ActiveRain Planned Maintenance: Monday, June 20th, 9-11pm PST

Listen up, guys! This is an important announcement and I need your full attention! All eyes and ears on me, please!

We will be doing a database update on Monday, June 20th, from 9-11pm PST. ActiveRain will be completely unavailable to you during that time. Our team needs to take the site down for two hours in order to feed the hamsters implement the update to our system.  As we have talked about in the past, we are 100% committed to improving the stability and availability of ActiveRain.  All websites need to be maintained on a regular basis.  On Monday, we will be doing just that by updating our database.

Are we all on the same page? Have you been following along so far? (There will be a test at the end of this post.) It's very important for you to pay attention now, so you don't freak out Monday night when you come to the site and find our system maintenance page! Let's go over this one more time:

ActiveRain will be down on Monday, June 20th, from 9-11pm PST for a planned database update.

Mark your calendars! Tell your friends! Post those blogs in advance! The downtime will be brief and painless as long as you've planned your blog reading/posting schedule accordingly.

Now, suddenly you have two free hours on your hands (so really, it's kind of like we're giving you a present)! Here are a few of our suggestions for how to spend your time on Monday night:

1. If you're on the west coast, find a buddy/sweetheart/furry companion and go watch the sunset. In Seattle, the sun is supposed to set right about 9:11pm on Monday the 20th. This is the day before the solstice, so get out there and enjoy one of the longest days of the year! If you're feeling adventurous, do a little research on wine and cheese pairings, and pack up a twilight picnic to take along with you.

2. Read a book! This will not only give your brain a much-needed break from your hard work day, but it also has the added incentive of increasing your vocabulary. You'll be all fired up and ready to blog prolifically as soon as the site's back up! One of my all-time personal favorites is A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. Let your imagination take you along with Bryson as he recounts his journey walking the Appalachian Trail. I promise you will laugh out loud, especially when he starts talking about his fear of bears...

3. Rest your tired old bones. Whether this means going to bed early, taking a hot bath, or curling up on the couch to watch a movie, take advantage of this two-hour gift we're giving you. Consider it a computer (or at least an ActiveRain) time out. Claim these hours as your own, put yourself first for once, and relax. If you like light-hearted foreign films, I recommend watching Priceless with Audrey Tautou. A sweet, charming little film with a running time of an hour and 44 minutes, just about filling up that two-hour downtime window!

Although we're just keeping you in the loop, I promised there would be a test at the end of this post. Luckily, this test has only one question, with no wrong answer:

What are you going to do with your two free hours on Monday night while ActiveRain updates our database?

Let us know in the comments!

Written by staff contributor Karli Larson

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