The folks at our data center had trouble with one of their server cabinets, and it happened to be the one our web server was in, which took us off the air. Initially they thought they'd fixed it right away and Pocket-Monkey was only gone for about 15 minutes, but it turns out that was overly optimistic as things went wrong again less than half an hour later and took us off the air for just over 11 hours.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah -- but did our games time out?" ;-) No, no games were timed out during the outage. The last game was timed out nearly four hours before we went off the air (the last time the Gorilla ran). To allow for people not having been able to get to the site, we've added 24 hours to all active games (12 hours for the outage, plus a bonus 12 hours just to handle time-of-day issues).
Sorry for the inconvenience. We've been unhappy with this data center for a while now and will be making a move as soon as we can; realistically that will be sometime in February or March.
Many thanks to all who wrote in to let us know of the problem.
hi, just a little suggestion in a situation like this, couldnt you have an automated email that goes out, cos i was frantically trying to get on for my pocket monkey fix and thought my comp was broken lol. thanx caz
Well, when our servers are down or inaccessible, it's hard for them to send email. ;-)
But speaking seriously, over time we've been getting more and more sophisticated with our monitoring of Pocket-Monkey, and in fact as of mid-December we're now using a separate server in a different location to monitor it. Right now that other server just gathers timing information, but I want to add to its responsibilities. It's an interesting idea to have it send email to all interested parties (obviously this would be opt-in). A bit complicated because players come and go and their email addresses change, but fundamentally possible. Of course, the primary thing is to avoid downtime in the first place. ;-)
Thanks for the suggestion! -- T.J. Crowder First Primate Pocket-Monkey.com
Another idea is to have someplace off-line that can server as a place people can gather when the site is off-line.
For example, a Yahoo Groups page - or even a MySpace page.
That way if the site is not accesable for some reason, users will have a place to go and gather to make sure (1) it is not just them having the problem, and (2) maybe get some answers since hopefully you or someone else who knows more information can go and make a post or something at one of the off-line sites to keep the users updated.
I mean 12 hours is not a big deal, but sometimes thing will happen that might take the site down for days - which having a place to gather outside of the site would be most useful.
MySpace would be a good choice - you could use it as a recruitment tool to get more users to come and visit the game site also!
And if you did not want to "run" it, I'm sure you can find an active user with some free time to go start one up and keep it updated and such.
That is a very good idea indeed, a very good one. Of course, people would have to know about it (e.g., where it was), but still... And it ties in well with a couple of other things. Thanks, great idea! -- T.J. Crowder First Primate Pocket-Monkey.com
And using MySpace would be a good way to advertise the site.
I set up my own MySpace page about a month ago - did NO advertisement, did not tell anyone or anything like that - set it up and left. Put information like my high school, etc... and basic info like "look at my coan.net webpage".
So far, with no advertisement or anything like that - have around 50 views, 7 messages, couple of friends added, and a message from someone I went to grade school with until he moved away in the 8th grade.
Now image if I'm active - visiting other people, adding comments/friends that point back to Pocket Monkey and such - you would then be expanding this site to new "turn based" players.
The more I think about it - the better I like the idea - now quickly run over there and try to get a name similar to the site!
Yes, /pocketmonkey is already taken. I've just grabbed /pocketmonkeyspace on spec. No time to set it up (I'm really pushing a deadline at work), but at least I've grabbed a name...
I should clarify: By "on spec" I mean that MySpace may very well not be where I want to do this, but you're right it's a good idea to grab a name... :-)
May I suggest "pocketmonkeyrehabcenter" for the MySpace name? T.J., you've become a "game dealer" and your customers get game withdrawal when they can't get their fix.
We here in the US have been having some miserable weather with electric out for days up to a week in some areas. Having your site off-line seemed almost expected as we adjusted to inconveniences here. Heard about the high winds around Europe, visualized a downed antenna (or whatever). So glad to see you back and to know there was no damage (except to your mental well-being). Welcome back (to my) home! :-D
Yes, we've had some really severe winds here in the UK, killed several people (trees falling on cars, roofs blown off houses, etc.). And I've heard about the severe weather in the U.S. (and PM's servers are in southern California). And yet -- the weather wasn't the cause! They had some sort of hardware malfunction which only affected one "rack" (cabinet) of servers. It took down our web server (because it was in the cabinet) but not our databse server which is at the same facility but in a different room. -- T.J. Crowder First Primate Pocket-Monkey.com
i agree with everyone in here.... definately need a site we can go to check status of site when its down, i really liked the idea of the "rehabcenter". lol. like others i thought it was my computer or internet server. i was freaking out because i had already lost numerous tournament games on the 10 of january do to having to redo my computer... had to reformat and reinstall the whole thing.... i wish we had emergency time.... i usually move very fast so i would have lots of time built up and wish i could use it on those days. but .... great job with the site.....
Well done to TJ and the team for getting everything back up and running allowing us all to get our fix each day...great work to all concerned........
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