There were two separate issues.

1. For about an hour this morning, there was an internal network issue at the data center at the hosting company that resulted in a loss of connection from the virtual private server (VPS) and the MySQL server. Without access to the database WordPress doesn’t work. That was from roughly 8:30 – 9:30 AM MDT.
2. There have periodically been issues for the last couple of months due to memory allotment overages on the shared hosting plan, so I upgraded to a VPS. Since they charge per MB of RAM I’ve been experimenting with different memory levels so as to keep the costs to a level where I won’t feel the need to start soliciting donations. I will likely continue to fine tune memory levels since memory saturation (using all available memory) is very bad and having to needlessly pay for memory we don’t need is also bad. I was toying with different web server applications immediately before the outage, so it looks like it didn’t go through until the outage was resolved and I was at work. Oops. I learned my lesson. Save stuff like that for days off or as soon as I get home from work.

I will be monitoring resource usage closely for the rest of the evening and before and after work the next two days, but then I’ll be headed to southern Oregon for my brother’s wedding, which by the way I’m officiating.