News.
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
A few weeks ago, visitors to Today’s Meet were greeted, not with the regular interface, but with a cryptic message warning that it was, in fact, very dark. They were likely to be eaten by a grue.
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Zork games? No? It doesn’t really matter.
The issue was caused by the database server. Specifically, it wasn’t running: MySQL failed to start with the system after a routine weekly restart.
Unfortunately, the monitoring I had in place at the time only checked that there was a response from the web server, since the database had been 100% reliable until that incident. The new monitoring checks the database server directly.
More unfortunately, there seems to have been some data loss at the time, which wasn’t noticed until more recently. I deeply apologize to those affected by the data loss. I know what a blow that can be. I have extended the life of my rolling database backups to provide more insulation against this type of thing.
I hope this will not happen again, and I hope that this transparency is appreciated, and that you will continue to use Today’s Meet.
May 1st, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Hey,
I think Today’s Meet is great. We are trying to use it in our company in different ways. I have some suggestions…the top Today’s Meet logo should refresh the current page…not take you to the main page. Also, the tag Listen doesnt make much sense to me…thanks!
October 1st, 2009 at 9:14 am
You are likely to be eaten by a grue. If this predicament seems particularly cruel,
consider whose fault it could be:
not a torch or a match in your inventory.
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:52 am
Hello James & others…thought I had created a room to last for a year…I recently used this at the NSBA conference and it seems as though my URL http://todaysmeet.com/nsbatools09 was gobbled up somehow? Is it just me, or was there a system hiccup sometime over the weekend? Bummed I lost my room and info, but do love this tool so much!
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Hey Kimberly,
If you e-mail me with the name of the room and the last day you used it, I might be able to help. I only keep around 5 days of rolling backups, but I’ll grab copies of the oldest ones now.
james @ todaysmeet. com
November 6th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Hi James,
This was the name of the room, I created it October 15th ish…and last used it at NSBA conference in Denver November 29th. I’ve been traveling since then and just got back last night…
Would be great to have back…but understand if it was “eaten”
Thanks so much – Kim
http://todaysmeet.com/nsbatools09
January 13th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
James,
Not only did this happen again, but it did today in a class full of middle school kids and one very freaked out teacher.
She specifically said several computer screens went dark and then the text “IT is pitch black” appeared in caps, and underneath it said “you will soon be eaten by a grue.” The entire class was instructed to immediately shut the lids to all the laptops and the teacher made a panicked call to I.T.
We love Today’s Meet. The service is awesome. It meets our needs, the kids love it, it works, it’s fast and flexible. There are no ads (bless you for that) and it’s about to become very popular in our school.
That said, I’m having a hard time finding words to describe how angry I am right now that this teacher’s lesson was lost and a whole lot of people got frightened unnecessarily.
By the way, an article I and this other teacher wrote about backchanneling (prominently featuring Today’s Meet) is about to become the cover story (so I’m told) for the February issue of the NJEA Review (http://www.njea.org/page.aspx?z=1093&pz=8).
I’d really, really, really hate to not be able to recommend Today’s Meet to teachers in my school and around the world.
Please let me know what can be done about this.
Thanks for a great service,
-kj-
Kevin Jarrett
Technology Facilitator, K-4
Northfield Community School
Blog: http://www.ncs-tech.org
Twitter: @kjarrett
January 14th, 2010 at 9:58 am
Kevin,
I’m terribly sorry this happened. This error message is part of the framework that powers TodaysMeet and usually only happens in development environments. Since it basically shouldn’t happen in production, I never bothered to come up with a more useful error page.
I can promise that it’s in no way dangerous. It’s a reference to an old video game, a sort of geek in-joke. TodaysMeet is incapable of harming your computer.
I’m trying to figure out what happened, and when I get a chance, I’ll make a more helpful error screen. This weekend, if not before.
Again, I apologize for this. I hope this didn’t scare anyone off permanently.
James
January 15th, 2010 at 1:28 am
Hello James!
Fantastic news. Thanks so much! My teacher colleague will be thrilled! We can all laugh about it now…
Really appreciate your immediate response, and of course, your terrific service!
Best,
-kj-
Kevin Jarrett
Technology Facilitator, K-4
Northfield Community School
Blog: http://www.ncs-tech.org
Twitter: @kjarrett
January 15th, 2010 at 7:10 am
Hi James,
Thank you for fixing this error message. I am the teacher who freaked out along with my aide and a classroom full of 11 year olds. We thought the laptops were being hit with a virus, so everyone logged off and shut down, and the students had to answer the questions on paper. I had a lot students running to the dictionaries to see what a grue is. It is not in the dictionary.
Our IT department figured it out after the students had left school for the day.
Mary Ann