RPGnet, Gym, Update
Jun. 28th, 2004 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aRPGnet Upgrade
When last I wrote I was in the midst of the RPGnet forums upgrade.
In short, it sucked.
The upgrade package supplied by vBulletin to go from 2.0 to 3.0 was flawed in that it died out during two points in the upgrade, with no indication of what had happened. This was due to a very long & complex database manipulation which caused the browser to time out (and, I tried two different browsers, IE and Firefox, with the same result on each). I'm sure any moderately large forum installation will have the exact same problem.
The first time this happened, Thursday afternoon, I had no idea what happened and so I stumbled around, trying to fix it, and ended up getting the forums into a sufficiently untenable state that they had to be rebuilt from backup.
Unfortunately, the rebuild from backup also crashed twice, each time forcing a restart of the process. In the end it took 7 hours to do the rebuild because of the very large size of the RPGnet forums. It was 6am Friday morning by the time things were back the way they originally were, and by the time I actually went to bed.
On Friday, things went better. I'd figured out some ways to monitor the upgrade better, and so when it timed out those two times, I was able to get things going again right at the correct place. I started at noon and was done by 2.30pm or so. Afterward, another half-an-hour or so and I'd rebuilt the most important RPGnet styles, and could let users back in.
Since then I've been tweaking and tweaking. Nothing works quite the same, but it's slowly getting to a pretty good state. Right now, I think the forums look better than they ever have before and they also are running better, because vB3 backs off on at least one of the really intensive functions (constantly updating thread read counts).
Unfortunately, memberships at RPGnet are totally broken right now, but there I hopefully just need to rebuild the low level abstraction to link correctly with the new forum software. It's on my list for tomorrow.
Gym
Last week, I made a good showing at the gym for the first time in forever. Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday. Not Thursday because I was in the middle of the RPGnet debacle, not Friday because I was severely sleep-deprived, and not Saturday because I was gaming till after the gym closed. Then I made it Sunday again, and even lifted some weights.
It was the random pain and illness that I started having last October than had knocked me out of my gym routine. I still have slight twinges, and am nervous about working out, but can't be a lump forever.
Update
Otherwise, last week was generally good. I got back to work and remained sane. I did some good writing on Wednesday, including a full outline for an Issaries book and a conceptual overview for a Lovecraft Country comic, and the first column in a long time that I've been truly happy with (see![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
skotos_columns -- "It Ain't Fair").
A good week.
When last I wrote I was in the midst of the RPGnet forums upgrade.
In short, it sucked.
The upgrade package supplied by vBulletin to go from 2.0 to 3.0 was flawed in that it died out during two points in the upgrade, with no indication of what had happened. This was due to a very long & complex database manipulation which caused the browser to time out (and, I tried two different browsers, IE and Firefox, with the same result on each). I'm sure any moderately large forum installation will have the exact same problem.
The first time this happened, Thursday afternoon, I had no idea what happened and so I stumbled around, trying to fix it, and ended up getting the forums into a sufficiently untenable state that they had to be rebuilt from backup.
Unfortunately, the rebuild from backup also crashed twice, each time forcing a restart of the process. In the end it took 7 hours to do the rebuild because of the very large size of the RPGnet forums. It was 6am Friday morning by the time things were back the way they originally were, and by the time I actually went to bed.
On Friday, things went better. I'd figured out some ways to monitor the upgrade better, and so when it timed out those two times, I was able to get things going again right at the correct place. I started at noon and was done by 2.30pm or so. Afterward, another half-an-hour or so and I'd rebuilt the most important RPGnet styles, and could let users back in.
Since then I've been tweaking and tweaking. Nothing works quite the same, but it's slowly getting to a pretty good state. Right now, I think the forums look better than they ever have before and they also are running better, because vB3 backs off on at least one of the really intensive functions (constantly updating thread read counts).
Unfortunately, memberships at RPGnet are totally broken right now, but there I hopefully just need to rebuild the low level abstraction to link correctly with the new forum software. It's on my list for tomorrow.
Gym
Last week, I made a good showing at the gym for the first time in forever. Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday. Not Thursday because I was in the middle of the RPGnet debacle, not Friday because I was severely sleep-deprived, and not Saturday because I was gaming till after the gym closed. Then I made it Sunday again, and even lifted some weights.
It was the random pain and illness that I started having last October than had knocked me out of my gym routine. I still have slight twinges, and am nervous about working out, but can't be a lump forever.
Update
Otherwise, last week was generally good. I got back to work and remained sane. I did some good writing on Wednesday, including a full outline for an Issaries book and a conceptual overview for a Lovecraft Country comic, and the first column in a long time that I've been truly happy with (see
skotos_columns -- "It Ain't Fair").A good week.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-28 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-28 09:33 pm (UTC)I know the biggest complaint is the user info on top v. left; if that's one of the things you don't like, you'll be happy to know that I think I can set up different styles, one with on-left and one with on-top. I just need to wait until all the style changes are worked out before I create a second one.
In any case, for the mod tools, you're quite welcome.
Shannon