We suffered a nine-hour system outage today -- without a doubt the hardest day we've ever had in August. Our systems are back online now -- new subscribers can make purchases, and existing subscribers can log in. If you prefer to phone, we will have a representative answer calls tonight at 206-527-4444 until at least 11:00 p.m. Eastern time (Wednesday, August 23).

Wow, what a terrible day.

Our website was down from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m. Eastern time. Our credit card processing came back up at 8:30 p.m. (If you tried to order tonight between 7:00 and 8:30 p.m. Eastern and your card was not processed, then you should try your order again. We will also communicate with you by e-mail.)

We feel terrible about this. If you purchased a subscription but could not access it in time for a Wednesday night draft, then please contact our customer service department and we will issue a refund. If you prefer, you may reach us by phone at 206-527-4444. We will be open this week and next from 9:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. Eastern time.

Here's what happened today:

CenturyLink plans to upgrade DSL service in our area on Friday. They warned us that if the firmware on our DSL modem was out of date, then we would lose service for several days while a new modem was shipped to us. CenturyLink instructed us to take the old modem offline and check the firmware. (It was already up to date - ARGH!).

FAKE SCARY ERROR MESSAGES. When we brought the modem back online, it wasn't recognized by our firewall. This caused some customers to receive scary messages like this:

Your connection is not private Attackers might be trying to steal your information from fantasyindex.com (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards).

That was patently ridiculous and untrue. Subscribers couldn't even connect to our website, let alone enter passwords or credit card numbers.

We worked with CenturyLink technical for several hours nonstop. Finally in exasperation we sent an employee to the store to purchase a new DSL modem. (So much for the scare tactic about being down for several days while we waited for a modem to be shipped to us!) We brought the new modem online and got it configured properly. A tech was dispatched to our site to get our firewall connected to the DSL modem, and our website came back online just after 7:00 p.m. Eastern time. At that point our web server began serving pages again, and subscribers could access their products.

Next our merchant bankcard processor required us to reconfigure our account to accept credit card payments routed through the new firewall-modem combination. We completed that task at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, and now we are operating normally.

We are terribly sorry that you were inconvenienced by this outage. It's not a good look for us. We are flattered and pleased that customers have come to rely on us, and that subscribers expect to call up their custom rankings five minutes before their drafts begin. We do not take that responsibility lightly.

Next steps: Our setup has run relatively smoothly for many years. We do not want to risk any further disruption during the 2017-18 NFL season. But as soon as the season is over, we will move to a cloud-based solution.

If you have questions about today's outage that aren't answered in this post, then please e-mail me directly and I will respond quickly and to the best of my knowledge.

We are grateful for your patience and good humor through this really difficult day.

Now get out there and draft great teams!

-Bruce Taylor