Why can't we get PQ's on time?

[+trainlove]

So now we need someone to write a Firefox macro that will complete the set of repetitive keystrokes needed to do this and GS can continue to ignore the problem until delivery of instant PQ's bubbles to the service.

I too have heard the rumours of "instant PQ's" but don't see what or how those would work.

 

Does the mere fact of unclicking the scheduled date, then re-clicking it bump the PQ to a higher priority? If so then there is no need to duplicate a PQ, just write the simplest of keystroke sequences to automatically click and click again a pixel on your screen. Something I mentioned some hundred thousands of words ago.

[+Tequila]

So now we need someone to write a Firefox macro that will complete the set of repetitive keystrokes needed to do this and GS can continue to ignore the problem until delivery of instant PQ's bubbles to the service.

I too have heard the rumours of "instant PQ's" but don't see what or how those would work.

 

Does the mere fact of unclicking the scheduled date, then re-clicking it bump the PQ to a higher priority? If so then there is no need to duplicate a PQ, just write the simplest of keystroke sequences to automatically click and click again a pixel on your screen. Something I mentioned some hundred thousands of words ago.

 

No, unclicking/clicking won't work. You have to make an exact copy of the PQ and run that.

 

Your question just highlighted another level of the absurdity. Groundspeak created a special button that allows you to create a copy instantly. So they abet you in your get around.

[+Tequila]

There should not be a snowball effect as mentioned by Koos Koos.

 

Remember that every single PM is entitled to run 5 PQ's per day, regardless of how they schedule them; instantly or pre-scheduled. I still get the same 5 sets of data. I have just manually improved response time.

 

So the same volume of PQ's are being run, they are just entering the scheduling queue differently; either at the bottom if pre-scheduled or at the top if instant.

 

The problem is the server cannot handle the load on certain days. Arguably that could be software or hardware. Either way, it is in GS' ballpark. As customers, we have found a way of getting what we paid for regardless.

Edited November 17, 2008 by Tequila

[+pppingme]

So now we need someone to write a Firefox macro that will complete the set of repetitive keystrokes needed to do this and GS can continue to ignore the problem until delivery of instant PQ's bubbles to the service.

I too have heard the rumours of "instant PQ's" but don't see what or how those would work.

 

Does the mere fact of unclicking the scheduled date, then re-clicking it bump the PQ to a higher priority? If so then there is no need to duplicate a PQ, just write the simplest of keystroke sequences to automatically click and click again a pixel on your screen. Something I mentioned some hundred thousands of words ago.

It works best by copying then running the copy and deleting when done. Unselecting/reselecting the same PQ doesn't seem to do much in terms of priority.

 

Your reply got me thinking and about 5 minutes with Google showed me these tools already exist.

 

Anytime a site ignores problems, the users will develop workarounds, and those workarounds can't be optimized by the site. Its really to GC's advantage to acknowledge the problem and fix it now, or this really will get out of hand. GC can optimize (and fix whatever they broke) how scheduled PQ's work, but they will never be able to control when users submit "on demand" PQ's.

 

What will happen here is everyone is going to give up on scheduled PQ's, especially over the weekend, and everyone is going to come home from work on Friday at 5 and all hit their macro's at the same time. Instant PQ's will then take hours to generate. People asking for PQ's at 5 won't get them until 10, too late for caching.

 

Yet GC continues to ignore the problem.

 

The real sad thing here is that this isn't a problem caused by excessive usage or an unexpected surge in PQ's, but rather a site change/bug introduced a couple months ago, they broke something and now won't acknowledge it.

[+trainlove]

Your question just highlighted another level of the absurdity. Groundspeak created a special button that allows you to create a copy instantly. So they abet you in your get around.

Prior to this topic, I didn't know that they had a 'copy' button.

I guess it's something that Santa created sometime in the 20 or so months since I've been a PM. That only makes me want to join up more to see what else is 'new'.

[+pppingme]

There should not be a snowball effect as mentioned by Koos Koos.

 

Remember that every single PM is entitled to run 5 PQ's per day, regardless of how they schedule them; instantly or pre-scheduled. I still get the same 5 sets of data. I have just manually improved response time.

The snowball comes from everyone coming home Friday afternoon and running their PQ's on the spot, right now it "seems" to be working but when enough people start doing this it will fail. I know there's a couple times on Friday afternoons I've waited 30 minutes for an "instant" (new, never run before) PQ to run. Thats not consistent right now, but it will be worse in the future if GC doesn't get this bug fixed.

 

Every week more people are doing this (snowball building) and eventually it will be out of control.

[+Tequila]

Your question just highlighted another level of the absurdity. Groundspeak created a special button that allows you to create a copy instantly. So they abet you in your get around.

Prior to this topic, I didn't know that they had a 'copy' button.

I guess it's something that Santa created sometime in the 20 or so months since I've been a PM. That only makes me want to join up more to see what else is 'new'.

 

Join up. You seemed to have quite the interest in a service you can't currently get. Might as well be frustrated with the rest of us.

[+tozainamboku]

What will happen here is everyone is going to give up on scheduled PQ's, especially over the weekend, and everyone is going to come home from work on Friday at 5 and all hit their macro's at the same time. Instant PQ's will then take hours to generate. People asking for PQ's at 5 won't get them until 10, too late for caching.

 

Yet GC continues to ignore the problem.

 

The real sad thing here is that this isn't a problem caused by excessive usage or an unexpected surge in PQ's, but rather a site change/bug introduced a couple months ago, they broke something and now won't acknowledge it.

I disagree with this analysis. If people give up on scheduling PQ and simply create new ones to run on demand, you will have some people who will run their PQs less often. If they come home on Friday and are not planning to go geocaching on Saturday, they just wont run any PQs. There will be less PQs run. There may be times of the day when lots of people will submit "instant" PQs at the same time and the queue will get longer. I agree that they may no longer be "instant", but I suspect that wait will not be more than an hour or two. What is happening now is that there are so many people who simply ask for PQs on Friday on the chance they may be going geocaching on Saturday that it takes most of the day to run through these.

 

This is the reason for prioritizing PQs. It allows those that want instant results to be able to submit a PQ and see results in a few minutes. Those who want the convenience of scheduling PQ can schedule them to run weekly (or even to run once up to six days in advance) and still get them early enough in the day to be useful. Those who insist on running the same queries every day will usually get them sometime that day, but apparently there are days when they won't run. I agree that Groundspeak should more explicit about the chances that sometimes a scheduled PQ won't run. The argument that since Groundspeak says premium member can schedule up to five PQs a day means that they have to be able to process that many doesn't hold much weight. The expectation is that not every premium member will ask for all 5 everyday. The servers should be able to run through the queue on the busiest days, but that is likely far fewer than having to process 5 PQs from every premium member. Given the increase in the number of premium members running PQs there are times when the capacity of the severs is exceeded. In addition, a server failure during the day can cause processing to be delayed. It is probably reasonable for Groundspeak to indicate that while they will make a good faith effort to see all the PQs run, there may be circumstances when the queue will not finish by the end of the day. Groundspeak should clarify what happens in this case - are the low priority PQs that failed to run dropped or are they run the next day possibly counting against a user's 5 per day limit on that day.

 

I don't believe that Groundspeak is ignoring this problem; typically they don't post in these forum in response to these type of problem reports. It would be nice if someone would respond to this thread to let us know what plans, if any, they have to improve the situation.

 

I also don't see any hard evidence that the base problem is related to a recent site change. There was a site change that caused new PQs to not run but that was fixed after a day or two. There have been site changes in the past that caused the queries to run slower that had to be reworked so it is a possibility that something changed to cause additional load, but I'm more inclined to believe that it is just an increase in the number of users.

 

A general comment to those who complain that the apologists (I prefer the term brown noses) only offer workarounds. Only Groundspeak can respond here to acknowledge the problem and inform of their plans to fix it. However, anyone can post how they workaround the problem. These people are trying to be helpful by providing information that can be used to get around problems on the site. Your frustrations with Groundspeak's lack of response should not be taken out on those who are simply trying to be helpful - even though you may not see it as help.

[+mtn-man]

Your question just highlighted another level of the absurdity. Groundspeak created a special button that allows you to create a copy instantly. So they abet you in your get around.

Prior to this topic, I didn't know that they had a 'copy' button.

I guess it's something that Santa created sometime in the 20 or so months since I've been a PM. That only makes me want to join up more to see what else is 'new'.

 

Join up. You seemed to have quite the interest in a service you some people can't currently get sometimes on Thursday or Friday if they happen to run the same PQ every day of the week. Might as well be frustrated with the rest some of us if you choose to get PQ's in this manner.

I corrected that statement. As I have stated, I get my PQ's just fine so please don't speak for me.

[+Tequila]

Your question just highlighted another level of the absurdity. Groundspeak created a special button that allows you to create a copy instantly. So they abet you in your get around.

Prior to this topic, I didn't know that they had a 'copy' button.

I guess it's something that Santa created sometime in the 20 or so months since I've been a PM. That only makes me want to join up more to see what else is 'new'.

 

Join up. You seemed to have quite the interest in a service you some people can't currently get sometimes on Thursday or Friday if they happen to run the same PQ every day of the week. Might as well be frustrated with the rest some of us if you choose to get PQ's in this manner.

I corrected that statement. As I have stated, I get my PQ's just fine so please don't speak for me.

 

mtn-man,

 

If you had taken the time to check, you would have noticed that the poster, train love, is NOT a Premium Member and that is why I said he can't get the service. It has nothing to do with Groundspeaks inability to deliver.

 

Please correct your changes to my quotation as they are incorrect.

Edited November 17, 2008 by Tequila

[+pppingme]

I disagree with this analysis. If people give up on scheduling PQ and simply create new ones to run on demand, you will have some people who will run their PQs less often. If they come home on Friday and are not planning to go geocaching on Saturday, they just wont run any PQs. There will be less PQs run.

The bigger picture that GC is missing here, and you will too after more people catch on, is that as people abandon scheduling them on the GC site, those people will start resorting to 3rd party tools. I stated in an earlier post that 5 minutes with Google showed me several tools to do just that.

 

The people using these tools aren't going to schedule them to run early or something, they are going to schedule them to run 30 minutes before they get home from work, here is where the snowball effect will really kick in.

 

Those that don't care about a late PQ will continue to use GC's scheduling, those that do will use 3rd party tools that will really slam the system through the weekend. Running an "on demand" PQ will become impossible on a Friday afternoon.

 

The people that are "giving up on scheduling and simply creating new ones" are the exact ones that are going to resort to these 3rd party tools to do those functions for them.

[CoyoteRed]

A general comment to those who complain that the apologists (I prefer the term brown noses) only offer workarounds. Only Groundspeak can respond here to acknowledge the problem and inform of their plans to fix it. However, anyone can post how they workaround the problem. These people are trying to be helpful by providing information that can be used to get around problems on the site. Your frustrations with Groundspeak's lack of response should not be taken out on those who are simply trying to be helpful - even though you may not see it as help.

Yes, not everyone who is offering workarounds are apologists. Some of us simply offer the solutions we've found to work within and around the system. But there are some who take it beyond merely offering workarounds, though.

[CoyoteRed]

I disagree with this analysis. If people give up on scheduling PQ and simply create new ones to run on demand, you will have some people who will run their PQs less often.

This is true. If everyone suddenly abandons scheduled PQs and goes to instant delivery the number of PQs run will drop and probably by a significant percentage. However, this would only be a short term "fix" just like all of the previous "fixes." More folks will join. More PQs will be run. Etc. We'd be right back in the same boat. Only we'd have a lot more folks getting many fewer PQs each.

[+tozainamboku]

I disagree with this analysis. If people give up on scheduling PQ and simply create new ones to run on demand, you will have some people who will run their PQs less often. If they come home on Friday and are not planning to go geocaching on Saturday, they just wont run any PQs. There will be less PQs run.

The bigger picture that GC is missing here, and you will too after more people catch on, is that as people abandon scheduling them on the GC site, those people will start resorting to 3rd party tools. I stated in an earlier post that 5 minutes with Google showed me several tools to do just that.

 

The people using these tools aren't going to schedule them to run early or something, they are going to schedule them to run 30 minutes before they get home from work, here is where the snowball effect will really kick in.

 

Those that don't care about a late PQ will continue to use GC's scheduling, those that do will use 3rd party tools that will really slam the system through the weekend. Running an "on demand" PQ will become impossible on a Friday afternoon.

 

The people that are "giving up on scheduling and simply creating new ones" are the exact ones that are going to resort to these 3rd party tools to do those functions for them.

I don't buy that all that many people run PQ for the reasons you do and in order to have the latest data in their offline database will use a third party tool to schedule their pocket queries. Use of these tools is possibly a violation of the Terms Of Use, but I won't pass judgment on that here. In any case, the idea that this will cause a "snowball" because they will all be submitted to run 30 minutes before people get home from work is off the mark. Geocachers live around the world and will "arrive home from work" throughout the day. Even if you assume the majority live in the Eastern timezone, not everyone will schedule these to run at the same time. Some will do it earlier in the day, willing to trade a few hours of updates for the increase likelihood that the results will be waiting for them when they get home. It may be that if more people switch to running fresh copies of PQs instead of scheduling the same one every day or every week, there will be times when they won't be as instant as they are now. But I don't expect you would ever need to wait more than a hour or so for them to run. Since most days, the sever processes all the PQs it will continue to process all the queries in the same period. Scheduled PQs might even run earlier in the day as some previous schedule PQs will be changed to on-demand and run late at night when the queue is empty. Those that continue to use GC.com scheduling to run a daily PQ may not run on Friday just as they don't now. If all the once a day people change to use a third party tool as you suggest than some once a week people may not run. I suspect these people will just switch to running earlier in the week.

 

Unless you believe that use of a third party scheduler will cause people to run more PQs than they do now, it will not change the load on the server over a 24 hour period. Schedule queries will continue to run when they do now and except on heavy load days, they may even run earlier. Thanks for scheduling your "instant" PQ in the evening.

[+mtn-man]

Your question just highlighted another level of the absurdity. Groundspeak created a special button that allows you to create a copy instantly. So they abet you in your get around.

Prior to this topic, I didn't know that they had a 'copy' button.

I guess it's something that Santa created sometime in the 20 or so months since I've been a PM. That only makes me want to join up more to see what else is 'new'.

 

Join up. You seemed to have quite the interest in a service you can't currently get. Might as well be frustrated with the rest some of us that choose to get PQ's in the manner that I do to maintain a personal database, or be very happy as the other 99 percent of people who get pocket queries to just go geocaching.

I corrected that statement. As I have stated, I get my PQ's just fine so please don't speak for me.

 

mtn-man,

 

If you had taken the time to check, you would have noticed that the poster, train love, is NOT a Premium Member and that is why I said he can't get the service. It has nothing to do with Groundspeaks inability to deliver.

 

Please correct your changes to my quotation as they are incorrect.

Gotcha'. That does look better, and more correct.

 

If you notice his status in the forums, he was a Premium Member at one time. I know he isn't one at this time. Sorry to misread the statement, and I do agree that the change is more accurate.

[+sbell111]

This is my point exactly. Where is the email problem at. Like said before I have run the same querry 3 times. Just telling it to send to 3 different email providers and never receive the PQ in an email. Every one says it runs shows the preview of the whole PQ. So that tells me there is an email problem on the PQ server end and dont know why. This was all working fine a few weeks ago on my account why did this all start doing this now?

Are you requesting that your files be zipped?

What does an airline do when they overbook? Tell the passengers they should have planned their travel for a less busy period?

Sorta. They typically bump the last person who checked in (unless it is one of their 'premium' passengers) to their next flight.

I didn't start this thread to be given a bunch of cumbersome get arounds that required me to manually do things that are better left to automation. I already knew how to get around it.

Cumbersome? The easiest workaround involves two keystrokes. Check the box to copy the PQ and then delete the old one. That's the entire workaround.

The really sad part is that I have thrown in the towel and re-engineered my PQ's to ensure that I can mitigate the weekly disruption by Groundspeak. This means I am running close to twice as many PQ's as I want to and I know that exacerbates the overall situation. But, in the absence of a response from Groundspeak, it is the only thing I can do.

Really? You chose to attempt to run twice as many PQs as a solution to not receiving your fewer PQs as quick as you wanted them? You find this to be a better solution than the 'two keystroke' method that you may only have to implement every six months or so? Interesting.

I have set it up to ensure I get my 5 PQ's per day that I pay for. How I use them is my business. And one last thanks to the poster who discovered that you can get more than 5 scheduled PQ's in a day. Rather than leaving slots open to be lost to GS, I have scheduled 5 PQ's with overlapping PQ's to alleviate any delays.

I can't wait until you start the thread complaining that you already used your 35 PQs per week, but now want more because you need to take occasional trips outside your regular caching area.

I'm not even sure how you get 34 cents or whatever, since you didn't explain it, but for the 5 to 10 minutes a month I do actually spend on the site, your WAY OFF. I do nothing online that I don't have to. I write my logs offline, I decide my caches I'm hitting for the day offline, there is very little site interaction from me.

You forgot forum posting. $30 divided by 365 days equals 8.219 cents per day. Divide that by 24 hours and you get 0.342 cents per hour. Just simple math.

No one here uses the site 24x7 as you suggest, this post by its self removes any credibility you might have had by making such absurd comparisons.

Unlike scheduled visits to your doctor, people have expressed the desire to get their PQs (and access the main site) at any time of their choosing. I have to assume that your doctor is not available to you 24/7.

And again your still avoiding the real issue here. You or anyone associated with GC have yet to even admit that there was a change a couple months ago that clearly is causing problems, again you just want to point blame somewhere else and hope that no one else but me notices the real problem. The "weekend slowdown" was not an issue before, and would not be an issue now, IF THE ORIGINAL PROBLEM GETS FIXED.

 

You can't even admit there's an issue that started a couple months ago, even though the significant increase in posts related to this clearly documents it.

I suspect that you are correct. I suspect that at some point in the past several months, they changed how the PQ generator handles those PQs that couldn't be run before the end of the day. I'm pretty certain that the old method was that if they couldn't get run by the end of the day, then they would not be run. Now, it appears that they are running the next day.

 

If this is the case, it's generally not a bad idea. I'm sure that Friday is the busiest day, so when those don't run they would spill over and run early on Saturday, which is a slower day so wouldn't be likely to spill over into Sunday. The problem, of course is when two busy days are in a row, like Thursday and Friday. As the volume of PQs continues to grow, it keeps delaying PQs into the next day until the entire system breaks.

 

The problem, of course, is made worse by those people who try to force the system to behave differently. Those people who request more PQs than they need so they will always have one hot from the oven when they walk out the door or don't realize why the system is behaving the way it is, so they run additional identical PQs without deleting the old ones. These increased PQs continue to overfill the pipe.

 

Some people have expressed dissatisfaction over the fact that 'PQ creep' is a problem that repeats every year or two and hasn't been resolved once and for all. These people don't get it. This issue will always be a problem as long as the game continues to attract new players. In a perfect world, new hardware will be brought on line before most users ever notice the issue, but this isn't a perfect world. Forecasting need is not a perfectly accurate science and new equipment is expensive and must be sceduled.

 

Therefore, as users we must be willing to take a few steps. First, we have to throw up a flag when there is a problem. The OP did this when he started this thread. Second, we must understand the system and be willing to implement workarounds to get what we need until the latest fix can be made. Third, we have to be reasonable about our needs during times when there is an issue.

 

I will certainly admit that I use PQs for other than their identified purpose. I keep an offline database of those caches in my area that I haven't found. To that end, I have three scheduled PQs that each run twice per week, Mondays and Thursdays. I don't run them daily, so I understand that it is technically possible that I could miss a log or two, especially on the newest, easiest caches. (Of course, even if I ran them daily I could still miss logs from people who cached in large groups or those that logged their finds late. No offline database can ever cache all logs.)

 

My Monday/Thursday PQs have always been delivered on the days that they were requested, but they do creep within their requested days. I suppose that I could implement the 'two keystroke' workaround, but why bother? They still get to me. I assume that before long TPTB will either do a hardware upgrade or deselect all PQs again and the issue will be resolved again for awhile.

 

But what if I want to go caching early in the morning, the day after Thanksgiving? Since my PQs come late in the evening on Thursday, I won't have time to run it them Sunrise and dump the results to my pda. Should I reset them so they run in the morning on Thursday? Should I wait and go caching late in the day on Friday? How about neither? I can just use the data that I received on Monday. Sure, it's a few days old, but it's still usable.

 

Using data that's a few days old will result in a slightly increased chance that I will look for a cache that is no longer there. In my area, this chance is about 0.5%. I have a much greater chance of not finding a cache that is there, so this small chance of looking for a cache that is missing doesn't bug me.

Edited November 18, 2008 by sbell111

[+KJcachers]

as a side note. I email Groundspeak on this issue last week and still have not received a reply. No biggie, I just thought maybe there should be official contact instead of just griping in a thread. Hopefully I will hear something back someday.