Some of you who have been around a while realize that my brain chemistry cycle makes the mood swings of Mike Tyson look minor.
Last week was the absolute bottom of my cycle. I behaved in a completely irrational way and did some very stupid things.
This week is a week of reflection and…well, recovery.
Ever had a day you want as a do over?
This is one.
This morning, I was briefly waylaid by a colleague who wanted me to look at a traceroute for her. Her question: “Is it safe to say that alter.net is not Verizon?”
Answer: Nope.
Alter.net begat UU.net begat MCI/Worldcom begat MCI begat Verizon.
And so goes the world…
Technorati Tags: alternet, uunet, worldcom, mci, verizon, backbones, providers
We have been in the Boston area for 2.5 years. In that time, ZenWife and the boys have not been home.
Frankly, the whole process of leaving the US and then getting back in scares the hell out of us. US immigration always goes out of their way to make us feel unwelcome.
But ZenWife told me last night that she has to go see her parents and let them see their grandbabies. So they are going to Victoria April 13-25.
It comes to a point where you have to say it’s a really nice cell, comfortable and all; but we are still in jail.
ZenWife and the boys are going to make a break for it.
Technorati Tags: Canada, Homeland Security, US immigration, visas, Victoria BC
I was reading online (Slashdot) that some videos from Iraq are censored in the US.
Yup, it’s true
So much for “Do no evil”.
Any wagers on where the first internment camp will be opened in the United States? Guantanomo Bay and Eastern European “democracies” are not included in this pool.
Technorati Tags: Google, Google Video, censor, censorship
UPDATE: Turns out this is a “feature” of the Google Video uploader. [here]
After the release of GrabPERF 2.0/2.01, I hit a wall. I haven’t been able to write a line of new code for over a month.
I know that the move to the new datacenter took a lot out of me, but I can usually snap out of it.
Any suggestions for snapping out of a funk?
So, In my ongoing effort to be more transparent about the data that I find in GrabPERF, I have produced an Excel spreadsheet of Jan 21 – Feb 18 2006 Aggregated Data.
Top Twenty – Performance
Top Twenty – Availability
I hope to post this data more frequently in the future.
Technorati Tags: GrabPERF, Web Performance, Performance Indicators, analytics, KPI
Some random GrabPERF link love from the Web.
Technorati hosting blog pageload timing service
Technorati Tags: GrabPERF
If anyone wants to know why I am proud of GrabPERF, this graph should give you a clue.
Every hour, an aggregated value is produced for every test url. Counting up the Geometric Mean aggregations on a daily basis, the growth line is pretty amazing.
Doing a rough calculation, the system has grown from testing 40 urls to testing 104 urls.
But the true scope of this growth can only be seen by looking at the number of data insertions into the raw data table on a daily basis.
Currently, with the four measurement agents (I turned down one of the Technorati agents today to relieve the strain on the database server), the system is handling nearly 300,000 data insertions a day. Not even in the same timezone with most of the major sites I measure, but when I think that this is a system that I designed, I am stunned. For an unfunded, not-for-profit, one-person effort, I am constant astounded by what this system can handle.
Other areas of note over the last year:
I know that I have said it many times in person, or online, but thank you all. Those of you who use and support GrabPERF are the ones who continue to motivate me to make this system better on a daily basis.
Keep those cards and letter coming.
Technorati Tags: GrabPERF, growth, Web Performance, analytics
I have noticed that GrabPERF has been responding increasingly more slowly as of late. Well, I believe that I have resolved the performance issue: I moved the Web component of GrabPERF off of the machine where the database is housed.
However, when I did this, I hit a really stupid issue that was the result of a legacy httpd.conf file directive.
As well as GrabPERF, I moved this blog, also a heavy HTTP | PHP user, onto the same Web server. Then, once I had seen the DNS propagate, I went to this blog….and got the GrabPERF homepage!
WTF!?!?!?!
Turns out that I was the victim of a REALLY dense mis-configuration, which I removed from the new Web server configuration file. I had buried the NameVirtualHosts directive in a VirtualHost container, which was not part of the new server’s config file.
Without the NameVirtualHosts directive set, the server happily responds to all incoming requests with the first VirtualHost it finds in the httpd.conf file, which in in this case was GrabPERF.
Once I solved this, and placed the NameVirtualHosts directive outside of all of the VirtualHost containers, the server began working perfectly.
I then went and retrofitted the secondary Web server.
If none of this makes sense, it’s ok. I am not feeling real lucid right now.
Technorati Tags: Apache, httpd.conf, virtual domains, web hosting