Manhattan goes dark, and so might Daily Kos

Manhattan has lost power, in what looks like near apocalyptic conditions. All our thoughts are with those in the storm's wake, including my brother and sister-in-law in Hoboken.

Our data center is also in Manhattan, wouldn't you know it, and has been running on generators pretty much all evening. They had enough fuel for 2-3 days. Except that the diesel storage and fuel pumps are in a now-flooded basement and are no longer operable. The data center is also evacuating all staff from their building, because it is apparently hell over there. I feel for them, having to leave their building in these conditions,

What that means for the rest of us is that the generators have about five hours of fuel left in them and then poof. The data center, and this site, will go dark. That's at about 1 a.m. PT.

But that's the worst-case scenario. The tech team has been working furiously to rebuild the site at an alternate location (in fact, they started last Friday), and they seem to be making good progress. These sorts of things are governed by Murphy's Law, so the transition may not be perfectly smooth. But if you're seeing this post after 1-3 a.m., we should be in the clear.

Here's the thing, given the emergency last-minute nature of this transition, the new home doesn't have hardware as powerful as what we have now. Beggars can't be choosers, so we're going to have to strip down some site functionality to make it work. Things like archives will be taken down. We'll only have two weeks worth of data live. The tech team will have to decide what else has to go to make this work.

Obviously, the fate of this site pales in comparison to what people in the middle of the storm have to deal with. Our challenges are nothing like theirs. But we'll do our best to stay up.