The Reports of c99's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

We're back.

I went to bed last Friday evening and awoke Saturday morning to c99 being not only down, but gone. After doing everything I could to bring it back I made the determination that the problem was server side. It was out of my hands.

So I called our web host. The initial respondent tried a couple of things to no avail, so she gave me a service ticket and then told me it would take 24-48 hours for a tech to take a look at the problem. 24-48 hours, WTF! So I waited for the 48 hour time frame, which was Monday, and still no c99. So I called again and was reassured that they were working on it. Finally yesterday (Tuesday) the front page came back, but only the front page and nothing worked on the site. So I contacted then again last night. This morning I awoke to c99 back on line.

To say the least I am not a happy camper about what happened. The 24-48 hour wait, which turned out to be much longer, is unacceptable. I will be shopping for a new web host.

Anyway, welcome back.

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EyeRound's picture

Thank you Jtc for shepherding this valuable site back to life! It would have been just too sad to lose C99%. Wishing you and all posters and visitors here happy holidays!

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28 users have voted.

all I could glean from the tech was it was a problem with the configuration on a Apache server file. How that file became miss-configured is a puzzle to me. I suspect they did a server update and it whacked the file.

What did you do during your vacation? I pulled most of my hair out.

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27 users have voted.
dystopian's picture

What a thrill to see this back up and running! Thank you fearless leader!

Here are some possible reasons for the c99 crash
1) I posted too much, exceeding limits, on Friday.
2) Conversation got so heavy, the whole dang thing collapsed under its own weight.
3) Deep state realized we were on to something here.
4) Server was in Buffalo, N.Y.
5) List owner finally figured out how to block me. Wink

Perhaps we should have a EBS - emergency broadcast system? Whereby an email broadcast goes out to those signed up that explains things.

I have two primitive websites, one hobby, one biz. Not crazy about the hosts in either case, but they are up and running almost all the time. However they are not message boards, mostly just a bunch of html and poor pics. I keep them in two vastly different areas of the U.S. so an earthquake or blizzard is not likely to take both down. That way I can always use the email at the other when one goes down.

Anyway, GREAT to have you and the site back up and running.

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24 users have voted.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

@dystopian I think this would be a great idea. Not sure what has to be done to make it possible but I did spend the weekend worrying that one of my sources of news was gone. Glad to see it back and running and JtC hope you have some time to enjoy your Thanksgiving!

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20 users have voted.

Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

QMS's picture

@jakkalbessie

We did use the offline contact list a bit during the outage. Mostly just to check it wasn't
a problem with individual connections. I used to keep a contact form in the left margin,
but asked JtC to take it down after Wendy Davis got compromised.

I still have the data list if anyone wants to be added.
Just PM me and get hooked up.

Q

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12 users have voted.

you and the site back up, JtC.

C99 being down was good for a reality check as to how worthwhile it really is - thanks for putting in the work to keep it up and going.

Hope you have the opportunity to chill out and recover a bit for Turkey Day. Not much of a thing here in Japan - the one American holiday I actually miss.

Holiday cheers,

- BR

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23 users have voted.
usefewersyllables's picture

@Blue Republic

I wasn't too pleased with the involuntary cold turkey- especially before the turkey was made warm to start with! It is beyond great to have C99% back, and I just kicked in a little coin (using that little yellow button up in the northwest corner) to help grease the skids for the server relocation. Thanks for all you do, JtC!

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23 users have voted.

Twice bitten, permanently shy.

Lily O Lady's picture

@Blue Republic

a Thanksgiving buffet in Daikenyama. It was pretty nice.

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12 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

I reported the death of the site as part of a pessimistic assessment of internet free speech. I'm still pessimistic, but quite happy to learn the truth which is more annoying than an example of gathering doom.

I appreciate the effort to keep this channel of communication open.

Edited to add the text of my exaggerated account of the death of this message board, posted at an all but defunct message board that lost all its participants during the covid wars:

Caucus 99 has been down for at least two days. It is getting to look like the medium of message boards is becoming extinct. No role for this mode of communication in the Brave New World that is emerging after Covid and Ukraine. Truth has always been created by power, but the powerless in many societies have been allowed to kvetch about things that bother them. No longer on the internet, it seems.

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24 users have voted.

I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

snoopydawg's picture

This little kerfuffle sure let me know how important this site is and how much every person here means to me. I was sad that I wouldn’t have a chance to tell them and get to say goodbye.

Hey y’all…I appreciate you and love what you bring to us.

Glad that we are back in full glory and hopefully JtC can now enjoy his vacation and he can let the ocean breeze blow out leftover frustration. I’d suggest taking a long walk on a pier but that might get misinterpreted…so take a walk on the beach.

The front page loaded for me Monday, but couldn’t go any further.

Thanks, JtC for all you do!

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26 users have voted.

“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

earthling1's picture

Damn Russians!
They're the cause of everything.

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24 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

ggersh's picture

that a CT Smile

Welcome back everyone, we are blessed to have C99 and JtC!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

PS: My Turkey cost $90 this year that's quite the increase from
years past. I'm guessing the "Reduce Inflation Act" helped s/

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25 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

karl pearson's picture

So glad everything is back to normal. I kept telling myself it was some kind of computer glitch.

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22 users have voted.

trying to find some actual truthful takes on current events, some intelligent discussion. Not particularly fruitful. At least boredom and frustration leads me to clean house. If the site were to go down more often, my bathrooms would be cleaner, but I digress.
I missed my friends!
Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday!
ggersh, we have an annual deal that if you buy a spiral cut honey ham, you get a turkey for free.
dystopian, I thought of you, considered your bird info to have been the dead site culprit. I mean, lotsa bird info, you must admit.
I am playing at the beach. Hope all cruisers are getting calm seas.

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24 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

orlbucfan's picture

and hoping for this news, JtC. Smile
Happy Turkey Day Holiday, and Rec'd for the very good word.

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19 users have voted.

Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

mimi's picture

Jesus, if you would have known my thoughts during downtime period, it would have been the best literature book on the planet for you to read for entertainment. WTF, I hate mobile phones, cameras and older men, who think they know it all and always find someone or something to blame it on. I am happy to say I haven't found those types of men on this site. /ahem ...for sure ..I am serious ... yeah.

Ok, you are my hero, JtC, but for the world of me, I wouldn't want your job.

All I know is that I will throw my mobile phone into North Sea and will make a happy dance whem it is gone and swallowed up by our cute sea lions.

Sigh all the cute things are gone. Selenskys fault. Ja, ja.

Happy to see you all back.

Let's hope for better times.

PS it sucks when you don't remember the correct words in either language. A good excuse to say nothing, don't you think?

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24 users have voted.

@mimi

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18 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

mimi's picture

@on the cusp @on the cusp

it sounds great ! Thanks. I had not remembered that you all have the Turkey day.

Manno, I need to come back. When you get to know the German 'authorities' you will be very fast. vary much homesick for the good ol USA-

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16 users have voted.
mhagle's picture

Glad you're back!! Thank you!!

I've used omnis.com as a server for years, however, I have never maintained anything this fancy. I've been happy with them. The problem I had with nowthepathforward.us was my problem, not the server's. I foolishly neglected to sign up for auto-upgrades, so it got to a point where it was no longer upgradeable.

Anyway . . . missed you all!!

Happy Thanksgiving! I-m so happy

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16 users have voted.

Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

So happy C99 is back on line!

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17 users have voted.

NYCVG

Socialprogressive's picture

Good to see C99 has come back from the grave. Truly a reason to give thanks tomorrow.

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18 users have voted.

I'm great at multi-tasking. I can waste time, be unproductive, and procrastinate all at the same time.

Lily O Lady's picture

I was afraid that you might have been hit by a bus or something. There was a post on the kossacks4sanders Reddit wondering about what happened to c99. You were missed. Glad you’re back! Sorry about your hair. Wink

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18 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

@Lily O Lady was asking about it also!

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7 users have voted.

NYCVG

thanatokephaloides's picture

Like so many of us, I give thanks that c99 is back on the air.

And I thank you, gentle Sir Conqueroo, for all you do and did to bring it about!

[video: https://youtu.be/uB1D9wWxd2w]

[video: https://youtu.be/pRhjWdr-LAA]

Smile

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12 users have voted.

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Pluto's Republic's picture

JtC, you said you had to perform a site-wide software maintenance, and you expected some glitches.

So, I just assumed you were trying to shove this octopus back into the shoebox.

As a result, I brushed off the 'missing' C99 — even though my paranoia throttle runs a little hot these days. (I also took a moment to contemplate life without a community like this to run reality checks and talk to serious/funny aware people. I pictured the near future, living in the US, when it finally becomes alarming or dangerous to speak obvious truths about political matters. Where one might be considered mentally ill if they expressed misgivings about the artificial facades and illogical narratives that surround us. And yet, around us right now, there are cognitively stressed citizens who carry guns with them when they enter the public square. Pushing guns into the hands of ordinary citizens has been a very deliberate government policy. It is seen as the the most important "right" that US citizens have; far surpassing any of the globally-recognized Human Rights. This has monumental psychological and social implications.)

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10 users have voted.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange

@Pluto's Republic

Pushing guns into the hands of ordinary citizens in the US, is a very deliberate policy. It has monumental psychological and social implications.)

In Oregon - where, despite the plain language of the Oregon Constitution to the contrary, the most anti-gun 'Violence Reduction Act" (Measure 114) has just passed(albeit by 1% or less, and with 29 of 36 Oregon counties against it).

Among its provisions, no one can buy a gun without having undergone training in a course at the county level which does not exist and for which there is no funding... It has about as much to do with reducing gun violence as the Inflation Reduction boondoggle had to do with reducing inflation - zero, if not less.

I suppose you could contend that such overreach is designed to push people to arm themselves - certainly it's reported that there is a rush on in Oregon to purchase guns and high capacity magazines before Dec. 8 when the law is scheduled to come into effect. Given recent SC decisions and any plain reading of the Oregon Constitution and that lawsuits are already flying to challenge it, that may well be delayed and much or all of the measure may not survive court challenges.

A bright spot in the situation were the significant number of leftist groups who weighed in in opposition:

...

This bill as written serves to imprison and punish otherwise law-abiding vulnerable groups, all in the name of preventing gun violence. The police effectively get to decide who should be armed—a decision which may be prohibitively expensive to appeal—without any oversight.

Please vote No on Measure 114.

PDX SRA is the Portland chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association, a 501(c)(4) firearms education organization that seeks to empower those marginalized by a capitalist society.

Antifa:

Rising Fascism Makes Community Defense Necessary

Between 2005-2010, I published a ‘zine called American Gun Culture Report. My writers were overwhelmingly folks of color, LGBTQ and others who owned firearms because they cared about community defense and knew the violent history of gun control being used to disarm persecuted populations.

Since those years, I have been contacted by countless individuals sharing stories about using guns to resolve dangerous situations. Typical were examples close to me. One friend pointed her shotgun at a man who broke into her house, scaring him away, and another friend recently drew his pistol on a knife wielding man attempting a gay bashing attack, holding him until police arrived. In none of these cases were shots fired and a firearm ended the confrontations peacefully.

Many people told me they kept such stories themselves, because there is such a harmful stigma connecting guns with conservative politics. There are easily available statistics about firearms being used for terrible acts, yet none documenting how often they save lives. However, just a brief look at American history demonstrates the important role armed defense has played, from the Appalachian Mining Wars to Mississippi Civil Rights struggle. In more recent times, I have provided firearms training out in rural parts of Oregon where immigrant communities exist under regular threat from Right wing groups and law enforcement is distrusted or simply unavailable.

But gun violence finally touched my life. Last February, a dear friend was shot and almost killed at the hands of a fascist mass shooter who opened fire on a peaceful police accountability protest at a Portland park. One woman died and several others were wounded before antifascist security used their AR-15 to quickly stop him. Were Measure 114 in effect, my friend and many others would surely be dead.

Before voting, please consider all the consequences.

Thank you for your time.

Ross Eliot

www.occupy2a.blog

(This information furnished by Ross Gustafson, Antifascists of Cascadia.)

FWIW - there has not been a generation on the shitkicker/hillbilly side of my ancestry, going back to when the United States of America was not even a remote idea that has *not* 'had guns in their hands' - including the ones they took to fight the War of Independence with.

Source (arguments in opposition by various groups that appeared in the 2022 Oregon General Election Voter's Pamphlet)

But yes, I can see the prospect of an armed (and responsible and aware) citizenry having serious and psychological and social implications for those aspiring to absolute authoritarian rule. It was ever thus with tyrants...

Oregon Consitution
Article 1, Section 27

Right to bear arms; military subordinate to civil power.

The people shall have the right to bear arms for the defence [sic] of themselves, and the State, but the Military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power[.]

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6 users have voted.
Pluto's Republic's picture

@Blue Republic

....Oregon is in for a lot of disappointment. Thank you for taking the time to write the Oregon story. In general terms, I don't believe a state can achieve real self-determination or security, while it is subject the rules of a larger governing nation that is moving in the opposite direction. (The Vatican and Walt Disney World being two notable exceptions.)

(It's sort of like the Donbas seeking leadership autonomy inside Ukraine. That's just never going to happen. For Ukraine, the logical solution was to send the Nazi militia to the easternmost borderlands to kill off the ethnic Russian population, one by one. In the years that followed the 1958 annexation of this Russian territory to Ukraine, the residents of Donbas have held periodic referendums — with which they petitioned the Russian government to take them back. But Russia held out.... until NATO arrived many years later to plant itself on Russia's border, just nine minutes from Moscow (via missile). That's alittle too close for any missile defense system to neutralize an incoming threat.)

In any event, the context for my comment is international, not intra-national. The first time I considered the US gun rights flaw, from a global perspective, I noticed that there were still five nations with constitutions that defined handgun ownership as a Right, rather than a Privilege. In the mid 20th century, there were many more, but reason and reality prevailed. Handgun rights were dropped from constitutions as they were periodically modernized toaddress the new times and the new technologies of the Industrial Revolution. The five remaining nations with constitutions declaring a right to handgun ownership, were each overcome by internal violence and chaos. They are failed states. Yemen, I believe, was the last one to fall.

This leaves the US as the final remaining experiment in laissez-faire handgun self-destruction. The thrust of my original comment was to point out that codifying indiscriminate gun rights is very likely a deliberate, well thought out policy — a policy that fulfills the management strategy for this nation's long-term Ruling cartel. The sharper angle of the continuing downward slope of the economy of the masses will be met with keen disappointment by the current USian population. They have been tricked into thinking they can vote their way out of the trap, but the political and social violence will continue to grow as they fail to do so. Soon enough, they will die off and history will be forgotten. Those remaining will easily bend to the new reality of their class. Evidence suggests that this is the deliberate intention behind allowing the obsolete and irrelevant US Constitution to stand enshrined (with its disgraceful gun rights and slavery mindset proudly on display). The US Constitution is now a Singularity in this world. Its unfamiliar outdated language is the very thing that made it possible for the US to become the souless, predatory corporatocrisy that it is today.

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5 users have voted.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
Sima's picture

That the server had troubles. Or a conspiracy, but... I tended to think it was more the server. Lately, software, server upgrades have gone really badly for quite a few sites/places. I'm sorry you had to pull your hair out and deal with this stuff, it can suck!

My websites are much more simple than Caucus99%, just php, sql, etc. If you want any help with those things, lemme know! And once again, thanks so much for all you do. This site rocks, I would be lost without it!

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11 users have voted.

If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so

Lookout's picture

I wondered what the deal was on Sat. I hoped we hadn't been hacked and taken down as that is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Well, absence makes the heart grow fonder. I've missed everyone! Thanks, JtC, for our home base!

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13 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

GreatLakeSailor's picture

WHEW!

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9 users have voted.

Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.

travelerxxx's picture

Otis sang, "You don't miss your water till it's gone," and he was right.

Really, really glad to see the site back and humming again.

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6 users have voted.

@travelerxxx

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5 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Absence makes the heart--palpitate?, --constrict in agony? Yeah, and also realize what you had. And that, in this case, what you had was a lifeline.

Thanks JtC for maintaining. Love you guys.

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7 users have voted.
Creosote.'s picture

And of course I thought I'd done it -- I'd made a small change to my sign-in.
But then I saw everything was gone.
And the white screen arrived with a four-word phonecall from an old friend (since 1950s, person who'd had a 'booster'), coughing, barely able to speak -- "Bit of a cough" -- then no word from them for days .
And still no site found next day.
Profound shock of actual formidable irreparable isolation, and recent blood panel suggesting 10 more years of that. What for?

And then I could breathe again; friend tested and found OK too.
Warmth and true gratitude to you, JtC, and all of you.
A lesson!

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2 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@Creosote.

Better late than… it was the time that tried our souls that’s for sure! I think we all felt a horrible loss, but I came across quite a few sites that were worried about what might have happened. Phew! Good to know that there are many, many others that appreciate this site.

Hope you are doing well!

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2 users have voted.

“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt