Editorial: A Break from Normal is Over

–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!