Is there a problem with the Boards today?

[sup]I hope I posted this in the correct forum.[/sup]

I’m having a lot of trouble loading pages today. I don’t think it’s me because other sites are just fine.

I’ve received so many Gateway timeout messages it’s not funny. It takes five minutes to load a page! I’m not exagerating. I’m on a T1, too!

So is it just me?

[sub]I really need an SDMB AIM buddy. Then I could just IM him/her without posting a thread.[/sub]

Not just you. Boards have been erratic all day.

Problems here, too.

Another odd thing has happened. At the moment I can’t access the archives. I go to the Straight Dope front page http://www.straightdope.com/ , click on the “search archive” link http://www.straightdope.com/columns/ , and all that happens is that the front page redisplays. I’ve gone to other pages on the site, such as the FAQ page, click on the archive links there, and I return to the front page.

My computer has been acting somewhat flakey today, so that could be the source of the problem.

But I’d like to know if anyone else can access the archives.

I experience the same thing, rowrr, when I click the Search Archive link.

Thanks for the confirmation, Juanita.

I just checked again, and it’s working now. Very weird.

I have a fast connection too, and I think there has been some serious traffic today. This morning, my time, it wooshed. I’m also 6 hours ahead of ET, so it was 2 a.m. in NY at that point.
Then, at about 3 p.m. (9 a.m. NY) things started getting sluggish. I couldn’t get in untill 11 p.m. my time, 5 p.m. in NY.

I tried to ping the server and got slow but not impossible return. About 140 ms and no lost packages. So I don’t think it was a problem, just very many users.

Sometimes I wonder if the boards would benefit from us logging in and having maximum # of users. If you don’t do anything, you’re logged out after 30 minutes or so? Just a thought.

We weren’t mentioned on slashdot in the last three days, so it’s probably not that.

JuanitaTech- If there’s something wrong with these boards, there’ll usually be some mention of it at the Fabulous Forums of Fathom, in the “Heads Up!” forum.

I was thinking of starting a thread, but I see everyone beat me to it. I’ve been noticing this problem a lot at night (I work nights). I usually hit the boards around 11:00pm Mountain time. For the last week or two, they’ve been extremely slow. I know we all joke about the hamsters, but this is ridiculous. It took me 3 refreshes to get the main forum page to load. Seems to be running fine again now.

Is there some technical reason for the massive night time slow down?

The boards are positively zipping for me suddenly in the last 20 minutes, where all Monday I couldn’t load any pages. I wonder if this will last…

It didn’t.

From: The Boards

To: Juanita Tech

Do I have a problem? You bet your sweet ass I have a problem. My eyes are going bad, my back hurts, I’m all verklempt, and I missed Matlock the other night. My doctor says I have hard stools, can you believe that? I drink that softening stuff he gave me, but I just keep getting harder and harder. Plus my bursitis is acting up.

Mods! How bout some info here? I keep timing out, not finding the server and so forth (gods alone know if this will post). What is happeing?

WOO HOO! We’re flying now. Great job to whomever fixed things. Was it the new icon afterall?

Haj

Speed, glorious speed!!

:smiley:

The boards are working beatifully again, and I don’t see the bullet holes through the envelopes anymore. I think we can all figure out what caused the slowdown.

Not enough fiber?

[sub]i failed logic[/sub]

I blame qts

I notice that the new thread icon is gone now. I guess it really was the one causing all of the trouble.

So is my priapism! :smiley:

Q