Monday, June 16, 2014

When Down Really Is Down


Ancestry.com is apparently down as I write this. Not just for me, but for everyone. The website, as I barely grasp it, is under attack. I first learned of this via super-blogger, Thomas MacEntee. But, because I am me, I had to delve into it more deeply, poke it, and prod it, just to see what I could find . 

Admittedly, I have had an ongoing issue with Ancestry because, seemingly, they get tired of me taking up their bandwidth and suddenly I find that I am required to sign in again. And again, as in 30 times or so. Either they give up or I do but when this happens, it comes down to a contest of wills.  Sometimes I just give up and go do something else until it decides that it likes me again and leaves me to work in peace. When it doesn't like me, it’s like having a half-deranged roommate with a bad memory; you just have to walk away and come back later when their brain has reset itself and then start over with them. And yes, I have called Ancestry's tech support many times. Their solution is for me to empty my cache, but it doesn’t help. I have an inkling that it has to do with a deeper problem and my poor old laptop is likely the cause in some way, and granted, this doesn’t happen all the time but when it happens, it makes me wonder...”Is it me or is Ancestry down or having problems?” 

Well, today I stumbled on a solution. Not just to check if Ancestry is really down or just is in a bad mood and hates me temporarily, but it works for any site. The site is Websitedown (http://www.websitedown.info/ ) and it will run a check on the website that you are feuding with and tell you if said website is really down or if it’s just you that the website is hating on. 

So, I tried it and Websitedown said that Ancestry.com is really down and that it isn’t me, or you for that matter. We can all give up and go do something indulgent like sleep while the tech heroes work on a fix, safe in the knowledge that we can now forever know whether a site is really down or that it is really just us. Now, if only there was a site that could tell us if it’s us, or that those half-crazy people in our lives are really as deranged as we think.


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