Running s... l ...o... w

[sidewinder]

Seems to be running OK here.. Hang in there Jim and get that well-earned shut-eye.

[brownie]

GO GET THAT SLEEP, JIM!

Things seem to be OK by now...

GOOD NIGHT B-)

and deep thanks!

[EKE BBB]

Yeah! Everything seems normal now, even the PM function.

Get that well-deserved sleep, Jim. Let us European members keep vigil over the board! B-)

[Jim Alfredson]

Thanks, all. I'm off to bed. I hope it's still running good in the morning. I've been having anxiety dreams of late because of this whole fiasco. I had one of the scariest half-dream/half-waking experiences I've ever had last night.

Zora woke up around 5am. My wife got up to tend to her and I fell back asleep. When she came back into the room, I woke up again and then started to drift off. As I was drifting off, I could feel this darkness enveloping me. It seemed to go from color, to gray, to deep black. All of a sudden I realized that I was driving. I could hear the tires on the road, I could feel the bumps of the uneven concrete, and I knew I was going at high-speeds down a highway, on the way home from a gig.

I thought to myself, "Oh shit, I've fallen asleep at the wheel!" And at first I just resigned myself to the idea that any moment I would crash into something and die. Then I started thinking about Zora and Alison and that I couldn't leave them, and so I started to try and wake myself up and suddenly I was back in my bedroom, my heart racing like crazy.

It was the wildest experience, dream-wise, I've ever had. It was very real!

Anyway, in short, I love all you guys (ok, most of you!), but you're stressing me out!!!

Nah, it's not your fault. I just hope this site is running well in the morning.

[Bright Moments]

hang in there jim!!!!

[neveronfriday]

Thanks, all.  I'm off to bed.  I hope it's still running good in the morning.  I've been having anxiety dreams of late because of this whole fiasco.  I had one of the scariest half-dream/half-waking experiences I've ever had last night.

Zora woke up around 5am.  My wife got up to tend to her and I fell back asleep.  When she came back into the room, I woke up again and then started to drift off.  As I was drifting off, I could feel this darkness enveloping me.  It seemed to go from color, to gray, to deep black.  All of a sudden I realized that I was driving.  I could hear the tires on the road, I could feel the bumps of the uneven concrete, and I knew I was going at high-speeds down a highway, on the way home from a gig. 

I thought to myself, "Oh shit, I've fallen asleep at the wheel!"  And at first I just resigned myself to the idea that any moment I would crash into something and die.  Then I started thinking about Zora and Alison and that I couldn't leave them, and so I started to try and wake myself up and suddenly I was back in my bedroom, my heart racing like crazy.

It was the wildest experience, dream-wise, I've ever had.  It was very real!

Anyway, in short, I love all you guys (ok, most of you!), but you're stressing me out!!!

Nah, it's not your fault.  I just hope this site is running well in the morning.

Jim,

here's my story (and the reason I haven't been around for a while).

Last year I bought myself a new PC, a positively huge machine in all respects. The other day I had the glorious idea of streamlining my entire backup system. I bought myself a third (external) HD and transferred everything to that one. After everything was fine, was triple and quadruple checked, I threw out the backup disks (I had been very anal about keeping a good backup system and therefore had simply too many of those CDRs and DVD-Rs). The following day I was going to make new backups of several hundreds of GB of data ... and I got delayed a bit (as usual).

Here comes the kicker. I start up the PC several days later, started burning and WHACK, lightening literally struck (just my luck, because I live next to a church tower which is supposed to bloody well deflect this shite from my house). Within a few seconds, my RAID setup was wiped out (300 GB gone), and the backup disk (200 GB), which was attached because I was burning, got smoked in an instant.

I know it was a stupid move, but I thought that after 10 years, I could allow myself a bit of sloppiness. God made absolutely sure that this kind of thought will never pop up again.

Summary: In about 1 second I lost 10 years worth of files, three harddisks, a mainboard and a monitor (plus 6 USB devices). The hardware was replaced by Dell (to my surprise, I had that unlikely case covered by a separate insurance - if not, I would not have been able to afford replacements for another 6 months or so) within 6 hours (great and unbeatable service), but losing the files hurt badly. A lot of my ongoing projects were lost, tons of design, layout and other files, infinite numbers of important business files, all of my saved e-mail, etc., etc., etc.

Needless to say, I got absolutely plastered for two days in a row.

Not a pretty sight.

Now, a few days later, I can actually see the silver lining: new system, new systematic approach to backups, a clean new start.

So, in summation, if I can sleep well after that disaster, so can you after some board hickups. Just remember: other things are more important in life.

P.S.: Nowadays harddisks have gotten so huge that it actually takes like a week or so to get a system up and running again. Getting the few backup files I have left back onto the disk is a breeze, but setting up a pretty complex PC again, finding passwords to 20 and more e-mail accounts (all of which one saved in a supposedly safe password "safe" on a backup disk), tracking down registration codes (which were never printed out (too lazy)) to programs bought online by getting in touch with each and every vendor, reinstating speed-up settings and registry tweaks, sorting out the desktop, etc. .... I think I'll start using notepaper again.

Edited May 17, 2005 by neveronfriday

[kinuta]

Glad to see things are ship shape again. I understand how you feel , I tend to lose sleep brooding over imagined problems too.

Look on the bright side, i had to learn to use a pc in Japanese ! And you think you've got problems !

[neveronfriday]

[...] i had to learn to use a pc in Japanese !

I'd rather have another RAID crash.

[jlhoots]

This is still not working properly.

[clinthopson]

It's running quite slowly here (and I have a high speed dsl connection), I can't get JC to open but AAJ is running fine.

Is that a plot?

[Ron S]

It was the wildest experience, dream-wise, I've ever had.  It was very real!

You didn't happen to see Freddy Kruger in your rear-view mirror, did you???

[mikeweil]

.... I think I'll start using notepaper again.

Highly recommended. Luckily I never had to face a system breakdown like this, but had to set up a new user profile for myself when the monitor settings started playing weird a few months ago and nobody knew how to fix it. I was glad I kept a handwritten sheet with all my passwords etc. on it ...

[mikeweil]

... and Jim: thanks again for your hard work, but take care of yourselves. We can live without the board for a few days, although I have to admit it's real hard ...

[JSngry]

Maybe it's my ISP or something, but I'm still having bouts of logy-ness.

[Jim Alfredson]

I just got a call from customer service. The fellow was very understanding and offered to move the site off the current server free of charge (usually it's at least $75). He also gave me the option of sticking it out for a week and then moving if need be, no charge. I told him we'd see how it goes. The site seems to be running much better. I guess they've already moved a lot of sites off... the server was being overloaded.

We'll see how it goes...

[JSngry]

Just got one of the "could not send e-mail" messages when posting.

My time on the board today has been about 50/50 fast/crawly.

Not trying to stress you or anything, Jim, just providing anecdotal evidence, should you need it.

[Jim Alfredson]

This place is running really zippy right now. I got a call from customer service at around 7pm, apologizing for the server and offering to move the site for no fee (usually costs about $75) and give me two weeks credit on my account. I told him it seemed to be running much better and so he gave me a week to determine if I want the site moved.

So far, though, it's running great!

[neveronfriday]

I don't want to stir the pot, but throughout the day I accessed the board through various PCs and connections from different places over here in ol' Europe and half the time things were slow as hell. Sometimes page links worked but brought up nothing (browser status bar said "done" ... nothing had opened up, I was still on the page I wanted to be taken away from). Other times it was just slow. Inbetween, things ran much more smoothly for a while, but not at the accustomed speed.

Right now (about 5 minutes ago) I had a timeout on a page on a high-caliber system with lightening-fast connection where nothing ever times out unless the Internet itself has major trouble.

Maybe it's just hickups.

Just wanted to report back.

[jlhoots]

A little slower again this a.m., but not too bad.

[Jim Alfredson]

Thanks for the report. Please keep an eye on the info at the very bottom of the page, specifically the "Script Execution Time:" because that will tell you whether it's the forums or your connection or something else.

The script execution time should be under 0. Last night it was zipping around at 0.05 and under. When I went to post this message I got this:

[ Script Execution time: 4.2449 ] [ 12 queries used ] [ GZIP Enabled ]

That's far too long.

Help me keep an eye on things and if it doesn't get better in a week, I'll move the site to another server.

[neveronfriday]

I actually have kept an eye on it because I myself use a similar script on my own sites.

Today I got everything between 2.8 and 4.6. Nothing below.

It's almost like things get "stuck" once in a while. A query will run and will then not put out anything (it probably times out, although there's no error). I ran several more "complex" search queries with more than 4 words today and several turned up with nothing. No search results page, no error page, nothing. Just the page I entered the search into with the message "done" in the status bar.

From experience I would say that the big O is on a server together with other sites that use mySQL queries extensively (other forums, shops, etc.). If possible, try to verify that and ask to be moved to one with less SQL traffic. I had the same problems last time I moved all my shite elsewhere, and a simple in-house move away from SQL-heavy traffic sites did the trick.

P.S.: I was on a server with 4 porn sites initially (and many others), but the leeches killed everyone else on the server.

[neveronfriday]

BTW: Links like "today's active topics" take an average of 9.6 and above here. That supports the idea that anything more complex needs a lot more script time. I'll try to keep track the next couple of hours.

[Jim Alfredson]

I just got the "can't find organforum database" error for a minute or so. How strange?

I think you're right... there must be some other sites on this server that are using SQL, probably as much or more so than this one.

[neveronfriday]

Yes, and a brief test proves it as well.

I've reloaded, queried, etc. What I get are the wildest jumps from 0.2 to over 9. That's definitely other sites intervening. Some sites seem to be hogging script time. I'm assuming that you are on a stable server and then other sites seem to be the only explanation, especially since this board software is quite good at querying efficiently. Whenever some other site runs intensive queries, query time is added here.

I had the exact problem myself, but knowing the Internet, God, Bill Gates and George Bush could also be at fault.

Who knows.

P.S.: I upgraded my own site to a server with exclusive script time and haven't had a problem since then. But I had to shell out quite a bit of dough. Over here, script time does not come cheap. Package offers might seem like a great bargain, but when you need to run scripts, you can easily tell that more cash will get you more speed. Especially since every idiot needs an SQL-/database- driven site today.

[Jim R]

It's been pretty slow for me so far this morning. After being on the site for awhile (and posting to two different threads), I opened and read this thread, and then clicked on today's active topics. A log-in type window (which I've never seen before) came up, prompting me to give my user ID and password. I did that, and then got a "Not authorized..." message. Clicked on my bookmark for TAT again, got the log-in prompt again, and this time it worked. Weird.

Also, although I can see everyone else's, my avatars have been doing weird things. My Jimmy Smith avatar wouldn't appear (for me) for several days, so I changed it. The "Swing Guitars" avatar worked for a short time, and now I can only see about 25% of it (the upper portion)...

Edited May 18, 2005 by Jim R