Shadow of Victory missing from the monthly bundle

runsforcelery wrote:It would have come in in electronic format which would have gone directly into the EARC bundle and would easily have met Baen's original August 15 schedule.

How long is the usual delay between turning in a manuscript and Baen getting the eARC out? No ulterior motive for asking...

kzt wrote:Apparently it was just a bad lot of hard drives...

Hard drives have a pretty well documented "bad batch" phenomenon. They are normally very reliable for several years but if one dies prematurely then usually most of the others from the same batch will also do so. This is why if you want really high reliability you pick different manufacturers/models or at least try to space out the purchases to get different manufacturing batches.

NervousEnergy wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:I normally actually average about 5,500 to 7,500 on a normal working day

There are a ton of highly successful, professional writers that would be ecstatic with a THIRD Of that...

No kidding, I know someone who writes fanfic on his spare time and he can usually write that much in a month.

turol wrote:No kidding, I know someone who writes fanfic on his spare time and he can usually write that much in a month.

I mean, even if I'm really feeling it and the story's going well and I know where it's going, that's about best case for me, which I've maybe kept up for three consecutive months... once. I mean, I'm writing software for a living, not fiction, but I'm also a single guy with no life ...

Hello,

at David:
Thanx for your explanation

turol wrote:Hard drives have a pretty well documented "bad batch" phenomenon. They are normally very reliable for several years but if one dies prematurely then usually most of the others from the same batch will also do so. This is why if you want really high reliability you pick different manufacturers/models or at least try to space out the purchases to get different manufacturing batches.

Not only HDDs.
6 or 7 years ago we bought a new Dryer and a new dishwasher at the same day.
Guess what happens - both broke within 2 days. Thats not bad luck, thats planned.

Hans wrote:Hello,

..stuff deleted for brevity

Not only HDDs.
6 or 7 years ago we bought a new Dryer and a new dishwasher at the same day.
Guess what happens - both broke within 2 days. Thats not bad luck, thats planned.

A sketchy power supply or motherboard can do it as well. A surge protector or UPS wont help if the PSU is unsteady or the mobo has voltage issues.

I've always had a "thing" about hard drives as well. Fortunately, I don't tend to have many failures, myself; but I certainly don't expect any drive to meet the advertised "MTBF". Some of those "Mean Time Before Failure" numbers represent a longer duration than since the *INVENTION* of the first disk drive. It's hard to see how they can realistically come up with something like that.

That said, what's interesting here is the pattern of failures. Assuming RFC didn't get all the same brand units; and they weren't all manufactured at around the same date, he shouldn't be seeing a lot of concurrent or even closely consecutive failures.

One thing to remember, however, is that a disk drive - as long as it's not a SSD - is basically a *mechanical* object rather than an electronic one. There are actual platters in it that *spin*. If anything "gets in the way" of that, a failure is pretty much certain. Back years ago, certain IBM/Hitachi drives experienced premature failure because of some sort of "dust" residue from the manufacturing process. And, for that matter, there have sometimes been firmware issues that, while the drive itself is sound, render it inaccessible from the operating system.

In most actual IT shops, they rarely turn computers off. That's actually good in general for disk drives. Unfortunately, many "general consumer" desktops and laptops are configured to power drives down if the unit is "idle"; basically as a "green" measure. While it may be good (as far as power usage and heat generation goes) it's extra wear and tear on the drive and it's motor.

MaxxQ wrote:

kronan wrote:Now get cracking on Manticore Ascendent-want to see how the finale works out

You'd be better off talking to Tom Pope or Tim Zahn about that. David has a some input into those books, but not as much as you might think. Most of that probably comes from his Honorverse bible, which has already been written (as well as updated when things got changed around a little... )

Your wish has been granted. Just received an email from Amazon announcing A Call to Vengeance release date which is March 7 2017.
Sorry wrong day.

OrlandoNative wrote:

I've always had a "thing" about hard drives as well. Fortunately, I don't tend to have many failures, myself; but I certainly don't expect any drive to meet the advertised "MTBF". Some of those "Mean Time Before Failure" numbers represent a longer duration than since the *INVENTION* of the first disk drive. It's hard to see how they can realistically come up with something like that.

That said, what's interesting here is the pattern of failures. Assuming RFC didn't get all the same brand units; and they weren't all manufactured at around the same date, he shouldn't be seeing a lot of concurrent or even closely consecutive failures.

One thing to remember, however, is that a disk drive - as long as it's not a SSD - is basically a *mechanical* object rather than an electronic one. There are actual platters in it that *spin*. If anything "gets in the way" of that, a failure is pretty much certain. Back years ago, certain IBM/Hitachi drives experienced premature failure because of some sort of "dust" residue from the manufacturing process. And, for that matter, there have sometimes been firmware issues that, while the drive itself is sound, render it inaccessible from the operating system.

In most actual IT shops, they rarely turn computers off. That's actually good in general for disk drives. Unfortunately, many "general consumer" desktops and laptops are configured to power drives down if the unit is "idle"; basically as a "green" measure. While it may be good (as far as power usage and heat generation goes) it's extra wear and tear on the drive and it's motor.

I think that it is best to use SSDs as your active data store on your machines, with HDs as backup. Further, I suggest actually turning off the HDs between uses. This has 2 advantages: first, you don't put too much time on your HDs (even though you cycle power more), and second, your backups are off-line and less vulnerable to hacking. There is malware that can invade your backups as well as your primary data as long as the backups are online.

-- Bob G

OrlandoNative wrote:I've always had a "thing" about hard drives as well. Fortunately, I don't tend to have many failures, myself; but I certainly don't expect any drive to meet the advertised "MTBF". Some of those "Mean Time Before Failure" numbers represent a longer duration than since the *INVENTION* of the first disk drive. It's hard to see how they can realistically come up with something like that.

Easy, test 365 hard drives for 1 day. If one fails the "MTBF" is 365 days.

Granted, that is an extremely naive way to calculate MTBF. But given that marketing has taken over writing spec sheets for our hardware (one more sign of the Impending Collapse of our Civilization) that is probably more math than the marketing folks actually can do.

Thanks for the update, and the shared personal info RFC.

In regards to the lost productivity since RFC elected to post in the forums, it's an accepted fact that a bit of variety and even a nap enhances your productivity. Attempting to stay 100% focused on One task doesn't tend to work out very well for us hoomans

My plan for after work today was to read the SoV EARC if it was out (obviously). And if it wasn't out yet I was going to cut my grass. Sadly, after checking Baen.com I found myself firing up the lawnmower.