Surviving gMail 502 outages

I use mint to see live stats for the traffic to skfox.com and Google Analytics for the long term statistics. I’ve seen a resurgence today of traffic to my two blog posts (in March and again in May) about my gMail account being down. The most common for me is a “Temporary Error (502)” and it would seem to be happening to other users too. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it. On the short side, most of the outages only last 30 minutes or so with the longest being 3.5 hours. It can be terribly frustrating, but there are a few things you can do to alleviate the pain.

  • Use your email client like Outlook or Thunderbird to download your messages to your local machine with POP3 while keeping your gmail account unchanged. That way, even if gMail is inaccessible, you can get to your old email for reference. Of course, you have to do this once your account is up and running again.
  • Visit the gMail Google group to at the least find others in your boat and get the latest updates.
  • Check the Google Apps Status Page
  • Use Gmail Offline with Google Gears

Some users have reported success getting to their mail during outages by using any number of alternative links to gmail. Your mileage may vary, but here they are:

No dragon boat racing this year

For the last two years I’ve been a rower in the Dragonboat races during the Salem World Beat Festival. I got a memo yesterday that the Dragonauts wouldn’t be participating this year due to time constraints. I won’t miss the cold water, sore muscles, and sunburn; but I will miss the chance to compete with my co-workers in this very fast paced and fun sport. Here’s to hoping for next year.

What’s old is new again

I’m getting old

There, I said it. Deep breath, then exhale slowly. I keep telling myself it is going to be okay ala “Gross Pointe Blank” style.

Recently it seems that more and more of the things from my childhood are being brought back around again. Some of them arguably should have stayed there, but that is the nature of recycling themes I suppose.

Just last night I was flipping through channels trying to find something to watch as I drifted off to sleep. Not that I’m getting a lot of sleep, I have a 2 month old baby, and my wife is getting even less then I am. Brinley is getting another ear infection that seems to cause her the most discomfort at 1am and 4am respectively. I needed more coffee this morning then I got. Anyways, I digress. AMC is the last channel in our line up, and so I flipped towards it if only to cycle back around to the beginning of the channel lineup. I quickly recognized Ally Sheedy, as she was (most notably for me), in the Short Circuit movies. My mind quickly made the jump to…OMG…WarGames is on. As most nerds should, at least those that want to keep their nerd card, I immediately convinced myself that sleep was overrated and that I had to watch this movie. I wasn’t the only one. Watching WarGames brought back a flood of memories about massive floppies, green screens, and BBS. Pure. Nerd. Nirvana. Sadly, I passed out before the end.

After I completed my 6 hours of cat napping, I got the kids to the baby sitters and made my way to work. Nelson and Terry reminded listeners that New Kids on the Block were coming back to town in November. Holy crap, here we go again with the childhood memories. I still have one of my New Kids cassettes buried in a box somewhere. Hangin’ Tough was my elementary school anthem album. The last time that I saw the tape, I could barely read the writing on it. Granted, it was next to my Achy Breaky Heart cassette, and God only knows what kind of damage that can do to something. Admittedly, I tried to get tickets, but being the 10th caller can be impossible no matter how strong your resurrected dreams of seeing them live is. Wait, aren’t they like 40ish now? Crazy.

Other notable recent events that keep taking me back…

  • The ST:TNG movie “First Contact” was on recently too. I watched eagerly with the kids who are still to young to appreciate it obviously, but I effectively put my wife to sleep trying to explain what was going on. Good for her, she needed the sleep.
  • Stand by me is going to be on AMC soon too. The teaser ads noted some trivia about the movie.
    For example:

    • Keifer Sutherland bullied the boys on and off camera
    • Wil Wheaton was a faster runner in real life then River Phoenix.
    • It took 27 takes for some of the laughing scenes to be just right.

    Maybe I should ping Wil and see if any of that is true. I knew one of the extras many years ago. He rode in the car when they were breaking the mail boxes. That was his claim to fame, mine was knowing him, too bad I can’t remember his name now. I can pick him out of the joy riders though.

  • ThinkGeek is selling a replica flux capacitor. Note to wife: It is the must have Fathers Day gift.

I would have thought that the new transformers movie (which was awesome) and the talk of a G.I. Joe film would have the same effect. While I watched those as a kid, they haven’t quite brought on that nostalgic feeling that the other things have.

What’s old is new again, but I’m only 25.

*sigh*