There are few things in life that are permanent. Death and taxes is the cliche. “The only thing permanent is change,” is the spicy koan bumper sticker. But tonight I had an experience of the permanent that made me laugh through clenched teeth. I seem to have a permanently dysfunctional relationship with this god damned website.
Recent news sent me digging through the Internet Archive images of this very website. I was looking for a particular picture of my friend Kenny, one he had sent me while he was fighting for the US Army in Afghanistan. Now that the war is over I wanted to remember and see. It felt like one million years had gone by since he was over there, a permanent past. But I couldn’t find the picture. Not on the Internet Archive, not on Google, not on my own computer. But I knew it existed here on this server. Someplace behind the curtain of the error message that’s been displayed for the past 4 years or more. I tried it anyway, tried the URL. I was met with the same black text on white background: Error Establishing a Database Connection. I hate this site.
The thing is, I barely know how to make websites. I’ve taught myself how to put them up but their maintenance is another story all together. When they break Google is my only recourse. Google and Ridlo. Tonight I tried Google. I found an article. I stepped through the troubleshooting checklist. I don’t think anything from the checklist worked for me, but in the meantime I did do a long overdue update of the server. Then noticed that I could login to phpmyadmin after all, and hey, that means mysql is working, and then.. refresh the page and it’s back.
Like finally forcing open a drawer that’s been stuck shut for years, here’s the website again. It’s back! What did I do to fix it? How can I be sure I won’t break it again. Boy it looks old! I love this site!