Gremlins

Scott Hardie | December 19, 2007
Computer programming is usually an exact science: The software does precisely what you tell it to do, and errors are your fault. But every once in a while, the software misbehaves for reasons beyond your ability to diagnose – the code is right, the machine configuration is right, the database is right, everything – and still it won't behave as instructed. At work, we call this "gremlins," because clearly there are tiny monsters inside the computer, breaking it.

That's what's happening on my site today. First it didn't randomly select three giveaway cards in RB (users checking at midnight saw a blank page), and I had to force it. Then Goos in the News broke down, and after I undid my minor tweaks to debug it and restored the code, it worked fine again. Then the site refused to acknowledge Eric and Justin's newly-unlocked rule, so I put the correct value (1) into the database, and watched them receive it. Half an hour later, that same value was incorrect again (0). I tell you, I've scanned every database query in every script I have, and it's impossible for that value to be set to 0. What in the hell is going on?

Until I can put a stop to it, I thought I should mention all this, because who knows what other weirdness might crop up. Tomorrow, if you don't see a rerun goo or three giveaway cards in the Card Exchange, that's got something to do with it. I think my webhost is making adjustments to the server or moving me to different servers, because certain machine configuration values keep changing every few days. If so, I wish they'd knock it off, because it's causing random havoc on my site. Bah.

Scott Hardie | December 19, 2007
By the way, Justin and Eric, I've "fixed" the rule for the second time tonight, so you should have it. If it goes missing again, please let me know.

Lori Lancaster | December 19, 2007
[hidden by request]

Jackie Mason | December 19, 2007
[hidden by request]

Eric Wallhagen | December 19, 2007
And you definitely don't want to get it wet...