A lovely sunday morning.

[artimrj]

So I wake up this morning and have a cup of tea and turn on my computer. First thing I do is read my email and I have 20 frantic messages telling me that the websites are down. So I go to RWA and the website is working. But when I go to the forum I get error 406 telling me my browser can communicate with the website but it cannot translate the code coming across. I have seven PHP BB forums running and all of them are down. All of the websites were running but none of the forums were.

I logged into the cPanel of several sites and the first thing it made me do was change my password, this has never happened before. So I'm immediately thinking that someone hacked my sites. I changed several of the passwords but that did not fix anything. By now I'm getting extremely aggravated because I have no clue what is going on. And since I had just woken up that didn't help matters much either. So I had another cup of tea.

My next step was to run the repair facility on each of the databases. This took several minutes and it also failed to bring the forums back. So the only thing left to do is to get in touch with tech support. It's Sunday and I assume no one was going to be around so I didn't even bother trying to call. I just went to the website was getting ready to send a help ticket and I noticed the live chat button on the right-hand side of the screen. So I clicked it. A small pop-up appeared and told me to please wait while we contact and available personnel. After about 10 minutes someone came to the chat window. I told him what was wrong and he asked for my website address and asked me to wait a few seconds. He came back in a few seconds and asked me to go to one of the forums that was down and it was working. He said that they had forced an update through and this might have been the problem and that they made a small patch to fix it while they straighten things out.

Good tech support is a great thing and these guys are pretty good.

[Chacal]

Great!
I knew several guys doing tech support for hosting providers. The kind of guys who would pick up a few tickets even when not on duty. They were working from home and were mostly playing games until they got a call.

They usually are young tech enthusiasts and it's a great learning experience for them. Even then, it must suck to be on call around Christmas.

[johnmckenzie]

So I had another cup of tea.

Everything always seems better after a nice cuppa!

[Chacal]

After about 10 minutes someone came to the chat window.

7b3fda94-lotwindow.jpg

[harryadkins]

I've seen him at my window before...

[philmoberg]

Y'know, I wondered what was up, but I had to be out the door quickly this morning. Thanks kindly for setting it aright.

[Bananarama]

Great - now that pic is gonna' give me nightmares...

[GaryG]

That must be the ghost of Christmas phpBB, always ready to assist so no worries.

Early Merry Christmas and/or whatever Seasonal Wish you like to all!

GaryG

[NDORFN]

That must be the ghost of Christmas phpBB

[fecrails]

I figured the problem was something along that line. When I checked in to the forum this morning and got the 406 error message, I just left, went to work for the day and knew it would all be straightened out when I checked in tonight. Sure enough, it is! I'm glad it was nothing major like a hack!

Sorry to hear you had to awaken to a stressful Sunday morning Bob. Just know we appreciate your dedication to keeping this site here for us.

A least one good thing came out of it..... a wonderful second cup of tea to sooth the soul!

[bpetit]

Hey Bob, I have the perfect song for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1jcdd3dos (Scorpions-Loving you Sunday Morning)

[Rich_S]

Bob, you are not alone. I woke up Sunday morning and after watching the news headed off to work as Sundays are my Tuesdays. My problem for the day was a SD70 that would stop displaying locomotive speed above 17 mph, but only in dynamics. After reviewing the prints and taking a few voltage measurements here and there and to make a long story short, it appeared someone had installed the wrong speed probes on the traction motors. What is truly amazing is just how filthy dirty the traction motors get, I thought these things ran on rails, not off road So I spent most of the day standing on a step ladder in a pit hovered over a few grimy traction motors changing speed probes. I'll trade you, on second thought better not, I don't know much about bulletin boards. In closing Bob, this is just a little light hearted humor, keep up the great work and thank you for keeping this site up and running


Merry Christmas,
Rich S.