Please Pardon the Interuption (SITE DOWNTIME)

[LouieMacGoo]

Yesterday as I was downloading a back up of the site I encountered an "Fatal Error" when I finally got the download working again I discovered that certain critical files had disappeared causing the forum to completely crash and become unavailable. Unfortunately it took me some time to figure out what the exact problem/files were so that I could get them restored and I had to resort to a back up that was several days old. Unfortunately that means that some posts from over the weekend have been lost but it beats not having the forum at all.

Thank you to everyone that has reached out to me and the offers of help. It is greatly appreciated.

As a result of this incident I will be looking at a possible software upgrade and better more dependable methods of backing up the forum data and structure.

Man do I need a homebrew!

[RickBeer]

OMG! Does that mean that certain ruminations by a certain someone(s) of matters of great importance to themselves (and no others) might have been lost for all time?

SAY IT AIN'T SO!

"certain" is intentionally non-specific...

[Inkleg]

No worries Leigh, sorry you had troubles. As long as no one had to go to couples therapy over the site being down it's all good.

Thank You for all that you do.

[BlackDuck]

Not a problem Leigh, glad you got it figured out. And you're right...a few lost posts is just fine as long as we can all sit at the bar and talk again!!

Inkleg....Couples Therapy??? Hmmm....

[RedBEERd]

Leigh, you are underappreciated and overly awesome.
Thanks for all you do for us and this site.

[Whamolagan]

Glad you got it figured out, I went to therapy cause I thought it was happening again. Glad you got it figured out. Hope it didn't inconvenience you too much, So with that you become BOTM automatically

[John Sand]

Nice to see you.

[FedoraDave]

Yeah, when I tried to log in and got a 404 screen, I had visible cartoon question marks flying out of my head.

Glad we're back on track. Thanks, Leigh, for all the work you put into this great site.

[LouieMacGoo]

Honestly I didn't get a lot of sleep on Monday night. I had tried several things to try to get the site back up and running and nothing was working. i was getting very frustrated and had to walk away from it before I did something really stupid that I really couldn't fix. Finally yesterday after putzing around with it throughout the day (in between my real work) i was finally able to restore the site from a few day old copy that I swear I had tried before but didn't work. It was a huge weight off my chest for sure!

As I mentioned above I will be doing some software updates that will improve dependablity and allow me to have a better method to back up the site to make sure this doesn't happen again.

[Dawg LB Steve]

Leigh you do a fantabulous job with the forum!!! Shit happens!

[RickBeer]

I can relate very much to "walking away before doing something stupid". I've had technology as a hobby for decades, had my first PC in 1983. I often get frustrated with technology and take broad strokes, sometimes realizing after the fact that I could have done X or Y to either minimize the impact or to maybe recover it. Can't count the times that hard drive images didn't restore as I expected. Or the backup I thought I was doing regularly I discovered I was not.

As a matter of fact... My 7 year old laptop's screen died several weeks ago. When you can see a ghosted image, that's either the inverter (cheap and easy to replace) or the backlight (still pretty cheap, and moderate to hard to replace). As I was relegated to 1 screen instead of my standard 2 screens (the horror!), I ordered an inverter. It came, I installed it, and all was well. The best $3.50 I'd ever spent. Two weeks later, same problem. Had a free replacement sent, got it Monday, put it in yesterday, no change. So now it's the backlight it appears...

Luckily I could switch to a newer laptop and spend a day plus moving everything over, before starting down that road.

I love/hate technology.