Hate to do it, but just some basics; Please acknowledge that all posts made to these forums express the views and opinions of the author and not the administrators, moderators or webmaster (except for posts by these people) and hence will not be held liable.
Please talk smack, we encourage healthy debate! BUT, You also must agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-oriented or any other material that may violate any applicable laws. You know the difference...
We hate spam as much as you do, but we also encourage advertisng by drivers, and teams, as well as other racing news and information websites. Feel free to place a link and/or banner in your signature or send your artwork/links to us for placement at adv@makinglaps.com.
Post anonymously or register, but only members will win random prizes periodically. We are pleased to have a great library of animated avatars, members may send a brief request of what they would like their avatar to be by emailing the bratmaster38@aol.com.
Now with all that out of the way.....Let's make some laps!
Some of you may have noticed that we have had some downtime lately, completely uncharacteristic of the MakingLaps.com Forum. Because these Message Boards are hosted independently of the website MakingLaps.com, you have been able to access the site, but not the forum. Please forgive us for the inconvenience and know that by the time I came home from work the past two days, the errors had been corrected. Because I have Fridays off, I was able to see the interruptions first hand, I immediately made sure that it was not an internal error, and then contacted Sparklit technical support. Below you will find (copied from my reply email from them), an explanation of the interruptions in service.
Whenever there are problems like this, I am made immediately aware of them from the OWR, who stays on top of me until they are corrected. He is my most unruly member! So just know that you don't have to contact me to make me aware, he expects everything to run smoothly and hassles me until it is! Needless to say, my day off was spent in front of the computer, much like a workday....whew!
There should be no more problems pertaining to this issue in the near future, and I do have to say that since we have had this company they have been 99.9% reliable in their stability. I know there are hosts out there that cannot say the same.
Although I would really love to stay with them, because of the recent relaibility issue, I may increase the time I had allotted myself to find a new Message Board and Host. One that will allow the hosting of photos, but be financially reasonable for us to continue to provide to our members without sponsorship.
Thanks for your understanding, and it is a relief to have it back up and running smoothly!
Keep MakingLaps Guys!
Hi Brat,
Our apologies for any inconvenience you may have experienced.
In order to continue to provide a good experience for our customers; due to very high growth in the past few months we have need to upgrade the ActiveBoard server cluster. We have been busy adding an additional 7 servers to the existing 17 servers. In order to accomplish this it was required that we move our Vancouver cluster to a new facility in Seattle. This move was carefully planned to avoid any downtime, however, due to unforeseen, and very unlikely catastrophic failures of our primary database server there were periods of downtime Thursday and Friday morning. This has been resolved and your forums should now be working without fail. We have taken steps to ensure that this does not occur in the future. Again, I apologize for the problem.
Best Regards, (name removed for security) Sparklit
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Whether you go to the track... or stay at home... Keep on Making Laps!
Webmaster@makinglaps.com
I should have posted this much sooner, but I have temporarily disabled the chat module of the site. This was mostly a unilateral, monetarily-related decision. I can do that....LOL! Again sorry for the delay in notification of the shutdown, but most of you understand why. If this has created any inconvenience, my sincere apologies.
Most of you know that this site, it's messageboard, and the chatroom, are completely privately funded, by OWR and yours truly. When I spoke with my chat host about continuing our contract, (with some exciting upgrades like a photo host where we plan to bring live photos via the great new cellphone/camera gadgets from the track into the chats, wow!) they told me that we could suspend the chatroom temporarlily during the "down season" and receive a reduced rate on the yearly charges. I couldn't actually turn their offer down as the chatroom tends to remain dormant during the off-season. It's like paying rent on a vacation home for one month when you only stay there for two weeks. Obviously, I chose to suspend the chatroom until March 2006. Hopefully, MakingLaps.com will host some Guest Driver Chats prior to the first race, so watch your inbox for news.
Bottom line for all of those loyal chatters on Friday nights,(as well as new members and guests who have joined us intermittently, or plan on joining us for the 2006 season):
MakingLaps.com will return with Live Chats beginning with the first race of the year. We plan on bringing Live Chats from the TIS Icebreaker and the Waterford Opener with instant news, weather reports, and podium finishes!
The 2006 season is shaping up to become one of the most exciting ever with new divisions, rookies, driver divisional changes, and etc...
We will let everyone know when we enable the chatroom for the 2006 season, so keep on MakingLaps and thank you everyone who helped support us during our first year and well into the second.
-- Edited by bratmaster at 11:43, 2006-01-28
__________________
Whether you go to the track... or stay at home... Keep on Making Laps!
Webmaster@makinglaps.com
