AWS outage
Monday, October 20th, 2025 10:11 amDW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.
Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.
Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.
Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.
Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.
vignettes
Sunday, October 19th, 2025 11:07 amThis week's prompt is:
knee 🦵
Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.
knee 🦵
Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.
bother that blasted bird
Monday, October 13th, 2025 09:43 pmSo I put in a bird just to stall things.
Then it began flying about and staying just out of the heroine's range.
I think I may have to define that range much better. grumble
Then it began flying about and staying just out of the heroine's range.
I think I may have to define that range much better. grumble
vignettes
Sunday, October 12th, 2025 11:23 amThis week's prompt is:
wary 🤨
Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.
wary 🤨
Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.
nailing down the journey
Thursday, October 9th, 2025 11:35 pmThe heroine sits around and thinks, and the writer sits around and thinks about whether there should be more obstacles between her and the meeting with the love interest. The terrible toad was one, and now -- perhaps a bird? I could make a bird a real nuisance and different from the toad.
The dread bird.
The dread bird.
Sanders' High School Reader
Thursday, October 9th, 2025 11:33 pmSanders' High School Reader by Charles Walton Sanders
The final reading program with more elocution exercises. The standards by which the choices were made are laid out in the preface.
So again the interesting thing to the modern reader is probably the choices. Scientific, religious, political, historical -- poems, speeches, essays --
The religious is sometimes generically theistic, sometimes Christian, sometimes specifically Protestant (in a passage where it is explicitly stated that the contemplative vocation is non-existent).
The final reading program with more elocution exercises. The standards by which the choices were made are laid out in the preface.
So again the interesting thing to the modern reader is probably the choices. Scientific, religious, political, historical -- poems, speeches, essays --
The religious is sometimes generically theistic, sometimes Christian, sometimes specifically Protestant (in a passage where it is explicitly stated that the contemplative vocation is non-existent).

