–by Margie Doyle–
Yes, we’ve had a break from normal with wild winds, high seas and power outages over the past few days. And Orcas Issues also experienced a major break from our normal 24/7 ever-present news service over the weekend.
What was it like for you? We heard from some of you — thank you!– as early as Friday morning, and Lin McNulty, Managing Editor, looked into the slowdown and failure to connect to the internet with our server, BlueHost. Meanwhile, our Technical Manager, Ann Palmer of TechnoSense on Lopez Island, began investigating the situation, eventually conferring with BlueHost technicians and server experts.
Meanwhile I was headed for Seattle and Verizon to repair/replace my cell phone.
One cause of our problems seemed to be tons of spam that was coming to associated sites with Port Gamble Publishing, our state-licensed business publisher. We got rid of those spams and installed a newer filter. Another cause seemed to be our increasing popularity — 20,000 page views PER DAY! and growth — 300,000 files on a site meant to handle 200,000 max.
So we cleaned out and optimized essentially every nook and cranny of our site. Ann was in constant contact with BlueHost to identify the problems. Lin soldiered on, responding to our readers, and taking hours to upload files to the site that normally take minutes to mount, and sending out messages to our subscribers through MailChimp to let them know “we’re working on it.”
And I spent eight hours over two days in the heart of Seattle synching my old phone to my new one so that now I can get voice mail messages and respond to phone menu commands. I also tried to keep up with emails and internet connections on a one-bar, maybe two-bar reception. At one point, I took a break to go into a huge QFC store to find it was without power, just what its generators could provide to the checkout stands. It was eerie to see literally hundreds of people stumbling around in the dark, lit only by their cell phones!
When I was finally ready to come home, the winds were gusting 60-70 miles per hour. City traffic lights were out, and people were crawling through what had become four-way stops. Driving north on I-5 I saw the traffic headed southbound for the I-405 exchange backed up past the exit, at least two miles onto the freeway. No reservations were being taken for the evening ferries from Anacortes, and when I checked into my hotel, the automatic doors were locked to protect them against the wind.
With my new cell phone, I was talking to Lin and Ann, trying to be philosophical, and so impressed by their sense of urgency to fix the problems and report to our readers — you’ve become more than a habit to us!
Finally, as I got home Monday afternoon, I was able to sit down at my computer, instead of tapping out text messages and emails on my phone. Slowly, with intermittent disconnections, I worked to post the great letters and opinions that have come in over the weekend.
I’ve heard from many of you that you’ve experienced internet slowdowns outside of Orcas Issues’ website performance, but now, Monday evening, I’m so happy to be able to say that it appears that we’re back to almost-normal functionality! We haven’t yet turned back on some of the features we disabled during testing, but will do so gradually and with great care. This may be premature, but I just couldn’t wait to share the good news with you, our faithful and conscientious readers.
Fingers crossed and going ahead!
Am filled with admiration for the way you’re managing the new cell phone! Am at this time learning the Apple 6S plus iPhone, upgrade from my trusty Jitterbug, feeling like standing (barely) on two continents. Thank you for sharing.
Welcome back, Margie, to Paradise . . . .
Thank you for all of your hard work to keep us connected! Things seem much better now with the connectivity issue.
Hats tipped to all of you for your diligence and persistence in keeping us informed. And what a wealth of new stories we got as a reward! Thank you for one of the best information sites on the net — it’s my pleasure to be a supporter!
Ever wonder what it was like on the island, back when Marge or Pauline pulled the plug from the switchboard at 9 PM & hit the sack? Or when a lonely power line got knocked down for awhile, or a fishing boat caught a cable and power was down for a month? Then the generators were started, and power was rationed out to one area of the island at a time. And phones were SO easy to figure out; pick up the receiver, hope the other 3 parties sharing your line weren’t talking (for once), and tell Marge or Pauline who you wanted to talk to….
Anyway, you did well, and I’m glad it’s not ME trying to make sense of all our present conveniences!
A lot of really weird things happened during the time frame of your problems but we don’t think our problems were related to yours. The most weird award goes to the messages in our “in box” suddenly and without reason reproducing themselves, mostly by 6 or 8. The net result was 135 message were over 8,000 overnight. We still have not found the reason and it hasn’t happened again. But…as we suspected all along, we are not really in control of what goes on inside our various devices that fall under the guise of making our lives easier etc. etc.