Database maintenance

Oct. 25th, 2025 08:42 am
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

New Worlds: The Retired Life

Oct. 24th, 2025 05:01 pm
swan_tower: (Default)
[personal profile] swan_tower
How many people have ever been able to afford to retire, and what has "retirement" meant through the ages, anyway? The New Worlds Patreon has some thoughts -- comment over there . . .

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/79omGz)

The phone battery saga - 2025 10 20

Oct. 21st, 2025 09:30 pm
gentlyepigrams: (mac daddy)
[personal profile] gentlyepigrams
I have a iPhone 14 that's about 2 1/2 years old now, maybe a little less, and it's still under AppleCare, so when I got a battery warning, which of course happened when I was traveling, I got it to the Apple Store ASAP, which happened to be on the way home from DFW on Monday. Usually we go to the NorthPark or Knox/Henderson stores but this time the best appointment was available at the Galleria.

I made sure everything was backed up and did all the pre-diagnostics in the car. Then we went to the store and showed them the phone and sure enough, they needed to replace the battery for free. They said they could get it done by the time the stores closed at 8pm so we went off to have dinner in the food court.

We came back at 7:30 and it wasn't ready. We were told to ask again at 8.

When we asked at 8 we were told it had been put in as overnight. The manager was super apologetic and had us stay for an extra 30 minutes so they could put in a new battery on the spot. It was pretty clear one of the two "geniuses" involved in the transaction had made a mistake, which was OK, and we were understanding. I had been traveling for 12 hours so as long as I got my phone back I was set to be "whatever, dude" as long as I had my phone for jury duty in the morning.

The phone is now working though I clearly need to figure out what's eating so much power because it's not lasting as long as I'd like. I have a mag-safe battery and an external that plugs into it, so as long as I'm not away from power for days on end, I should be OK. I'm glad I don't have to replace the phone just yet because that's not in my budget.

Jury duty - 2025 10 21

Oct. 21st, 2025 08:25 pm
gentlyepigrams: (*sigh*)
[personal profile] gentlyepigrams
It sucks to come back from a trip and do jury duty the next morning. This was my second time at Frank Crowley (the first time was right after the building reopened after the COVID shutdown, when the defendant turned out to have COVID in his pod so we were released) and everything went pretty much the same: they got us all in there, swore us in, dealt with all the folks who went to the wrong court building and forgot their paperwork. And then we waited. I was sitting on the left side of the service room reading my book and they picked from the right, so I wasn't grabbed for the first panel.

Apparently they only needed one so I was out of there at 8:30. This time instead of trying to walk to the train station, I took a rideshare home.

We ate at: Kai in Phoenix (backdated)

Oct. 19th, 2025 10:24 pm
gentlyepigrams: (food)
[personal profile] gentlyepigrams
Kai. It's an indigenous-centered tasting menu restaurant at a big Sheraton resort. The service was excellent, almost too much so, and the food was delightful. You get five courses with an amuse-bouche to start and truffles afterwards. They had no trouble accommodating my friend's gluten-free needs. The presentation was as good as the food.

For the two main courses I had bison and venison and both were top-notch.

Definitely want to take Spouse here.
gentlyepigrams: (screened words)
[personal profile] gentlyepigrams
The Musical Instrument Museum. A very large single-subject museum, which it has to be to cover the subject of "musical instruments". The permanent galleries are arranged by country, and I started running out of steam before I finished the American gallery. There was no special exhibit when we visited, alas, but if I lived there I'd be a member and also hit their concert series. They had an excellent shop and book store and I have a ton of photos to sort through.

The Heard Museum. Excellent museum of indigenous art and culture. Kind of what I would expect if the NMAI (pre-TFG) and the McNay in San Antonio had a very lorge baby. The exhibits were fascinating and I learned a lot, though with the time and energy we had I had to pass on the boarding school exhibit. The gift shop had amazing jewelry and rugs that were Out of My Price Range and a cafe with some very nice food. I have some photos but the multimedia work is not amenable to photography.

I want to go back and take Spouse to both of them.
gentlyepigrams: (books - shelves)
[personal profile] gentlyepigrams
Books
Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets, by Dorothy Armstrong. Popular history of the numbered object type centering on the central, southern, and western parts of Asia and their carpetmaking traditions. I expected all the colonialism around Britain and the US, but was surprised by some of the other stories.
A Peculiar Combination and The Key to Deceit, by Ashley Weaver. First two in a WWII mystery series featuring a young female safecracker gone straight and the officer and gentleman who put her on that path as they deal with Nazi spies and the Battle of Britain. Engaging so far, with two interesting mysteries, and the romantic triangle the author is setting up is sufficiently subtle that it's not ruining the rest of the story.
A Case of Mice and Murder, by Sally Smith. First in a mystery series set in the Inner Temple of London at the turn of the last century featuring a clearly autistic-coded attorney. This one involves the dual mystery of the murder of the Lord Chief Justice and a case centering on who wrote a popular children's book. I'm in for the next one.
Breakout Year, by KD Casey. Queer baseball romance featuring fake dating and two Jewish characters with a complicated history. Light and fluffy when it's not dealing with heavy issues.
Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City, by Bench Ansfield. Now I know why the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. Centering on the historic burning of the Bronx in the 1970s and extending out from there, this is economic history about the insurance industry and the financialization of, well, everything. Definitely worth your time if current events and economic history are your thing.

Movies & TV
The Hobby: Tales from the Tabletop. Watched this short documentary about boardgames on a plane flight. It's all about the subculture around them, which I'm personally not involved in but a lot of my friends are, so I was prepared to like the character types involved. I'm not sure how it would hold up in terms of background material if you didn't already know a little bit about board games.

AWS outage

Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 am
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

New Worlds: Are You Insured?

Oct. 17th, 2025 05:02 pm
swan_tower: (Default)
[personal profile] swan_tower
Insurance is rather a hot-button topic these days, especially (but not only) in the field of healthcare. How did it even get started? That's the topic this week at the New Worlds Patreon -- hint, it involved ships sinking at sea. Comment over there!

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/N18vHc)

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