Search maintenance

Apr. 22nd, 2026 09:19 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

Happy Wednesday!

I'm taking search offline sometime today to upgrade the server to a new instance type. It should be down for a day or so -- sorry for the inconvenience. If you're curious, the existing search machine is over 10 years old and was starting to accumulate a decade of cruft...!

Also, apparently these older machines cost more than twice what the newer ones cost, on top of being slower. Trying to save a bit of maintenance and cost, and hopefully a Wednesday is okay!

Edited: The other cool thing is that this also means that the search index will be effectively realtime afterwards... no more waiting a few minutes for the indexer to catch new content.

The Firm Hide of Bovidae

Apr. 19th, 2026 08:42 pm
michaelboy: (Default)
[personal profile] michaelboy
I was tempted to write: I had hamburger for lunch, but since I never eat hamburger, that simply won’t do.

Ever notice how the deepest forms of beauty and attraction have little to do with a look of perfection?



Revlon Age Defying Makeup with Botafirm* certainly may beautify and accentuate, but the essence of beauty and sensuality may be as simple as the bare nape of the neck, a choice of words, the unique shape of a nose, an attitude, or even the crack in a voice. While a particular commercial perfume may indeed send a person to the clouds, it seems it is both the physical and emotional personality that keeps us there.

* I imagine the term Botafirm was created as an allusion to the nerve-deadening product Botox. I think it sounds much closer to ”Bota” - a winesack made from the skin of a goat.

* * *

The Redbud is fading now as the Dogwood has its turn, just outside my window.




Alas, "Is there in Truth, No Beauty?" (with apologies and recognition to 15th century poet George Herbert and very much later Star Trek TOS.

Where I was

Apr. 18th, 2026 06:57 pm
michaelboy: (Default)
[personal profile] michaelboy
It is closer inside
than heartbeats
where you grow




* * *

--

Apr. 15th, 2026 07:03 pm
michaelboy: (Default)
[personal profile] michaelboy
The ants crawling over the Peony buds bring a certain pang of missing -- innocence, dusty knees, and the anticipation of life ahead.

Some day, I will not be here but the hope of finding you -- loving and wanting me, will always.

How Dare he...

Apr. 12th, 2026 08:23 pm
michaelboy: (Default)
[personal profile] michaelboy
The will-o’-the-wisp
(willfully missed)
is wistfully wishing
on bits of your bliss



Source: Flammarion, L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire (1888, p.749)





I enjoy poetry because it often uses the fewest number of words in rendering an expression. I'm not at all certain how others approach writing, but for me, I prefer to initially write way more words than I ultimately use. It is usually over half of what I've written that ends up being taken away in the process -- tossing many of words/parts.

* * *

"Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher. "
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des Hommes, 1939

The case of the missing notifications

Apr. 11th, 2026 11:58 pm
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

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itsphoebemarie

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