#49165: — 11/16  at  12:39 PM
You can never let those inanimate objects think they've got you cowed. The Fonz knew this.

#49168: Abiola Lapite — 11/16  at  12:53 PM
Er, what is your hardware and OS setup, exactly? Is Expression Engine dynamically generating each and every page, without performing any caching? Does the blogging software hit the database for each and every page request or something? If your server's running OS X, do you have the Tiger update installed? The update contains significant improvements to OS X's threading functionality (though judging by this article there's still quite a ways to go).

It seems extremely odd to me that you should be having such performance issues even with relatively outdated hardware, as any old Pentium III type box should be able to serve up hundreds of thousands of static pages a day without breaking a sweat. If OS isn't at issue (and even with OS X's current limitations I strongly doubt it is), you might want to talk to the pMachine guys about the architecture of their software - maybe some locks are being held for longer than they ought to be, calls which ought to be asynchronous aren't, or something else along those lines.

#49180: — 11/16  at  01:31 PM

"you could be replaced with a MovableType installation..."

Be careful. It might just tell you, "well, Blogger that!" and turn your archives into a smoky cloud of bits.

#49181: PZ Myers — 11/16  at  01:32 PM
Everything is cached to the hilt, although it does access the database briefly for every page.

I've got a request for help in to the EE people. I also just did the obvious thing and looked at my server logs, and what's this? I'm getting multiple requests for a "referrers" page every few seconds? Idiot spammers. I don't have a referrers page, but it sure is keeping my machine busy.

#49207: DouglasG — 11/16  at  04:02 PM
We're still experiencing DB errors and it is slower than molasses -- outside -- in Minnesota -- now...

#49208: — 11/16  at  04:09 PM
Sounds like it's time to get an AMD based solution! (Really I'm just kidding, though in all honesty such a machine would be far more powerful than the one you have.)

#49210: PZ Myers — 11/16  at  04:22 PM
I know. It's getting worse and worse.

This is really pissing me off.

#49211: PZ Myers — 11/16  at  04:27 PM
I know. It's getting worse and worse.

This is really pissing me off.

#49217: charlie wagner — 11/16  at  07:35 PM
BUSH WAS RIGHT!



http://tinyurl.com/dz8mh

#49218: — 11/16  at  08:10 PM
Seems you've pissed off that portion of the Scott Adams fan club who take retribution by attacking servers of people they don't like. Not unexpected given the tech-geek nature of that crowd.

#49221: — 11/16  at  08:54 PM
Pounding on the desk – pounding on the CPU or turning the air in my office blue has absolutely no affect on how your site loads on my machine. I have to conclude that the rotten apple must be at your end of the internet.

#49223: coturnix — 11/16  at  08:59 PM
A spam message just appeared on the Pissant thread. This is the first time EVER I saw comment spam on this blog.

#49226: Heliologue — 11/16  at  09:08 PM
I've heard good things about Wordpress + the Staticize plugin. Weathers a Slashdotting, even.

#49229: — 11/16  at  09:25 PM
If you are still on the UMM network I suggest you take a look at your NIC settigs vis a vis the switch port you are connected to, and even do a little investigating of packet shaping technology that may be in place. Duplex mismatches are killers of throughput; and most universities with student dorms on the network put restrictions in place to control outbound traffic ... intended to discourage students running music/file sharing and the like. At my former institution we lifted the packet shaping at night ... which resulted in a 45mb internet connection becoming immediately saturated throughout the night. In the morning we throttled that traffic so academic and administrative functions could take priority of network bandwidth.

#49239: paul — 11/16  at  11:01 PM
yeah, I doubt your hardware is at fault here. I don't know how hard it would be switch from eEngine to something else. If you're shopping for recommendations, I'd take WordPress over MovableType.

I could look it up, I suppose, but does your publishing software use its own webserver/listener or does it use Apache and if so, what version?

Interesting that my CAPTCHA word is "darwin": relevant to your site and to the OS of the system under discussion.

#49240: Ron Sullivan — 11/16  at  11:14 PM
It must be frustrating, but here's a hat tip from those of us who appreciate what you do here for free -- informative and entertaining, pace anyone who presumes to lecture you on what you ~should~ be doing. In fact, some of us here are so appreciative we're inclined to be cheerfully patient while this mess gets sorted out, whatever (insert dark look) its origin.

#49244: — 11/17  at  12:03 AM
I agree with Ron Sullivan, though it's certainly frustrating. If I were not a poor student I think I'd give you a shiny new AMD powered machine to host this site on, plus one wet behind the ears computer geek to write you some code. Then you could ditch the Mac!

#49267: Keith Douglas — 11/17  at  08:09 AM
I'm with Desert Donkey. I'd check the upstream bandwidth and policies. Probably not much you can do, though at CMU some colleagues were able to get extra bandwidth for a project for free for a while, then had to pay for its continued use. (I suppose it could also be badly designed software, but I don't know anything about these blog app things.)