Regular visitors might have noticed a little something about BZP yesterday... like the fact that it was offline for about 12 hours. Yep, things were happening behind the scenes.

Our hosting company did some tweaking to the server and repaired some databases (although their repairs took a lot longer than mine usually do). Specifically, they updated the HTTP server (Apache) and installed an accelerator module to help cache the content. Then they repaired some database tables that had been damaged by all the up-n-down server antics. Then they went home.

It took until about 10:30 last night Pacific time for the server to finish repairing the databases, so I restarted the services last night and got the site back up. It's been running fine ever since, as far as I can tell, but the real test won't come until later today or on the weekend, when we have a lot of members on posting and reading their PMs at the same time. Once more, I've got my fingers crossed, but once more, I'm not holding my breath.

One interesting thing that I've noticed, though... we've had a ton of visitors in the forums recently. Last night when I turned the site back on, it was 1:30 in the morning on the East coast, yet we still had 600 people on (most of them visitors) within 15 minutes. As I write this, we have 620 users (188 members) on the forums. That's a lot... we usually hover around 350. I did notice the increased visitor count coincided with GregF's posting of The Many Deaths of Toa Tuyet. Hmm, coincidence?

I'm really hoping my next blog entry won't be about the BZPower server. I've gotten into kind of a rut.

Oh, one LEGO-related thing not having to do with BZP... Last night I spent an hour at the local LEGO store, switching out the Community Window display and removing my big dark red building. I forgot how big that sucker is. We put a display of LEGO through the ages into the window, including some big pre-Duplo blocks; some tiny li'l Modulex bricks; really old '60s era sets - still in shrinkwrap; some old wheels and big huge gears; and some very early bricks without tubes. There's also three cool artsy mosaics hanging on the walls, as well as a bin with 24 different colored elements. I brought my camera but the battery was dead, I'll take some pictures and post them shortly. All the stuff was courtesy of my friend Steve's envy-inspiring collection.

EDIT: The store manager sent me a picture this morning. You can't see the sides or stuff on the bottom, but you get the idea.