support

You have. Disagree. Agree.

You said that a "repair man" "freed it", not that the seal/s and bearing/s were replaced. i.e. the issue remained but the machine operated after a fashion. From your description, the motor will only run at full-speed. For all we know, the timer may completely bypass the controller card to do this but even if it doesn't, failure of certain components on the controller card would also produce this symptom. I suggest you input the make, model number and symptoms into Google and see what others are saying. If they concur, price a replacement controller card. You will also have labor on top of this. The cause of failure could either be water dripping onto it or partially seized bearings. Do you think it is normal that a machine seizes, needs freed, makes a lot of noise? These are all signs of impending doom. There could be further damage to the spider and/or shaft. If the issues extend that far, the machine is highly likely to be uneconomical to repair. As things stand at the moment, you'd probably be better off looking for a reconditioned machine rather than incur the extra expense of an engineer's visit, only to tell you how many arms and legs it will cost to repair your existing one.

Without knowing the detail or seeing it, I would guess the machine now needs: Seal kit. Drum bearings. Controller card (likely because water has leaked on it from item #1). Repair costs will depend on make and model. Depending on age/general condition, it may not be worth spending the money on it.

LOL Could be me speaking there. I've probably got a copy of my original (1980s) custom dictionary kicking around somewhere. It consisted of around 30 words, many of these being location related. Plain text file, with one word per line. The only way to alter it (other than add) was to edit the file. Not sure what has changed in me. Perhaps a few things... I hardly use spellcheck now at all. I go to the trouble of setting up multiple languages and do I use them? Nope! In the '80s and '90s, I would have pressed a button (more likely used keystrokes) to run a spellcheck. I distinctly recall emailing Vanchau and on another occasion speaking to an ezBoard developer about the spellchecker that was introduced to ezBoard. You may recall this was removed. Twice! That would have been around 2001ish. Hardly used spellcheck this century. Perhaps on a letter that counts, I may verify it at the end. I turn off the automatic spelling and grammar checkers. I do not use predictive text on my phone. However, I do leave the US-EN dictionary enabled in: Firefox, Thunderbird and Pidgin. They help once I begin to get tired. My fingers go dyslexic! Council counsellor Counsell, was good at keeping his own counsel.

I'm getting "Counsell" flagged as incorrect in Firefox. Perhaps you have added it to the custom dictionary at some point? Learned a new word today: "shirsey". Another issue that can arise is adding an incorrect spelling to the custom dictionary. Usually, this is very easily done - perhaps too easily. I'll remember "levity". That'll give me a chuckle a few times over the next few days! LOL (That'll is a spelling error according to Firefox. :\) Some careful and strategic use of the cuss filter could work around some of these misspellings. Interesting to see a 2007 topic correctly revived.

Auto-correct and lack of attention are responsible for a lot of spelling errors these days, with people using their phones. Some of these typos can end up causing a LOT of offense but others may find them simply humorous. I dare not quote examples here.

Emailed directly as PM notifications not getting through.

When you say you unplugged it, do you mean disconnected from the phone line or cable or actually powered it down? (You seem to know what you are talking about, so I suspect the latter.) I've seen very few of these and they have until now been resolvable by powering the modem/router off and back on again. Flushing DNS or changing DNS servers does not seem to affect anything. It sure is a weird one! Anything, which takes longer than 30 seconds and returns a good page means that the request is not even making it to PHP, as PHP is set to time-out at that point and you would get an error page or just a white page. As you can see from work, this site loads in around 500-600ms. No, I stand corrected, this site loads between 600ms and 700ms on average. The worst it has been in the last 3 months is 1.150sec. As you will know, the issue is either at your end or in the middle. If you ping, it will respond just fine, I would bet. If I can assist you in any way whatsoever, I will. If you find a solution, please let us know. One other thing I have not mentioned... Some have the ability to use their equipment on different providers. The performance is different depending on who they connect through. This does tend to rule out whatever device they are using. DNS should be able to be ruled out because this site never changes IP. It has had the same IP since I moved servers a while back. You could try a traceroute and see if that sheds any light. Alternatively, Lambeauleap is on the same physical server. Does that go slow too? HTML: http://lambeauleap.net HTML+PHP+MySQL: http://forum.lambeauleap.net If you want to shoot me a PM or email (buttons below and left), there are a number of sites we could test on. I will not be able to see much from the logs because I cannot see what is not there. (I'll have a quick look anyway, sometime later.) i.e. if you fail to connect in the first place or that request is delayed, I will never see it. Only one 500 error and two 503 errors in the last 3 months too. No difference with time of day at all? (he clutches at straws but wants to leave no stone unturned)

PM stuck in outbox just means it has not been read by the recipient but there is every chance the email notification of the PM has. Once it has been read, it will "move" to your Sent box. The issue you are experiencing, I have been trying to get to the root of for months. It does not just affect this site, it does not just affect this software, it is not caused by a particular ISP and it is not caused by a particular modem/router. It affects less than 1% of users. My latest hypothesis is this may be caused by a stale session between the end user and the ISP. It has always been resolvable by turning off the modem/router for a while, turning it on again and allowing it to reconnect. Please let us know how this works out for you.

This happens to less than half a percent of people. The IP address never changes, therefore neither should DNS. It is not ISP specific. Next time, just pop your router off for 30 seconds and back on again. Do you mind me asking what make and model of router you are using? This might help others, who find themselves in a similar situation.

That's great to hear! By rights it should be faster but there are many constraints that can slow delivery to you. If you are noticing differences in your favorite sites, that is good. [sarcasm]Of course, I did make some changes a day or two that speed this site up.[/sarcasm]

There are not too many DOCSIS 3.0 retail modems currently. Personally, I would go for either the Motorola SB6141 or the Motorola SB6121. You could get cheaper and it may even work out quite OK, just the same as you might get more expensive and not gain. Consider these three things: Don't feel pressured into upgrading if you are quite happy with the performance that you have. In time the technology and hardware will become better honed and costs will reduce a little too. You are probably saving $5 a month by providing your own modem. In one year, that is $60. The cost of these is very little more than that, so you are more or less staying within any warranty period. Be sure that whatever you purchase is compatible with your existing hardware as well as your Service Provider.

Nice to hear some feedback! What I would like to see is that it remains like this rather than slowly deteriorating. Only time will tell on that.

It would have been better if I had been prepared in advance but all things considered, we escaped quite well. Hardly anyone is hitting the old server now. There may be the odd hit every hour or two. The worst for people would have been when the database was moved. Unfortunately, I was only aware of this as it was underway. There may have been an hour of downtime and if memory serves me correctly, this would have been late morning EDT and it is quieter then. For the last two days, the data has been traveling around 10,000 miles round-trip to get to you (and did not too badly either) and now the trip is around 1,000 miles and approx half of what it was originally. This will not make any sort of noticeable difference but I do think you are in a better place and the servers are performing much better than the old ones. I couldn't wait to start tweaking. Got the speed up a little too! If anyone may have suffered more, it will likely be the IE users and you really do not have many of them. IE has a tendency to store stuff that it should not and not store stuff that it should. I'll re-automate the backups in a day or two and just monitor them instead for the next 20 days. It's difficult to gauge running them manually but they do seem to run quite well.

[sarcasm]Well, we cannot have you all at sea, can we?[/sarcasm] The ride is over for some and not others yet. I will continue to monitor both sites for the time being, until I am certain everyone is off the old server. Try pressing Ctrl+F5 on your keyboard (Cmd+Shift+R for a Mac). Anyone with extreme difficulties, please reboot your computer (or flush your DNS if you know how) and if that still does not work, reboot your router. If that still does not work, you can either wait it out until your DNS servers update or switch your DNS servers to either OpenDNS or Google Public DNS. (of course, I am posting to those on the old server here that may lose access at some point and hoping they read this before they do) For anyone in doubt, if the announcement on the index page is in RED, you are on the old server still. That was quite a paper-chase. Thankfully Casey was able to save the day once we found exactly where the DNS had been set for this place. I have no desire to know just how close things were! We got here and that is the main thing. So, initial measurements are much faster. I do want to monitor this over the next 10-20 days to make sure it retains its speed. OK guys ... pretend I wasn't here and carry on!

As some may know, I have been monitoring these sites for at least an hour a day, since the end of last month. I've been unhappy with performance but have been limited by the options available to me. I have been in regular (albeit slow) correspondence with the host. I have continued to tweak and even run backups manually. We have been unable to find what was behind the excessive slowness and it was suggested that a server move might just resolve things. Wind back around 4 weeks and I actually suggested a change of data center and not just server/s to them. As it happens, I arrived here a couple of hours ago and found an email, saying that a full migration to another data center was what they chose to do. Quick look in and it was underway! I had to do a fair bit and very swiftly in the background but you are here! Where is here? You are now in Virginia, whereas before you were in Southern California. The data center you were at commonly has issues - although I am told it doesn't - and this was my reasoning some 4 weeks ago. I think we got lucky. It will take a little while for the dust to settle. If you notice anything odd, just try a full refresh (Ctrl+F5 or Command+Shift+R) and it should come to rights. If you are unable to do this, you may need to clear your cache. I won't be far away and still monitoring. 2pm EDT: The final stages are complete and operational. To ensure you see the new location as early as possible, please perform a full refresh (Ctrl+F5 or Command+Shift+R). 6pm EDT: It would appear that I am the only one currently on the new server. This must be a bit slow for you guys, while things are in two places. Hopefully, DNS will take for you soon and remove the lag. ----- ETA: I take that back... I just flipped back to the old server. S L O W ! 8:20pm EDT: I suspect we have a DNS issue (with the way this was originally set up). This could take a while to resolve and unfortunately, until it is, this site will be slow. 9:30pm EDT: There is indeed a DNS issue and I have now confirmed where it lies. Unfortunately, this is not within my control and I have done what I can to try and get this changed. I'm afraid we must wait this out. I do have a couple of contingency plans on the back burner, just in case. Please make sure your email addresses in your profile is up to date, just in case we should need to contact you. ----- ETA: Lambeauleap is actually up and fine on the new server. By all means visit and post. If you lose this site at any time, you can visit there for news.

This game gives you these choices and was the first one I hit: http://wizardofodds.com/play/blackjack/ I would have suggested you play a human for the reality aspect. I agree with you that registering is undesirable but I don't think you will find realism other than from playing another human being. IMHO, all these games are the same, unless you can introduce the human element. Even still, a computer is in full charge of the deck. I would have suggested: http://games.yahoo.com/games/login2?page=bj&ss=1 All you need is a Yahoo! account. I have some disposable ones, of which you are more than welcome to one. If you would like one, just drop me a PM. I honestly have no clue what the game is like but it is against another human, who is most likely just playing for fun.

[pre]` .-'||'-. .' || '. / __||__ \ | /`- -`\ | | | 6 6 | | \/\____7___/\/ .--------:\:I:II:I:/;--------. / \`:I::I:`/ \ | `------' | | \____/ | | , __ ___ , | |======| / | / _ \ |======| |======| ^| | | | | | |======| |~~~~~| | | | |_| | |~~~~~| | |\ [___] \___/ /| | \ \| |/ / `\ \ _ _.-=""=-._ _ / /' `\ '`_)\\-++++-//(_`' /' ; (__|| ||__) ; ; ___\ /___ ; '. ---/-=..=-\--- .' `""` `""`[/pre]

Thanks again logan82. Just to clarify, this was not a bandwidth issue as bandwidth is unlimited; it was a connection/resource related issue. Connections alone were over 10 times what is recommended as a maximum for the hosing. A great many things have been done since my inadvertent discovery and these have been handled in priority order. Initially Bing was small-fry but as other matters were resolved, it soon became a much bigger one (1/8 of total resources being used). Currently, I have your connections alone down to 30% of what they were on discovery. This is still 300% above what is recommended though. Bing has been ignoring robots exclusions policy directives, which have been here since day one. These were placed to avoid unnecessary crawling by search engine spiders. Bing is the only offender. In short, Bing has been repeatedly and unnecessarily crawling only a very small percentage of your content. It also does not deliver visitors. Over the last few days I have removed some extraneous links from the "eyes" of Bing (as well as other search engine spiders, who ignore them anyway). I then reduced the content visible to Bing to only include more recent and relevant content. I have been in contact with Bing and honestly, I fear I would cuss if I discussed "responses". This is ongoing but from what little I have heard, there is little more can be done. e.g. Even if Bing were made to crawl more efficiently, the speed that it would try to do this is unacceptable for this site. Consequently, last night bingbot was temporarily blocked from this site. This morning, the logs look great! Bing have been fully informed of this and I await their next "response". Pending that, I may allow it again. Failing that, I will allow it again in a week's time for 24 hours and see what it gets up to. Things should not be this hard! Incidentally, you may have noticed the bots disappearing from the whosonline. This does not mean they have been removed, I simply changed their state to "hidden". Google is still crawling, albeit at a reduced rate. Others will come and go as normal. Bing will be around too, only wearing different "clothes", so it thinks it is incognito. Remaining slowness is not server related. There is a "lag", when opening pages. Once they start, they are as fast as they should be. This is down to DNS issues and the round-about manner in which these have been set up. This is currently beyond anyone here's control but please take note that we know about this (now) and hopefully will be able to improve this with more distant future plans. On the matter you originally reported, this was indeed revisited 2 days later as it became a top priority. This time I got it right and results are great. (Originally I used a method this server did not support, so I found one that it did.) In conclusion, we are close to the best you are going to get for now. Instead of me spending all day every day checking and optimizing, I have backed off a bit. It may take me half a day to respond to a post here now. This board, along with Lambeauleap.net really requires daily monitoring to help prevent a situation like this recurring. The whole situation will never recur but the symptoms may and could do at any time. Until something better is set up, feel free to bookmark this contact page and use it, should there be any sign of slowness or 5xx errors that persist for more than a period of 10 minutes. I'll be on the case just as soon as I can (and probably will not reply until after resolution). You have a great board here and it needs to be kept going.

I agree with you 100%! Makes me wonder though if the same happened to the other 9 that bought from that auction. If you keep this up, you will do a make a very good job of insulating your house.

Yes!

If you can afford to lose it, I would fire in a dispute. Having said that however, I would inform the seller that his auction was not as described and you are not responsible for their mistakes. A transaction is binding and therefore they should honor it. Even with everything in your favor - as it is - the seller may choose to try to cancel the transaction, which by rights, you should have the option to either accept or decline. Aggravatingly, even if you do refuse to agree to cancellation, over a period of time eBay will just shrug their shoulders and say there is nothing they can do. On the plus side, if you file a dispute, the seller may find their selling privileges restricted or as I suspect in this case, they may just get a warning (threat). However, if you don't want to lose the deal, why not try to reason with the seller, with perhaps the unspoken veiled threat of report? They may eventually be willing to split the difference as a compromise but I would keep that as an unspoken option initially. ETA: This seller has done this before. Have a look at the negative feedback. Would it be an option to collect? Maybe get a local friend to collect on your behalf and catch up with it next time you see each other? If genuine, there should be no extra fee for collection.

Thank you very much, logan82. I was unaware as I was being served from cache. A quick refresh (F5) should set things to rights for you. Apologies for that. It was caused by trying to gain as much from the server as possible and obviously something was wrong. I may/may not dig deeper as it is only a small saving. Thank you also for the feedback on the speed. Things do look much better now and I think little more can be done without major changes. ETA: Same issue found elsewhere using a similar method. This too has been removed, so you should be fully functional.

Both your Host and I have been monitoring and bouncing a few emails and things do seem very much improved as well as stable. They voluntarily made one further alteration, directly related to my initial findings as they could address the issue in a much more efficient manner than was available to me. I have to say that I was impressed with that. We've also been chewing over the thought of changing data center and on balance it looks best to stay where you are. From purely the board aspect, things do still need to be addressed. We need these long topics split. Addressing the increasing difficulties that are inevitable with a growing database needs done sooner rather than later. Neither of my suggestions include pruning, so do not worry about losing your posts. Please do provide feedback, whether positive or negative.

I have received the following response from your Host. While I will respond, I wish to hold back and observe. I'd also like more feedback from you all. The response would seem quite positive but the bottom line is: Is it working?