[NewPacifica] Re: update on "blueboard" problems



--- In HelpFixWBAI@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Frank LeFever"
<wbaiFM-activist@...> wrote:
>
> Gil Gilmore tells me he's working hard on fixing the glitch at
> http://listenerforums.net and not getting much cooperation from
> techies at the server.  More jobs farmed out overseas (to Phillipines,
> in this case).  May have to obtain and install new software.
> 
> Knowing his personal circumstances (relocating to care for an aged
> father, etc.) and the tremendous work & expense of maintaining WBAI's
> most important and active online forum, I'm sure he'd appreciate
> whatever support people can send him.
> 
> --Frank LeFever
>



By "whatever support", I mean financial support, of course.

Further update:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Radio Listeners' Forum - WBAI Issues
Status of the Blueboard
Posted By: April 15 update 
Date: Tuesday, 15 April 2008, at 10:01 a.m.

    Blueboard Update as of Monday evening, Apr 14

This last week has been a lousy experience as the list administrator
of the Issues and Peoples forums. Loosing both sites without being
able to jump-start them back into internet-life has done little for my
stress levels. I sincerely apologize for the extended outtage. I hope
we'll be back online soon. I thought I'd present a brief update as to
where things stand relative to both forums.

The problems for both forums apparently began on Wed afternoon, Apr
9th, when some scripts took a nosedive rendering it impossible to post
new messages. Unfortunately, I didn't realize the extent of the
problem till Wed night as I was still able to post through my
moderators' interface.

Mea culpa big time.

Thus, I didn't contact my web-host provider til midnight Thurs morn.
The support staff I spoke to insisted (quite erroneously it now seems)
that the problem was to be found in my cgi script. A subsequent
diagnosis and analysis of my scripts revealed nothing. I contacted
Frank F (the sainted founder of these forums)who generously devoted
his expertise to correcting my bumblings while confirming my
conclusions. The blueboard scripts were not-guilty.

I subsequently spent all of the Thurs nite into Fri morning convincing
the web technicians that there site was at fault. This was made doubly
  difficult by the fact that my hosting company, Powweb, has now
outsourced their first-level tech support jobs to the Philippines. The
problem is that the Philippino tech staff are apparently have neither
the knowledge or authorization to perform any hands-on tech support.
That function was reserved for the "level 2" support staff, located in
various Canadian locales, insulated from pesky customers by the
Philippinos.

Nevertheless, I invoked the indomitable spirit of Monroe and spent all
  Thurs nite and the Fri morning making hourly calls to Manila trying
to the gain a pass to talk to an actual web engineer. My efforts were
rewarded with little more than canned assurances that my messages were
being conveyed to the technicians and my problem would be solved in
the "next couple hours".

Finally, Friday, I was promised a call from a level-2 tech as my case
had been escalated and I was deemed worthy of a "level 2" worthy
intervention.

My ship had come in.

Here I made my second mistake. During one of my hourly calls, I added
an additional problem to my ticket that Frank had discovered. It was a
minor problem with my host's FTP protocols. I assumed this problem
would be disposed of along with the main problem. This particular
problem was fixed in two hours from my complaint.

Unfortunately, someone then then closed my ticket, having done nothing
to fix the original problem.

I didn't discover this until the fact that my ticket had been closed
until midnight Fri when I happened to look up my ticket to see if
there was any additional info not mentioned by the phone techs.

So I reopened my ticket during my next hourly phone call which was,
this time, shunted off to St Edwards Island, Canada. At least the
dialect was more familiar.

Nevertheless, despite the dialect, the techie's promises for imminent
  resolution of my problem proved just as worthless as her Philippino
  predecessors.

So finally , serendipitously, I succeeded in getting thru to a level-2
  tech on Saturday noon. I again explained my problem to him (for the
  umpteenth thousand time, and got a promise that he'd get an
engineer on the case and get things sorted out. I received his
assurances that I'd be back online by Sat night.

Of course Sat night came and went and the forums were still DOA. Ditto
  Sunday and now Monday.

I'm still calling hourly and receiving the same contemptibly scripted
  assurances. My last call - Tues, 1 am promised me a resurrected
blue-board by TUesday morning.

I'm not holding my breath.

In the meantime Nalini has offered her site for updates and discussion
==>    http://www.kpfkChat.org

An interim email list has been established on Yahoogroups. Its   
called, fittingly enough, Blueboardbridge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Surf over
to and search/subscribe for Blueboardbridge.

Comments, condolences, complaints as always can be sent to

Again, I'm sorry for the downtime. Keep hope alive cuz we'll be back.

    Gil Gilmore
    List-Mom 
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