Serendipity35

Ken says:

We did seem to disappear this week. A perfect storm of problems. I have been very busy this week getting NJIT on iTunes U flying, including a launch event with Apple for the press (TV crews, radio crews, reporters).

And Tim was sick all week. And then our server did an auto-update and needed a reboot while Tim was sleeping, so our database went offline and that's not something I have access to (or want to have access to!).

But I got emails from folks saying, "Hey, your blog is down." More email than we get comments in a week.

Reminds me of my college radio days. Had one of those latenight radio show where you suspect that no one is actually listening. No one calls in. No requests.

Then the transmitter goes down. And the phone starts ringing. There really were listeners ou there in the dorms!

Tim says:

Serendipity 35 runs on 2 servers. The web pages run on devel2.njit.edu, but the content (the articles, the images, the comments --when we Ever get any) all live in a database on another machine. When you read an article here, you are reading stuff that gets dynamically assembled by a fair bit of network magic happily casting packet transporting spells.

Until the Cybergods grow restless.

Then an update comes down the virtual pipe and fixes a security issue on the database server and the server needs to be restarted to load the new configuration, but the new configuration tries to load a patched file that is already loaded, doesn't know what in heck to do, so reboots and tries again... and again... and again.

Meanwhile Mr Tech (me) has been leveled at home by his own version of gastro-intestinal rebooting and can't get to the server until the next day. About a half hour of reconfiguration (and several more reboots) and the server is happy again and Serendipity 35 is back online. By the time I get to check my e-mail, I have a bunch of "Hey your blog is down" e-mails in my InBox, but the blog is well and functioning as (almost) always.

I begin to reply to "Hey your blog is down" e-mails, and suddenly, no messages will send. Turns out the main NJIT e-mail server has also angered the Cybergods and won't send or receive e-mail anywhere.

Personally, I think I chased the evil spirits from my machine and they found a new home in the NJIT e-mail server for a few hours, then the NJIT e-mail techs chased them somewhere else.

Tomorrow, I think I'll sacrifice some RAM, just to be sure the Cybergods are happy.

We say:

Keep those cards, letters, coffee, (after today, we're almost out) and COMMENTS coming in. We know you're out there - we can hear you breathing.