The Rubber Band Broke!

So when I logged off SL just now, my Lindens balance was L$-1, I was unable to make any teleports at all, and my messages to group chat failed to arrive without even the courtesy of the "The lagmonster has eaten your witticism" message.... In short, LL have managed to break something badly and the grid is massively unstable.

Well, it happens.  It is annoying when it does, though! - and am I being petty in resenting the phrasing of some of the results?  The first thing I noticed amiss was when I tried to drop some loose change into a donations kiosk, and got the L$-1 thing and the message "You failed to pay [name] n Lindens".  Um, no, I thought, I didn't fail, it wasn't my fault, it was the server's.  Similarly, the message on the Grid Status page tells us that "We are currently undergoing unscheduled maintenance".  Well, now, we know this means something has gone badly wrong, because this is the only time "unscheduled maintenance" happens - nobody goes around at LL (or any other Internet company) saying things like "Hmm, I've got nothing much on this afternoon, I think I will do some maintenance on the servers, just for the heck of it!"  No, "unscheduled maintenance" means "something got broke and we are scrambling to fix it".  So why not say as much?  Really, LL, you could do that, and none of us would think less of you.  If the rubber band powering the serves has broken, just say so.

Petty?  Well, probably, yeah.  It's really not even fair to nag LL for not reassuring their customers in more detail and with more friendliness, because, after all, if things are going wrong, I don't want people coming out and reassuring me, so much as I want them staying in and fixing them.  Simple priorities, after all....

But I'm narked.  And I can't reasonably take it out on LL, because in this fallen world stuff does go wrong, and all they can do is fix it.  So, I have to take my narked-ness (memo to self: don't typo that particular word) and do the only thing I can, which is vent about it on this blog.  Which means all my readers have to suffer through it as well.  You're welcome!

ETA:  And this is sort of what I mean about the reassuring vs. fixing thing... a couple of hours later, someone has spent the time and trouble to put on the grid status page a reassurin message that maintenance is now completed.  But SL itself is just giving me a message saying that logins are currently disabled.  Really, saying a problem is fixed when it isn't.... why not just fix it instead?