Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (23 Feb 1932 – 18 Dec 2008; age 76), the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry who nurtured the legacy of the seminal science fiction TV series after his death, has died. She was 76 and died of leukemia Thursday morning at her home in Bel-Air.

Majel was a recurring actress in the Star Trek franchise and was the wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry from 1969 until his passing in 1991. This association with Roddenberry and his most famous creation has earned Barrett the title "The First Lady of Star Trek."

Though she played many characters in the Star Trek franchise such as the ship’s computer voice on multiple series as well as the mother of Deanna Troi, I was always fond of her role as Nurse Christine Chapel working side by side with ‘Bones’ on the original series.

Patrick and I attended the Star Trek Convention in Vegas a few months ago and she made an appearance on the main stage, I recall telling Pat at that time that she looked very sick, pale and gaunt in the vendor room where she was trying to sign autographs.

Rest in peace Nurse Chapel.

12 months ago I moved Geeknews over to Dreamhost services from Supernova.net. The reason for the move was Supernova’s flakiness in uptime. The last straw in my patience was when their servers went offline for over a week. Not just Geeknews was affected by the outage but so was my family site that was responsible for hosting the family’s e-mail.

Since the move to Dreamhost though it seems as if I’m plagued with bad luck. Numerous times in the last year their file servers have gone offline for over 12 hours at a time, meaning Geeknews along with hundreds or thousands of other sites hosted on that server, or its disk array, have been inaccessible. It also seems that most Friday’s the site goes offline for an hour, probably for maintenance?

A few weeks ago the outage lasted a couple of days, again this Friday evening we were offline until Sunday morning. Each time we’re offline we either get moved to a new server or the existing server is reconstructed and each time the disks are refreshed with a backup image that is 7 days old meaning i’ve lost all files (mostly images) uploaded in that time and need to go back and clean it up…again. So for the 2nd time in two weeks I’m reconstructing the site.

I can’t imagine if I had customers dependent on my site being available like some of the poor people affected by the outage, thank god I just do Geeknews as a labor of love or else I’d be apoplectic right now instead of just very annoyed.

I have a lot of sympathy for the support folks, it’s not their fault HW goes offline, but it would appear the management needs to invest more in fault tolerance, backups, alternative HW in hot standby to switch us over to with just hours of downtime as opposed to days, so they can work on the failed machine at their leisure.

Moving to a new host provider is such a fraking hassle, though I guess I should at least start looking now and staging the content to flip the switch the next time DH is offline.

So where do I go? While lamenting the latest DH outage with other folks suffering, I hear that Bluehost and Media Temple are good options. Do you have recommendations?

NBC plans to offer the season debuts of several top shows on the Hulu video site it co-owns with News Corp. before they air on television.

The shows that will air online a week early include Knight Rider, Lipstick Jungle, Chuck, Life and 30 Rock.

Vox Anon contacted me the other day promoting his new book The Unicorn Man. From the description it sounds dark and interesting. The kind of work that causes me to reflect on my own life and future and makes me wonder if I should be scared.

Vox Anon promised to send a copy for review, I can hardly wait! If you can’t wait, good news for you because it’s available on Lulu.

Description:

An epic poem, an ecstatic prayer, & a beatific psalm authored by an anonymous master. The Unicorn Man is not for children, the faint of heart, &/or faithless. It is a grotesque self portrait of physical love & spiritual longing unraveled in an apocalyptic vision. These are verses of eternal hope written by a man with an acute suicidal condition. A man with an undiagnosable tumor growing in the shape of a horn from the center of his forehead. He hides from the world. This symbolic disfigurement transforms him from human into a fantastical beast. Until the love of a girl changes him back. The Unicorn Man is a highly personal collection of hidden text. Intimacy on a universal scale. A few poems about Love, G-d, & Death. Enjoy!

Here’s the full Press Release:

The Unicorn Man is: selected unpublished verse from earlier poetic works “The Voluptua” & “The Epitome” collections (1999 – 2007) inspired by artwork from “Anatomia Ecclesia: The Anatomical Brides” . “My life’s work adds up to this: Beauty, Love & G-d & Death.” Vox Anon WWW.THEUNICORNMAN.COM

The Unicorn Man 08/08/08 version contains: 3 short stories, 216 verse poems & +55 unique images that were too unfinished, too profound &/or too sacred to be disclosed to anyone other than the initiated. The 3 short stories “I Awoke”, “Once Upon A Time”, and “Non Plus Ultra” have been added to help introduce and contextualize the 7 chapters of poetic verses that follow.

The White, Black, Red, Pale, Gold, Lost, and Last Verses are meant to pique, Not satisfy the curiosity as to the truth and wonder of The Unicorn Man’s existence. Images/text on the origin of beauty and the price one pays for dying for it/killing for it will be revealed.

Although his disease remains undiagnosable, it is not unlike Cutaneous horn (cornu cutaneum), a rare projectile, conical, dense, hyperkeratotic disease that resembles the horn of an animal. State of the art technologies along with X-rays, fMRI, and CT scan imagings show that the base of this horn is rooted at the very seat of his soul; the pineal gland. Surgical removal of this tumor from his forehead may prove fatal.

These verses are collected from diaries and journals he has kept over many lifetimes. The text starts out in the tradition of an epic poem then translates into experimental stream of consciousness. Methinks Cain killed Abel because he wanted to marry his Twin sister, & in a jealous rage murdered him. Now he walks the earth until the end of time as a punishment for the 1st murder. For Love. For Beauty. For Self.

The Unicorn Man is a collection of love notes and self-portraits in verse that is at times fantastic, horrific, and sublime. Names, places, and events in the texts date back 10,000 years and predict the end of the times on December 21, 2012.

A search for truth, beauty, and identity is recorded in these pages. These verses inquire: Who is the most beautiful creature on earth? Is the anatomy of man G-d’s greatest creation? How will the End of Times end? Who is the Wormwood Star? Is this a tumor growing down my face? or Am I Qayin? The Unicorn Man? A few poems about Beauty, Love, G-d, & Death. Enjoy!

Hopefully, The Unicorn Man will find a home in your imagination with the likes of Dostoevsky’s “Notes from the Underground”, Darren Aronofsky’s “The Fountain” and Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth”. If you love the book of Psalms or works of fiction like The Crow or The Sandman, then you will love The Unicorn Man!

Hack a Day needs a new t-shirt design and they’re giving away a dash express (donated by Dash) for your creativity. Deadline for submissions is Sept 15 2008.

Some of you out there are Left Brain’ers and could surely provide some great ideas.