Recent Outages

February 28, 2006 / The entire Zero to One-Eighty site, and hence DR, has recently been subject to several unplanned outages, the most recent of which lasted throughout yesterday evening (approx. 7:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. on Monday, February 27th). Additionally there was a database outage a few weeks back that rendered DR inoperative for about 12 hours, although on that occasion the rest of Zero to One-Eighty remained unaffected. Even worse, last night’s outage not only knocked out my web site, but my e-mail as well.

The entire Zero to One-Eighty site, and hence DR, has recently been subject to several unplanned outages, the most recent of which lasted throughout yesterday evening (approx. 7:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. US-Eastern time on Monday, February 27th). Additionally there was a database outage a few weeks back that rendered DR inoperative for about 12 hours, although on that occasion the rest of Zero to One-Eighty remained unaffected. Even worse, last night’s outage not only knocked out my web site, but my e-mail as well.

With these recent troubles I have, for some weeks now, been debating with myself (1) whether to announce the problem, and (2) if, nay when, I should switch web hosts. The problem resides with my current web host, which seems unable to provide the percentage of uptime that I need for developing Zero to One-Eighty, and that would enable visitors reliable access to the site. I will also be officially on the job market in a month’s time—these problems need to be a distant memory by then, when potential employers may be dropping by my site to check out my work and (hopefully) consider offering me a job. Needless to say, it’s incredibly frustrating to be uploading files one minute, then moments later have my computer tell me it can’t contact the server for love nor money.

Since these problems have not fortuitously vanished in recent weeks, I’ve resolved from now on to report any and all outages of my site that come to my attention. That way visitors can at least confirm after the fact whether any problem connecting to my site was at my end, rather than theirs. I will also be reporting e-mail outages—horrifying though the prospect of losing e-mail contact is—for the same reason. (My alternative e-mail contact is adrian at convealer dot com, though hopefully it won’t come to that.) Meanwhile I will be working on a longer-term solution to the problem, and will keep you in the loop if (when) any cutovers take place. Switching hosts will probably involve some amount of downtime…

So, my apologies for the interruptions, and especially for any visits I have encouraged you to make that may have resulted in a browser timeout or an otherwise non-responsive web site. Things will improve, and fast. In the meantime, if you experience problems with the site, or with sending me e-mail, please check back on DR within 24 hours to see if I have posted a notification of recent problems. Thanks for your patience!