What to do about the current Seti Server Overload

Jord
Joined: 26 Jan 05
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RE: RE: Out of curiosity,

Message 20774 in response to message 20763

Quote:
Quote:
Out of curiosity, why don't the SETI folk suspend all new work downloads and focus on servicing uploads of completed work? With no new work being sent out, the glut would have to start clearing sooner or later.

Owner,

Good idea, but with one problem - they would have all the SetiClassic and other SetiBoinc newbies screaming "Where's my work?", or more pathetic whining about "Boinc doesn't work - it sux". Bad enough, all the new "experts" with 2 days experience on Boinc claiming it's a piece of....trash.


I finally managed to make some time free from all those posts over in the Helldesk on Seti. No, that is not a typo. ;)

Man, are we glad Seti is doing that backup now, so we can breathe.
And are we glad it's only one more day we need to tell people we're so glad Classic is going to close down. :)

I added over 2,500 help posts to my post count; having done so in 2 weeks; isn't too much fun. If you ever have such a thing going on here, count me out. Use Notepad havily, to copy&paste advice you are going to give a lot of times. Make up for people refusing to read other's posts. Everyone is alone and special in having the problem. No one else has the problem. ;)

As for:

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There should be a way to contact people at SETI ! Does someone know an address/phone/fax/something ?


Here's part of a post by Matt Lebofsky:

Quote:

There is no tech support on staff. I end up with dozens of e-mails a day from people who figured out how to reach me. If I dealt with all these, that would occupy about 15-20% of my time. I don't have this time and neither does anybody else around here. Many of these e-mails go unaswered. Sad but true, and I personally find this painful but part of the big picture.

Yes, we can do better in the PR department. Don't have the staff or the money to add the staff. And it's not so easy to add news items to the page. I can't be bothered to go into detail why. I leave this as an exercise for the reader to figure out why.

The staff is small. Me and Jeff are continually up to our necks dealing with everything. We've both been here working on SETI long before SETI@home came around, so we both are well versed in every aspect of the "big picture" around here. Bob, the main database guy, actually only works half time. Court is busy dealing with various long term network/systems projects that Jeff and I can't handle since we're diagnosing, debugging, programming, or maybe actually getting science done. David and Rom (and other various programmers) strictly work on BOINC code. Eric works overtime on other non-SETI projects when he's not building the next SETI@home client. Dan, the project director, is spending a lot of time building spectrometers for other projects because that's where the money is. Outside of current academics (Kevin and Josh) working on other applications of SETI data, and students helping Dan build hardware that's it here at the lab. No administrative staff, no tech writers. When it comes time to fill out a new grant proposal, we all drop everything and work on that, for example.


(mind, link above won't work until after Seti is back up from the database backup)

Just to give you an idea. So people post on the Q&P/Q&A forums... what I call the Helldesk. Still not a typo. :)

And we who volunteered to help out, post back to them, with some just posting to slam the door behind them closed, whilst others we manage to help and they attach and they like it... We're only a small group helping out. About 10 people in all. Men & women.

So it was refreshing to read new analogies by one Michael Roycraft on the BOINC forums. One thread I keep coming back to if I need a big laugh is this one. Applause, Mr. Roycraft.

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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RE: One thread I keep

Message 20775 in response to message 20774

Quote:
One thread I keep coming back to if I need a big laugh is this one. Applause, Mr. Roycraft.

Absolutely right on Mr. Roycraft!

Well, I guess that's a good argument to continue looking for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

I guess when BOINC is perfected 'someone' ( it's their job, right? ) ought to hand deliver it to him.

Ah, don't worry about, much better to push a squeaky wheel further down the road than to oil it.....

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

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