the grass isn't greener on the other side, we set it on fire

Last night, the grid went down--and hard. Between then and now, over six thousand regions in SL were affected when the data center--which apparently also controls users logging in and out--lost power. Slowly but surely, the grid's restoring, but it's going to take some time.

In the meantime, major changes at Radio Riel--Duchess Gabi sent an email out to all staff:

For almost 2 years, we have used the subdomains "music", "music2" etc as user friendly URLs for our listeners. I want to start transitioning to a new standard for our user friendly URLs.

As of now we have the following redirects in place:

Main = music.radioriel.org - New Name = main.radioriel.org
Event = music2.radioriel.org - New Name = event.radioriel.org
New Toulouse = music3.radioriel.org - New Name = newtoulouse.radioriel.org
Graceful = music4.radioriel.org - New Name = graceful.radioriel.org
Steampunk = music5.radioriel.org - New Name = steampunk.radioriel.org

So keep these in mind, start using them on your parcels--"music.radioriel" and "music2.radioriel" are going away, and we're adding three more.

*scurries off with the steampunk channel in tow*

Lady Kira reminded me of a potentially staggering problem I hadn't even thought of before--granted, the grid has been unstable and glitchy for the better part of the day, but--every time she's been logged out, from Caledon, she gets logged back in in Zindra.

This presents a whole new complication. Say one lives in Caledon. Say said one has no interest in adult matters in the least, and hasn't even bothered to age-verify, because what would be the point? Say Caledon II goes down, and that user is then relogged into Mosh, when they attempt to return to the grid?

Now we have a new situation--here we were pondering how best to keep people who have rated Adult--but seem to have no earthly concept of what that means in terms of appropriate behavior--from being stupid in Zindra. Now we have the problem of people who are rated deliberately PG, who get shunted to Zindra anyway.

Oh, no, that's not a PR nightmare waiting to happen! Not in the least. No, that won't have an impact if some fundamentalist housewife gets shunted to the red-light district from virtual church of a moment. No news stories there...

Honestly. It's a big business. Are there working brains at the Labs? I mean, anywhere? I've been assuming this, based on the fact they can type and walk upright, but...maybe I've been being too generous with them...

In the meantime, according to the Labs, there will be data center maintenance tonight, in, oh, about three hours...Over five thousand regions will be down, then.

Perfect. The day of the Grand Tour directly in support of cancer research. And today's been down-up-down-down-up-really down-way down-down-down-up-down. There's no way to win.