The site has been down!

[Cindy]

As you would have noticed the site has been down. I got a phone call from Susan this morning my time. The hard drives had failed.

We have bought new ones. Susan has been working non-stop and has another 12 hours or so of work to get the site up.

Our servers are now over 3 years old. I know, I bought them.

They need replacing, how about some help please?

We were $350 down last month, that is the money Susan needs to keep working on the site. She works non-stop on this site to provide a service to YOU.

Did you miss the site while we were down? Is this site worth a few dollars to you?

If it is, please donate or subscribe.

If you are broke we understand. Susan, I and the generosity of a few others will keep the place going, but if you can spare a few dollars a month for what we do - please donate.

If you are capable of funding at large level, please contact Susan or I - you can remain anonymous if you wish.

Please help if you can.

Cindy

[Asche]

Did some/all of the posts made after sometime yesterday get lost?

I notice that a couple of my recent (yesterday?) posts are gone.

[Dena]

The server went down about 4:30 pm server time and everything from the last backup was lost. I don't know the exact time of the backups but it appears they are run overnight Susan's time as my last post before the crash was 9 pm Nov 5 server time (don't look for it because most can't see it). This would mean we lost a bit less than 24 hours of work.

[gamerchic_kaylee]

As you would have noticed the site has been down. I got a phone call from Susan this morning my time. The hard drives had failed.

We have bought new ones. Susan has been working non-stop and has another 12 hours or so of work to get the site up.

Our servers are now over 3 years old. I know, I bought them.

They need replacing, how about some help please?

We were $350 down last month, that is the money Susan needs to keep working on the site. She works non-stop on this site to provide a service to YOU.

Did you miss the site while we were down? Is this site worth a few dollars to you?

If it is, please donate or subscribe.

If you are broke we understand. Susan, I and the generosity of a few others will keep the place going, but if you can spare a few dollars a month for what we do - please donate.

If you are capable of funding at large level, please contact Susan or I - you can remain anonymous if you wish.

Please help if you can.

Cindy

Just curious, but have you looked at the cost differences of moving the site to a hosting provider or AWS, Azure, etc... to possibly remove the need of supporting physical hardware, and provide better scaling and redundancy?

How much are the servers you are hoping to get to replace the existing, if you don't mind me asking.

[melissa_h]

Sorry to hear about the technical troubles. Just subscribed this week, will donate as well.

My best luck with hard drives were for the old IBM xseries servers (and earlier).  Had a work machine from 98 still running until a few weeks ago when a second drive failed.  Haven't seen many others with that level of reliability, and no idea if they're still that good after going to lenovo.

Hosting, particularly VPS based hosting, I've been with Dreamhost for over 10 years. Affordable, but I've got no idea what kind of resources you ladies are looking at from a processing/memory standpoint.  A recent review: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2424725,00.asp and  http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2423650,00.asp   

[Claire]

I've been reluctant to contribute because I'm not sure how it will show up on my statement. That would not be the way I would want my wife to find out about this. How will it sow up?


Dori.

[gamerchic_kaylee]

I've been reluctant to contribute because I'm not sure how it will show up on my statement. That would not be the way I would want my wife to find out about this. How will it sow up?


Dori.

Hey Dori - I made a donation last month and it showed on my statement as the following:  PAYPAL *SPTRDONATIO <Merchant telephone number here> CA

Not sure what you would get if you called the phone number that is provided in my statement.  Not sure if that goes to Susan's or a direct number of PayPal.

[melissa_h]

Yep,nice and non-descriptive, and it stays that way in the paypal interface too.  Worked perfectly between my account here and a very different email address.  Very nice integration.

[Dena]

If you are really nervous about discovery, people have used the cash/gift cards you buy in the store to make payments. I am not sure if all of them work but others have reported success with them.

[AnonyMs]

If you are really nervous about discovery, people have used the cash/gift cards you buy in the store to make payments. I am not sure if all of them work but others have reported success with them.

I tried that, but Paypal want to know who I am to process the payment.

[Tristyn]

As you would have noticed the site has been down. I got a phone call from Susan this morning my time. The hard drives had failed.

Cindy

Oh....so that's what was goin' on with the site last night. I thought it was just me...

Well, glad to see it alive and well again! :3

~Nixy~

[Nattiedoll]

Does anyone know why my picture won't show? Yesterday it let me upload one but now it looks like I have no picture again?

[melissa_h]

I tried that, but Paypal want to know who I am to process the payment.

Here's what my subscription order looks like in Paypal.  I had to use my RL info for the order, which tied to my persona here.  However, none of my persona info from here appears in paypal or at the bank level transaction.

It's fairly discrete, though you may be asked what you're donating to if that's not something you normally do.

Seller info
B Larson
sptrdonations@gmail.com
Your purchase
Item amount$10.00
Shipping$0.00
Tax$0.00
Purchase total$10.00
Fee$0.00
Total$10.00

[Dena]

Anything you did yesterday was lost in the crash. You will have to post up to 15 post again and repost your avatar. I am sorry that you lost it but if recovery were possible it would be extremely expensive. We are better off going with the backup of November 5.

[Nattiedoll]

Thanks for the info! Working on my 15 posts again lol

[Laura_7]

There should be some disc diagnostic tools which might tell if discs are prone to failure...
and there are some disc arrays which write double so in case of failure things simply have to be switched...

there are controller cards where discs can be attached and in case of failure a switchover is automatic...

or there are external storage devices with built in controller cards...

different levels of redundancy and switchover can be defined there...

due to being more widespread expenses have come down...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_array_controller

[gamerchic_kaylee]

I tried that, but Paypal want to know who I am to process the payment.

You don't have to create an account with PayPal to donate.  The site does allow you to process the payment as guest through their service.  That's what I did.  There's no getting around not giving your real information, with any credit card transaction, you have to provide a valid name and billing address to verify it is you making the transaction, it also checks it against the bank or credit card company to make sure it matches.  But that information is only for the processing, PayPal shouldn't be storing it unless you create an account for them.  It will also be displayed on the receipt that gets emailed to you.

But I still understand your hesitation.

[Claire]

Thanks for the reassurance regarding donations. I just did. Thank you for doing this.


Dori.

[Joelene9]

  Donated! I lost all of the responses I gave since Nov. 3.

Joelene

[Mariah]

Yes, There is about 24 hours of posts lost so if are your posts occurred since November 3rd during the time period lost then you would lose back to the date you mentioned. Sorry about that. You can always create new ones and replace some, if not all, of those posts lost. Hugs
Mariah

  Donated! I lost all of the responses I gave since Nov. 3.

Joelene