You know how it is...
(snip)
You know how it is...
Various searches in various places finally reveal that he died a week ago.
Just over half an hour ago I was able to re-establish the PRIMA Web
Services and get the site public again.
There are some lessons to learn out of all of this:
For myself, it is my intention to arrange a public notification on the
site with subsequent closure, in the event of my demise, or, if anyone
wants to keep it running, it will be financed through a trust I'll set
up. The main thing is that people should be communicated with.
You know how it is...
You're working on things with the usual ups and downs but nothing
untoward, then suddenly, things stop. Your FTP access to your site no
longer works. You can't maintain the web site.
You check your router and Internet, it's fine.
Open a ticket with your Internet provider and get no response.
You've been with him for over 13 years and consider the guy a friend. He always responds promptly.
You raise another ticket requesting communication.
No response.
After a couple of days, you try phoning. (He is in Wellington, about 300 miles away.)
The phone has been disconnected.
You decide to try and check if he is OK...
Various searches in various places finally reveal that he died a week ago.
This is a bit of a shock but there must be someone managing the
business, right?
No. There isn't.
Everything looks fine at their site because it is all automated. You
could sign up for the service and never know that it was in a state of
slow demise...
Over a period of around 4 weeks I had to watch helplessly as something I spent over a decade building, disintegrated.
FTP stopped then returned, then stopped again and became "intermittent",
then Control Panel, then Mail, then Web Services... It was really sad.
While this was happening, and whenever FTP was running, I was salvaging
the entire site to an external hard drive on my local machine...
Once I knew he had passed I had to find a new web host.
This is a non trivial exercise, but in case any of you are in the same
boat, here's the bottom line on the extensive searching, conversations,
and tests I did:
Three finalists selected from some 20-odd "possibles":
1. Gator. US based with very good service and support. Excellent pricing.
2. AccuWeb. US based with SSD hosting at a very reasonable cost.
3. A number of Kiwi Hosts who really couldn't match the Americans on
price, but added value with great support and personalized service.
I ruled out major sites like GoDaddy, because I'm not running a
templated site in Word Press; I need Windows hosting for ASP.Net running
on IIS, where I can build and test C# code-behinds and run COBOL COM components...
I have gone with a site in Auckland called Open Host.
I needed to get the PRIMA domain transferred out of the old hosting and
there was no-one to talk to about it. Open Host were fantastic and
worked with the NZ Domain Authorities to get a new UDAI and stabilize
and protect the domain.
Just over half an hour ago I was able to re-establish the PRIMA Web
Services and get the site public again.
If anyone has had mail to PRIMA returned as undeliverable during the
past 4 weeks, that's the reason. It should be back now, but I have not
yet restored all of the mail accounts.
If you try and access the domain https://primacomputing.co.nz you will
be forbidden (I'll be looking at that in the coming week), however, if
you access the web site via the new landing page: https://primacomputing.co.nz/primaMetro you should get to the new site.
Not everything that worked on the old site will be working on the new
one, but all of the essential information and freebies should be
accessible. The videos are there and SHOULD be working. I tested a
couple and my favorite one: https://primacomputing.co.nz/PRIMAMetro/PC2NvP.aspx is working even
better than before... :-)
There are some lessons to learn out of all of this:
1. If you are going to offer people a hosting service, make sure there
are measures in place to protect your clients in the event of your
untimely demise.
2. If you are looking for hosting, try and establish that whoever you go
with is more than a "one man band" and if anything happens to them, you
can easily move your site to alternate hosting. My old host was
brilliant and extremely capable, but when he went, there was no-one to
take over...
For myself, it is my intention to arrange a public notification on the
site with subsequent closure, in the event of my demise, or, if anyone
wants to keep it running, it will be financed through a trust I'll set
up. The main thing is that people should be communicated with.
Pete.
In article <iil931F2e5jU1@mid.individual.net>,
pete dashwood <dashwood@enternet.co.nz> wrote:
You know how it is...
[snip]
Various searches in various places finally reveal that he died a week ago.
Somebody got 'hit by a truck'? Not a problem, we were taught that back when... back when it was so long ago we learned it, practised it, taught it... and then forgot it.
[snip]
Just over half an hour ago I was able to re-establish the PRIMA Web
Services and get the site public again.
Well done, Mr Dashwood.
[snip]
There are some lessons to learn out of all of this:
[snip]
For myself, it is my intention to arrange a public notification on the
site with subsequent closure, in the event of my demise, or, if anyone
wants to keep it running, it will be financed through a trust I'll set
up. The main thing is that people should be communicated with.
If you find a way to communicate with people from the Great Beyond please send me a postcard I can pass along to a fellow I know inclined towards philately.
As for preparations for When Things Blow Up... not that long ago, must've been about '03, '04... 20, not 19... certainly not 18, the shirt-collars would've been all wrong... and people were *much* too clean for 17, so 20
it was...
... anyhow, I took a contract with a Federal agency to work on their
payroll system. While I was sitting about waiting for identification
badges, security clearances and other trivialities I was asked to write a program which would, if given a Division code, would go through the
Payroll Master File and authorise everyone in that Division ten days'
worth of regular salary (also called 'straight 80').
What was the reason for this? First and foremost, Folks Gotta Get Paid... and shortly before '03, '04 it was 11 September 2001. Folks saw that nightmare and someone thought 'what would happen if one of our timekeepers had been in there and didn't certify the employees' timecards?'...
... and if a timekeeper - or someome appropriately designated to assume
the duties of a timekeeper (as specified in that dense, unhumorous prose which composes Federal regulations) - does not certify the hours worked as valid the Folks Won't Get Paid... and that is unthinkable.
So... folks didn't think about it for a couple-three years and then they
had this new guy sitting and twiddling his thumbs... so they gave me the task.
After a bit of analysis I asked 'I'm noticing something about Divisions... it's ten characters and there seem to be subdivisions, you'll have people with AA division, then AAA, AAAB, AAAD, AAC, AACZXYWVUT... do you want to
be able to wildcard?'
'You can do that?'
'Not a problem... and while I'm at it, there might be some time when you don't have a Division but you have a list of people you want to get straight-80, I can set this up so you can use a list of Social Security Numbers as input and those people will get processed.'
'You can do that?'
'Well... to make it neat I should limit the input, how about anywhere
between one and five hundred?'
... and I did it... and ever since then the Secretary of this agency gets their time submitted for pay by this contigency program.
(the rest of the agency gets paid by the Monolith Program I had to
modify... but that's another story)
DD
On 6/12/2021 9:33 PM, pete dashwood wrote:
You know how it is...
(snip)
Pete,
I'm very glad to see that your site is back up! I tried it with Mozilla Firefox and also Chrome, Edge, and Brave (which are all Chromium based).
You've obviously had a lot to do in a short time. I've only had to
change Hosting services once, and there was ample advance warning.
Normally I always have a current backup of every page and file hosted on
my website, which can save some time.
I am sorry to hear your friend passed away.
Kind regards,
Arnold
On 6/12/2021 10:33 PM, pete dashwood wrote:
You know how it is...
You're working on things with the usual ups and downs but nothing
untoward, then suddenly, things stop. Your FTP access to your site no
longer works. You can't maintain the web site.
You check your router and Internet, it's fine.
Open a ticket with your Internet provider and get no response.
You've been with him for over 13 years and consider the guy a friend.
He always responds promptly.
You raise another ticket requesting communication.
No response.
After a couple of days, you try phoning. (He is in Wellington, about
300 miles away.)
The phone has been disconnected.
You decide to try and check if he is OK...
Various searches in various places finally reveal that he died a week
ago.
This is a bit of a shock but there must be someone managing the
business, right?
No. There isn't.
Everything looks fine at their site because it is all automated. You
could sign up for the service and never know that it was in a state of
slow demise...
Over a period of around 4 weeks I had to watch helplessly as something
I spent over a decade building, disintegrated.
FTP stopped then returned, then stopped again and became
"intermittent", then Control Panel, then Mail, then Web Services... It
was really sad.
While this was happening, and whenever FTP was running, I was
salvaging the entire site to an external hard drive on my local
machine...
Once I knew he had passed I had to find a new web host.
This is a non trivial exercise, but in case any of you are in the same
boat, here's the bottom line on the extensive searching,
conversations, and tests I did:
Three finalists selected from some 20-odd "possibles":
1. Gator. US based with very good service and support. Excellent pricing.
2. AccuWeb. US based with SSD hosting at a very reasonable cost.
3. A number of Kiwi Hosts who really couldn't match the Americans on
price, but added value with great support and personalized service.
I ruled out major sites like GoDaddy, because I'm not running a
templated site in Word Press; I need Windows hosting for ASP.Net
running on IIS, where I can build and test C# code-behinds and run
COBOL COM components...
I have gone with a site in Auckland called Open Host.
I needed to get the PRIMA domain transferred out of the old hosting
and there was no-one to talk to about it. Open Host were fantastic and
worked with the NZ Domain Authorities to get a new UDAI and stabilize
and protect the domain.
Just over half an hour ago I was able to re-establish the PRIMA Web
Services and get the site public again.
If anyone has had mail to PRIMA returned as undeliverable during the
past 4 weeks, that's the reason. It should be back now, but I have not
yet restored all of the mail accounts.
If you try and access the domain https://primacomputing.co.nz you will
be forbidden (I'll be looking at that in the coming week), however, if
you access the web site via the new landing page:
https://primacomputing.co.nz/primaMetro you should get to the new site.
Not everything that worked on the old site will be working on the new
one, but all of the essential information and freebies should be
accessible. The videos are there and SHOULD be working. I tested a
couple and my favorite one:
https://primacomputing.co.nz/PRIMAMetro/PC2NvP.aspx is working even
better than before... :-)
There are some lessons to learn out of all of this:
1. If you are going to offer people a hosting service, make sure there
are measures in place to protect your clients in the event of your
untimely demise.
2. If you are looking for hosting, try and establish that whoever you
go with is more than a "one man band" and if anything happens to them,
you can easily move your site to alternate hosting. My old host was
brilliant and extremely capable, but when he went, there was no-one to
take over...
For myself, it is my intention to arrange a public notification on the
site with subsequent closure, in the event of my demise, or, if anyone
wants to keep it running, it will be financed through a trust I'll set
up. The main thing is that people should be communicated with.
Pete.
An *amazing* chronicle... congratulations on apparently getting through
that level of hardship. Condolences about your friend who provided
hosting service. Yes, many of us know lots of "rules" - "backup of
backup", "a backup isn't unless it has been read and verified" etc and
it is even more astonishing how many times I have caught myself ignoring
such sage advice (momentarily) until I come to my limited senses... :)
Glad to hear Prima is getting back on its feet.
Best wishes.
Kerry
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