What to do when launchpad is down?

Question

As I am writing this (Friday, November 8, 2013 at 9:59:18 PM EST) launchpad is down. Apparently there is a power failure (https://twitter.com/launchpadstatus/status/398980619880775680). I tried running sudo apt-get update on my Ubuntu install. However, I simply get stuck on this:

Ign http://ppa.launchpad.net precise InRelease  
100% [Waiting for headers]   

Being a Ubuntu newbie, I tried to point my sources.list file to a different source. I backed up the original sources.list and then deleted the entire file to start afresh. I then added the following lines to it:

deb http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu/ precise main 
deb-src http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu/ precise main 

I figured that since I have a different mirror, there would be no problem updating. I was wrong. I get stuck at the same place.

I have several questions:

1. Why do I need to hit launchpad? I do not reference it in my sources.list file at all. Is this something where the mirror redirects me to launchpad?
2. Is there a good article out there that I can read on how exactly this whole apt-get update thing works that will help me understand why it is hitting launchpad?
3. Is there any way to get my Ubuntu to update while launchpad is down?
4. Isn't there any redundancy for the launchpad servers?

Answer 1

for question: 1) you might have some other files referencing launchpad in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

2) https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGet/Howto

3) comment or remove all references to launchpad (probably check 1)