As you likely know our site was down for a few hours yesterday. OK, it was a few hours more than a few hours, but who is counting, really? Well, us, for one - and our loyal customers, for another.

What went wrong? If I were William Shatner (or John Lithgow, if you prefer) I would tell you that gremlins climbed into our server and wreaked havoc with the digital guts that hold the site together. If I were Fab Morvan or Rob Pilatus (of Milli Vanilli) we could blame it on the rain. But those are stupid explanations.

The real truth regarding how our website was suddenly updated with ten units of every item we’ve ever sold in the history of our company (possibly a slight exaggeration, but we will never know) is this…

‘I dunno.’

And that’s right from the mouth of our extremely talented IT guy, Tommy Ready.  Yeah, that’s right folks; we don’t know what the hell happened. All we know for certain is that it’s not our fault. Honest! Nobody but Sykes, who’s on vacation right now and out of the country, would dare to tangle up the backside of the website in such a way as it evidently tangled itself.

Our best guess is that one of the hundreds of queries that run behind the scenes of our site somehow went awry and changed the count of every item we’ve had in stock.  One of the many joys of working with complex technology is the way in which it sometimes seems to take on a personality, and intelligence all its own - at least to those of us who don't understand it. And, granted, that intelligence does tend to come off as a malevolent one... particularly to those of us who don't understand it. Fortunately, Tommy, who understands well the intricacies of technology, won't rest until every server log file has been scanned for clues as to what might have happened. Whether this results in him gently asking the system to tell him about its mother, or he gives it what Eric has referred to as ‘brisk wall-to-wall therapy’, we have full faith that Tommy will ensure that it behaves in a more socially acceptable manner in the future.

So we took the site down and set to work putting all the pieces back together again. It wasn’t fun for us and we know it wasn’t fun for you. In fact, it was kind of embarrassing.

We’re good now, though. The site’s back up and we’re monitoring our inventory very carefully. If you have any questions or concerns about an order you might have placed with us while we were down, please give us a call.

We’d like to apologize for any inconvenience that we may have caused anybody during this hiccup. And thanks for your continued patience throughout. You guys are the best.