Website Visitor Traffic Statistics (18 Jan 2008 - 17 Feb 2008)

blog.nztechie.com
522 Visits
16.84 Visits/Day

EinkeY and Pickled Hamster's Blog
133 Visits
4.29 Visits/Day

tech.nztechie.com
1,443 Visits
46.55 Visits/Day

www.nztechie.com
270 Visits
8.71 Visits/Day

Total for period 18-Jan-08 to 17-Feb-08: 2368 Visits (Avg 76.39 Visits/Day)

Startlogic: The Subdomain Manager

Below is an example of one of the errors you will be bound to run into if you use the Startlogic vDeck Control Panel. At least you can log into the OpenSRS and manage some parts of your domain.

"The Subdomain Manager is currently not available. Please try again later.
NOTE: If your account is new and has been activated in the past 24-48 hours, this feature may not be available until your domain name propagates through DNS."

32 Hour Startlogic Outage

After getting back onto the Startlogic support chat and speaking with Ivan Davis, my website is to an extent back in operation. Moving forward, I don't have a lot of confidence in Startlogic now.

My website was brought back online at 11:30pm tonight. The server st03.startlogic.com had not been correctly serving customers websites since 3pm yesterday. If I do the math correctly this has resulted in a total website outage time of 32 hours!

After my website came back online I noticed that directory security permissions had all been modified (presumably reset, more restrictive). I informed Ivan of this and he told me to fix the permissions myself. Rather unacceptable I say given what they have put me through.

After Ivan realized that my website was back up and that I could access it he quickly terminated the chat session without giving me a chance to say anything. This is presumably because I am bound to find other problems down the track.

Why Startlogic Helpdesk Staff don't know how to create CNAMES

I have had so many issues trying to get Startlogic Helpdesk staff to correctly create CNAME records for subdomains for me.

It appears the reason that they are failing to do this correctly is because they are not putting a full-stop/period after the host I am pointing to.

This angers me completely, due to the fact that I have advised them so many times that they need to put a fullstop / period after the host name. Fortunately, the function in the Control Panel is now functioning and I can make the correction myself.

The Startlogic helpdesk / support seem to find it difficult to complete even the most simple of tasks.

Technical Difficulties With DNS (Startlogic System Notice)

This is a Startlogic system Notice which has been posted to StartLogic customers. I am unaware whether this is related to the current problems I am experiencing with my domain on st03.startlogic.com.

Technical Difficulties With DNS Update: 8:56PM EST

With the repair process taking as long as it has, we've got multiple options going. We're hopeful that one will finish over night, which will allow us to re-enable the process of adding DNS for new domains and any effected domains.

Once again, we apologize for any inconvenience.

Update: 4:52PM EST

Unfortunately, the repair process to the damaged DNS information is taking longer than expected to restore. We are continuing to work on this process, and are expecting it should be complete in the next eight hours.
We apologize for the troubles, and appreciate your patience.
____________________________

Please be advised that we are currently experiencing technical issues with one of our DNS servers.
As a result, if you've purchased, renewed, or registered a domain name after 12:00AM EST, you may experience difficulty in accessing your domain name, e-mail services, or FTP.

We are currently working on the server in question, and hope to have it resolved shortly. Once the server has been repaired, we will begin fixing DNS for all affected domains, in the order in which they were setup on our system.

This restoration process should take a few hours to complete, once the server has been repaired.
More information will be posted, as it becomes available. Thank you for your patience.

Startlogic Compensates me for Outage!

After a recent complete outage of Startlogic's st03.startlogic.com web server (Which is ongoing as I write this), I received the following email from Shalet Fernandez (Billing Specialist) providing me with one months credit to the sum of $6.95!

Below is the email that I received:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: nztechie / Inquiry Regarding Credit [xxxxxx433000000000]
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:59:13 -0500
From: support@startlogic-inc.com
To: hayxxxx@xxx.nz

Hello Hayden,

This e-mail is being sent in response to your inquiry regarding credit request for your account 'nztechie' (ticket # 4475433). Per your request, I have given one month credit $6.95 to your account ‘nztechie’ which will be used for the future purchase/renewal of your hosting account.

If you have any further questions, you can email us seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

Sincerely,

Shalet Fernandez
Billing Specialist

Startlogic Outage for st03.startlogic.com

Prior to 3:00pm (New Zealand Standard Time) the Startlogic shared web server st03.startlogic.com suffered a complete outage. All customers with websites hosted on st03.startlogic.com are inaccessible.

www.nztechie.com is hosted with Startlogic and has also been effected by this fault. Our blogs are hosted on Google blogger and have been unaffected, barring any hosted files pointing to the Startlogic Server.

Below you will find snippets of several conversations I had with Startlogic via their Live chat facility, trying to find out what is going on.

--- Initial Conversation with Startlogic (Chiristopher Kiplin) --- [Finished around 4pm]

info: You are now chatting with 'Christopher Kiplin'
Hayden Tennent: Hello
Christopher Kiplin: Hi Hayden. I apologize for the wait time. My name is Christopher Kiplin, how are you today?
Hayden Tennent: I am a very angry customer
Hayden Tennent: But its not your're fault, so maybe you can help me.
Hayden Tennent: Why is my website at www.nztechie.com down?
Hayden Tennent: [Security Question Answer]
Christopher Kiplin: To protect your account from unauthorized changes, can you please verify for me the answer to the Security Question:
Christopher Kiplin: [Security Question]
Christopher Kiplin: Thank you for the authentication.
Christopher Kiplin: Could you please hold for 2 to 3 minutes, while I review your account?
Hayden Tennent: Thank you
Christopher Kiplin: Thank you for your patience.
Christopher Kiplin: I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.
Christopher Kiplin: We are aware of the issue that some of our customers are unable to access their Web sites. Unfortunately, we have a network outage which caused this issue. Our engineers are working in it to resolve this issue so we would like to ask for your patience until this is resolved.
Christopher Kiplin: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Hayden Tennent: What is the ETA to fix? Is the fault on the web server or is it DNS-related? how many customers are effected?
Hayden Tennent: How long has this issue been occuring for?
Christopher Kiplin: Since the host st03.startlogic.com is down, your Web site is not loading and we will fix it as soon as possible. Also, it just come to know us and our engineers start working on it and I do not have exact number of the customer who are hosted on this server.
Hayden Tennent: Am I hosted on an unreliable server? When am I going to be moved to this new platform your site talks about?
Christopher Kiplin: No, there might some maintenance going the host st03.startlogic.com and this might be effected. No need worry about this and we will fix it as soon as possible. Also, our engineers a;ready started to move your account to the new platform and they will complete it soon so we would like to ask for your patience until complete it.
-----

--- Second Conversation with Startlogic (Ivan Davis) --- [Finished around 5pm]

info: You are now chatting with 'Ivan Davis'
Ivan Davis: Hi Hayden, I apologize for the wait time. My name is Ivan Davis, how are you today?
Hayden Tennent: Hi
Hayden Tennent: im okay
Hayden Tennent: Im looking for a progress report of the fault on st03.startlogic.com
Ivan Davis: How can I help you today?
Ivan Davis: To protect your account from unauthorized changes, can you please verify for me the answer to the Security Question:
Ivan Davis: [Security Question]
Hayden Tennent: [Security Answer]
Ivan Davis: Thank you for the authentication.
Ivan Davis: Hayden, what exactly you wish to do?
Hayden Tennent: I would like you to provide me with a status update on the resolution of the fault on st03.startlogic.com. How are the engineers going?
Ivan Davis: Hayden, the st103 is down. Our engineers are restoring it.
Ivan Davis: The server will be up and running soon. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.
Hayden Tennent: How do you normally compensate your customers when this happens?
Ivan Davis: Hayden, the issue is resulted due to the load on the server. Once you are upgraded to the new platform, you will not experience any issues.
Hayden Tennent: Do you guarantee that?
Ivan Davis: Yes, Hayden.
Ivan Davis: Could you please let us know, if you have contacted us earlier via e-mail with regards to the same issue?
Hayden Tennent: Is there any capability to mirror my site between a number of your servers to avoid this issue?
Ivan Davis: Hayden, it is not possible to mirror the Web site in the present platform.
Ivan Davis: We will be using this technology on the new platform and down time will not be noticeable to the users.
Hayden Tennent: Getting back to my other question, How do you normally compensate your customers for outages like this?
Ivan Davis: Hayden, normally we provide one week of credit for downtime experienced by the customer.
Hayden Tennent: Could you please organise this for me.
Ivan Davis: Okay.
Ivan Davis: I will be forwarding your inquiry to our Billing department. They will look in to the issue and provide the compensation accordingly.
Ivan Davis: Could you please provide me your e-mail address so that we can contact you as soon as the issue is resolved?
Hayden Tennent: Thats all for now. Thank you for answering my questions. You're doing a great job.
Hayden Tennent: hayxxxxx@xxxxx.nz
Ivan Davis: Could you please let us know, if you have contacted us earlier via e-mail with regards to the same issue?
Hayden Tennent: So i will receive a notification when im back up then?
Ivan Davis: Yes, Hayden.
Hayden Tennent: Ok, thanks, and good bye.
Ivan Davis: Thank you for chatting with us. Please feel free to contact us at any time. We are available 24x7.
-----

It is currently 8:16pm and my site is still not accessible.

Update: At around 9:00pm requests to my domain are now going to the "Default page for vDeck Hosting Server". This is also tricked my website monitoring service into thinking my website is back up and running. It isn't.

Below are more snippets of my further conversations with the Startlogic Helpdesk

--- Third Conversation with Startlogic (Melanie Evans) --- [Finished around 9pm]

info: You are now chatting with 'Melanie Evans'
Melanie Evans: Hi Hayden , I apologize for the wait time. My name is Melanie, how are you today?
Hayden Tennent: Im good, how are you?
Melanie Evans: I'm great, thank you. How can I help you today?
Melanie Evans: Yes.
Hayden Tennent: Can I have a follow-up on the progress of repairing the fault on st03.startlogic.com
Melanie Evans: To protect your account from unauthorized changes, can you please verify for me the answer to the Security Question:
Hayden Tennent: [Security Answer]
Melanie Evans: Thank you for the authentication.
Melanie Evans: One of our Billing Specialist is working on your issue and I assure that it will be fixed soon.
Hayden Tennent: I am talking about the fault on st03.startlogic.com, not my compensation for it. The fault still exists and www.nztechie.com is still down.
Melanie Evans: Could you please hold for 2 to 3 minutes, while I check this for you?
Melanie Evans: We are aware of the issue.
Melanie Evans: One of our engineer is working on this issue and I assure that it will be fixed soon.
Hayden Tennent: My website has been down for 4 hours, I was told it would be fixed soon hours ago. Can you please tell me what the cause of the fault is? Your engineers have had 4 hours to at least determine that.
Melanie Evans: I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Melanie Evans: I cannot provide the exact cause of the issue.
Melanie Evans: I assure that it will be fixed soon.
Hayden Tennent: Can you please ask the engineer what the cause of the fault is.
Melanie Evans: Due to technical glitch on our server st03.startlogic.com, you are unable to access the Web site.
Hayden Tennent: Is the problem just effecting st03.startlogic.com? or is it effecting other servers? What are your engineers doing to resolve the fault?
Melanie Evans: I cannot provide exact cause of the issue.
Melanie Evans: It is effecting the st03.startlogic.com.
Hayden Tennent: Is st03.startlogic.com overloaded?
Melanie Evans: Yes.
Melanie Evans: The restoring process is taking place.
Hayden Tennent: What is the estimated time of repair? when can i expect to be back in business again?
Melanie Evans: It will work fine soon.
Hayden Tennent: Can you please define 'soon'. Is it 1 hour, 5 hours?, 24 hours?
Melanie Evans: It will work fine with in couple of hours.
Hayden Tennent: The analyst I spoke with last advised me a couple of hours, and that was 4 hours ago.
Hayden Tennent: Can you please ask your engineer how long he expects the restore to take.
Hayden Tennent: Where do you display your system status information on the Startlogic site? I can not find any reference to this outage.
Melanie Evans: It will work fine within 6 hours.
Hayden Tennent: Will I experience any data loss?
Melanie Evans: No.
Hayden Tennent: Back to my other question, where does Startlogic keep its outage notices? I can not find any. It is an industry standard to do so.
Melanie Evans: We have not sent any outage notices.
Hayden Tennent: Why not?
Melanie Evans: I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Hayden Tennent: Ok, you have done your best to help and angry customer and I appreciate it, staying cool under pressure. Thanks for your help. I'll check back in 6 hours.
Melanie Evans: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Hayden Tennent: No thanks
-----

Trying to get Startlogic to create a CNAME Record

Below is a transcript of today's communication with Startlogic via their live chat facility. I have been trying for almost a week to have them create a new subdomain for me, yet they have failed so far to configure it correctly for me.

Chat Transcript

info: Thank you for contacting support.

We are currently experiencing a network outage at our support location. Please expect a delay in our response as we are currently operating with minimal staffing using our back up lines. The local IT team is working to fix the issue. Please contact us later or continue to hold; we'll be with you as quickly as we can.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you. Thank you.

info: We appreciate your patience. All operators are currently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and we'll be with you as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we'll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you for waiting.

--- Repeats 5 times for about 20 minutes ---

info: You are now chatting with 'Melanie Evans'
Melanie Evans: Hi Hayden , I apologize for the wait time. My name is Melanie, how are you today?
Hayden Tennent: hi
Hayden Tennent: I have a query about my domain
Melanie Evans: To protect your account from unauthorized changes, can you please verify for me the answer to the Security Question:
Melanie Evans: [Security Question]
Hayden Tennent: [Security Question Answer]
Melanie Evans: Thank you for the authentication.
Melanie Evans: How can I help you today?
Hayden Tennent: Can you please provide me with the following details regarding all subdomains (CNAME Records) configured. Their names, and where they are configured to point to
Melanie Evans: You have created the CNAME blog and pointed ghs.google.com..
Melanie Evans: The CNAME [Requested Subdomain] is pointed ghs.google.com.
Hayden Tennent: Thanks
Melanie Evans: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Hayden Tennent: Yes, the [Requested Subdomain].nztechie.com subdomain dosent work. I have enabled it at my end and it is not working. I have been forced to disable it at my end because it wasnt working.
Melanie Evans: Okay.
Melanie Evans: I will point it again.
Hayden Tennent: If you ping [Requested Subdomain].nztechie.com should it not resolve to ghs.google.com ?? Because it dosent when i try it
Melanie Evans: It is not pointing.
Melanie Evans: I will point it.
Hayden Tennent: Thank you.
Melanie Evans: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Hayden Tennent: Could you please make one more CNAME record for me
Hayden Tennent: [Additional Requested CNAME].nztechie.com and point to ghs.google.com also.
Melanie Evans: Okay.
Hayden Tennent: Thank you
Melanie Evans: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Hayden Tennent: Are you able to double-check the CNAME setup as I have had a problem before when the CNAME record setup would not "Hold"
Hayden Tennent: perhaps compare the setup with the blog.nztechie.com which is working perfectly.
Melanie Evans: Okay.
Melanie Evans: I have added it.
Melanie Evans: It will work fine with in 1 to 12 hours.

--- Administrative Banter ---

Hayden Tennent: bye

Requesting Your UDAI from Microsoft Office Live!

I received the following email response when I requested my UDAI from Microsoft. It appears you must cancel your account first, otherwise they won't give it to you:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: SRXxxxxx11608ID - Microsoft Office Live Free
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 19:48:49 -0000
From: Microsoft Customer Support
To: hayxxxxxx@xxx.net.nz

Hello Hayden,

Thank you for contacting us at Microsoft Office Live Support regarding your Microsoft Office Live Basics domain.

My name is Sarika Srivastava and I am creating SR # 1058011608, so that we can track this concern.

I sincerely apologize for not being able to answer to your email in a timelier manner. We are experiencing high contact volumes at this time which as caused our delayed response. We appreciate your patience while we have worked through this situation as quickly as possible.

I understand from your email that you want Unique Domain Authentication Identifier for your domain from Microsoft Office Live. I would like to assure you that I will do my best to help you process your request in the quickest way possible.

To get Domain Authentication Key, you have to cancel your services with us. Once we will cancel your services we will provide you with the Domain Registration Key (DRK) through which you can manage your domain name further. Please provide us the below mentioned information in case you want to cancel your account with us. This information is necessary to help us to maintain the security of your account ownership and information:

1. First and Last name associated with your Microsoft Office Live account.

2. Phone number associated with your Microsoft Office Live account.

3. Last four digits of the credit card number associated with your Microsoft Office Live account.

4. Billing address associated with your Microsoft Office Live account.

5. Alternate email ID on which you want cancellation confirmation email to be sent.

We appreciate you contacting Microsoft Office Live. If you have additional questions, concerns, or need further assistance, please be sure not to change the subject line so that we can urgently address any remaining concerns. Also you may be selected to receive a survey. You're feedback is valuable to us. Should you receive a survey, we appreciate you taking the time to respond so that we may improve the quality of the service you receive.

Thank you and have a great day, Hayden.

Regards,
Sarika Srivastava
Microsoft Office Live Support

It also appears to be standard policy to apologize for a late response. Microsoft Responded overnight, which I find quite acceptable.

Email Outage for Orcon Internet

As I go to press, Orcon are currently experiencing an email outage. First hand reports indicate that this problem has been ongoing for a significant portion of today. The issue is still not currently resolved.

Below is a copy of the notification on the Orcon Internet System Status page.

Mail Outage

We are currently experiencing intermittent mail outage with e-mail authentication. Our technicians are currently on-site and a resolution is expected as soon as possible.

Hot tip: Many common broadband issues can be solved by restarting your broadband modem/router.


Authentication issues are such a beast. The system will happily report to you that your login credentials are wrong when it is up the crapper.

Orcon's Webmail portal seems to be working now and then when you arn't getting the error in the screen capture below. However it looks like POP and IMAP are dead in the water.


I absolutely love the "Hot tip" at the bottom of the post! I hate outages, and I have so wanted to sign-up for TVNZondemand today.

I'm betting on another power failure on the North Shore.

Source: Orcon Internet - System Status

Telecom Virtual Rugby

How many characters can my password be? Is it a maximum of 12 or 24? make up your mind Telecom.

The answer appears to be 12 ;-(

Limiting my password lengths aye?

Website Visitor Traffic Statistics (5 Jan 2008 - 4 Feb 2008)

blog.nztechie.com
485 Visits
15.65 Visits/Day

EinkeY and Pickled Hamster's SuperFun Blog
94 Visits
3.03 Visits/Day

Disjointed Thoughts / tech.nztechie.com
1,030 Visits
33.23 Visits/Day

www.nztechie.com
265 Visits
8.55 Visits/Day

Total for period 5-Jan-08 to 4-Feb-08: 1874 Visits (Avg 60.41 Visits/Day)

Broken Gallery 2 Thumbnail Images

I am experiencing Broken Thumbnail Images since upgrading to Gallery 2. Why is this happening?

Microsoft, Yahoo! and $56 Billion Dollars

So it appears that Microsoft has put in a bid of $56 billion dollars to purchase Yahoo! I recall the time when MSN and Xtra broke ties and closed down the http://www.xtramsn.co.nz/ portal. Xtra then needed a new partner and chose Yahoo! to form the http://www.yahooxtra.co.nz website.

Now that it looks like Microsoft are going to purchase Yahoo! it appears that good old Telecom Xtra are going to be back in bed with Microsoft, the soon to be new owners of Yahoo! That is when Xtra arn't busy fighting off charges for misleading customers on broadband capabilities!