hyalineskies

Over the past couple of days, hyalineskies has been pretty unreliable, and I apologise for that. It seems that upgrading to Media Temple’s Grid Server didn’t give me the type of stability that it promises, and that they’ve been having a ton of problems with their database servers. I’ve been on the phone with Media Temple twice this week, and they’re now adding more database servers to the grid to keep up with demand. You’ve probably noticed that my First Class entry isn’t here this week, and I’ll explain a bit as to why that’s occurred. That said, the First Class entry should be published sometime today (14 November) or tomorrow (15 November.)

Update (15 November 2006 00:46) It turns out that I’ve got an unexpected midterm exam Thursday, so unfortunately there will be no new First Class entry this week. There will be one next week, though. For now, enjoy Gridlock.

Update (15 November 2006 11:09) MediaTemple’s database servers have gotten worse, and my database server is running out of memory. To counteract some of the traffic effects, I’ve installed a static caching system and done some optimisation on the database to keep things running smoothly until all of this pans out. So much for the grid server being able to handle traffic.

Gridlock got huge

At the same time, Gridlock, my newest WordPress theme, is now instantly popular; 13 November 2006 set a daily traffic record. I spent quite a few hours this weekend developing the theme, so the first class entry got delayed in the buzz of yesterday. I was busy responding to comments, helping people set up the theme, and so on, which left me with little time to write.

Client work

I also had a lot of client work this weekend; I spent some time in Flash trying to hammer all of that out. I’m not going to be accepting further freelance work this year so I can devote some more time to building this site and more open-source applications for the community; at the same time, this means that there’ll be a substantial hit in my income. I think I’ll be able to offset it with some new opportunities, though.

I’m sick

To make things even worse, I’m now sick with a fairly severe cold, and I’ve had to sleep a lot to try to get over it. Some have suggested Zicam, others Vitamin C, and others yet taking preventative antibiotics since I seem to always get an infection while I have a cold. I’m trying all of these things simultaneously, so I should feel better soon.