I've Worked Every Thanksgiving of My Life. Why Can't the Lindens?

[Prokofy Neva]

I totally get it that the Lindens work hard and are overstretched but then so are a lot of us.

But...every RL job I've had has always required me to work on Thanksgiving because it's the nature of my jobs.

So why can't the Lindens? To disappear for 2 days AND leave us with broken sims just isn't right.

I have an island that no one can teleport to, because it says "Routed to wrong region." It's been like that all day and the bot at customer service can only leave a ticket, like me.

Gosh, we know what that is about -- the cloud. 

Things like this often feel deliberate to me, so while I realize there are legions of fanboyz who want to say how wonderful the Lindens are and how wonderful their sim is working, I'm posting this notice to see if anyone else has "Routed to wrong region".

No, I can't reset the sim obviously because -- wait for it! -- I can't even TP to that sim.

Just a skeletal staff, you know? For dire emergencies. Or maybe take one day, but be present the other?

It's great that Walmart's etc now give workers a holiday. But people at TV stations and radio stations don't turn off their media, so something like this should have at least some bare maintenance on holidays.

 

Edited November 26, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[Sassy Kenin]

I'll add a theme song to help highlight the the disappointment of the lindens in the words you wrote.

 

[Drakonadrgora Darkfold]

28 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I totally get it that the Lindens work hard and are overstretched but then so are a lot of us.

But...every RL job I've had has always required me to work on Thanksgiving because it's the nature of my jobs.

So why can't the Lindens? To disappear for 2 days AND leave us with broken sims just isn't right.

I have an island that no one can teleport to, because it says "Routed to wrong region." It's been like that all day and the bot at customer service can only leave a ticket, like me.

Gosh, we know what that is about -- the cloud. 

Things like this often feel deliberate to me, so while I realize there are legions of fanboyz who want to say how wonderful the Lindens are and how wonderful their sim is working, I'm posting this notice to see if anyone else has "Routed to wrong region".

No, I can't reset the sim obviously because -- wait for it! -- I can't even TP to that sim.

Just a skeletal staff, you know? For dire emergencies. Or maybe take one day, but be present the other?

It's great that Walmart's etc now give workers a holiday. But people at TV stations and radio stations don't turn off their media, so something like this should have at least some bare maintenance on holidays.

 

Tough if you don't like it. Their company their rules. Not for you or anyone to decide what is fair or not since you're not in control and never will be.

A lot of companies completely shut down for the holidays. Does not matter if you think is fair or right or not. Just because you had to work the holidays because of the job you chose to work at.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

not everybody has to be or wants to be you prok,  good companies, Nice companies give their people the day off and the day after.   the company I work for has given me wed to monday off this year,  because they are nice to us,  during this pandemic, they would rather have good employee's than employee's turning and burning and causing massive turn over.   times have changed. 

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

No, I can't reset the sim obviously because -- wait for it! -- I can't even TP to that sim.

So .... why can't you restart it from your dashboard?   Open Land Manager >>> My Regions and click on the region you want to deal with.  Then click Restart.

[Prokofy Neva]

It doesn't work.

(The point of going to a sim is to see if it has collisions, etc. or some problem scripted object which is not visible just from the web dashboard -- which BTW I've found sometimes doesn't work whereas inworld it does.)

Edited November 27, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

45 minutes ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

not everybody has to be or wants to be you prok,  good companies, Nice companies give their people the day off and the day after.   the company I work for has given me wed to monday off this year,  because they are nice to us,  during this pandemic, they would rather have good employee's than employee's turning and burning and causing massive turn over.   times have changed. 

Again: while I realize there are legions of fanboyz who want to say how wonderful the Lindens are and how wonderful their sim is working, I'm posting this notice to see if anyone else has "Routed to wrong region".

All kinds of companies rotate staff -- they can have staff rest, people can put in to work the holidays because they pay double time, or they give vacation days or other bonuses.

The idea that it's "about me" is silly, or about me wishing to "control a country". What I'm citing are normal expectations in the industry. Media doesn't take time off; Google isn't closed for two days; etc.

[Drakonadrgora Darkfold]

5 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Again: while I realize there are legions of fanboyz who want to say how wonderful the Lindens are and how wonderful their sim is working, I'm posting this notice to see if anyone else has "Routed to wrong region".

All kinds of companies rotate staff -- they can have staff rest, people can put in to work the holidays because they pay double time, or they give vacation days or other bonuses.

The idea that it's "about me" is silly, or about me wishing to "control a country". What I'm citing are normal expectations in the industry. Media doesn't take time off; Google isn't closed for two days; etc.

It doesn't matter what media or Google does or doesn't do..  there are no normal expectations.. every company is different. No two companies have to be how you think they should ever.

[Paul Hexem]

Speaking as someone that rarely agrees with Prokofy, I agree with Prokofy.

If you're offering a 24/7 service, you'd better have someone available 24/7. I don't get to pay less that month if the region is down for a day, they shouldn't be taking the day off.

[Qie Niangao]

It's just a business decision by the Lab.

And I think it's a very bad business decision. Worrisome, in fact.

It's also very bad if the dashboard Restart doesn't work, but even if the self-serve tools were flawless there should still be a way, worst case, for Prokofy to get a human on the line from somewhere on the planet.

(Incidentally, "routed to wrong region" has a whiff of Uplift about it, don't ya think? I'm thinking that whenever somebody gets back to the office, they're going to have a very bad day.)

[Prokofy Neva]

31 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

It's just a business decision by the Lab.

And I think it's a very bad business decision. Worrisome, in fact.

It's also very bad if the dashboard Restart doesn't work, but even if the self-serve tools were flawless there should still be a way, worst case, for Prokofy to get a human on the line from somewhere on the planet.

(Incidentally, "routed to wrong region" has a whiff of Uplift about it, don't ya think? I'm thinking that whenever somebody gets back to the office, they're going to have a very bad day.)

Well as I said in the OP:

I have an island that no one can teleport to, because it says "Routed to wrong region." It's been like that all day and the bot at customer service can only leave a ticket, like me.

Gosh, we know what that is about -- the cloud.

I've seen issues before where you can't teleport to the region. But one cure for that is to relog and type in that sim as the place you log into -- but that doesn't work, either. I would say most of the time the web page can work but I always try to go in person to see if there is a collider, etc. If I'm the only one that has this, well, I dunno, draw your own conclusions. If this is common we would see others complaining. I could see during the few minutes -- hours? -- that a sim is "transitioning" it might give that error, but for 10 hours?

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

It doesn't work.

Interesting.  It worked just fine for me an hour ago, and I tried it again just now with no problem.

[Qie Niangao]

32 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

If this is common we would see others complaining. I could see during the few minutes -- hours? -- that a sim is "transitioning" it might give that error, but for 10 hours?

Wild guess, maybe a one-off configuration error that somehow also breaks the Dashboard Restart for that particular region. (Not that this would help, even if correct.)

Kinda surprising it started today. They must have planned to complete all maintenance changes well before a holiday break.

Where's that rubber chicken gonna roost?

[Prokofy Neva]

58 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Interesting.  It worked just fine for me an hour ago, and I tried it again just now with no problem.

It doesn't work FOR MY SIM THAT IS BROKEN derp. It works on my homestead just fine.

You're usually better than this, Rolig.

[Prokofy Neva]

46 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Wild guess, maybe a one-off configuration error that somehow also breaks the Dashboard Restart for that particular region. (Not that this would help, even if correct.)

Kinda surprising it started today. They must have planned to complete all maintenance changes well before a holiday break.

Where's that rubber chicken gonna roost?

What happens is the restart just keeps looping once started but never actually achieves anything and the error remains.

[Nalates Urriah]

The Lindens have talked about holiday staffing in their various Office-Hour/User-Group meetings. There is always some number of operations people on duty. I don't know of anyway to reach operations people directly. We usually talk to Support Staff and they pass on what needs to be passed to operations. Otherwise the operation people watch the stats to decide if something has gone wrong. Which means whatever it is has to be significant and affect a significant number of people to ne noticed.

The engineers say they avoid making significant changes before a holiday because they don't want to be called back in to fix a big mess. This implies that if the problem is significant enough, more staff is called in to help operations.

As with any bureaucracy, it is often difficult to get their attention. Big government... big corporations... big any organization is difficult for individuals to work with. It is why small government and small businesses are preferred by individuals that have to deal with them. 

In this case I suspect the problem is too small to show in the stats. Complaints to all the usual offices, now empty, are cuing up unanswered. Are the Lindens taking Friday off? Is this a four-day holiday? 

 

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

You're usually better than this, Rolig.

Thank you.

[Alwin Alcott]

it's weird that a company with so many users... and so many bugs/interuptions these days, simply cuts the customerlines for a holiday ..or weekend.. having a small team available didn't prevent huge problems during weekends/holidays in the past, in special the response times were awfull.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Wait, you work on Thanksgiving?

Problem solved.

[Qie Niangao]

11 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I have an island that no one can teleport to, because it says "Routed to wrong region." It's been like that all day and the bot at customer service can only leave a ticket, like me.

To ask the obvious: One way or the other, somebody did leave a "Region Down" ticket, right?

(on the off-chance that would get into a higher priority queue that might actually be staffed)

[preciousgurl]

Our sim is down as well and has been for over 24 hours now with the same routing issue. No help, no support and no solutions. The sim has 54k in traffic and being down until Monday will kill us. Meanwhile, we are still paying rent on days with no service. No staff on Thanksgiving? ok, i can understand that. No staff for 4 days for things that have been screwed up BY LL? I just dont get it and it just goes to show how much they care about the users of the platform. 

Edited November 27, 2020 by preciousgurl

[Prokofy Neva]

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

To ask the obvious: One way or the other, somebody did leave a "Region Down" ticket, right?

(on the off-chance that would get into a higher priority queue that might actually be staffed)

Yes of course, both on Live Chat, which isn't really live now, but often doesn't really work when it says it will leave you a ticket (it does, but it gets ignored) AND I filed a separate ticket of my own. Of course. This isn't my first rodeo, Qie.

[Prokofy Neva]

32 minutes ago, preciousgurl said:

Our sim is down as well and has been for over 24 hours now with the same routing issue. No help, no support and no solutions. The sim has 54k in traffic and being down until Monday will kill us. Meanwhile, we are still paying rent on days with no service. No staff on Thanksgiving? ok, i can understand that. No staff for 4 days for things that have been screwed up BY LL? I just dont get it and it just goes to show how much they care about the users of the platform. 

I'm glad to hear I'm not alone only in the sense that I'm glad to hear that this is not a devious act of Linden sabotage directed at me personally.

I only have 20-odd customers on that sim and their friends, and I've immediately given them free rentals elsewhere for 2 days or as long as it takes. But of course it's not the same.

Even so, I can't imagine having a sim with that much traffic and having your sim down on the weekend with the most sales of the year. It's madness! Nothing short of compensation of tier for these 2 days or more is in order.

[Prokofy Neva]

10 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

The Lindens have talked about holiday staffing in their various Office-Hour/User-Group meetings. There is always some number of operations people on duty. I don't know of anyway to reach operations people directly. We usually talk to Support Staff and they pass on what needs to be passed to operations. Otherwise the operation people watch the stats to decide if something has gone wrong. Which means whatever it is has to be significant and affect a significant number of people to ne noticed.

The engineers say they avoid making significant changes before a holiday because they don't want to be called back in to fix a big mess. This implies that if the problem is significant enough, more staff is called in to help operations.

As with any bureaucracy, it is often difficult to get their attention. Big government... big corporations... big any organization is difficult for individuals to work with. It is why small government and small businesses are preferred by individuals that have to deal with them. 

In this case I suspect the problem is too small to show in the stats. Complaints to all the usual offices, now empty, are cuing up unanswered. Are the Lindens taking Friday off? Is this a four-day holiday? 

 

Yeah, we're the little guys, and we don't count like you do, Nalates, I'm full cogniscent of this reality.

I don't doubt that if your sims had this error they'd be fixed already. I do know how it works.

The operations people on duty do not look at support tickets. That's reasonable but you would think the bot's version of this ticket with the key words like "sim down" or "Routed to wrong  region" might get them to put down their Red Bulls and Ring Dings for a minute for a look-see.

Let me think now. On the one hand you admit LL is not a big bureaucracy and that's preferable but on the other hand if a small business is preferable because it's more responsive, that doesn't work. I know, because I'm a small business in SL and so I put down my pumpkin pie and came rushing in when I got a slew of IMs with the usual hate and venom assuming that I had done something deliberately -- had blocked people from their rentals because I thought they hadn't paid (a tactic discussed in another threat which frankly never occurred to me to do in 16 years of this work).

In that way, my tenants, largely non-computer related, are just like you on the forums in the tech world, because they always assume that it is "Prokofy's fault" on "Prokofy's land" and that "Prokofy has griefed them," rather than grasping that once again, it's about LL's software.

I immediately got on the problem and gave people alternative rentals. In RL, we're also working on Thanksgiving, as part of the vast gig economy supporting major media because they need it yesterday.

It's a two-day holiday and they may answer Saturday or may not.

 

Edited November 27, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

8 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

it's weird that a company with so many users... and so many bugs/interuptions these days, simply cuts the customerlines for a holiday ..or weekend.. having a small team available didn't prevent huge problems during weekends/holidays in the past, in special the response times were awfull.

I honestly don't mind if these people are overworked and underpaid and this is their way of saying F/U in a subtle way that most people won't notice. But I'd like them to be open about that, as you are, Alwin, then we know where we stand.