Open Spigot

Dear readers,

As you know, we have been in the throes of correcting a system time problem on our server. The first problem we fixed was responsible for a mysterious late delivery time on our emails. This, unfortunately spawned another problem. All of a sudden, our words were being sent a full 8 hours earlier than they should have been. Eight hours essentially got us into ‘the day before’ territory, so words were being sent on Sunday when no words exist for Sundays. Just when we thought it was fixed, the blank words demon struck again.

I assure you that we are not “speechless” or on a lovely hiatus in the Bahamas. The words are still there, Monday through Friday. Please see the today’s word page:
http://www.vocabvitamins.com/today/

Our system administrator, despite his brilliance, is still chasing this one down. Apparently, there are three or more system time and/or time zone settings that have been responsible for this mess.

We are switching over to complete manual sending until things are 100% fixed. Thank you for your patience!

Fix one problem, get another!

We have had many a mysterious complaint about the timestamp on our emails. You have been telling us that the emails have been coming late, but we know full well that they were being sent on time.

The server time was correct, and it was one of the first things I checked to try to unravel this mystery. So, our talented sys admin tackled the issue and discovered that our server time was time zone agnostic.

He fixed it and viola, the emails started coming on time! Unfortunately, fixing the problem and changing the time zone also changed when our server ran the script that sends out words. At that time, the word data had not yet been updated and the word came out blank! Please accept our apologies for the error!

Hello all, apologies for the writing hiatus. I have had a snowstorm of possible Vocab Vitamins blog topics, but unfortunately not enough time to bake any of them to delicious fruition.

Just an update to let you know that we have had a couple of problems with account upgrading that have now been fixed. The errors were cause by really minor issues, but were resulting in heaps of frustration for our users. We are thrilled to be celebrating their demise. Please accept our regrets. Contact us at support@ if you need assistance.

The definition and usage sentence for Friday’s word, ‘triskaidekaphobia’ was not correct, as it was the definition for ‘ochlophobia’. The correct definition and usage example are now in place and are as follows:

triskaidekaphobia:
1. pathological fear or dislike of the number thirteen: “Apparently, many architects are mindful of triskaidekaphobia and don’t built a thirteenth floor.”

Apologies for any confusion!

It was harrowing to flatline part of our site while we adjusted nearly all our pages. This is just a quick note to let you know that we are nearly all systems go. We are eternally grateful for your patience!

Our apologies particularly to those of you that were barred from accessing your premium account. Please contact us and we will extend your subscribtion to compensate for the time lost.

So this weekend was spent swimming in code and hanging out at the colocation facility with a screwdriver. Do you know that servers are really quite loud? The noise level of their supposedly innocent hum is reminiscent of the cabin din of a small airplane.

For at least a couple of days, we will keep the log-in part of our site closed. We will also be a bit delayed with answering your email. Please call 415.643.9767 if you run out of patience.

Please bear with us during this transition time. Although we expect many positive benefits from the upgrade, the short term may bear some potholes. Please report any odd activity here.

Recently some of you have written in to complain about receiving text formatted words when you signed up for and were only recently getting bright and shiny html. Is this still a problem for you?

Please let us know your experience in the comments, just choose one:
1. Still a problem — getting text now but used to get html
2. Was problem but now fixed — was getting text for a while, went back to html
3. Never a problem — was getting html all along