861 Head In the Clouds and Back to the Future
Old computer hands are used to this, but lately it’s become less frequent and unexpected. The site that hosts this blog and hundreds of thousands of others blew up for almost 24 hours. It happened during what was described as “routine maintenance.”
This “routine” was common in the early days of computing. Information Geeks In Charge would tell you something like “the system will be down for maintenance” or an upgrade for about one hour starting at 3am tomorrow. That hour often stretched into much more.
Modern gizmology has “solved” all that and as Google leads the parade into “cloud computing,” it was an “oops” moment. Well, more like an “oops” day.
No wonder bin Laden kept his e-mails on flash drives. No wonder those of us with any sense make backups on a word processing program.
Cloud computing, indeed.
Reminder: this is not some rinkydink outfit doing inventory at a wool factory, or Blackberry which for awhile had more crashes than a bumper car ride or demolition derby. This is the world leader in cloud --off site -- computing. And this is not some rinkydink experiment in an obscure variation of a minor service. This is a huge multinational technology leader and advocate and its second or third busiest and most lucrative service. And it’s not 1985, it’s 2011, which is several dozen lifetimes in computer years.
And it’s not like these guys don’t know their stuff. They’ve owned “Blogspot” since 2003.
Adding insult to injury, a late breaking bulletin from the Google Ministry of Truth tells us that “many” users were affected and that work posted after a certain time two days previous was removed and “will be restored.” It affected everyone, including the people who read the stuff, the non-posters.
Google has trained us to trust it. Good thing we can’t give them a vote of no confidence or they’d have to dissolve Parliament and call for new elections.
--Shrapnel:
--A day after cancelling our pay-to-read subscription, the New York Times sent a half price offer to re-up, so we re-upped. And we found a trick to reduce the number of times the NYT mobile website crashes the Android phone: don’t try to use the app unless ‘droid’s power level is above 60%. Brings new meaning to the phrase “morning paper.”
--A reader comments these Wessays™ have been emphasizing tech subjects at the expense of others, which may mean its Executive Producer may be over-focused and should be broadening his horizons. Done. From now on, it’s going to be an hour a week on a manual typewriter and hand buffing the corroded 1960s “German Silver” guitar picks.
--So bin Laden had a porn collection. Not such a bad thing. After all, the guy had a lot of time to fill and after awhile, maybe he just got bored with his wife... er, wives.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own buy you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com.
© WJR 2011
Old computer hands are used to this, but lately it’s become less frequent and unexpected. The site that hosts this blog and hundreds of thousands of others blew up for almost 24 hours. It happened during what was described as “routine maintenance.”
This “routine” was common in the early days of computing. Information Geeks In Charge would tell you something like “the system will be down for maintenance” or an upgrade for about one hour starting at 3am tomorrow. That hour often stretched into much more.
Modern gizmology has “solved” all that and as Google leads the parade into “cloud computing,” it was an “oops” moment. Well, more like an “oops” day.
No wonder bin Laden kept his e-mails on flash drives. No wonder those of us with any sense make backups on a word processing program.
Cloud computing, indeed.
Reminder: this is not some rinkydink outfit doing inventory at a wool factory, or Blackberry which for awhile had more crashes than a bumper car ride or demolition derby. This is the world leader in cloud --off site -- computing. And this is not some rinkydink experiment in an obscure variation of a minor service. This is a huge multinational technology leader and advocate and its second or third busiest and most lucrative service. And it’s not 1985, it’s 2011, which is several dozen lifetimes in computer years.
And it’s not like these guys don’t know their stuff. They’ve owned “Blogspot” since 2003.
Adding insult to injury, a late breaking bulletin from the Google Ministry of Truth tells us that “many” users were affected and that work posted after a certain time two days previous was removed and “will be restored.” It affected everyone, including the people who read the stuff, the non-posters.
Google has trained us to trust it. Good thing we can’t give them a vote of no confidence or they’d have to dissolve Parliament and call for new elections.
--Shrapnel:
--A day after cancelling our pay-to-read subscription, the New York Times sent a half price offer to re-up, so we re-upped. And we found a trick to reduce the number of times the NYT mobile website crashes the Android phone: don’t try to use the app unless ‘droid’s power level is above 60%. Brings new meaning to the phrase “morning paper.”
--A reader comments these Wessays™ have been emphasizing tech subjects at the expense of others, which may mean its Executive Producer may be over-focused and should be broadening his horizons. Done. From now on, it’s going to be an hour a week on a manual typewriter and hand buffing the corroded 1960s “German Silver” guitar picks.
--So bin Laden had a porn collection. Not such a bad thing. After all, the guy had a lot of time to fill and after awhile, maybe he just got bored with his wife... er, wives.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own buy you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com.
© WJR 2011
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