Fuck if I know what happened

I've been trying to get the mail notification functions to work, so I haven't tried to log onto the forum until around 2:00 p.m. my time. That's when I saw the entire site wasn't available.

The domain name isn't resolving. I can reach it with http://216.97.239.204/. The forum won't work that way though. Some people have had some luck reaching the site via http://crazymeds.us with no www. The forum may or may not be accessible that way. I can't reach the site with just the crazymeds.us address.

I can ping crazymeds.us and www.crazymeds.us but I can't get a traceroute past vpl20-sd.lunarpages.com before the traceroute times out. The traceroute fails for both the domain name and the IP address.

I've tried restarting Apache and even a reboot, neither made a difference. Restarting Apache from the command line gives me:

[error] (EAI 3)Temporary failure in name resolution: Cannot resolve host name crazymeds.us --- ignoring!

I haven't done anything with the DNS entries since the initial setup. When I look at them they seem fine and named service is running. Everything was working well last night.

Overnight I was bombarded with a tremendous amount of spam that other people were trying to relay through the site, but as far as I can tell it wasn't delivered. I had over 6,000 e-mails in the queue and I've already deleted them. I hope nothing got through. I thought I had that door closed, but I guess not.

In any event I've opened up a ticket. This time I know to check my e-mail before passing out, which is probably going to be early.


Edit 10:08 pm Mountain time: I wanted to pass out early, but that ain't happening. We're back up. Many of you may not have noticed a thing. The problem was literally all over map as to where Crazy Meds was available and where it wasn't. I'm curious as to what caused it and all, but I'm not losing any sleep over it. I'll post some more of the weirdness later.

It's about fucking time.

The forum seems to be alive again.

There is no guarantee as to how long this will last.

I've seen a little funkiness here and there. Report any problems on the site problems board, or here if you can't log on.

E-mail notification isn't working yet, but I expected that. Due to the high volume of attempts to use my new server as a spambot, starting before I logged on for the first time, I've practically shut down the mail system.

I'll be tweaking stuff here and there. Response time is a bit slow at the moment, so I'm trying to track that down as well. Otherwise, have a part.

Where in hell is Major Kong?

So, what have a managed to accomplish since nine o'clock this morning?

Fuck All.

It looks as if the tech people reinstalled MySQL after all. I got a shitload of files all over the place, including what looks like a full dump of the databases along with a duplicate of the entire directory tree of where the MySQL data are stored. My storage skyrocketed from 2% to 5%. I guess I can keep it for as long as required.

I can't find the log entries that tell me exactly what the fucking problem is with the database. I've been trying to get better logging from MySQL and that's been pretty frustrating as well. At this point I don't know if there aren't enough data to give me something to look at or if I still don't have it right. Please, try to connect to the forum. The more failures the better. I guess.

phpMyAdmin is just fucked, though. I'd love to reinstall phpMyAdmin with a newer version, but from everything I've read, nobody seems to have had any luck getting newer versions to run with Plesk.

Fucking Russians and their fucking Plesk. You'd think in Siberia they'd have nothing better to do than get the fucking code right. Instead they were probably drinking. Or, worse yet, making sure their software would work only with some shitty knock-off of phpMyAdmin that their down-on-his-luck cousin coded.

No wonder Plesk does all sorts of random shit all the time. If it's not phpMyAdmin fucking up it's the log management function crashing. Or something else that gets pissed off because it can't find the SMTP or MySQL or DNS services running. Even though if you look at them through the Virtuozzo panel or the Linux shell the fucking services are running.

Hence the title of this entry.

The Night Shift is Taking a Look

Just got an e-mail from one of the junior system admins. He's stumped as well and is referring the problem to Parallels.

I let him know that re-installing MySQL is an option, as importing the database isn't that big of a deal now that I know about breaking up those two problematic tables into smaller chunks and have already done so.

I don't know where the Plesk software people are. It was originally developed in Novosibirsk, and they're GMT +7:00. The original Parallels is based in Switzerland, but the company that gobbled them up and assumed their name is in the Seattle area.

The Schadenfreude begins to your right.-------------------------->

It makes everything more tolerable. Really.

The Pros from Bangalore are looking at it.

The tech support team are looking into fixing MySQL. I wouldn't be surprised if I broke it, because I'm really good at breaking stuff in new and inventive ways.

I exported discrete chunks of the big files that gave me trouble from the old server. Previously I just overwrote the existing file with each export. I kept the export of the entire database. This is all just in case MySQL needs to be re-installed.

Down, Not Across: Suddenly a Viable Option

I figured out the problem regarding the blank screen. root owned everything. php didn't want to run if a root-owned file was being invoked by someone who isn't wrote. Understandable. Easy enough to fix.

So now I can see what the actual problem is.

Somehow mySQL was installed in such a way that nobody has permission to do a fucking thing.

Not root.
Not the mySQL admin account that was already installed.
Not the IPB user I created who is the DB admin for the IPB database.
Not even the mysql account in linux.

And after going through the fixes involving grant tables and everything else the only thing that chaned is Plesk won't recognize mySQL as running. Just as it earlier stopped recognizing SMTP as running.

Which means I see fuck all through Plesk.

And mySQL is still fucked up about denying access to everybody.

Why do I think the solution is re-installing mySQL? Because my life has to keep getting worse?

Of course it does.

Down, not across. Looking better all the time.

Then again, maybe not

I don't know what the fuck happened, other than my writing about it being a relatively painless process. I should have known better.

It was working this afternoon. Really, it was.

I did the easy stuff, checking permissions and the global config file. Beyond that I'm too out of it. We're on the new server and that's the way it is. It's not a server issue or anything like that. I can't bring up the admin panel, but I can bring up phpMyAdmin

I'll figure out something tomorrow.

Crazy Meds Talk Forum is up and running

We're on our slick new server. How long it will take to propagate all over the InterTubes is anyone's guess.

Forum performance is much better.

Guests are once again allowed to view the forum, and all of the old features are back.

I'll still be tweaking stuff here and there, so expect a few hiccoughs. Otherwise we're good to go.

All in all this was a relatively painless migration, accomplished in less than 48 hours and not once did I have to remind myself of alt.sysadmin.recovery's motto:

"Down, not across.".

It's been 17 years since I was the sysadmin of a box running *nix (SCO Unix, if you must know) and it's been close to ten years since I last had a shell account on a *nix system where I could do much of anything. So this really happened a lot quicker and quieter than I had originally thought.

I still need to sleep a lot for the next couple of days. I'm not used to 'pushing' myself like this on all of these meds.

I'm fried

I'm really fried now. I'm still plugging away at trying to figure out what's up with the missing 30,000 or so posts. I don't know what the correct number is. The table in the database on the current server has ~44,000 rows, but the stats show ~38,000 posts. Either way, I get the same 13,895 rows no matter how I try to export the table.

Something is funky, because it's the same number of rows when I export the entire database or just that one table. Plus the missing rows are all in the middle somewhere. The very first and very last posts all show up.

There's a utility called bigdump. I can't process how it works. The other recommendation from IPB is no longer supported. I'm going to try exporting 10K rows at a time. That I can do without thinking.

I'm seeing people on the forum. The thing is offline. I'm the only one who should be able to poke around it now.

At least some other stuff was taken care of.

While I still can't access HTML files via the IP address, the sites shows up as expected via the VPS preview using the domain name. The reason why it all stopped working after turning on the VPS software is that document root needed to be changed from /var/www/html to an entirely new and custom directory. Surprise!

Plus the VirtualHost stanza now takes up more than a full screen.

As if often the case when the support person took a look at the DNS entries they were just fine. That was a fast self-correction too, as she got back to me in about 20 minutes.

named and syslog are running as processes, the services just don't appear to be running according to the VPS software's panel. Entries are being written to my logs. Lots of entries, as I have Apache set to debug for now.

Because I'm seeing the index.html page through the preview I'm going to assume, for now, that named is running and there's a bug in the VPS panel.

If I don't get a response about the nameserver problem by tomorrow I'll e-mail support directly.

Edit 7:18 p.m. Mountain Time: exporting 10-30K rows at a time from the two tables that were giving me problems worked. The IPB database has been migrated to the new server.

Since they sent their usual follow-up e-mail, I asked the Bangalore support team about the nameserver issue. I don't know if it's their area, but they've been pretty quick with any problem I've had.

So Far, So Bad

What do I find this morning?

1) The only reply to my ticket regarding the name server issue is that they received the ticket.

2) The DNS information on the new server is gone.

3) After I re-entered the information everything reads *crazymeds.us. instead of *crazymeds.us. Plus I'm not sure if I made the entries correctly.

4) named refuses to start.

5) HTML access via the IP address is still gone.

Edit, 10:13 Mountain time

6) I was finally able to transfer the forum's database. We're missing only 30,000 posts or so.

As of 8:00 p.m. Mountain Time

I'm trying again to import the forum MySQL database. The phpMyAdmin balked the first time. I'm just going to let it run and check it again later.

Somehow in getting all of the Plesk stuff set up I managed to clobber HTML access to the IP address. It's not an Apache thing because it didn't even get to Apache. I think it's some nameserver funkiness or something, because sometimes when referencing specific pages via the IP address I would hit the existing crazymeds.us domain.

So I'm trying to update the DNS entries with the new nameserver information. The new IP address is all set up, but the old domain refuses to let go of the existing nameservers. I opened a ticket.

The meds have told me I've had enough for today. Although it seems like nothing has happened, a lot has. I'll pick this up tomorrow.

Let the Migration Begin!

I'm starting the migration to the new server now.

What that means is the Crazy Meds Talk forum won't be available until whenever I'm done.

The static pages on medications, etc. will be available until I update the DNS entry with the new IP address. Then they'll be back up after what is I hope will be the brief time it takes to propagate said change. How much longer after that until the forum is ready is anyone's guess.

I'll post any updates as required.

Let's make it the weekend.

I asked the IPB tech people about what it takes to move from one server to another. After reviewing the instructions it doesn't look too difficult. Not easy, just not impossible.

So here's the current plan: I'll take the forum offline sometime the evening of 3 July and run a bunch of housekeeping. I'll give myself the entire weekend to get things up and running. Whenever it's done, it's done. Check here for progress reports.

If we're not up and running by a decent hour on 5 July, I'm throwing in the towel, buying the graphic control panel and paying someone at IPB to do the install. If they can't do the install before 10 July I just hope I'll have managed to save all of the data that make up the forum because I really, really don't want a version 10.

Still working on the upgrade

Apache is happy. But there are still some things I need to do.

This would have been a one day install if I were willing to pay a couple hundred more dollars for a control panel with a graphic interface. Then everything is, for the most part, completely installed. As it is I'm having to do the work myself. And I really didn't want to spring for a graphic interface that I'd rarely use.

It didn't help that I had a major panic attack yesterday and couldn't see my shrink. I spent the entire day sleeping or just dozing in a lorazepam haze.

I'm hoping I'll have it done by this weekend. If not, then I'll probably need to have the graphic interface installed. Nothing like getting to pay for all that frustration.

Probably not today

It's unlikely we'll be changing servers today. Apache isn't being my friend.

Anyone who knows their stuff about Apache 2.0 & Linux, especially the CentOS flavor of Linux, I have my plea for help posted here.

Server Upgrade

I'm moving Crazy Meds to a new server. The forum performance sucks too much ass crippled as it is, and I'm tired of the version with its limited capabilities.

If all goes as planned (HAH!) the move will happen tomorrow, sometime in the morning (Mountain Time, GMT -6). I don't yet know how long it will take. I hope to have a better idea later today as I'll attempt to move the forum files today as a dry run for testing purposes. I'll update this post later once I know either how long it will take or if I'll have to move the IPB files when no one is on the forum.

Update 13:35 Mountain Time: Some obscure Apache setting, or something along those lines, is preventing the site introduction from being seen when the IP address is used as an URL. I put up four files as a small test of various things.

The domain host's tech support people are looking into it. I'll be getting an e-mail when that is dealt with.

Update 17:17 Mountain Time: An e-mail from the domain host shows up, but it's a reply about something else. Grrr. Thanks to the meds I'm too tired to do anything else today. The move to the new server may or may not happen tomorrow.

R.I.P. JG Ballard

Key Words: Epilepsy-Sleep-Orgasm. Epilepsy and sexual activity may be related in the following ways:

1) hyperventilation provoking seizures during sexual intercourse; 2) reflex epilepsy provoked by orgasm or other sexual stimuli; 3) tactile genital sensations as part of the epileptic aura; 4) orgasm and sexual hallucinations as part of the epileptic aura; 5) sexual automatisms during or after a seizure; 6) abnormal interictal sexual behaviour; 7) ictal somatosensory sensations in the genitalia.

Normal marital sexual behaviour was reported. At age 38 she developed frequent, brief, nocturnal somatosensory seizures. The episodes usually awakened the patient after falling asleep and consisted of a sudden sensation of electrical discharge in the neck, which spread to the right leg and lasted a few seconds. The right leg jerked at the end of each seizure, with paresthesia in the right lateral abdominal and pubic regions and about her genitalia. A sensation of vaginal dilatation ensued immediately afterward, which inevitably brought about either a pleasant or a painful orgasm. During these episodes there was no confusion or memory loss; she was bewildered; in fact, because of her religious beliefs, such orgasms were hard for her to accept.


Crescendo of sharp waves and spike discharges. The sensory representation of the genitalia lies in the paracentral lobule. The epileptic symptoms of the patient correlate well with epileptiform activity recorded on the central-parietal region in the waking EEG and during
sleep. The spreading of paresthesia from the abdominogenital area to ipsilateral nipple did not occur. Orgasms in our patient ensued immediately after the genital sensations, as if they were a step in the sensory march. Although she did not exhibit apparent consciousness alteration, the
ictal polygraphic recording showed generalization of focal paroxysmal activity accompanied by autonomic changes. These findings suggest that the orgasms might be the result of the spread of focal epileptic activity into the hypothalamus but without disruption of amnesic mechanisms.




The pathogenesis of orgasm. Cases of ictal orgasm:

1) a 55-year-old woman with a right parasagittal meningioma who began to manifest paroxysmal nymphomania at age 43. The initial paroxysms awakened the patient with a feeling "of being hot all over as if she were having coitus." Afterwards she also had left somatomotor seizures and developed left hemiplegia. 2) a patient who described "unusual sensations about her genitalia that were similar to those of a sexual orgasm"; the EEG revealed diffuse abnormalities. 3) a 43-year-old woman with a right parietal glioma, developed paroxysmal, painful, and frightening orgasm on two occasions with left leg jerking. 4) a 36-year-old man with a right parasagittal parietal meningioma, developed painful and anxiety-provoking paroxysmal orgasm, accompanied by left leg jerking. 5) a 55-year-old man with a right parasagittal meningioma who had seizures that began with aching pain in the left leg. This was followed by spasms of the left leg and then ejaculation without erection or other genital sensations.




This long-overdue tribute to J.G. Ballard is brought to you by



I Used To Like Sex, Now I Take Paxil t-shirts.








Pictures from Jon Haddock's project ISPs (Internet Sex Photos) -- Pr0nography, digitally edited to remove the figures.

Text is excerpted, edited and rearranged from the paper Orgasmic Epilepsy Jesús Calleja, Rosario Carpizo, Jose Berciano Epilepsia Volume 29 Issue 5, October 1988

I have previously written original fiction in the style of Ballard from his 'Concrete / High Rise' period (The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, The Concrete Island, High Rise) to go along with some of Haddock's ISPs. Today I came across the paper on orgasmic epilepsy and thought the late Mr. Ballard would have appreciated said paper. The lists, the descriptions, all of the nervous system pr0n. Three of the four stories omitted from the original version of The Atrocity Exhibition, but included in the expanded, annotated and illustrated edition published by RE/Search, are taken almost verbatim from plastic surgery journals. They are 'Princess Margaret's Facelift,' 'Mae West's Reduction Mammoplasty,' and 'Queen Elizabeth's Rhinoplasty.'

I'm currently reading the RE/Search edition, and have a few other Ballard books I haven't yet read all queued up. Once I heard the news of his death it was all a matter of when I have the cognitive capacity to appreciate them.

Tipping Point

I think someone brought in a mail-order nanny on penis cake day.

This interlude of warmth and fuzziness is brought to you by:

My Doctor Can Beat Up Your Doctor shirts










Image from Dark Roasted Blend: Lovely Ladies of Yesteryear (in B&W) via FFFFOUND!
Caption from Overhead in the Office.

Ironic forum status change

It's the ultimate irony. I'm always getting on everyone's ass about the search function being everyone's friend and other snarky ways of telling people to search for stuff first before posting a question about a side effect they mention on the TV ads. Now I have to go and disable the IPB search function.

There really shouldn't be a board busy signal when only two people are on the forum.

The IPB search function is superior to the Google search for a number of reasons, especially the part about finding something posted a couple minutes prior to your search. Unfortunately our already stretched-too-thin resources are taking a hit from it. The Google search is done by Google. Life sucks then you die.

I'm finally getting over what I've had for the last 2-3 weeks, so I'm back to looking into a VPS.

What could possibly go wrong? Daikaiju will kill us all!

As has been pointed out by Jon Stewart et al., in all of those movies where the world is going to be blown up by terrorist asteroids or everything is going to freeze due to global warming if that mutated virus doesn't kill everyone except Charlton Heston and Will Smith, the President of the United States of America is black.

I grew up on a diet of daikaiju eiga. Gojira was first awakened/created by an atomic bomb being tested. Various meddlings deep below the floor of the northwest Pacific Ocean were responsible for his return or the appearance of of other giant monsters. Earthquakes and/or typhoons were often involved. So what's been happening lately?

North Korea launched a 'satellite' that crashed into the ocean. And they detonated an actual atomic bomb, instead of a fake one like the last time.

If that weren't bad enough, the Japanese government has funded an earthquake prediction program that involves drilling four miles into a trench in the Pacific Ocean. Work has been interrupted the past few days due to one hell of a storm.

What could possibly go wrong?

Atomic tests and nuclear-ready rockets launched into the NW Pacific while they're drilling holes into a bigass trench to predict earthquakes! Each of those events alone account for the first 15 minutes of half the Japanese giant monster movies I've seen, and I've seen a lot of them. Together it's like every metalhead on the planet got together on the Pope's birthday to sacrifice goats while playing Black Sabbath records backwards. In front of Jack Chick's house.

Seriously, what could possibly go wrong in either of those scenarios?

I'm glad I moved far away from the coast and now live half a mile above sea level, because those things aren't limited to attacking Japan any more. Gojira, Radon, Varan, even freaking Mosura and Gamera might show up just about anywhere. They've been known to get pissed off about climate change and crap like that as well.

Although either the kaiju or the humans shred the mountain forests in The War of the Gargantuas and Gamera vs. Gaos. I'm probably safe from the genetic engineering that spawned the former, but there are plenty of precocious brats around here already doing time or community service for burning the scenery as the annoying brat wanted to do in Gamera vs. Gaos.

Safety in Stupidity

First an update on Crazy Meds: Kit noticed an error with the drug-drug interaction checker that's all over the place. For some idiotic reason I coded the link as a secure (https) connection instead of vanilla http. Maybe it was because you could create an account with your cocktail and check impending changes. As if anyone using Crazy Meds actually does that. It's difficult enough as it is to get 90% of the people on the forum to use that tool at all.

In any event the secure connection works only if you're willing to permanently add an exception regarding POZ's expired SSL certificate. They're the same people. Really. I'll be changing everything to http soon enough. Although I may have to deal with something else first...

Topamax has gone generic, which means I'm on generic topiramate now. Has that been a lot of fun. The switch to generic lamotrigine was simple. Teva good, Dr. Reddy bad. Topiramate isn't so simple. I'm getting aurae some days, other days I'm knocked out as if I've taken too much, and other days are just right. This inconsistency in the bioequivalence between each tablet of the generic and brand Topamax is really fucking with me. Should I ask my pharmacist if they can get the generic from another manufacturer? I can try another if available, but I've heard that this problem is widespread. I just wish I could find some documentation.

The aurae have a common trigger: crossword puzzles. Or anything else that requires logical or any other type of thinking. Woo-hoo, the thinking (noogenic) reflex seizures are back! Trileptal gave me reading seizures, where my left arm would violently straighten out whlist I was reading, usually online. Apparently I had short absence seizures most of my life when working on complex arithmetic and/or logic problems.

I asked the Google and PubMed if there were anything in the literature about crossword puzzle-induced seizures. Google pointed me to an exerpt from The neurological side of neuropsychology - by Richard E. Cytowic - that cited Reflex seizures induced by calculation, card or board games, and spatial tasks: a review of 25 patients and delineation of the epileptic syndrome as including crossword puzzles in the list of seizurogenic activities. Google also found Seizures induced by thinking where crossword puzzles are mentioned in the article but not the abstract.

As for PubMed itself, Reflex epilepsy evoked by decision making: report of a case states that crossword puzzles were used as one of many potential ways to induce seizures. The abstract doesn't make it clear if crossword puzzles did anything. In any event the article is in Italian.

This sucks. Not because I'm a big crossword puzzle fan. I just started doing them as a form of mental calisthenics. I was doing the cryptoquote, as pitifully easy as single-letter substitution codes are, for the same reason. That just isn't going to happen until my doctors and I figure out this mess. Protriptyline lowers one's seizure threshold, and at 50mg a day I'm getting close to the maximum dosage. Like most almost all TCAs protriptyline is metabolized by CYP2D6, and my liver probably squeezes out a drop or two of that stuff every other day. Protriptyline has a 74-hour half-life, yet has to be taken three or four times a day to work. Now I understand why Dr. Stahl paraphrased the Merck Manual regarding Vivactil (protriptyline) and how its complicated pharmacokinetics result in its being rarely prescribed. Anything else with a half-life of three days I poor metabolizer like me could get away with taking every other day.

Add to that I'm taking methylphenidate, which lowers the seizure threshold. Allegedly methylphenidate inhibits the metabolism of TCAs, but that's based on nothing but case reports. Of people taking imipramine who were also taking more than their prescribed amount of Ritalin on a daily basis. The effect has never been reproduced in the lab. Hmmmm...

But I never had a problem prior to switching to generic topiramate. And the combination of methylphenidate and protriptyline is used for all sorts of wacky and/or refractory conditions. That has my name written all over it. Yet with Topamax as a third-tier drug the fight with the insurance company might be too much. An increase in the dosage of topiramate and/or lamotrigine would be easier.

Until then I'm going to have to stay stupid. I tried to pick up on a puzzle I left off and started to get a headache and tingling. It went away after I stopped. Until I started looking up stuff for this post. Again I have an aura with the headache, tingly hands and feet, and my vision is getting a bit funny. Perhaps it's to the point of no return (writing-induced seizure, they're all related), but I think I need to explain my limited presence with periods of total absence for however long it takes to fix. This is may yet be another day I'll to have to write off with lorazepam and too much sleep. I can't remember most of Sunday and on Monday I was so groggy from the extra-strength medication I needed on Sunday I thought it was Friday for most of the day.

For your edification and amusement, some articles on the subject of seizures induced by thinking:

Higher brain function as precipitant of seizure

Self induced noogenic seizures in a photosensitive patient

Reflex writing seizures in two siblings with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy.

Mah-jong epilepsy: a new reflex epilepsy.

Mah-Jong-induced epilepsy: a special reflex epilepsy in Chinese society.

Two examples of Epilepsy Engrish:

Toothbrush-thinking seizures.

Reflex epilepsy evoked by specific psychic activity. A case report.

Crazy Meds Talk Forum Status

What we have as of right now is what we're going to have until further notice. That means no guest viewing, no site stats, no calendar and there's going to be only a limited amount of activity allowed at any one time.

So I'll probably have to upgrade to a VPS.

Please, no more suggestions regarding domain hosts and/or forum software. Changing either is too much trouble. Free isn't worth it.

The Map is the Territory

The new political reality of Europe, as seen by Yanko Tsvetkov. A.k.a. ArtWerk.

Best viewed at ArtWerk's Flickr stream, as there are all sorts of notes as well.

Franklin Veaux's map of the countries, provinces and various territories in the Lands of Human Sexuality:

At the website the map is about three times the size you see here, although clicking on the picture one or more times (depending on browser, setting, etc) should get you the full-size version. Better yet you can place pins into the different territories regarding stuff you've tried and liked, didn't like, haven't yet tried. Your own map can be saved and embedded in your own pervilicious blog.