If there was ever such a thing as a figurative ‘perfect storm’, it happened here earlier this week. So I’ll get into that in a bit.

But first off, COMC wants to apologize for any issues on any accounts that had processing due dates of this past Monday, April 26. We are sincerely sorry for the confusion stemming from that incredibly hectic night.

Coby Stephen Lewison

Flash back to the previous day, when the ‘perfect storm’ was in its infancy stage. That’s when one of our primary reviewers, Brent Lewison, became a father for the third time as Coby Stephen Lewison was born.

Flash forward to Monday, when — wouldn’t you know it, with one of our key team members out, we had 20,248 cards scheduled to go live. That is the most cards we have ever had due on the same day in the history of the company.

To make things more interesting, Mondays are traditionally our busiest shipping days because of the backup from the weekend. This Monday was no different from normal accept it was our busiest shipping day in two weeks and second busiest shipping day in a month.

As if those circumstances weren’t problematic enough, with more that 20,000 cards due by midnight, we were also attempting to alter the image upload process. Keeping with the luck of the day, we somehow had a breakdown of our normal imaging process (which explains why some of your images didn’t trickle in until after deadline). The storm was in full effect at this point, for sure.

So, to recap, a baby was born (congrats Brent!), a company record was broken, the shipping team was maxed out, and the most unfortunate of computer issues occurred at the most inopportune time. Suffice to say, it was a 24 hours to remember (or forget, if you’re Jeff Maeda, Mark Boyer, or Jade Aspiras!). They were here until midnight trying to get as much stuff on the site as possible.

A little side note here is that COMC’s streak of consecutive days without missing a deadline was snapped at 144. Not quite Ripken- or Gehrig-esque, but we did deem it fairly impressive. Oh well, streaks are made to be broken. … We just wish it wouldn’t have come at the cost of some of you. Again, our apologies.