Dave Ambrose

It's definitely an addiction. Creativity plus modelling is a hot ticket. Hot rodding is basically kitbashing with real cars. When I build model hotrods, I take great pleasure in swapping things around in a semi-believable manner in a quest for something a little different, and presumably cool. Probably the reason hot rods are the largest category of kits in my stash.

I've been getting updates for a few days. The type of failure we had might have gotten us marked as a spammer, and consigned you your junk folder, or perhaps blocked altogether. Sometimes this designation takes a while to reset. We know that AOL is blocking our emails. There may be others.

My wife came in with the news. We lost Chick Corea. I know at least a couple of us here were fans. He was an innovator, and all these years later, his music still sounds good. Glad I got to see him in concert. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/chick-corea-obit-1127283

The notification problem should be fixed. There may be some delays in getting them. One of the mail queues is completely overwhelmed, and we may have to clean that one out with the Big Ferrous Hammer.

Thanks. We found one obscure problem last night. I'm not getting forum summaries either. I'll keep digging. I am getting PM and some administrative notifications.

Update: Notifications look to be working again.

Guess I'd better include Shasta, my little build buddy. She has a bed on my hobby table, and she also likes to use the Titan IIIc box as an out of the sun bed. She's miffed that I finished that project (finally) and tossed the box.

Update: The short story is that the mail program on our server is down. The hosting company is still working on problem. It's been escalated, and should get some high-powered attention tomorrow. .

We're having a problem with our outgoing mail server. Our hosting company is working on it.

Email notifications aren't working. We're still trying to diagnose the cause and fix it. I'll keep you posted.

I tend to look at private equity deals with a jaundiced eye. Usually, the firms come in, find a way to turn asset value into special dividends, then go bankrupt, sticking all the suppliers, bondholders, and employees with the losses. The British press appropriately refers to this as privatising the profits, and socializing the losses. There does seem to be a different type where they invest in companies that need "patient capital." Plastic models is certainly one of these, and hopefully, this deal will be in this category. Science fiction modelling is one of the growing categories, and I wouldn't be surprised to see investment there. Star Wars is an enduringly popular franchise, and getting a license is big. I gave my grandson one of the Revell X-wings, and a year later, it's still one of his favorite toys. Given China's treatment of intellectual property and tooling, it may well make sense to manufacture in the US. Makes for good press, and you might be able to make it work if you set up in an enterprise zone, or work out some incentive deal in a depressed area.

We seem to be having some problems with notifications. I'll be diagnosing those tonight.

Update 4: Migration is complete. All looks good so far, but let us know if you encounter any problems.

Update 3: Final migration is scheduled for 11 AM, Pacific today, Jan 28th. If you have anything you're thinking about posting, consider holding off until this evening.

Nei eieieieieiei gh! It took me a while to figure out why the horses always made a fuss when her name was mentioned.

Update 2: New server is in place, and it checks out good. I've given them go-ahead to do the final data transfer. The site will probably go offline tomorrow, Jan 28, while the final cutover happens. You may get various errors including "Host not found" while this is happening, and possibly afterward. Please bear with us as it can take up to 24 hours (but usually doesn't) for old information to get purged from the Interwebs.

That's a great idea. I'll see if I can change the default. You can also define your own activity streams too.

It's pretty high up on my list of things to do. But, it will happen after I get us moved in to the new server.

Update 1: The new server is up and running. We will be doing a data migration sometime very soon. I'll try to make it more graceful, but you may get a time out for the entire site.

It shouldn’t affect that, but you’re going to have a much harder time finding a modern browser that will run on XP. Add to this the insecurity of that OS, and you seriously need to upgrade.

At long last, the forum and main website will be migrating to a new server. We'll try to keep the disruption to a minimum, but I don't yet have a hard and fast schedule for any offline time. Our hosting company will coordinate with me as best they can, but there are likely some factors that are beyond our control. The new server should be faster and more responsive than the old one. We're also upgrading the underlying server software, which is a necessary security measure. If you find the sites offline, please bear with us. We'll have them back as soon as we can. I'll also update this posting as more information becomes available. Update 1: The new server is up and running. We will be doing a data migration sometime very soon. I'll try to make it more graceful, but you may get a time out for the entire site. Update 2: New server is in place, and it checks out good. I've given them go-ahead to do the final data transfer. The site will probably go offline tomorrow, Jan 28, while the final cutover happens. You may get various errors including "Host not found" while this is happening, and possibly afterward. Please bear with us as it can take up to 24 hours (but usually doesn't) for old information to get purged from the Interwebs. Update 3: Final migration is scheduled for 11 AM, Pacific today, Jan 28th. If you have anything you're thinking about posting, consider holding off until this evening. Update 4: Migration is complete. All looks good so far, but let us know if you encounter any problems.

We support both encrypted (https) and unencrypted (http) urls. We have a fully qualified SSL certificate, but the site doesn’t automatically redirect the unencrypted requests, hence the message. we do have all the appropriate countermeasures in place and I’m going to try to fix the redirection problem when we upgrade the server.

You can read the board without logging in. Seems that lots of people do that.

I inadvertently discovered that if you start swearing like an angry navy chief in the goat locker, the voice response systems will sometimes route you to a rep who can actually help you. And yes, I can be quite the potty mouth under some circumstances.

Hmmm. . . looks a bit like my backlog XB-70 Corsair Rutan's voyager Lockheed Vega (don't tell my dad) PBY Catalina P-38 SR-71 I have a whole 'nother list of imaginary flying machines.