Peoria Pundit

Folks, I’ve posted a general notice about the end of the big server move over at the front page.

But I’m going to let my loyal readers in on a secret.

I am not a patient man.

When I get frustrsted, I tend to … well, blow up and things.

So, here has been MY week. Imagine the mood I’m in when you are done.

My now-previous Web host let me know that they have had enough of me and communicate to me the need to move The Blog Peoria Project to a new location. They notify me by turning off my account. You no doubt saw the pretty orange “account suspended” page.

Hey, I knew it was coming, but I was hoping to get someone with some mad skills in mySQL and servers to help.

Instead, I got the equivalent of my landlord locking the door, but being nice enough to stand there and watch while you hauled your crap out to the curb during your break from trying to hire amoving van. Sweet.

C.J. was right. Blog Peoria done got evicted.

Fortunately, I did have some server space already purchased, thanks to generous donations.

But I still didn’t want to do the move myself. Last time, the move went sorta-well, but there were some serious issues with lost uploaded photographs that no one can find. And my size of my data base makes it impossible to move using services with which I am familiar, like “phpmyadmin.” So I spent some time trying to talk several WPMu gurus into helping, but none were available, even if I had cash to pay them

So, I starting trying to do it myself. My new host, mediatemple (mt), is a popular and powerful host. But their support ticket system is very, very slow. I’ll give A Small Orange some credit, they responded quickly and often to my tickets. These guys, however, take their time.

I started to panic. I was contacted by another Illinois blogger who operated his site through a “virtual private server,” also known as a VPS. He offered me unlimted stace and bandwidth. I jumped at the change and stzarted uploading files and tryin to manually install the WPMu. It was going well enough for me to actually point to domain name “blogpeoria” to this new server.

Then several things happened.

I have been fighting with Comcast for more two weeks over service interuptions. On the day this started, it seemed to have been resolved with the purchase of a new modem, not that it didn’t take several calls to Comcast to get it resolved.

So right in the middle of all this, I lost connection again. I called Comcast and THIS time I got a tech support rep who agreed with me that the problem wasn’t inside my apartment, but outside. So we made an appointment for the next morning.

And I spent the rest fo the day trying to finish the installation, all the while losing and regaining Internet connection. And the A.S.O. site would go down during those moments I had Internet service. THEN my friend’s site started to crash. A call to HIS server people releaved that the site might not have been as powerful and resource laden as we both thought. I tell him to pull the blog on the Blog Peoria experiment.

And I actually start getting sick.

The Comcast dude shows up and the service is up during his visit. He checks some equipment outside my home, then leaves. 90 minutes later, I’m on the phone to Comcast again. It is then they decide that I’m part of a brand-new, just discovered area-wide intermittent and recuring outage. I call bullsh*t. My service has been going in and out for two weeks or more, and they were telling me that they wouldn’t help fix MY unique problem until this outage went away. Which might be never. And no, they had no idea how widespfread the outage was in terms of the number of people affected nor the geographic area. In other words, the perfect dodge.

I pitched a fit for close to an hour on the phone to various flunkies.

Oh, and get this: My cell phone dropped the call twice. No call back. When I complained about that, I was assured by no less that two reps that Comcast service reps — not even the supervisors — have the ability to call you back. No outgoing calls. Ever. Period. No exceptions.

More about THIS later.

It turned out that the problem was right outside my back door. My immediate neighbors were being effected. They SEEM to have fixed it because I’ve gone two days without an outage.

So, I’m on Twitter later trying to get help for my server issues and I mention Comcast. Turns out Comcast monitors Twitter. I end up unloading all the problems I have with comcfast on this dude. I told him that I found it odd that a company like Comcast that tries to sell online telephone services to people would not be able to supply their own tech support workers with telephones that ACTUALLY dial out.

And because I’m doing it in public, on Twitter, he is making all these promises to me and assures me, for all to read, that Comcast call center workers ABSOLUTELY have the ability to call back people.

I tell him that I went out abd bought a cable modem because HIS COMPANY assured me that my equipment was bad, when it was not.

I’m going to email him, and he has promised to make it all good.

Which leaved with the service issues from mediatemple. I learn on Twitter that mediatemple sites are down all over the place, and that’s no doubt what’s sucking up their time. They eventually respond to all my open support tickets.

And those outages at mediatemple sites? All caused by a Comcast outage. Life is nothing if not ironic.

Eventually, I got WPMu installed. All that was needed was to import the massive database, which will bring member blogs online, and then upload all the images that my bloggers have uploaded.

So, I looked for documentation on how to do this. And I waited. And I waited. And waited. They responded. Of course, the instructions were generic, and assumed that I’m familar with DOS. I may be an old fart, but I got into computers in my 30s. I missed out on the DOS thing.

So I waited for more help. And waited. And waited.

Eventually, I get ahold of a a techie at mediatemple and he walked me through using PuTTY. And once all the files were uploaded, all the sites work.

Oh, there are some glitches. Blogrolls and categories are empty. I entered a support ticket in the WPMu forum. Someone might respond. Eventually.

Oh, and during this, my Mom took ill (she’s better now, but needed several rides to the doctor). And I’m taking by brother’s dog to the vet tomorrow. Where is this vet located? On the other side of Elmwood.

And to make this trip, today I had to replace a tire that’s about ready to blow. The mechanics (and I use that term loosly) won’t touch the tire because there’s a lugnut missing. I waited for two hours at a location that has no wireless signal.

And I’m gonna get fired in less than two weeks.

So, how’s YOUR week?

This entry was posted on July 19, 2008 at 2:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.