Anonymous wrote:It looks like you changed something today. It's snappier. What was it? Or am I just getting lucky?

I've made lots of tweaks to the database and db connection pool. I also turned off the built-in anti-spam detection -- I actually now think that was a big part of the problem, so thanks for pointing that out. I've also swapped out the search engine a couple of times and may even try one more version to see what works best.

You might consider a Mazda MX-5 (Miata). They are cheap, easy to repair and plentiful. While they are subject to the laws of physics, they are a safe car unless you are hit by a dump truck. They are also not very powerful and can only hold one other person. That prevents the driver from being distracted by a carload of friends.

Get a stick shift and send her to a driving school (e.g. the Tire Rack Street Survival schools organized by the BMW clubs).

This may be the biggest OWS achievement yet. Newt Gingrich has completely adopted the vocabulary of Occupy Wall Street. Moreover, Rick Perry is right behind him with his "vulture capitalists" talk. Apparently, polling in South Carolina shows Gingrich running neck and neck with Romney after erasing a 10 point Romney lead. It will be hilarious if Gingrich shows that financial inequality has legs in South Carolina. Then, he can open his DC headquarters in McPherson Square.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I'd like to point out that we don't homeschool, but that I find most homeschoolers to generally very insightful people who are very well-informed about educational resources out there and I find their perspective very valuable.
Obviously, if they are homeschooling due to extremist beliefs, well, you can always ignore them.

I'm more curious about why Jeff keeps ignoring these posts without even answering. When he didn't respond I looked through previous posts and there was another unanswered one asking the same question.

I believe I have answered home schooling posts previously. What I said, or would have said if I actually didn't answer it, is that people should feel free to discuss home schooling topics in the Schools General Discussion forum. If I see there is interest in the topic, I will consider creating a forum. But, I have never really seen that much interest in home schooling here.

Greenspan, or should I say, Mr. Andrea Mitchell, famously said that Americans were wasting their money getting fixed-rate mortgages and should get ARMs:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/fed/2004-02-23-greenspan-debt_x.htm

Then, resetting ARMs were one of the biggest contributors to the housing crash.

Anonymous wrote:
Crime: Silent.

CM Cheh has a meeting at 7:30 this evening at St. Mary's Church on Fessenden to discuss recent crime in Ward 3. MPD officials will be attending.

Anonymous wrote:is it possible that you're being hacked? Maybe some hacker group wants to expose all of our personal secrets matched with our IP addresses? Ha ha. That's funny, right? Funny because it can't happen....right?

Being hacked has been one of the possibilities that I have considered. I am a pretty good system administrator so it is unusual that I cannot find the problem even after all this time. At this point, I'd almost be happy to discover a hacker. I doubt they are after any personal information and would be pretty difficult, if not impossible, for them to get it. But, hackers do a lot of things just for fun. However, I'll stress, that having considered the possibility of a hack being the cause of this, I took steps to catch him if he is there. So far, there is no evidence of a hacker. That's either good if it means there is no hacker, or bad if it means he is a hell of a good hacker.

Anonymous wrote:there are a lot of db lock errors. it looks like the db needs to be upgraded

The db lock errors are the symptom of other problems. You may be correct that the database needs to be upgraded, but this problem showed up all of a sudden. If it were just a problem of load growing beyond capacity, I would have expected it to be more gradual. I am focusing on the database -- for obvious reasons -- as the culprit here.

Anonymous wrote:At some point in the recent past, I noticed that you started (?) preventing people from doing multiple posts in too short a time. I see them when I post, realize that autocorrect has turned me into a total idiot, and try to post a correction.

Is it possible that this change introduced a bug (like not letting go of a connection), or is it something you introduced in order to fix the existing issue?

Actually, this is a good point. The forum software has a built-in mechanism to combat spammers. I had forgotten about that, but some time ago (within the past couple of months) I did adjust it. Let me go take a look at that.

Thanks. I'm basically collecting debugging information around the clock. I have been seeing the following issues:

1) errors generated when a nonexistent page is requested. Because of the way the forums are written, this doesn't simply generate a "page not found" error like it normally would. Instead, it generates a Java exception. I had been ignoring these, but because they were filling the log files I started to pay attention. I found that the vast majority either come from spambots or Google's spider. I have no idea why the GoogleBot is trying to index nonexistent pages -- and these aren't pages that once existed but were deleted. They are pages that never existed. Spambots tend to make requests for various php pages that are unlikely to exist on a Java application, to say the least. I think the shear traffic generated by these sources added to the problem and I've taken steps to stop it. While I was typing this message I saw another of these errors, but it was caused by the BingBot. It tried to retrieve page 28 of a 27 page discussion. The last post in that discussion was in May 2010 and it has never had a page 28. So, why would the BingBot be trying to retrieve it? It makes no sense.

2) search related errors. This is a weird one because it appears that the search system simply crashes very frequently. Yet, I've never had one single complaint about the search crashing -- just a great many complaints that the search system sucks. I can't reproduce the issue myself and I've never seen it with my own eyes. I just see the errors in the logs. I downgraded the search engine this morning in order to see if the errors go away. So far, I haven't seen any of those errors.

3) db connection pool timeouts. This is what I believe is the most important. However, it's also the one that only shows up under heavy load. I have been tweaking pool and db settings for days trying to find a combination that works. So far, no luck.

4) Search Indexing. I think this accounts for the freezes during non-peak hours. When the search indexer starts running, system load goes up. Then, I see a lot of dropped connections as users react to frozen pages and hit "reload". Then, when the indexer finishes, all sorts of connections come flying in at once which leads to some of the db issues described above. I have also made a couple of changes to the indexer to see if that fixes things. I unexpectedly stumbled across a change that I had made in 2010 that may have contributed to this issue. I reversed that change, so hopefully this will be less of an issue.

I still think there is something else that I am not seeing that is the root cause. If so, I will find it but it might take some time.

DC's tradition is to have neighborhood schools. So, walking is probably the most common way to get to them. With the popularity of public charter schools, families are generally on their own to find a way to school. Actual yellow DCPS school buses are pretty rare and, I believe, only used for special ed students. But, I could be wrong about that. WMATA has special bus routes for some schools. But, yes, you should plan to have your elementary school children dropped off yourself or by someone you trust.

No, see, you are missing the big picture. As long as the women are fighting with each other, us guys can continue to get away with murder. Can you imagine if they put us under the same sort of scrutiny they give themselves? Personally, I'm pretty happy that deciding to send our kids to daycare didn't result in an existential crisis about whether or not I was being a good dad. Don't fix it if it isn't broke, I say.

Anonymous wrote:Idiomatic pet peeve:

I would take this with more than a single grain of salt.

...doesn't make sense. The reason you say "take it with a grain of salt" is that the thing in question is so insignificant that any more than a single grain would be overkill. So if you want to emphasize this, you'd say, "Take it with a very *small* grain of salt" or "...take this with no more than a single grain of salt."

Can you provide some sort of support for your definition of "take it with a grain of salt"? I've never heard it explained the way that you do here. Regardless of the literal meaning of the phrase, idiomatically it means to "view something with skepticism". So, if you take something with more than a single grain of salt, you are viewing it with more than a bit of skepticism. For instance, I am taking your definition with several grains of salt, meaning I am extremely skeptical of your explanation. Also, I plan to argue this to the death because I cannot think of any more important issue facing the world today.

I am doing my best to resolve this issue. Believe me, it is affecting me as well. I can't even post half the time. I really have no idea what the root cause might be. It seems to be related to the database. Right now, I am basically treating symptoms in the hope that I can stumble across the root cause and correct it. But, the problem only shows up during periods of high traffic. Unfortunately, during periods of high traffic, the amount of debugging information is overwhelming. So, it's a bit of a Catch-22. I made a couple of changes yesterday that I hope will help and will make a couple more tonight. But, this is really driving me crazy.

Anonymous wrote:
Yeah, I get that it's your sandbox or henhouse or whatever. And I find your quick response to technology-related questions to be extremely helpful. But now I see your posts are tending to be either offensive (abortion, STFU) or you appear to be the angry out-of-control substitute teacher yelling at a bunch of rowdy school children. What's with all the hostility? You, and probably only you, know that some of these posters asking you questions are not the same "Amys" that you've referred to or other people who are just out to spoil your day.

Angry out-of-control substitute? I'm no substitute. I'm the real thing.