elmers back up

[franksolich]

I think it was our colleague beefeater who pointed out a couple of weeks ago that the oldelmtree site had evaporated, and wondered what was going on.

I just checked it, and it's now back up.

http://www.oldelmtree.com/showthread.php?tid=22768

This are messages from Andrea, the owner:

Dastardly Disaster Debriefing

So most of you are probably wondering where the heck we have been or what in the world happened. I am going to post here the email updates I sent out to those few members whose email addresses I had access to. In the next few days I am going to find a way to download everyone's email address so I have a way to contact you if anything like this ever happens again. Keep in mind that when the site is down, our email is also down, so I had to rely on my personal email and my Paypal contacts (which they apparently only keep for about a year).

Hi all,

I have sent this to everyone I have an email for. We went down around 3:30 eastern this morning. I had just been talking to Max and knew he was getting ready to do the nightly backup. It always goes down for a couple minutes when he does it, so I wasn't worried. However, I went to go online a couple hours later and we were still down. I skyped Max, but he wasn't there. He got my message around 6:30 eastern and said he would contact support. I haven't heard back from him, so I decided to contact Eggyak myself. I couldn't get in to our member area because I can't remember the password. I requested a reset, but they send it to email and of course our email is down, too. I decided to try live chat, but you can't get into live chat without signing in. So, I decided to call them. This is where it really gets disturbing. I called the only number I can find for them, which is the one prominently displayed on their website. There is an extremely short message that the phone is not in service and no new number is given.

I am really worried that they have skipped town or something. A new company bought them a couple months ago and things have not been the same. Now this. I have instructed Max to get us back up ASAP, but then to start looking for another host. Thank goodness that Max makes backups every night. If we can never get ahold of Eggyak again, we won't have lost anything. Still, this is really bad. We are paid up with them through August 3 and I would like to be able to move to a new host by then.

In the meantime, I will keep you updated through email. If you have emails for any members, please contact them and let them know what is going on. If you want, forward this email to them. And ask them to spread the word, too, please. Let's keep our fingers crossed that this is just temporary with Eggyak.

Thanks,
Andrea

Hi all,

Some of you might not have received the earlier email. I have been searching out emails all day off and on. This basically confirms my fears from earlier. I was able to track down one of the tech guys who had helped us at Eggyak. He confirms that the company has probably closed up shop without notice. He and the rest of the staff were all fired when the company was bought out in May. He still gets several calls a week with complaints. From what he has heard and seen, the people who bought the company are scam artists. His best advice is to take our back-ups and go elsewhere. He could only recommend one company, his new employer. He is only allowed to recommend one company because they are his employer. The company is jaguarpc.com. He says they are pricey, but have been around 15 years and are reliable.

Fortunately, Max has been making backups every single night, so we won't have lost anything. He will find us a new company. In the meantime, I am trying to find someone who will share hosting with us as a temporary measure. We will need to put up at least $70 - $100 in advance to get set up with a new host. As embarrassing as this is to say, that is going to be difficult for me right now. I've been slammed with medical bills the last two months. When August 3rd comes around, I'll have it covered. I don't want OET to be down that long. So, in the event I can't find anyone to host us for free until then, if you are so inclined and can afford it, please send $10 or so our way. You can go to Paypal and send it to andrea@oldelmtree.com or andreastu1360@yahoo.com.

As I said before, if you have the email addresses for other members, please pass the word along to them, and ask them to do the same. Feel free to forward this email if you'd like. I don't want people thinking we've just disappeared. We didn't disappear, our hosting company did. I have to laugh to keep from screaming. Big Grin I am steaming mad about this. Please hang in there with us. We will get up again as soon as possible and I will keep updating you, unless you tell me you don't want the updates.

Thanks,
Andrea

Hi everyone,

First I want to let you know that we have made progress! We have enough money for the first month of hosting, and depending where we go, at least part of the second. Thank you so much for donating! You guys are great.

Now we need to figure out where to move. Obviously we don't want this to happen again, so we are being extra careful picking out a host. Max is doing most of the work on that. Saracat's husband, Mr. Saracat, has offered to let us host there for a month, or maybe longterm. Max will be emailing him with details of our usage. If we aren't too resource intensive for his operation, we could stay there permanently. So, everything depends on how many resources we will eat up, and how close Max is to finding a host. We did get some suggestions from some of you, and we are looking into them. Thanks! One way or another, I think we should be back up by tomorrow night. However, there is something called "propagating through the web" which I don't really understand. What it means is that once we are all up and running, it could take up to 24 hours for some of you to be able to access OET. It depends on where you live, and different areas come online at different times.

I can't wait to get back up. I really miss feeling connected to all of you, and our other members whose email addresses I can't access because the site is down. Again, if you know anyone else's email address, please keep them informed.

Thanks,
Andrea

    Hi everyone,

    Good news here. We found a hosting company that seems very reliable. They are in Canada. The name of the host is myhosting.com and they have been in business since 1997. They are owned by Softcom. They offer customizable packages which is great for us. Because of the interactive nature of our site, we need a lot of RAM, disproportionate to our other needs. By having a customized package, we don't have to sign up for more disc space and bandwidth than we need. The price at myhosting was excellent and when we sign up for the yearly package next month after I get paid we will be able to use a discount code for 20% off, bringing it down to $320 a year. This will be great. We can pay this yearly amount and then not have to worry about a monthly bill for hosting.

    Now, it will take about a whole day or day and a half for everything to get uploaded. Our database is huge. After that we get into the whole "propagate through the internet" thing, so some of you will be able to get online as soon as Saturday afternoon, and for others it might be as late as Sunday evening.

    Sunday evening I will send out a mass email to all our members to let them know that we are back. Then I will try to find a way to download all the email addresses in case anything ever happens again like this. I wish I could have updated everyone, but I only had email addresses on my home computer for some of you, and email addresses in the OET Paypal account for some.

    I am so glad this nightmare is nearly over. I have felt so much at loose ends without having Old Elm Tree to keep me connected. I really appreciate your patience.

    Thanks,
    Andrea

Note: I am waiting for Max to give me the go ahead before sending out the email. The last thing I want to do is accidentally knock us offline again!

    We are back up, but we are still "propagating through the internet." You may not be able to reach the site through your bookmarks or the usual url, but you can reach it by typing this into your url if your regular bookmark doesn't work:

    http://216.224.181.64/~oldelmtr/

    I'm going to start a thread in Q & A About the Nuts and Bolts called "Dastardly Disaster Debriefing" where you can post any problems you have noticed since we came back up. No matter how much it seems that we shouldn't have any, there is always something.

    Again, thank you, thank you, thank you!!! for being so patient, sticking by us and giving ideas and donations. You are all wonderful!

    Andrea

In summary, tell everyone you know that Eggyak's new owners are scumsucking bottom dwellers and no one should ever do business with them again! They disconnected their phone, disabled their instant chat, closed the customers' forums, and are not responding to any tickets. They have just up and disappeared, with who knows how much customer money.

Now, please let us know all the problems you notice so that we can get them straightened out.

So far I'm noticing that we seem to have lost about 3 days worth of posts. That really doesn't make sense to me because Max had just backed us up literally a few minutes before we crashed. Maybe he can do something about it.

The other thing I'm noticing, and this happens every time we change hosts, is that most or all avatars have gone missing. Please upload your avatars again. I like for all the pretty pictures to be displayed! If you don't have your own personal avatar, come over here and I'll tell you a secret. Shhh Before we were so rudely interrupted, I had collected a beautiful set of new avatars and was in the process of getting them all resized to give to Max to upload. So, you might want to wait a few days.

I sincerely hope that absence has made your heart grow fonder. It certainly has mine. In addition to all this craziness this past week, I had my phone go down and then Yahoo locked me out of my email for no reason yesterday. On top of that, I couldn't come here and kvetch with all my friends. I really missed all you guys! I'm so sorry this happened. When we went with Eggyak they had a great reputation and they gave us great customer service and tech support until they were bought out. I sure hope this never happens again to us.

Well, one wonders where the cross-eyed Iowa primitive, the HawkeyeX primitive, the social security disability scammer, was during all this.  I thought he was a "professional" with fixing things.

[GOBUCKS]

So far I'm noticing that we seem to have lost about 3 days worth of posts.

Disaster! That's gotta be at least a dozen precious posts down the memory hole.

[Doc Savage]

Next will be the post that Bain Capital bought the hosting company and closed it down becasue they were worried for Mitt.

[franksolich]

Disaster! That's gotta be at least a dozen precious posts down the memory hole.

I'm sure Andrea's going to be bent out of shape when she finds out her site's been mentioned, and by none other than franksolich.  If she already knows about it, there's probably right this minute two or three threads over there castigating franksolich.

What she won't understand is that I do things like this as a public service, for the Good of Humanity, advertising the locations of places where primitives hang out, so that decent and civilized people may look and laugh at the vanities and pretensions of the elmers.

The primitives on Skins's island are simply coarse savage brutal stupid ugly beasts; the elmers are more refined, but also more hilarious in how smart they think they are.

[dane]

The primitives on Skins's island are simply coarse savage brutal stupid ugly beasts; the elmers are more refined, but also more hilarious in how smart they think they are.

My favorite spot to read at the elmers' site was the accumulation of discarded (tombstoned) Skins's island members.  Even gNads was there after one of her many GBCW posts, telling how 'they' were mean to her, but then returned to the island.

[Rebel]

Who?

[GOBUCKS]

I'm pretty sure Crazy Andrea's place went dark because she didn't pay her bill.

You get a whiff of "service terminated" from all her whining about doctor bills - but it's easier to blame a company no one's heard of.

It's hilarious, because the smug snots at Crazy Andrea's place use no more bandwidth than my Words with Friends account.

She could sell pencils in downtown Cleveland and make enough to stay online.

[redwhit]

Wow, she's really takin rage to the streets

Andrea Studebaker   27 Jul 12
Eggyak was excellent when we signed up with them. They were sold two months ago in May, 2012. Since then they have gone to hell in the proverbial hand basket. Service gradually got worse and uptime became less than dependable. 4 days ago our site went down. That's when I found out that they had disabled their chat, disconnected their phone, closed the forums, and stopped responding to tickets. It's as if they disappeared into thin air. I am not sure what the deal is with these new owners, but they seem to be complete scam artists. We have secured new hosting and will be demanding our money back for at least this month. I doubt we will ever see it, though. If you are considering them, DON'T. If you are already with them, get out as fast as you can, before what happened to us happens to you.

Hostjury

Eggyak seems to have an operating website but I guess looks can be deceiving.  I wonder what Eggyak's response to these allegations would be?  And why does Andrea get so racist against the Chinese?

[franksolich]

I'm pretty sure Crazy Andrea's place went dark because she didn't pay her bill.

This is what I found funny; remember, they're paid up through August 3.

These comments of course were from.....July 27.

.....will be demanding our money back for at least this month.

How much of a refund could that be, for circa 6 days?  Twenty-four cents or something?

[Airwolf]

This is what happenes when you try and run a board using money you find between the folds of the living room couch.

[franksolich]

This is what happens when you try and run a board using money you find between the folds of the living room couch.

There's nothing wrong with being a shoe-string operation; after all, that's how many things get started.

But surely the owner of the site has wads of cash stashed somewhere in a trust fund or something, given that she's related to a once-prominent automotive manufacturing family.  It's true the company later folded into American Motors, and then went out of existence entirely in 1966-1967, but surely so much wealth had been amassed that lo, even all these years later, at least some of it still remains.

I suspect she's just like the other Democrats, liberals, and primitives--she wants to keep hers, and have other people pay for it.  Like Vast Teddy had been.