Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Lost in the Zone...

The Faith Writers’ web sites go down every once in a while. Last time that happened I got these panicked emails from my friends, “Amy! What happened with FW!? Can you get on?” I know it happens periodically, so it doesn’t concern me much. It’ll be back online in a few hours, or at least by the next day. Now, to understand the reaction, you have to understand that Faith Writers is a second home. All of us on the message boards are like family. Most of us check in several times a day. And, though some of us have each other’s email addresses, the boards really are our link to each other.

Well, yesterday the sites went down again. But this time it was different. First, it was on a Monday morning--when the new topic for the writing challenge is announced. So I mailed a few friends asking if any of them had happened to see what the topic was before it crashed. One of them wrote back and said not only had she seen the topic, but she was on the FW message boards right then.

That was the start of the weirdness. I could not get on that site, but I could get on other sites fine, so I knew it wasn’t my server. Why could she get on and not me? A few hours later I was able to get on. I had gotten a few PM notifications, one on the regular FW site and a couple on the message board. I went to the regular site. There were no new PMs. Okaaaayy. So I went to the boards. It showed that there were two new ones--but they were ones I had gotten two days ago and responded to…

So then I started looking around the site. All the “new” posts had been made on Friday. It was Monday. I check for a few threads I knew had been started on Saturday. Not there. To make matters even more confusing, one of my friends was still saying that she hadn’t notice anything odd about the boards. Suddenly I was feeling very much like I had woken up in the Twilight Zone!

I checked the regular FW site and to my horror the last two chapters of our Chat-A-Book were not there. Thankfully I had those two chapters more or less saved on my computer. But I was stricken with horrific imaginings of the whole Chat-A-Book getting lost! This book is completely irreplaceable and un re-do-able. Now, I know this is awful, bad, stupid…but I haven’t been saving the Chat-A-Book--just posting it on-line and then copying the next week’s session over the top of the last one, to save space on my computer. I’ve been meaning to go to a different computer that takes floppy disks and copy it, but I haven’t yet.

OK, so this time, I am panicking. LOL Just about then I got an email from another friend. She was panicking, too. Ah the comfort in knowing that someone else out there was stuck in the Twilight Zone with me!! LOL

All is well now. FW was moving to a new server and things were just crazy for a bit. ;-)

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I'll say! Things still are a bit crazy over there, but I hope things will get straightened out.

Shame on you for not saving CAB!! LOL If it helps, I can save finished transcripts on mine until you come up with an alternative.

Deb Porter said...

Hee hee - it just goes to show how addicted we all are. This was definitely the strangest down-time at FaithWriters, but it was for the very best of reasons.

Hopefully, now that they have the new dedicated server, we should never have to go through such panic ever again.

Love you!

Deb x

purple_kangaroo said...

server moves can be frustrating

Shelley L. MacKenzie said...

I was a little flustered too when I couldn't get on to see the new topic...

Then I remembered that they had been having problems and that they were probably down, maybe even fixing something...so I waited a few hours and then was able to get on thankfully.