I’m pretty sure that anyone with a calendar, or eyeballs, has figured out that we did not move to the new site today. We are aiming for next week. I can’t be more specific than that except to say that it won’t be Monday and it won’t be Friday.
Anne Laurie mentioned that the current site may have been acting up today. Not that it’s much help, but I can assure you that whatever may have been happening on Balloon Juice today, it has nothing to do with the new site.
Oh, and one more thing. We are aware that a few of you have been sneaking in the back door of the test site. We haven’t said anything before this, but now that we are in the final troubleshooting phase and are turning things on and off as part of that process, it’s really not helpful for you guys to be in there.
So after a couple of weeks of turning a blind eye, we are now super-politely asking you to stop that. Don’t make John pull this blog over.
Omnes Omnibus
If you tell me how to get in, I promise I won’t do it (says a person who was known for getting into new buildings and drinking on top of them before they are open to the public).
Jerzy Russian
What are they doing back there? Smoking? Making out?
Martin
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
I need to pee.
dmsilev
Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!
Apocalypse has been rescheduled for next week.
chopper
first we had “balloon juice after dark”, now we have “balloon juice through the back door”. you people.
Jerzy Russian
@dmsilev: That is a movie where one can overthink things. For example they were able to build these huge robots but they still needed two people to control them? Remote control was not an option? Although to be fair, if we had a rash of attacks by monsters the size of buildings I am not sure I could come up with anything better.
dmsilev
@Jerzy Russian: That movie is not supposed to make sense. For instance, if humans had success fighting monsters using giant robots and then the monsters got tougher, our response wouldn’t be to Build Wall, it would be to build gianter robots. If nothing else, the giant-robot-industrial complex would insist on it.
John Revolta
@Omnes Omnibus: When we were in high school, my friend Nat and I snuck in
to the John Hancock Center in Chicago when it was still being built. We managed to get almost to the very top floor where the windows weren’t in yet and looked down the side of the building. Scary as shit.
We didn’t have any drinks though. Probably just as well.
WaterGirl
Dear commenters 1-5. Big thanks to every one of you for making me laugh!
TaMara (HFG)
Ummm…TMI? What y’all do in your spare time is between you and your FSM
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: My only (almost) trespassing charge was when I was 5 years old. The dime store around the corner had a fire and the building was still smoldering. My two older sisters and I (they were 7 and 10) were climbing on the roof of the smoldering building when the cops found us.
They of course said their little sister (me) had gone up there and they had only followed to save me. One of my two brushes with the law.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@John Revolta: holy shit– using stairs?
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…. Wheeze, gasp! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahaaha….. Two? I am crying here. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha….
?BillinGlendaleCA
So Cole finally looked at the new site, said he hated it with the intensity of 1000 suns, so we’re back to square one.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Confession is good for the soul my son.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Who says I have one?
debbie
More than just today, at least for me.
BruceFromOhio
Hahahhhhahaha lololol I fuvking hated users logging into the contingency site during resilience testing. Hey you idiots without a life! Read your email! It’s a holiday weekend!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: You have a point there, you are an attorney.
BruceFromOhio
@Omnes Omnibus:
And your point is?
Omnes Omnibus
@BruceFromOhio: Dear god. Why would I have a point?
BruceFromOhio
@Omnes Omnibus:
Dear Omnes Omnibus. Not really sure.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Do you have trouble with automatic doors? ?
https://giphy.com/gifs/season-7-the-simpsons-7×4-xT5LMt6PQ0ZB2fM48g
HumboldtBlue
Is this what winning looks like?
John Revolta
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No- the lower half of the building was already up and running. We walked in behind some tenants like we were with them and took elevators up to some floor up in the
90s.
Ken
@Jerzy Russian:
Conducting DDOS attacks?
laura
All I can say is that I’ve never felt so old lady driving a station wagon zero street cred chamomile tea in all my born days.
O/wise, the blog is nifty as all get out.
Ken
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Nah, he just didn’t like the font. Two minutes to edit the CSS and it’s good to go. Either that or the whole thing crashes for utterly mysterious reasons.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ken:
Today is not the day.
Ken
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Did I miss some news?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ken: Did you read WaterGirl’s post(and title)?
lgerard
Texas
This year Republican legislators introduced a bill, supported by Abbott, that would have replaced judicial elections with a system in which the governor appoints judges, subject to Senate confirmation. Every four years, voters would decide whether to keep the judges in office through a nonpartisan “retention” election.
Ken
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yes, but I thought from your remark that there might be some specific reason that today is not a good day to talk about DDOS attacks.
Redshift
A bit of that illicit traffic could have been me; I had left a tab open on the test site. I don’t think I’ve reloaded it, but with a phone browser, you can never be sure what it’s doing in its own.
piratedan
@Ken: not enough Comic Sans is what I heard….
JaySinWA
so are these not authorized testers or just stranglers? Cause i haven’t seen a cease and desist order for official testers other than this. And I haven’t been to the test site in a while.
NotMax
@JaySinWA
Last time I looked in via the front door (early early morning Friday) it was offering me an option to edit others’ comments. Which it shouldn’t be doing.
I know better than to barge in the back way and have not even attempted to do so.
mrmoshpotato
John will turn this blog around!
NotMax
Mitt, take that dog down from the roof of the blog!
:)
mrmoshpotato
@Jerzy Russian: Using paper not for writing but for rolling doobies!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Ya never want to use the back door without permission.
Ivan X
Is the title of this post a reference to the Curve song? If so, that’s a deep, deep cut. Respect.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Didn’t want to dry the pooch off after a bath. Or did Mittens just take the car through a car wash?
JWR
What? You mean I can get into the new site? Without even being an actual tester? What’s was that URL, please. ;)
Just kidding. I have a hard enough time just keeping up with the old site, which was exhibiting all sorts of odd behavior for me last night. (Plus, I like nice surprises.)
Also, you rock, WaterGirl!
Anon Y. Mouse
Not a wise choice to switch during Mercury retrograde… best wait until after November 20.
OzarkHillbilly
Blah blah blah… Sure you are. Any day now. Been hearing this for years. I’m beginning to think you aren’t even real WG. You’re just some bot that Cole got whipped up to troll us, the low plebeian commentariot..
HeartlandLiberal
Want to step in here and speak to this process based on my 35 plus years of computer programming, analysis, system development, and IT director experience, including even designing a few personal web sites with WordPress.
I participated in the testing, and can report that the test procedures provided by WaterGirl and dev team were among the best designed I have seen. Designing and implementing a system as complex as an interactive web site, that must support heavy traffic, is a complex and difficult task. And the LAST thing you want is to rush it into production, only to THEN discover fatal flaws. That is a mess neither developers nor users want, trust me on this. I also was thrilled to see that the new design will be READABLE, no one on the team fell for the trendy use of low contrast gray fonts that are invisible. That was one of my primary criteria for success. So, patience, fellow jackals. The new site is a clean, straightforward design, that will be an improvement in functionality as well, particularly in the comments. So be patient.
Oh, and I might as well pitch an old maxim from system design days in: “A system becomes at some point 95% complete, and remains that way forever.” At some point, the time comes to go into production, despite whatever remaining design goals linger not quite achieved. I suspect golive is near, have patience.
J R in WV
@lgerard:
These Republicans hate democracy… they also can’t think ahead at all. What if Democratic voters elect a Democratic Governor? All Democratic judges all over the state? Of course, this attitude reveals their inrtention to do away with democracy and fair elections as well. Fuck the American Constitution and the institution of fair and equal elections.
It makes me so angry to have the country in the hands of anti-American, anti democratic traitors at a time like this.
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Smart boy!
edit: I am assuming here that you were not talking about back doors to websites. :-)
J R in WV
@HeartlandLiberal:
Back on topic:
This is so true. No really major system is ever complete, as requirements change, capabilities change, law and regulations change. When I worked in IT, they refused to allow us to hire full time premanant employees to enlarge staff for development of major new systems, because bad politics to increase staff in state government, lets not pay attention to a more complex world and increasing environmental standards.
So instead they authorized us to procure contractors, expensive higher-paid temp employees with the required skill set, which was difficult because we wanted to abandon COBOL and work in the windowed PC RDBMS world, and people with those skills were expensive and rare.
Years later, senior management wanted to know when the system would be “finished” so they could stop paying the expensive contractor software mavens. I had the unhappy task of informing the top management white guys that as long as they and the Feds and the Legislature kept changing regs, law, policy and procedures, the systems would never be complete in the sense that we would no longer need a full staff of analysts, designers and programmers.
We were barely able to keep up with changing requirements and changes to our platforms with the additional contract staff… And the networking folks were in charge of the network, including the servers and client desktop machines. I will never forget the morning when users were unable to use the very expensive state of the art software because in their majesty the network staff, rulers of hardware, had decided it was time to upgrade server, network and desktop systems, without even asking if the actual systems all that infrastructure was intended to support would work after the network “upgrades”.
Nothing worked, and nothing we could do would help, as our development tools didn’t work any more either. 20 years later on it is a very funny story. They denied they had changed anything, it was supposed to have been invisible to the user community, but Novell wasn’t really good at upgrading transparently.
ETA: Also agree that Watergirl’s testing regimen was excellent and through, and that the new B-J appears to be a great well built new iteration of Balloon-Juice, for which I am so thankful~!!~
Citizen Alan
@lgerard:
It’s like they’re daring democrats to resort to political violence.