Lessons learned (not)

Back to normal

Gosh, I hope that’s true.

You might notice that the stern Dr. Conspiracy has reappeared on the blog Welcome at right. A new Quote of the Day has been set. The Friends and Feeds widget has been restored, and our1 beloved flag is once again raised.

I think the last of the character encoding issues are behind us and the short link to the Debunker’s Guide is working again.

Like many things, if I had known before what I know now, it would have been pretty easy.

I don’t know that I could have predicted and avoided switching hosting companies right on the eve of a disaster, but I could have made better contingency plans. And speaking of contingency plans, I will be setting up another site to where you can go for status on this one – announcement to follow.

Update:

Yesterday was pretty rough. The vps.net has made yet another excuse, something about excessive load on one of their servers. You’d think they would be able to deal with something like this quickly and efficiently, and not just go down for hours at a time.

I finished the off-site status page. It can be reached at Obama Conspiracy Theories Status. I say it can be reached, but I can’t reach it myself at that address. It looks like the BellSouth DNS servers are weird. I’d appreciate comments below on whether you can get to the status site or not. I’m looking into switching to Google’s public DNS servers that resolve the status site  properly.


1For those of you for whom it is your flag

About Dr. Conspiracy

I'm not a real doctor, but I have a master's degree.
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45 Responses to Lessons learned (not)

  1. Bob J says:

    Doc,

    and the rest who know so much more,

    The .002 second delay in anything you have posted, has been worth the wait.

    When I read of a virus’ ( or is it virus’s?) on certain sites, I feel like Kevin Nealon, who is having, unprotected, sex in Haiti, stupid and infected.

    I am sure you did the the best for your site.

    I have Norton. Am I safe looking at other sites, or am I in danger?

  2. You mean this Norton?

    Sorry, I try not to give advice in areas where I don’t know much more than anyone else (i.e., I would not make a good birther).

    Bob J: I have Norton. Am I safe looking at other sites, or am I in danger?

  3. J. Potter says:

    Bob J: I have Norton. Am I safe looking at other sites, or am I in danger?

    I’d flost the suggestion that your choice of browser is very important. Not sure about the recent versions of IE, but it using it used to be literally asking for it. I use no antivirus, FireFox (usually), do some regular maintenance, and takes me chances.

    There are so many variables in security, I have somewhat pitched in the towel.

  4. J. Potter says:

    … which is very Ed Norton of me! 😀

  5. By the way, I personally use Microsoft Security Essentials which is both anti-virus and anti-malware. It’s free and I haven’t had any problems. I also use Firefox 10 for my usual browser.

  6. The site went south again this past hour. The disk problem that took us down for a couple of days is still not 100% resolved. I have a backup now at least.

    I’m trying to get shed completely from my old host and then if things don’t clear up here, I’ll start looking again.

  7. J. Potter says:

    donna: Who’s Who In Birther Super PAC

    Geez, there’s a SuperPAC for everything these days! Considering their unregulated nature, only a fool would donate to a birtherPAC

    Oh, right.

  8. misha says:

    Dr. Conspiracy: By the way, I personally use Microsoft Security Essentials which is both anti-virus and anti-malware. It’s free and I haven’t had any problems. I also use Firefox 10 for my usual browser.

    I tried Norton and one other. I gave them up. I now use Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows firewall, which are free and part of the OS. I have Windows 7 Professional, and usually use IE9.

    Dr. Conspiracy: You mean this Norton?

    “To the moon Alice, to the moon!” I can’t get over that Gleason never got an Oscar, especially his portrayal of Minnesota Fats.

  9. US Citizen says:

    Past birther cases, it’s hard to predict how things will go.
    Your efforts are appreciated though. 🙂

  10. RuhRoh says:

    Let’s say lessons half-learned. It’s hit and miss whether this site is up. Has been for days. Probably will be for weeks.

  11. our beloved flag is once again raised.

    As a recent immigrant, I suppose it is my flag now, but as an aside, just for a moment there, I wondered if we, the community here, had our own flag.

    You should get on that, Doc – 51st Statehood beckons!

  12. They are replacing their SANs and things probably won’t be straight until them.

    RuhRoh: It’s hit and miss whether this site is up. Has been for days. Probably will be for weeks.

  13. justlw says:

    Dr. Conspiracy: You mean this Norton?

    I would have thought this Norton would be a little more, er, thematic.

    He’d have made a hell of a lawyer/dentist.

  14. G says:

    Yeah, I too continue to experience a lot of periods where this site is down. I think it is too early to proclaim smooth sailing until at least several days pass without incident.

    I would clearly rate this site as still unstable at the moment. You mention an outage that happened prior to 4pm. I had several periods of difficulty getting to this site between then and now.

  15. Latest excuse from vps.net:

    There were issues with MySQL at your Cloud Hosting server: some databases were corrupted (also your database). We fixed it and now your site work correctly.

  16. Somehow my article seems to have a certain birtheresque optimism about it.

  17. US Citizen says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:
    Somehow my article seems to have a certain birtheresque optimism about it.

    You’ll have a good server ANY DAY NOW????

  18. Arthur says:

    Dr. C.: Trying to post a comment has been hit or miss. Sometimes the “Comments” wont open, and other times, after clicking the “Submit” button, nothing happens.

  19. realist says:

    I had no problem accessing the “status” site.

  20. I am in discussions with the hosting company about moving my site to another data center.

  21. Rickey says:

    I got to the status site without encountering a problem.

  22. Wile says:

    Status site worked for me.

  23. Majority Will says:

    I’m with the status quo.

  24. linda says:

    The link to the Debunkers Guide still is NOT working for me, but the link to the Status page is (yay!). I am glad you are back, I appreciate the sanity.

  25. G says:

    12:30pm on 2/9. Seems to be working at the moment.

    It sure had its problems all late yesterday afternoon and into the early morning on 2/9. Either took forever to get site or site was down during that period.

  26. Paul Pieniezny says:

    Almost Friday for me. Cannot reach status site. This site works well now, but last post took two minutes to be visible. That IS hours ago.

  27. G says:

    Well, let’s just hope this latest site change attempt holds. Obviously, this afternoon was another day of site problems…

  28. Keith says:

    OK, I has got OCT 2.1 now! There is definitely a noticeable difference.

  29. Majority Will says:

    Just fyi (as linda mentioned):

    http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/debunk

    is still 404 Not Found.

  30. Double odd. It works for me, but it goes to the old site.:?:

    Majority Will:
    Just fyi (as linda mentioned):

    http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/debunk

    is still 404 Not Found.

  31. Keith says:

    Keith:
    OK, I has got OCT 2.1 now! There is definitely a noticeable difference.

    But I had to reboot to get here.

    I cleared the cache with ipconfig. Didn’t do any good.

    I cleared the Firefox cache. Didn’t do any good.

    I rebooted. Got to the 2.1 site.

    Posted the above comment, which clearly, got here OK.

    BUT what I didn’t notice was that when the screen refreshed after posting the comment, I was in 2.0!

    I posted a follow up comment to indicate that the comments posting was much faster and it was only after that post that I noticed I was now on 2.0.

    Notice that my first post, the one I am commenting on here, reached BOTH 2.0 an 2.1.

    I did all the cache clearing stuff again, even switched briefly to IE, all to no avail.

    I rebooted again and here I am.

    I do hope the new DNS assignment gets fully propagated and this gets straightened out in due course. I would hate to have to reboot every time I post a comment.

  32. Keith says:

    I stayed on 2.1 after that post!

    Things are looking up!

  33. The old DNS entries should expire around noon tomorrow and that should be the end of it.

    Keith: I do hope the new DNS assignment gets fully propagated and this gets straightened out in due course. I would hate to have to reboot every time I post a comment.

  34. Keith says:

    Hmmmm….. weirdness

    Some of the links to comments in the Recent Comments list lead back to 2.0.

    Example is RealityCheck’s last comment in “Out of the Frying Pan and into the Apuzzo”.

    I take it that the comment link backs have the IP address, not the domain name?

  35. No, they have domain names. You’re probably getting a cached copy from somewhere. It will stop soon.

    Keith: I take it that the comment link backs have the IP address, not the domain name?

  36. Rickey says:

    Keith: But I had to reboot to get here.

    I rebooted my laptop and got here without an problem. I haven’ rebooted the desktop yet.

  37. DNS is still weird for me, switching back and forth between old and new sites. It should all be normal after noon today (EST) when all the old A records expire.

  38. Horus says:

    Status worked fine for me.

  39. Now that things have stabilized, I am really enjoying how fast the new site runs. Many of you are getting cached versions of the pages, and you should be seeing faster response than I.

    If you view page source on the pages, you’ll see a footer at the bottom something like:

    <!-- Dynamic page generated in 1.132 seconds. -->

    That’s how long it took to read the database for all the parts of the page and to build the HTML file you’re being shown. That delay doesn’t occur for the most part on a cached page.

  40. John Potter says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:
    Now that things have stabilized, I am really enjoying how fast the new site runs. Many of you are getting cached versionsof the pages, and you should be seeing faster response than I.

    If you view page source on the pages, you’ll see a footer at the bottom something like:

    <!– Dynamic page generated in 1.132 seconds. –>
    That’s how long it took to read the database for all the parts of the page and to build the HTML file you’re being shown. That delay doesn’t occur for the most part on a cached page.

    It humming along Doc! Great work!

  41. Northland10 says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:
    That’s how long it took to read the database for all the parts of the page and to build the HTML file you’re being shown.

    I had to wait 0.965 seconds. It was like an eternity.

  42. I had to remove the American Flag widget. Something had changed in the script it loads and it made the footers go all weird.

  43. Joey says:

    When I open this site with Internet Explorer, I get “Lessons Learned (Not)” as the featured article on Obama Conspiracy Theories 2.1.
    When I open this site from AOL, I get “The Debunkers Guide to Obama Conspiracy Theories” as the featured article, also at “Obama Conspiracy Theories 2.1”
    If I click on “Home” from AOL, I still get “Site Temporarily Unavailable.”
    It is now Sunday, February 12 at 1: 16 pm Pacific time.

  44. John Potter says:

    Joey:
    When I open this site with Internet Explorer, I get “Lessons Learned (Not)” as the featured article on Obama Conspiracy Theories 2.1.
    When I open this site from AOL, I get “The Debunkers Guide to Obama Conspiracy Theories” as the featured article, also at “Obama Conspiracy Theories 2.1‘
    If I click on “Home” from AOL, I still get “Site Temporarily Unavailable.”
    It is now Sunday, February 12 at 1: 16 pm Pacific time.

    Joey, IE is nasty about caching. try clearing your cache first. If that doesn’t work, try flushing DNS (Start > type “cmd” in “Search Programs and Files” box to open a command prompt. enter “ipconfig /flushdns”). Close browser and try again.

    Consider trying a different browser.

    Can’t help with AOL.

    The site is up and running, have been in and out all day. If needing assistance, john.david.potter@gmail.com.

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