The crash of 2014

[Ran Morrissett]

Not the stock market, GolfClubAtlas.com - what a horrid week!

The end result is that all posts from January 15th through January 31st have been permanently lost. We are making changes so that back-ups occur more frequently than every two weeks. All other information added to the web site during the last half of January has been rebuilt into the web site.

Thank you for all the kind emails of support and well wishes – they were MUCH appreciated!  

While the Discussion Group was down, I looked over various parts of the web site and my favorite thing that I re-visited was this Feature Interview with the late, great Dr. Henry Terrie:

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/feature-interview/henry-terrie/

What a writer and what a gentleman! Having had the opportunity to meet someone like that makes bad weeks like this   infinitely bearable.

Thanks again for your patience. Let’s hope it is another fifteen years before we suffer another hardware crash.

Best,

[Keith Grande]

What did everyone do over the past 3 days - speak to their spouse/signficiant other?  Take up knitting?

I read some great profiles on the courses....Sleepy Hollow was an interesting one, as well as Hollywood.  

Pete Lavalee....check your messages.  I had sent you info regarding next week but I fear it was lost in the ether when GCA was put to sleep over the past few days.

As far as "crashes" go, let's hope this was the only one we had to worry about this year!


ATTN: Moderator - can you delete my "We're back" post - I included it here.

[Rees Milikin]

What did everyone do over the past 3 days - speak to their spouse/signficiant other?  Take up knitting?

LOL.

Ran, thanks for trying to recover the lost topics.

[Eric Smith]

Probably responsible for the next baby boom. NOT.

[Dan Kelly]

Thanks for all of your efforts, Ran.

[PCCraig]

No worries Ran. Thank you for all the work you do to keep this site running.

[Nigel Islam]

Its not a big deal. I did miss the board though! Makes you appreciative for all the gifts we have.

[Thomas Dai]

No worries Ran. Thank you for all the work you do to keep this site running.

+1
atb

[Kevin_Reilly]

Glad I made a screen shot of Raynor's CPC routing when it was posted on Jan 31.   

[JC Jones]

No worries, Ran.  You are very generous to offer this site for us to use and we are thankful for the opportunity.

[Colin Macqueen]

Ran,
All's well with the world!  In fact the end was not nigh! The resurrection is much appreciated.

Cheers Col

[Steve Wilson]

Do we get a pro-rated rebate? 

[Connor Dougherty]

What did everyone do over the past 3 days - speak to their spouse/signficiant other?  Take up knitting?

I read some great profiles on the courses....Sleepy Hollow was an interesting one, as well as Hollywood. 

Pete Lavalee....check your messages.  I had sent you info regarding next week but I fear it was lost in the ether when GCA was put to sleep over the past few days.

As far as "crashes" go, let's hope this was the only one we had to worry about this year!


ATTN: Moderator - can you delete my "We're back" post - I included it here.

I can't believe I actually studied the past few days  . Felt like a student!

Ran, thanks for all you do. I'm sure it seems like a broken record, but this website is incredible. The amount of information I've learned from going through the previous threads, the interviews, and the featured courses has taught me a heck of a lot about golf course architecture. On top of that, I've managed to meet some incredible people through this site.

Take care,
Connor

[RJ_Daley]

Ran, you mean you connections at the NSA cyber command aren't so hooked on their daily reading of our GCA posts, that they couldn't lend a hand? 

[scott_wood]

A very apropos moment to be sure we ALL make our 2014 contribution.....NOW......

[Brent Hutto]

OK, so the two weeks of crash happened to be a period where I had several important (to me) Personal Messages. Guess I should not trust a forum's messaging feature for important personal correspondence. My bad.

I also had originated a thread which generated quite a bit of discussion just at the start of the lost two weeks. It's gone now. Oh well, shit happens. I remember the basic information we discussed so the thread had served its purpose.

But now I just spent 20 minutes typing a carefully thought out and worded discussion of Mid-Pines and Pine Needles, with comparisons to some other courses. And for about the 100th time over the past decade, when I hit the POST button I was told my login had timed out and all that typing was lost.

That's it for me. I'm out. So long and thanks for the memories. I may post a very brief comment or two from time to time but I will not waste any more time in routine participation here. Ran, I love you man and appreciate all you've done with this CGA community but get yourself some real forum software. Seriously. Life's too short to clown around with this bodge-job platform.

[Germain Pepin]

I missed the Discussion Forum during these days,

I am hoping that it is our last crash for a very long time.

[John Kavanaugh]

If you pay close attention you may notice that the outing was a healthy reset. Discussion has improved over the last few days. I would love to see this happen every month.

[J.D. Griffith]

The "crash" made me realize how much I enjoy this forum, and appreciate all the work that Ran has done.

[Bill_McBride]

OK, so the two weeks of crash happened to be a period where I had several important (to me) Personal Messages. Guess I should not trust a forum's messaging feature for important personal correspondence. My bad.

I also had originated a thread which generated quite a bit of discussion just at the start of the lost two weeks. It's gone now. Oh well, shit happens. I remember the basic information we discussed so the thread had served its purpose.

But now I just spent 20 minutes typing a carefully thought out and worded discussion of Mid-Pines and Pine Needles, with comparisons to some other courses. And for about the 100th time over the past decade, when I hit the POST button I was told my login had timed out and all that typing was lost.

That's it for me. I'm out. So long and thanks for the memories. I may post a very brief comment or two from time to time but I will not waste any more time in routine participation here. Ran, I love you man and appreciate all you've done with this CGA community but get yourself some real forum software. Seriously. Life's too short to clown around with this bodge-job platform.

Brent, I get that message all the time.  All I do is hit the "Post" button again and it works.  Stick around, we need you!

[RJ_Daley]

Brent, like Wild Bill said!!!

As someone suggested more than a decade ago, when you are going to wade into a very significant contribution of information and observations on a thread, as opposed to some glib one-liner attempt at humor as I am prone to do, write your missive on a word processor and save it.  Cut and paste it to the GCA comment box.  Then, keep a file on your PC for all your best efforts, and you can always repost it in the event of a lost thread or other cybercatastrophe.   

I did not follow this advice for IMs, of which I've had dozens with 'the men down under' in the last few weeks whilst organizing my upcoming trip to OZ and NZ.  That has been challenging to remember who said what. 

 

[David Harshbarger]

Let’s hope it is another fifteen years before we suffer another hardware crash.

Werner Vogel, the CTO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) has made AWS the World's leader in data center as a service precisely because of what happened to GCA.com, and happens eventually to every other company at some point: stuff breaks.  Instead of trying to engineer services that break less often, instead they started from the perspective that:

Everything Breaks, All The Time!

From this beginning, AWS has built an empire by architecting infrastructure that is designed to be accommodate stuff breaking.  Hard drive breaks? No problem, data is redundantly stored.  Data center catches fire? No problem, data is redundantly stored in multiple data centers.  Server mother board craps out? No problem, server images are stored as data, and can be reinstantiated on some other server in seconds. 

Netflix, famously, runs their streaming service out of Amazon.  They had some high profile outages, and to correct against them, created a program called the "Chaos Monkey".  This program randomly disables parts of their infrastructure, servers, storage, networks, etc., to ensure that the Netflix service can withstand failures.  It works.  And architecting systems to withstand failure works, too.

On peak times (think Christmas eve), when Americans sit around the TV to share a movie, 1/2 of US Internet traffic emanates from AWS.  To handle that scale, in the past, service providers (Netflix, and GCA.com), would have to make huge investments in infrastructure.  Now, AWS provides easily used tools that enable service providers to dynamically scale their servers and networks up and down in response to demand.  US Open spike in course profiles?  Setup the servers in an auto-scaling group at AWS, and as the servers get busy, peers will be created and brought on line.  Demand wanes?  Servers are decommissioned.  Best part?  Charges for new servers are by the hour (starting at about $0.10/hr). 

Ran, as you look to the future, consider the new delivery models for Internet services.  It really is an amazing new world out there.  With a little planning, there is no need to have a hardware failure impact services.