<story><title>This site is no longer solar powered for now</title><url>https://www.andrewjvpowell.com/articles/this-site-is-no-longer-solar-powered-for-now/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ericbarrett</author><text>When I was young I ran a Team Fortress Classic server from my living room. It was hooked up to 768k SDSL (symmetric). It was 2fort-only—still a common thing in TF2—and popular enough that it was full 24&amp;#x2F;7, with a 20 player limit. Had lots of regulars, some of whom stayed in touch for years afterward. Some of the things that caused downtime:&lt;p&gt;The house&amp;#x27;s floor slab had a crack that wicked up groundwater when it rained too much, so my carpet would get mushy. Electronics off!&lt;p&gt;The anti-cheat software I ran (PunkBusters) went crazy after an update and banned anybody who connected. I noticed when my MRTG graphs flatlined.&lt;p&gt;Girlfriend once yanked out the Ethernet cable when we were having adult time. I didn&amp;#x27;t bother explaining that one to the players.&lt;p&gt;Heavy web browsing would cause lag, so I ended up learning how to do QoS via iptables (or its precursor, whose name I forgot).&lt;p&gt;At the time, the server used an astonishing &lt;i&gt;25 gigabytes&lt;/i&gt; of bandwidth a month. Always raised an eyebrow with the ISP tech when I called in, but they never complained.</text></item><item><author>ElongatedMusket</author><text>This post reminds me of the pre-steam days of gaming servers when certain clan members with fat pipes would host servers out of their homes or after-hours business racks, and often have little blog posts like this on their PHP-Nuke clan website or in-game MOTD, containing whatever little peril the admin had to deal with hosting the server... from kids tripping on wires to rats nesting in the chassis, it was always fun to read.&lt;p&gt;When resources are scarce, interesting stuff happens. Nowadays most outages are either due to expired payment, disk full, or provider outage. That&amp;#x27;s a good thing I guess? Just much less fun.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ShroudedNight</author><text>I miss TFC. I remember learning how to conc-jump with the medic and figuring out the detonation points for pyro, and ultimately getting to the point where my presence was materially beneficial to my team. I never managed to get there in TF2; they had (at least at first glance - I presume the meta simply changed) blunted the ability of a single player to significantly move objectives forward. I had already been burnt by the changes between Day of Defeat, and DoD: Source, and the TF2 changes seemed to confirm that I was simply not a member of the target audience for the Source remakes.</text></comment>
<story><title>This site is no longer solar powered for now</title><url>https://www.andrewjvpowell.com/articles/this-site-is-no-longer-solar-powered-for-now/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ericbarrett</author><text>When I was young I ran a Team Fortress Classic server from my living room. It was hooked up to 768k SDSL (symmetric). It was 2fort-only—still a common thing in TF2—and popular enough that it was full 24&amp;#x2F;7, with a 20 player limit. Had lots of regulars, some of whom stayed in touch for years afterward. Some of the things that caused downtime:&lt;p&gt;The house&amp;#x27;s floor slab had a crack that wicked up groundwater when it rained too much, so my carpet would get mushy. Electronics off!&lt;p&gt;The anti-cheat software I ran (PunkBusters) went crazy after an update and banned anybody who connected. I noticed when my MRTG graphs flatlined.&lt;p&gt;Girlfriend once yanked out the Ethernet cable when we were having adult time. I didn&amp;#x27;t bother explaining that one to the players.&lt;p&gt;Heavy web browsing would cause lag, so I ended up learning how to do QoS via iptables (or its precursor, whose name I forgot).&lt;p&gt;At the time, the server used an astonishing &lt;i&gt;25 gigabytes&lt;/i&gt; of bandwidth a month. Always raised an eyebrow with the ISP tech when I called in, but they never complained.</text></item><item><author>ElongatedMusket</author><text>This post reminds me of the pre-steam days of gaming servers when certain clan members with fat pipes would host servers out of their homes or after-hours business racks, and often have little blog posts like this on their PHP-Nuke clan website or in-game MOTD, containing whatever little peril the admin had to deal with hosting the server... from kids tripping on wires to rats nesting in the chassis, it was always fun to read.&lt;p&gt;When resources are scarce, interesting stuff happens. Nowadays most outages are either due to expired payment, disk full, or provider outage. That&amp;#x27;s a good thing I guess? Just much less fun.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wes-k</author><text>TFC! I ran a TFC concing server from my college dorm back in 2004&amp;#x2F;2005. Been dreaming of setting up my old PC to play again.</text></comment>