Hurricane Rita

MachineDog · #1 09-20-2005, 06:58 PM

Hurricane Rita will be hitting Texas later this week as a Cat. 4 storm, maybe even 5 by then. The real test of The Planet's generators and other plans for something like this to happen shall begin friday. =D Let's just hope it holds out.. =\

genius · #2 09-20-2005, 08:00 PM

I don't know if you live in Texas (I have no idea where the everglades are), but good luck and hope all works out if you do.

Also I hope those who ARE there make due also.

gone2alpine · #3 09-21-2005, 12:49 AM

So this would be a good time to pull down some "off site" backups I suppose...sure hope things hold together becasue this Hostgator place has gotten pretty comfortable.

Good luck to our friends at Hostgator and The Planet.

David · #4 09-21-2005, 05:21 AM

Considering that Dallas is over 200 miles from the coast I would hope that it would have lost a lot of it's punch by then, but you never know. It would be nice if a magical High Pressure ridge came out of nowhere and squashed it. A hurricane no matter how powerful is not much of a match for a strong High or Front coming through. Of couse they would just push it in a different direction but hopefully away from populated areas.

Oh, BTW the everglades are in southern FL...you know where Gators live

David

MachineDog · #5 09-21-2005, 12:26 PM

Yeah, hopefully it'll have lost it's punch by then but, you never know. It'll still be pretty bad though. I'm mainly wondering if the backbone providers that The Planet depends on for connectivity will stay up completely. Probablly a few lines will have some downtime and the connections'll have to be routed through differant GigE lines.

tina · #6 09-21-2005, 01:45 PM

yes Rita a 4 !!! when i signed up a month ago there was hurricane talk too !!

The beauty of back-ups ! Only human life is so irreplaceably frail.
I hope everybody/thing stays fine...and i'll keep my fingers crossed.
Good luck to Planet & Gators !

MachineDog your move to greener

pastures completed?

Trolling through the forum sure has helped to point me in the directions i need to learn up on. I want to thank again all of you who contribute so faithfully and constructive ! ( still don't know how "secure" my "contact us" pages are

and wanting to put a blog in one site is sure kicking my

since i am still not proficient in the "lingo" and some sentences have to be read a few times to make a bit of sense. (bought Sams teach yourself php, MySQL and Apache..if there is better please advise!)
Most embarrassing is the fact that i can't read my logs, incompetent at reading -.gz - files and what program to install to unzip them.

any suggestions? (windows xp)

MachineDog · #7 09-21-2005, 01:58 PM

I think WinRar works with gz files. And I'm unfortunately having troubles finding the money to rent out a dedicated server.

tina · #8 09-21-2005, 03:24 PM

Thank you i shall look into this WinRar this afternoon.
That sure sucks! night-shifts in the ICU are paying my way right now too...first thing i'll do if i start making money on this web-endavour is hire a knowledgeable kid like you

!

David · #9 09-21-2005, 10:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tina

Thank you i shall look into this WinRar this afternoon.
That sure sucks! night-shifts in the ICU are paying my way right now too...first thing i'll do if i start making money on this web-endavour is hire a knowledgeable kid like you

!

Another to consider would be PowerArchiver at www.powerarchiver.com for the gz files.

Rita is now a monster CAT 5 with winds of 175 Gusting to 215! I hope it fizzles at least somewhat before it hits land.

Regarding the PHP, MySQL, etc. books, you might want to try the folks over at Sitepoint They have some pretty decent publications and a wealth of info. for webmasters.

David

jimmi · #10 09-22-2005, 09:01 AM

I sent this to my customers;

The servers we lease are located in Dallas, TX -- which you may already know is about to get hit by hurricane Rita sometime on Friday morning.

The ISP we use have taken every precaution possible and even have multiple backup generators and over 10,000 gallons of fuel on hand. The buildings that contain our servers were built to handle Category 4 hurricanes, which is what Rita is expected to be when she hits Dallas. The actual internet lines and services are underground and have their own backup generators. Little or no outages are expected.

However....

Should the primary server go down, goto http://www2.phpwt.com for details. There will be short delay while internet servers "see" our new back-up server. This is normal and unavoidable.

We currently have daily backups of ALL our hosting customers and will get the data moved to our Johnstown, PA backup servers as well. We have also stepped up our back-up routines to do back-ups every 30 minutes, to minimize data loss on any dynamic sites.

From what we have been told, there should be little or no disruption of service from our primary provider in Dallas. While this may be true, we are still taking our own backup and recovery steps.

Many people will be affected by this hurricane and our prayers go out to all of them.

MachineDog · #11 09-22-2005, 09:56 AM

Reached 179 miles per hour this morning.

tina · #12 09-22-2005, 03:38 PM

Thank you David , I just spent a few hours lost at sitepoint...sooooo much to learn!
semantics/lingo/lack of good glossary, makes reading slow when new to a field

jlgreer1 · #13 09-22-2005, 06:17 PM

I live a little northeast of Houston. I'll keep everyone posted as long as I have power and a dsl line.

Jeff
An old curmudgeon!

David · #14 09-24-2005, 12:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tina

Thank you David , I just spent a few hours lost at sitepoint...sooooo much to learn!
semantics/lingo/lack of good glossary, makes reading slow when new to a field

You're very welcome! I had the same problem when I first found that site back a year or two ago. I think I spent like 5 hours on it or something crazy like that. Good luck getting through it all...BTW, I just ordered a few books from there so I'll post a review after I've had a chance to actually read them. They're supposed to be in on 9/26, but I'm leaving for a week in FL on 9/25 so won't be until next month sometime.

David

David · #15 09-24-2005, 12:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlgreer1

I live a little northeast of Houston. I'll keep everyone posted as long as I have power and a dsl line.

Jeff
An old curmudgeon!

Wish you all the best! Sadly I think northeast of Houston is the direction it was heading last I saw. Take care...

David

MachineDog · #16 09-24-2005, 10:33 AM

Lol, David. Meet up with meh! It looks like the storm has past through Houston now.. Haven't seen the damage report in that area.

jlgreer1 · #17 09-25-2005, 08:48 PM

I have had power restored for about an hour. No damage to speak of in my small community NE of Houston. The schools are planning to reopen Wednesday.

It sure is nice ot have AC back (And a computer!).

Gasoline and supplies are a problem. Even late Sunday, none of the gas stations have any gas. All of the teller machines have been out of cash since Friday.

Everyone should think about a preparedness chest or something to that effect.

A small generator, propane cook stove, LED flashlights, battery powered radios, and lots of batteries.

Jeff

MachineDog · #18 09-26-2005, 11:34 AM

Looks like it passed without too much trouble for Houston. Louisiana got hit hard again..