Going on now......

2009-05-28 - In the course of trying to increase response of the site I have turned off several items that may be depending on external resources and thus holding back the site.  These things amount to some statistics and the Google ads.  Let's see if the site feels any different on Friday and maybe we'll learn something.

2009-05-27 - Mosso (our hosting provider) is experiencing degradation of their database cluster resulting in sluggish response and the load blancer message "No suitable nodes to serve your request", etc.  They are working to restore quick response asap.

As of 4:52 PM CST Mosso Engineers have reported that the PHP5-3 Cluster in our DFW Datacenter is experiencing dropped connections.

As of 5:06 PM CST Mosso Engineers have corrected the issues that affected the PHP5-3 Cluster in our DFW Datacenter. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and appreciate your patience as we worked to resolve this. As always, you can reach us by visiting live chat or calling 24-hour toll free 1.877.934.0407 and INTL +1.210.581.0407.

 

2009-05-27 - This is a Quicktime VR made by DORBA's own Chris Mann.  Click on the picture and drag to get a 360 degree view of the camp and campers.

05/27/09  DORBA Monthly meeting is on Tuesday, June 2nd at the REI in Dallas (http://www.rei.com/stores/45).  This month is the annual "Snakes on a Trail" meeting where the Heard Museum (http://www.heardmuseum.org/) donates time and instructors to  come out and showcase various snake species in North Texas. 

Children and families are encouraged to attend. 

This is the last General Membership meeting before the big picnic in August at RCP, as there will be no General Membership meeting in July.  The Board meeting is at 6:00PM and the General Membership meeting begins at 7:30PM.  Hope to see you there.

Dino Valley and Solavaca trails from Braham B on Vimeo.

5-16-09: The Allen Bike Day has been rescheduled for September 12.  And the clinic scheduled for tomorrow has been postponed to Saturday the 30th.

2009-05-11: Welcome to the new DORBA2....  In case you missed the message over the weekend, we have moved DORBA2 to a more robust host.  In the process, however, we had to leave behind the data from over the weekend.  So if you said anything important or updated an event or trail information you will need to go check it and re-do your edits.  Sorry for this inconvenience but the site should run solid under very heavy loads.

If you registered last Friday, Saturday or Sunday, you will need to re-register starting over from the the beginning.  Again, sorry about that.  - Mike

2009-05-08: Today is moving day! When I get in my office I will begin moving the site...  likely around 10am. Expect it to be offline until 5 or so.  More if things get complicated. I will post updates on the "offline screen" if needed. Cross your fingers.  - Mike

2009-05-06: What to expect over the next several days and what to expect after that.  Obviously the system does not have the resources required to handle the traffic and demands put on it with acceptable levels of response and availability.  To correct that, the site will be moved to a place where "virtually infinite" resources will be available to it.  Here is some Q&A regarding the process:

• Q: Why didn't you host the system with enough resources in the first place? A: Shared hosting performance has come a long way in the past few years.  This system is enabling us to serve close to 15,000 pages per day with peaks up to 1,000 pages per hour.  Since I did not have any stats from dorba1 it made since to try a good shared hosting service ($7) per month rather than dedicated ($100/month).
• Q: Does Drupal take more resources than the old phpbb system we had before?  A: Yes.  But the problem is manageable and the benefits are too many to list here.
• Q: How long before the system is relocated and back up at a better hosting situation.  A: Hopefully before the end of the week.  I have a bunch of work to do with my day job.
• Q: What can we expect between now and then.  A:Expect the system to be very slow and at times unavailable during the day and early evening.  It's not crashing it's just exceeding the limits set by the current host.  They will be glad to see us go, I think.
• Q: Where are you planning to host the site next. A: Mosso.  http://www.mosso.com/cloud.jsp

5/5/2009: Don't forget tonight's meeting at REI/Dallas. Board meeting at 6:00PM, with General Membership meeting to follow at 7:30PM.  More details here: http://dorba2.com/node/418

5/5/2009: Here are this mornings stats.  Looks like consistently over 50 users in the system.  I wonder how many will make it to the meeting this evening?

5/4/2009:  I received an email (not the first) concerned over site or membership personal information being exposed on the site.  Currently, only Name, City, State is exposed in the profile.  You can see your own full address and birthdate information on your profile but not everyone else.  That being said, if you enter a location on the "User Location Map" then you are offering that information up to everyone.  This is just like posting your commute route from home to work.  I observed one user hacking away at the location search this afternoon.  So in the interim, to avoid confusion I have disabled the user location maps and tables to make it clear that people are not seeing registration info they should not be seeing.  I apologize if this has created any undue concern and if you see anything that does not look right please contact me immediately.  You deserve an explanation and assurance that your information is being properly cared for.  As of this time, no breach of web or member registration has been confirmed.  Members should look for more updates here:  http://dorba2.com/node/469

BTW... my little search hacker was doing his bidding and driving up the page counts way above normal.  He was doing searches on locations from 2 to 4pm this afternoon while I was doing performance tuning.

5/4/2009: I saw 54 concurrent users in the system just after lunch and just before we exceeded 120,000 SQL queries and the system went off-line.  I m in conversations with the current host as to whether they will increase our database allotment or if I am going to have to move to a new host (not difficult).  Other facts...  pages served this morning was twice the average at around 1,000 per hour with 492 unique visitors as of 1pm.  The system has been consistently serving over 10K pages/day and even more when it's muddy outside.  Expect some blank screens from time to time during peak usage times.  The data is safe... the system is safe, we are just exceeding some management thresholds of our hosting provider. 

In the mean time, I will be increasing some caching and likely disabling notifications for a while to decrease the heat on the database.

5/4/2009: May 5th DORBA meeting has been relocated back to REI.  The weekend rains have forced us to move the meeting from the LBH Trail back to the regular REI location.  Board meeting at 6:00PM, with General Membership meeting to follow at 7:30PM.  More details here: http://dorba2.com/node/418

5/3/2009: I have enabled Private Messaging for all authenticated users of the system.  The current reasoning has more to do with avoiding confusion and usability issues than a result of debate.  It was possible for a member to send a non-member a message and that non-member not to even be aware of it.  That situation could be confusing and an inconvenience for members.

5/3/2009: (organic) Groups are gone. No reason to have them at the moment and they just add complexity and take up resources.  Maybe someday there will be a use for them.

5/2/2009: More construction over the weekend. I will be doing a full back-up of the database and current software build before ripping groups and a few other things out to make things easier to maintain and maybe increase performance.

5/1/2009: Mike Bohn was hit by a truck on Thursday.  Despite multiple serious injuries he was able to visit with Geoff Rodgers on Friday and seemed in good spirits.  He is scheduled for surgery on his hip on Saturday.  Best wishes to Mike and his family as he works toward his recovery.

5/1/2009: There are still several of you that have registered and not found your email with your one-time password to get onto the new site.  Please take a thorough look in your spam folder as this is where many of them end up being found.  I have also set the system to keep sending the welcome email once per day for 10 days in order to make sure everyone gets on.  Please add to your address book so you will get notifications from this site in the future.