Why so Quiet? And Feedster Delivers 10% the Hits of Google ??????

Sorry I've been so quiet on the whole Feedster front.  I've been heavily revising the crawler / loader architecture to use Etags so I request RSS feeds less relying on the "if modified since" http header.  I **think** its working but if anyone notices any oddness, just flag me down.  You know how.

Now this just shocked the heck out of me -- I was over on the utterly hilarious Adrants site (which is highly brilliant, by the way) and I happened to glance over their referrers, something I tend to do rarely.  And I saw that Feedster is apparently delivering 10% of the hits to them that Google does.  Go figure.  My "little part time project".  How very, very, very odd.  Picture of this since referrer results change.

And if you just plain don't get why Feedster is really useful, Rick Klau says it perfectly (better in fact than I do actually, even on Feedster's About page):

Practical use of this? Set up Feedster queries for you, your clients, your competitors, your friends... you get the idea. If anyone is talking about things that matter to you on a weblog somewhere, you'll know about it. Within the hour.

Thanks Rick.  Oh and in case anyone is curious, we've served over 12,805 rss feeds to more than 1,000 distinct users since we started tracking.  Not too shabby.

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Be Still my Beating Heart or KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

Ack!  About 1.5 hours ago, the mouse on my Windows 2000 box just went *Virtual Poof*.  It just went away.  So that started what I call "The One Handed Restart Two Step".  One handed since a Windows box w/o a mouse is like typing with just one hand.  So I **finally** saved everything and restarted.  And I see:

KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

Run in circles, scream and shout.  Ack Foo!  Note that I did not say what module it appeared in.  Windows 2000 helpfully did not tell me.

Go to another computer and Google for information (how do people w/ only 1 computer live?).  Basically I found out that:

1. This is bad.
2. Usually related to hardware changes -- but I've made NONE recently.
3. This is bad.
4. Also check power management.
5. Also check video drivers.
6. See items 1 and 3.  Run in circles once more scream and shout.  Let's not talk about backups, shall we?

Try booting in Safe Mode.  NOPE !  Try booting with last known good profile.  NOPE !  Anyway, to make a long story short, I started disconnecting external hardware figuring that it was easier than opening the case.  Kill the Firewire hard drive.  NOPE !  Look for another video card.  Can't find one.  So on a whim I pulled all USB devices and **Bingo**.  Booted like a champ.  Increasingly I find USB stuff to just be ***bad*** and ***unreliable***.  Maybe its just me but ...

Motto: If you get KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED, disconnect all USB devices and restart.  Worked for me.  No where on Google or Microsoft's web sites will you find this recommendation (afaik) but it worked in at least one case.

Total time lost?  Like 2 hours or so. 

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Email Newsletters Not Just Worth Getting But Excellent

I'm not a fan of publishing via email.  I tend to view almost all non person to person content via email as just plain old spam.  Heck I even founded a company that makes software to manage spam for Microsoft Outlook (it actually does a lot more than that but it is a major function of the product).  So I was very, very surprised this morning when:

1. I read an email newsletter.
2. I thought it was excellent.  Not just worth getting but excellent.

Which newsletter you ask?  Lockergnome Windows Daily.  If you aren't getting these then you really should try them out.  Recommended. 

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