Secondlife Maintenance the Residents Perspective

One of the strangest things about something like secondlife which is an international entity is you can come in and say "Hey, everythings going ok right now, lag is at a minimum, asset server is actually giving me my notecards when requested, all is honky dory in the land of prims".

But unbeknownst to another person in a different time zone, earlier in the day people were singing another tune "Its all not working, I open inventory...oh let me rephrase, I press the button that opens inventory and would have got more response from an unconscious brick. 

A drop down menu notice arrived inworld which was as welcomed as a tooth fairy hungry for enamel.

"We will be performing *scheduled maintenance Monday April 30, 2012* beginning at 6:00am until approximately 9:00am. Please save all builds and refrain from rezzing no copy objects or making inworld L$ transactions. Some residents may experience delays logging inworld. Please follow this blog for any updated information."

The translation in world goes like this.

Resident 1 "Ahhh, now I know why my inventory doesn't work".
Resident 2 "what happened to my no copy object, Its just disappeared, can't find it in inventory anywhere"
Resident 1 "because its dead Jim, it never made it, it cease to be, gone, floating around in some server in the sky"

Resident 3 "Ok maybe if I go to another sim it will all sort it self out....." <teleports out>
Resident 1 "He didn't just teleport out during Maintenance, did he!!!"
Resident 2 "I think so".

Resident 3 has logged off (stuck between sims and now is throwing things at his PC screen)

Resident 1 "Both him and the prim are both dead"
Resident 4 "Hey, people are saying no one can get in, its reported login's have been suspended".
Resident 2 "what does that mean?".
Resident 4 "Means what I said, login's have been suspended, didn't they teach you anything in Orientation Island"
Resident 1 "Basically, no one can get logged into Secondlife right now and we can't leave the sim we are in, we are stuck here until they sort that out".
Resident 2 "Just heard from a friend on the net using a system that functions"
Resident 1 "what do they call that system, everything else?"
Resident 2 "They call it the internet, anyway, he's saying the website is down too".
Resident 1 "This is now serious, we may have to consider getting up out of our chairs and leaving the keyboard".
Resident 4 "How long will the repairs take"
Resident 1 "The time it takes the engineer to come back from his coffee break probably".
Resident 4 "And what happens if I just Teleport out to some other sim"
Resident 1 "Same thing which happened to Resident 3 and his prim, the virtual equivalent of a deer trying to out stare a monster truck on a highway".

Trying to access Secondlife.com earlier

So the moral of the story is, when secondlife is doing server maintenance, buy nothing, rezz nothing, go no where and hope the SL sky doesn't fall down on you, then pray to whatever linden you can think of to make the naughty server behave.