The EfU server will be going down shortly, and then being shipped to a new and professional hosting service. Hopefully the server will be back up within a week or so. The server will definitely continue to go very strong, and I know we have a fresh crop of new Dms with some excellent ideas and energy. Server performance will probably be better than at any point in the past.

Keeping EfU will be expensive, so now more than ever any kind of donations to the Paypal account are gratefully accepted.

Finally, my time with EfU will be continue to be sporadic at best. Please consider me a semi-retired DM, keeping an eye on things but not actively DM'ing or building in the way that I used to. PMs or inquires related to on-going plots or administration business should be directed to other DMs.

It's been an privilege to have started this project, and been involved with it. I appreciate everyone who took the time to help contribute to the project in any way. I certainly don't plan on dropping off the map, so this is definitely not a goodbye, but anyone who wants to get in touch with me can as always e-mail at howlando@gmail.com or send me a forum PM.

Estimated delivery time via Fedex is the 26th of July. The -fastest- I could get it going would be sometime on friday, but that's only assuming everything goes perfectly, which probably won't happen. What is more likely is that I will have it up in kind of a 'beta' state over the weekend with a limited number of players, and it being possibly passworded like it was during alpha and beta during that time. That way, I can get it ready for the install, which would then (hopefully) be monday.

I'll be taking at least a day off off work and the day's pay for this, so you all better be thankful! :)

http://img407.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fedexkf4.jpg

Fedex certainly stopped by my place yesterday, but without a roommate able (or willing GRRR) to answer the door, they left the door tag that just everybody loves to see. We'll keep our fingers crossed today.

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/9666/dsc00722hg4.jpg

http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/4647/dsc00725cp0.jpg

We aren't out of the water yet....

Exile Strife says, 'Thumbs up!'

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/2445/dsc00727nj7.jpg

That doesn't actually mean anything, nor do the covers on my bed.

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/2357/dsc00732dl5.jpg

If you can guess what these are, you'll probably understand why the server is now not going to be up on schedule. God damn...so close.

Everyone has probably had enough time to guess by now, so here's the story.

A few people on IRC might have saw me ask, "Is anyone around?" and follow that up "I want to test the server in a moment." I was pretty excited, since it was just about time to push all of this forward. At the time, I was stress testing the new server configuration with the top cover off. Right after typing that, I went to put the cover on to make sure things worked in both cases. In my hurry though, I did not take the moment to ensure the seven hundred foot long power cables from the power supply were clear of every spinning fan, and as I closed the lid, instead of experiencing a moment of relaxation, I was startled with a sudden *SNAP* and an internal terror that could cut steel.

What my eagerness cost me were those four broken fan blades you see in the above picture, as well as the thirty dollars it's going to take to purchase and ship a replacement. I spent a very long time attempting to super-glue the fan blades back on in perfect orientation, and when I had finished, I had a near-perfect product. At 2000 rpm, it functioned like a near-perfect product too. At 6500 rpm, things change, and I could definitely start to hear a low beat frequency growing in intensity, which is the sign that the fan is out of balance with failure imminent. So, now, I get to buy a replacement, and everyone else, unfortunately, gets more time to find other things to do with their lives.

My bad! :(

The replacement fan:

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/8425/uspspq2.jpg

This is really the worst experience ever.

Since it's going to be a little while longer, I decided to remove one of the processors and put the server up. Details are in the #EfU topic. Go wild and have fun for now.

Edit: It will be down while I sleep. From ~10/11 PM CST to 7 AM CST. It's loud.

you are such a nancy xD

Look at them go!

http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/8396/dsc00733of7.jpg

That's out of the way now. Sometime early this upcoming week, The server will be shipped off to it's new permanent home where it will enjoy the beach and soak in some sun.

If I work my ass off tonight, I'll be shipping the server tomorrow. In the case that I procrastinate, it will be shipped on thursday. This means the server will be down until sometime next week (most likely). My guess is monday or tuesday.

I'm posting from work: The server has just left my hands. I'm using our company's shipping service to save a few bucks, though I'll have to admit it was kind of an odd process figuring out where to put down addresses and who's name to stick on them. At least for a day, "Escape from the Underdark" is now a real company! :P

There is a garenteed delivery by the 22nd of August. With my experience, it's likely it will be there by the 20th. I don't know how long it will exactly take for the colocation facility to get everything set up, but I spent these last two days ensuring that the only thing they will have to do is plug in the ethernet cable they told me they would use, and a power cable, and everything should smoothly come up at that point. (It powers up automaticly without needing to press a button. Pretty slick ^_^)

At that point, the server should be back to running 24/7 and with the cap raised back up to 50 or so. My guess is latency will be about the same, as we decided to use a cheap tier 2 provider instead of a more expensive one. I don't think latency will be much WORSE than it was before, at least. Time will tell.

The server should also hopefully show up on gamespy automaticly now, too. That problem was related to the personal ISP I have in my appartment blocking off some of the ports needed for it to function. At least players were able to connect!

The upcoming projects will probably be a revamp of the website (which is already underway), and then I am going to take some time into investigating if there is a way to get the NWN server to be multithreaded, or at least in some way take a greater advantage of the hardware we are currently using. I have some ideas already, so I'll see where that goes later.

Google maps tells me that the server is sitting in a shipping distrubution center that is 14 minutes away from it's destination. Argh! Come on, move it, gooooo!

UPS says it's delivered. Now I'm waiting for a call from the datacenter, or an email, or possibly a holographic image to form in front of me.

Once they say the server is set up and turned on, I will be running a offline stress test on the machine to verify it runs without locking up (either from overheating or power issues) in it's new environment.

After that, a quick OS update.

After that, I'll turn EfU back on with about 20 players and the password it had before. This will run for about 12 hours to a day and will be used to verify that it's not crashing repeatedly for some new odd, strange reason. Hopefully, if there aren't any issues, we can blow the doors back open again.

Looks like we're back online, 50 slots and all!