You may have noticed some of the Telegraph's Web sites were down for a time this afternoon. Actually 2 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. is more than 'a time' but let's not quibble.

The problem was due to an honest attempt by one of our hosting providers to upgrade some of the servers that host our blogs, forums, multimedia and other features. Along with "the check is in the mail," "we expect a short downtime" is quickly gaining cache as a lie for the ages.

The issue was compounded by the fact that along with upgrading the servers, they were also physically moved (somewhere in the Dallas TX area) across the hall apparently from one room to another. For reasons known only to internet geeks (yes I do know why) this also required a change in the actual IP address underlying our sites.

So - after a 5 hour blackout, we also needed to work with yet another vendor, this time the one hosting our Domain Name Servers, to change the IP addresses and update the domain names on 12 separate subdomains (forum.nashuatelegraph.com, blogs.nashuatelegraph.com etc.)

That update process, along with the propagation of the changes across the Internet transformed a "short downtime" into something currently approaching 7 hours.

Funny, I never really cared how my TV worked - i just knew it had an on switch.