This Geek

(Thanks Drusky)

Server hard disk crashed, so the site was offline for awhile.

Had lots of fun recovering the disk. Did a bit-for-bit image of the old disk to the new one, and the problems followed along. sigh

So we repartitioned from scratch without using LVM (Which I suspect was causing the problem the whole time),  and manually copied everything over.  Thankfully that worked without a hitch.

I then decided, in my genius, to attempt an OS upgrade.  That went more-or-less smoothly; the few issues I had were resolved rather quickly.  Since the new OS upgraded the PHP and MySQL to version 5, I had a few issues with my sites.  This one had a problem with one of the text formatting plugins (I’m tired, so the name escapes me right now), so I had to disable it.  If any of the entries look funky, that’s why.  Hopefully there’s a bug fix for the plugin soon, cuz I kind of like it.

The other (more serious) issue I had was transferring my vbulletin forum from its backup host to this one.  I didn’t think there would be much of an issue, since the backup host is running PHP & MySQL 5.  Turns out that Murphy has a sense of humor.

There’s an obscure bug with one of the queries that vbulletin runs when it opens a forum for viewing that causes MySQL 5.0.0.21 (or whatever) to crash.  Fun fun.  Thankfully the guys at vbulletin.com have a temporary code fix to sort out the issue until a new version of MySQL comes out.  It took me a frikkin’ age to get the patch applied (had to do it manually unfortunately), cuz I was tired and I just could not grasp what I was doing.  The code block that I had to change was about 20 lines or so, but only about 3 lines actually changed.  I must’ve tried the patch about 5 times before I realised a missing brace was stuffing me around the whole time.  Arrrgh!  It was really annoying, because you go through a stage (after about the 3rd attempt) that you start thinking the patch just doesn’t work in your environment.   Thankfully that was not the case.

In other news, updating on the Sleep Apnoea bit; I got a call from the neurophysiologist, and she told me that according to the sleep lab tests, I test positive for Obstructive Sleep Apnoea.  Joy.

I get to go do another sleep lab on the 7th where they’re going to test CPAP on me.

I’ve been a snorer for many years. It’s never really bothered me much though. Lately it seems to be bothering my wife alot; I don’t know why all of a sudden, it’s not like it’s a new thing. Anyway, I finally decided to go see my ENT about it.

I told him my symptoms:

• I snore no matter what position I’m in (I could be standing on my head, and I’d snore)
• I wake up tired
• I fall asleep at the drop of a hat
• I struggle to stay awake while: driving, watching tv, sitting in a meeting, etc I also mentioned that I’ve been told several times by different people whom I’ve kept awake with my snoring that I stop breathing for short periods when I sleep.

He told me that surgery works very well. For three months or so… So he’s not an advocate of surgery. Good thing that, because I’m not a particular fan of it either, and I’ve read some scary stories by people who’ve had surgery to “cure” sleep apnoea. Now I have to contact a sleep laboratory, and get hooked up to all sorts of machines for a sleep test. (My only question is: How do I study??? :D)