10 Things I Did While The Blockchain Was Down
With the entire STEEM blockchain stopped, I decided I'd come up with a Top Ten list of the things I did while waiting for it all to get fixed. Unlike other more famous Top Ten lists, this one is more fact than funny. Also, please note, I wrote this yesterday (Monday) afternoon.
Image source—Pixabay
No. 10
Hang out in Discord. It might seem counterintuitive any other time, but when I can't do anything else, it suddenly makes a lot of sense.
No. 9
Use SteemPeak to write a post and then save it for posting later. That's how this post got written, since I couldn't even get on Busy, let alone Steemit, to do this. I like Steempeak.
No. 8
Watch STEEM continue to trade. I'm not sure how this is done, but apparently it doesn't need a blockchain. I'm kind of amazed that it's not tanking, too, but more or less doing what it's been doing for a few days. (Yeah, it went up quite a bit since. Remember, I wrote this yesterday.)
No. 7
Run errands and do chores. Mondays are kind of that way for me anyway, so instead of letting Steemit keep me involved and the rest waiting until later in the day, the garbage bins are already back from the curb, I've showered and the laundry is done. No, it hasn't been folded yet (let's not get too carried away), but my shirts are all hanging up.
No. 6
Play with the granddaughter a little more. I need to see if she's up from a nap she was supposed to be taking a few hours ago.
No. 5
Watch Steemworld cycle through error messages and nodes. That's been going on for several hours now. I really like Steemworld, and I appreciate it even more right now for its tenacity. It's got one job, and that's to spit out user information, and dang it, it's going to continue to try to connect as often as it takes.
No. 4
Eat lunch. Actually, I've had breakfast and lunch and now it's only two or so hours before dinner. For the record, I generally eat all three meals regardless of whether STEEM is accessible or not, and since the blockchain has only been down twice since I first logged on in January, that means I've managed to eat and work for most of it.
No. 3
Constantly wonder when STEEM is going to be back up. Check frequently to see if things are working. Refresh pages. Look to see on any of six different Discord channels and their assortment of links whether or not anything new has been said about what's going on or what specifically may have happened. Keep doing this until service is restored or its bedtime.
No. 2
Wonder what everyone else I normally talk to are doing right now. Find out they more or less are doing what I'm doing—spinning their wheels and twiddling their thumbs—though by the sounds of it, they have more of a life than me, which is not at all surprising.
No. 1
Convince myself it's not a good idea to make that post—An Open Letter To STEEM—where I enumerate quite emphatically all of my complaints and sound reasoning for rage quitting. Finally succeed with the thought that no one wants to hear about me rage quitting.
Ok. We need to talk :) When I was speaking to you on Discord, and said since steemit was down I was going to close my laptop and do something else, this is what I did:
-went swimming
-went for a walk
-had a friend stop by for a beer
-ended up making the best fish tacos ever and invited him to stay
Need I continue? :)
I believe this can all be summed up here. :)
hahaha bingo :)
You list is very similar to mine @glenalbrethsen although I couldn't get on to Steempeak. I had the idea as you to write a draft post but I had to do mine in a plain old text file.
i didn't do this one either nor played with the grandchildren as they weren't in the vicinity.
otherwise I was pretty much on the same page. 😁
Well, I wasn't even sure I managed to save this post when I finished with it yesterday. Steempeak wasn't up the entire time, but I managed to get on it while it was, and it autosaved my progress. But when I went to set up a publishing time, it wouldn't let me. I ended up refreshing the page and it kicked me out completely. It wasn't until about two hours ago that I went to check whether it was there (wanted to try to post something today), and lo behold, Steampeak had it saved in the drafts.
that was lucky then @glenalbrethsen. I usually save my unpublished posts in a text file anyway. I've lost too many drafts not too. 😁
This is maybe the second or third time I've used Steampeak. I've used Busy a couple more, but only had to save a draft once. So, it's not been a big deal. It's definitely smart to copy it into a text editor. It's also aggravating and redundant that you would need to do it to ensure it doesn't disappear because the STEEM app isn't doing it's job.
I've been on Steempeak a couple of times but only used it once I think. I'm too impatient to get used to something new but it's time might come if I hang around.
The Steemit UI will probably get more and more out of date I suspect. 😊
re: If I hang around
Sounds like things have come to a serious juncture for you. I'm hoping you find meaning and happiness in whatever decision you make. Of course, I would like you to stay, but not if it's essentially miserable or unfulfilling. I've had my bouts several times now, and so have you. I'm still of the mind to keep going because I love to write and create and don't have a better alternative at this point.
But unless there are some major changes made, the day will come. The problem I foresee, however, is regardless of where I might go, human nature will be human nature. People will bring their bad attitudes and power grabs and controlling nature with them.
Anyway. You know all of that. :)
thank you @glenalbrethsen. it doesn't make me miserable but i don't find it fulfilling but then I would never have take expectation.
fulfillment for me has always come from family and friends really. Maybe from study but I've never found it in any type of work.
That's one of the major things that keeps me here and I'm pretty sure I'll stay until something better comes along.
Unlike you I don't love to write though so that's not much of an incentive. 😁
The human nature bit I realised within the first couple of months of being here and, for the most part, I'm over that upsetting me know.
Except for the odd personal thing like the Steem Cleaners flag.
That really did take a lot of my remaining enthusiasm away.
Anyhow. I'm still here, for now. 😊
I'd have to say I'm very similar in that family has brought me the most fulfillment. I think it's a purpose (borrowing from our other conversation) that a majority of us share. And it's a big reason why I am here. Until it proves itself otherwise, STEEM is a vehicle for improving my family's future. One penny, nickel, dime, quarter and the occasional $20 at a time. :)
re: steemcleaners
I won't revisit it other than to say fanatics can be found everywhere, and they often aren't any better at what they're claiming to safeguard than the rest of us. :) In fact, they tend to hide behind the supposed authority they've been given for that exact reason. Fortunately, not everyone is like that.
Good for you that you still did your Steemit writing despite the chain being down. I should have, being my day off before having to go back to the grind, but kept pretending that it would be back up any moment all day long instead as I watched videos.
Well, I've been slacking for almost a month now, between my own STEEM stupor and my wife's hernia surgery/recovery, so I was pretty much raring to go. Then I can't get on Steemit. Can't get on busy. Steampeak was up, then it wasn't, then it was, then it wasn't. So I caught it when it was and wondered if it actually saved my post when it was down again. :)
Ive been away for a while, Nd haven't heard of SteemPeak. Gonnabhave to look into that. 😊
I'd say it's definitely worth a look, @powellx5.
Probably by default, Steempeak looks a lot like Steemit, maybe even moreso than Busy, but it has some options I like that neither Busy or Steemit have. Overall, I think it functions more like a modern blog app.
After I did most of the things on your list, I watched the meltdowns in the steemit chatrooms of witness and witness-social. I see a slight problem with the TOP 20 witness things, I guess it is hard to even get 20 people to see that the blockchain had stopped working. Ran into a wall. But it was fun to watch them in the chat, I guess there is an ultra secret slack chat room somewhere the "real" witnesses talk.
They need to clean the witness table up also.
number 14 -Witness Disabled
This witness does not have a signing key either at the owners request or because too many blocks have been missed.
number 26 and 31 same thing. Number 35 mr bainfeld same thing.
The witness list needs purging.
But like I said it was fun watching both rooms.
Hey, @bashadow.
I was headed over to Steemit.chat on Asher's recommendation, but I couldn't get in. Not sure now what the problem was. Password, something, which I don't remember having an issue with the first three times I tried it seven months ago, when I swore it off.
I guess I would have enjoyed it, too, to a point.
I'm afraid many of the top 20 witnesses aren't regularly active on STEEM. They've got their own projects and they're busy with them. We've got people calling for more dev witnesses now. Well, okay, but it wasn't the witnesses who came up with the HF 20 code, to my knowledge. And I don't know if it's the witnesses' fault or primary blame that it went down, either.
I'd prefer they not rubberstamp anything. It would be good if there were among the witnesses maybe four or five pairs of eyes to look through it, but what do you look for? I don't know. I suppose there's a need to know how to get things up and rolling quickly when things go sideways, too, but that really shouldn't amount to much more than running the previous good version and up we go.
It's a little discouraging to me given what I'm told is the sheer magnitude of scope. The only thing that can be done, I'm repeatedly told, is what happened. Wait until it breaks. Fix as fast you can. Wait for the next one.
I agree totally with the witness list. There's a reasonable time in which a witness could be down, but weeks isn't it. And a witness should, on their own, advise what they're doing, too. But there's no reason why their should be a witness list and an active list, especially since the witnesses are being compensated based on one or the other.
From what I saw in the chat, it seems the bug, or one of them was a small difference between if I remember right 12 seconds verse 12 hours. a misplaced decimal point or something. It was working fine on the testnet, or so it seemed to timcliff, and then the bug was found by an action, and boom kapowee and the lockdown invalid action or whatever.
The thing people need to remember is that the safety system did work. It stopped and waited to be fixed. My guestimate 12-13 hours of downtime. Not sure on the exact number but no funds lost everything safe and sound and back to normal. For a software bug mind you.
MS, Apple, and other software people hide their bugs people don't know their stuff is not safe until after MS, Apple, etc tell them or they get caught by the media, "oh yeah, we had an issue with that a few months ago, it tooks us 6 weeks to fix it but your all safe now". type statements. So people missed a few hours of time, that in the end is all they lost.
I can't speak for anyone else, but my issue isn't with what comes after the failsafe kicks in, it's before. It's what can be done to prevent these things from happening. So far, the answer is nothing. We just wait until it breaks. I don't know how that compares to those other companies. I can't speak to the transparency of Steemit Inc, either, when it's the entire blockchain that goes down. Rather obvious something happened, and it's affecting everyone trying to get on at once.
I was thinking it was basically 11 hours.
The reason why it was working on the testnet is because the testnet didn't include testing for what happened, which is odd, since what happened was a result of the change in upvoting in the current 12 hour lockout period. So, the bug makes it through.
Your number 10 and 3 were part of what I did during that moment when steemit was off.
Initially I was unaware that steemit would go of due to hart fork update and when I tried to log in and was unable, I was tripped off! Then I log on to discord, ask questions and realized what was the case.
Hey, @maxijgcomm.
From my understanding, if all is well, the Hard Fork isn't supposed to take the blockchain down. But because of a code value for upvoting past the current lockout point being incorrect, it caused a problem when an upvote took place within that six hour window we now have where we can't vote, but will be able to with HF 20, albeit with diminishing returns.
Bottom line, the hard fork didn't take us down, the bug in the code did. Hopefully that's the only one and they can get us up and running on the new hard fork by this time next week.
Unfortunately, there's not a good way to know when STEEM would be back up and running since it requires enough of the Top 20 witnesses to gain consensus in order for the blockchain to start up again. So, depending on how quickly the last of those witnesses was able to get their server running again is how long it took for us to get the blockchain back. For me, it was roughly 11 hours.
Like seriously? I never knew of this. But how come my voting power has dropped even @100% because of the new changes?
Okay, so the changes for HF 20 haven't taken effect yet. We're back to running off a version of HF 19, so nothing that's happening now has anything to do with HF 20. Yet.
It is still supposed to go into effect next Tuesday, though, providing the Top 20 witnesses all start running it and some other bug doesn't bite in the process.
So, any drop in your voting power now is probably due to the STEEM price and how much you vote.
What I was referring to has to do with voting on a post that is past 6.5 days old. Under the current rules, the system won't allow you to upvote past a certain point, but you can actually flag. They've decided that's not fair, so instead of keeping us from upvoting at all, they're going to make it possible, but reduce the effect of the upvote the closer it gets to payout. So at say, twelve hours and beyond the upvote is still 100% of whatever it is, but the closer to payout it will drop in percentage until it's basically $0.00. If a vote is worth $0.03 otherwise, it will be worth less and less the closer it comes to payout.
This change will only effect upvoting on the older posts heading towards payout, and isn't supposed to change any upvotes before that.
Ok now I understand. Thanks for the enlightment. I really appreciate.
haha! very good sir very good. I particularly like this "they have more of a life than me" ha! I highly doubt that! But what is "rage quitting" ?
Anyway I like your list and I've heard such great reports about steempeak that I want to try it, how do I get on? just steempeak.com?
Rage quitting is basically what it sounds like. It is when you're mad and stop doing something you've been doing. Like quit participating on a team or posting on Steemit. I suppose you could even rage quit a marriage. Often it is accompanied by some kind of loud and very emotional declaration of why you're quitting, so that everyone knows in no uncertain terms that you are quitting.
What's funny about this is, the rage quit is often followed by some kind of return to whatever was forever to be quit. In other words, heat of the moment quits don't generally last.
You may have figured it out by now, but yes, go to steempeak.com, go to login and it will take you through the steemconnect process where you choose your username and then you're in until you quit the session. Basically until you shut off your computer. If you close the window you might have to re-login, but I'm not totally sure that's the case.
sir Glen! so you go on there on steempeak and it's just like steemit except easier to use? if that's the case then everyone should be doing it huh?
I've heard that there are many advantages but I don't remember what they are.
have you ever rage quit anything before? I haven't I don't think. No way you have either unless it was in your younger and less mature days, if there were any, ha! can't picture that though.
I've only been using Steempeak the last day or so to write a couple of posts so I can't speak to the rest yet. However, just being able to see the preview to the side of where I'm writing is a huge improvement in my mind. Then, if you'll notice in the bottom lefthand of the image you'll see a publishing option. Big plus for me, too. It autosaves as you go, but you do have the option of saving a template, so you don't have to constantly put, say, the steemitblogger logo at the bottom of your post every time you do it.
It does markdown, so that's similar to Steemit. I'm not fond of the font choices, but that's okay. I'm not fond of the Steemit fonts either, though I do prefer them now.
The one thing that is better in Steemit than Steempeak on the create post page is the way you get images into your post. You can't drag and drop. You have to upload or link the image. In Steemit, if you have the image on your desktop, you can just select it and drag it over to the window and drop it where you want it. Steempeak won't do that.
re: rage quitting
I can't think of a time I've ever actually done it, but there have been plenty of times where I would have if not for one reason or another. Usually having a chance to just cool down is the primary factor. I have my initial kneejerk reactions like most will, and then if I'm able to let things sit (which is mostly the case), I start seeing things from different perspectives, and while I still might not like it, I manage to proceed in a more deliberate manner.
That's not to say I've never quit things, even after calming down. But it's been due to more rational thought than fiery emotion. Emotion is great for quite a few things, but it needs to be tempered by logic to make the best decisions.
wow sir Glen, your comment about quit raging makes it sound like you were a real hot head! lol.
That was when you were younger though right? Not that you don't get upset now but you don't go crazy or anything right? like with fiery emotions. Because you seem so even keel and logical.
I got on steempeak and in fact I'm on it right now to see if it's better. One little way that it's better is in replying to comments it doesn't have that stupid gif button in the way like steemit. that thing always irritates me. But I'll experiment with it.
I'd say there's still times I get upset, but I rarely do it in a public forum like STEEM. If anything, I'll sit and fume for a while until I get over it, which doesn't seem to be too long. I do try to be even keel and logical because way too many people are the opposite. Emotions generally make poor decisions if left to themselves.
yes sir that's exactly what a logical, even keel person would say! lol, Mr. Spock! Just think what would happen if the whole world would adapt your method of dealing with anger!
A lot less bloodshed!
Oh, speaking of bloodshed...that job that I told you my wife applied for, the county jailer job? Well actually it's a Corrections Officer.
But anyway she got it! lol. we were kinda shocked because when she went in for the interview the other people who were before her came out and they were these big, tall young guys so we figured that made sense for the position.
In the interview it was the 2 two people who run the whole jail system and they took turns asking her questions, it was a man and a woman, the woman actually is head of the entire system.
So it was a tough interview over an hour long with some really hard questions but by the time it was over they were all visiting and chatting like old friends. which my wife knew was unusual but we figured that even though she got along with them well and they ended up having a great conversation, that for the actual position they may have other requirements than what a petite, older lady could meet.
The application they gave her to complete was a monster, we've never seen anything like it, about 50 pages, extensive background not just on her but her entire family.
Well, she takes the application back to them in person and talks to the Administrator who she talked to the first time she went in and they really got along, this time the lady told her that the bosses REALLY, REALLY liked Mrs. J and that she had the job!
lol. so the bosses told the administrator to fast-track her application so she could start! Ha! So she's actually going to be a jailer at least for awhile. It's totally wild but she had been praying about it and felt that God really wanted her to do this and then it was such a confirmation the way it all went down.
The administrator said that moral is really low there but it won't be for much longer when she gets there.
Well, congratulations to Mrs. J. I think. :)
If she really feels she should do it, and particularly that God is prompting her so, I would say it's meant to be. I'm still trying to get my mind wrapped around it, and what you both plan to do with it, but hey, that just means it's a good thing I'm not involved.
re: if the whole world
No pressure there. I've often felt that if more people would just look at things based on their merits, we'd have a totally different world. Oh, well. Not going to happen. There's such a thing as last days or end of days for a reason.
It was a very similar day around here; actually found it remarkably easy to go do "other things" once hanging out on Discord had become rather boring.
Seems there IS life after Steemit. But I'm glad it's back up, today!
=^..^=
Hey, @curatorcat.
Yeah, there is definitely life without STEEM. Unfortunately, I don't earn anything watching Steemworld or wondering what everyone else is doing. I guess I do benefit from eating lunch and doing the laundry. Someone else really should be taking out the garbage, though. I don't feel I participate nearly as much in the creation of garbage as I end up making sure the trash is taken out. :)
Yardwork. Around here it's yardwork. Everything outside grows out of control, regardless of whether we look at it, or not. Like the lawn. You mow it, and three days later you have to mow it again... what sorcery is this?
=^..^=
No.10
Every day for me :p
No.8
since the exchange holds everyones funds they don't need to transfer it around when people buy and sell to each other on it. That's how that works.
P.s I'm back up running again 😁
That's good news!
Yeah, I figured the money had to be somewhere. Blocktrades wasn't even allowing STEEM transactions, though. Had both STEEM and SBD under maintenance. :)
re: No. 10
Well, you've got a good reason to be there on a regular basis as part of your gig with steemcleaners. In my case, the time spent off STEEM is time I'm not able to earn STEEM, so I tend to limit my Discord time.
I ran through a lot of those things myself. I didn't watch the price of Steem as I stopped worrying about what it was doing. I'm still not in a position to buy, so I don't watch. Same with silver unless I'm doing a spot check.
I'm glad it's all up and running so you don't have to keep watching SteemWorld cycle the error messages as it seeks new nodes from which to grab data. Now you can get back to writing.
Yep, as fun as that was. My admiration for that app has gone up threefold at least, and it was already pretty high. :)
That's good to know you were doing a lot of what I was doing. I figured eating lunch and such would be a community favorite thing to do. Wasn't sure about laundry and playing with a grandchild, but now I know. :)