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November 02, 2004

Hooboy-- the Internet is Jumpin' Today

Instapundit seems down, and I'm having getting through to a Slate article I want to link.

Mu.Nu seems to be okay, though. I was hoping for huge traffic on this Blog Christmas, but maybe huge traffic would just shut the whole server down.

Anybody else having this problem, or is it just a problem with my local routers (whatever they are)?

Update: Okay, now the amateur leftist webzine Slate is pretty much down.

Instapundit, Powerline, LGF-- so many of the heavy hitters are out of the game right now.

Excellent.

posted by Ace at 02:32 PM

Comments

With the first round of exit polls everything started going in the tank. Command Post, NRO (just ads though), Instapundit etc. The talking heads on TV must have mentioned blogs or something...

Posted by: James on November 2, 2004 02:38 PM

You seem to be carrying it today Ace! :) I can't seem to get thru to my other regular stops...you're it dude! You've got me freakin' out about VA thought...I thought I was gonna be solidly in the Red Zone! :( News from my local vote drop-off site...Reston, VA (Burb of DC): Relatively tame here...the Reps and Dems appeared to be on their best behavior. Had to wait in line for about an hour and a half. I knew that most from my area were going to be Kerry supporters (based upon tax contributions looked up on the net for my zip code) but I decided to wear my Bush/Cheney shirt just the same. Nobody spit on me...and some even made polite conversation! I literally was the only person there (that I saw) with Bush/Cheney paraphenalia...saw a bunch of Kerry/Edwards buttons.

Posted by: on November 2, 2004 02:40 PM

Missing In Action:

Insty
HogonIce
N.Z. Bear
Michelle Malkin
Slate
NRO is spotty, but mostly there
PowerLine
Chicago Boyz
LGF
Treacher

Sigh. Gonna be a long day if we have to watch MSM...Thankfully, Ace is here!!

Posted by: Joan of Argghh! on November 2, 2004 02:45 PM

Ace--

Blogger is sluggish. Fine for posting, but you have to hit refresh a lot on the pages.

Of course, I got a nice link from Jonah Goldberg in the Corner, so I'm also dealing with an avalanche today.

Just keep at it. Like a Viking.

Cheers,
Dave

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on November 2, 2004 02:51 PM

They all use the same server is what I think. I noticed this too.

Posted by: Rusty Shackleford on November 2, 2004 02:52 PM

I seem to be down, or really hit or miss. That's a first since I moved to Hosting Matters.

Posted by: Nathan on November 2, 2004 02:52 PM

You, and Roger Simon, and Hugh Hewitt are the only blogs I can get onto. So blog furiously. I'm trying to work, and it's not going too well.

Posted by: Dianna on November 2, 2004 02:54 PM

BTW...that no-name post above is moi. Sorry...got ahead of myself.

Posted by: Jo Baker on November 2, 2004 02:54 PM

Can't get into blogspot.

Posted by: ccwbass on November 2, 2004 02:56 PM

Jay Cost is up, which is the key place for non-stomach-churning news/analysis.

Posted by: someone on November 2, 2004 03:03 PM

I've got a downstream trace-break once I hit Alter.Net's OC12. My wife says she loaded instapundit @ home just fine, and my RSS feed on MyYahoo is updating...but I can't get to any hostingmatters site from the office. Including command-post.org. ARGH!

Ace, keep us in the loop! You and other MuNuians are our only hope!

Posted by: cadrys on November 2, 2004 03:04 PM

Can't even get to Hostingmatters.com. Think the lefty's are attacking?

Posted by: TakeFive on November 2, 2004 03:05 PM

Wonder if it has to do with this sort of thing:

"PA.: ALLEGHENY COUNTY GOP HQ IN PITTSBURGH WITHOUT POWER [Chris Lilik 11/02 03:01 PM]

According to several reputable sources, the Allegheny County GOP HQ in Pittsburgh just had lost power. Because the office building at 125 Seventh Street is without power, telephones, computers, and other office machines are unusable, a huge blow to Bush supporters hoping to remain competitive tonight in this key area of the country.

While it is still not clear the cause of this electrical problem, politics could potentially be a factor.

The Democrat Headquarters across the street and other surrounding buildings are said to be with power..."

Posted by: someone on November 2, 2004 03:11 PM

I'm wondering how the BlogAds folks are gonna feel about the most significant traffic of the year being blacked out by faulty servers...even if they have been hacked. Hosting Matters didn't see this coming?

Posted by: Joan of Argghh! on November 2, 2004 03:14 PM

The net must be slow because of all the undecided voters getting online to get info on how to pull their heads out of their asses!

Posted by: Wild Bill on November 2, 2004 04:58 PM

This is part of why I wanted to get us all onto the new server last weekend.

The other part, of course, was those goddam monkeys.

The new server seems to be just cruisin' along. Not a care in the world. :)

Posted by: Pixy Misa on November 2, 2004 05:25 PM

Remember, folks, all of MuNu is up! Go here for a complete list of MuNu blogs.

Posted by: Pixy Misa on November 2, 2004 05:26 PM

Yes, I meant to thank you and congratulate you for that.

Better a little outage on Thursday than today.

Posted by: ace on November 2, 2004 05:27 PM

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The Deplorable Gourmet
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Top Headlines

TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

TJM acts like he knows anything about John Wick and screenwriting. It's embarrassing, really.

Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!

Oh, I forgot to mention this quote from Pete Hegseth, reported by Roger Kimball: "We are sharing the ocean with the Iranian Navy. We're giving them the bottom half."

Batman fires The Batman
Batman is disgusted by the Joachim Phoenix version of Joker
Batman tries to fire Superman
Batman is still workshopping his Bat-Voice

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Red Leather Suit and Sweatband Edition
And I was here to please
I'm even on knees
Makin' love to whoever I please
I gotta do it my way
Or no way at all

Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

Sec. Army recognizes ODU Army ROTC cadets for their bravery and sacrifice in private ceremony
[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]

TJM gives you a brief tour of his movie collection.

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click
One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter
One day I'm gonna get that faculty together
Remember that everybody has to wait in line
Oh, [Song Title], look out world, oh, you know I've got mine

US decimation of Iran's ICBM forces is due to Space Force's instant detection of launches -- and the launchers' hiding places -- and rapid counter-attack via missiles
AI is doing a lot of the work in analyzing images to find the exact hiding place of the launchers. Counter-strikes are now coming in four hours after a launch, whereas previously it might have taken days for humans to go over the imagery and data.

Robert Mueller, Former Special Counsel Who Probed Trump, Dies

“robert mueller just died,” trump wrote in a truth social post on march 21. “good, i’m glad he’s dead. he can no longer hurt innocent people! president donald j. trump.”

TJM has thoughts on Superheros and Iconography

Canadian School Designates Cafeteria And Lunchroom As "No Food Zones" For Ramadan
Canada and the UK are neck and neck in the race to become the first western country to fall to Islam [CBD]

Chuck Norris, Action Icon and 'Walker Texas Ranger' Star, Dies at 86