Posted 6/9/21
9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.- Galatians 6:9
Happy Wednesday to all! I trust this will reach you today although, with the way the World Wide Web is struggling here and there these days, who knows? I work in IT and have for quite a while…I have seen issues come and go many times…
Yesterday, according to Tech Radar (who was also down, The following were dead as Julius Caesar for a while yesterday:
- TechRadar
- Amazon
- eBay
- BBC
- Etsy
- PayPal
- Vimeo
- Square
- Squarespace
- Giphy
- Target
- Spotify
And the world didn’t implode?!?!?! Nope. They lost some…ok…a lot of cash from ad revenue.
Here is the timeline, from the content delivery firm’s status page:
Past IncidentsJun 9, 2021
No incidents reported today.
Jun 8, 2021 Global CDN Disruption Resolved – Fastly has observed recovery of all services and has resolved this incident. Customers could continue to experience a period of increased origin load and lower Cache Hit Ratio (CHR).
Jun 8, 12:41 UTC Update – A fix was applied at 10:36 UTC. Customers may continue to experience decreased cache hit ratio and increased origin load as global services return.
Jun 8, 11:57 UTC Monitoring – The issue has been identified and a fix has been applied. Customers may experience increased origin load as global services return.
Jun 8, 10:57 UTC Identified – The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.
Jun 8, 10:44 UTC Update – We are continuing to investigate this issue.
Jun 8, 10:26 UTC Update – We are continuing to investigate this issue.
Jun 8, 10:23 UTC Update – We are continuing to investigate this issue.
Jun 8, 10:21 UTC Update – We are continuing to investigate this issue.
Jun 8, 10:11 UTC Update – We are continuing to investigate this issue.
Jun 8, 10:07 UTC Investigating – We’re currently investigating potential impact to performance with our CDN services.
Jun 8, 09:58 UTC Possible Performance Impact Resolved – This issue has been resolved for impacted customers
Jun 8, 02:55 UTC Update – The issue has been identified and a fix has been implemented for impacted customers
Jun 8, 01:30 UTC Identified – Fastly is currently investigating into customer reports of intermittent domain not found errors.
Jun 7, 20:09 UTC Investigating – We are aware of a possible issue and are working to determine the scope and impact.
Jun 7, 19:48 UTC
What looks like a pretty mundane history to us on the outside of the web-o-sphere was an full-blown dumpster fire for these poor folks. This, though, in my wee little brain, made me think about dementia’s dumpster fires. Here are a few ways:
- Things happen behind the scenes– There was advanced notice bad things were happening. In dementia, there are all sorts of warning signs worthy of consideration if we watch close enough. Denial doesn’t prevent them any more than hiding under she sheets protects us from the Boogey Man.
- Notice that the problem actually started before the major disruption? Indeed, the day before the outage, there were possible issues. Things weren’t “seeming right”, but they were “working to determine the scope and impact”. I am sure this company is not this way, but, behind the veil a little in the IT world, sometimes “working to determine the scope and impact” in reality involves Googling errors, trying to break thins so that we can re-fix them better, and a lot of hopin’ and prayin’. I am sure these folks are more sophisticated. In dementia, early detection is important. It is VERY important. If we can know early that there are problems, we have a plan. First we determine what the problem truly is. There are dozens and dozens of things that mimic dementia, many of which can be 100% fixed. (UTIs, blood sugar issues, blood pressure issues, stress, etc…I have written many times about this before). BUT we need to eliminate them one-by-one as possibilities until we know what is happening. This week’s announcement on Aducanumab (Aduhelm) screams early detection too! This drug only “works” as best we can surmise if you are VERY early in the dementia gauntlet. Wait too long and the weeds take over and the drug will not be approved for use in your case. This is one of the many things very cool about the many advances in biomarkers. (Link Link Link) If you can look for biomarkers (evidence/signs of pathology/illness), it will be a head start for them on preparation, on “backing up their data” (a.k.a…..getting their ducks in a row), and on receiving Aducanumab, or whatever drugs spawn from this excitement.
- Deer in the headlights– To most, when they clicked on one of the above websites (or the many others not listed) and they got a not found/404/or other error, they had a deer in the headlights face. Some would get mad, others confused, and still others would put on their troubleshooting hat to try to “fix the internet”. VERY few typical people knew that Fastly, a fine company that does a whole lot, even existed. They didn’t know what a content delivery network was. They didn’t know how the internet worked (I admit that even I struggle with this sometimes). They just expected that clicking gives the desired result…and when it doesn’t…crickets….deer in the headlights look. That is the same look and feel as what I see and hear very often when I am contacted about dementia by those who are not familiar. Not judging anyone, mind you…a handful of years ago I had my eyes in the high-beams too. I get it. This fact is why the Alzheimer’s Association and the Area Agencies on Aging exist: to prepare people for such through seminars, outreach, and the like. We need to understand the blessings and the challenges of aging and of health concerns associated or made more common by aging. (Note: dementia is NOT a normal part of aging…but your odds do increase as you age). This fact is one big reason why these two organizations exist and why I do occasional fundraisers for both.
- Sometimes what seems to be a small cog in the wheel can break the whole thing– Isn’t it interesting when culture is introduced to a concept like Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) only when something goes wrong? We (erroneously) think they are a small thing at best until they have an outage. I mean, they don’t make the content nor do they provide all of the legwork to get the content to your laptop…they just speed the delivery up immensely. Therefore we blame other things when our webpage content isn’t delivered or delivered fast enough. However, perceived “little” cogs make all the difference! In your brain, the size of a hippocampus is much smaller than other parts/lobes of the brain. Many have no clue what it even does. However, get it out of whack and see how you feel about this little cog.
Well, the crisis is over now. No harm done (except the millions in lost revenue from the downtime and the engineers who probably were fired). Am I the only one who misses the good ole days? You know, where there were a few channels on TV and we spent more time worried about our garden and our weekend hike than whether we could order new cat meme themed socks at 4am? I bet I am not. And I miss the good ole days with mom when I would call her (and my dad) every day on the way home from work to check in, to visit, and to have a couple of laughs. Heck, I miss the good ole days when I could actually visit mom in her stinkin’ nursing home before COVID and vaccine resistance by staff has taken that away. At least we could hang out and watch some Andy Griffith together over dinner. It’s little cogs like this that made the disease suck a very small amount less…
Let’s get to work on a cure.
#EndALZ
Update: No real update on mom. No Ombudsman, no hospice help, no reports… I hope and pray she is doing ok. I can and do call, but the report is generic and the authenticity is not verifiable at all. I might as well call customer service Amazon or Paypal and ask them how to fix their sites.
Runnin’ Til I’m Purple Update: We are currently over goal and awaiting the T-shirt money. I don’t mean to sound greedy, but blowing out the $5280 goal would be cool too. 🙂 We are at $5325 and I expect a few hundred in shirt money. 🙂 I am still preparing daily although I am not running 20+ miles on big runs until June 19th’s run day. Yesterday I ran 10, Monday 9.25. I took today off and will do 10 tomorrow. Saturday I do plan on a decent run and will experiment with some food options. I also ordered a set of cooling towels because it appears it may be a hot day for the run. I will stream as much as I can and I hope to complete it all and do so in under 10 hours…but we shall see. A pebble in my shoe can small cog me into taking longer.
