The Snow Tire FAQ Forums are back up, well sort of.

After several months, the Snow Tire FAQ Forums are back up, except for one small thing: At this point, all posts (and users) made between March 2008 and September 2009 have been lost. I am looking for them, but I am not too hopeful.

So what happened?

A couple of things. The first was the sudden lost of the web host. After a bit of scrambling, I was able to get the site re-hosted, but I decided not to bring up the Forums immediately. Instead, I decided to to drop back to the original FAQ.

Before I got around to bringing up the Forums, the very unexpected happened: the group I was working in was disbanded, and I lost my job. One would think that that would give me a lot of time the site back up. Well, it did, but there was just one little snag: Since the Snow Tire FAQ has banner ads, any day I work on the site (even answering e-mails or enabling users), I have put in a day of work, so I can't claim unemployment for that day. [That includes the day I am writing this.] It doesn't matter that my income from the site (before expenses) is typically less than $200 a year.

So that explains where the site has been, and why it has taken so long for the forum to get back up. So what about the missing year of posts?

Well, err, you see, computers are funny things. When they work, they work. When they decided to only back up 1/2 of a database, they only do 1/2. The half that was missed included all of the posts and user accounts for the site. That should be no problem, just pull an old back-up. After looking, I did find one, but it is a bit old, from March of 2008. It could be worse, the Snow Tire FAQ Forums have been going since 2004.... still....

- John

Good news. It looks like I found some of the posts. There are still some missing, but it is a start.

- John

jwernerny wrote (View Post): › Good news. It looks like I found some of the posts. There are still some missing, but it is a start. - John

Well it's good to have you back. I had to buy snow tires (Altimax Artics) with nobody to share with.

Did you at least get "real" income back also I hope?

Good to see the Snowtires FAQ back again . Sorry to hear of your troubles, I hope you've found some new income too.
As it happens (partly as a result of previous data losses) I had configured my profile to give me a daily digest. Hopefully of all the posts have been sent although I think it does truncate long posts. I still have all of these from 16 Apr 2008 to now. I'm not sure how I could send you them all nor how you could "inject" them back into the database. If you wish I can look into downloading them off Yahoo as a single usable file.

Now that winter is past, I find myself once again able to work on The Snow Tire FAQ as I am once again employed. Now, if there was only snow.... Oh wait, it is Rochester, NY and it has been known to happen...

- John

Well it's good to see another post at least. I kept checking to see if anybody else posted.

I can say that my new Altimax Arctics are excellent in the snow and Continental CrossContact LX's (H-rated) are probably the worst tires I ever had for winter. Great in summer but a safety hazard in cold/snow. Poor traction to the point that my wife parked her 4WD Sequoia and took my front wheel drive Sonata with Nokian WR G2's instead.