February 09, 2001

What happened to the reports?

Alas my Fernie page has become too popular for its own good. In January of 2001 it had over 55,000 visits, served up almost 210,000 pages, transmitting over 9 gigabytes of data. The machine doing this is a 266 MHz Pentium II running Linux and sitting in a friends home in Calgary. Alas his Shaw small business account was never meant for these volumes and the Shaw cyber cops finally came calling.

In order to protect his account I have redirected requests back to one of the servers in my house. However I am concerned about the load that this could put on the link into the valley, particularly at peak times, so I have suspended the reports for the time being.

My in box is jammed with supportative email messages, many offering help. I am absolutely overwhelmed by this and certainly very flattered, but I will need a few days to consider my options. Long term readers will know it is about time for my annual threats to quit or cut back and this could be the perfect opportunity.

Probably the most frequent suggestions are to implement some form of ads or subscription service, but frankly that all smells more like a job rather than a hobby. If it came to that, I think I would rather just try and fund it myself. I do appreciate the suggestions though.