is happily being the wheel rather than a rusty old spoke
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The contractor is simply a .NET geek creating the framework under our direction. Framework from a programming viewpoint, not framework as in look/feel of the site.
We may yet seek outside expertise in UI design, but simplicity will always be key.
That's extremely surprising about RB, especially considering who runs it now.
Semi on-topic...
I use a particular alias just about everywhere but here.
http://www.iwsti.com/forums/1596462-post41.html for example.
I'm a huge Rush fan, and a bass player. A good friend of mine when I was younger was also a Rush fan and a guitarist. We used to jam together almost daily, along with motorcycling. I called him "SnowDog" and he called me "Bytor".
Rush did a song called "Bytor and the Snow Dog". It was a kind of "Peter and the Wolf" thing with instruments playing the parts of characters in the song. The guitar played the part of Snow Dog, and the bass was Bytor. In that song, Prince Bytor was a bad guy. And was whooped. "Bytor, in defeat, retreats to Hell."
On the next album, Bytor is a good guy, rescuing three wanderers in the song "The Necromancer".
At the ISP that first hosted our servers when I came on board, it turned out the owner of the ISP was snowdog@planetkc.com and he was amazed that coincidence led him to actually meeting bytor@planetkc.com.
I occasionally run across someone where I'm using the name "Bytor" (sometimes they ask for nicknames at the driving schools I do and that's the name I always use, and it's the name on my Mustang Club jacket), who's enough of a Rush fan to get the reference.
Side note: The group was inspired to write the song because a friend of theirs had two dogs, a white one and a black one. The black one bit, so they called it "Biter" and the other "Snowdog", but since they're into more unusual names "Biter" because "Bytor".
We're doing a lot of discussion about the overall interface. No firm decisions have been made, but what's favored right now is to have a handful of preset layouts people can use because the per-user CSS thing has gotten out of hand. It was a good idea and gave unprecedented configurability, but there are just too many users to keep doing it that way.
The contractor made a comment about the interface being "childish" or "immature" or something like that, and we're not sure what they meant. I think they were talking about the default setup and Meatloaf seems to think they were talking about my per-user CSS stuff, but I don't think the contractor knew at the time that users could do their own CSS configs.
Either way, we'll keep something very much like the current default layout available, but it likely won't be the default. This layout is very dated, to say the least.
I am. Actually, I wear a goatee most of the time, and a full beard in the winter. Just trimmed it all short for Vegas then will let it grow out again.
I get a lot of double-takes in London because beards are very unusual there. Especially as full as I let mine get.
We'll be gaining that feature in the rewrite of iHub as a .NET application, which has finally started.
Check out any profile on SI. Dave put together an awesome profile routine there, and we'll be using it here, too.
As for whether to address these kinds of things to me, Dave, or John, actually, either me or Matt, preferably me, but either of us can add things to the project queue.
The lay of the land is basically that Matt and I come up with and manage the ideas, and pay attention to user suggestions and see what gold can be found there (a lot), then most of it goes through me to get put into the project queue, assigned, prioritized, etc.
Then John, Dave, and I do the programming. I wrote SI from scratch with Dave's help, and most of the code used here is stuff I've written, but John's about 3 times better than I am, and I've got too many other things happening to do more than a token amount of programming. Dave does mostly Admin programming, but he also does some site programming. Anymore, most of the site programming is John's responsibility. Most of my involvement is just determining what gets done in what order.
We were already planning to emulate Dave's excellent work on SI profiles here, but I'll make sure it gets put in the project queue for Dave to do here, since he's got a knack for that kind of thing.
It'll be a while. We've got a contractor working on the .NET rewrite, and they just started this past Monday. Once they get the framework written, Dave, John, and I will start redoing existing routines in the new framework and adding new stuff.
If you slow down "Baby Got Back" (a personal fave) just a little bit, it synchs up.
Guess Matt's not around.
Oh! You mean the pages are loading fast! I thought you pinging Ma... nevermind
Could be. I'm using satellite and I think the error message is showing up faster than an HTML page containing that text would load.
Definitely odd. I've gotten it 3 times. I'll wait until I think I've found a useful pattern to report before bringing it back up. Last time, it was go.asp that did it. A previous time it was read_replies. Can't remember what it was the other time.
I just got it again when trying to read your post. It pops up even more quickly than a normal page typically does.
Dunno. He's working on something else entirely unrelated and though I hate to pull him away from it for even a second, wanted to let him know there's a potentially major item that might warrant distraction.
Anyone else getting those errors or is it reserved for me?
Have we tried putting LB's back into the loop today or something?
2 of my last 4 page reads returned nothing but "Bad Request".
Edit: Was meant to be private, but public's okay, I s'pose.
Tweaks are done, so everyone should feel free to start using that account for submitting TOU stuff that you don't think you should use the normal TOU link for.
Thank you, Shelly, for your help in all that extensive testing we just did.
I'm off to get a beard trim and a hair cut. Heck, I might splurge and get two of them cut.
test
test
I just checked and the account is receiving PM's just fine. The problem is in viewing those PM's from the Admin screen. So no re-send necessary as I'll have this sorted out in pretty short order.
So I guess a caveat should be "If you want to flirt with Matt in response to a PM, be REAL sure the "Sent by" field says "IH Admin [Matt]" and not "iHub Admin".
Come to think of it, if I haven't already done so, I need to add something to it that informs the reader very clearly that the reply is coming from the generic Admin account.
Friendly chit-chat with members is just as important to the job as is spanking those in need of spanking, and I want to make sure I don't impede that. These are friendly, accessible cops walking the beat or, in Matt's case, hanging out in the nightclub.
But you were VERY startled for a moment, and that amuses me, which is a good thing. :)
Nicely put and exactly the mindset I think is ideal for a Mod!
I would think only PMs sent to this account would be seen by all admins. A pm sent to Shelly's pm box would hopefully be read only by Shelly
That is exactly correct.
However, I'm encouraging all Admins to start forwarding Admin-related PM's to that account (using their own best judgment -- sometimes one Admin is dealing with a problematic board and needs to be the only one dealing with it for the sake of consistency) and start working them from the queue so people will gradually get into the habit of replying to that account where their needs can be met by whoever happens to be at their computer at the time. Even when you get a reply from that account, you'll know who it was because it automatically inserts something like "Regards, IH Admin [Matt]" into the message.
It should be a solution to the problem of things like sending Matt a PM that needs urgent attention but he's in a Krispy-Kreme induced state of unconciousness for the foreseeable future, and you need isn't getting addressed.
That is the best secret I have seen yet.
I too have been guilty of sending multiple PM's to separate admins trying to guess who is awake at that time.
lol
I didn't realize it all fell into a single cache.
Gracias.
Well, it's not completely done, but the framework is in and quite functional. Only PM's written directly to that account or forwarded (yes, we have forwarding functionality now, but it only works for us "special" folks and only to that account) hit that account, and any Admin can work that queue logged in as themselves.
I forward stuff to it all the time because people often think I'm king of the Admins or something, when in reality they're very autonomous. And it's an important early step in making it easier to add Admins as-needed.
P.S. If I do speak to one privately, does this mean that all admin reads it all? I think that is what you are saying.
Nope. Their PM's aren't automagically forwarded there, so if you want to, for example, flirt with Matt, nobody else will know you're doing so. Unless you do so via the generic iHub Admin account.
Actually, a little-known secret that I suppose we can remove the wraps from anytime is that this profile would be a good one to bookmark: http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/profile.asp?user=111041
If your issue doesn't require a specific Admin, sending a PM to that account (or using the TOU link) would be a better way to increase the chances of being seen by whoever happens to cruise by next.
BTW, Meatloaf and I are not Admins here and won't do deletions, bans, etc. Technically, neither is Dave, but since SI is so well behaved, he pitches in here.
Actually, I don't want to split them. I want to cut them into two-foot lengths and because they're full of rocks ready to destroy chains, was wondering if a conventional splitter might be capable of cutting them rather than cobbling up a sheer for the excavator. The force is could apply to sheering is unimaginable. I'll have to dig out the manual sometime and post the actual number. Somehow, I doubt it's spec'd in the manual as "unimaginable". But I know that the tip of the bucket teeth can pull a 46k-lb dead weight. Likely a bunch more. And I won't be using the outer edge of the bucket, so I'd have about twice as much leverage.
Come to think of it, if I wanted to split them, I probably could just by standing them up and driving the bucket teeth down through them. I used to use the backhoe to split logs, and the railroad ties would split much more easily than oak logs and the excavator can apply a multiple of the force.
But I don't want to split them. Some of them split themselves (fall apart) after being cut, especially where the spikes went through them, the door of the furnace is big enough to take them unsplit, and they burn longer if they're whole.
I almost bought a Husky myself and ended up with a Stihl. One had some advantage over the other and I think it might've been the Husky. It was either a chromed cylinder bore or two piston rings instead of the usual one. I remember that the reason I got the Stihl, though, was that it was capable of using the same chains I had a dozen of from my old Craftsman and could also take a much larger bar (24", I think).
Of course, I also own a Homelite. Its only purpose in life is to free the Stihl when I get it stuck, but that hasn't been a problem in a long time. I don't cut down trees anymore. I push them over with the excavator. And I don't use them for firewood anymore since installing furnaces/AC's in the house about 5 years ago, and using railroad ties in the garage. The trees I take out are usually either in the way (running bigger equipment now) or are where I don't want trees, like pond banks.
I do the same thing with my old chains, btw. Have the dealer sharpen them all at the same time, and sometimes I'll give one a quick touch-up if it didn't lose too much sharpness.
Really might be easier, despite the rocks, to just take all the chains in for sharpening and cut up as many railroad ties as I've got enough chains for. Still want to come up with an alternative, though, as the rocks are very plentiful and sometimes I'll ruin a chain on my first cut.
BTW, at long last (3 months!), the Cat 973 will be done and returned home today! Pretty much when it's too late in the year and I'm too busy to really make any real use of it. I'll probably work on the lake roadway tonight, but that'll likely be all. Needing to lessen the slope and also make a few more feet of level ground down in the hole because my old dumptruck can't pull a full load out of the hole as it is now. Figure if I give it enough room to get up to 2k rpm (the gearing's so low, that really is just another few feet) and give it less of a slope to contend with, it can start doing the full 7 yards instead of the 4 yards I've had to limit it to. If it can only handle one scoop from the 973, it's pretty hard to justify it being in the loop since the 973 can get up the hill quite a bit faster. I just don't like putting that much wear on the undercarriage. Each round trip is nearly 1/4 mile.
Although I'm going to start shopping for a Cat 300 soon. 21 cubic yards, 6-wheel drive, articulating truck. The idea being to buy it while prices are depressed late in the year, use it for a couple of years to work on the lake, then sell it in the Spring when demand should be up.
Awesome stuff!
Well, as Dave went on to explain in a later message, the appearance that Silicon Investor sent out an email advertisement was legitimate but he noted that the opinion of legitimacy didn't extend specifically to the content of the email, and I concur.
ADVFN has a wonderful "World Daily Markets Briefing" email that I'm encouraging the other side of the pond to start sending (with opt-out opportunity, of course).
Dave explained it a lot better than I can.
http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=24029499
I'd like to add, though, that we also sent out a self-promotional email (announcing the new Finance Channel content) to everyone that had the same opt-out link in it.
Well, the off-topic thread still peripherally involves chainsaws and likely huge wood chippers, so just how off-topic is it?
Speaking of chainsaws....
I always buy used railroad ties when they're available locally and cut them up to burn in the garage furnace. I don't worry about the creosote buildup because it's a metal building so a bit unlikely to suffer from a chimney fire, and the chimney is just 8-inch stovepipe I replace every year. And the railroad ties burn long (I cut them to 2-foot lengths) and hot.
Once things are really heated up, there's no smoke from the chimney and the stovepipe doesn't have much in it whe I replace it. Rust is the main reason I replace it. Humidity is an ongoing problem in the building.
Anyway, these railroad ties are brutal to the chainsaw. I hit rocks frequently and if you just nick one of them, it's time to replace the chain.
I keep forgetting to have my son look at the excavator and see if he can devise a sort of shear to fit it. It has amazing curling power (can drag the 40k-lb machine if I grab something sturdy enough with the bucket and curl it) so I'd imagine a shear fitted to the bucket would go through railroad ties like butter.
Since I keep forgetting to have him see if he can make something, I was wondering... Does anyone have any idea whether a large log-splitter might be capable of doing the job?
My manlift will do 45 feet and it scares the heck out of me up there. Always worried it'll tip.
It's not too tough for me to get vertigo. As I discovered in Paris. We were walking up the Eiffel Tower and Clem mentioned the word "vertigo" and I felt it for the first time in my life.
Matt can confirm what I did next.
I'm an adrenaline junkie so I told them to hold on a minute and while the vertigo still had a great grip on me, I leaned against the outer railing and raised my hands so it felt and looked like I was just floating at that height above the ground. Embraced the feeling, got off on it, and was fine for the rest of the climb.
What a rush it was, too!!!
If he was a real friend and the damage was not that bad, he should tell you to forget it and wait until somebody else hits his car to get it fixed.
No, a friend would shrug off very minor damage.
A real friend would help you bury the body in the trunk.
Beigle, the cost of repair does sound extremely high for what sounds like largely cosmetic damage, but the bumper cover could be a high-dollar piece and it's likely the mounting pieces are shock-absorbing and they want to replace them just in case they moved any due to shock. To err on the ultra-conservative side.
Kinda like how you're supposed to replace a motorcycle helmet if you ever drop it because supposedly any impact weakens it dramatically. Which I don't buy for a minute, btw. Unless it was dropped about 20 feet with a bowling ball (or a head) inside it, I really doubt any lessening of its protective abilities would be easily measurable.
Surely another shop would make the car good as new for a LOT less money.
My agent knows about my driving-school hobby and is cool about it but told me that if I ever submit a claim for damage that happened at the track, it better be a biggie because they'll pay it, then I'll be shopping elsewhere for insurance and have a lot of trouble finding it.
Back when we had life insurance on me, the premiums were very high and it was because my driving school hobby was equated with racing, and I couldn't convince them that it wasn't racing and that a huge distinction is "contract passing". You don't pass at these events unless pointed by, and rarely does an event allow even instructors to pass each other in turns. In my 13 years, I've only seen this at two events. Once when I was at Road America (Tom was my gracious host for a pair of events up there), and once a month ago when I'd personally rented MAM (MidAmerica Motorplex) for a day and invited my best local track buds to play for the day.
We no longer carry life insurance on me. I tell my wife that in my case, we spell life insurance "Estate Sale". She has no need of my car/motorcycle/guitar collection, big Tonka Toys, or even our place in the country.
I recently tried to get an umbrella policy and unfortunately I forgot about the rule about not telling them everything, and I didn't realize a particular item would be a big deal.
In order for me to have an umbrella policy, I'd have to carry much higher liability limits on every vehicle that's insured, which was gonna be a pain. And I'd have to carry insurance on every car and motorcycle I own that starts and can be driven/ridden. A far more painful expense and hassle. Then they hit me with the deal-killer. My old dump truck, which never leaves the property but simply moves dirt from one place to another, would have to be insured. And the annual premiums were about 1/3rd of its value.
Sometime before Spring, I'm planning to buy a semi to tote the car-hauler to the track, since I traded in my one-ton on an RV a few months ago and used semi's are far cheaper than new one-tons and they're so much cooler.
I'm also keeping my eyes on a very small local used car dealership that looks like it's in the early stages of going out of business to see if I can pick it up at a worthwhile price so I can get dealer tags and no longer have to register and insure every vehicle individually.
A perfect example of where this would be handy is I'm currently preparing my daughter's old 94 Taurus SHO for sale, and frequently test-driving it, but don't want to go through the hassle of getting it inspected, insured, and registered, when my hope is to have it done and sold in a couple of months.
And I'm told by people I know at the track (a surprising number of them do this), though insuring a dealership isn't a cheap date, it's cheaper than insuring a lot of cars/bikes, fewer registration hassles, even when you factor in the cost of a salesperson to keep it open during business hours. You just have to sell a nominal number of vehicles per year to keep the qualification.
It seems practically every month I have to get one vehicle or another inspected and renew the registration. And motorcycles always expire in April in Missouri. So I have to take them in for MVI's a time of year that's often too cold for me to want to go riding.
Actually, such a mechanism does exist. Could you PM the URL to one of the Admins?
On post submission, the post is checked for "forbidden strings", which usually are URLs, and if one is found, the post doesn't get submitted and, if it still works the way it did when I implemented it, the user is logged out.
Yes, I saw the episode, which prompted me to learn to do it. I can't do it as quickly backwards as forward, but can do it in less than 5 seconds. Might be a side-benefit of dyslexia, too. Like the ability to read things in any orientation, sometimes not even realizing it's upside-down, sideways, mirrored, or a combo.
I can do it. It's surprising how little practice it takes to memorize 26 characters in a different order. Simple rote rehearsal.
In future, you know. Don't breathe a word to the insurance company unless you plan to file a claim.
I've got 17 cars and 17 bikes, many of which are registered and insured. It'd take a helluva claim before I'd tell them anythng since they'd get it all back in increased premiums in no time.
I always avoided automatic trannies like the plague (they're heavy and complicated) so my experience with them is limited and my memory of them fuzzy.
But according to my fuzzy memory, the only item back in the day that was called a modulator and associated with the tranny was the vacuum modulator, whose only purpose was to downshift the tranny when you give the car a lot of throttle and the vacuum would drop as a result.
Or maybe it was to not allow the tranny to upshift until you backed off the throttle. That actually makes more sense when I try to piece together how it would've worked.
Like I said, my memory on the subject is fuzzy.
If it's the former function, the car won't downshift when you floor it. If it's the latter, it'll be reluctant to upshift or not do it the way it used to.
Either way, I suspect that the item you found on the side of the tranny is the modulator. Does it have a vacuum line? If so, remove the line with the engine idling and you should hear a loud hiss and cover the end of the hose with your thumb and you should feel quite a bit of vacuum. If there's no vacuum, check for break in that or any other vacuum line. The OBD might be complaining that the modulator isn't getting a vacuum signal. Even in this day of computer-controlled everything, vacuum is the best way for a car to know if it's under load.
SuperBee is right, though. Whether the modulator the computer is complaining about is an internal piece or is the modern equivalent of the piece I'm talking about, the fact that your tranny is slipping means you're gonna be spending some money. When the clutches start slipping, they simply have to be replaced.
It's a good thing you've got a shop at your disposal.
A slipping automatic is never a cheap date. And it's worse in a 4x4 because the fact that there's a transfer case involved means roughly double the labor.
Interesting timing on your post, btw. I spent a few hours helping my son and a couple of his friends replace the clutch in one of his friends' Toyota pickup. They were planning to replace the tranny also because it would only partially go into 3rd and 4th, and when the owner was pulling it onto the lift, he somehow accidentally stumbled upon the fact that if he lifted up on the lever, pulling it away from the tranny, it'd go into 3rd and 4th just fine.
Turned out to be that the rubber socket that the shifter's pivot ball rides on wasn't there. Had to take apart shifter in the junk-yard tranny to realize a piece was missing.
We couldn't find any evidence of it in the oil we drained or in the back part of the tranny where the shift linkage is. And the ports going back to the rest of the tranny were too small for it to fit through.
It's possible that the speedo drive gears chewed it up small enough to fit through the ports (it's relatively soft rubber that perhaps could've avoided damaging the nylon driven gear) and it's still in the tranny, but the lack of ANY rubber in the waste oil or any evidence of it anywhere, combined with the distinctively different wear pattern of the pivot ball in both trannies leads me to strongly suspect the truck escaped the factory with this piece missing and it took time for the rubber washer (which was intact) to squish enough to cause the shifting problems, which only started a few weeks ago.
It's a head-scratcher. But instead of replacing the tranny, we just replaced the clutch and used the pivot socket from the junkyard tranny, and he's going to try to get a new pivot socket to put in that one and see if he can take it back to the junkyard for a refund.
I was wondering the same thing. At first blush, the answer seems likely to be "Not as much as you might think."
I would've loved to have had the date and share count so I could back-track and see if there were splits.
We didn't tell her this (it's for a broker to tell her), but my understanding is that since it's exceedingly difficult to sell a cert without delivering the cert, it's very likely the cert is valid.
Though I suppose there's a mechanism in place whereby the cert could've been misplaced and a new one issued and sold. Though it didn't sound like the cert was found in a box of clothing in the attic.
Too bad I'm not going to know how that story will play out. Really wondering if some broker might not be telling her right now that she's a millionaire.
It wouldn't be a good precedent if I moderated this board.
Besides, I'm really not trolling the boards very often. Too busy to pay attention isn't the most desirable of moderator traits.
I'm planning to eventually open an ETRD account to see if I can buy through them and avoid the obscene commissions I've been dealing with. All of my buying over the past year has been through AG Edwards, who happens to have a London office, making the trades relatively easy, but the commissions have been absolutely brutal!
The only plus side is that because of the trade sizes, they've occasionally been able to go places other than the usual channels to get fills for me. But not always. There was one trade where I wasn't just *on* the bid, I *was* the bid. For a little over 3 weeks!
This thing of no trades yesterday or today is really unusual. Surely it's not a bank holiday over there.
Funny thing, though, is that because the pound rose against the dollar, I've made decent gains on this position the past couple of days, with no trading happening in the stock.
If memory serves, I checked ETRD for a quote on this stock and couldn't get one, which led me to believe it can't be bought through them.
Wish I'd answered the phone on this one....
We just got a tech support call where we had to tell the lady basically "Get thee to a broker". Her grandmother had recently passed away and among the things she left was a certificate for AT&T stock and she wanted to know if we could tell her if it was any good.
I would've loved to have asked for the date and number of shares shown.