Jerry the Tech God is not a tech god

The BBQ Pit
21

It’s just a message board. sob But it wasn’t up this morning when I wanted to post a thread about pre-Christian symbolism hidden in Firefly. And now I’m never, ever, ever posting again! Goodbye cruel board!

/runs off crying

No, Jerry isn’t even a god with e lower case g. Nor is he a force of nature, elemental, epic hero, cherubrum, etc.

He seems to be like every tech guy I know: He knows a lot of shit, but can’t make it work. Kinda like a mechanic that knows the complete history of Ford, but can’t identify the gas cap on a schematic.

22

It’s obvious to anyone that Jerry and TubaDiva are total incompetents technically.

23

Yeah but it’s purple and then there’s Opal :wink:
To the OP, Klaatu you will be missed. Have a good one.

24

OK, admit it, who clicked on Klaatu’s username and tried to do ‘find all posts’ - to see if this really was the last one?

25

I didn’t, but I did notice that Waverly is still posting. I really thought he was leaving.

26

That is not fair, Jerry’s best way to fix the dope was to install it on a new server and upgrade to a new version of vBulletin and tweak the MySql database. He got and installed the server last year. If his bosses never authorize the software side, then there is little he can do.

I think this lack of search really blows and the outages were annoying. If the search does not soon return, we will lose many posters. I hope that they give us a time frame soon on when this test will end.

Ed Zotti is meeting with one of the real powers that be today and maybe if we are lucky, we will finally have a better idea of what Creative Loafing plans to do with the SDMB.
Here is the link and the post.

Saying TubaDiva is a total incompetent technically just shows your own ignorance as you should no she does not handle the technical side and she has never said she did. Your statement might be true, but I might as well say you are a complete failure as a Presidential candidate. It does really matter as you never claimed otherwise.

Jim

27

I’m sorry, but this just isn’t fair to Jerry. I have met only one person in my life who was expertly proficient in almost every area of computers. Computer science is like anything else these days — there are areas of specialty expertise. A person might be a real wiz at hardware, building dynamite boxes but not know how to program a for-loop. He might be able to write an operating system with assembler, but not know how to diagnose his overheating processor.

And then there are database experts — administrators who know all the tweaks and innards of SQL. Those matter because performance issues are so often cursor and attribute dependent. For example, if a cursor is locked onto a record, then no other user can access that record until the cursor lets go. A good SQL admin knows to do static searches with no-lock enabled. But a hardware guy doesn’t know this typically. Neither does a programmer, unless he’s proficient with SQL integration via ODBC or something. And there are settings galore within the SQL structure itself that can have a massive effect on performance.

Just because Jerry may not be a SQL admin does not mean he is not a great hardware guy.

All that said, the SDMB needs all three: a great hardware person, a great software person, and a great SQL administrator. Boards that run well have all these.

28

Maybe not technically. But customer service-wise? No comment.

:dubious:

29

I don’t know if Jerry’s incompetent, because I don’t know how much time he gives to the SDMB, what his family life is like, how many hours he works a week on other stuff, or what his technical level of expertise really is. So, I can’t label the man based solely on how the SDMB performs as there are a lot of factors outside of his technical aptitude that can make this board perform like it has.

In my experience, I can say that it’s likely not a hardware issue here. When the board is performing, it does it well. If it were hardware, you’d likely see a pattern to the outages, or the blips would be a lot more often. It’s database corruption. It’s likely the engine driving the writes to the posts table is a little buggy and could use some updating or debugging.

When this board was put up almost a decade ago, there were a certain set of “best practices” that were likely adhered to at the time, many of which are now obsolete. Taking a shot in the dark, I’m wondering if management knows anything about technology and if it’s been a priority at all to keep not just code updated, but technical administration tasks as well. I wonder if Jerry’s a plumber in his day job, and has no concept of this either, and is just a bright guy who messed with computers and was able to bring the site up, fixing it when it broke, and nothing more?

I’m rambling. I’m trying to see it from all sides. I’m trying to wonder if the management is so myopic that they can’t see their own limitations to try an augment them with a serious technological staff (of one or two part-timers) or they’re just so unethical that they’ll deal with bitching as long as the subscriptions keep getting renewed. Either way, it points back to management’s commitment and/or effectiveness and not necessarily Jerry’s expertise.

30

We seem to be running smoothly since the search function was dropped. Could it be that the search function on these other boards aren’t used as frequently? I never have a session on this board without searching. Until now.

31

I had several time outs yesterday, so while it’s running smoother, I wouldn’t say it’s eliminated the problem entirely.

32

Not only that, but there are further areas of specialization within these subsets of specialization. I know database experts who are awesome at ETL, but couldn’t set up a cluster to save their lives, for example.

I think the insults are highly unwarranted coming from those of us who have little or no knowledge of what is going on behind the scenes.

33

Agreed. If you’re not sure what you’re pointing your finger at, then you’re pointing it at yourself. There’s been enough said recently to suggest they’re all painfully aware of the frustrations and a fix is in the works. I’ve every confidence that will in fact happen.

34

No. 'Fraid not. The search function was down for a while on HC, but people raised total hell about it. The search function is a vital part of a good message board.

35

It’s rare that I ever think this, let alone say this, but I strongly agree with Liberal here. And DMC too (who I don’t know from Joe Poster anyway).

Even if you’re the bomb ass DBA and you can write optimized SQL statements until the cows come home, that has jack shit to do with how vBulletin works because you paid for vBulletin and it’s not up to you to rewrite the SQL.

If you’re a master at MS SQL and it runs all of your company’s internal apps and you’ve tweaked the performance to the realm of godliness, that still doesn’t mean you have the first clue as to how to make MySQL play nice on a Windows machine, or a Linux machine for that matter. You can go to any tech forum on the Internet and see all of the weirdness of which version of MySQL with which settings work or fail miserably on what machines.

You guys act like the Chicago Reader bought a dedicated Linux machine on which to install only Apache, MySQL and vBulletin, and they hired this guy named Jerry who’s a Linux and MySQL expert to do nothing but sit around and make sure that everything is working great.

The SDMB probably isn’t on a dedicated server. It may even be on a virtual server. It may be on a Windows server. Upgrading vBulletin might very well cause problems beyond what we’re experiencing now. Upgrading MySQL might do that too.

Jerry is most likely not a MySQL and vBulletin expert. He was definitely not hired for those skills. The SDMB is probably a huge thorn in his side that he begrudgingly takes care of just enough that it’s running most of the time. Whatever he was hired to do is actually more important to him AND his employer. And I am utterly amazed - gobsmacked - that he is cool enough to take a “board is down” page any time after 5 PM or on weekends. Having to do that probably makes him want to kill someone.

Yes, there are other boards that run better. If I was a Linux/Apache/MySQL guru and had a decent server I could probably make one that ran better. But I am not. Lots of boards you see that run without a hitch are probably on dedicated machines run by people who either set them up themselves for the express purpose of running a board (and chose vBulletin because they are most comfortable with MySQL and Linux), or they’re hosted on a mega-host that offers vBulletin hosting and has techs that specialize in making sure the shit runs right and is updated.

Could the SDMB be hosted elsewhere, perhaps on one of those specialized mega-hosts? Sure. But whoever paid for what is now in place probably does not want to “re-pay” for something they have already put money into. That’s just how businesses think. They also think about how data is such a goldmine right now (see Facebook, MySpace) and aren’t in a hurry to put all this data into someone else’s hands. Are they making a profit? Probably. Probably not much, though. No one’s going to make a move until the revenue can be proved to be enough to spend money AND have some left over. This is also how businesses think.

I’m sure I’ll get flamed for all of this, but I’m just amazed at how angry people get when the boards go down, when functions don’t work and people expect heads to roll.

I’ll tell you right now that I spend about 12 hours a day online - 8 at work and 4 on the SDMB exclusively. During those 8 hours at work, probably 3 are spent on the Dope throughout the day. I rarely go to any other sites on the Web - if I do, it’s from a link on the Dope. I also do not have extra money to spend on crap. I get pissed if I have to spend 55 cents on a can of beans instead of 50. Yet, $15/year (actually, $7.50 for me) seems like peanuts for the service the SDMB provides, whether it’s working or not. If it’s up, it’s up. If it’s down it’s down. I think “Jerry must be tearing his hair out, and all the kids at the SDMB are going to start whining.” I’ve never once thought about leaving, or wanting my money back, or any unfairness.

The level of uproar every time there’s a glitch just…it just boggles my mind. Chill.

36

You know, that can be automated right? I mean when one of the apps I manage is offline for routine maintenance (cold backup), there’s a neat little handler that responds to the condition of the app being down and displays a nicely worded apology for the inconvenience.

All of this process happens while I am not at work because it’s 3 in the morning and I’m asleep.

37

I’m sorry to see you go, Klaatu. Unfortunately, something tells me you won’t be the only one.

38

We can’t search? (this shows how much I use that function)

I have no beef with Jerry, whoever he is. I have to agree with zipperJJ–it’s just not that big a deal for me. Or maybe I’m more patient than other people–I dunno. I think I’m getting a great bargain, for pennies (less, really) a day.
People leave message boards all the time. It’s the down time or the ads or the fill in the blank. They’re free to come back. Perhaps I’m missing something here, but I just don’t see the need for such anger. :confused: Then again, perhaps the new owners of the SD don’t realize what they have here, in terms of good will and essentially free advertising. “Cecil Adams” has a certain cache which is reinforced and broadened here. Maybe TPTB should invest just a tad more into this portal as paper news fades away. Just a thought.

39

Meh. The board being down is Life’s little way of telling me to go do something more useful.