User talk:TheRealLurlock/2012 01

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I'm back, sort of.

Well, it's been a long break, but with Skyrim out now, I'll probably have to get into this again. I don't actually have the game yet, nor much time to play it, so I won't be contributing a whole lot like I used to. In case anyone wondered or cared where I've been, I've gone back to school to get a masters in game programming. It's a fairly intensive program and it eats up pretty much 100% of my game-playing time, so I won't have time to get into Skyrim as anything other than an observer until we go on winter break. (I'll probably want to wait until there's an editor available, personally.) But if there's need of my admin-ly duties (as it appears there may be - with a whole bunch of people being given temporary admin status for the Skyrim rollout), I'll be around. A bit. And probably not on the Skyrim pages until I get a chance to play it, so maybe that's not worth much. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 14:04, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Welcome back, and congratulations on going back to school! Anything you could help with would be great. I'm not nearly as active as I used to be either, with a little mini-me running around here now, but there's always something that could be done. Shoot someone an email, if you want, and we'll loop you into the recent off-site admin discussions. A lot of staff has seemed to be in IRC recently, too... --GK^talk2me 15:50, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Great grief, here's a name from the dark! Welcome back - even if I'm late. I remember thinking you must have been involved with Dragon Age - Hurlocks, etc. Let us know how you want to get back to business. rpeh •T•C•E• 22:25, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

So - no sooner did I post this than the site went completely down for me for over a month. Today is the first time I've been able to load anything on this site since November. Even now, I'm just seeing the default layout with no CSS, and it takes me 10-20 minutes per page just to load that. Are we completely swamped by all the Skyrim traffic or what? I've been trying to log on every few days and getting nothing until today... --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 02:09, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Good to hear from you again, Lurlock!

I'm not sure what's been happening that's preventing you from accessing the site. Since November 19th the site has been handling the traffic pretty well, without any significant outages. The fact that you mention not having the CSS makes me suspect that the issues are with firewalls at your end. For a couple weeks CSS was being served from port 81, which caused it to be unavailable to a few readers who were trying to access the site from work. On the other hand, that issue was fixed on December 7th, so it shouldn't still be affecting you right now. Are you using the standard www.uesp.net URL or some non-standard URL? What browser are you using? Are you using a phone/mobile device or a standard computer? Are you trying to access the site from a location that might be blocking access to sites? --Nephele^Talk 17:49, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - problem is fixed now. Apparently the peer-block program I was using was complaining about the ads on the site and blocking everything as a result. It's not really supposed to do that - I mainly use it to stop potential malicious scripts and spy-ware. This isn't the first site to have a problem with it, but so far it's the only one to completely not work at all with the program running. (Other sites might be partially broken in places, but they don't appear to be totally dead like this did.) Now that I've turned it off, everything runs fine.

Incidentally, I've noticed that the only two ads I've seen so far are one for the ad service itself and one for UESP. Seems a bit weird that we'd have an ad for our own site on our site, kinda pointless since you're already here, obviously. And the other one doesn't make much more sense either. What's the point of an ad service that only advertises itself? --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 21:57, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Welcome back, TRL. Long time no see! I'm not sure why you're only getting such a limited selection of ads. I've gotten a bunch of different ones, but I've never noticed either of the ones you mention. I generally filter them out mentally, though, so I rarely notice any of them. I could've been been served both a hundred times by now and just never noticed. – Robin Hood↝talk 03:51, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

E-Mail

I was going to e-mail you, but your e-mail is disabled. If you're returning as an active Admin, you'll have to add one back in.

Anyway, as far as not having Skyrim, Dave has offered to buy Skyrim for senior/active members of the site. Since I'm on disability and couldn't afford it right away, I asked how Dave felt about it given my prolonged absence. He said he was fine with it given my historical contributions. While you were away much longer than I was, you also have a lot more edits than I do, so he might be willing to buy it for you as well. If you're interested, you should e-mail him and ask. – Robin Hood↝talk 21:39, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Tempting, but my school work is taking up about 110% of my time these days. I'm afraid if I started getting heavily into Skyrim, I'd really get into trouble. That's why I've only been sort of marginally active of late. It's a very intensive program - so much so that they basically forbid you from having a job while attending. I don't think I'll be putting very much time into this until at least this summer, possibly next fall. That's why I also haven't changed my status on the UESPWiki:Administrators page. I can help a little in an emergency or something, but I don't plan to really be active until I get a reprieve from all the classwork. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 04:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC)