Archive for August, 2007
Dear Netflix. Please have somebody watch your DVDs before you send them to me.
I know you can report DVDs as damaged, but I don’t think many people are doing that. The last 3 DVD’s I’ve rented from you have skipped, froze, or just not played.
Normally I’d think that my DVD player is the problem, but I tried it in 3 different players AND my computer.
If I get another DVD that doesn’t play, I’ll be switching over to the blockbuster plan. At least that way, I’ll be able to go back to the store and get a different copy that actually works.
August 5th, 2007
Some of you may have noticed that dotcult.com, noslang.com and feedbutton.com have been down or acting very slowly for the last few days. I thought it was because of the amount of bandwith feedbutton was using (see post below this one) but it wasn’t. I kept running the numbers in my head and thought “wow, a dedicated server should be able to handle these 3 websites with no problems.” It turns out, I was right.
When my sites weren’t responding I went through the usual checklist. Here’s what I did and my thought process:
- Is it my internet connection? A quick visit to some proxy sites show that the site isn’t responding for them either.
- Is the server down? ping…pong it’s responding to that.. A quick look at the apache logs confirm 150 current requests being processed… it’s not down
- Is there a rogue process? su root; ps x …. Nope, everything looks normal here.
- Restart apache anyway. That didn’t seem to work.
- Restart the server for the hell of it… that didn’t work either
- Must be a network issue. tracrt www.dotcult.com … hop hop hop.. interesting….
After it reaches a GoDaddy IP address (ip.secureserver.net) the final 5 hops take 778ms. This tells me that the problem is somewhere within GoDaddy’s network. It also tells me that there’s nothing I can do to fix this problem. I’m stuck calling GoDaddy.
After about 30 seconds of hold time (impressive!) I’m met by a guy on the other end. Before I can tell him what the issue is, he explains to me that I have an unassisted server plan, and thus he can’t help me. He also told me that he can access my sites fine. I tried to explain to him that by accessing them locally from his network, he won’t experience it… to try a proxy site or external internet connection. He refuses.
30 minutes later, I finally got a manager on the phone. He gave me the same shtick about having to upgrade to an assisted plan. After explaining what I’ve already tried, and assuring him that I know my way around a linux box, I told him it’s got to be a network issue and asked him to walk down to his server team and ask them to debug. I had to threaten to close my account, but he finally obliged.
Only then did he realize that they were having some hardware issues. Apparently the issues were bigger than just my site because he seemed to have an “oh shit” reaction to what he found. He told me that it would take a day or 2 to fix the issue, and thanked me for reporting it.
He was right. The next day the problems were gone and my sites are currently responding faster than ever. (I know I’m probably jinxing myself with this one.)
I’m just shocked that I had to go through all of this. It took him about 5 minutes to find the issue once he went down to his team in the server room, but it should have been found and fixed before I even called.
August 4th, 2007
Many of you know that one of the sites I run is called FeedButton. It’s a cool widget that lets you replace all those “add to feed reader” buttons with something else.
It’s proven very popular – it’s being used over 3000 blogs. That’s where the problem is. It’s also using about 150gig of bandwith every month, and it’s the real reason why this website is slow.
Despite everything I’ve done, I just can’t see a way to make feedbutton worth it’s weight. It’s a great service, and it offers valuable stats – but it doesn’t make any money. I’ve made $22 off of it so far this year.
I’m bleeding out money right now. I can’t afford to give it its own dedicated server if it’s making less than $2/month.
I’ve decided that I have the following options:
- Take down the site. – I don’t want to do this. This will be a last resort
- Make blog users host the javascript / images -This is feasible, but really hard to roll out
- Option 2 + limit current usage – Would it piss a bunch of people off if I made their cool widget go away, and linked the button to a page that had all the feed readers listed (for readers to select one)
- Angel Investor – I’d prefer for a company to step up and donate me a dedicated box to host the server on. I’d gladly let them brand the webpage, do a PR release about it, etc. I think this is the best option
If I can’t find somebody willing to help me save the website, I’m going to be forced to change the way it works or sell it.
If anybody’s interested, or has any ideas please drop me a line. My Gmail address is: thehockeygod
August 1st, 2007
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