Cockblocked

August 21, 2007 2:18 PM

I've been getting "connection reset while page was loading" errors every time I've tried to access any of the x.metafilter.com domains for awhile now. I post this in one of the small 5-minute windows of access which have opened up over the past few days or so. Is there still work being done on the site, or is the borkage on my end? [more inside]
posted by tehloki to Bugs at 2:18 PM (27 comments total)

I have tried the following already:
- Deleting Cache
- Deleting Cookies
- Using IE, Firefox (1.x.x.x and 2.x.x.x), and even netscape fucking navigator 3.0
- Browsing through a proxy
- Resetting my modem, router, and network connections
- Yelling at my wireless router
- Yelling at my cat

Nothing has worked.
posted by tehloki at 2:20 PM on August 21, 2007

Yeah, we're working on the server right now. Expect another 30min or so of up and down time until we're done.

The status blog is pretty good at keeping things up to date on this.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:21 PM on August 21, 2007

This is a daring scheme to remind you just how much you value mefi uptime, basically. It hurts us more than it hurts you.

Or it hurts me, at least. Slow day at the office and all.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:25 PM on August 21, 2007

Argh. I had a feeling I might just be trying to hurf durf metafilter at the exact wrong times.
posted by tehloki at 2:31 PM on August 21, 2007

the site is terribly sluggish.
posted by quonsar at 2:32 PM on August 21, 2007

I've heard it's especially slow depending on how many favorites you have made....
posted by vacapinta at 2:46 PM on August 21, 2007 [3 favorites]

*unfavorites vacapinta's comments*

Wow, that is much faster. Thanks.
posted by quin at 2:59 PM on August 21, 2007

Ok, we're done. Stuff should be back online for a while but we'll keep doing small tweaks (with no downtime) to see if we can keep things speedy.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:59 PM on August 21, 2007

tehloki -- I think you owe your cat an apology!
posted by ericb at 3:39 PM on August 21, 2007

tehloki - when the site is unresponsive (euphemism), I think the etiquette is to email mathowie's cat.
posted by Cranberry at 3:45 PM on August 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

(I'm having a hard time determining from this recent site performance why more sites didn't go with cold fusion, this has been a sparkling advertisement.)

Of course, the definition of a moron would be the guy (hi!) who just repeatedly stabs the "try again" button when getting "the connection has been reset" error message.
posted by maxwelton at 3:50 PM on August 21, 2007

Ok, stuff should really be back now.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:17 PM on August 21, 2007

My Little Pony request: Is there any way that site maintenance could be done in (what I'm guessing are) off-peak hours? If it's horribly inconvenient to do this yourself, you could always hire a lackey from Portland's teeming hordes of underemployed computer scientists.
posted by mullingitover at 4:26 PM on August 21, 2007

The status blog is pretty good at keeping things up to date on this.

There's also this page on the wiki.
posted by juv3nal at 4:40 PM on August 21, 2007

Yeah, ideally, we should do this stuff late at night, but we noticed this morning that the server was running very slowly under high loads and we had to do something to try and make that better. I'll let it run as-is for the next couple days and hope for the best.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:53 PM on August 21, 2007

I'm glad it wasn't just me.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 5:48 PM on August 21, 2007

I just happened to make this post in the slight overlap of "site's borked" and "status.metafilter.com still says it's up". Sorry for the extra spam on what appears to be a really spammy day.
posted by tehloki at 6:07 PM on August 21, 2007

Yeah, ideally, we should do this stuff late at night,
Day and night, night and day, why is it so
That this longing for you follows wherever I go
In the roaring traffics boom
In the silence of my lonely room
I think of you
posted by tellurian at 6:27 PM on August 21, 2007

"... to see if we can keep things speedy."

"speedy" and "metafilter" (or metafilter in an implied sense, as in "things") in any sentence construction constitutes an automatic oxymoron. I prefer to think of the metafilter.com domain as a small dark corner of a much bigger jungle, where superstition still prevails, and jungle drums in the form of JRun errors are the principal means of tribal myth and ritual communication, that bind us all together.

If this site ever becomes reliable, it's going to lose a certain quirky charm that reminds us how inessential it truly is.
posted by paulsc at 7:26 PM on August 21, 2007

tehloki - when the site is unresponsive (euphemism), I think the etiquette is to email mathowie's cat.

i tried emailing a cat once ... scratched the shit out of me and the computer
posted by pyramid termite at 8:41 PM on August 21, 2007

Of course, now it's zippy. Stupid daytime traffic.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:50 PM on August 21, 2007

i tried emailing a cat once ... scratched the shit out of me and the computer
posted by pyramid termite

Try emailing an alligator.
posted by Cranberry at 10:39 PM on August 21, 2007

I would email a cat, but how do I scan it in? Anybody have some good links? For cat scans?
posted by philomathoholic at 12:14 AM on August 22, 2007

It all still seems to be running v...e...r...y slowly. Is everything really done?
posted by yhbc at 11:05 AM on August 22, 2007

We're still working on it, trying to get things optimized. It's really nuts -- at night the server is absolutely screaming, and you can even get fast page loads during the day as long as you don't pause.

Try hitting the "older" links in new ask mefi questions and the pages load fast, but if you wait and read a thread, the next load takes 30 seconds. It's really weird.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:33 AM on August 22, 2007

M..o...l....a.....s......s.......e........s
posted by caddis at 1:19 PM on August 22, 2007

Molasses has been cleaned up. 24 hours of super fast page loads are now behind us. I expect the speediness to continue.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:05 PM on August 23, 2007