- December 24, 1998 - We reconfigured the dance portion of our site
and recovered all the files we had in August and added the related ones
from 12 collections. We gave up on our attempt to use Java to provide
full text site indexing for our readers and may pull the Java buttons
off next.
- November 27, 1998 - Most of our 60+ software programs now work and
most data recovered. We noticed that in our efforts to not lose data,
we made a couple of duplicate files - about 20,000. They are being erased
as fast as we can identify them. Our hard drive better keep working.
In this day of high tech and with all this equipment, we must admit
that we finally copied about 100 E-mails from one computer to diskette
in text files and then walked them over to the other machine and reloaded
them. Hopefully we can catch up by using the holidays and weekends.
- November 26, 1998 - Finally get the Seagate tape drive to work on
the secondary IDE cable with the CD-DVD ROM drive. The directions refused
to work for the past four days. I finally reversed the master (tape)
slave (ROM) role and they worked. Seagate service personnel kept telling
me that the tests showed the I/O failed and the drive needed to be returned
to the factory for repair. I don't think I believe them.
- November 17, 1998 - The Gateway cow boxes arrive. We erase the hard
drive and start trying to load about 60 software packages with various
patches, hopefully in the correct sequence. Luckily we can move about
7 GB of data, by just switching a hard drive over to the primary IDE
slave position. We now must reinstall the Colorado tape drive in the
computer with the brain dead mother board. It's easy and it works!
- November 1-11, 1998 - We determine that part of our problem is that
the motherboard is only recognizing memory in banks three and four,
but requires some chips in banks one and two to run. Of course Interex
tech folks do not agree, forcing us to make a decision. We are going
two directions to cover this mess. One: replace the SIMMs in banks one
and two with 4 MB EDO memory chips. These are throw aways with no value
so they can hold the place, which the board does not recognize. Two:
replace the 16 MB chips in banks three and four with 32 MB chips, bringing
the usable total to 64 MB. Three: Buy a new Gateway 450 with a single
128 MB DIMM chip and room for two more.
- October 25, 1998 - Still recovering our software collection and e-mail
after wiping both hard drives out about three weeks ago. Outlook is
not recognizing the former Outlook files, so we finally give up and
realize we lost about 200 E-mails and a couple of thousand address files.
We also just received about 30 E-mails sent in 1997. The software with
passwords is the hardest to recover, especially since we can't locate
some of the passwords. We use AltaVista to search our personal computer
as well as the Internet. The latest version of AltaVista Discovery still
happily locks up in the middle of our index runs and at its fastest
takes four hours to build the index of only a portion of our files.
- September 10, 1998 - Got two search engines running on site and search
engine query block. We are getting more comfortable with Java. Have
reworked the site and mirror section to get first block of 5,000 dance
steps on site and reindexed for search engines.
- August 28, 1998 - Tried second Java search engine on our site. It
works, except it does not appear to search anything but the txt, htm,
and html files. It also likes one word instead of text phrases or Boolean
combinations. All right, it choked on the size of our site and the only
way we can get it to work is to eliminate more than half our content
from its database. Only dances and the primary index will be indexed.
- August 24, 1998 - Tried first Java search engine on site. Pulled it
off as unstable on August 28.
- August 12, 1998 - Switch to 56K Flex modem and stay with BellSouth
service, which is fairly reliable. Make the decision to go to ADSL,
when it becomes available this year. It should increase our monthly
Internet access costs from $20 to $60 or more.
- July 3, 1998 - In preparation for a new site mirror section, we noticed
a large number of porn links from our normally conservative and child
friendly sites. We are clipping part of the URLs out and completely
deleting sites to block the porn. We are not permitted to link to any
site which provides porn or directly links to a porn supplier. We anticipate
this will be our last complete mirror of site sections due to porn and
our inability to handle commercialization.
- June 21, 1998 - We will begin using Adobe Acrobat portable document
format instead of HTML for some of our work. It has been accepted by
the both the State of North Carolina and federal government as a preferred
method of sharing documents across platforms. It is also practical since
most ISPs are offering flat rate 56K service for $20 monthly and modems
have dropped to the $100 price range.
- June 14, 1998 - Ready to announce Prio glasses are a good idea, when
working on a computer. I've again tried my regular glasses and realized
how hard I was trying to manipulate my monitor and focal distances to
see the screen. It is so much easier to see the screen with my new computer
glasses on.
- June 13, 1998 - Now running almost 300 E-mail requests behind.
- June 6, 1998 - Discover a fairly new listing service for the Internet
is fronting a major porn site. Tighten policies on links and notify
other site owners. Discontinue site links to folks continuing to use
the listing service. Redesign mirror site approach.
- May 11, 1998 - After three years of fighting eyestrain from computer
usage, finally take Prio test and commit to Prio glasses.
- May 10, 1998 - PC Magazine Survey reports Netscape is still at 59%
of the browsers being used. We will continue to design for Netscape.
- May 3, 1998 - Finished the redesign of Tony Wanko's second database.
Consolidated over 210,000 data cells and began proofing over 21,000
lines of code.
- April 30, 1998 - Finish several weeks of work on Tony Wanko's database.
He sent us several DOS dBase diskettes of information. We started out
by choosing which of his data sets to work with. We used one which started
with the dance name. We discovered all text was in CAPS and key fields
were cut off at 20 characters wide. We changed the field names, columns
in the table, width of columns, moved data, standardized entry and spelling,
designed a report, converted the report from Access to HTML, reedited
all 2400+ files, and packaged it for presentation in three methods.
One of the tricky parts was finding that Access stuck all 2400+ files
in one directory with file names that ran about 60 characters long.
We did a little more manual labor to split them into three directories
and cut the file names down to DOS level. We hope you aren't upset with
tildes in our file names. Good night.
- April 26, 1998 - Flatten the site again trying to work with search
engine challenges. Drop the new dances added listing. Drop the choreographers
requests for review of the dances. Both due to lack of interest.
- April 12, 1998 - North Carolina splits area codes. Correct phone
numbers on the site for any of the 450 or so exchanges being changed.
- April 10-12, 1998 - Bell South's RDU connections returning "All
circuits busy" signal and if you do connect, there is an extremely
reduced speed.
- January 23, 1998 - Found that BellSouth's new modems for 56 Flex have
brought us back up to 28,800 for downloads.
- January 16-21, 1998 - Unify color and link patterns of core site,
making over 22,000 link and line changes.
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