Yesterday's database mishap revealed backup existed from last time

yesterday's database "mishap" revealed something interesting. they restored a
temporary backup from november. this backup predated the last "mishap" where we
were all forced to completely rebuild our "my shows" list from scratch. i still
haven't got all my shows set up the way they were before, and now we find out a
backup existed the entire time.

so why force everyone to start over from scratch when a backup existed?

omg! the shot came from the grassy knoll! we never landed on the moon! 9/11 was
a set-up!

who friggin' cares? this site is set up by the folk who set up this friggin'
site - in their own friggin' way!

i likes me the eztv. i likes me the admins of eztv. aydin slaps the trolls;
novaking does digital voodoo; santabj has a nick that hovers somewhere between
being santa, and evoking the disturbingly combinatorial image of a bj.

and maybe that latter is the germaine image. if the whole thing crashed
tonight, and ceased to be, it was what it was - an incredibly convenient place
to find the online content i'm most interested in; namely, the better-quality,
more-reliable recording of television content than is provided by my vcr.

to say that eztv could have better served your convenience by somehow better
preserving your "my shows" settings is, frankly, rude. "my shows" is a
convenience on top of a convenience. so, maybe, rather than complain about the
trifling "injustice" of having to rebuild your list from scratch, you should be
grateful that the list exists to rebuild, at all.

i happened to have been online at the time of this crisis. and i imagined the
scrambling that might have been going on to correct it. and, in the midst of
it, i noted that the only (and immediate) reaction was some whining tamagotchi
saying his "my shows" list was empty. jeeee-zus! every thread-date was november
23, 2007 - and someone was standing, amidst the chaos, complaining that
he'd "chipped a nail!"

i don't do flaming. i'm only asking you to look at the bigger picture. given
the outstanding job the admins did, in this recent crisis, isn't it a bit petty
to ask why they didn't do a better job 3 months ago? is it really that
difficult to rebuild your list?

aydin, novaking, santabj, et.al. - thank you. nice recovery and (again) happy
birthday.

hear hear, spareaker!

don't complain about any aspect of this service - because, it's free. don't
expect anything - because it's free. don't rely on it - because it's free. so
at what point does it actually become useful?

perhaps my post sounded ungrateful, and that's unfortunate. i always feel that
putting in a "you know, this service is really great... but i don't agree with
how _______ was handled" line in a post sounds a little disingenuous. this
service /is/ great, and i do appreciate it. i just don't agree with how the
earlier outage was handled, especially in light of the fact there is a
demonstrably working backup.

for a long time, i kept track of all my own shows, and things were fine. what
annoyed me so greatly when all the shows got wiped, was i has just given up on
keeping my own separate record on the assumption that this service was stable.
the funny part is, i'm a very vocal opponent to the movement to the theory that
most applications should be moved online, for the very reason that you become
vulnerable to to service outages and data loss beyond your control. so,
really, while i was annoyed, i was really more annoyed at myself than anything
for breaking my own rule of not depending on online services. what is
particularly frustrating is knowing that i have the experience to merge the old
and new datasets if i just had my greasy mitts on the backend db.

so, i wholeheartedly apologize for any offence my post may have caused. that
wasn't my intention. i still don't agree with how it was handled - but i
probably could have expressed it more nicely.

i'm really starting to like this spareaker guy. 🙂