Breaking the Wall

Thanks for fixing the site, Sasha! A lot of people on Facebook were panicking.

Maurine - thanks for the note. We had a hardware failure (I think broken power supply or something else that makes it not power up, did not have the time to diagnose) that landed on top of a crazy day already. I temporarily sacrificed a family computer to run the FRB server while I am figuring out the replacement logistics. It is sitting in my office with the cover popped up and the old hard drive plugged in. One nice thing about Linux is that you can just take the HDD out of one computer, put it in another, and it will usually work. I just had to remove the jumper cable from HDD to put it in cable select, and fix /etc/network/interfaces to call the Ethernet interface by a different name because the smart alec UDEV somewhere where I did not have the time to look remembers what adapter is what and it called the one and only adapter eth1 because it was not what it knew eth0 to be. On the positive side of things I used this forced downtime to move it from the old house to the new one. There will be a 15 minute scheduled downtime in the near future to rescue the family HDD out of the sacrificed machine and to mount the new HDD properly :-)

Isn't that how it always happens? Job well done. Your blog was sorely missed by many people. It proves the old adage that you don't appreciate what you have until you don't have it available to you.

How is the family doing? And work?

Thanks Sasha. The blog is used world wide :) I just met a fellow blogger here in Hong Kong this weekend.

Michelle - thanks. Maurine - the family is doing well. Benjamin just ran a 5:14 mile, details to follow. Work is going well, too well if we can say that - no time to do much with the blog, but the family gets to eat while I get to improve my geek skills, which is a plus.

Sasha, I would like to personally thank you for taking the personal time, space AND time away from family for keeping this blog running. While the site has been down I've felt lost :) I've come to rely on a lot of people on this blog for motivation and help with my running. Sometimes I feel like my runs don't even count if I don't blog them. I love this blog!

I didn't understand a lot of what was wrong with the server, but I'm married to a network engineer and I know what life is like at home (and for him) when there is a broken emergency like that. So, thank you SO much to you and your family for all you do for us!!! I, for one, am VERY grateful!

I must also express gratitude, Sasha. Glad the community is "live" again.

Ditto. You are doing a great service for the running community Sasha! Thanks!

sorry this all went down on an already crazy day for you. i may or may not have been a part of the panicking facebook group. as maurine said, sometimes you forget to appreciate things until they are gone.

this is such a valuable site for so many people, myself included. thanks, sasha!

Nice work getting it fixed. Thanks! I don't know what I would do without being able to check the blog a few times a day. I hope those display ads and google adsense is making this a profitable endeavor.

Thanks so much for your efforts in getting the blog back up and 'running'.

Sorry to hear about the piriformis - I hope it gets better soon. Also, congrats to your son Benjamin for his fast 5:14 mile!

Yes, very nice of you to take time out of your schedule to keep things running.

Thanks for all your work on the blog! I really missed it when it was gone (I was probably one of the facebookers Maurine mentioned), and I'm so grateful for all the work you put into it.

Thanks for continuing to provide this site to us. I have made many great friends all over the country via this site and wish to see it continue and thrive. I know it takes a lot of your time, but what passion doesn't.

Sasha - ran into Mike and Bonnie Ramsdell this afternoon and talked with them for a long time. They said to say hello to you and Sarah - so here is their hello.

Yeah for Sasha and the FRB!