Everybody needs to take a few cleansing breaths and try to settle yourselves. Yes, things have been sliding downhill faster than a ski jumper about to become airborne.

And no, I’m not about the big “C” bug hammering entire countries into submission like a Godzilla attack.

I’m talking about our little slice of heaven here where some really squirrely stuff has started going on. I’ve been noticing some significant delays in notifications and stat reports. Think twenty-four hours or longer delays in receiving updated information.

I’m sure you all have as well.

But I’m sure most of you had the presence of mind to check into it and discover what’s the root cause.

So did I.

After spending two full days of asking myself WTF is happening over, and over again.

After slamming myself with thoughts that my recent attempts to write quality work were failing and failing hard. True to my nature, I gave myself a healthy a*swhupping before in desperation, I decided to see if by chance it could be something else.

It was.

I discovered this on the support page this morning:

I knew it, I just knew it. I’m not the crap writer that I kept telling myself I was. I mean, me being a crappy as*ed writing hack would be the only reason why my read count was taking such a header into the toilet, right?

Uh, no P.G. Even though you’d like to think so, it’s not always about you. Stop trying to think so hard and always read doom and gloom into things.

The message above is a classic example that in our world of systematic dependencies, we often tend to forget that just as Humans fail, our system friends do as well.

When they do, and because of our dependency to count on them to work all the time, we immediately panic and start thinking the worst when they give up the ghost and shut down.

Backup in our data pipeline, huh?

Is that like a stopped up toilet?

Has someone been using paper towels because they can’t find toilet tissue on the shelves at any of the stores anymore?

Thanks, big “C”.

Maybe the technical folks here should have gone out and bought better plungers. You know, on the market these days, they have some hand-pumped compression plungers. Plungers that will blow that data backup through the d*mned pipeline like hitting it with a power washer or a sandblaster.

Fifteen pumps, stick that sucker in and depress the trigger.

Woosh!

Problem solved.

Maybe I’ve just become the master of oversimplification. It wouldn’t be the first time or the last.

But from a purely technical viewpoint, it appears as if the pipeline’s ability to perform proper data dumps has taken a dump. And now the professional folks are scrambling about, trying to find something suitable they can use to wipe the system’s derriere.

See? I can speak “technician”.

But until the plumber arrives and manages to unclog things, we get to continue smelling the awful scents of stinky stats and poor read counts. Oh, and what should we do if we have our latest visual defecation we need to share with all our readers?

Just hold it?

Talk about experiencing a backed-up pipe situation. But I’m just not into suffering a massive attack of word constipation. It always makes me feel bloated and icky, and my jeans just don’t seem to fit right.

Instead, I think I’m just going to let fly and add my daily “dump” to their already backed-up pipe.

Hey, we all need our daily constitutionals, right?

Just remember, folks, the problem isn’t always your writing. Most times, you just need to sit and read in the peace and quiet of your bathroom and try not to think about things so hard.

“D*mn. Uh, baby are we out of toilet tissue?”

Thanks So Much For Reading

Let’s keep in touch: paul@pgbarnett.com

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