From dave@syix.com Sun Jun 22 19:01:05 1997 Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 18:49:13 -0700 From: Dave Overton <dave@syix.com> To: dave@syix.com Subject: NEWS@SYIX v3n5-6-7
***************************************** * * * NEWS @ SYIX * * * ***************************************** June 22, 1997 Vol 3 No 5, 6, 7
VERY COOL! Dave finally does another Newsletter!!! WOW!!! Now that you are all done picking on me about it....
WELCOME!
Hey! Welcome new people, to the continuing, irratic publication of NEWS@SYIX (get it? News at 6) And of course, welcome all you 'ol timers that have just been setting around waiting patiently for me to get this done....
SYIX...
Pronounce it SIX... Ignore the "y". Really. Just wanted you to know that.
NEWS!!!
Things are going on around here, quickly and furously. So much so that I have found almost no time lately to "play" with the Internet. If you REALLY love the net, and enjoy it all the time, DON'T work at an ISP! Seriously, we have a ball around here, just seems that it gets overwhelming at times...
PHONE CALLS...
On that subject, our phone system here is just not doing the job. Any experts out there with "voice mail" type system experience? Those that are intelligent enough not to offend the caller? I want to FIX the "lack of answer" or worse, busy signals that occur here about once a day.... IF you get a busy, or the dumb answering machines, CALL BACK. The system we have now is not dependable, as many of you have noticed.
NEW SERVER...
Added another new server online, this one replaced our old WWW server... Here are the specs for anyone who is interested...
Intel Pentium Pro II - 266 Mhz Intel Motherboard 128 Meg EDO-ECC RAM Adaptec Ultra SCSI Card 4.2G Seagate "Cheetah" 10,000 RPM Wide SCSI 3 Drive Windows NT Server 4.0
This is an AWESOME machine.
It was fairly transparent when I made the move, only a few people noticed that there was a small change (like I forgot the counter scripts at first) But overall its seems VERY FAST and is running VERY WELL! This all happened on June 20 about 7 pm.....
We are building a SQL Server now, and will have it online in a while, then more and better toys for web hosting coming online!
MORE SUPPORT OPTIONS...
I have been running ICQ on my computer lately, as some of you have found... You can reach me for tech support, or just general questions most any time that way, I seldom chat (usually in the middle of something) but do answer those messages fairly quickly. My ICQ number is 251093, you can page me at http://wwp.mirabilis.com/251093 The latest release of ICQ seems to be fairly stable, not a BIG resource hog like the last one. Only problem I have with it now is their server goes offline about once a day. You can get it from
http://www.mirabilis.com/download.html
They have versions for Win31 and Win95, with Mac and Java to be released (according to one report) within a week or so. If you get it running, give me a shout! I did try the AOL Instant Messaging stuff, not impressed.
PERFORMANCE ISSUES!!!
Lately (the week of June 16) things have been REAL WEIRD online. First on Monday, UU.NET went offline to most of the US, took them until Wednesday to get it fixed, on Wednesday MCI broke, stayed that way until Thursday, then we get reports that Microsoft is hacked on Wed and stays broken until Friday! BAD net week... Just shows that the internet is still VERY NEW and not quite as stable as we would all like to believe. Best news? SYIX.COM has had ZERO downtime in the last 45 days... ZERO. Not one second has our system been offline, our connection to the backbone been offline, nothing has gone wrong at all!!! (The sound you hear is me furiously pounding on wood).
K56 REPORT...
Its coming. Thats the official word from Livingston, and they got their information from Lucent. Its coming. When? NOBODY will make a committment, but they will say its because of an incompatibilty between Lucent and Rockwell chipsets. Livingston is using Lucent, we are using Livingston... You get the picture. All I can say is this, if we get the things, they will work. Unlike the people using x2 from USRobotics who are on the "upgrade a week" plan due to a LOT of problems with the phone system.
USRobotics STINKS...
"SYIX.COM recommends that you do NOT buy, under any circumstances, any product designed or sold by US Robotics or any of its subsidiaries". If you have one now, so be it, but when you are shopping for new products for your computer, and it says USR on it, RUN!
No sportster products, no pen based computers, nothing. I expect that USR will be soon disappearing, based on just this recommendation.
FLOOD...
I have been recieving a number of requests to advise you all about flood related things. One of them wanted a link from our homepage, another wanted me to send a mass mailer out, etc. I wanted to let you know my position on this, so you will all know whats going on. As a company we can't get involved in political actions, either for or against a particular area. Personally I am in support of whatever actions we need to take to get the flood protection increased around here, but as a company, we just can't take a stand. End result of this? I can't allow SYIX to become a "broadcaster" of news either for or against a particular subject. Yeah, I know, the flood protection is important, and yes I know its very important to get the word out, but its still a political issue (at this point anyway) and we can't get involved. When it becomes a "there's water coming in" issue, as last January, we will of course get involved, thats "NEWS" (very important news!) not politics.
200,000+...
The counter on the SYIX.COM homepage just rolled 200,000 hits! COOL!!! I am planning on resetting it on Jul 1, and a small note as to how many we actually had on that day will be added to the page... One small note, this is an actual counter, but it still misses a few, so you can assume that we probably had 10% to 20% more hits than it shows. And yes, we did start it at 0 on July 1 1996.
WEBTALK is a success!....
The WebTalk area of SYIX.COM is BUSY, it has over 150 regular readers, over 200 active messages (the thing doesn't show more than 75 at a time) and it gets LOTS of hits. Check it out, its moderated now, so no garbage messages get through, but you don't get your message immediately either. Just post, say whats on your mind, and enjoy!
http://conference.syix.com:8000
Really, its easy to use, and local in nature. Thats where the flood political stuff goes!!!
ANOTHER ONE???
Last week I ordered another PRI line (T-1 with 23 ISDN ports) to be installed. We are going to be moving our existing lines slowly into the ISDN ports and the new digital modem system we have from Livingston. VERY slowly we are going to weed out ALL the stand alone modems we have now.
FOR SALE...
And on that point, we will be selling off a bunch of "well tested" 28.8 modems in a few weeks. If you are interested in an external modem, complete with cables and all, "well tested" fire me off some mail and I will put you on the waiting list. Prices probably around $100. Even have the boxes for them!
PUBLIC ACCESS WEBSITES....
Or Non-Profit group websites. We have them here! We can do this ONLY with your support! They each cost us a bit of money and time to administer, so your can be proud that your support of SYIX.COM allows us to host these sites for many deserving groups. Without the overwhelming support of the community, SYIX.COM would not be able to afford this service!
If you are part of a non-profit group, please feel free to contact me about hosting your site on SYIX.COM! Remember, our WEB HOSTING service is second to NONE! (45 days straight uptime, remember?) We only ask for your permission to host your site, and stick your name on our "presents" page so people can find it.
PUSH-Technology...
You have heard of it, I am sure. The places are going to just "send" the sites to you instead of you having to find them yourself. Easy enough said huh? Well, I spent some time today playing with the newest "PointCaster" that was supposed to be the latest greatest thing in "push". Its SLICK, it works, and its nice. BUT!!! It requires (and uses) 18 MEGABYTES of RAM on my WinNT Workstation just to run. I don't think I will be using it anymore. Any application, that by itself can use that much RAM is not worth running in my humble opinion. Slows down the entire computer to the point that I couldn't even browse files without noticing the performance hit. My suggestion, wait for the next "this is an even better release" to get released. Besides that, you all have "push", its called EMail! Ziff-Davis and a few others use this very well, and it doesn't require yet another application to learn and install just to use it.
CURRENT RELEASES
We have been distributing software now with our Internet Connections since day one. It occurred to me that you probably need to upgrade your software if you haven't. Since this is a very long and time consuming process, I wandered the internet and found a practically automatic way to do it. Go here...
http://www.manageable.com/home.html
Follow the links to "download" the software, then when its all downloaded an installed, hit the link on the new icon you just installed that says "running catch-up" and follow the screens! This thing is GREAT! Tells you what new versions of what software are out there, and a link to each one. Remember, each version update fixes bugs and adds features! You NEED to stay current, the Internet is a very fast moving target!
Check http://www.microsoft.com/ie for Internet Explorer updates, and if you still use Netscape, make sure you get the 4.01 release of Communicator, the security bug they recently found is a VERY bad one.
SITES....
Yep, I make you wade through all that before getting to the good stuff!
VIRUS SCANNER
Found another very nice Virus Scanner. This is a slick one, and even scans your files while you download them! Check this out out, not a pretty website, but a nice functional piece of software
http://www.eliashim.com/files/files01.html
NO NAGS
If you like software, this is a GREAT site, all the programs listed here are either free or shareware that contains NO NAG SCREENS or other annoyances to get in the way.
http://nng.simplenet.com/main.html
GAMES???
I know, nobody out there ever plays games. After all, these are EXPENSIVE computers right? Well, if you want to know what is going on in the game world, whats new, whats happening, and what you SHOULD be really doing right now instead of reading EMail (whoops, thats wrong, its the other way around isn't it) Anyway, check this site, you will be impressed.
http://www.gamepower.com
And while you are at it, take a look at the sequel to MYST at
http://www.riven.com
I know you want to see it, after all, I wanted to!
HARDWARE...
Tom's Hardware Guide will fill you in! If you REALLY want to know why your computer is not as fast as mine is, you will read these pages! There IS a difference when you are informed. Every bit of info about all the parts of your computer are here!
http://sysdoc.pair.com/
MORE Technical Stuff...
And if you need MORE information, and are tired of using Altavista to search way too many thing, check out this very targeted search engine!
http://www.pcwebopaedia.com/index.html
Its GREAT for people that need to find answers about anything to do with this technology. Try it, you will be impressed.
Live VIDEO...
There are some interesting things out there in the world, and since most of them are WAY too far away from my computer, I live vicariously through my computer! Travel to places far and wide, and see whats happening NOW
http://www.rainier.net/~larry/web-voyeur/
FREE SOFTWARE...
Yep another software link, this one just too good to pass up on. FREE SOFTWARE, never any charge, no nothing. Just use it!
http://www.tudogs.com/begin.html
SPEED...
And last but not least, Ziff Davis released "SpeedRate" a quick and easy program to test YOUR computer against some known benchmarks. Easy to download and install, runs very quickly, and shows you exactly where you stand next to their benchmarks.
http://www3.zdnet.com/hpc/content/speedrate/index.html
Once again, thank you for reading my little newsletter. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I enjoy creating it. You will notice that there were no banners or other rediculous advertising (except for mine of course) included, and I happen to like it that way!
Enjoy your time on SYIX (remember thats "6") and have a great day!
Dave Overton Partner/Owner SysAdmin Answerer of Questions.
(News@SYIX is published on occasion for the members of SYIX.COM, all rights reserved. If you should decide that you do not wish to recieve any further issues of News@SYIX, tough. Copyright 1997, David E. Overton)
AND A JOKE...
Why my job (SysAdmin) is sometimes frustrating
I work as a systems administrator, and part of my job involves answering questions about computers. I generally like my job, but sometimes it gets on my nerves. When people ask me what I find so irritating, this is what I tell them:
Imagine that you are a salesperson for Ikea (substitute "furniture store" if you don't know what "Ikea" is). You get a phone call that goes like this.
Customer: I'd like to buy a kitchen table.
You: That's fine; we have many styles of kitchen tables, I'm sure you can find one you like.
C: I need one that's 3 feet by 5 feet and has a butcher block top.
Y: Yes, we have a table like that. You can pick it up today.
C: OK, how can I get it back to my house?
Y: Well, it comes disassembled, so you can just put it on a roof rack. We can loan you a roof rack if you don't have one.
C: But how do I get there?
Y: We're just off exit 25 of the Turnpike. Where are you coming from?
C: Wait, wait, you're going way too fast for me. I have a Toyota Celica in my driveway, and the keys are in my hand. What do I do next?
- And, whatever you say at this point, the response is always the same:
C: But all I want is a kitchen table! Why does it have to be so Complicated!
Dave Overton dave@syix.com http://www.syix.com/ Voice 916-751-8873 Fax 916-751-8871 Premier Internet to Yuba/Sutter/Butte/Colusa Counties, California