Due to an unscheduled fault, the smackfoo mySQL db decided to reject connections for the last couple of hours or so.
We are currently experiencing periodic and intermittent issues involving connectivity from customer applicatoins to MySQL. (mt) Media Temple engineers are aware of this issue and are actively working on a resolution.
However, as the (mt) guys rock, we’re back in action. This would be the first unscheduled outage in, err, 5 months? Having come from dreamhost where outages are an almost daily occurrence, this whole not crashing, always available thing (mt) have going, quite frankly rocks!
The (gs) gridserver product has been going through a few growing pains lately, as the demands generated by folks snapping up some of the best type of hosting short of virtual, along with my (mt) brethren grabbing their slice of the grid — even so, performance has been impressive and the scalability of the product just beggars belief..
If the grid slows down, they add a new blade and hey-presto — more horsepower, without the nuisance of having to commission new hardware, migrate users and all the dead air-time that brings.
To celebrate the return of the ‘foo - I’ve decided to release a Windows ((.. I have to get a mac.. anyone want to donate to a worthy cause? :) )) screen saver, tentatively dubbed smashfoo, for those times when stress becomes a bit, well, intolerable.
There are no ‘options’ per-se:
- simply download
- unzip
- save to your windows/system32/ or winnt/system32/ directory
- enable
- .. and enjoy.
Each features a small animated individual, having a few issues with a PC, rendered on a black background.. I’m sure the image is familiar to some. :)
There are two flavours1 - option one is for single displays, option two is for multiple displays -:
Download the
single display screen saver.
Download the
multi display screen saver.
..oops — download links have been fixed.
- .. zipped to reduce packet waste. (↩)
≡ This is a journal entry relating to the topics of humour, mt, noteworthy, os, software.
Brendan Borlase is a Systems and Network Administrator living in Adelaide, Australia, having lived, worked and breathed Information Technology for over 12 years. Learn more.
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Nov 8th, 2006 at 6:44 am
This thing is delightfully demented, truly. …and the thing with the eyes? That’s art, man, real genius. ;)
If I could print out an animated gif, I would totally put this on my wall. (^^)b
Nov 8th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
The eyes bouncing around like yoyo’s are my personal favourite. :)
The image has done the rounds a few times, but I’ve never seen it in screen saver form.. one just can’t help but smile as this demented individual vents their frustration.
Nov 20th, 2006 at 10:35 am
Hi. I got this page from Technorati. It looks like it’s my turn to be down. I did a dig and we’re on different servers. But, the Account Center is also down, so it may be a sitewide thing.
Nov 20th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
It looks like the (mt) mySQL servers are having some major growth pains and suffering under load.
I am certain that the team will get it under control, but it’s pretty obvious the new (gs) product is selling like hot cakes - it’s a new product that is getting a beating.. it will thus take a little while for things to settle down.
Although I am a little surprised the mySQL issue keeps reoccuring, I would have hoped they would be in a position to nail that down by now.
Nov 21st, 2006 at 5:15 am
I can relate to their troubles, so I’m not quitting yet. But it’s a bit disturbing to me that some of their growth is due to PR like the Techcrunch article that they are “crushing shared hosting.”
Nov 21st, 2006 at 2:37 pm
The numbers of shared accounts is pretty high if I recall correctly - a large number of people had shared hosting via (mt). Thus a suitably large number of people will have already migrated - or will be planing to.
The almost immediate demand for the product is likely far higher than expected - thus any ‘planed growth’ upgrade metrics will be out the window as such.
For the price - it gives virtual server technology an absolute run for it’s money..