Gah, thank you for the announcement and pointer, sir. Not only was I going mad refreshing AW, but I couldn't remember where the Camp was. 'Tis now bookmarked. :P

Hey, CaoPaux! This is like running into a friend in the waiting room at the ER.

What I was about to post is that AW's people are also welcome here, just like last time.

Thank you, ma'am! I just hope we don't track mud over the carpet like last time....

*resumes pacing while nursing tepid vend-o-matic coffee*

The carpets cleaned up just fine last time. Don't worry about it.

Fresh coffee in five minutes or so; I'm just finishing grinding the beans. Beer is in the bathtub as usual.

This is the current word from MacAllister Stone, owner of AW (thanks Birol, for the email!):

"Yep. AW is down, right now. The tech line has a minimum 4 hour wait, the last time we tried to call, or sometimes it's just busy. The story seems to be that they're having problems with at least one major switch being down BUT there have also been repeated brown-outs in the city where the server is located.

We're working on it, as much as we actually can. But most of this is out of our hands."

hah. Dawno beat me to it - was just coming here, upon being advised that ML had mentioned the outage.

So, err, what Dawno said.

Thanks for your patience, everyone. :)

Thanks, Dawno.

Hey, and Mac, too. I'll phone Patrick (he's at the grocery) and have him pick up some extra cookies and pretzels while he's there.

*steals a cookie to munch*

*settles down to wait and work on chapter X*

Abi @ 4... Beer is in the bathtub as usual.

After you've taken out the latest batch of gin?

The good news is, we've made regular database backups (something AW was not doing, the last time we had a significant outtage) so even if worst comes to worst, we can be back up on a different server with a minimum of data loss.

Just hang in there peeps.

As Mac says, we have alternatives ready to do, including a second vBulletin license.

In the meantime, you can frolic at the AW sister forum: here

and Roger Carlson's AW Refugee Camp here:
here.

Thanks for getting this up for refugees to find. I'm not the only one wondering what happened. Now I know--and it's clear that it's temporary. Whew!

Lisa @12:

Your first link was b0rked. Fixed it for you.

TNH, Mac - you're welcome :-)
Now, back to my taxes...

The Absolute Writedown? I thought you were talking about quarterly financial results.

Hm, I wonder how many people hit ML before reading their email? Roger's sent out an email with the url for the Refugee Camp.

Christmas cookies for everyone in the meantime! Still lots of iced bells, holly leaves and stars, and snowflake gingerbread cookies.

-Barbara

*snaffles a holly leaf*

Prickly!

Somebody said zombies overran the ISP. There's talk of moving to the mall.

Barbara @17: Worse than that, I'd already checked my email for the morning and didn't get back to it to find his message until I'd already thrashed around the 'Net in a panic. *sigh* I need to get out more.

absolutewrite.com is obviously still registered (turns up at the whois database and all that), but its corresponding IP address is currently gone from the name servers.

I'm not savvy enough with DNS to know why this is; I didn't think a simple outage, even if it is for days, is enough to do that.

That ISP is really not doing well.

I'm making pudding.

Caught in the act of nabbing a cookie, Madeline F brazens it out. That writing place? Oh, terrible that it's down! Terrible! I wonder if it's the result of Sinister Forces! By the way, have you tried the chocolates over there? I hear they're handmade.

Snorfles cookie in momentary distraction, tries to look like someone who totally belongs at this party.

Whew. My internetz is not broken. AW is just down.

...

...

AAAUGH! AW IS DOWN!!!

*regains control*

*grabs a cookie*

So glad you all have backup places to hang out and check for updates. Thanks for having us over, Theresa. :-)

Er - that'd be Teresa. With no H.

(bad guest! Can't even spell the hostess' name right...)

Heh.

Meanwhile, if you guys didn't know about Making Light, now ya do - and your lives will be richer for it. *g*

this helps somewhat, though I miss the wide halls and endless corridors of AW. I've been searching for sign of AW life, looks like I've found it. There is intelligent life on the internet. Oh, snacks...

I had a look here yesterday wondering if you'd post an announcement. I guess I was ahead of myself.

I've been having trouble reaching the site for a week now, off and on, so when I couldn't get there at all I assumed, at first, that it was more of the same.

I do hope that it's back on line soon and meanwhile, thank you for the announcement, and the cookies. I'll try not to eat them all.

Hi all,

Thanks for letting me know what happened, and for this alternate refugee camp.

I'm having PAMB-and-its-quotes withdrawal symptoms.

Yay for recent backups, and for MAcAllister and Dawno for their hard work, and for Making Light for the free coffee.

In the "lemonade out of lemons" vein, who's planning to get some BIC time in while we're waiting for AW to come back? Anyone?

AW is back up as of ~ 11:10 EST.

I assume, per protocol, that this was all Dawno's fault?

Yayness! Thank you for your hospitality, Fluoroshpere. We shall now depart in an calm and orderly fash-- *vanishes under mob*

Fluorosphere, that is. *gathers shreds of dignity and limps off, stage left*

Is AW down again? I was on for a minute this morning and then couldn't get it to respond. It's now 9:47am CA time.

AW's homepage is working for me, but if I try to get to the forums it returns a database error message.

Pah. I wanted to get BACK there!

Time for hot chocolate, I think. And yes, this is definitely All Dawno's Fault.

Chris Johnson @ 31... this was all Dawno's fault?

"It's not my fault!"
- Han Solo

We're running various utilities now; panic not. Just making sure the server has TLC.

There are over 500 people repeatedly refreshing the link for AW's forums. I'm very glad you love us.

Please stop hitting refresh, though. *g* It slows stuff down even more.

It's going to be an hour or so, while we fix databases.

Datapoint: it's 6:49 EST now, and I'm getting the following error message: "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.absolutewrite.com."

I'll assume you guys are still working on it and check again tomorrow. Thanks for your work!

OK.

We're at Stage II now. We've run the SQL utilities (thanks Scott), and we've now turned vBulletin off so we can run some other utilities, because the database got hosed (but it will be fine).

In the meantime, please please please stop clicking on Refresh and trying to log in. It slows things way down when, as just happened, 200 of you log in within five minutes of us getting the board up.

We appreciate your patience and enthusiasm, but please, just be patient a little longer. I'll be sure to come here, the IRC channel, and (not) Written in Stone to let you know when we're live.

Thanks guys; you're the best.

Lisa /Medievalist

Hi

We seem to have a clean bill of health.

Go forth and post. We know we need to re-set the server clock, but since over 300 of you are now compulsively hitting re-load, we've turned on the forums.

Please do PM me, Medievalist, if you see something wonky.

Yes, of course, wonky is a technical term . . .

Thanks to all of you, and especially our ML hosts.

Y'all are finest kind.

Since I didn't know where else to post this (I left a post up on my blog, too), I hope the Making Light moderators will be kind.

Absolute Write is down again.

Oy vey.

Absolute Write is down again.

Darn. I was wondering if it was just me.

To the Refugee Camp, then.

Hiya, Jim -

Yep. The Post table in the db was pretty hosed. We're rebuilding stuff, and hope to be up again shortly.

Thanks for checking in, MacAllister. Hope all is well soon.