Update to the update: I’ve successfully re-imported all of the blog comments that were posted before this morning’s technical difficulties — 107,175 in all — into the “wp_comments” table in my blog’s MySQL database. (With today’s comments, we’re at 107,258 and counting — though that includes several thousand yet-to-be-deleted spams.) And so far, so good — the blog appears to be running at normal speed again. We’ll have to see if that continues, or if the problem recurs.

Next up, I intend to do what I was going to do last night, before this random crisis hit: upgrade from WordPress 1.5.2 to WordPress 2.1. Among other things, that should allow me to get this working, which means I should be able to create functional “categories” that are really a conglomeration of other categories, such as the long-awaited “non-sports” page. Stay tuned.

It is now possible to comment again, but all previous comments are currently unavailable.

More technical explanation: restoring my most recent backup failed to solve the problem, so now I’ve created a new, blank version of the “wp_comments” table, and it seems to be working fine. The old comments are still archived, they’re just currently inaccessible because they’re in the “wp_comments_old” table. I’m now guessing the structure of the table (as opposed to its data) was corrupted, so I’m going to try just importing the old data, without the structure. Stay tuned.

P.S. I don’t think my problems have anything to do with the global attack on the Internet.

UPDATE: Permalinks, archives, etc. are now fixed, too. As it turns out, that was actually an unrelated problem with my .htaccess file.

UPDATE, 4:13 PM: Okay, I just re-imported all 107,052 comments that were in the database as of 4:00 AM Tuesday. Let’s see what happens. If the blog manages to remain stable, then I’ll try to get yesterday’s comments back in there.

For some reason, the MySQL back-end of my blog is suddenly running very, very, very, very slow. I have no idea why, and I can’t seem to fix it. *sigh*

The homepage should load fine (because it’s actually a static HTML page that’s updated once a minute), but comments, permalinks, etc. may be effectively broken. I’ll try to fix it ASAP, but after several hours working on this problem, I’m really at a loss.

UPDATE: The problem seems to be isolated to the “wp_comments” table of the blog’s MySQL database. So I’ve temporarily renamed that table, thus breaking comments on the blog — but allowing the blog to function otherwise (aside from a bunch of ugly error messages). Now I just have to figure out what’s wrong with wp_comments, so I can restore it. In the mean time, however, comments are offline; I apologize for the inconvenience.

UPDATE 2: I’ve been going back and forth with WestHost tech support on this. Here is my latest message, which provides a pretty good summary of what I know (or think I know) at this point:

[T]his is NOT a simple efficiency issue. My site has long had some moderate performance issues due to the size of the database and the inefficiency of some of the WordPress queries, but this is of a whole different magnitude. It’s been basically offline all day (here’s my traffic chart) because MySQL is crippled. This happened very suddenly: everything was fine, and then last night around 9pm or 10pm, it all went to hell, for no apparent reason.

The problems appear to be isolated to the “wp_comments” table in the “wp” database. All the slow queries involved that table. I have renamed that table to “wp_comments_old,” thus effectively breaking comments on my blog — and now the blog is working fine, except of course for the error messages saying “Table ‘wp.wp_comments’ doesn’t exist” and the fact that comments don’t work. But the site is loading at normal speed (or a bit faster), and not crashing a few minutes after each VPS reboot, as it was before.

So, now the question is, what’s wrong with “wp_comments,” and how do we fix it? It’s a large table — over 100,000 rows — but that alone can’t be the culprit, because it was large yesterday too, and the day before, and the day before that, but it wasn’t crashing the site. It was a little bit slow, but not overwhelmingly so. As I said, this problem started very suddenly. So I suspect some form of data corruption or… I don’t know… what could cause a MySQL table to suddenly go from normal speed to slow as molasses? Any ideas?

I have to go to school, but when I get a chance (probably starting in 90 minutes or so), I’ll try to restore the most recent backed up version of wp_comments from before this problem started. Maybe that’ll fix things and perhaps shed light on the problem.

If anyone has any suggestions (including possible answers to the question “what could cause a MySQL table to suddenly go from normal speed to slow as molasses?”), please e-mail me at bloy [at] nd.edu. Thanks!

P.S. “After the jump” links also aren’t working, for some reason.

P.P.S. Er, I guess all permalinks, pages, etc. are broken too. So basically only the homepage is working. Gah.

I’m playing around with the blog a bit, so the appearance may change dramatically (and then change back again), and/or the blog may occasionally stop working entirely, over the next couple of hours. Apologies for any inconvenience. I’d advise copying & savings any comments before you post them, in case they get lost.

As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve added a link to LoyCam in my left sidebar. Check out the icicles!

Holy crap! I just discovered that the majority of the posts which I thought were lost forever when my website crashed back in February 2005 are on the Internet Archive. (See also here; full list of archived versions of my site here.) WOOHOO!!

My blog’s SiteMeter counter received its 2 millionth unique hit at 4:12:34 AM EST this morning, from a Cox user in Atlanta who found me by searching for Chrissy Popadics.

As I explained when I got my 1 millionth hit in October 2005, the count dates back to a somewhat arbitrary date, July 11, 2003, when I started using SiteMeter. (I’ve been blogging since April 2002.) Still, it’s a cool, even if arguably meaningless, milestone. :)

It’s appopriate that the milestone visitor was looking for my Ian & Chrissy post, since the ridiculous surge of people searching for the newly engaged Boise State cheerleader caused the 2,000,000-hit milestone to occur a week or so faster than I expected. Searches for Chrissy account for the vast majority of my traffic at the moment, and 18 hours after breaking 2 million, I’m already above 2,015,000, thanks to 18,115 hits today and counting — my biggest non-Katrina-related traffic day ever.

Anyway, in light of all this attention to the lovely future Mrs. Johnson, I’ve finally bowed to the inevitable and created a “Babes, Boobs & Sex” category. :) I went back and added a bunch of old stuff to the category, so there are 55 posts in there now, and counting (as I find more than fit).

I’m getting more than a thousand hits per hour right now, the vast majority of them finding this post directly from searches for “chrissy popadics,” the Boise State cheerleader who is now Ian Johnson’s fiancee. Insane! At this rate, I’ll get my 2 millionth hit in the next few hours.

As noted earlier, I’m #1 on Yahoo for that particular search. This is by far the biggest traffic boost I’ve ever gotten from a particular search-engine trend (as opposed to a link from another website or a mention on TV).

UPDATE: The future Mr. and Mrs. Johnson are the top “movers” among search terms on Yahoo, so I guess it’s not surprising that I’m getting such a ridiculous amount of traffic from being the #1 site for Chrissy’s name on Yahoo. But still, wow. 9,926 hits yesterday. That’s my seventh-biggest non-Katrina-related traffic day ever… and all because of a bunch of search-engine hits! Remarkable.

A lot of people are searching for Chrissy Popadics (a.k.a. Boise State hero Ian Johnson’s fiancee), and I’m #1 on Yahoo for that search. Overall, searches for Ian & Chrissy are accounting for more than 25% of my traffic at the moment. Heh.

In a long-overdue move, I’ve created a blog category specifically for posts about Joe Lieberman and the U.S. Senate race in Connecticut.

Actually, it’s not limited to the Senate race; it contains 177 posts (on 12 pages) going all the way back to August 2003, and including my endorsement of Joe for president, my first-ever reference to “Joe-mentum,” and lots more from the 2004 presidential race… plus everything from these eventful past few months.

The Lieberman category is a subcategory of “Connecticut & Newington,” rather than of “Elections & Politics (U.S.)” or “Election 2006” (you can see the full category structure here), so all posts about the current Senate race will actually appear in at least two different categories: the “Election 2006” category and the “Joe Lieberman” category.

Now maybe I can actually get Blog of Joe to blogroll me. :)

Full disclosure: the posts below did not actually appear on the blog with their timestamps say they appeared. I was having technical difficulties which have just now been resolved.

Anyway… 7-3? Are you kidding me?!? Would someone who has been watching this game please tell me what the hell is going on with the Irish? This is Stanford they’re playing!! A four-point lead, at home, halfway through the second quarter, is ridiculous! And from what I’m hearing (now watching the game on TV in between the wedding and the reception), Stanford would be ahead, if not for a dropped pass! Forget #12; the Irish are not a Top 25 team if this is all they can manage. Sheesh.

Out in L.A., they’re just getting underway in the USC-UW game.

UPDATE, 5:02 PM: Now it’s 24-3 Irish in the third quarter. Still not impressed. Where’s my 50 points? :) And USC leads 17-10 at halftime.

UPDATE, 5:07 PM: Now 24-10 Irish early in the fourth quarter. It’s a two-possession game in the fourth quarter. Against Stanford. Lame.

Wikipedia’s article on the Bush Push has been nominated for deletion, which seems totally absurd to me. The good news is, there appears to be a strong consensus in favor of keeping it.

In unrelated Wikipedia news, the article about me hasn’t been vandalized in nearly two weeks. I feel almost hurt!

As you can see at right, I’ve made some much-needed changes to the blogroll sidebar, adding (finally!) a “friends & family” section — which replaces the old “Brendansphere” frame — and greatly expanding the sports blogroll, with separate sections for USC and Notre Dame sports bloggers. I also added a section called “other blog regulars” for people I don’t know in real life, and who don’t fit into any of the other categories, but who frequent my blog and have blogs of their own. I’m sure I missed some people, in that section and elsewhere, so please, leave suggestions in comments for sites I should add!

By the way… a few blogs that used to be in the Brendansphere were left off the “friends & family” list, simply because they haven’t been updated in a long time, or are updated very infrequently. Nothing personal — I’m just trying to keep the blogroll relatively fresh.

Welcome, InstaPundit readers!

A few items of potential interest:

• My thoughts on the anniversary, and a request for your thoughts & memories

• 9/11/01 video clips, minute-by-minute

• My 9/11 anthem & audio montage (also below)
 
source file

UPDATE, 5:00 PM: I’m heading over to the Grotto now, for Notre Dame’s 9/11 anniversary memorial mass. I might liveblog a picture or two from there. More later.

P.S. FYI, this “index911.html” is my blog’s main index just for today, as my homepage is currently given over to a 9/11 memorial. If you want to bookmark something, please bookmark http://www.brendanloy.com/ — not this page. Thanks!

As you can see, I’ve uploaded a special homepage for this somber fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 atrocity. The page features a photo that I took from Staten Island on the second anniversary of 9/11 — one of my favorite photos that I’ve ever taken — as well as the famous Ground Zero photo by Thomas Franklin of the Bergen Record. It also features two audio clips, Bruce Springsteen’s My City of Ruin (as performed live at the “America: A Tribute to Heroes” concert) and my 9/11 audio montage and anthem for the war on terror.

I’ll have much more later in the day, including video clips of the various key events of 9/11, which will post at the exact times when those events happened, and a reminiscence of my own 9/11 experience. I may also liveblog from the 5:15pm mass at the Grotto. (I don’t think I will wake up early enough to attend the 7am ROTC ceremony at the reflecting pool.) But for now, I’ll just post those two audio clips I mentioned, for posterity’s sake:

source file
My City of Ruin by Bruce Springsteen

My 9/11 anthem (downloadable here)

Incidentally, a reminder: CNN.com’s “Pipeline” will broadcast a continuous stream, starting at 8:30 AM, showing CNN’s live coverage of 9/11/01 as it happened, in real time.