Editors_Desk's blog

Hive bloggers: Unfortunately, we've had another outbreak of spam on the site and we've had to ratchet up our anti-spam controls. Please let me know if you experience any interference in trying to post. I hope the countermeasures will be in force only temporarily. Thanks for your understanding and patience.

Dan

Attention, all bloggers. We've had sporadic problems over the past 24 hours in which bloggers -- including several of us on The Bee staff -- have been temporarily blocked from posting. We apologize for any inconvenience that may have caused you.

We are working with our corporate folks to smooth out the problems.

Dan

If you're interested in discussing results from Tuesday's election, and have any questions of Bee reporters, click here at 11 a.m. to participate in our live, one-hour chat.

I've been deleting posts and comments and suspending accounts at a rapid clip this evening for multiple abuses of The Hive's guidelines for conduct.

Several users are on the verge of being relegated to a level of access that will require approval from Bee editors before their comments will appear on the site. And we can be maddeningly slow in granting such approval.

So if you want to take part in the discussion here on The Hive, hew to the guidelines.

Dan

I've seen Springsteen at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. I've attended the Oscars in Los Angeles. And now I can happily say I've been to the MAMAs in Modesto.

The Modesto Area Music Association's annual awards show was held last evening at The State Theatre, and it was a big deal. This was the 10th go-round for the awards, the brainchild of music fans and promoters Chris Murphy and Chris Ricci. They packed The State with a lively crowd and strong lineup of acts.

Bee Publisher Eric Johnston and I each were privileged to present awards at last night's show, and I'm already hoping for a return gig in 2010.In the meantime, if you like your music local and live, consider supporting the MAMA.

Dan

[UPDATE: The denial of service attack against McClatchy servers continues. Be aware that although we think we have The Hive in the clear, there still could be sporadic outages.]

We believe service has largely been restored on The Hive.

Many of you have been able to post over the past two days, but others - myself included - have been stymied.

The problems erupted Wednesday, when McClatchy Co. Web sites became the target of a malicious "denial of service" attack. In layman's term, it means thousands of barbarians are scaling the castle walls. To fight the attack, our corporate Internet team engaged in various counter maneuvers, one or some of which apparently affected The Hive.

This is a test.

This is a test.

This is yet another test.

Is the system working?