I painfully twisted and stretched to grab my phone to check what the alerts were for. I had gotten an email sent to my newsfeed account from News12. The mail stated that Cablevision customers were experiencing slowdowns with their Optimum Online email accounts. Eh, whatever, doesn’t apply to me. Next however, was a tweet from @SmithtownRadio, saying Cablevision was experiencing outages with their mail service. Lastly, to guarantee I wouldn’t be falling back to sleep, my tech customers, messaging me, asking why they couldn’t log into their email and seeing if I could come over to fix it.

So by that point, I grabbed a bowl of cereal and headed over to the internet to see what was really going on. The issue was real, but much more severe than News12 had claimed. (Well what can you expect by a news company owned by the company experiencing the issue?)

According to Long Island Business News, Cablevision began experiencing issues with their service around 11am Thursday morning, which can be backed up by one of my customers saying they have had the issue for a day now.

Cablevision as of Friday morning has not released an ETA until when the problem will be fixed, however they do claim they will be issuing a statement regarding the issue soon.

For now, many Cablevision customers seem to be in a state of panic and others frustration, without their email. Many for example have been flocking to Twitter to share their feelings on the issue, while others have found themselves making calls using a telephone for the first time since the creation of their first mail account.

What are your thoughts on the issue? Is email always being there something we take for granted and don’t realize the magnitude of disaster that can be obtained without it? Discuss in the comments below!

[Update: 3:59pm]: Cablevision has announced the issue with Optimum Online’s e-mail service has been resolved, stating it was caused by a malfunction with one of their storage devices. Cablevision claims none of its customers’ e-mails were lost in the disruption.

A velociraptor smells you from a distance of 100 meters and begins to accelerate at 10m/s^s from rest to a maximum speed of 25m/s. You’re standing still on some roller-blades and hear the raptor approaching. You immediately begin to accelerate at 4m/s^2 to your maximum, adrenaline powered speed of 8m/s thinking you might be able to save yourself.

There are two doors between you and the raptor. The raptor has to run 60 meters to stop and open the first door and another 40 meters to the second door. Knowing Velociraptors take five minutes to open the first door in their path and half the time for every subsequent door, how long do you have to live before you are devoured?

Okay, so it takes the raptor 3.65 seconds to get to the first door, where it has to stop and start running again after it opens the door. It takes an additional 2.85 seconds to get to the second door. It took 300 seconds to open the first and 150 to open the second door.

Meanwhile, you have skated 3,644 meters away. However, raptors are awesome and don’t lose your scent. Especially if you’re the only person mentioned in the problem. You proceed an additional 1,690.85 meters before the raptor catches up to you.

So to explain what happened here:
You proceeded 5,373.41 meters (3.3 Miles) and survived 672.7 seconds (11 Minutes and 12 Seconds) before you were devoured.

Next time bring a rifle.

Not really.

That’s right, ice! That lovable, handy combination of H, 2 and O frozen at a temperature of 273K for your enjoyment. Ice is a part of our every day lives as it is commonly used for simple tasks such as freezing a finger you lost in your tech class while operating a jigsaw. Okay, not all people are as daring and curious as that one kid it always happens to each year but there’s more!

Ever wonder why when you ask for a glass of water as a restaurant there’s none of what you’d call, “water” in it? You’ll get about two sips out of that straw and then— hey, where did my water go?! There you now find yourself waiting impatiently for your waitress to come back out but as you realize they only come to check up on you when you don’t need them to. Once you tell them off the first four times, which happens within the first two minutes of eating your food, they’re gone until you want your dessert.

Frustrated, you gently pound your fist on the table so not to draw attention to yourself by the people at tables around you and then put your mouth on that straw again, pretending as if there would actually be more in there to drink… but wait, there is! Where did that come from? Just a moment ago you had no water in this glass but now you’re finding some? Have you gone crazy? Are you outside and there are birds flying overhead? The latter, at least is incorrect! You see, you have had a glass of water in front of you all this time but haven’t noticed it!

Restaurants want you to have the freshest and purest water they can get you from a tap, so they simply give it to you while the water’s still processing. By giving you 4/5ths frozen water in that glass, they’re guaranteeing you they didn’t have a dead fish floating around in the pitcher before you came. Instead, you could think it was a dead fish, FROZEN in there, which is completely normal because it preserves the body and bacteria doesn’t get to it.

Be grateful your waitress went out for a 20-minute smoke, you may have nearly choked to death on the bone to a chicken wing but you have at least just discovered SCIENCE! By the time she gets back, you’ll have already gotten a full glass of water by just staring at it. Who said a watched pot never boils? Well… I do, because by experience, it doesn’t, but watched ice? Watched ice certainly melts.

That’s ice, the little trickster it is.

Open yourself up a little bit (surgically works best) and you’ll soon discover the benefits of ice and why it sometimes makes you late to school or work in the morning. It just wants to help.

Now that I’ve introduced you to ice, here’s this photograph I made of ice in a cubed form, to honor all the waiters and waitresses who lost 25% off their tip because people don’t understand the purpose of ice cubes in their drink.

(Click for full size)

It makes a nice Windows 7 background on my 1440×900 display, just pop in a black taskbar. =]

As for videos, Alex and I will probably be trying to film a new episode of Nardy Network News sometime late this week if we get a chance, so be on the lookout for that!

ZNet-III sported an AMD Athlon64 x2 processor at 2.1Ghz, 2GB of DDR2 RAM at 667Mhz and a 250GB Hard Drive. All of which was pushed the the limits of their potential just about each day. Built July 31st, 2007 and retired August 18th, 2009, ZNet-III racked up approximately 16,800 hours of service time.

That service time surely had a significant impact and pretty much is the story behind anything you see on my websites today. (Which were also built using it) Hit the “Read More” link for a quick summary of significant achievements by ZNet-III.

• Rendered over 100 Videos
• Operated for a few months with Apache, PHP, MySQL and FTP services active.
• Was used to found 5 of my websites
• Hosted the main “Touched RPG” service
• Was the primary server for Spherack, Spherack II and Spherack III
• Was used to develop all the Spherack games to date as well as Touched RPG and Racer Online
• Ran as an internet radio station for several months
• Donated a few months of runtime to BOINC projects
• Simultaneously ran about 50 programs at once
• Had processed 19,495,442 keystrokes
• Processed 5,324,799 mouse clicks
• Mouse was moved 359 miles

And with that, I look forward to what I can squeeze from the new system, ZNet-IV in its time. Look forward to Spherack Reloaded’s return in the future!

Otherwise, I’m starting school again tomorrow so I should probably get to sleep now considering it’s 11:19pm and I have to be up at 6am. Night!

Anyway, as I said in the last post, I was due to be getting a new HP desktop. Yeah that didn’t quite work out at first, which is why it took me so long to be back on a desktop. You see, I ordered an HP Pavillion Slimline at first, not realizing it was a slimline. It got it and the case was half the width of an average video card. Disappointed I was, because that meant running on horrible integrated graphics. So I sent it back and spent an extra $80 bucks to move onto a “normal” sized Pavillion. Just got it yesterday and I’m presently loving it.

Versus the Slimline I described in the last post, this machine boasts…

• An Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 Processor @ 2.5Ghz
• 6GB DDR3 RAM
• 640GB HDD

It’s quite a significant step above the last, especially being I was able to pack my own power supply and video card into it, giving me a perfect Windows Vista Experience Score of 5.9 across the charts. Was very happy to see that and also am excited for the free upgrade to Windows 7 when it comes out.

Yep, that’s right. Free. That’s the major reason why I went with an HP computer rather than throwing one together myself. No, it wasn’t free, but in a way, half of this thing was. After $300 of instant rebates, free upgrades to more RAM and larger hard drives, I ended up grabbing this beast for $549. (before tax)

I haven’t gotten to doing any rendering on it yet, but I’m sure I’ll be pretty pleased when I do get around to it. So far its been really speedy doing my regular tasks, however I feel Vista is hating on Spherack’s server.

OH, and about that. Currently I’m unsure on whether or not I can use this as a flagship for Spherack’s server. Yeah, it’s got more than enough power to do it, but after doing some testing on it tonight, the server programs keep dropping connections like crazy and I have no clue what’s up with that. Anyone feel like dedicating their machine’s 24/7 operating time to a very lightweight program? That’d be awesome and I’m sure a community of five players will be grateful.

So yeah, that’s about it on what’s new with my computer adventures.

But wait, there’s more!

I got a new car while I was waiting for the computer! Okay, so it’s not new and has 128 thousand miles on it… it’s still awesome though! Its previous owner was “nice” to the car and kept it in great shape. It’s been in the shop the past few weeks getting fixed up before the dealer turns it over to me Monday. Pretty excited for this.

I’m looking to expand my freelance computer technician shindig beyond people I know in my local neighbourhood… still sort of restricted to people I know but hey, I’ll have a much larger audience now once I can get the car. We’ll see how that goes, taking requests, building computers for people, fixing them, etc.

Well then! Recap of what’s happened the past few weeks, shall we?

• ZNet-III’s motherboard fried
• PCS-Aspire’s solid state drive fried
• The “HP-Mini” Netbook is a good buy
• HP Slimline Computers are not DIY-Friendly
• Spent a lot of money
• Got a car
• ZNet-IV Welcomed to the Fleet
• I typed this.

And that just about covers it. I’ll be writing an article on ZNet-III’s well appreciated service in the near future so stay tuned for that!

Somewhere that night between 3am and 8am something went crazy-go-nuts and the motherboard fried itself. Not exactly sure what happened, but something did.

Anyway, I’ve ordered a new computer from HP… usually I’d build my own of course but I found this deal to be a real steal:

Intel Core 2 Quad @ 2.3Ghz
4GB DDR2 RAM
640GB HDD
Windows Vista Home Premium with a free upgrade to Windows 7

Plus the usual stuff HP throws in like the case, power supply, keyboard, etc. All for just  $525, I found that for quite a steal and ordered it. Of course, it won’t be here probably until next Friday or something so for now I’ve double-monitored my netbook. It’s good fun. 1024×600 on a 19 inch monitor; an 80-year-old’s dream.

Anyway, what this means for you guys right now is Spherack is completely down. You won’t be able to host or join servers because my computer is what they all use to route themselves together. I apologize; I didn’t expect this to happen until December yet it did anyway.

SOOOOO yeah. I’ll be on a netbook with two monitors for the next week or so. Leave comments here or something.

One billion downloads? How can you question that? Well, you can’t.

Here’s how the internet works…
Each technical user, like myself is bound to have Firefox installed on at least three to six machines in their household. That’s six downloads.

A major version of Firefox like 3.1 -> 3.5 is released. That’s six more downloads. We’re at twelve!

Oh shoot, operating system data got eaten by malware. Reformat. Reinstall Firefox.

Thirteen from one person now!

You can’t question one billion on the internet. You just can’t.

Originally posted as a comment by AndrewNatoli on Mashable – The Social Media Guide using Disqus.