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Thank you Geocaching/Groundspeak staff!

c&s 143

By c&s 143
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c&s 143

+c&s 143

Posted
Posted

Before I proceed, I want to say I am NOT trying to bash those complaining about the geocaching slow down. I just want to express another point of view on this.

 

Right now there is a slow down on the geocaching server. Trying to access functionality is slow and some pages don't come up at all. I have been reading the forums and seeing how people are complaining.

 

I work for a University as the System Administrator. My job is to keep the servers running. I maintain the student email system, faculty email system, web servers, file share servers, user accounts, SQL servers and other systems. Whenever something goes wrong, I am the one that gets the call to fix it and I am also the one that all the students complain about (why can't he get it running? When will it be fixed? I paid all this money and it isn't working!).

 

I know from first hand experience what it is like to have a high profile system go down/slow down. I also know how it could take a while to get it up and running. There are so many possibilities for what is wrong. It is also hard to judge how long it will take to fix. I am sure the correct people are working on the problem.

 

To those of you who are working on this problem, THANK YOU for all you do. Keep up the good work!

 

To those of you who are waiting for the site to return to normal, please understand that those working on are indeed working on it. I am sure that the staff working on this would much rather be doing something else on a weekend then trying to get the site running normally. These things take time. No computer system is going to be available 100% of the time. Things happen. Unfortunately, this particular problem happened on a weekend when I would imagine usage is higher than on a weeknight.

 

THANK YOU GEOCACHING!! THANK YOU Groundspeak!!

 

Craig

C&S 143

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KoosKoos

+KoosKoos

Posted
Posted

I'm not an admin any more, but work for a company who's main business model relies on our ASP software and yes, when it goes down, customers call ALL of us complaining about it.

 

Strangely, none of those customers calls me during the 99.98% of the time that we have no down time to say "the servers are up today, thanks".

 

Yes, the gc.com downtime is very frustrating and should be reduced to the barest minimum possible, but stuff happens and if we have a little delay of our fun, I don't think the world will end. For my $.08 a day in premium membership fees, I can live with a little frustration now and then.

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Cache Liberation Front

+Cache Liberation Front

Posted
Posted

People love drawing false dichotomies: you're either for or against us! Bah. Life's more complex than that. We ALL love geocaching. That goes w/o saying, folks. And the folks here complaining about the servers being down are doing it from a place of love (for the game). If we didn't love the game than we wouldn't care if the servers were down and hence we wouldn't complain. So please don't try and depict those complaining about the servers here as some kind of "haters."

 

Also note the argument "the servers are up MOST of the time" doesn't fly. If *I* only worked "most of the time" when I was supposed to, I'd only get SOME of the pay coming to me (or worse, sacked!).

 

Just some perspective.

MrW.

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bitbrain

+bitbrain

Posted
Posted (edited)

Yep. It's bad enough when I have a few thousand people waiting for a flakey server to start acting right. I'd sure hate to have the weight of a world full of folks waiting with their cursor poised above the Refresh button.

 

Good luck with the servers, y'all!

Edited by bitbrain
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c&s 143

+c&s 143

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I don't mean to bash those who are making complaints about the slow speeds of the servers. I sympathize and I want to get one the site too. My initial post was meant bring a different perspective to the subject. I work in the IT field and I catch all kinds of crap when something goes wrong. NOTHING in the world will work 100% of the time. Has anyone ever had a car that worked 100% of the time with NO problems? What about a computer at home? Ever had to replace a leaky faucet? Things happen and it takes time to fix them.

 

While I appreciate the frustration of the users (I am one too), I also know first hand what it is like the be the guy trying to get the server working (not at Groundspeak but at the university where I work). All I am asking is to give the people working on it a chance to get it fixed.

 

Craig

C&S 143

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Mopar

+Mopar

Posted
Posted

 

Also note the argument "the servers are up MOST of the time" doesn't fly. If *I* only worked "most of the time" when I was supposed to, I'd only get SOME of the pay coming to me (or worse, sacked!).

 

Just some perspective.

MrW.

I can't see your profile to see if your job is listed cause the servers are acting up, but I'll make a leap of faith and guess that you DON'T work 24hrs a day, 7 days a week. Neither do Groundspeak employees.

Just some perspective you know.

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TexasGringo

+TexasGringo

Posted
Posted

***I work in the IT field and I catch all kinds of crap when something goes wrong. NOTHING in the world will work 100% of the time.***

 

I work as a Project Manager (and many other hats) in the IT field...and if we implement changes to production and they cause a problem...we always have a Roll-Back plan to restore the system to where it was...and then debug the code on a Dev machine to see what might have been missed and what went wrong...and add it to the project's Lessons Learned.

 

It is Hell to be under pressure while production is down and the customers wait...Been there done that and If I was closer, I'd bring you my emergency bottle of Extra-Strength Tums.

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Team Black-Cat

+Team Black-Cat

Posted
Posted

I coulnd't agree more with the OP. Good job devs! Cudos! Applause!

If I were paying $19.95 per month, I'm sure I wouldn't be quite as understanding, but keeping a system of this complexity running 24/7 for the number of concurrent users they get is not possible without the necessary time and resources.

I'm not privy to the details of the recent problems at GC, but I'm sure it was not related to quality or quantity of the servers in use. Some other threads had posts suggesting that their $3.00 a month should be able to buy all the servers GC needs. Jeez, I wish more servers would solve all of the problems I have to deal with at work...

Good job by the mods too for running interference for the devs and calmly dealing with irate users.

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ernbob

+ernbob

Posted
Posted

Absolutely agree with everyone that is giving props to the tech guys working behind the scene. I work for one of the largest freight company is the US and maintain their web environment. I can speak from experience when the servers/infrastructure fail the teams on the back end want it fixed just as badly as the users.

 

Thanks.

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hukilaulau

+hukilaulau

Posted
Posted

If *I* only worked "most of the time" when I was supposed to, I'd only get SOME of the pay coming to me (or worse, sacked!).

 

Just some perspective.

MrW.

Wow... You've got a crummy job. Many of us can miss 10 or 12 a year due to unforseen circumstances and still get paid.

I know nothing about how all this stuff works. It's all magic to me. I think the folks who make the magic work do a great job. Thanks!

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ReadyOrNot

+ReadyOrNot

Posted
Posted

So please don't try and depict those complaining about the servers here as some kind of "haters."

 

I just carefully read through all the posts in this thread prior to yours and all I saw was "Thank You" to Groundspeak for all their hard work. PLEASE explain to me where anyone tried to depict someone who complains as some kind of "hater" as you put it?

 

I also work as a Systems Engineer. Usually when a system goes down, the phone calls start before the pager goes off. And there's always those hateful complainers that complain in a hateful manner to anyone that will listen to their hateful complaining....

 

Keep up the good work Groundspeak!

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Glenn

+Glenn

Posted
Posted

 

Also note the argument "the servers are up MOST of the time" doesn't fly. If *I* only worked "most of the time" when I was supposed to, I'd only get SOME of the pay coming to me (or worse, sacked!).

 

Just some perspective.

MrW.

I can't see your profile to see if your job is listed cause the servers are acting up, but I'll make a leap of faith and guess that you DON'T work 24hrs a day, 7 days a week. Neither do Groundspeak employees.

Just some perspective you know.

 

I'm on call 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 day a year but I don't expect a Groundspeak to be actively monitoring the website 24/7/365. Well, not for $3/month anyways.

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Peconic Bay Sailors

+Peconic Bay Sailors

Posted
Posted

Before I proceed, I want to say I am NOT trying to bash those complaining about the geocaching slow down. I just want to express another point of view on this.

 

Right now there is a slow down on the geocaching server. Trying to access functionality is slow and some pages don't come up at all. I have been reading the forums and seeing how people are complaining.

 

I work for a University as the System Administrator. My job is to keep the servers running. I maintain the student email system, faculty email system, web servers, file share servers, user accounts, SQL servers and other systems. Whenever something goes wrong, I am the one that gets the call to fix it and I am also the one that all the students complain about (why can't he get it running? When will it be fixed? I paid all this money and it isn't working!).

 

I know from first hand experience what it is like to have a high profile system go down/slow down. I also know how it could take a while to get it up and running. There are so many possibilities for what is wrong. It is also hard to judge how long it will take to fix. I am sure the correct people are working on the problem.

 

To those of you who are working on this problem, THANK YOU for all you do. Keep up the good work!

 

To those of you who are waiting for the site to return to normal, please understand that those working on are indeed working on it. I am sure that the staff working on this would much rather be doing something else on a weekend then trying to get the site running normally. These things take time. No computer system is going to be available 100% of the time. Things happen. Unfortunately, this particular problem happened on a weekend when I would imagine usage is higher than on a weeknight.

 

THANK YOU GEOCACHING!! THANK YOU Groundspeak!!

 

Craig

C&S 143

 

You got that right C&S 143...

I do the same thing at work...

The last thing someone troubleshooting and repairing a problem is other people constantly bugging them for an update...

You spend all your time answering those questions and giving updates...

valuable time that could be spent fixing the problem...

A simple "we are aware and are working on it" should suffice to any user...

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paleolith

+paleolith

Posted
Posted

I basically agree with C&S 143. And I would add that this does not to me have the feel of a capacity problem (which could be anticipated) but of something breaking. At this point we don't AFAIK even know whether it was actually a gc.com problem.

 

At the same time, I'll say that it helps users A LOT for someone to take the time -- 3 minutes every two or three hours -- to post a quick note giving the status. Yes, I know how hard it can be to break away from the repair effort. Often, though, the break results in better thinking as well as much happier users. The status note doesn't have to be much more than "our provider is suffering from a DoS attack", or "two of our three servers suffered disk failures and we are rebuilding", etc.

 

Again, I know that this kind of status update requires a special effort. But it's very much worth the small amount of time it takes.

 

Edward

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