More than a few people have been in touch with me over the past week about a strange bug in the downtime system that was causing some activities to inexplicably stall. Just so everyone knows, I've been aware of it and working to squash it. I'd just rather work on it than stop to say, "Working on it," if that makes any sense. ;)
At any rate, I believe I'm isolated and eliminated the problem. Funny story, really. The cron script that runs every morning to credit downtime activities was reusing an important variable name in two places, which was causing the overall loop to end prematurely. Hence why some people's activities were doing just fine while other people's were frozen in time. Let me tell you; intermittent bugs can be head-scratchers. Somebody should fire the stupid programmer who did that. Oh, wait... :P
I'll check again tomorrow morning to make sure everything is running smoothly. Assuming it is, I'll put in some additional work to go back and credit the time that was lost.
"May time bend and memories of my failure fade. Time Warp!"
In case you just got a bunch of downtime completion emails, there's no need for concern. I just selectively advanced the downtime system to make up for the earlier bugs. Everyone who was affected should now be up to date. Please let me know if you notice any problems.
"You are technically correct. The best kind of correct!"
- Bureaucrat 1.0, Futurama
Well, it appears as if everything is running smoothly now. I'll work on selectively advancing stalled downtime activities this weekend.
"You are technically correct. The best kind of correct!"
- Bureaucrat 1.0, Futurama