News Item - August 30, 1999 08:39 PM
RichZ from 300Z.com & I have gotten together to relaunch 300Z.com in it's newest incarnation. Rich likes to update (read totally revamp) his site from time to time. This is the most radical change I've seen it go through (I got a little sneak preview) so far. SO... we're having a little prize give-away to go with it! :-) Stay tuned for more details later this week.
Written by Dallas DamonZ
News Item - August 27, 1999 01:29 PM
Well, finally success. We upgraded to SQLServer 7.0 today primarily to take care of issues with case-sensitivity in the 6.5 database. It worked! The upgrade went very smoothly and was completed in about an hour. After some quick testing we turned everything back on and hopefully you are now enjoying much faster performance from the site.
Most notably: 1. The user directory should be MUCH faster now. 2. Directory search should work much better and correctly now. You can search on MODS :-) 3. Logging in with your screen name should be just as fast as logging in with your ID
Written by Greg (Dallas)
News Item - August 20, 1999 02:39 PM
We're having SQL database issues galore. It's not capable of keeping up with the lunchtime load (101+ online at once) in it's current configuration. I'm getting SQL 7.0 & the version upgrade + re-installing without case sensitivity (Why you have to re-install to remove this option is ridiculous, who's the genius at Microsoft that made it that way???) + re-configuration should solve the deadlock problem. What you get to see is all the lag time between page returns, because every access is an access on the member database.. blah blah blah.
Now on the access counter, I think it's AWESOME that some people can spend as much time reading/contributing to the betterment of the forum as they do. I know I spend what I consider too much time on the list & I'm down in the bottom of the top 25. Those 3-4 up on the very top of the hill. WOW! is all I have to say, BUT, let's not get all wound up in the numbers. It's just an indicator of how much activity that member has. We don't base anything on these numbers, except using them as an indicator. I could set it back to 0 for everyone today (and probably will when V3.0 rolls out) & Jack B, RT, RH, etc. would still be on top in short order, because they spend more time here then anyone else (probably). Some people feel the need to turn this into some sort of competition base on how high your numbers are, which segues into...
I have NO clue what your access numbers are before you get bit by the 'tragic' access counter reset. It's a bug in the software that occurs during high load periods. If your counter crashes back to 0, I apologize, but I can't do anything about it. If for example (if I jinx him with this, I'll make ONE exception) Jack B.'s rolls back to 0. Well, sorry. To be 'fair' to everyone else, I have to leave it alone since I don't know what it was before. Why Jack B. for the IE? OK, OK, I know we document the top 20 or so about every 3rd day on the open forum, so I could put his number back to something close to what it really is, but we're back to the 'fairness' thing. Which relates back to the "We don't base anything on these numbers" which equals 0. See where I'm going?
Greg is unofficially starting a new job. Congrats to him in his new capacity (I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is the one where he starts a Dallas office for a Ca. software company). I'm off doing some wheels-off freelance stuff, so between the two of us, there's basically no time to work on the current forum, or V3.0 software. V3.0 is doing better, but until we can get the new SQL stuff happening, it's reached it's maximum potential for now. :-/ Also to speed in login, we've always given the option of entering your member ID number in the screen name blank. Please use your ID number when logging in, otherwise doing the search for your screen name is a database slowdown. If you don't know your number, go HERE, it's the number at the top.
Using Member Directory Search will probably fail too, for the same reasons everything else is slow above.
RIDES submits were caught up the other week. If you submitted in the last couple days, you're in the next batch. Otherwise your page is ready to start by editing your member profiles.
Remember, we don't get paid for this, it's a very involved hobby. So don't cop an attitude with us if something is wrong. It will in no way benefit you here, like it won't most anywhere else. We do the best we can to keep this thing on the tracks & since it doesn't cost you a single dime if you don't want it to (visit the sponsors!), then drop the attitude when there is a problem of some sort. We'll try to correct it to the best of our abilities, but I can't promise anything & we don't sit and monitor this thing 24-7 for problems. For those of you that know this, I'm sorry to repeat, but there's a lot of newer members that just don't know the details of how all this admin stuff works for this site.
News Item - August 09, 1999 06:19 PM
Ugh... Lot's of changes going on in the V3.0 software to make it fast enough. Glad I don't get paid for this stuff, cause someone would be riding my backside right now. :-) Greg is probably going to switch jobs shortly, which is great for him, but V3.0 goes on the back burner for awhile. Oh, well.. at least what we have now works good. :-) I added a couple much needed FAQ pages & trying to keep up with the RIDES pages & TECH pages in the meantime. Just thought you should know what's up right now.
News Item - June 28, 1999 07:20 AM
No update in awhile. I've been buried at the office with a huge project, which I'm still working on. Greg has been out of the loop for the last week. Who cares, right? Well, this means no development on the V3.0 forum. We had a small beta test & the actual scripts work fine. The Perl programming language libraries need some beefing up though. With a low load, it (the libraries) couldn't keep up, so we're having to upgrade the Perl & get some software acceleration for it to handle the 78+ member high side server loads. Greg has done some tests with it & says it makes it really fast due to the way it keeps the scripts compiled & in the RAM of the server, instead of executing each individual script. :-) Bad news is we have to do some revamping of the scripts to make them work cleanly with the different software. Depending on work schedules, this could take some time. As always, Greg & I have real jobs that pay the bills, this site is a hobby (an intense one), meaning we don't live & die for it. Don't get irritated when something doesn't happen when/as quickly as you think it should, I'm talking about working on new requested features, RIDES pages, stickers, T-shirts, etc..
The forum is moving WAY too fast. I know there's a lot of traffic through here, but a lot of it is idle chit-chat adding nothing to the archives. The VtD feature does pretty good, but I'm probably going to start making sweeps of the forum deleting 'noise' from the forum. I'm as guilty of it as the next person, but I see what it does to the forum. If your message disappears, deal with it. Don't start complaining about 'my message got deleted, <insert insult here>'. Sorry, if it's BS, it's out. Think about what message got deleted & why it might have gotten deleted, it'll probably be VERY apparent. Sometimes this will include Z related posts. I'm talking about the lifestyle with the Z posts. Sometimes they're fun, other times it's just a waste of space. We have to re-focus the forum, because we veer off track too often (yes, this is partially my fault), for awhile we had a nice balance, but now it's lost, so we'll do our best to get it back. We could sit on our hands like some other forums, but I've got too much time & money involved to see it go downhill now.
New members to the forum need to go thumb through the FAQ section & check out the titles there. I don't expect you to read everything, but I'd really like it if you would remember where to find that answer to 'how do I remove the shift knob'. Also Appendix Z in the FAQ section provides a fairly complete glossary to the terms we frequently fling around here. It's a bit spartan, but I think you'll be able to get the info you need to follow the conversation with out having to ask the inevitable questions. We made it for a reason, use it. Also, take a read (yes, read) the ForumFAQ in the FAQ section. This forum has a LOT of features you won't find in other forums. Please learn how to use them to make your time here better spent & not irritate other members when you continually re-post the attempt at posting a picture of a wheel.... use the [ Preview ] feature instead... See what I mean?
News Item - May 29, 1999 04:19 PM
Our 1,000,000th site hit was from Chris B., Congrats! Here's the rundown of the hits around it:
News Item - May 28, 1999 02:24 PM
1,000,000 is looming ever closer! You've probably noticed the counter is 'hidden' now. Why? Well, the 1,000,000th hit gets prizes!!! Courtesy & SGP have donated prizes for the 1,000,000th visitor. Courtesy is giving away one of those snazzy T-shirts with the embroidered Z and 'Twin Turbo' across it you've seen in a couple posts here lately. I have one, they're very cool. :-) SGP is giving away an SGP T-shirt and the newest addition to the 'SGP stuff' line-up, the SGP tuner oil cap! We'll also throw in the last set of www.twinturbo.net stickers! We've got the counter printing out the hits once we get really close, we'll show you the results of the race for 1,000,000 once we know who the winner is. If the winner accidentally happens to be a newbie that's not yet logged in, the prizes will go to the next 'known' visitor. You'll see it in the results! Congrats in advance to the winner!!
News Item - May 25, 1999 01:24 PM
We're wrenching away on V3.0 in the background. Sometimes we don't get things quite right the first time, overloading the server or otherwise fouling things up. I apologize for the down-time, but it's the price for progress. Now we've pretty much done the stuff we wanted to do to improve on the current version of the forum. We're starting to examine the way the other areas work, For Sale, Events, etc. Here's YOUR chance to let us know what would make things easier/faster/better. We're always looking for improvements we can't think of, or hearing how you use the forum differently from the way Greg & I do. Send mail to Suggestions@TwinTurbo.NET to let us know what's on your mind. This is very important to us, so we can give you something 'customized' to your tastes. I can't promise all ideas will see the light of day. That doesn't mean they're bad, just maybe they don't fit here or are beyond the scope of what we're up to. I guarantee they will be read. I'm going to leave this account open from here on out, so any future ideas can be mailed to us and safely filed, instead of posted and overlooked.
T-Shirts: Right now, I'm in the process of getting artwork done, getting printers lined up, etc. Stay tuned for this. Also going to get more window stickers printed, along with larger rear window stickers. I promise, more carbon-fiber ones this time!
RIDES entries keep flowing in, if you're interested in submitting pics of your Z for the RIDES section, check here for details.
News Item - April 23, 1999 05:49 PM
Hadn't updated news in a bit... Greg & I are feverishly working on the second generation of Twinturbo.NET with a lot of new features to make browsing easier/faster. The new forum will look a slightly different, as we're going to try out a fully SQL based message system in the next couple weeks on our test forum. Greg's got the basic stuff operating & I think it's pretty cool! We've got some nice surprises in store, so stay tuned!
Something small but useful, the Search page is upgraded... Check it out!
If you're interested in a Twinturbo.NET T-shirt, just let me know you want one & what size. Shirts@Twinturbo.NET If you've already set me mail on this, I've still got it. I'm looking for people that might have missed the posts last week.
News Item - March 23, 1999 01:31 PM
All my news stuff has been aimed at the Z Concept Action letter writing campaign. Here's the skinny: We started sending e-mails to Corporate Nissan about 3 weeks ago and collecting written letters to be bundled along with pictures of prowd owners and their Zs. I want to take a sec and mention a LOT of them were from 240-280Z owners and Z31 owners as well, it wasn't JUST a Z32 effort. I thank each of you that came over from other sites to participate. I sent off the last batch of e-mails yesterday. 103 total. This morning I got a reply: "You don't know how helpful these have been. but you will soon" Jason Vines, VP Corporate Communications, Nissan USA. I'm mailing out the 26 written letters today. It appears as though we really HAVE made some sort of impact over there. :-)
Now, to help with getting folks motivated to write, we scored some prizes from our sponsors. Here's the list of winners:
For snail mail, $50 SGP gift certificate:
Mark West "WeST" west@cyberrealm.net
For snail mail, Z valve-stem caps from SGP:
Ryan Davis "ryand" davisryan@worldnet.att.net
For snail mail, Nick + Roxanne T-Shirts from Courtesy Nissan:
Arthur Golebiowski "Arthur" zzzzmydust@aol.com Jonathan Howlett "YellowTT" jonathan.r.howlett@jci.com Phuong Tao "got rice?" gotrice10@yahoo.com Chris Ham "JCH" jimham@ixlmemphis.com Jennifer Bowden "Jen" JBowden21@aol.com
For e-mail, $25 SGP gift certificate:
Red3ooZX@aol.com
For e-mail, Nick + Roxanne T-Shirts from Courtesy Nissan:
billw@connect.ab.ca Good2Zya@aol.com money@collector.org MVANMETER@aol.com schoemf@mtco.com acapsouto@earthlink.net stevez32@yahoo.com KSchenholm@aol.com mag_bag@istar.ca
I want to thank JoshZ & TomB for gettin things rolling. I also want to thank everyone who participated. Courtesy & SGP want to thank everyone who participated as well. I want to thank Courtesy & SGP for helping out. This really was rather successful! You're welcome! It looks like we might have really done something here!!!! =)
As far as the site goes... um, Greg and I have been cleaning up a few things and working out some bugs. Please be patient, some of these things are just hard to track down to crack them. Arthur sent me a pile of stats on the Z32 from Motor Trend and Automobile magazines. I've compiled them into Z32 Stats in the Z32 FAQ. I left in the comparisons to the other cars in the tests to show how the Z stacks up. The one with the Viper, NSX & Vette is interesting from a cost standpoint.
Nothing else to report right now...
