Author Archives: Matt Simpson

IE6 Is Almost Dead, Really This Time!

Google really knows how to make me happy on a Tuesday morning:

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ?as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar. …

So now that Google is finally getting rid of IE6 support, the rest of the net will cave (if they haven’t stopped already) and if all goes well by the end of the year IE6 will be nothing but a story us geeks can tell over pint…

[joe] Oh, remember that time when I had to spend 3 days rewriting that great Javascript tool so that Neophyte Bob wouldn’t have to upgrade his nine year old web-browser?

[steve] 3 days! Meh, that’s nothing, try 5 days trying to get basic CSS2 to function properly.

[joe] Yeah, wasn’t there some sort of library we used called ie7.js to give it basic support?

[steve] I don’t think so, why would someone have to write a Javascript library for that?

[steve] Oh wait, yeah… that’s right, they did.

Because Everyone Has To Rant Once In A While

As a web developer in a graphic designers body I spend a lot of time making what I consider to be very usable and “pretty” interfaces, so I truly resent when Neophyte Bob arbitrarily and publicly posts something like “this interface is too techie” when what he actually mean is “this interface is not completely idiot proof”.

Come on Neophyte Bob it’s a blinkin’ select box, and by the way… stop using IE6.

Apache and PHP Upgraded: websrv01

Just a quick note to inform websrv01 users that I have upgraded both Apache and PHP on websrv01 this afternoon. This server is now running PHP 5.2.12, and previous pdo_mysql issues should now be resolved. Our next PHP upgrade (likely the end of February) will be into the PHP 5.3 branch, so please ensure any PHP applications you may be running are ready for this.

Scheduled Maintenance on websrv01

Update: 9:29AM EST
Dell has successfully completed the maintenance work and replaced the failed hard drive on websrv01. All services are currently online; however, the server will be a little slow until it fully syncs the newly installed hard drive with its mirrored drive. We expect that this will take another few hours to complete. If you have any trouble, please let me know.

Original Post: Oct 27 @ 8:02PM EST
I confirmed earlier today with Dell that a service technician will be on-site in our Montreal data centre on Thursday, October 29th at 8:00AM EST to replace the failed hard drive on websrv01. While this maintenance is taking place, all services on the server will be unavailable. We expect that the downtime will no longer than 1 hour; however, your patience as we replace the failed hardware is appreciated.

Just to confirm, all services on websrv01 will be unavailable:
Thursday, October 29th, 2009 @ 8:00AM EST

Unscheduled websrv01 Downtime

Update: Oct 21 2:24AM
websrv01 is currently back online. Diagnostic tests are currently running on the server as we speak (thanks to Greg), but initial reports indicate that 1 of the 2 hard drives on websrv01 has died. Luckily we run a RAID 1 (mirror) configuration, so the other drive is picking up the slack (whew). Dell is aware of the issue and will get back to me later in the day to schedule a time for them to visit the data centre and investigate further. I will post more information as it becomes available.

Initial Report: Oct 20, 11:03PM
websrv01 is currently off-line. It is highly upsetting to say that; however, we are currently experiencing some major hardware issues / failures. I am currently working with Dell and our co-location provider to resolve the issue; however, we expect that the server will be down most of the day on Wednesday while we recover service.

Unscheduled websrv01 Downtime

This morning we experienced a short unscheduled service outage on websrv01 due to spam attack that took place early in the morning. This incident could have easily been avoided if a select few users had e-mail address passwords that were not incredibly simple. If you have a simple e-mail address password, please change it immediately. Passwords should be alphanumeric and contain a minimum of 6 characters, and no dictionary words.

Nellie Belly 2

Unfortunately I have not been keeping up with my Image Of The Week for the past few months. I have no excuses really, I am not sure what was going on. Either way, I am trying to once again focus on what is important to me, so here you have it: Nellie Belly 2

We have had Nellie now for about 4 months now, and she has grown tremendously in this time, as puppies do. She has been spayed, had her first hair cut, and is an all around happy attention seeking member of the family. Nellie and Dyna are also now best buds, who much to our dismay wrestle almost constantly. Dyna’s initial hesitation to the new family member quickly faded.

Looking back at our experience to this point, makes me very happy that Karla and I decided to get another puppy for our home.

Unscheduled websrv01 Downtime

We are currently experiencing an unscheduled service outage on websrv01 due to what we believe may be a hardware issue on the server. In fact, I think this could be the same issue we encountered on April 25th, and I hate to say it but our co-location provider *still* has not resolved the misconfigured the power port that our server is plugged into, so I am still unable to reboot the machine.

A technician has been informed of the problem, and someone is going down to the server to reboot it right now. Luckily, I am told there are people in the building today, so it should be back shortly. I will post an update as soon as I know anything.

Update 9:29AM
Data centre technicians are making their way to the server right now to fix the APC switch and restart the machine.

Update 10:26AM
I’m still waiting, and getting more angry by the minute. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Update 10:50AM
websrv01 is back online after the technician finally rebooted the server, I apologize once again for the inconvenience. I am fairly certain that they assigned John to my support ticket:

Data Centre Technician John

Data Centre Technician John

Unscheduled websrv01 Downtime

We are currently experiencing an unscheduled service outage on websrv01 due to what we believe may be a hardware issue on the server. Unfortunately our co-location provider misconfigured the power port that our server is plugged into, so we were unable to reboot the machine ourselves. Currently we have a technician assigned in Montreal who is on his way to the data centre to reboot the server and investigate further. We will update this post as more information becomes available.

Update 3:53PM
We are still working with our co-location provider to determine the exact cause of the problem. One theory currently being investigated is that we may be experiencing a distributed denial of service attack on the server. As soon as we have any further information, we will post it.

Update 6:20PM
The problem has now been resolved, and all service has been fully restored. It does in fact appear to have been a distributed denial of service attack, which fortunately ceased on it’s own. We sustained 1Mbit of http traffic to websrv01 for only a short period of time before the server was unable to handle the requests. The 1Mbit wall continued until just after 6PM when it stopped just as mysteriously as it began. Further investigation is on-going and any new information will be made available.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Nellie Belly

Karla and I have been talking about getting a new puppy for quite a while, and when we stumbled upon a photograph of a litter of Lhasa Apso puppies for sale on Kijiji, our minds were pretty much made up… we wanted the one with the white boots!

We drove 3.5 hours to meet the breeder (Heidi) and the puppies on a Friday evening, and everything went really well, so we picked up our new little friend the following day and headed for home.

On our journey home I happened to round the corner of an off-ramp a bit too quickly, which caused our new puppy friend to take a rather large tumble in her kennel. Karla’s first reaction to this first boo-boo was “Woah Nelly”, and from there we named her Nellie.

She has been integrating into our lives and routine with surprising ease. We already have a 10 year old Lhasa Apso (Dyna), who has been a huge help so far with the training process, much to her dismay. We were a bit worried about how Dyna would react to a new puppy, and at this point my guess is she’s neither here-nor-there. Some days she is very excited about having a friend to play with so they tug on ropes for hours at a time, and other days Dyna will have none-of-it while Nellie bites her ears and generally harasses her. It is funny to watch, and I am sure they will grow to be great friends over time.

So that’s our exciting news. Puppies are cute, this one especially… and I look forward to posting the dozens of comedic photos we have taken so far. There is also this really funny video I took of Nellie learning how to go up and down stairs, I will throw that on YouTube over the weekend.