What's up at welding web?

[Rustyiron]

Thanks!
I worked on both of those floating bridges. Little over 4-years. That picture is the LVM replacement bridge. I was the rigging foreman setting the anchors. The square anchors weighed 300-tons. We stacked them 5-high on the lake bottom. The wing anchors, jetted 18-feet in to the lake bottom. They weighed 90-tons.

Now those are some big "strings" on that lifting block!

I'm guessing your didn't swim down to the bottom to release them being the rigging foreman. :laughing:

 

[rhunt]

Currently still down - Friday the 16th @ 0624. Bob

 

[MinnesotaDaveChalmers]

Head weldingweb moderator posted this today:

Got it from a insider..
ALL WEBSITES ASSOCIATED WITH PENTON MEDIA HAVE CRASHED.
MAIN HOST SERVER IS DOWN..
DATA RECOVERY IS IN PROGRESS BUT...

IT DONT LOOK GOOD.

ALL INFO WILL BE PASSED ON AS I GET IT.

THAT IS ALL

 

[Shield Arc]

Now those are some big "strings" on that lifting block!
I'm guessing your didn't swim down to the bottom to release them being the rigging foreman. :laughing:

They are 4-inch in diameter. The black frame weighted 25-tons. Our engineers said we needed that weight so the wire rope would wrap correctly on the winch drum, coming back up empty. It was 24-parts. The load block weighed 5-tons. We had hydraulic cylinders on the black frame, we controlled the cylinders from the deck of the derrick.
The State DOT gave our surveyor the wrong coordinates! We set a lot of the anchors in the wrong place! Had to have divers go down and reconnect the picking frame, so we could put the anchors in the correct place.

 

[Rustyiron]

The scale of.... everything fascinates me in heavy const. I'd love to have a (few) cups of coffee (or beers) with you and your photo album & stories.

 

[Shield Arc]

I've worked on some very interesting projects. I worked in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, and Nevada. In the local Navy ship yards we did some interesting projects, but no cameras allowed in the Navy shipyards. Same as in the Boeing plants.

 

[California]

Head weldingweb moderator posted this today:

Got it from a insider..
ALL WEBSITES ASSOCIATED WITH PENTON MEDIA HAVE CRASHED.
MAIN HOST SERVER IS DOWN..
DATA RECOVERY IS IN PROGRESS BUT...

IT DONT LOOK GOOD.

ALL INFO WILL BE PASSED ON AS I GET IT.

THAT IS ALL

Wow. If it's that bad then the corporation as a whole may have taken a severe body blow. Isn't Penton largely a media, advertising, specialist? If they've lost all their current ads, creative work in progress, and even worse, all orders, transactions, even client lists, they're screwed.

Taking this long to get just the forums back up is a bad sign. It says they lacked a workable backup strategy.

I hope their financial databases - sales, accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, and also employee roster, retirement contributions, internal phone/email directory, etc - were better supported. Lose all that and you no longer have a business.


Since WW isn't up I'll post a longwinded rant here for everyone's entertainment.


I saw a simple example of a mess like Penton's, first hand. I phoned my optometrist when I hadn't received notice my glasses were ready. He answered the phone himself and said his secretary stole his records to conceal theft so calls like mine were his only way to rebuild his customer list. He would have to rebuild his financial records from scratch. He also said please pay for the glasses I ordered. I told him sorry, I have my Mastercard statement showing I paid the day of the exam so if they aren't on order then please order them for me. He did but I'm sure he ate the cost. Poor guy. Sitting alone in his office day after day waiting for the phone to ring ...

And -

As an Internal Auditor for the state DOT we mostly verified contractors' Change Order claims on big projects by visiting the contractors and going through their payroll and accounts payable records. We seldom found a problem but this kept them honest, they couldn't bill for imaginary costs. Another responsibility - what I initially had been hired for - was to examine the State's internal processes such as adequate documentation of project records, and including appraising whether adequate backup processes were in place to recover from a mess like Penton has. For DOT in an earthquake region, disaster recovery including restoring communication and project documents - in a time of crisis - is critically important to get things working again. Running all those backups for years seems pointless ... until you need to rebuild all your records from your backup.

 

[dstig1]

Oooo. That's gonna hurt bigtime. Still down as of now...

 

[MinnesotaDaveChalmers]

** update **
I've been told progress is being made on the website issues

 

[pgk]

Good to hear Dave, I guess I never realized how much I logged onto weldingweb for info. or just to see what was happening..


Pete

 

[newbury]

A little off topic but

<snip>For DOT in an earthquake region, disaster recovery including restoring communication and project documents - in a time of crisis - is critically important to get things working again. Running all those backups for years seems pointless ... until you need to rebuild all your records from your backup.

And part of that is knowing how to check and restore the backup.
The lab where I worked for the Army didn't routinely backup the email system, that was "handled" by another lab in Mississippi. For a period there we had several instances of peoples computers crashing and they would lose a lot of important emails they had saved to their local system. We'd contact the "backup lab" only to find out that -
Yes, they backed it up
But they never checked the backups and didn't know how to restore.
I think someone got reassigned.

 

[MinnesotaDaveChalmers]

Good to hear Dave, I guess I never realized how much I logged onto weldingweb for info. or just to see what was happening..

Pete

I used it often too.
Many times it was faster to find info or pictures for class there since I knew what threads they were in or which member posted it.

 

[California]

Good to hear Dave, I guess I never realized how much I logged onto weldingweb for info. or just to see what was happening.

Me too. My welding is mainly farm repairs, and fabrication of implements I need. Reading WW is the closest I'll ever get to working next to a pro who answers my 'how do I do this' questions. Following the various threads and going to links provided, is very helpful and I miss it.

Plus its simply good entertainment to see the breadth of viewpoints on there, like here at TBN.

 

[California]

A week now.

Here's an article saying some of the broad multimedia companies like Penton - or the conglomerate that owns it - are slimming down activities that are less profitable than they had hoped. I hope that isn't the case here.

A google search on 'Penton Ownership' brings up a complex picture. I didn't dig into it. (and Penton owns Welding Web). Vox appears to be a similar multimedia conglomerate.

Layoffs at Vox

 

[Mark @ Everlast]

WW has been for sale in the past, but pretty sure it isn't anything like this on the most recent issue. I think they are still taking Everlast's ad money.

 

[Evan03]

I just recently found welding web and already i feel lost with out.
Duane and a few other members are incredible. Im literaly lost trouble shooting welding systems

 

[MinnesotaDaveChalmers]

**** New update ****

THIS JUST IN FROM FIX IT CENTRAL IN NEW YORK..

We have not forgotten about you. The IT team is literally piecing our sites back together one by one, and byte by byte, from the failed SAN array. It’s obviously a catastrophic issue.

 

[ishiboo]

A perfect case of why an intelligent backup plan needs to be implemented and followed. The issues here basically say things were not done correctly for a production site. At all.

Hope they get stuff fixed ASAP though!

 

[California]

Fire everyone from the VP-Technology on down. This failure is like those recent Navy ship crashes.

An illustration that their salaries were money thrown away, useless.


Added: Dave, thanks for that update. It's good to hear the site will be back up eventually and not shut down forever.

 

[CAVEMANN]

I always lived by the theory that if you only have one backup then it's not backed up.