Each month UBBDev will be selecting one of our dedicated Team UBBDev All-Stars as our Haxxor of the Month. In the spotlight this month is XPerT, who has piled on the points since joining Team UBBDev. XPerT comes to us from
Netwerkin.com , his computer support website and forum.
Interviewed by: tackaberry
Haxxor of the Month:
XPerT UBBDEV: Tell me a little about your web-site, and how the UBB™ is used.
XPerT: Netwerkin.com was my first website. I started it after getting hooked on UBB's at
www.quake3world.com but wanted a more productive internet experience. The UBB is basically a central place for people to be able to ask virtually any question about any computing platform without having to worry about being judged by their choice of OS or experience level. I encourage the members to not only ask questions but to participate in answering them as well. Netwerkin.org is a testing site right now, and licensed so that i can have public participation and stay legal. Netwerkin.net runs on .asp and SQL so UBB wasn't an option and it's focus in on Microsoft's .Net infrastructure.
UBBDEV: At what point did you start modifying your UBB™? Visiting UBBDev?
XPerT: I started modifying the UBB and visiting UBBDev the same day I got my first license, in fact it was the same day that I purchased the domain name. I'm the Senior Systems Engineer for the world's largest provider of instructor led computer training and specialize in Microsoft networking and server apps so using Perl and .cgi were totally foreign to me. I run 3 sites now and 2 of the are UBBs and run on IIS 5.0 servers.
UBBDEV: What 'hacks' are currently being used on your board?
XPerT: That's a difficult question, I have quite a few that I've gotten from UBBDev:
Who's Online, Avatar's, Custom titles, Sticky Threads, Anchor Hack, Graemlin's addon, PM inbox, News Fader (Netwerkin.org), Statistics, MyStyle (Netwerkin.org), MemberList
I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting, there are some great UBB hackers at UBBDev and the support has been fantastic. I have done most of the template hacks myself with some guidance from a variety of sources. I would love to be able to give credit where it's due but I honestly don't remember where all of the help and ideas came from. I hack on the fly and unfortunately haven't been able to answer all of the question I get about Netwerkin's layout but I really try to be as helpful as possible.
UBBDEV: What particular hack/mod is your favorite?
XPerT: Who's Online has to be my favorite. I try very hard to keep a peaceful evironment for my members and WOL allows me to know what's happening there at a glance.
UBBDEV: Which hack/mod is most popular with your users?
XPerT: I'd have to say that the Avatar Hack is the one most people like, it gives them an "identity" that a user name alone can't provide.
UBBDEV: What feature currently not available in UBB™, or as a hack would you like to see?
XPerT: This is an easy one, a database connection. Right now my boards are small enough that using flat files isn't an issue, but like anyone else I would like to see the community grow.
UBBDEV: You've been putting up some impressive results. How many computers do you have running, and what are their specs?
XPerT: I have 7 machines running right now ranging from a PIII 550 with 512 Meg of ram to a dual processing server with 2 Gig of ram and 6 10,000 RPM SCSI drives on a Raid 0 stripe. I have a large network at home and try to use all of the machines that aren't in a production mode.
UBBDEV: That's some heavy-duty equipment. What sort of things have you done, other than adding additional machines to maximize performance?
XPerT: As far as increasing performance I really haven't been able to do much on my own. The UD client doesn't appear to run in a multi-threaded environment so dual processors doesn't help, but having alot of ram never hurts. I never let my machines use a screensaver, so that the client runs at it's full potential, and the machines are running 24/7.
I really hope to be able to add more clients in the near future, but I have to get permission to use any computers outside of my own network. I would love to see United Devices ramp the client up to be more friendly to server environments and be able to run safely as a service under Windows 2000 and XP. I am doing some stress testing with it in different configurations and hopefully will be able to post some results and suggestions for increased performance soon.
UBBDEV: Wow, that sounds great. Have you considered getting some of your Networkin users involved? Create your own sub-team?
XPerT: I have considered getting a sub team together, and since the holidays are over I'll begin to pursue that. I run all three sites by myself and sometimes put projects off in the interest of spare time but this is a really good cause and deserves attention.
UBBDEV: How many regular users do you have on your site and how many do you think might be interested in joining up?
XPerT: There are about 50 regular users at Netwerkin, and I'm sure that with a little coaxing I could probably get 10 or 15 to join.
UBBDEV: Well we look forward to having them. Which is your favorite Target Protein and why?
XPerT: I don't really have an answer for that, I rarely ever open the client window anymore except to make sure they are still running. I remember one that looked like a bundle of different colored ribbons but I don't know the name of it.
UBBDEV: There are a few neat looking ones. I think my favorite is the C-ABL Tyrosine Kinase. That's the red, white, blue and yellow looking ribbon. VEGF is the most boring, a clump of dots. Last question...What is the longest work unit you have had?
XPerT: My longest work unit was just over 4 days, on the most powerful machine I run it on. I thought it would never end, and it's the one that put me over 50K points so I was watching it.
UBBDev: Ouch, I can only imaging how long it would have taken to run on your PIII-550. Well thanks for taking some time away from your servers to speak with us, and keep up the great conformer crunching!
