Oh good. We're still going. in Site Updates

I have to admit, with the weird issues I was fighting last night, I wasn’t entirely confident the site would keep chugging along. I’d start up the app server and the first request would hang for about five minutes (had to change the timeout settings to get past that problem). Very weird, I suspect it was yet another thing I forgot to install on the server trying to initialize.

You know how when you get a new computer at either home or work, and you suddenly realize just how much crap you have to install to get everything you need on there? Yeah, pretty much that. There are people in the IT industry called “devops” - basically they automate all of that, or put it all in some virtual container that can be launched at the push of the button. Sadly, I’m not yet one of those people. So there was some grunt work and a lot of trial and error due to my suckiness at documenting things.

And now we’re on a completely up-to-date and fully patched web server, with a nice little certbot installed (which means that the “DANGER WILL ROBINSON!” error you get using prosebox.com instead of prosebox.net should be resolved as well). No, there was no grand conspiracy - just me letting my Linux distro fall behind and my provider deciding it was too risky to even provide boot support for old systems susceptible to Spectre and other hideous viruses/vulnerabilities.

I did notice some errors related to people trying to update profile images. I think I know what that is - one other thing that didn’t get installed, will look into that soon.

But wow. You guys. YOU GUYS. What an outpouring of kindness and understanding! There’s way too many comments for me to try to respond to individually, so here:

I do take pride in this site, and it causes me anxiety when things don’t work. It’s always nice to be reminded of just how much enjoyment people get from the site, not to mention the therapeutic value of writing and sharing with friends.

All right, I guess that’s all for now. Thanks PB family!