlawed super heroes to suit up for one more fight. But they're about to learn that saving the day [needle scratch] ain't as easy as it used to be. [family movie rock music] Gather round the screens on March 6, 2009, as Nite Owl, Silver Spectre, Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandias, and that kooky Rorshach try to solve the mystery of the murdered Comedian in the action classic...Watchmen!

Because I feel that sharing the notes from President Packer's talk is just fear mongering for the most part, I'm going to link to several General Conference talks that are exactly what God wants us to be thinking about.

Come What May, and Love It by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

Finding Joy in the Journey by President Thomas S. Monson

If you are still in the process of raising children, be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled will disappear all too soon and that you will—to your surprise—miss them profoundly.

"Hope Ya Know, We Had a Hard Time" by Elder Quentin L. Cook Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

The Test President Boyd K. Packer's Message to the World, not just the Forest Bend Ward

Letter to the Editor Food Storage: "It’s About Prudence, Not Paranoia"

For those curious, here's a page full of linkage to information in past Ensigns about food storage: LDS.org