Gotit!

If it's OK, we say so too. Filled out my tax return yesterday on Tax on Web. Didn't go down once (in what I imagine would have been the most hectic weekend, when all last-minute users like myself decide to go ahead and do it) and was prefilled correctly (having changed jobs last year could have caused some mixup but no). No session time outs, no crashes and no seconds lost when sending it out. Great! No wonder more than 1,5 mio users will have found their way to Tax on Web this year. My guess is, it will be much more than that, after this weekend.

Gotit?

Het incident werd veroorzaakt door een defecte switchpoort in de backbone van het storage area netwerk, op een ISL tussen een edge switch en de centrale directors in één van de SAN switched fabrics. Het signaal was "flapping" met een link die soms wel en soms geen signaal gaf waardoor de disk access tijden op één van de databaseservers (die met één HBA op de betrokken switch geconnecteerd is) op sommige momenten veel langer was dan normaal. Dat had onder meer impact op de trafiek tussen de 2 datacenters

Now thàt is why Tax on Web crashed last week!

Never ending projects

You know that feeling? You build a website, you go through different phazes of stress, crisis, war rooms, ... you finally accomplish something quite OK and then you need to wait weeks before you can go live. Dangerous because in the meantime people want changes, try to alter the scope, suggest new functionalities ... very hard keeping everybody happy and still saying no. There's a pressconference tomorrow .... unless it gets canceled for the 4th time I will finally have a go and we can let this baby go.

iranian twitter bis

Quite a journey of discovery, following the Tehran situation: lots' of interesting links being posted but rumours are getting stronger and stronger and so do calls from others to support claims with evidence (best example: that the army is invading tehran ... causing reactions like 'not confirmed by thrustworthy Iranian twitters' or 'please do not provoke')
Cutest so far are the calls for hackers to bring the government networks down.

Iranian twitter

Following what's happening in Iran on Twitter is scary and fascinating at the same time. As an outsider on the other side of the world you see the tweets barge in at a tremendous speed, giving you the feeling that you are actually in the middle of it. But when you read stuff like

Xtal RT @chrisstrouth change yr Twitter settings to show GMT +03:30 Tehran as yr timezone & change home city to Tehran 2 confuse Iranian censors

or the uncountable tweets helping out with IP addresses, offering tech support, warning for iranian intelligence using the same channels, ... I must admit it gets too close for comfort. What is rumour and what isn't? Recounting in contested area's is announced: true or false? people being arrested: true or false? As always, authentic sources are difficult to define on the Web but one thing is sure: what is happening over there and the way Twitter seems to be the one medium standing in a closed down country is a major shift in the use of what we, spoiled brats, only consider as cool-tools-till-the-next-cool-thing-comes-around. This seems actually to be accomplishing something.