It never fails. I decide to walk away from the computer for one day and all heck breaks loose.
I needed to focus on a project for a client. I checked all my emails and other vitals, then went into seclusion building a website for a new client. When I was done I stayed unplugged and helped a friend put together a Haunted House for next week. I ended up going out with friends and enjoying the night.
Little did I know, on another site I work on a fire was brewing. It wasn’t a big deal, but really made me scramble when I finally got back online. I (hopefully) put out the fire and continued about my business. It did, however, take me a good 30-45 minutes to take care of – in which it takes up time so I can get other things done.
The funny thing is every time I take time off, something happens. The last time I unplugged, my main website (geekazine) went down. An errant program rewrote my htaccess file and I was down the whole day. What was worse about that was I just posted a big article that was getting higher – than-normal traffic. AUGH!
I have set up some fail safes, though. I put in a couple scripts to email me when certain things happen. It did save me on another issue – I got a site up and running in a matter of minutes.
Site monitoring is a daily thing for me. I have over 10 different sites I have to go to before I even move on to other tasks. It doesn’t bother me – I enjoy what I do. It just seems that things want to go awry when I walk away.
There are a lot of tools out there that can tell you if something goes south. I get emails when the Database has issues or when a site didn’t ping for over 15 minutes. Still, nothing is better than the friend that messages you and tells you what’s going on. For that, I thank everyone that looks out for it.
I am a PC – And a Firefighter. Well, at least one without a cool firefighter uniform. Oh and also no cool red ladder engine to drive around town in. Maybe someday…