Maintenance outage coming soon.

Changing the hardware underneath the database tonight. Standby for everything to come to a halt with an annoying message screen right in the middle of that incredibly clever post you just pushed the 'save' button on.

Please understand that we do this primarily to annoy people and make them hate their lives.

edited 25th Jul '11 10:45:08 PM by FastEddie

I was just getting ready to go to sleep and this post made me laugh out loud. Thanks, FE. Good work.

Working again, but seems a little slow . . .

Seems totally fie now.

Our hardware related excuses for spreading sorrow and regret have unfortunately come to an end for now. From here forward, all the user pain will have to come from the drunken programming and myopic code architecture. Luckily, we have vast quantities of those things on hand. The agony should continue unabated.

MOFW

Oh, come on, Eddie. You of all people should know the dangers of Tempting Fate like that.

Until Morale Improves The Beatings Will Commence! So sayeth the fast one.

Nothing inspires confidence in the moderation quite like massive quantities of snark, apparently.

Hey, just a question- Will there be any danger of loss of data from this? Just want to make sure.

<Incredibly clever post>

There is a time distortion in the space time continuum!

Can someone explain this amendment of time that so subtly changed things from one night to another?

edited 27th Jul '11 9:04:32 PM by stevebat

Wait, so it's 24 hours from now?

Yes, apparently.

I second Hydrall's question.

Why would you automatically expect a loss of data? The potential for such things exists in any major database operation, but it's not like Eddie is likely to run a process with a high risk of data loss and not bother to tell anyone.

If the restructuring involves some kind of purge of older threads, one would expect him to tell us.

I don't automatically expect a loss of data, I'm just being cautious.

I would say that data loss is unlikely, but that would be like challenging the Data Vampires to do their worst. So I'm not saying that. In fact, this post isn't really here.

Eddie, just curious - is this going to involve any restructuring of the forums to account for some of the suggestions that have been made in the "how to fix TRS and IP" threads, or is this purely a hardware fix?

edited 28th Jul '11 9:31:46 AM by Willbyr

There will be no visible functional differences. Well, modis will be able to use mod-mode pink posts everywhere, but other than that, no wishlist items will suddenly appear. The restructure will make maintenance easier and allow more flexibility for future functional changes.

So, when the forums are closed, will we still be able to use pms?

I'm 99% certain that's an independent system. So probably yes. Also, Ask The Tropers and other threaded discussion pages.

No, the PM system will offline, too.

Well, damn. Shows what I know. Should let the expert(s) talk.

Maybe the "pm system is also closing" bit should be part of the announcement? Considering that it's not immediately obvious.