Fixed the Paypal Donate button

I guess the Paypal donate button (to the right on the Flaming Family Web Page). It is now fixed.

High Tech Crossword

I think Mom wants an iPad. She's definitely enjoying the NYT Crossword Puzzle app on my iPad.



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Location:Whalley Pl W,Seattle,United States

Wheeler St Kitchen

Nothing says yum like Butternut Squash Soup with a hint of curry, a Pulled Pork Shoulder Sandwich with Caramelized Onions and Garlic Mayo, and a side of 'Slaw.




It was so rich, even I couldn't finish it!

I must say I'm loving living this close to so many great places to eat! :-)

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Location:W Wheeler St,Seattle,United States

Grand Canyon North Rim Lodge Cabin

Thought this was so cool in iMovie I made another video...this one I set to auto play in HD.

Grand Canyon - North Rim Lodge

I thought this was cool and I had to share.

I took this video on my camera (a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7) of when Mom, Dad, Terrie and I went to the Grand Canyon back in September of this year. I had uploaded the video and pictures to my iPad but here is where it gets cool. I took the video and imported it into an app called iMovie for the iPad. With that app, I was able to modify the video as you see and then upload it to a couple of movie sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. By the way, if you have a Google account, you have a YouTube account and a Picasa account so you can upload both your pictures and your videos and post them here from your smartphone (iPhone, Droid, etc.) or tablet (iPad, Android tablet, etc.).

Here is the video on YouTube...

Here is the video on Vimeo...

The Grand Canyon - North Rim from Dean Flaming on Vimeo.

A view of the Grand Canyon from the North Rim

Email Up and Running...

In case you didn't notice, Email is back up. The following is from the service provider.

I figured I'd share this as I could definitely feel their pain in this situation - having been in it myself.

Another Outage, Really? Yes, really. I regret having to write to you again so soon, but the latest outage of our IMAP/POP3 email was a very severe one that lasted for over 30 hours. After the last outage, we thought we had fixed the issues, but there were obviously some lingering, unforeseen bugs.

What Really Happened? Let's start from the beginning... A few months ago, we migrated all of our hardware out of a data center in San Diego. San Diego was where email was originally housed. Upon moving, we changed the structure and hardware that was handling IMAP/POP3 in order to make it more reliable and redundant.

We added new redundant switches, raid controllers, storage servers. Even the Ethernet links that connected these were redundant. After much testing, we decided on Oracle's OCFS2 filesystem, but that is where the trouble came, the one part of the system that could not be redundant: the filesystem. Bugs cropped up after the structure was put into production. We worked with Oracle to have them fixed, but their patches were no help. After the Nov 2nd's failure, they then proceeded to update our case to "Severe", but we never heard from them again.

After some trial and error, we were successful in getting the filesystem mounted in a read-only state. Instead of waiting for Oracle to figure out how to allow writes again, we began transferring the email to alternate hardware with a known reliable filesystem. The time estimates were made on how long it would take to move the data across the network. But email is a funny thing that way, the hundreds of gigabytes of data was not the problem, it was the shear number of tiny files being created on the filesystem. Some accounts had over 200,000 files that were only a few hundred bytes long. This is why our time estimates were so grossly incorrect.

We were in the dark just as much as you were as far as a time frame for when the data transfer would be completed. It was a long and painfully slow process.

Is IMAP/POP3 stable now? Yes, it is now structured the same way that it has been for the past 8 years. During those 8 years, we have never had any major outages, so we are confident that this solution is the right one.

So, what happens now? We have come to realize that managing email has become far more costly and time consuming for our small team to manage in house. We could hire more staff and purchase bigger, more expensive hardware, but this would in turn drive up our low prices and our customers would suffer. So, we realize that we should ultimately focus on what we do best, Managed DNS.

In light of this, we are joining forces with an email provider that has the time and resources to manage millions of email accounts effectively. They also have an uptime history of 99.999%, so outages are out of the question.

Does this mean No-IP will no longer manage my email? Not exactly. We will still manage your email, but another company will be maintaining the infrastructure of your mail. All support calls for IMAP/POP3 will still be directed to us. Mail forwarding will also be handled by the new company.

But what about my other Email Services: Alternate-Port SMTP, Backup MX and Mail Reflector? No changes will be happening to these services. We will still be managing all of them in-house and will continue to provide support for any issues that you have concerning these products.

What will the transition be like? Most importantly, will I still have all of my data? All of your emails, contacts, and calendar items will be transitioned as part of the migration process. The only difference you will probably notice is in the webmail interface, which will be different.

Will there be any downtime associated with this transition? Although we are still in the planning phase of this transition, we are hoping to have little to no downtime during this transition, and if there is downtime, it will be kept a minimum, during off peak hours.

We hope that you stick around with us. Email is going to be the same low price that it has always been, and it will now be backed up by a solid 99.999% uptime guarantee and honestly, you won't even notice a difference in your email, well except for the uptime ; ).

Email is important and that is ultimately why we have reached this decision.

The transition to the new service will be as painless as possible. There will be little effort on your end and we will be doing most of the legwork. At most, you will probably have to update a record or two.

You will be receiving information in the coming weeks with information about account migration.

In light of the recent outage, we are offering you a free month of email service, and have already added it to your account.

We thank you for your continued patience and for being a valued customer of No-IP. If you have any questions about anything, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Email Down

It seems email has been down by the service provider... No-IP has had several issues with email over the last day or so. For updates, see @NoIPStatus on Twitter.com or the No-IP.com Support page.

Additional Sonora Resort Pictures

I thought I'd post some of the other pictures we took while at the resort over our anniversary weekend.

Here's a shot from the helo while coming in for a landing.



Below is a shot of the passage from our room.



Speaking of our room, Terrie had to get shots of our fridge. All goodies inside are part of the room rate and no additional charge...along with calls to anywhere in the world.



Can't forget what's in the door...



Here's another shot of our view and room.



Terrie took me "for a drag" (i.e. Translates to "hike [with intent]") the next day (we took the BLUE trail as Terrie thought that'd be the easiest - what part of that was the "easiest", I'm not quite sure)...



...and the views (once we made it to the top of the world) were beautiful.



At one point while taking the above picture, Terrie was gesturing and couldn't tell if this meant we were at the "location of intent" or if she was holding something.... ;-)

Turns out she was just holding up the bear bell. Whew!! ;-) Let's just hope she's not "calling" a bear in. :-o



After recovering from the above "near death" experience (wink wink), we went on a boat cruise (You see what I mean by the word "intent"? For those of you who are not aware, water is another potential peril of mine.). It was just the two of us, our captain, and hostess (thank goodness there were witnesses this time). ;-)



Our Captain... He works for the resort and takes many parties out on the water throughout the day doing such things as fishing trips, eco-cruises (dolphins & whales, etc.) and more romantic cruises such as what we did.



Our hostess... She was sitting in the back as we were preparing for a somewhat fast run down to another area.



The boat cruise was really cool (and no, I didn't fall in or get wet).



We were able to see all sorts of wildlife...





Note the many heads sticking out of water in the above picture.

...some neat scenery...


Thank goodness it was really calm.







...and some uber-rich person's cool toys on one of the nearby islands.






And let's not forget Hers and His boats below....




After the boat ride, we came back and had dinner. I must say, they have the most wonderfully prepared meals. For dinner this night, I had the pasta and Terrie had the crab.



For lunch both days, I had the Sonora Burger....which was absolutely, hands down, the best burger I have ever had! It's their own mix of meat and spices - a combination of ground steaks. Even the homemade fries were great!


For a lunch side on the last day, I requested a plate full of their fresh grown tomatoes. They are absolutely wonderfully fresh tomatoes! You can see them in the background of the above picture.

On the day we left, it was rainy (to be expected in the Pacific NW - especially within the Inside Passage). Therefore, the helo flight back was mostly around the 300ft elevation level until it started clearing up. Fun!



Terrie and I on the flight back...



Coming in for a landing was really fun...



Taxiing up to the terminal where we took off, we noticed it was next to the air ambulance terminal. As you can imaging, Terrie had some flashbacks to her previous occupation. :-)





All-in-all it was a fantastic and wonderful weekend.

We both agree, Sonora Resort is a very cool place!


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Location:Sonora Resort, Surge Narrows, British Columbia, Canada

Sunrise at the Resort

How can you beat waking up to this?




Here's a better shot of just the sunrise.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Sonora Resort, Surge Narrows, British Columbia, Canada

Surprise Anniversary Trip!

So, I'm sure some of you knew this already, but Terrie surprised me for our 18th anniversary by taking me to the famous Sonora Resort in British Columbia, CA.

In case you're wondering where it's at, it's a 45 minute helicopter flight up the Inside Passage, North West of Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

NOTE: For all images, click them to see larger versions.

In the below map of the Inside Passage and Vancouver Island, see the blue dot in the upper left corner - this is where the Sonora Resort is located.



As I said, we took a helicopter flight up to the resort. The flight was out of Vancouver right next to the International Airport. This was my 1st time ever on a helicopter! For you aviation types, it was an Agusta Westland AW-139 helo. Here we are (below) watching our fellow passengers board.




Of course, the weather turned out to be great which made the views spectacular!



The resort is quite stunning as well...



...and the room is very, very nice (apologies for my corniness)!

We're told we could see bears on the property too!!

Stay tuned! More to follow!

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Location:Sonora Resort, Surge Narrows, British Columbia, Canada

Blog Updates

If you're wondering why the multiple re-posts, it's because I updated a number of their settings on the blogs and accidentally unpublished and republished those articles.

Apologies...

Lunch in The Burgh

Just got done having lunch at a little Mediterranean cafe called Daphne Cafe here in Pittsburgh.

Terrie had the Daphne Wrap...lamb, tomato, lettuce, onion in a flour tortilla.



I had the Daphne Panini...Provolone cheese, tomato, beef pepperoni, and a special red sauce in a panini toasted bun.



We, of course, both had the Humus for an appetizer. This was awesome!

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Location:Ellsworth Ave,Pittsburgh,United States

A Kindred Soul

Terrie found a shoe store with a kindred soul (pun intended).



The store is Little's of Pittsburg.

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Location:Forbes Ave,Pittsburgh,United States

Lunch in The Burgh

Just got done having lunch at a little Mediterranean cafe called Daphne Cafe here in Pittsburgh.

Terrie had the Daphne Wrap...lamb, tomato, lettuce, onion in a flour tortilla.



I had the Daphne Panini...Provolone cheese, tomato, beef pepperoni, and a special red sauce in a panini toasted bun.



We, of course, both had the Humus for an appetizer. This was awesome!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Ellsworth Ave,Pittsburgh,United States

A Kindred Soul

Terrie found a shoe store with a kindred soul (pun intended).



The store is Little's of Pittsburg.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Forbes Ave,Pittsburgh,United States

A Girls Day...

Terrie took her niece, Kelsey, to the mall today to get their nails painted, hit the Disney store, and grab a slurpy.

Looks like it was fun!



These are definitely not bullet toes! These are orange sherbet toes.



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Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day! Don't forget to thank all those who've served our country!



Today we all went to the Memorial Service at Willamette National Cemetery. It was very good and very patriotic.

The Howitzer salute and flyover were awesome!

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Location:Willamette National Cemetery, Outer Dr Portland Oregon 97086 United States

Good Wine, Good Food

Mom, Dad, Terrie and I just got back from Wine tasting and Dinner in Dundee, OR. The winery we wanted to taste at was the Argyle Winery - which has a wonderful Champagne called Argyle Brut (our favorite).

After wine, cheese, and crackers, we went across the street and ate dinner at The Dundee Bistro where Terrie and I shared a wonderful hummus...



...Mom had a bun-less Burger and Fries, Terrie had the Fish...



...and Dad and I each had the Pulled Pork Hoagie (Yum!).



And poor Dixie didn't get to come...but she did get leftovers (lucky dog)!



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Location:Dundee,United States