Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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yogi
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Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

Post by yogi »

The help desk servicing our website has been notified of the problems we have been experiencing regarding lag time and access to this website. Their reply is as follows:
There has been a performance issue with the server web21. Our senior engineers are working on it now. The speed issue of the website will be resolved once the issue is resolved.
They promised to keep me updated
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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Hi Yogi - Made it back from vacation safe and sound. - Looks like they may have fixed the problem while I was away, the site loaded fast. So far that is, hi hi.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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It took them a couple days, but they finally improved things. There are times when it still loads slow, but nothing like the past problem. I don't know what they did to fine tune the server loading, but I was told they got some engineers involved. I'm REALLY glad they fixed it because I don't feel like moving to another server yet again.

I'm glad your road trip allowed you to return safe and sound. The weather could not have been more cooperative and I hope y'all had a great visit with your relatives. :smile:
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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I may not know much about servers and how they work, but I do know the host I'm using has a program that monitors the loads, and will switch to another computer if the demand is too high. They are accessing the same servers, but apparently only so many server calls can be made from a single computer. So they have several computers accessing the data servers.

We had a wonderful time, got to see my son, his wife, and my grandkids. My sister came in from the other end of the state to visit us. We went out on my brothers boat for a BBQ and ride up and down the Miss-is-sloppy river. Had fireworks on a sand bar. Then on the way home we stopped to visit my wife's son.
The highlight of my trip is I stopped at Lion's Choice on the way in, and went back at least once a day while I was there.
Went swimming one day, went to the Science Center another, after all of that walking I was too tired to go with them to some big store somewhere, so only the gals went and me and my son went around to some of his clients so he could get a couple of hours of work in for the week. He went out of his normal route to take me past some of the old places that are still there. Almost everything else has been torn down or renovated so new larger building could be built in their place.
We kept busy doing something the whole time I was there, so it was good to get back home to my own bed, hi hi.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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I guess that's the point of visiting relatives; to do things together. When the kids come in, or we go up there, an agenda that was planned weeks in advance has to be executed. There is no such thing as just sitting around and enjoying each others' company. But then, I think what you did at the BBQ was exactly that. To me the most difficult part of any road trip is being on the road. While I do indeed enjoy sitting on the patio watching the grass grow, it's not the same as the intense concentration required to stay on the road and avoid hazards. Glad to read that you had a well deserved break from your home office. As I type this to you it is raining a tad; left overs from the hurricane that hit New Orleans.

No doubt all web hosting services have load monitors running 24/7. Redundancy would seem to be an absolute necessity as well. If history is any indicator my guess would be that one or more of the sites we share a server with went bonkers. Or, more likely, some cron our host runs for maintenance or security purposes was loading down the system. It's like when you run antivirus software. Nothing is up to speed when it runs. So, the engineers probably just rescheduled the cron for some other off peak time. Things do change over time so I can see why they might have to manually adjust loading from time to time.. In any case, we are looking good at the moment.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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My brothers boat is powered by TWO 540 MAG Bravo 4V 8.9L 440HP V-8 engines with 560 foot-pounds of torque each.
But the boat is so big is moves a little slow at the junction. He sold his house and lives on the boat.
It has two big bedrooms, and one small bunk style bedroom, plus a kitchen, dining room and living room on the main level.
Upstairs is a deck on the rear of the boat, and you can climb down the back to a small lower deck. The pilot house is up another few steps, and in front of the pilot house is another area where you can sit in chairs on the bow.

A couple of years ago, a short in the refrigerator set the kitchen on fire, which spread through the living room, and burned a hole in the side of the boat. Sadly, his insurance lapsed because he is a major procrastinator at getting around to keeping things like that up. So he had to foot the bill for the repairs. Even so, other than the hull and window work, he did most of the rest of the interior tear out and repairs himself.

I had asked one of the larger busy server farms about load, and they just said when it gets busy, they just bring another server online. This is confusing to me because all the data is on the same bank of servers. So I have to assume they mean they bring another computer online to access the server array.

The only thing I really have to go on is from back in the 56k dial-up days and prior.
My ISP had a wall filled with 56k modems for us to dial into. But since we all called in on the same phone number, I assume the phone company used a roll over to select another number that was not busy. I don't think their modems could handle more than one inbound phone call, which is why they had so many. But they all accessed the same server array, through a bank of four different computers. I don't remember how many modems each computer controlled, or how it was done. I do remember them talking about a modem pool and 4 cards with several channels on each card, so they could handle like 32 modems per computer, something like that.

If I had the time, I would study up on it, just for my own satisfaction of knowing.
Can you imagine 6 million users online at the same time. Ouch.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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6 million users all at one time is a cake walk for places like Amazon and Google. You never hear of Amazon, for example, going down due to a DDoS attack. There aren't enough computers in the world to overload their servers. The reason they can and have survived vicious attacks is because they have A LOT of computers/servers. Their database is redundant and probably residing on something better than RAID. I'm guessing you can take out a whole server farm at Amazon and it would never be noticed by its users. The secret to success is in scalability. One server can be used for whatever is needed at the moment. Multiply that by a few thousand and you got a huge 100% uptime network.

You know what's bigger than Amazon? Think of how the Internet works. Those switches, routers, and DNS servers are all computers/servers of one type or another. We are talking BILLIONS of access points when we get to that scale. The scary part about the Internet is that some bad actors have already taken down parts of ours just to see if they can do it. Makes you wonder why they want to do it, eh?


Wife and I gave some thought (about 5 minutes) to selling the house and living on a boat, or possibly an RV. It sure seemed cheaper than owning land, but ultimately we decided we need a place to plant our roots. So here we are in the Show Me state. Just got word off the television this morning that Missouri was the #1 cheapest place in the USA to live if you are retired. I have to think about that for a while.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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Yeppers, it is mind boggling to say the least.

Got a kick out of an ad for the Flat Earth Society. It said they had Chapters all around the globe.

It costs more to dock a boat in a marina than maintain a yard, and the taxes are higher, hi hi.
Look at the fees for parking an RV, and you'll be glad you have a house to retreat to.
And then there is the maintenance on the boat or RV.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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Living in a house only makes sense now that we don't have a mortgage to pay off. But, as I said, we only gave the idea about 5 minutes of thought; probably 4 minutes more than it deserved. LOL

I know for a fact that the cost of living in O'Fallon is about 20% less than up near Chicago. While that sounds good on the surface, and it satisfied one of our major objectives, there is a price to pay for that lower cost of living. Quite a few things available up in Chicago are not even known to exist down here. The quality of medical service is suitable for this area, but some of the best doctors in the country work out of Chicago. Have I ever mentioned that I firmly believe you get what you pay for?
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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When I first moved down here to Knoxville I felt that nothing I needed or used was available here.
It took me about five years to find and connect with those companies I needed, and they were not easy to find either.
However, that being said, I still buy my bottles and caps from my original St. Louis manufacturer and vendor that I have been buying from since they first opened in 1972.
WHY? When they have a plant right here in TN, but at the other end of the state. Because of shipping costs. It is cheaper to ship 600 miles from their plant in St. Louis, than it is to ship 300 miles from Memphis, and I get the delivery by lift gate truck with a pallet jack on wheels to move the stuff up my driveway to my storage sheds. The company Memphis uses requires trailer high docks and my own forklift. The best delivery company is also cheaper and provides all the things I need for them to provide at no extra cost.

I found a better deal down here on the cartons and cases I use. Trouble is, they almost closed down a couple of years ago, and I had to beg with them to get my last order out. Now it has been taken over by another company and they've upped their minimum order, but still less than half as high as all the places in St. Louis.

When you consider I lived over 50 years of my life in St. Louis, and also knew of places my parents and grandparents sought out for the best deals. In many cases they did the legwork and established contact with the companies. Things I needed not part of their contacts took years to find the best deals, and also get certain lifelong deals I hated to give up.
Had I not sold off my hot foil stamping equipment, I would have had tons of outlets down here for my work.

I've now been living here for over 15 years, and my first 5 years I rarely left the house due to caring for an invalid. But since that time, I've been out and about to find who can get me the best deals on the things I use mainly in business.
Some of those sources dried up and I found others that turned out even better.

Albeit, I no longer do as much as I used to, next to nothing in comparison now that I'm ill and running in Granny Low Gear, hi hi.

While back home in St. Loo, almost all the mom n pop shops were gone as the large chain stores took over. Down here we still have tons of mom and pops and they bend over backwards to keep your business. And 90% of them are normally cheaper than WalMart with their regular prices. They can't compete with some of WalMart's sales of course, because WalMart buys some things in such large quantities they pay next to nothing for them to start with.
But for the general line of merchandise, most of the small shops are buying from a few major distributors who do buy in large quantities since they service numerous small stores.

Although I remember when Pringles was a 6 oz can for 99 cents. WalMart's sale price on 5.2 oz cans of Pringles is $1.44, regular price is like $1.88 - Kroger is $1.39 and the UGO where we shop is $1.19. If I buy a whole case of 19 cans like I usually do, they only charge me $1.06 per can.
They never intended to sell in bulk until I came along, hi hi. UGO is place that orders my soda for me 15 cartons per month and has it in the back room for me to pick up on the 1st of every month. Other things I may ask them to get me whole cases of are also piled on top of the stack of soda, hi hi.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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For all the complaining I do about what is and is not available in O'Fallon, I think a lot of it can be found in St Louis proper. But that's 25 miles from here. Living in the big city spoiled me in some ways. Everything, and then some, was available in ten different varieties. And I didn't have to drive country roads to get there. I've also become less willing to go on treasure hunts, not that I enjoyed them at any time in my life. Most of my deal making and exploring of new market places is in the virtual world. I can't say price is not a factor, but it's not usually the first thing I look at. I dream of winning that lottery some day, but I wonder what I'd decide to do if I actually did suddenly become a multi-millionaire. While not everything I want at my fingertips is available here, would I ever find a place where it is? I doubt that I'd move back up north again, but I must say that Chicago is the land of plenty.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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Where I lived in Creve Coeur, right off I-244/270 nearly everything I bought for both personal and business was within a 5 to 7 mile radius. There were only a couple of exceptions, but those companies delivered, so all was good.

I lived for a few months in Oak Brook, which is just outside of Hinsdale, very near Chicago. And rarely did we have to go downtown for anything. I forget the directions now, but the retail shopping malls were in one direction, and the industrial and warehouse centers in the opposite direction. Did go through the Old Grau Mill a couple of times while there, the second time was the best because they showed us all the workings, not just the spectator areas.

It was nice, but no offense, I wouldn't want to live in Illinois. Besides everything being higher priced, it it wasn't nailed down it was taxed heavily, and if it was nailed down it was taxed twice as much and severely regulated.
But then too, I guess you get used to the idiosyncrasies of where you lived most of your life, and learned your ways around many of the regulations.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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Been to Oak Brook a few times in my former life. Wife liked shopping at the mall and there were some pretty good restaurants in the area. We lived up the road, maybe 20 miles or so, and all those things were around home too. And that's my point. When I speak of Chicago in my mind I'm thinking of six counties. Chicago occupied most of Cook County but there were five highly populated counties adjacent to it.. The entire metro area, all six counties, had something like 13 million people in residence. Servicing the needs of all those people required an abundance of resources.

I was not a registered voter in Illinois. I knew the system too well to have delusions about it. When the machine politics of Chicago was in power it literally paid to vote. Thus I was registered when I lived in the city itself. My wife retained her voting registration and for that reason our state representative, Michele Mussman, would come to the house periodically to take the pulse of her constituents. Wife would not talk to her, but I did. My biggest complaint was the high real estate taxes and how I could not qualify for any exceptions. Then they literally doubled the tax one year and poor ol' Michelle got an earful from me. LOL I looked up her record and she did in fact sponsor a few bills aimed at easing the tax burden for us old guys, but those bills never got to the governor's desk. So she tried. The last time we met and I kept up my complaints, she obviously was exasperated and told me that if I can't afford Cook County I should move. (been hearing a lot of that sentiment lately, hmm) I didn't reply to that, but I did take her advice. So yeah. You are right. It's expensive to live in Illinois and it's crooked as all Hell. But I could buy spätzle at a couple of the local stores. Around here they look at me funny when I ask for it.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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I'll try to keep this essay long story as short as possible and just hit the bare facts about St. Louis County.
Before zoning, you could build any size house you wanted to.
Municipalities joined in on the phun and came up with their own zoning regulations.
The county came up with a minimum home size of 600 sq. ft.
A few municipalities topped that and required 800 sq. ft. in their towns.
Soon the county raised the minimum to 800, then 1000, and finally stopped at 1200.
The municipalities followed in suit almost immediately and increase theirs by similar amount over county minimums.
In Creve Coeur, when my house was built, the minimum was 1200 sq. ft. of roofed area, which allowed for open carports.
Close in the carport and you have 1200 sq. ft. of living space. But then they upped it to 1600 sq. ft.

When I was doing general contracting, I wanted to build a subdivision of smaller starter homes with room for expansion, where the foundation was already in place for them to expand cheaply.
Four of the seven member board loved the layout of the subdivision and how cute the homes were. The other three didn't want any small homes in the county, anywhere.
I should note that the roof area already covered 750 sq. ft., but the actual house was only 600 sq. ft. A 180 sq. ft. foundation was under the back patio so homeowners could add their first addition here.
We had the architect redraw the home plans to bring them up to 800 sq. ft. of roof area. But that week the county upped the minimum to 1000 sq. ft., probably to stop us from getting the permits.
Our architect came up with an idea, since duplex or multi-housing was prohibited in that area.
We placed two homes side by side each with 800 sq. ft. roof areas, but 15 feet apart as was also required, but then we constructed a 20 foot wide roof that covered the area between the two houses. The roof support beams rose up from the corners of the houses which made the roof physically attached to the houses.
Legally, they could not be considered duplexes. And both houses could use the second roof between them for their sq. ft. roof area count. We thought we finally found a way to get the subdivision approved. It looked really nice too!
Then we hit a major snag, not with the city but with home insurance companies. They would not allow a raised roof to physically touch another building. There had to be a minimum of 6 inches clearance between what they called a detached garage, carport, or pavilion, to the house, and if that close, it had to have a 2 hour firewall at each end and as a ceiling.

We spent enough money on architect, lawyers, and city approval forms, so we cut our losses and gave up.
Not less than two years later, the county approved a small cottage subdivision of 500 sq. ft. homes of the ugliest damn houses you ever did see. Looked like something makeshift you would find along railroad tracks.
The whole deal here was the poly-tick-ians had a hand in it with huge state kickbacks to build low income housing.
And sadly, they sold for nearly double of what ours intended to sell for. So higher taxes I'm sure.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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As you were describing the shared roof between houses, the first thought that came to my mind was fire hazard; and that was before I finished reading the whole commentary. Out my back window is part of the subdivision that is made of row houses. That is to say four residences are all attached to one another as one large building. I'm certain there is a firewall between them, just as I'm certain it will do no good when the roofs catch on fire. I don't know about the legalities, but to me those homes do not look safe to live in.

Obviously that project of yours interfered with the plans made by the city. The city hall back in Roselle, IL, had a planning department which published plans such as low income housing well in advance of construction. Thus any contractor with building designs knew in advance that the village had its own plans and it's best not to fight city hall. I think you are probably right about some behind the scenes sweetheart deal that could not be brought to your attention outright. But the other side of the coin is that those low income families need a place to live too.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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Back when I was doing renovations down in the City where there were many tiny row houses the city really wanted torn down. When I would find two side by side on the same grade level, I would buy both and build a house between them connecting them together as one large house.
The city wanted this, so they gave me several breaks and very few picky type inspections.
The post office even let me pick which of two existing addresses I wanted to use, and sometimes let me get a new address for the house in the middle and abandon the two older addresses.
I did have to twin the water supply lines so only one meter served the final house.
Same with the electric, sorta. We could have only one meter basin with a meter in it, so I had to abandon and remove one, but was allowed to add a second weather-head to run the electric over to the other panel box. The electric company actually did the wiring for me, by running two wires from the pole to the house, one was used to return the metered electric out to the pole, and then back again to the other weather-head using the existing wires.

The new house was super simple, it only needed a foundation and slab floor, and I turned the front into the main entrance.
The back exterior wall had a sliding glass door. Only one simple partial partition wall divided the living room from the den, sometimes with a coat closet.
Once the exterior walls were up, we just dropped trusses on them and joined the two roofs together with a new roof. Since these houses were old, we usually installed new shingles across all three roof sections.
The new entryway area was set back three feet from the two existing houses and the roof overhang made a roof over the front porch. Looked almost like a modern house, sorta like my mom and dad's house when finished.
Again, an architect provided designs for us to redo the fronts of the houses so they looked modern, but for low cost.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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When we built our previous house we were the first people on the block. There was a stretch of vacant land about 300 feet wide of which our home would be in the middle occupying 75 feet of frontage. When we went to the post office to inquire about mail delivery, they had no preference about where our box should be. We chose a box by the street as opposed to a mail slot in the door, which ultimately turned out to be that much less walking for the delivery person. When we asked about the address to use, that was our choice too. Any address from 600 to 698 would do as long as it was an even number. Any? Yes, any. The USPD didn't care. That surprised me a bit. Those folks were very flexible.
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Re: Trouble Ticket #WJR-536530

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My dad built the first house in a subdivision which gave him lots of choices later buyers in the subdivision could not get.
However, being first meant TONS OF MUD EVERYWHERE, for over two years, hi hi.
He also built at the bottom of the hill, but fortunately never had any sewer problems, because there was still another subdivision below them, and the mainline was like 30 inches in diameter.
Normally only storm drains get that large, then I found out the storm drain was almost 4 feet in diameter.
Curiosity killed the cat so to speak, and while working for MRTC I managed to get a map from Metropolitan Sewer District for the area my dad lived in.
The 4 foot storm sewer started up along Clayton Road as a 12 inch sewer, changed to 14 inch within a half a block, then clear up to 20 inches as it passed through the upper part of the subdivision. The subdivision itself had lots of curbside drains feeding into it. By the time it reached the top of the cul-de-sac on the street dads house was on it was already 36 inches, and changed to 46 inches where it passed by his house. Once it crossed the street heading downhill into the next subdivision it was a full 4 feet plus and it emptied into a 6 foot diameter sewer that ran perpendicular at the bottom of the next subdivision and on out toward their watershed which was several large sewers off the map I had.
The Sanitary sewer lines also started up at Clayton Road, but did not have any Clayton Road houses connected to it, only houses in dad's subdivision. Every house had 6 inch laterals into 14 inch mainlines. Each north south street had a 14 inch mainline for the top of the subdivision, then it changed to a 30 inch where the west 14 inch line joined with the 14 inch line above dads house. The other 14 inch line to the east ran across the street to his south before tying into the 30 inch.
These pipes were larger than other similar subdivisions I looked at, like Claymont subdivision built by the same builder.
I never did learn why they were so large, or why the builder chose oversized and more expensive pipes when they built the subdivision dad was in. I assume he must have got a deal on that size pipes else he would not have gone to such overkill.

As far as house addresses go, I'm surprised they gave you as much leeway as they did.
When I moved into my grandmothers old house, it was the same address used for the Florist like forever.
Utility Poles all had a street address on them too. We couldn't change the address of the Florist, but I did manage to get a new street number for grandmas house between the number posted on two telephone poles either side of the house. They agreed to that!
When I moved to Creve Coeur, I didn't have to take the address of the former owner of the house either. We were the only house in our block who's drive was on the street, so they let me change my address from 12129 to 12131, which was the same address I had when I lived on Manchester Road in Des Peres.
The house I grew up in on Manchester Road was 12229. And the Florist (grandmas house) was 12123.
Of interest here is our house, grandmas house, and the florist were all east of I-244, and my house in Creve Coeur was west of I-244. However I-244 curved east which is how the numbers on Olive were not in line with the numbers on Manchester Road. But they were in perfect alignment with the way the Post Office assigned numbers.
Even numbers are always south and east of a roadway.
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