Last night, we made some back-end upgrades to our network of sites to make sure that they can keep pace with all the amazing growth we are seeing in our online communities.  Unfortunately, as many of you experienced, that upgrade came with some problems this morning, and we want to thank those of you who alerted us to them. 

The most noticeable problem was pages either taking a really long time to load or not coming up at all.  Our software development team worked to roll back and fix some of the changes to correct to the glitches.

However, we need to keep testing this upgrade for a few days in order to fine-tune the improvements.  So, from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. tomorrow, Friday, Feb. 15, and at the same time on Tuesday, Feb. 19 and Wednesday, Feb. 20, please be on the lookout for any problems or glitches and let us know if and when you experience them.

We thank you for your patience, and for your help in making our sites better, faster, and stronger.

Attention night owls:  due to a software upgrade, the Bakomatic-powered parts of Bakersfield.com--namely, the interactive parts you contribute to every night--will be inaccessible tonight from 11 p.m. to at least 1 a.m.

[So fair warning, Nancy--don't start writing something at 10:58 and then hit "post" at 11:01 and tell me I didn't warn you first when it disappears!  Heh.]

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Head Bakotopian Matt Munoz has let me know that local actor and acting teacher Jim Padgett, who posted here as "bballdadmc," passed away on Tuesday, January 29.  He was 45.

Bballdadmc was a member of this online community at least since the move to Bakomatic, and was a semiregular blogger and commenter last spring and summer.  Though he hadn't been an active participant recently, his profile page shows that he was visiting here as recently as two weeks ago.

Nick Belardes has a remembrance of Padgett up on Bakotopia.  Our thoughts go out to his family and friends.