Rant #2,331: That Old Black Magic

Yes, I did oversleep pretty badly this morning.

I just passed out last night at about 9:20 p.m., and it was one of those sleeps where I kind of knew that I would be out for quite a while.

And I was. Out. Completely out.

So that is why this column is late today, so sorry if I missed your morning coffee.

I know my sleeping late threw my hundreds of thousands of daily readers for a loop, but well, it happens--even if it only threw my dozens of readers out of sync.

But let me tell you about an occurrence yesterday that did throw hundreds of millions of people completely out of sync.

Starting at about 11:30 a.m. and lasting until about 6:30 p.m., Facebook was off line.

There was no message to prepare Facebook users for such a thing to happen, but it just did.

Facebook said it was doing "regular maintenance," and it would be back up and running in a few minutes, but first off, they would never do such "maintenance" without some type of warning, and secondly, why in the middle of the workday like that--and it wasn't for minutes, it was for hours.

Yes, I do believe that Facebook was hacked. That is my own opinion, but why would such a thing happen if it wasn't?

You just don't shut down a social network as popular as Facebook--and Instagram, too, since they are related--without warning.

I could be entirely wrong, but Facebook and Instagram were shut down for a very valid reason, and the company can call it what it wants, and yes, it was "maintenance" in one regard--to weed out whatever and whoever hacked the network.

I first discovered this at my work lunch time, which begins at 12:30 p.m.

I tried to go onto Facebook as I usually do during lunch hour, and lo and behold, I could not get on.

A box came up that said they were doing "maintenance," and that they would be back up and running in a few minutes.

In the meantime, as I ate my lunch, I went onto a couple of other sites to bide my time, and intermittently went back to Facebook, but I continued to get the same message.

At one point, nearer to the end of my lunch time at 1:30 p.m., I actually got onto the site, but I really couldn't do much of anything, and my new messages were not updated.

I went on my phone, and I was able to get onto the site, but again, I could not do much of anything, and I had zero new messages.

So I went back to work, checking the site from time to time, but nothing. Zip. Zero. Nothing was happening, and that infernal box continued to come up to tell me that they were on "maintenance."

It was at this point that I figured that yes, they were doing "maintenance," but it was a bit more than just that.

Or at least I think it was.

I went through the rest of the workday, went home, my wife and son both said they could not get on, and then when I finally settled down into my evening activities, I decided to go on, and finally, I was able to get on around 6:30 p.m. or so.

I had a few new messages, but only a very few, dating from the previous hour, and that is, of course, because nobody could get onto the site.

I have not looked at Facebook today at all, but I am sure everything is back to normal.

Let me check as I write this ...

Yes, it is back to normal, although I had to log in, which is somewhat unusual from my home computer, but otherwise, I have plenty of new messages and everything is A-OK.

We don't really understand how important Facebook is to us until we lose it like we did. It is the perfect time waster for me, but it does allow me to put up what I consider to be interesting things, voice my opinions on matters large and small, and promote this blog.

It has also allowed me to attach to past friends, and that makes it very worthwhile to me.

So again, when you lose it, you finally realize what you have lost.

I wish Facebook well, and if it was shut down because of a hack, I hope that they found what the problem was and fixed it so it presumably will not happen again.