Blogger Outage Ends and Twitter Outage Begins - Server and Switch Resident Evil Afterlife Maintenance

His life was gentle, and the elements

So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world “This was a man!”

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, V, 5

This week spanning Monday May 9^th 2011AD to Friday May 13^th 2011AD is proving to be rather eventful. Maybe it was because of the celebration of 30^th Anniversary of the Death of Bob Marley as stated in the article “World remembers Bob Marley”, published Thursday May 12^th 2011, The Jamaica Observer and thus the Engineers at Google may have smoked or drank too much cannabis sativa.

THC (Tetra Hydro Cannabinol) in the Google Engineer’s veins may be the explanation for the outages that plagued the Blogger Platform at 7:37 a.m. PDT on Tuesday May 11, 2011AD as stated in the article “Blogger goes down, talking 30 hours of posts with it” published MAY 12, 2011 5:46 PM PDT by Liz Gannes, CNET News – Digital Media.

Thirty hours of posts down the toilet is somewhat hard news to swallow for many bloggers, especially those who do not keep offline copies of their articles. Luckily from day one, I have kept several types of backups, a hard learned lesson from my days as a Network Administrator at Mother’s Enterprises Ltd (six months in 2004AD):

1. An Online Backup copy on Cloud –based Backup service DropBox
2. An Offline copy on a mounted Hard-Drive on my computer
3. An Offline copy on my computers Hard-Drive

Ironically, I had just posted my blog article entitled “Microsoft aquires Skype for US$8.5 billion - Miley Cyrus's Fly on the Wall Drops it Like its Hot” at exactly 7:33 a.m. PDT on Tuesday May 11, 2011AD via Blogger’s Website interface. Guess I have the luck of the Irish folks!

Four (4) minutes later after which time I had logged off from Blogger, it began acting erratically, refusing to take my commands. Hence my genuine proffered excuse for not posting anything on Google I/O on Wednesday May 11^th 2011AD and Thursday May 12^th 2011AD.

It was then on Wednesday May 11^th 2011AD that I knew something was amiss when I couldn’t access anything. But it was not until the news became official that I realize that Blogger was indeed down!

Twitter and Blogger updates tell what happened in those dark few hours when the light of the independent Blogger Press was silenced:

1. Blogger Twitter Update
2. Blogger Update Page

Apparently, it was NOT related to the upgrade of the site by Google Software in April of 2011AD, for which Blogger is seriously over, due to its lackluster appearance and plug-ins when compared to Blogging Platforms such as Tumblr and WordPress.

Thus it is leading me to suspect that Google may have chosen to silence Blogger during Google I/O, the two (2) day conference that started on Tuesday May 10^th 2011AD as stated in the article “Google I/O Day One: Android on Top”, published MAY 10, 2011 12:08 PM PDT by Stephen Shankland, CNET News - Android Atlas.

Possibly it was to prevent word getting out on Blogger via live blogging as to their word domination machinations as noted at Google’s I/O Confab in this video from “Google unveils Android@Home”, published May 10, 2011 2:29 PM PDT, CNET News

Whatever the real reason, as of now, Blogger is now up, based on live information come in by way of their Blogger Twitter Update and Blogger Update Page. CNET News Elinor Mills article entitled “Google revives Blogger after outage”, published MAY 13, 2011 10:21 AM PDT by Elinor Mills, CNET News – Insecurity Complex.

If you are really interested in what really went down (no pun intended!), the snippet quote on the Blogger Buzz site by Blogger Tech Manager Eddie Kessler as stated in the article “Blogger is Back” posted May 13^th 2011AD by Eddie Kessler, Tech Lead/Manager, Blogger Buzz, may help calm your frayed nerves:

“Yesterday we returned Blogger to a pre-maintenance state and placed the service in read-only mode while we worked on restoring all content: that's why you haven't been able to publish. We rolled back to a version of Blogger as of Wednesday May 11th, so your posts since then were temporarily removed. Those are the posts that we're in the progress of restoring”

So its back to posting on Blogger for me, as this appears to be nothing more than scheduled maintenance. As despite what managers may say, such as those superstitious technology phoebe Managers at C&W Jamaica, now Telecom Provider LIME my former workplace, Servers and Telecom Switches need downtime.

Continuous running corrupts load files and builds up lag time due to de-fragmentation issues and even Viruses as in the case of Servers, effectively “running errors” as Switch and Telecoms Technicians refer to this phenomenon.

Thus, scheduled shutdowns for maintenance purposes, at least once per year, is a must. Software roll-backs (Switch Technicians) or hardware revert (Telecoms Technicians) are usually the first course of action, requiring that the Telecom Switch or Server enter a SWACT (Switch of Activity) and MANBSY (Manually Busy) from the Active Plane with the problem to the Backup Inactive Plane while work commences to fix the problem.

After which, the Telecom Switch or Server is shut down and restarted for the Platform OS to accept the new Software roll-backs (Switch Technicians) or hardware revert (Telecoms Technicians) mounted unto the System Platform via External Storage media (Tape Drives, External Hard-Drives, etc).

Even CNET News editor Rafe Needleman suggested this very thing during the last Twitter outage as stated in his article “A proposal for Twitter: Shut it down”, published JUNE 6, 2008 10:45 AM PDT by Rafe Needleman, CNET News – WebWare.

Much in the same way on your PC (personal computer) or Laptop has to restart after you Backup your Data, format and partition the Hard-Drive and reinstall the OS with the updates that represent the last good working version of the Operating System e.g. Windows XP Pro SP3 installation procedure on a PC or Laptop.

Even if it just so happens to coincide with Google I/O and all other sinister conspiracy theories that may abound as to why Google chose to do their scheduled maintenance

Meanwhile as I upload this, Twitter is now experiencing an outage as stated in the article “Twitter down for some users”, published by MAY 13, 2011 11:23 AM PDT Elinor Mills, CNET News – Insecurity Complex.

Here is a reminder of alternative to Twitter as you Twitter-ratti affected await its return as stated in the article “Refresher Course: What to do when Twitter is Down”, published AUGUST 7, 2009 11:41 AM PDT by Don Reisinger, CNET News – WebWare, Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) Style!!