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A Day Without Rain

When it rains, it pours. But in this case, that's hardly an apt analogy; perhaps when it ceases to rain, the resulting drought is both immediate and devastating.

The cluster of servers responsible for the magic that is ActiveRain took a collective nosedive early (early!) this morning, leaving activerain.com and localism.com inaccessible for nearly 18 hours. The fact that it happened on a Sunday without any data loss is a very thin silver lining on this black cloud. The disagreeable servers have since been set straight, and all is right with the world again.

A curious thought came upon me during my stay in the eye of the hurricane: What if ActiveRain had never existed? The incredible team that Jon has assembled would be scattered. I'd still be living in Kansas. Some would be grinding away their days at Microsoft. Others would be selling homes. And what of our vast and vibrant community? Fragmented among smaller sites with no place to come together and share their experience and humor. In the parallel universe where ActiveRain was never born, everyone is the poorer.

Enjoy your stay in the rain — we'll try not to turn off the faucet again.

Posted by Jorgen Hahn on 11/02/2008 07:42 PM

Comments (139)

Originally posted at: Minor Missives: A Day Without Rain

Post is included in group: Club Chaos

139 Comments on A Day Without Rain

NOV

2008

Jorgen no worries, we were all on Skype and Twitter. Never have seen so many AR folks on Twitter at once. It would take more than a server error to destroy the life long friendships we have lmade here.

Just be thankful everyone wasn't at NAR !!

No worries, Jorgen. All is well.

I had a fleeting "what if it's all gone" thought. But then I thought, I still have my AR friends. We'd put it back together. I'm good with duct tape.

Jorgen, it is all good, we all got on skype and had a mini party for the last hour.

No worries....I missed the rain, but had faith you guys would bring it back..thanks for working so hard to restore our beloved site!

It's all good besides it made me spend some quality time with my brothers on a little getaway..but wouldn't you know it...as soon as I got home...it was up again! :)

I thought maybe I broke the site by reaching #1 for my state last night LOL

Yes, I was about to see who I could contact - without the rain. But have not solidified my friendships as yet. Must say it was a jolt. Glad it didn't last longer. Did notice alot more trouble during the daytime this last week though. Hope you can beef up those servers - as we are going to keep growing!

Well....us addicts now have our fix again. Thanks for getting it up and running again and hopefully it didn't cause much collateral damage.

Not to worry - but I am glad it is back up - I missed AR today!!

In some ways it was a blessing - I talked with AR friends on Twitter and got to know them a little better. But, glad we are back on AR!

LOL@ Jeremy.

I'm glad it's back up, and I'm sure you guys were stressing out big time all day trying to get this fixed for us. Thanks for your hard work, even if I did grumble a few times on twitter. ;)

I am glad you are back. Live just wasn't the same without the Rain.

I don't spend enough time in the rain anyway it was cool to see so many on twitter but good thing we had other venues to connect! Point is we still connected. Probably more so than if the rain had be working.

Glad you're back up and running. That had to a be a stressful 18 hours! We all had faith...

NFL on all day... No worries!

Sean

Wow I got so much done today while the server was down. Maybe that should tell me something.

I was absolutely horrified when I coulnd't log on!!!! Rain, Rain, Please don't Go Away!!!!

Thanks for the explanation Jorgen. I have been wondering what I did w/my free time prior to finding AR. KM

Thank the good Lord, Sean!

I thought I had screwed something up (I'm married, you see, and when something like this happens, my wife has gotten me in the habit of blaming myself).

At least, there was football, and the Chicago Bears won!

DEAN & DEAN'S TEAM CHICAGO

Welcome back. We had faith you were working on it.

Thanks for the explanation and your hard work. Good for us it was a Sunday and most of us were working.......right?

Jorgen, I don't want to think about AR not being here - thank you and the rest of the AR team for all your work in making this a great place.

Jorgen.... I was in the midst of Blogging somewhere during the 3:00 to 4:00 AM hour when all of a Sudden Active Rain told me it was bed time. Along with others.. I have been suffering withdrawals all day.... then all of a sudden my Yahoo Ping alerted me that Active Rain was up and running once again..

Thank You Active Rain for the opportunity that is offered. And for the price.. Nobody should complain for a short break of the servers. But we all missed them equally.

Hey %$*$ happens...and we all survived.

Jorgen...

Whew, glad you're back! That was a long day for you, I am sure.

Oh well..I'm used to it...it happened before and it will probably happen again...hell I've been putting up with it since 2006.

Jorgen - Is it normal to have physically painful withdrawal symptoms when AR is down? No? I didn't think so. Actually, I had a nice day, but I'm glad to see it back up and without any loss of data.

Damnit! I had so many cool blogs to post and now I don't have access to those photos!

Woo-hoo, back in the saddle again! As Missy said, there sure were an awful lot of AR people on Twitter all day today - it was fun, but we missed our AR!

Ann

I wasn't home until the end of the day....so I didn't even know what I was missing! A day without AR would be tragic. I've become hooked! I've learned on this single web-site that I've learned anywhwere else. I'm still learning!

AFter a day at work...3 open houses today, 2 yesterday, I am just getting back to AR and never knew it was down! Perfect timing, it is back and running, and I have time to check in!

Hey...momma always said not to put all your eggs in one basket so no worries about the minor shut down. BTW, I'm for Wichita...what part of KS are you from?

I think this was good for the Active Rain members -- it gave us some time to reflect on how our lives would be different without active rain. I bet your weekend wasn't too much though! Thanks for getting things back up and raining.

It's funny how many I times I tried to get log on today. Perhaps an addiction is setting is! :o)

Well...I ended up joining twitter and Face book today so...I guess I am really jumping in to this whole social networking thing!

I felt as if I lost all my friends today :( I got a lot of cleaning done but kept stopping by to check the site--so glad it's back!!

Well I don't have twitter and was at an open house all day but kept trying to get on and couldn't I was beginning to have withdrawal symptoms.

I was out showing properties all day IN THE RAIN! Glad it is back up because for some reason my day just didn't go right without being able to get my fix before I left this morning. Bad juju out in the rain today!

I was making comments at 2:00 a.m. when my computer told me that daylight savings time had just ended. Seems that was the exact time when AR ended, too. I just took it to mean that someone somewhere forgot to tell the computers that we were changing times a week later this year. Remember that we change time earlier next year, too.

Glad to see AR is back up and active. This is the first day in a very long time that I've had time to enjoy Active Rain........to find there was no AR! Phew! Thank goodness you're back!

That comment at 8:28 p.m. was me. For some reason Active Rain didn't log me in even though it said that I could log out, which typically means that I'm logged in. Oh, well. Onward....

Glad to see you were able to get the servers going again:-)

I kept the faith. Suffice it to say that I was frustrated without my daily dose of rain!

There was a surge of Rainers on Twitter today. How many points do we get for a tweet?

You guys rock !!! Thanks for bringing it back and getting those servers in order. We missed it but it also gave me added appreciation for the rain, the rain builders, and the rain members !

Glad you were able to work your magic Jorgen and get us back up and running without data loss! You guys are the best!

Had to laugh at Missy - Twitter was a buzz with AR folks as was FaceBook. Everyone was catching up on the "other" social media outlets out there.

I heard that Sarah Palin commented on A|R being down in a campaign appearance today. She said that you are a Maverick. She went on to add that the outage was due to water leak in the office, but she was sending Joe the Plumber out to help you with that and y'all would get the site back up and running.

Active Rain cost me a lot of money today, $416.71 to be precise. Since there was no Active Rain, I decided to turn on the television. All I got was a black screen. I had to go buy a new television. As soon as I got it hooked up, Active Rain was back.

Wow, I couldn't believe that I felt, somehow, lost or empty. I actually had to close my computer and go out into the world. Whoo-hoo! Scary! Thank you so much for getting it back up and running. I am addicted!

Hi Jorgen,

Nice to see A/R back up...thought it was me until I was forced to check out Twiiter! LOL! :)

Glad you're back up! But good thing I can entertain myself by playing on Twitter and selling 2 houses today ... ;)

Everything I planned to do today was centered around Activerain so I had to give up all the "doing" and relax a bit and spent time with friends - so glad I did.

Hey. Don't worry about it. Our fingers and eyes needed the break. I was doing opens (2) all day and had football

Thank goodness AR is back. Sunday morning is my usual time to get caught up, while my kids and husband are still sleeping. I will have to do my blog entries tomorrow. Too tired tonight with the time change and working all day...Is anyone else seeing their market pick up? I've definitely seen more activity in the past 10 days.

I figured that it was some kind of server problem. Thanks for letting us know .

Still pretending like that's your real name, huh?

I thought I was going to die from withdrawal symptoms! My hands are still a little shaky as I type away at this comment! Glad we're back up!

I wondered what was going on---tried to log on several times to no avail. Glad it's fixed--need my AR fix!

Just glad we're all back together! It was a long Sunday with no RAIN! I realized that I do have an addiction problem though!

Debe in Charlotte

So happy we are all are back. I think (it's all blurry) I went for some extra caffeine boost during the black out. ~Rita

Wasn't sure what was going on - glad it's back!

Jorgen,

Thanks for turning the rain back on. Just goes to show how addicted and in love with you guys I am. Keep up the great work and thanks for working so hard on a Sunday. We appreciate it.

Glad you guys got it all up and running again. Thsnk you.

Now I know I am a true addict! What part of Kansas did you live in? I am originally from Wichita. Thanks for all the hard work to get us back out into the rain!

Maybe a little rain on the servers made us miss networking more. Just don't let it happen again LOL. Your guys are the best.

Congrats on #1 Jeremy. And although I did miss AR today I was confident you guys had it under control :~)

I missed the rain! You have to be ready for a very deep breath...... Ok with me on one .......breath in breath out repeat until life feels good again.

And remember
"The edge.... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over." Hunter S. Thompson

Thank you so much for getting it fixed. I really missed you all today!

HI JORGEN!

I was pretty uptight without my Rain today!! Great post & glad to be able to read it! Vote & take someone with you!

Best,

I tried to login this morning and thought maybe I had missed a message about being down for maintenance. s I tried a bit later and still no luck and then thought it must be something a bit more serious. Thanks so much for getting things up and running again.

All the Best,

Bill Jones

I tried for hours to get onto ActiveRain.............I was at a loss, Thank GOD we are back up and running................

I just knew that we would be back up today...

With new listings and the NFL today, there was plenty to keep me busy in-between checking the website...

Now it's business as usual!

Jorgen, We spent the day on the beach, so I never missed the outage. I think I would have been freaking out with the rest of the AR addicts had I known!

Ginger

Hi Jorgen...I managed to get some of my photos organized. Now hopefully I can use them on some future posts. I tried using my time wisely.

Even though I have thousands more to organize, resize, crop, etc. please don't make me wonder where you are again.

Kate

P.S. Like Carole, I kept checking back to see if it was raining.

Hi Jorgen,

Thanks for filling us all in. I was going through "rain-withdrawals" :) Thanks to everyone that got it back up and running! :)

I also kept checking back. Then I was thinking maybe everyone is doing that and slowing up the servers. I am so glad Active Rain is back. Thank you!!!

Jorgen - I had enough withdrawal pains for one day thank you! :-) So happy to hear everything is back up and running smoothly.

My humorous brain thought the building where the servers were housed burned down or no one was around minding the store and wouldn't know there was a problem till everyone came back in on Monday. Wow, that was a long outage.

I was wondering what happened.... glad it's back up!

Jorgen I ahve to say it was quite strange not being able to get on until now. It is obvious I have an addiction:)

Jorgen, I thought something was off when only 11 new members joined today.

NOV

2008

It wasn't easy, but we survived. The shakes were a little hard to deal with at first, but once I got over those and learned to e-mail and call my Activerain friends it was a lot better.

Got my car washed! So, thanks for being down. Maybe you could arrange this every Sunday.

I knew that you would be back, sometimes that happens. Being a gamer and all I got used to sites going down sometimes.

I just kept checking every hour :)

A day without "rain" is chaos!! But I also had people believing this was a conspiracy by our staff to get members off the computer to spend this Sunday with their families! haha

Great job getting the plumbing taken care of Jorgen. Thanks, we all appreciate you!! :-))

Thank you for taking care of business and getting it all squared away again.

Jorgen, I can't imagine it was a fun Sunday for all of you. Thanks so much for all you do.

Jorgen,

"What if it disappeared totally," I wondered throughout the day! The world would be poorer, more drab. Thanks for your hard work!

Mike in Tucson

After not being able to log on for several hours I asked my webguy/hubby a foolish question. What if it does not come back what if it's gone for good? ok 2 questions.

Thanks for the explanation, I thought it was my connection.

Rich

Charlotte NC

At least we are all back together again today! Like many others have said - it forced me to be social with real live people! :)

Jorgen,

I happy everything is back in working order and nothing was lost.

Ah hum, Ah . . . . . where is the redundancy???

The techie I am not and the problems we have had reently with our computers I was soooo hoping not another virus had gotten thru....and than our pal Proxy Error popped up an knew that some one of the Rain Gods would be curing the problem...sometimes you don't know what you have till you don't have it, hmmm ?

Featured @ Club Chaos

Who said there was no loss of important data???

For the first time in months I sat down and wrote my 10 most thoughtful posts for the week and ....now....all are gone. All that work and effort. They were really great words of wisdom also.

Do I still get my 2250 points?????

Well, at least I'll get these 25 points. Right? Hello Hello Hello.....is anyone out there?

The bottom line is this is NOT the first time we have been lost on a weekend. Dependable servers and programs can be hard to come by when costs are what they are. and therefore the "not all eggs in one basket" theory is a pretty good one to rely on.

I guess, just like me, others just went somewhere else for the day.

Jorgan - No problem. It was my wifes, and mine of course, 17th wedding anniversary yesterday so we took the day off from A/R. Not Real Estate though. lol Glad to see everything is back up again.. Bob H

And I thought it wass the AR gods angry with me......LOL

I just joined Active Rain recently and have been blogging religiously since then.

I was amazed at how much I missed the site being up on Sunday.

It makes you realize how cool this community really is and much I appreciate being a part of it.

Thank you!

It was a good thing for me. i realize that i am addicted, it helped to put things in perspective. I actually took the time to clean my office and get my filing system straightened out. I even helped my husband paint the kitchen. I made the best of my time away from the Rain.

Jorgen, I was absolutely stunned at my own reaction to not being able to get to AR yesterday. I'm still new and act like it's just a small hobby. I couldn't quit trying! Thanks for getting it fixed. :)

Jorgen, my fingers got a break and I watched MSU win and the Bears win. But I think the shakes would have begun today if we weren't back up.

Please keep that faucet on, we miss it when we can't access it!!

Mr. Jorgen, I would like to say that I was very depressed yesterday. I sat around writting little proxy error haikus all day.

KEEP THAT FAUCET FLOOOWING! I didn't know what to do!!!!!

Thankfully I have been unable to treat myself to my daily dose of AR or I would have gone crazy like everyone else!

You are so right I thank God for active rain. I'll say 50% of my business comes from Active Rain and I love to network and build relations with people. Take a look at my profile if I can help you in any way please let me know. Have a great day!!!!

I love the title of this post. Too perfect. I agree, we'd all be lost without AR to bring us together. Thanks for providing some explanations.

You are so right. What ad odd alternate universe it would be without AR!

After a few minutes with the proxy errors and then not being able to log on at all, I knew it was probably a major crash here. Also, I was confident that you guys would fix it without losing all my points! And that this would be the topic of the day on Monday.

thanks again for making AR so much a part of our lives.

I'm sorry I looked at your blog just because I love your picture! I wish I lived in Washington!

I didn't notice activerain was down - but would be sad if wasn't here anymore.

Jorgen, I replied to your comment on my blog and asked you a question. You said that our data is all safe...yet in your blog you said that one of the silver linings was no loss of data. What did you mean by that?

Did you mean that there was no loss of data that would have to be restored from a back up? Or what "loss of data" were you alluding to?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Really missed it!! Even on a Sunday.

Its amazing how large this network is and things would be very different without it! Glad it's up and running again.

I went through withdrawals all day long. I don't have these other sites to fall back on. I was so glad to see it back up and running.

I don't like the proxy server error I was out of town and when we got home I only had a short time to do my comments and blog. I guess I've become so used to smooth access it gets me nervous with the error message thanks for the update.

Jorgen,

worry! 18 hours is a technological crime these days. You probably lost a few hundred people. You loose them, we loose them

Jorgen, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!! I thought AR had flown off in to the internet La La land or something. I'm so glad you're back and we can once again DANCE IN THE RAIN!!

real estate dance dance in the rain

I didn't even know what a SKYPE was until yesterday!! LOL

Oh well ! I actually showed property and didn't know AR was down. But thanks guys for getting it back!!

... what's wrong with living in KS?? :)

I had an Open House....and twittered a little in the am...and did a draft for when AR came back up. I did miss it terribly in the am with my am coffee :)

All's good and I love this place .......

I didn't even know AR servers were down. We were busy with life ... developing client relationship in our RE business ... and then campaigning and meeting people about our California ballot initiative that is so important. Harrison

I could probably live without blogging a day, but I am notorious service oriented person. Class service is having your prospect follow a link that does not work, NO! Jorgen is right to be stressing. This market is slow.

Jorgen, I have been in San Diego visiting a friend, I for once went without a computer. We did access her laptop once on Sunday (I wanted to show some pink firefighters in NYC) and I thought it was something wrong with her computer as she had not used it in 6 months. However I went to my own website and it was up. Now that I'm home I guess I know the secret of what happened.

By the way I left Kansas in 1979.

Exactly, Larry - I was frustrated mostly because I wondered which of my search terms were being returned as AR results that my potential customers could not click on and thus they went to my competition. Many, many of my search terms dominate page 1 of Google with ActiveRain results.

NOV

2008

Isn't it amazing the effect that it had on everyone. I was bummed, figured that sooner or later it would be fixed, and just moved on to other tasks. No worries!

I did miss ActiveRain when it was down. I wanted to tell my ActiveRain friends about the exciting LinkedIn developments. I thought I was doing something wrong. I compensated by spending more time on twitter. I'm glad you guys got it back up and running

There is and will always be hits and misses with the Internet. As with anything the bigger the group the more probability there will be downtime. I used the time to clean out the barn with my son. It was a wonderful afternoon, the time with your children is priceless.

Thanks for getting the site back up, great team. Remember to Vote.

Maybe my earlier question got missed:

Did you mean that there was no loss of data that would have to be restored from a back up? Or what "loss of data" were you alluding to?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

11/03/2008 04:45

Thanks!

If Active Rain did not exist. I would have a few more hours in the day to devote to something else. I would not know about blogging and importance at all if the Rain was not around.

NOV

2008

Still hoping for an answer to my question.

Sigh.

Jorgen, could you please explain what you meant by "The fact that it happened on a Sunday without any data loss is a very thin silver lining on this black cloud." in this blog?

You commented on my blog stating that members didn't need to worry as we would not have our blogs at risk since everything is backed up.

But from your comment in your blog it seems that data loss could have been a real possibility. All I'm asking for is clarification.

NOV

2008

whistling....dooo, dooo, dooooo....laaa....

Why are you not answering?

NOV

2008

Hi,

I'm really glad you are back. I didn't panic because I figured there was glitch somewhere. Welcome back!

Nancy Morgan

NOV

2008

No, I didn't forget. Just decided to ask again.

Jorgen, could you please explain what you meant by "The fact that it happened on a Sunday without any data loss is a very thin silver lining on this black cloud." in this blog?

You commented on my blog stating that members didn't need to worry as we would not have our blogs at risk since everything is backed up.

But from your comment in your blog it seems that data loss could have been a real possibility. All I'm asking for is clarification.

NOV

2008

Jorgen, any news on today's upgrade? According to Brad there was some sort of upgrade today. It has severely changed the look of everyone's blogs as html code was disabled somehow. We have listed all the items that are working and not working in our latest blog post from this morning. I hope you have a chance to run over and check it out and give us an update on this problem.

Reading Karen's previous comment above, scares me especially since this is yet another sunday that we're having downtime, and this time there was data loss, albeit in a conceptual form. If at all possible, could the members of this fine community be made aware of such updates so we have a chance to save our blogs prior to said execution? Thanks. Good luck on your efforts, you (obi-wan-kenobi) are our only hope.

Thank you for a swift reply.

Sincerely,

Active Castellum

Why am I not surprised that there is no answer here?

DEC

2008

Jorgen, are you still here? Is that why there are no answers to these recent questions?

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