Planned site-wide downtime

[campylobacter]

My Paid account was set to expire 6 October, so I renewed today for only 2 more months -- not because I can't afford it, but because LJ's technical flailing and failing are a continuing source of disappointment to me. I love my F-List, I love the communities here, but LJ's "improvements" to remain relevant & competitive with other social media services are klunky, creaky & kludgy.

Fandom's slowly migrating to Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook, which, although easy to use & immediately gratifying, are poor platforms for richer content & in-depth multi-threaded discussions. I don't want to abandon what I've worked hard to build here, but other blogging platforms such as Wordpress are looking like much better alternatives.

Originally posted by oceanplexian at lj_maintenance under Planned site-wide downtime

Dear all,

LiveJournal will be unavailable for up to three hours starting at the following times, Wednesday, October 5. During this time, LJ might be unreachable, slow, or experience issues loading. This will affect all services, including LJ Talk & Scrapbook. 

22:30 GMT

03:30 PM PST
04:30 PM MST
06:30 PM EST

The purpose of this downtime is to install new core routers, upgrade other network devices, and add more Internet uplinks to our primary datacenter. I expect the real downtime to be much shorter then stated above, but unforeseen problems could require up to three hours.

Thanks,
Andreas

Comments

[magnavox-23.livejournal.com]

I am surprised they even bothered to tell us. Probably so that we didn't think that it was another DoSS attack...

I am planning to stay on LJ as long as possible though I have noticed the same decline in content since everyone started using Tumblr and the like, which is a shame as I much prefer the more in depth conversation here.

*clings to fandom*

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

I'll probably stay on LJ until the bitter end, but that's not going to prevent me from having accounts on Dreamwidth, Wordpress, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook etc. I refuse to put all my fandom eggs in one basket, and try to keep my Dreamwidth account synchronized with my LJ via the Import feature. The thought of losing everything I've had on my LJ since 2003 is frightening.

[virkatjol.livejournal.com]

I can't for the life of me figure out Dreamwidth. I guess I could if I tried... but it took me long enough to get this place solved. LOL

I think they picked a poor time to do maintenance but I'm guessing it has more to do with what better for Russia than the US.

[lolmac]

I believe the choice of time was based on when the system load in Russia will be relatively low. It's worst for the East coast of the US, but we're not the centre of the universe, no matter how much we want to be. It's not too bad for the West coast, fine for Japan and Australia, and not too bad for Europe . . . so, all told, they picked the slot they thought was best.

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

Yep, they have to make sure there's low traffic AND staff available in case things go pear-shaped. I just wish more of their staff spoke English fluently enough to Tweet status updates without me nagging Carrie via the LJ Twitter account (http://twitter.com/#!/livejournal).

[lolmac]

Heh -- maybe they wish you spoke Russian more fluently. (Personally, my Russian sucks.)

I'm remembering a few yeasrs back when LJ did an April Fools announcement -- and a lot of users in the US were terminally confused, because it was released at midnight, Moscow time. The US users had assumed that the US time zones were the only ones that mattered.

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

IKR? It's arrogant of us English-speakers, who comprise most of the Paid accounts, to expect customer service in a language besides Russian.

Although what's actually most alarming is that Perl & the vast majority of computer languages were developed in English. I wonder if 100 years from now, coding OOP will be panlingual?

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

Dreamwidth is basically a clone of LJ (pre-RTE updates), except that it has a neutral way of managing Friends so that there's no butthurt associated with Friending & de-Friending; DW treats it as an access issue, not as an "I love/like/hate you issue".

Also, DW is compatible with LJ, easily allowing you to Import YOUR ENTIRE LJ into DW (http://eilidh17.dreamwidth.org/1018.html), which I do as a backup, just in case LJ has a cardiac arrest, which has happened several times this year due to the DDoS attacks.

[green-wing.livejournal.com]

I have yet to find an alternative to LJ that I like even a scrap as much as I love my journal! Even with the downtime and fail, I still love this place far too much to go anywhere else. This is where all my friends are, this is where all my fandoms are, and quite frankly, I don't have the time or patience for tumblr (I've seen what it's done to my sister and I "do not want" *headdesk*

So yeah, I'll keep renewing and putting up with the crap to keep the good.