The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

SA = 1 / SIB

Posted on | January 8, 2010 | 20 Comments

by Smitty

Situational Awareness is the inverse of Self-Induced ‘Baloney’.
We managed to crash our shared hosting server earlier today. Our nice host service Very Strongly Encouraged installing a caching solution. We already had experimented with a couple of caching modules, but disabled them due to the additional complexity. Making an update to a text widget and then not seeing the change can be maddening for the non-technical user, e.g. RSM.

The recommended tool started off by requiring the removal of existing caching tools. Following the manual removal steps somewhat blindly wound up wrecking the site below the top page. “Everything is easy, when you know how to do it,” as I’m fond of saying, but even the pros tread lightly around apache mod_rewrite rules in .htaccess.

Fortunately, I pull down files and check them into a Subversion repostitory prior to making site changes. So reverting the edits was straightforward. However, having decent process management is scant comfort when you’ve blown your credibility by wrecking the site.

Stacy is mildly apoplectic over all this, and I can’t blame him. He has some video of the Crimson Tide getting ready for a trimuphal trip home, and this service interruption has delayed the distribution of that. I owe every Alabama fan in the country a big apology: I’m sorry.

We’re going through blog puberty, as I was explaining to Stacy. The WordPress upgrade to 2.9 killed post scheduling until 2.9.1 was released, and configuring the caching has made life more interesting still. *sigh*

Category: Blogging, Computers

Comments

20 Responses to “SA = 1 / SIB”

  1. Lonely Conservative
    January 9th, 2010 @ 1:46 am

    Sorry to hear about your troubles, Smitty. Glad to see you have things back to normal.

  2. Lonely Conservative
    January 8th, 2010 @ 8:46 pm

    Sorry to hear about your troubles, Smitty. Glad to see you have things back to normal.

  3. Dandapani
    January 9th, 2010 @ 1:53 am

    That’s why most people buy such services commercially…. :whistling:

  4. Dandapani
    January 8th, 2010 @ 8:53 pm

    That’s why most people buy such services commercially…. :whistling:

  5. Thomas L. Knapp
    January 9th, 2010 @ 2:09 am

    Smitty,

    Have you tried DB Cache Reloaded? It’s free, it’s simple, and I’ve never seen it break a site.

  6. Thomas L. Knapp
    January 8th, 2010 @ 9:09 pm

    Smitty,

    Have you tried DB Cache Reloaded? It’s free, it’s simple, and I’ve never seen it break a site.

  7. Thomas L. Knapp
    January 9th, 2010 @ 2:12 am

    Or, better yet, go back to Blogger. The move was a bad idea in the first place. What are you trying to do here that you can’t do there?

  8. Thomas L. Knapp
    January 8th, 2010 @ 9:12 pm

    Or, better yet, go back to Blogger. The move was a bad idea in the first place. What are you trying to do here that you can’t do there?

  9. Patrick
    January 9th, 2010 @ 2:13 am

    WP-Super-Cache. Get it dude.

    and No, don’t go back to blogger. It SUCKS!

  10. Patrick
    January 8th, 2010 @ 9:13 pm

    WP-Super-Cache. Get it dude.

    and No, don’t go back to blogger. It SUCKS!

  11. Mike
    January 9th, 2010 @ 2:36 am

    This is ToM’s version of Hope and Change. Change platforms and hope it will work better.

  12. Mike
    January 8th, 2010 @ 9:36 pm

    This is ToM’s version of Hope and Change. Change platforms and hope it will work better.

  13. smitty
    January 9th, 2010 @ 2:38 am

    @Kn@ppster:
    I think the plan was:

    1. Go self-hosted.
    2. ???
    3. Profit!

    @Patrick:
    Everything sucks. The question will be, a couple of months into the experience, is the suction here more profitable than the Blogger suck?

    A couple of weeks into it, my chief regret is that task switching between the front-end and back-end work is less than efficient.

  14. smitty
    January 8th, 2010 @ 9:38 pm

    @Kn@ppster:
    I think the plan was:

    1. Go self-hosted.
    2. ???
    3. Profit!

    @Patrick:
    Everything sucks. The question will be, a couple of months into the experience, is the suction here more profitable than the Blogger suck?

    A couple of weeks into it, my chief regret is that task switching between the front-end and back-end work is less than efficient.

  15. Paco
    January 9th, 2010 @ 2:55 am

    Now, I readily admit that I am baffled by the intricacies of computer technology, but when mechanical things go wrong, it’s always my policy to first check the battery and the fan belt. I merely suggest it.

  16. Paco
    January 8th, 2010 @ 9:55 pm

    Now, I readily admit that I am baffled by the intricacies of computer technology, but when mechanical things go wrong, it’s always my policy to first check the battery and the fan belt. I merely suggest it.

  17. Thomas L. Knapp
    January 9th, 2010 @ 3:37 am

    Since I’m always looking for a reason to link to you guys anyway, I went ahead and posted an extended argument in favor of returning to blogger over at my place.

  18. Thomas L. Knapp
    January 8th, 2010 @ 10:37 pm

    Since I’m always looking for a reason to link to you guys anyway, I went ahead and posted an extended argument in favor of returning to blogger over at my place.

  19. Dave E.
    January 9th, 2010 @ 4:51 am

    Hang in there and power through it, smitty. You’ll be fine. Though I gotta tell you that telling the truth to less technologically skilled powers that be is almost always a losing proposition. There are much better excuses than the truth, and in the long run pretty much everyone is happier with them. That’s IT.

  20. Dave E.
    January 8th, 2010 @ 11:51 pm

    Hang in there and power through it, smitty. You’ll be fine. Though I gotta tell you that telling the truth to less technologically skilled powers that be is almost always a losing proposition. There are much better excuses than the truth, and in the long run pretty much everyone is happier with them. That’s IT.