Paksworld

Since my longtime website host, SFF.net, is closing down its hosting service on March 31,  all its denizens have to vacate, taking along all their goods and chattels, before then.  As with my physical house, my web house has a lot of stray goods and chattels (four websites, embedded blogs, and one subsite), but I’m now in the process of moving them to a New Home.   Or, to be honest, my new website maintenance person, Karen Shull, is doing the heavy lifting while I try to ignore this set of chores, and the political train-wreck now occurring (good luck with that, says the Citizen part of my head: you should be harassing your so-called representatives), and finish Into the Fire, whose title now seems unfortunate and prophetic both.

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OK…time to check out Universes, the new website section and blog dedicated to my science fiction writing.  They’re subsidiaries off my main blog (for several reasons):

http://www.elizabethmoon.com/universes/

http://elizabethmoon.com/blog/

The blog design, presently based on the same (older)  WordPress theme as this and the other blogs, is giving us some difficulty, and we may switch to a newer theme.   I like the simplicity of the older one, but sometimes needs must.  Though that suggests that maybe the other three will have to switch soon, too.

Website host has informed customers that the AC in the server space died, and the backup unit is running, but not a permanent solution.   Also, the HVAC people will need to get into the server space to complete installation of any replacement, which will require turning machines off so they don’t vacuum up the inevitable dust.    When this will happen, we don’t know yet.  (It’s Friday the 13th.   Let’s all perform whatever rituals it takes to make this go smoothly and the HVAC equipment & teams be available, OK?)   I follow the website host on Twitter, where announcements of progress will appear.

But should this and the other sites disappear suddenly, that’s why.  Panic not–We Shall Return.

As many of you undoubtedly found out over the past near-week,  Verizon screwed up royally last Wednesday and SFF.net, my website host, could not keep everything up and running.   Verizon’s inept an incomplete attempts made things steadily worse.   Websites (with any embedded blogs) went down.   The SFFnet newsgroup tree functioned intermittently.   Today, Verizon finally did enough analysis at their end to a) assign a person who had the authority to actually investigate what was really wrong and make changes to their stuff and b) then discover that the firmware they’d installed as an upgrade days before was in fact faulty (which brought  a router manufacturer in on the problem-solving circuit.)

I don’t know, as of now, if the current “it’s working” will be stable, since Verizon had told SFFnet before that they couldn’t do the real fix until tomorrow maybe (!) but  since it is working now, I’m posting this to explain the blank spot since last week and warn of a possible additional interruption.

The heroes here are the intrepid SFFnet crew, Steve and Jeffrey, who patiently worked their way up the corporate ladder of Verizon  (OK, maybe not *patiently*) until they got to a level where someone could make decisions, not just excuses.

Some of you may have noticed the site was offline for awhile last night.   It may be off for a bit today, too, because of some problems with a plug-in and the need to update the basic software and the plug-in.   Also, my comment database is getting large enough to be almost-a-problem at the host site, so I’m going to start pruning it (on my other sites as well.)   So some stuff will disappear, and the site itself may be unavailable for brief periods as Things Change.  It will be back, functioning better and with a smaller “waistline,” when I’m done tinkering with it, which I hope will be finished today.   (The host end help I’ll need for some of this will happen at their convenience, so depending on their other workload it could be any time.)

Please be patient, and I’ll let you know when all the tinkering’s over with.

Just a heads-up to everyone, that Elizabeth lost Internet access over 24 hours ago. The techs at her ISP are working on restoring service, but have not  yet succeeded.

Ruta, Webmistress

Editor has approved the title for Book V:  Crown of Renewal.    Scheduled to release late May 2014, though that’s always subject to change .   You will soon notice that title as a category (like, um, for this post.)

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The lights go out here and on the main site at 10 pm, Central Time in the US  (10 minutes)  but should be back on tomorrow.    Have fun.   See you then.

Webhost has warned us that things will be nonfunctional on this Friday,  March 22, starting at 10 pm Central Time in the US, and should be back to normal by 6 am Saturday.   No specifics yet on what will be down, which may mean short rolling outages, or everything.     Safer to bet on “everything” and prepare for it.

I suggest games in the extras’ break room (want to make up some interesting and appropriate games this week?)  and serious philosophical and theological and economic discussions in the stars’ private lounge, topics such as “If blue is Gird’s color, and red is Falk’s color, are Girdish more devout because more of them wear blue than Falkians wear red?” or “If making pickles represents an opportunity cost related to the shortage of cucumbers for cucumber sandwiches,  should pickles or cucumbers cost more?” or “If Writer decides to off me in the final volume, do I still get paid through the end of the month?”   Or anything else you can come up with.

Farrier’s coming at 8 am and he’s never late; must go feed horses now.

“Those Who Walk in Darkness,” written at the same time as Oath of Gold, and published in the now out-of-print Baen collections Lunar Activity (1990)and Phases, is now posted on the Paksworld website.

It did not fit in Oath of Gold, but it was a story I had to write, and it is, in a way, a connection to the new books…a sure sign that I was destined to write “paladin fallout” stories later on.

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