Many of you know that Podiobooks has had a serious system failure in the last few days. Evo shared the traffic logs with me and I don’t know if I’m proud or chagrinned to learn that one of the key contributors to the system meltdown was Owner’s Share. Starting with the release on Christmas Eve, the overall system load started climbing and peaked on 1/13 at something over 2x normal load.
Unfortunately, the system didn’t really have that much excess capacity and stuff started going bad.
There were some other releases during that time but visits to Owner’s Share constituted almost 15% of all web traffic for the period – and the page didn’t exist for half of the period covered.
I’ll be posting the episodes here until Podiobooks gets back up. It should be back by Friday and we’ll be in much better shape then. The net result is that the costs to podiobooks.com just doubled. Evo has put up an explanation on the front door of Podiobooks and if you can help out, the donations go straight to keeping the service free.
Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted out.
Finally shamed me into donating. *hangshead*
will they still be posted on itunes or does that go thruogh podiobooks.com
Thank you, Dr. Lowell, for helping us through this terrible outage by way of putting episodes here. Also, thank you for making a story so popular as to cause the outage in the first place. :)
Already donated, and proud to be one of the group that helped kill the server. :)
Congratulations on your success.
@josh – that goes thru podiobooks and but if you’re already subscribed thru itunes it might work out ok.
@robin – me too
I told you earlier today, it was your fault . But No-oh you wouldn’t listen. The lesson here is to never doubt the Jamming, as he is always right (sometimes) ;)
Any chance you can upload #18? That’s where I’m stuck at and I have to have my Ishmael fix.
@Raygan If you go onto iTunes you can get up through episode 19. I doubt new episodes will be up, but the old ones are there.
correction: they look available on iTunes but they don’t download.
Couldn’t get to podiobooks.com to donate, but community.podiobooks.com has a donate button for the new server. Congrats on crashing the system. :)
Sent off my donation. Guess I should have done what I usually do and waited for the whole thing to be available before downloading. But, I was on my 15th time through the series and just couldn’t wait any longer for the next installment of this fantastic series. I’ve even gone and bought Quarter Share and Half Share in ebook format and plan to buy the rest when the become available. I’d buy them all in hard bounded if my apartment wasn’t already so limited on available space.
Suggestion… To avoid you having similar trouble with your site… Create a set time to post the episodes. So as not to have everyone checking for the next one repeatedly. And recommend that they download it rather than stream in order to reduce the bandwidth load.
All the iTunes subscriptions that have their origins on Podiobooks are down.
Sounds like Podiobooks needs 2 servers, not one. One for content serving, and one for front-end work…
Or two servers – one for Nate’s Books, and one for everyone else!
I think one of the main contributors was the change of names in the podcasts cause my catcher started re-downloading most of my books. Anyway congrats on being popular enough to cause a server crash :) thats one claim to fame i hope to get to with my fledgling content management system. oh and thands for the tales. I’m not surprised you can make a living on writing cause its great
I’m shamed to admit it but i’ve just discovered the series and i’m hooked already. Brilliant.
I’m at the end of Half Share and can’t get Full Share. Only got episode 1.
Any other way of getting at least episodes 2 – 7 to tide me over till Poidbooks is back online ?
@Gogs – yeah – I need to rebuild my master feed so it by-passes Podiobooks. I’ll do that this morning.
@waterfoul – that really didn’t matter because the media servers didn’t die. It was doubling the traffic on the parent site that did it.
@shawn – the *solution* there is really to insist that everybody subscribe via RSS. That way the feed readers download the files and nobody has to visit the site. But really? I don’t think that was the problem.
@Michael – yea – Evo’s working on getting those reconnected ASAP
@kurt – they don’t use torrent because podcasts are generally not delivered in One Big Chunk, but get delivered via RSS a few megs at a time.
Thanxs Nate. Doing a great job. The books are amazing.
I’ll donate to Podiobooks once I can actually get into the website. Can’t even get into the main door.
Wow3 I’m not surprised since the share series dominates all of Podiobooks Charts But One.. Can’t wait to see how this ends(both Ish’s nd podiobooks Fate).
@gogs – try http://podiobooks.com/maint.html or visit http://community.podiobooks.com
@norman – yeah. I’m not sure why 3k people a day were hammering the site looking at the title page. doesn’t make sense, but the host is getting a MAJOR kick in the slats in terms of heft.
@jamming – yes. i know. it still doesn’t seem possible, but looking at the traffic logs, it’s pretty conclusive. It doesn’t help that they’ve been working on the same box since about 2006 and they’ve grown a lot in the last year.
Hiya all:-) just wondering if anyone knows how i can get episode 17,18 lol:-) podio broke when i was on episode 8 of owners share:-) but managed to keep pressing f5 while i was doing university work and every hour plus it works for a few mins:-) but this has now stopped working:-( Amazinf series though;-) going back through all of them once the server is back up;-) so anyone know how i can listen to the 2 episodes i am so desperate to listen to:-)
I’ve added a page under “Get the Books†with piped feeds for all the titles, including Owner’s Share up to episode 21. You should be able to click on them and grab whatever you need for now.
iTunes is just a pass-thru for Podiobooks. It doesn’t store podcasts redundantly, and I believe its just acting as a broker for the RSS feed. What we’ve done is the equivalent of a denial-of-service attack, where even pinging the site looking for new episodes hurts. I’ve just unsubscribed my iTunes feeds for anything I get from Podiobooks. Suggest others do the same — whether its iTunes or some other auto-feed. Sending money to Podiobooks is good. We should also try to stop causing them problems.
Thank you for the info! I worried.
Maybe Evo will ask for help more often and more publicly, instead of keeping a stiff upper lip and joking about beer money.
Will be donating directly when I can get to Podiobooks.
Annie, I’m not sure unsubscribing to everything Podiobooks would do anything but make Podiobooks feel unloved.
The meltdown was inevitable and chance dictated when. It’s the traditional indicator for upgrading the system.
Donate at http://community.podiobooks.com .. there’s a button right on the top of the page or at http://podiobooks.com/maint.html
Great episode as always, Nate!! Can’t help but worry that there’s not enough chapters left to hear all the stories I want to hear from Ish’s universe. My addiction certainly won’t stop when Owner’s Share is complete…
Thanks for all the hard work!
Don’t unsubscribe forever … just long enough to give them a break.
So we may have hit the refresh button looking for more Owner’s share a few times our selves but after reading you post we laughed… and laughed some more and then gave podiobooks some money.
@nate I know when I go to Podiobooks.com I always check the Title page since it lists what’s been released for the day. with 8 episodes left people just got anxious hungering for more.
@Annie. Why unsubscribe if the new server will be in place by Friday?
I discovered Quarter Share a few days ago, and downloaded the entire book at one shot then. I have been listening to some 3-4 episodes a day, sitting up till 1 A.M at times, even though I have to go to work the next day :) As you have probably figured out, I *loved* your book. I finished it today, and tried to keep up with the addiction by subscribing to the others as well, only to find that podiobooks is down :(
Thanks a ton for providing an alternate mechanism for getting my fix :)
@Jason — Perhaps I’m being overly cautious, but … every time you do an iTunes refresh, the Podiobooks server is pinged at least once for every audiobook you’re subscribed to. Multiple refreshes and multiple pings add up. It’ll also probably hit them hard Friday when they come back up, because all of us adicted fans will immediately and simultaneously start downloading all of the espisodes we’ve missed (especially if we have automated refreshes). This could be a significant stress. Having said that, I don’t know what the upgraded capacity is going to be. They may be able to easily handle us all. And I may be overreacting — I would just hate to contribute to crashing them a second time and just as they’re coming back on-line.
And I forgot the follow-up re resubscribing … basically, just pace yourself and try to spread it out a little bit. If you’re subscribed to something that you know you’re not going to have to time to listen to for few days then wait for a few days to download it. And I think Nate said in an ealier posting that having the espisode dowloaded is better for Podiobooks than listening online — so clearly subscriptions and feeds are the better way to go as we move forward. And again, perhaps I’m being overly cautious, but I think Podiobooks provides a great service and I know this has been a tought time for them.
Wow, a donation button at the ning communtity! http://community.podiobooks.com
a place I didn’t think to look.
I’m not smart like all of you “masters of the serververse”. The problem I have with the personal feeds at podiobooks is that the most they check to release episodes is once a day. I have to go in and release it manually when it is posted. In order to ascertain that info I go the front page of podiobooks.com and refresh it until a new episode shows up. I think others apply this tactic as well.
What was I thinking? Nobody can unsubscribe at Podiobooks, they aren’t up!
Unsubscribing on iTunes has merit, the updating tends to be automatic. Keeping the hits down when they power up can’t be a bad idea. Probably it will be ready to go with no problems, but I can’t help thinking “power outage” when it really does help to unplug everything possible until the system is stable again.
Has any one thought that maybe Mr Lowell is working on taking over the FDO’s highly coveted spot as evil manipulator and destroyer of universes. I mean he has successsfully managed to crash podiobooks. Just thought we could add a little fuel to the fire and anoy Mr. Sigler. Anyone else think that Mr. Lowell should take overas master manipulator. All I have to say is Wow lovingthe book and thanks for the last four years of adventure Mr. Lowell
I can already hear the manic laughter… Muahahahahahahaaaaa!
Having written this – I have the utmost respect for anyone who is able to generate enough traffic to seriously create problems for a well established site such as podiobooks.com.
I bow to the master!
Hi Nate,
Here’s a question that’s been bugging me. Shares on Ish’s new ship.
Assuming Ish gets both the 20% owners share, and the 10% captains share since he’s filling both roles, according to the spacers handbook on your site, the other 70% goes to the crew shares.
What’s left (I think) is 1 quarter share crew (Mallony), 2 half share crew (Arioni and Red), and one double share crew (the chief).
So for any given run the 70% that’s left is distributed there are a total of 3.25 shares…
43.1% Chief
5.4% Malloney
10.75% Arioni
10.75% Red
So the chief gets more of the profit than Ish? What am I missing?
@Stefan: There are 5.25 shares to be paid out. Besides the 10% off the top the captain also receives 2 shares.
@Stefan
Ish gets 20% owner’s + 10% captain’s + a double share as an office.
Also, I thought Arioni was an Able Spacer and got a full share.
So my math gives me
Ish – 54.3%
Chief – 24.3%
Arioni – 12.2% Red – 6.1% and Malloney 3.0%
I thought Mr. Harring was hired as a 1/4 share (ordinary spacer??) even though he is an Able Spacer. As I recall from ep. 20 or 21 how he handled shore leave while in Ten Volt was going to be a test to see if he was promoted.
I’m guessing he failed.
Spacer Apprentice is the Quarter Share.
I also believe that Arrione is rated at a Full Share as an Able Spacer.
Thank you Nate, for all you do! I’m glad that this problem is being handled. I sent $25 to Podiobooks. I’m sure they will take care of it. You know they will! Just see if they don’t!
I expect the math works something along these lines:
Money in from shipment.
Ship costs (including wear and tear + maintenance fund) are immediately deducted first.
Owners’s share = 20% of total after costs
Captain’s share = 10% of total after costs
Remaining shares are split amongst the remaining 70% divided by 5.75 shares.
Double Share (Ish & Gramps)
Full Share (Arioni)
Half Share (Red)
Quarter Share (Mallone)
Or ~12.17% per share.
Ish gets 30% + ~24.24% for 54.24%
Gramps only gets ~24.24%
Keep in mind that ish does not own all of the owners share since he has partners…
Looks like somebody forgot that Miss Arioni’s deal with Ish Puts her at full share.
Oops missed somebody else catching that. :D
There are 10 Owner Shares in the company with 6 of them currently going to Ish. So does the 20% of total get split 10 ways?
I don’t know if the other owner’s get a share as there shares are owned by the corporation which get those shares. The backers of the corporation’s share is at a different level. The ship owner’s shares would go to the corporation and used to cover corporation expenses, then any profits left after that is distributed. It is all accounting issue but the corporation moneies will be used by the Corporate Executive Officer, subject to audits by the Chief Financial Officer from reports from the ships filed at least once a stanyar (year).