Tech Issues

Our Home Page was missing for an hour or so.

We're not sure why. It should be back by now for everyone.

It was showing the entire time in the Archive section. If you manage to pull this up via the archives, but you still don't have us on home page, try refreshing.

We're working to figure out what happened. Sorry about the problem.

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Old Bug Resurfaces With Internet Explorer

Photo Downloaded from The Dark Wraith Forums

The Dark Wraith Explains

In an email last night, Dark Wraith, an economics professor and HTML coder of no small talent, gave me the low down on the problem Blogger has been having with certain sites. I reprint it here verbatum.

Someone has brought back from the dead an old problem that Internet Explorer used to have with certain javascripts. The culprit right now is Site Meter. Many Websites are not loading tonight in Internet Explorer. This has come out of nowhere, but the problem is easy enough to fix if your site is not loading in IE.

In the old days, certain javascripts that were set at certain places in a Website would trigger a false error in Internet Explorer; now, all of a sudden, that little bug has come back from the dead. The easiest way to solve the problem, if you’re having it, is to get Site Meter off your site; the problem should vanish.

This, by the way, may not Microsoft’s doing. The conspiracy theory version of what’s going on is that it would really, really be to the snoops’ advantage if everyone were using Mozilla-based browsers: way too many “Get Firefox” fans do not know the connection between W3C and Total Information Awareness in that those rigid, school-marm standards of W3C Strict 1.0 are exactly what mass data aggregators need to put everything into databases.

That’s the conspiracy theory overview.

The benign explanation for what happened is that Microsoft’s recent updates have triggered the return of this old, IE bug. A variation on this benign explanation is that the code jocks at Site Meter tried to get fancy and rewrite the calling script, but made a boo-boo that brought the old IE bug back from the dead.

Take your choice of explanations.

The Dark Wraith will keep to himself which one he thinks is pretty much on target.

Once again in a world of spaghetti code and competing platforms, old problems, long thought solved resurface.

Just like the Taliban.

I heartily recommend his site for intelligent discussion, video lectures on basic economics, HTML For Bloggers, and some of the finest political ranting, amusing graphics. . .well, just go take a look for yourself.

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Technical Problems

Jesse:

Massive technical problems. As in, I am gonna eat their ass.

Downstairs in the lobby on the wireless network from hell...

Beautiful hotel, but they has gots me upstairs (non-ADA) which is not only dumb, but PAIN. LM and/or Hubris have to help me up and down the stairs, carry my bags, and in general, wait on me.

Hmmmm. Strike what I said about “dumb.”

Hopefully LM and I get moved in the morning. I sure as shit can't go up and down these stairs another day. (Although maybe if they got me a mountain bike. Some of those suckers gear down so low a rider could climb telephone poles.)

Ooooh... and Maggie Jochild is here in the morning!!! Go Maggie!
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So... No more writing from me tonight. Not till they fix their fucking technical problems. Or till I get to the convention center.

I'm also not even naming the hotel...YET. Not till after we, um, negotiATE an appropriate change in our room charge given I had to go down and up the god-awful stairs from my room which I'm paying for to their lobby which I'm not...

Austin rocks. This hotel's IT setup is rocky.

Lower Manhattanite:

“Whats a dazzling urbanite like you doing in a rustic setting like this?”--Gene Wilder's Waco Kid to Cleavon Little's Sheriff Bart

What am I doing here? Hanging with the rest of the GNB crew, commiseratin', “conversatin'”, and Netroots Nation-aytin', faithful readers. Be fooled not--this is not some cow-town, this beautiful Austin, Texas. From the moment I hopped off the plane, I knew I was in what one would call "cool" environs. It probably had a lot to do with the huge, bronze statue of the amazing Texas political giant Ms. Barbara Jordan, staring down thoughtfully, weighty book on lap and glasses at rest.

Nothin' like that at Kennedy or LaGuardia, kiddies.

Then, walking to the ground transportation area, I was captivated by a beautiful woman in a coral-colored dress--seeming to walk in slow motion in the sticky night air. She floated damn-near, dress catching just enough breeze to where she looked akin to something descending from a cloud---but then, it could also have been simple fatigue on my part--a tough flight after a doubly tough night full of more drama than Wagner's "Ring Cycle" on crack. Ye Gods!

But, the kid is here, along with Jesse, Hub, TLG, and Mme. Robinson. The nicest touches were entering the hotel room, and finding it festooned—not with corny-ass hotel art--oh, no! Instead? A beautiful, striking, vintage silkscreen poster of Bobby Womack and his Peace Band playing at Port Arthur, Texas from back in the “That's The Way I Feel About Cha” days. Then, descending the balcony steps, the ring and peal of live music from across the street at The Continental Club. Oh yes...I think this could be fun. Fun indeed. But now...on to sleep, perchance to dream...of a nice breakfast.

I doubt it will be bagels. :)

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Minor Technical Glitch

HaloScan Not Incrementing Comment Count

HaloScan is working. Mostly.

I've sent a note to HaloScan support. They normally respond quickly.

The issue is the Comments link isn't incrementing as comments are added. People's comments are being entered just peachy. Although to be safe, please SAVE your work before pressing Publish.

Normally where HaloScan says Comments at the bottom of a Post, the Comment field would change -- 1, 2, 3 -- to tell you how many comments are there.

Not happening. We're working on it.

Thank you for your patience.

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All Nighter

I was working on computer issues half the night, so, here watch this and keep the noise down.

Gnarls Barkley...

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Twittering

Follow me on Twitter.

We never ask anyone to link their blog to ours.

If folks find our content worth it, we figure they'll link.

Twitter's different.

The value lies in people following Twitter feeds, and twittering themselves.

Feel free to "follow" my Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/JesseWendel

I've only been updating here and there, but as more of you start following, I'll update more and more, including from my phone and by email.

Also, while it's fairly unlikely, if GNB should ever have an outage, we'll provide updates on my Twitter feed.

Twitter: It's what's for dinner.

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HaloScan is Down Up

HaloScan has been down for 20 - 30 minutes.

We're trying to find out what's going on.

We can't get into any comment threads at all. We think HaloScan's database is offline.

Hubris Sonic and I are working to get this resolved. No time prediction yet.

Update 1:37 AM:

We're back up.

Don't know what happened. We may not know, HaloScan not always being especially forthcoming with the stitch. But the price is right and they keep upgrading and getting faster. We're going to call this a growing pain.

Sorry about that everyone.

Update 2:21 AM:

The outage was caused by an emergency database issue caused by a power failure HaloScan suffered the previous night. They are working on ways to notify us better in the event of future cases -- widgets, home page notices, and the like.

We were down for roughly one hour. And that... is that.

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