Server Issues

[Ray Brinzer]

As many of you have noticed, we were down this morning.

To make a long story short, we had an issue with the server.  We're awaiting further communication from our hosting service.  It does not appear that the problems are altogether resolved:  we just had a reboot, and were down for several minutes.  I can see that someone is logged in at the machine's console.  So, work appears to be continuing.

I don't expect more major downtime, though the chance does exist.  As well, a server migration is probably coming up in the near future.  We'll try to minimize downtime when that happens.  If things go well, you won't notice.

[mspart]

Thanks for working this Ray.  I'm sure I speak for all of us. 

mspart

[n9531l]

I noticed it was down, and assumed Ray was behind it on top of it.

[SingletSlinger]

why does it seem this site is down at least once a month?

[brycemus]

I feel like this is the first time it's been down in a while, at leaSt 3 or 4 months. And I am on every day

[Rockhard]

why does it seem this site is down at least once a month?

Its on its period.

[ViseGrip]

why does it seem this site is down at least once a month?

Its not... its just you.

[n9531l]

Who would have thought brycemus would have the only post in the last three with "it's" spelled right?

[ViseGrip]

Who would have thought brycemus would have the only post in the last three with "it's" spelled right?

Bob... this is the internet... apostrophes don't matter

[mspart]

It is a funny term when it comes to the English contraction specification.  According to the specification the following applies:

1.  When you are using "it" in terms of a possessive as in the ball belongs to it, there is no apostrophe, it is simply spelled its.

2.  When you are contracting "it" and "is" together, you use the apostrophe to symbolize the missing i from is as in it's.  You could say it is at the store or it's at the store.

This from the extremely long and fruitless to read English spelling specification handbook that is at 8 font, single space, 3000 pages long. 

mspart

 

[n9531l]

I hope the handbook didn't forget to tell you about "it's" for "it has".

[Ray Brinzer]

It is a funny term when it comes to the English contraction specification.  According to the specification the following applies:

1.  When you are using "it" in terms of a possessive as in the ball belongs to it, there is no apostrophe, it is simply spelled its.

2.  When you are contracting "it" and "is" together, you use the apostrophe to symbolize the missing i from is as in it's.  You could say it is at the store or it's at the store.

Honestly, this is one of our dumbest rules.  We use apostrophes for both contractions and the possessive... except for "it".  There we decide not to follow the rule to add the apostrophe in the case of the possessive, apparently to avoid ambiguity.  The same ambiguity exists for "Jim's", or "dog's"... we just don't care.  "It" has to be special, for some reason.  And unfortunately, it's not at all practical to decline to participate, because if you don't follow the rule, it just looks like you're making a mistake.

[n9531l]

Pronouns have a different way of forming the possessive than nouns. For pronouns we don't add 's. We write my, your, its, our, their, whose instead of I's, you's, it's, we's, they's, who's.

That does lead people to confuse its with it's and whose with who's and their with they're.

[Ray Brinzer]

Pronouns have a different way of forming the possessive than nouns.  For pronouns we don't add 's. We write my, your, its, our, their, whose instead of I's, you's, it's, we's, they's, who's.

Yes, the rest are actually morphologically irregular.  If the genitive of it was ites, I wouldn't complain.

[n9531l]

Seems you were born too late to obviate that complaint.

Possessive its  was originally formed with an apostrophe in the 17th century, but this was dropped in the early 19th century, presumably to make it more similar to the other personal pronoun possessives.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_possessive