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 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.
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?
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.
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.