Moving the Spring to a new ISP - the end of colocation

What do the members of the migration team do exactly, and must they be in Austin physically? If there is anything I can do and I am competent enough to do it, Speak and I am yours.

We're going to need Kaylene Thaler's help in migrating our conferences, she should be pretty reasonable about this since the servers we're moving to run the same OS, BSDI. Today, I was forced by Robert Ross to move both barton.spring.net and shop.spring.net out of the colocate facility. He was pretty mean spirited about it. These are not friendly folks, they are definitely reaping some bad karma right now. Mel Riser was the reason we were at DDC and he's left DDC for autoeloan.com, and a lot of other folks have left DDC because it's such an unpleasant scene. Robert would probably rip Mel to pieces if he could legally, he's so pissed off about Mel leaving. I could see that in his scary vibes today. So, as of now, we're running on www.spring.net (this machine) and access.spring.net where austen.com and firth.com live. I want to start moving all our sites to the new isp as soon as possible so we're out of DDC and harm's way. A reality check for y'all. I think we can come through this ok and have a lot less overhead. Babysitting hardware is something I would rather do less and I would rather focus more on growing community and creating great content. So this may be a blessing after all. We'll see.

They don't have to be here in Austin, Marcia, in fact, this means I don't even have to be in Austin. You know I don't even know the physical location of the new isp. What you can do is get familiar with the new isp and help with input as we progress down this road.

Alright. Ready and willing and all that good stuff. Is there a Url I could use or just how should I got about familiarizing myself? (feeling pretty ignorant aout now but eager to please)

There will be another topic opening with urls and technical details. This topic will be for broader questions and concerns.

To quote Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact, "life will go on"; that's how I feel, the Spring will go on.

We are well shed of DDC...How could they treat a gentle man like you with such callousness. Onward!

We MUST go on. Wherever would I go?!

It's not against me specifically, I'm just getting backscatter of a lot of other frustrations they're having right now. That and they have to go after bigger customers. We're not big enough for them. The problem is that they're just mean spirited in general right now, and no one's going to get their attention unless they can flaunt a bunch of greenstuff in front to them. We're getting a "great deal" for a high profile business customer with our colocation rate, but the problem is that we're not some high profile, well heeled business. We're fairly nonprofit and make it on donations and on windfall domain name deals and a trickle of website hosting fees and clickthroughs. Mostly, I subsidize it and babsit the hardware.

Ah, that is my whole point. You should have to do none of the subsidizing. I am sorry I got into the act a little late, but Whatever you need, let me know and I shall be out there squeezing blood out of turnips or whatever I must do for you and Spring. What bad vibes they are sending out will come back to haunt them. You do not need that sort of thing going on in your life.

wait, what happened to that other deal we had been talking about? i can't remember all of it right now.....

Moving to Springfield? Yes, what happened, Terry?

The Springfield guys called and said the deal was still on, but not until March. I had been counting on them to do this Jan 1, 2000 and had made plans to move the gear to Springfield, but that's what Anthony Hopp is saying now. After all their overtures, I thought they were ready to move right away. But they pulled back at the last minute. So on to Plan C.

which is....put everything in the basement but the basics? *hugs* terry!

Terry, as I posted elsewhere, if you could give me some figures I will punch them into some kind of form and post on Drool anbd Springfolks...Please!

OK I'll work them up. Basically, you don't want to know how much I'm in the hole right now and this venture.

Maybe that is what will get them to dig deeper. After all, as you fare so do we. Why would we not want to know. It is our problem as well as yours, you know! Please?! Or email me and I will tenderize it for them, but you need our help, do you not???

terry, tell us, i agree with marcia, if folks see how much it costs to keep this place up and running, they will dig deeper (and post the address again!)

Well, I just paid DDC.net $1288 plus another $433. That covers us for this month, Jan and Feb 2000. I hope we're on a lower cost setup after that, it remains to be seen whether digihost will work for us. It's still in the trial phase.

I will do what I can, but I have been requested not to post the plea for money in Drool. (They probably support Spring more than any other conference does.) How can we get donations from colinfirth.com (3 deers) and austen.com? Do they support their part of this operation? If not, I'd suggest you put them offline until they do.(Terry is too nice to do that, of course)

Our donations have come in fairly well in the past and I'm sure folks will continue to do so, they are most appreciated. Our future is in ecommerce and I'm going to work toward pumping up our click throughs (eg. Visto) and ecommerce sites as a means to support this place. We need to keep growing and expanding, if we can do this, we can be successful as a community. I'm not going to cut any websites off or anything, we've always gotten donations though postive appeals and by providing a place for conversations.

and the address again?

Send contributions to: Paul Terry Walhus The Spring 9011 Quail Creek Dr Austin, TX 78758

Terry, If I send a � check can you cash it?

Send contributions to: Paul Terry Walhus The Spring 9011 Quail Creek Dr Austin, TX 78758

Maggie, he can cash a check in any currency on planet Earth. Not sure about outer space, though. We encountered this question on the last fund drive and he had no problems. Thanks for asking!

most banks should be able to handle foreign currency, right? (and thanks, marcia, for making sure i got that address *grin*)

It's really better if you can convert it before you send it. Does your bank have the ability to make an International Money order in US Dollars or can you help us out by making a credit card payment for austen.com? I'm trying to raise some immediate $$ to move firth.com, austen.com and to pay the Network Solutions fee on austen.com. If anyone wants to make a direct contribution they can pay for austen.com online with a credit card. You can do this here: https://payments.networksolutions.com/ Just type in austen.com It will give you a screen like this: Domain Name Invoice Number Amount Due austen.com 13796338 $35.00 Billing Contact Information Walhus , Paul Terry Phone: 512.303.4000 Fax: 512.303.3200 Spring Rt 2 Box 56R Austin , TX 78612 UNITED STATES US Then select "Make Payment"

Austen.com is now paid for.

Thank you!!!!

*******am posting this message here too********** Terry, there is definitely a problem out there. Possibly that named server situation and/or router problems. Some people can get in and many cannot. I've been in contact with our Drool bunch via our backup mailing service and encouraged them to try their ISP's other phone lines for alternative routing as worked for me (except for the austen.com areas). Do you need any other evidence than Marcia hasn't posted all day! ;-)

Can you give me the numerical address for the sites and I can tell people to try that?

yes, marcia has emailed me too about her probs getting onto the spring and asked for the numerical address. it's weird that some of us can get in and others cannot. does this have something to do with the new setup? (and marcia, dearie, you are so generous! i, too, want to thank you)

Hey! Why didn't you tell me this was going on (money raising)! I just happened to stumble on this thread and found I didn't know anyting! The Austen.com folks paid the domain fee last year, and we were all prepared to do it again--Thanks Marcia!!! I do have a permanent link up on all of the Austen.com messages and message boards asking people to donate, but I also do try to have a couple of fund raisers each year as well. I'll post a request for funds tonight. Hopefully that will help (you'll get a check from me!) Is there anything more we can do, Terry?

Keep the contributions coming! We are experiencing a firestorm of sorts right now due to the premature move of our primary and secondary nameservers to their site. I sent them emails telling them to fix it. Because of this, I suggest you use ip addresses instead of domain names for the next day or so www.spring.net is 206.97.234.70 www.austen.com is 206.97.234.91 www.firth.com is 206.97.234.101 more at http://206.97.234.70/dns Sorry folks The digihost folks jumped the gun big time!

Again, firth is http://206.97.234.101 austen is http://206.97.234.91 www.spring.net is http://206.97.234.70

thanks terry. marcia says she tried the spring number and nothing is working, including ftp.

These numbers should work, I just emailed Marci, bless her heart.

I hope marci@aloha.net is the right email address for her.

I made sure I corrected it as soon as I noted that all the emails were scrambled. It is, indeed!

I actually couldn't get through to Austen.com using the numeric address, but I can get through using "http://austen.com". Strangely, "http://www.austen.com" doesn't work! (last time I checked, I got a "access.spring.net" message.)

Have only gotten through to spring and that only on Spring...*sigh*

We worked on this last night. http://austen.com works alright, I just tried that.

I just tried it as well. Netscape says it cannot find it. *sigh*

Terry: Any word from either Digihost or Network Solutions? Have the corrections been implemented?

Numerial ip will work on the web as well. First go to http://206.97.234.70 and click on say the last 50 responses. It will come up as http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin ... and you won't get the page. At this point go to the address box and change the www.spring.net to 206.97.234.70 and you will get through to the url. We need to let folks know this. Tell folks (via email or phone or however) that they just need to substitute 206.97.234.70 every time the www.spring.net appears in their address box of their browser. In the meantime, the Digihost folks have a solution and they're going to help us get back on track in the morning. I'll be on the phone to them early in the morning and try to get us moved over to their site. I know this is painful, and I hadn't planned on moving this soon. But now that we're in the throes of this accidental event, let's make the best of it and go ahead with the move. I'll get Kaylene to help get yapp moved and get with the system folks at digihost in the morning and the nuts and bolts of doing this. But in the meantime, it is possible to still use the spring on the web by substituting the ip address 206.97.234.70 for the words www.spring.net every time it comes up in the address box of your browser. Like I was telling Evelyn, who called a little while ago, ddc.net has priced us out of colocation so we have to make a move, I really don't have much choice. I think the direction I'm moving our servers, to virtual rather than metal boxes is the right thing to do. I know this works, because I'm doing this on a friends AOL right now. So please help spread the word and tell folks that life will go on, the Spring will go on and that this isn't the end, it's only the beginning. Keep the faith, we'll be ok!

And yes, I've heard from Digihost by email and phone and we're getting things resolved. I'll be on the phone to Digihost in the morning on their 800 number. Feel free to call them and ask for a status update to let them know you care!

Terry, I just emailed Heide, Evelyn and Karen then posted it on Springfolks which has just about every drool lady involved...I will continue to email others

Terry, I am online in Windows...things are working just fine - not like greased lightning, but well enough for this refugee from telnet. I am delighted more than I can tell you. Ann, you're welcome for my paying for your domain name. Not, contribute to Terry in that amount for me, please....

It Works With http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/porch/69.49 I arrived here from confifty...It is all fixed again. You cna't even guess how bad the withdrawal was from Spring we know and love. Geo's wallpaper is back and the lava buttons and now I can post the sunspot gif which is real time updating. Terry, any place you want me to post it so you can check for ionospheric disturbances and the like for Ham Radio???

Terry, http://www.austen.com still isn't a working URL, but http://austen.com is. Last time I checked the www. address, I got the mostly blank screen with "access.spring.net" on it. Any chance of getting that fixed? BTW, The Derbyshire Writers' Guild is going to be in an article in the New York Times some time this month, and I hope the site is actually working!

Fantastic news, Ann! About DWG...and, you can consider my paying for your domain as a way of thanking you for enabling me and so many others by writing your tutorial for html. If'n you's like to see how well I did, just pop over to http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/geo/all/ and see how well I did. Belated thanks for a job incredibly well done!!!

Marcia, Geo looks like a cool place! I love that sort of stuff. I grew up watching Nova and Nature and Scientific American and all the nature shows I could find on TV. Fun stuff.

Ooooh good...mayhap you might find your way into Geo to post sometime. Yippee!!! Wait'll you see the updating sunspot solar image. You can watch it rotate and pulsate...Good stuff over there...!

Terry: Thanks so much for getting everything working again. I'm sure the process is not yet finished, but a couple of people have reported the same/strange problem. They can get to Spring and read the boards, but cannot login. They are rejected. They have tried both spring.net and the numerical addresses. This is what one wrote: I'm unable to log in; when I try, I get the URL not found message. If I manually type in what I think is the correct response URL but substituting the 206#s, it rejects my user name/password. Is this something that will work itself out? Or have some user data files been damaged? Thanks again for bringing Spring back to us.

Hi there, Europe is back on - at least the mid-continental division... Now we only need to raise the island and mountain tribes, respectively. Terry - thanks for keeping things up & doing such a nice job about it!

Yea!! the URL http://www.austen.com is now working. Thanks Terry!

Sure, thanks everyone. The CEO of Digihost called and apologized this morning. I'm hoping these little minicrises will make us stronger and more unified as a community. The concerns show that folks care about our community and I'm glad to see this. We always pull together and weather the storms somehow.

Waiddaminute, "apologized"? I'm a, uh, "business" man in a different market, and to me this translates into "we still can make a buck out of him". Watch your back, Terry!

I'm stronger and believe in Spring more than ever. My telnetting skills improved (even though my typing did not), and I even got to teach a few the fine are of posting in DOS. We will be just fine...even if it is just you and me, Terry, and Alexander watching your back while others make the place prettier and ever more appealing.

Hi, Glad it all getting sorted out. I got in fine using the numbers thanks to Marcia - but haven't need to change it for each conference, so something's working well. Thanks for all the hard work.

Terry, Can you give us a little bit of status as to how the migration is going? I'm assuming it is not complete. Karen

I have heard from two Canadian Droolians who cannot get in yet.

marcia, where's the sunspot pic? ann--love those smilies!!

You found it in Geo 24.41. I also posted it on Weather which is linked to news.

Yes, Cymbeline gets in via the numeric IPs, but has no images. Also, she isn't able to use any of our links because of the www.spring part. I've told her to manually adjust for the time being.

Where does she live? Is she Canadian, as well? I seem to have forgotten.

In the US, Virginia to be exact. Mari still cannot login and was wondering if she should reregister (see question re: damaged user data files) and now I have a message from Aishling (UK) that she can't get in. Terry?

Karen, are you getting in the usual way and having no trouble? I am having to use the numerical ip but I can get in. However, telnetting is much the swifter than switching the www.spring.net on each of the URL's . Humbug!

Is there a different place I should be posting my questions on the Spring migration?

This is the place, Karen. If anything pertinent comes up I will also post it in Inner for you if it does not appear that Terry is seeing it. I have noticed that spring is very slow this morning and we are still without graphics and ads...but the magic buttons are there...*grin*

Since you began asking Terry questions here he has been logged in on telnet at least once, but he is not entering the conferences, I think. I shall go back to telnet to see what I can discover.

I went back into telnet and it is so slow-going that I had my connection cut off twice just trying to get through one time. There is a problem and as soon as Terry gets time to talk he will. Till then, I imagine he is up to his ears in alligators...

terry, i have to use the numbers now (started last night right after i posted some pics)....

I wrote to DigiHost and told them to be good to Terry and kind to us and they answered telling me to use the numerical ip's. No kidding. Oh well, at least they answer their email...

They even suggested I 'refresh' my browser and I mentioned (though not to them) that I dumped the caches enough that you'd think I was dosing them on prunes!

you've gotta dump the caches or the system will be slow!

Gotta keep them regular and slickery clean, huh!

Austen.com seems to be down again :-( (someone told me it is since 5pm yesterday) Is the migration actually taking place right now? Is that why it's down? Do we know the new IP #'s for the new servers?

www.spring.net is 206.97.234.70 www.austen.com is 206.97.234.91 www.firth.com is 206.97.234.101 Good luck, dear!!!

Let's make um hot links www.spring.net is http://206.97.234.70 www.austen.com is http://206.97.234.91 www.firth.com is http://206.97.234.101 Good luck, dear!!!

Oh Dear, Ann. Only firth.com works of those ip's I just posted. I tried to email you and everything was returned undeliverable. *sigh*

My Spring mail account seems to be down too. My main back-up e-mail is DWGuild@yahoo.com For some reason, the IP #'s haven't really been working at Austen.

Ann, please go read Ray Lopez' comments in Drool: http://206.97.234.70/yapp-bin/restricted/read/drool/124.161 I know they don't work...and you can forget about access.spring.net...which is where all of my stuff is... Thnx for the update on your email address.

Just got back into Austen.com. It seems an intermittant problem, and like most people had little trouble getting in today--just me :-(

I also had problems. Ray Lopez is helping Terry now...that is great news!

We'll get these things resolved by communicating and working with mike@digihost.com and ceo@digihost.com, the sysad and his manager respectively. Ray's input at this stage is invaluable. Our next step is to gain access to the site at digihost that they've set up for us. And then I need to know who will manage austen.com and firth.com so we can set up accounts for them to be the primary administrator for these sites. I also need to get repeater.org back up and running. I like the idea Evelyn had of forming a steering committee of hosts to work more closely together on the management of this community.

Terry, as before, I'm the primary host of Austen.com. I don't think spring.net e-mail addresses are working at the moment (at least mine isn't), so if you need more info from me, I'll need an off-site address for you. Steering committee would be good. I'd be happy to participate. :-)

I'm getting in OK, but hotlinks aren't working - like mark all as read, just get a page unavailable notice.

Terry, I guess I'm the only primary manager for www.firth.com. ;-/ What action is required, and when? Whatever it is, I hope we can do it within the next 2 days, more details in email.

terry, i'd like some input so i can understand what's been going on, and where we stand... 1. When did the deal with Digihost get finalized? 2. what are the terms of this deal? 3. which of the spring servers are to be moved (www, access, and barton??)? 4. as of right now, where are these servers physically? 5. where will they be moving physically? 6. have IP addresses been changed for the Spring servers and all web sites hosted on spring servers? 7. if so, is all we lack the update to the DNS tables? 8. will we still have control over our DNS servers for spring.net? i know that is a lot of questions, but i am easily confused!!!!

Terry, I guess I'm the only primary manager for www.firth.com. ;-/ What action is required, and when? Whatever it is, I hope we can do it within the next 2 days, more details in email.

Terry, what's your valid email address? It's urgent, I'll be computerless for a while soon.

renate, try these emails for terry... springnet@briefcase.com springnet@palm.net

Use this one for Terry, Renate: springnet@briefcase.com

Thank you all!

We're finally up on the new location, at least our index.html page. Though you still have to sometimes substitute 206.97.234.70 for www.spring.net to get in to some conference areas.

we're up? will have to try my bookmark....

Still cannot ftp...and have to use my ip's to get around Spring...*sigh*

We're going to try and nail down the complete move this week. We'll have to work together on this. Once the conferencing is moved, the rest is just a matter of moving domains like firth.com and austen.com. Everyone should make sure they have *local copies* of their content so they can ftp them. Our new site will have users with ftp access, frontpage 2000 access and telnet access for root level administrators sharing a single account. I don't know yet if we can get additional telnet access.

Terry, How much of the content of Austen.com will you be moving? Or is it all up to us? How long will we have to get the new site up and running before the DNS switch takes place? And, do you have any idea of a time-table for all of this? If I'm unable to get to the site from my home computer, it might be hard for me to do much work on things. Right now I am relagated to FTPing things, but I can't access anything through my browser.

Looks like I'd better go hunt up the graphics I put on Geo as I did not save a copy of them but I do have the urls I believe...I hope...!

I'm in! I'm in! After about 4.5 days, I can finally log into Austen.com!!!

Whew! Finally! I am still yearning for my pretties like wallpaper and buttons. Not to mention updating maps and such. Congratulations, Ann! You are safely home!

Locked out again from my home computer :( Seem to be able to get in from work, though.

Bummer! It almost sounds as though they are conspiring to keep you at the bluprints and drafting table longer than ever! This week....hope!

my bookmark still doesn't work and, is anyone else having this prob--in order to view any post listed in the "last five responses" i have to go to the topic in the conference list instead of clicking on the response i want to view. quirks!

Yup! Same here. I have bookmarked all of the conferences with both the standard URLs and the numerical IP's...I need to get around so it was the only practical way to do it. Shall I email them to you?

The net must have propagated austen.com to your isp Ann. Let's get clear now and exactly who's going to ftp the stuff to the new site and set a date and time to do it. I want to make sure that you have a complete offline copy of the site(s) and are prepared to move it to the new site when I create it (which takes all of ten minutes). It's all a matter of timing at this point. Ray is going to be tarballing the conferencing stuff in /usr/bbs (see unix conference for explanation of "tar") and when this happens, the remainder of our server content will move quickly to the new site. DDC is making threatening noises again, wanting me to sign a ludicrously expensive colocation contract so we need to move as quickly as possible and not get blindsided by them again.

Terry, I have a pretty slow internet connection, which makes it tough for me to download and upload over a thousand files--and that's the story archives alone. I would be at it for days. Do you have a faster way to do it? Also, I don't know how to go about transfering our message boards. I'd like to find a way to transfer them in their entirety--we could shut down Austen.com for a couple of days, and figure out how to do the transfer. I've already warned people that we might go down for a while. In a worst-case scenario, suppose I can lose all of the current messages on the boards and reset them to the beginning, but I still will need some time to get the CGI scripts running on the new machine. Of course, if I can't get to anything through my browser, I am very limited to what I can do.

We probably don't need to go down, and I'll handle ftping them over to the new site. The old one will just keep running till the new one kicks in. Give me a date and time to launch the new site and I'll ftp the files at the same time. And make the date and time known to all the folks who access the site via the site and email, letting them know we're going through a transition. The only problem will be that of propagation, some users will see it sooner than others because of the nature of how web sites propagate due to name changes.

Hey, we're here at the new site! Who will be the first person besides me to post here! What works? And what doesn't work? Let us know!

Hi Terry I've posted at Drool. Seems to be working, but can you change the page specifications so that our Drool background and icons show up. They are in a directory called: spring.net/yapp-icons/drool I'd do it myself, but haven't a clue as to how to do it. Thanks much for all your help, Karen

I'm going to defer to William on this, as he's been doing this stuff all along, if he's too booked, I'll dive in to it. But he's pretty much been doing this all along.

Terry, since you asked... Confifty does not work, and neither does 333. Otherwise, it looks great!

I asked Kaylene about this as well.

Mahalo! I miss it terribly...

Could we have have something like 11.111, too? Sometimes, when there's mucho traffic and you've bee off for a week, it might be handy...

Terry, I just found that I've become host in every conf I visit. No good juju. Please check if that's the default now for every user logged in... And take away the host rights I've acquired so unexpectedly, except for Music, InternationalConflicts, ViridianC. ...

Alexander, everyone is a host! I dread to think of the problems this could cause. Do you have an array of interesting buttons you never had before, as well? Don't use them, please! How odd that you do not have hostly powers on YOUR conferences! *sigh* We are not out of the proverbial woods, yet, I think!

Don't worry, I'll get Kaylene to address this.

I would appreciate that tremendously...and sleep a lot easier, as well.

I did it!!! I really did it! I cleared my old directory and sent my stuff (some of it, anyway, over to my new directory which is bright and shiny and bookmarked on the web. Thank you ! Now, just to figure out how to put those images of Ree's paintings back onto the same response...I think I shall have to re-enter them as I cannot imagine doing so much with my limited editing skills via telnet. But, I am happy to have my directory back online. Mahalo plenty!

Frontpage 2000 has global search and replace.

Correction: I have host privileges on all confs I'm host, PLUS a load more. I had no problem anywhere.

OK...I'll try frontpage 2000 because I still do not know how to do relative vs absolute addressing...or whatever it was we are to know now...*sigh* Yup! Alexander. Don't play with the buttons, man! You'll give others bad ideas!

FP2000 *defaults* to relative addressing. It's the perfect beginner's website construction tool. And it allows you to work directly with html.

I was just bug-reporting... No buttons frigging, I only updated the link in InternationalConflicts.

I haven't checked everywhere, but looks like the Host issue has been fixed, huh, Terry? I am host on Drool, but not on Geo or Porch. How about everyone else? All straightened out. What about those three buttons? Have they been taken away from every registered user?

I haven't really had the time yet to check in to these issues.

I am fixing some weird rc issues that have been keeping some conferences from using their approved buttons and backgrounds. If any odd issues arise because of this, please post them here.

Thank you. Other than stripping me of my marble, and the default buttons, everything is just fine in Geo *grin*

Oh, and thank you for restoring the most recent postings list. I missed it.

Graphics in Geo fixed.

I saw...Much thanks...and I am torn about having the classic buttons and not the hand-made ones ... *sigh* I shall leave them as cfadm wishes them.

Thank you for the marble bars. *sigh* It is back to Spartan classic instead of programmer crafted... but that was agreed on long time ago. Guess it is time to change my link color again, as well...

To put the Spring's default buttons and the horizontal bar back, delete the define gifs and define hr lines from your rc file.

Thank you. I also saved them as alternate GeoButtons file and ftp'd it to Spring's hard drive, so all I should have to do is to put the other URL in the current buttons' place. One more question....How do I become "world builder" again rather than just plain "host" of the conference? It is still in the rc and I hit the save these changes bar but is does not appear.

I have to do the same thing with define fw as I did with define gifs and define hr is all.

Ok...Since it is as it was originally, I shall not touch it. Which buttons should I use in Geo? It will be Spring soon and the handcrafted ones are so cheery and friendly...and special, somehow...

SpringArk seems to be fixed, as well.

Excellent. Now, we can get that conference going again...when I find the time away from Geo. Mahalo plenty.

yes, the praises from this wolfie have been made in other conferences. thanks so very much for all the hard work!! *HUGS*

May I add mine as well - or am I repeating myself ( nothing new here!)

I have problem which is using up space on Spring's Hard drive, and I don't know what to do about it. I have Ree's artwork (each over several hundred KB in size) portraits of just about everybody including me, and all sorts of other pictures which are no longer seen on Spring because the URL location is wrong. Suggestions?

Woh! Sounds like things have been a little unstable around here...!

Ree, you missed having to use an all-numerical IP to get to Spring, and there were days I could not get in at all (arrrrrgh!) And, other times posts were lost - and our esteemed gentlmen who work so hard at making Spring lovely and function properly got precious little sleep. Yippee! I am so happy you are posting again!!!

me too!

mee toooo! Wish I had a bit more time. How have you both been? Have any significant changes taken place while I was gone?

I had quadruplets and a sex change, but nothing else. (Not really!) Mike has been back posting in Geo! It turns out he is a Geologist! I was se excited to see him there! W're talking weird stuff in there like Ley lines and megalithic things - mostly British so far. Wolfie and I are still trying to get some attention of the Spring magicians who create conferences to made one for us called Crafts. Sheesh, my dear! You are always a joyous sight on spring, but...Law School?! Dontcha have to ask for extra time out just to breathe normally?! We are so proud of you...*big Hugs*

Good to see you back, Riette...

Thank you - I trust you are well? Ah, Marcia, Law School isn't as iffy-snotty-highbrow as people think, really. THere is ALOT of work, yes. Reading work - I even read when I'm on the loo or drying my hair. But it happens to be AMAZINGLY interesting, so the amount of work doesn't feel like punishment, and it is not difficult. Well, it's complicated, there's ALOT of stuff to remember, especially when you have to apply aids of interpretation to statutes or cases. There is SO many things to look out for, but it's GREAT. Like doing a jigsaw puzzle. But the understanding that studying Law requires couldn't in a million years be compared to, say, studying maths or science or geology. Apart from learning how the courts and the system function externally, it is all about language. Interpreting language, to be more specific. It is just a really enjoyable line of study for someone like myself who likes working with language. I was never that interested in literature, because I feel I don't need someone to tell me HOW to appreciate language. It is the application of language that has always fascinated me - that's why I decided on Law rather than Arts History or Literature.

You are spot-on about "studying" Literature (it spoils a good read in my opinion)...and I can imagine some court cases are riveting to read. It is the minutiae that would have gotten to me, I think. Gimme a rock and let me analyze any day. Working with capricious humans whose brains act so differently from one another and from mine you have no baseline to compare things with other than other court cases. Hmmm.. In any case, I happy that someone with what I consider a superior and facile mind is going to join the fraternity which is mostly populated with the venal-minded of our population. *hugs* and if you need a pep talk, pop around and I will be happy to oblige

AAACK! Last week, the Austen.com chat room dissolved when the permissions to the directory in which it is house went flooey, and I couldn't even get into it. It happened again this afternoon, and while I was trying to fix it, the whole Austen.com site went down. I can't get in using FTP either--my password isn't accepted.

Now I know why! Apparently, digihost doesn't allow chat rooms at all! They said they sent out an e-mail about this last week, but apparently not to the right person. Austen.com, sans chat, is back up and running.

How is firth.com's chat room operating, in that case? Or am I mistaken about that?

The firth.com chatroom is still in operation, but it has a far lower volume than austen's. In addition, I've emailed one of the room's frequent users to tell her about the possibility of it getting shut down if any major chats are scheduled. I'd like to hear what Terry thinks of the situation, i.e., that digihost doesn't allow chatrooms on its servers, and what alternatives exist.

Visto has chat room capabilities as does eGroups...

Visto does? Austen.com is hunting for a new place. So far we've tried BeSeen.com and Bravenet.com. We're going to try Talk City and maybe some others. But it looks like the best one is at chatweb.com. It costs money though, but only $10/month which isn't much. They allow HTML in posts and it looks quite a bit like our old room.

That ad at the top of the page...check it out - I think it does! (Visto)

the chat facility within eGroups wouldn't suit austen.com at all because (1) you have to be a member of the group and (2) doesn't allow HTML stuff.

You mean, there are folks who use HTML stuff in chat rooms? Doesn't that slow the reponding time down considerably?! Or...do they give points for style, too?

They post pictures and do italics/small for effect, just as we do on the Drool boards.

I have only experienced the chat room we have and things happen so fast that if you took the time to do all of that it would be irrelevant by the time it appeared! Oh well, it serves their purposes well, I imagine. Some day when geo has eroded into a beach perhaps I will investigate.

Hmm, HTMLing stuff doesn't usually make me fall behind the chat, but then, I don't do it much. For pics I post often, I have a page on my computer with the html all there, so all I have to do is cut and paste. Whenever I leave the room, I post this: All I have to do is open up the page I save my HTML to and cut and paste that in. Works well. Usually people will just put something in italics or in bolds.

Aha! You have a page of templates, too. Good idea! The only way to go! I think you alone are responsible for many html programming successes. I have used your tutorial almost exclusively and passed the url for it on to others. Now, if we could just remember to close those tags...

BTW, the current URL for the toot is: http://austen.com/tutorial It used to be on my account on spring.net, but I haven't gotten that set back up again.

Thank you, great doc!

Mahalo nui, Ann...I have referred many to this gem of yours. I shall send them the corrected url to bookmark.

We just had another fairly successful server move around July 1 and things have settled down now.