Please Read - SatelliteGuys Update!

[Scott Greczkowski]

Dear SatelliteGuys Member,

2005 is quickly coming to a close, what a great 2005 it has been for us. In this post I will let you know about our plans for the rest of 2005, including details of our 2005 Holiday Party, a special event next week, our upgrade and more!

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First off I would like to say welcome and thank you to our 28,000 plus members and a big thank you to our supporting pub members who help to keep this place open and free for all.

This message contains some exciting information so please take a moment to read it through.

SYSTEM UPGRADE

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As you might have noticed we have moved onto our new server! I am very happy with the performance since we have made the change yesterday! Over the next two weeks we will continue tuning the performance to give you the best SatelliteGuys Experience possible!

Now I should note that over the next two weeks you may run into cases where the site may be slow for a few moments, this is because we are working hard in the background on our new forum software vBulletin 3.51. We will work to keep the slow downs to a minimum.

SOFTWARE UPGRADE

There will be a site outage on Saturday, November 19<SUP>th</SUP> where the site will be unavailable for a good part of the day. This is when we will be installing the new software for your use. This upgrade will give us some new features and will offer us additional speed enhancements as well!

As we announced before because of this upgrade there will be a few changes to the system first which you should be aware of.

1) We will be dropping the UseNet Newsgroups tonight from SatelliteGuys. We understand that this is a popular feature, but because of the way the UseNet messages are stored we are unable to upgrade our database to the new software, the only way to fix it is to dump the newsgroups. Also the UseNet software for the new software is not ready for primetime yet. We do hope to bring back newsgroups when that feature is stable

2) When we upgrade the software the Arcade will be unavailable for a few days this will give us a chance to clean up the Arcade and install new features. The Arcade WILL return.

3) All Members Home Theater Pictures in the "Members Home Theater" feature will be removed. We will be upgrading to an easier to use system that will allow our members to better show off their setups available. This feature is expected to be working again fully within 2 weeks of the software upgrade.

Besides the software upgrade we have a few more things that you might find exciting.

CES SNEAK PREVIEW!

On Wednesday SatelliteGuys.US has been invited to New York City to get a first look at some exciting consumer electronics devices! Many of the devices we will be show will be items never seen by the public before! Sean Mota, Rob Hancox & myself will be on hand in NYC and will be reporting back what we saw on November 16<SUP>th</SUP>!

HOLIDAY PARTY DETAILS

I am happy to report that once again this year we will be having another SatelliteGuys Holiday Party! Currently we are seeking prize donations from our sponsors that we can give away. I am excited to announce that our Grand Prize this year will be a BRAND NEW XBOX 360 that my wife and I are donating to the site!

The Holiday Party will take place on Monday Night, December 12<SUP>th</SUP> at 8:30PM! MARK YOUR CALENDAR NOW AS YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS THIS!

WE ARE ACCEPTING DONATIONS FOR PRIZES TO GIVE AWAY IN OUR HOLIDAY PARTY! Please contact me if you are interested!

SATELLITEGUY OF THE YEAR AWARD

Also on Monday Night, December 12<SUP>th</SUP> we will be awarding the 2005 SatelliteGuy of the Year award winner! The SatelliteGuy of the Year award is given to the member who has shown the true spirit of what SatelliteGuys means, helping others get the most from their satellite systems.

The 2005 SatelliteGuy of the Year winner will win a beautiful award and $500 cash!

We hope you will join us for the party the awards ceremony!

For the most part that will close out 2005 for us… But get ready because we have a LOT of things in the works which are going to open up 2006 with a bang!

As I always say… STAY TUNED!

All the best to you, welcome home to SatelliteGuys.US!

 

[Stargazer]

Don't forget the satelliteguys.us plaque that he/she will also get.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

That is the Award.

I am actually looking at the Trophy Catalog now, last years came out NICE.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

By the way in my note above I forgot to mention something.

We have began to work on the 2005 SatelliteGuys Holiday Channel.

Any suggestions or ideas for this annual tradition please let me know!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Just an update, we have just spent $400 to boost our new web server from 1 GB of ram to 2 GB.

The reason this was done was because I noticed we were using some swap file. I want everything to be in memory and not comingoff the slower swap.

As soon as I find out when the ISP will install it I will post it here as they need to take the server offline for a few minutes.

 

[Neutron]

How can we go about nominating a SGotY?

I LOVED last year's holiday channel. I'd say don't change a thing!!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Because of all the stuff going on this year, I did not get to setup a voting system for SatelliteGuy of the Year, in addition doing so is hard as I want to make sure no one is stuffing the box.

So this year it will once again be myself and my wife looking over all the members seeing who has done the most for SatelliteGuys and who has been the most helpful with other members.

I have a few people in mind, not sure who my wife has in mind but I am sure we will have a good argument about it until we pick a winner.

 

[BFG]

I bet I can predict this year's winner and without Neutron pointing out a reflection in the award

 

[goaliebob99]

I dont think its gonna be me

 

[Mr Tony]

Lets see

Iceberg has less letters than Sean Mota so it will fit

 

[Neutron]

I bet I can predict this year's winner and without Neutron pointing out a reflection in the award

LOL!! I remember that. Not my fault the entire name wasn't covered up last year....

 

[Roger]

Is the Holiday Party on the net or for real? I'd like to win the X-Box.

 

[korsjs]

in the chat room.

 

[mikedz4]

I think I should win the guy of the year of the award. Yeah will never happen, I know.

 

[Purogamer]

Ya know, i'll bet it's not every day that iceberg says he could fit into a space better than someone else...

ya know? Ya know! =)>

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Well most of tonights work is done.

I am now rebuilding the search index which will take a few hours, then we are done for the night.

There is a chance that the web server could be offline for a few minutes later tonight as our ISP will be doubling the amount of memory in the server. I am told by our ISP that we could be down for up to 1/2 hour for this upgrade. (However I only expect it to be down for a few minutes.)

 

[rad]

I guess I'm the only one that thinks things are slower. Over the past few days pages have been slow to load if at all. This happens on different systems via different network connections. Example, it took 10 seconds from when I hit reply on this thread until the page completed loading. Ping times to your server in the mid 40's and my processor util is <10%.

 

[Purogamer]

Honestly, I think we should all just wait until the "work" is done before we issue any more complaints. I think scott has over-reacted a bit to the complaints and we should wait for the dust to settle before he goes changing hardware again. He'll buy another GB of ram if another few complaints come in...

Let's just wait a few days and see how things go. Sometimes the site works super fast, sometimes it really seems to be struggling. Moreso than a few months ago when it was great all the time. I don't know if it's a hardware issue, or a high-users-in-the-morning thing, or what, so let's all just wait a few days and then start posting how things are going.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

We are still tweeking things as well. Last night I was busy moving databases, importing databases etc.

All night I have been rebuilding the search index and now I am working on the beta site.

This upgrade did not need to be done now but it would by December / January and I have a lot on my plate those two months so figured it was best to do it now.

I feel it is best that we add the extra memory now, while we are only using 12 MB of swap space I feel its best that we use no swap at all. And while 12 MB of swap space is not a lot it will grow over time so its best to nip it in the bud.

Also he server move is not complete yet, we still have a lot of things running on the old server, in addition on the new server we have services running which should not be. Its going to take some tweeking until we get things just right.

From where I sit I love clicking on a link here and having it pop up on the screen almost instantly.

 

[BFG]

I'm still getting the occasionaly "request" timed out" when clicking on links in satguys