Houston, We Had A Problem! Of Awesomeness!

Posted by Tiff in Uncategorized | 3 comments

The day before yesterday you might have noticed that if you visited freeplaylife, you were greeted with a message “Account Suspended”. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a big deal, because the tens of people who read the blog are patient and kind, and had already read the last post I made, “Cleaning Without Compulsion“. But…those tens of people shared it with their dozens of people, and those dozens of people shared it with their hundreds of people, and so on and so on. This happened the same time as the same thing happening with the posts “A Life of Yes” and “Dyslexia Watch 2011” (thanks to facebook, I can see how many times each post is shared!). This created a kind of stampeding frenzy on the server, and it overloaded my bandwidth so they shut me down. That’s an awesome problem to have! They shut it down like the police on an out of control party in the Hollywood Hills, where everyone is jumping into a pool with their clothes on, doing nose shots of cocain off people’s stomaches, hanging from balconies without their clothes on and blaring electro music at 4 am*.

The interesting thing is the way my web hosts handled it. I didn’t get an email telling me what happened, instead I learned about it after getting facebook messages asking why I was suspended. I felt panicky and nervous, just like when I was busted for skipping a day of high school and had to go to detention. Except this time I didn’t know why my website was in trouble.

So I emailed the host very professionally:

My account has been suspended, could you clarify the issue for me?

And they answered back that yes it was suspended and it was a bandwidth issue, and that I needed to buy more bandwidth.

So I did.

And it remained suspended.

So I emailed back very professionally that it was still suspended and they answered back that as they reviewed my files, it appears I have a potentially bad script running and I needed to update or erase it before they would unsuspend my account.

So I tried and tried to get into my control panel to update or erase it, and for the life of me could not log in. I tried for hours! I reset my password, and futilely typed and retyped my account name and password over and over and over again.

I began to suspect my webhost tech guys were playing a nerdy joke on me. I pictured Mark, the dude who initially answered me, laughing at his desk when he sent me the email about updating the bad script, thinking to himself, “I wonder how long she’ll try to get into the control panel before asking me if any of her files are accessible while the account is suspended?!”

So I send a desperate unprofessional email:

I’m still suspended! And I can’t get into my cpanel to fix anything! Is it my fault, or can I not get in because of the damn suspension?! What do I do?! How can I fix it??????

And Mark, noting that I took me 3 hours to figure out his little game, sent back this reply:

Yes, the suspension is preventing you from getting to your cPanel. Our admin team can disable the script for you so your account can be unsuspended safely. They need your permission to disable the script. Then you will be able to get into your cPanel to update it.

Regards,

Regards my ass! Why they didn’t point that out when they first told me the issue I don’t know. It’s all a part of their sick little geeky game, I suppose. They must get desperate for drama after being tucked away in their cubicles day in and day out.

So I quickly answer back in a message less professional and more sexual than I realized:

I want to give it to someone! Who do I give it to, and how do they need it?!?!?!?!

This must be how to talk dirty to a computer programmer.

It must have worked, because they unsuspended my account and fixed everything. Again, why they couldn’t have done it in the first place is beyond me. Poor poor tech dudes must be so starved for affection and human contact, they draw everything out like this.

So, I’m back! Thanks so much for all the shares on facebook and twitter. As you can see from the picture, the huge spike was the traffic generated all before 9 am. You can imagine what it would have been like if the day had gone on unsuspended! Epic!

Feel free to share your hearts out anytime you read anything worthwhile in here. I now have a huge amount of bandwidth and can totally handle it!

*I’m not sure if this really happens, I may be stereotyping what wild parties are from old ’80′s movies?

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