The server that hosts raincitystory.com is under a DDoS (Distrubted Denial of Service) attack and it’s taking alot to defend against it. This site may be very slow and/or unreachable it may be a few days before I post more. I appreciate the patience of those paying me to host your sites.
Thanks,
Michael
[EDIT 9/14/05: I recorded the show and you can now download it from me HERE.]
If you have trouble playing the file in Windows Media Player 10, download this small video player that comes bundled with the .avi codec.
Set your Tivos for the Almost Live! 15th anniversary reunion special on Monday September 15th at 8pm on King5!
From King5.com (which I’m reproducing here because TV news stations are notorious for link breakage):
Almost Live!, the award winning, locally produced sketch comedy show is returning for one night to pay tribute to its 15-year history.
The Almost Live! Reunion Special will include classic characters from the past, as well as new sketches focusing on events that have affected Seattle since the show went off the air in 1999, including WTO and this year’s controversial gubernatorial race.
On hand for the special will be the core cast from the final 10 years, including John Keister, Pat Cashman, Tracey Conway, Nancy Guppy, Bob Nelson, Bill Stainton, Steve Wilson, Joel McHale and Ed Wyatt.
It’s the first time the cast has been together in more than six years. The show will also feature a special guest appearance from Bill Nye the Science Guy. Bill will be revisiting the liquid nitrogen experiment that launched his career on Almost Live! as the Science Guy. Expect the experiment to be bigger, wetter and potentially more hazardous.
During its 15 years of production, Almost Live! won well over 100 Emmy awards for writing, producing, acting and directing. Its unique blend of taped segments and live sketches earned the program the prestigious International Iris Award for Best Local Entertainment Program 11 times.
KING
The cast, clockwise from left: Bill Stainton, Tracey Conway, Joel McCale, Nancy Guppy, Ed Wyatt, Pat Cashman, Steve Wilson and John Keister.
Almost Live! was No. 1 in its time slot for 10 straight years. It now continues to be No. 1 in its time slot in repeats, Saturdays at 1 a.m. following Saturday Night Live.
The cast of Almost Live! has been very busy since the show went off the air in 1999.
- John Keister is currently a motivational and keynote speaker, as well as a popular emcee.
- Pat Cashman is a keynote speaker, a popular emcee and auctioneer, an advertising writer for TV and radio, and a regular guest host on KING 5’s Evening Magazine. In addition, Cashman is about to publish his first book of humorous essays.
- Tracey Conway and Bill Stainton are both popular keynote speakers, both nationally and internationally. Tracey has also been published in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, while Bill has written a business/leadership book on the success secrets of the Beatles.
- Nancy Guppy is the creator/host/producer of City a Go Go, a television show on The Seattle Channel and KCTS, promoting the Seattle arts scene.
- Bob Nelson has become a successful Hollywood scriptwriter.
- Steve Wilson continues to direct, write and produce in the Seattle market while also an emcee and public speaker.
- Joel McHale is now the host of E! Network’s The Soup and he also had a featured role in Spiderman 2.
The one-hour The Almost Live! Reunion Special airs Monday, Sept. 12 at 8 p.m. on KING 5.
It’s the big-ass, rack mountable machine on the right
One of the benefits for working for an internet service provider is getting access to cool hardware. We’re moving into a new building in a few weeks and one of the projects I manage is to get rid of the lab equipment we do not want to move. Instead of junking it or selling it on E-Bay which would have taken more time that it was worth, we decided to give the machines to the engineering staff. I didn’t get first pick but I didn’t get a lemon either
I took home a 4u, dual Pentium III (1.2 Ghz) with a gig of RAM and 2 18 GB SCSI drives. Even though they are Pentium III’s, this machine still has some serious horsepower and I had decided on using it for a Smoothwall Firewall appliance to put in between my Comcast cable modem and my 802.11g wireless access point. On bad thing about my house is that it only has one coax outlet for the entire house- in the living room. That means all my networking gear must reside behind the TV and in order to have computers elsewhere in the house, I have to send the signal wirelessly. So this new machine would have to go behind the TV. Or at least I thought.
When I turned it on, Bentley, who was very curious as to what I was doing on the floor with the fun play things (electrical cords), nearly jumped a foot in the air and his tail was puffed to the size of a body pillow. The machine was as loud as an old vacuum cleaner. Seriously. Not only that but it sucked enough electrical juice to dim the lights for a brief moment. Even though I new this was a box that was supposed to live in a datacenter, I had no idea it would have been this damn loud. Placement anywhere in side the house is not an option, even if I didn’t live with someone else. I’m thinking about putting it out in the garage but that would require me to provide an Ethernet drop out there and force me to make some wall penetrations which I’m reluctant to do just for a firewall. It’s a damn shame too ’cause this is a great box.
My quick attempt to add a SNMP (Simple Network Monitoring Protocol) module (php-snmp)to this server nuked my PHP and Apache webserver configs taking all sites that run PHP on this server offline. I had to re-compile both Apache and PHP to fix the error which took me awhile. Sorry folks!
I subscribe to quite a few systems engineering and information management professional journals which are usually pretty informative and generally fun to read. I may be canceling my free subscriptions though. About two weeks ago, I received a call from a lady at the publishing firm who produces these trade journals asking me a few (but not personal or confidential) questions about how I use the magazines. It only took a few minutes and since I believe in the trade journal model, I agreed to give her three minutes of my time.
The tone of her voice was disconcerting though. It was more flirty than professional and in just after 60 seconds, she seemed WAY too friendly for me. For a second, I almost suspected a social engineering hack was about to commence. At the beginning of the conversation, she sent me a generic e-mail that included a picture of her in her signature. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I answered the very basic questions and hung up.
Two days later, I started receiving voice mails from her that sounded like someone who worked at a phone sex operation was desperately trying to reach me. I should have recorded them in a .wav file to post here but I forgot. The messages were always like “hey, you! this is Tracey from CMP and I just wanted to see how things were going in your life. Gimme a call when you get a sec and make sure you check your snail mail, I sent you something that I’m sure you’ll like. giggle, giggle, giggle. Bye!” *D (delete message an Avaya voice mail). Whatever. She left me 4-5 of those voice mails which I just ignored and I had no idea what they were about.
Until I received this:
Click on picture to see a full size image
WTF? CMP has totally resigned to use sex to increase attendance at stupid IT conferences! I wonder how many people thought this woman was actually coming on to them, thinking that if they attend this conference they’ll have a chance with her. I bet the “real” Tracey looks nothing like that. I’m sure it’s a calculated effort since it’s no secret that us computer geeks have a hard time a female to talk to us socially let alone getting laid. How pathetic (CMP, not the computer geeks). I don’t even like blondes anyway.
I bought 23 tickets to the conference.
