Taken from www.secondlife.com/status page 1 minute ago at 8:06 PM.
Second Life Offline for Database Maintenance or Update
In our continuing effort to improve your Second Life experience, we have taken Second Life temporarily offline for maintenance. This may also effect portions of our website. We are working to re-open our doors as quickly as possible and we appreciate your continued patience. For more details and further information on our system status, please visit our official blog at: blog.secondlife.com.
So before you reply to a player, make sure you know what you are talking about.
This IS frustrating. Been 10 minutes now I get the "despite our best efforts" message and cannot log back in anymore.
*EDIT*
At 8:10 PM the grid is back up and the status message is back to normal. However, it DID happen. Meh.
*EDIT2- in reply to your reply*
Then the status page lied! >_>