Doug Van Pelt

How to pray for HM, things that frustrate us, or just complaining (maybe call it a "fine whine")

First of all, today we went to Universal Studios and it was a really fun place. My daughter and I went on the Simpson's Ride, which was a motion simulator based around a nefarious character that was out to kill Krusty and the Simpson's. It was a chair that seats about 8 to 10 people, which moves up an down on springs and hydraulics (I guess), but the movements are synchronized with the giant video screen you're seeing in front of you. It was about the most amazing ride I've ever been on. It was all virtual, but you really felt like you were tipping over near vertical, sideways twists, steep climbs and freefalls. It was awesome! It was so realistic that I got dizzy and motion sick. Wow.

I've ridden a simulated roller coaster ride in a Gatti's Pizzaland arcade before, but this was that times 1,000. Total sensory stimulation. Totally rad.

Secondly, back to the HM website... It seems that some spam robots have re-discovered our site in a big way. I'm having to "close" the comment field within a week of posting a new article or post, so if you want to leave a comment, you should leave it early on after it's posted.

My long-term plans for this are kinda complicated. We use a very old version of Movable Type. Upgrading to the latest version of Movable Type would alleviate a lot of these problems, because cocmmenters would have to type in the letters randomly displayed visually, which keeps robots out. The problem with this is the newer versions of Movable Type require an upgrade to the perl language that the site uses. Our first attempt to upgrade this perl language caused massive failures on the site and we scrambled to fix it and revert to the older version. So, the long-term solution involves re-building the entire site from scratch on another server (or another virtual location on our server) and then switching over once we have transferred over all the content. You have to admit, we have a lot of archived content, so that's a large task.

So, that's something that frustrates us that you could pray about for us. We need wisdom. We also have a terrible next to awful ISP situation at our office out in the country in Taylor, TX. It's pathetic. To solve it I might have to get a 50 foot pole/antenna installed at the HM Ranch. It costs a lot, plus it's kind of a huge thing, with guide wires going in three directions and basically taking over a backyard. A few months into the new fast internet should make me happy to pull that trigger/make that commitment, but from this side of the situation, it's like, 'Oh man. I wish there was a better option.'

We are planning on hitting the beach in San Clemente tomorrow. I've never been to that beach, so I'm looking forward to that (as well as scoring a San Diego Chargers "Pocket Pro" micro helmet. Sometimes. it's the little things...)

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at October 6, 2008 09:17 PM