Why Servers Crash

From Alexa, whose claims of easy use of their graph making widget on your website are false. The code is there, but nothing shows up. Anyway, the graphs shows the IRS graph trending up gently to a peak around the 17th of April. Virginia Tech's graph is flat, probably for months and then there is a huge spike. Looks about 10 times normal use. I also included the US EPA graph for comparison and it just hums along as normal since nothing dramatic happened.

One of these peaks is predictable, given that 15 April is Tax Day for Americans. The Virginia Tech servers were probably just purring along until around midday on the fateful day. They must have been smoking for the next few days. I wonder how computer systems managers deal with massive changes in usage like that.

Alexa is also good for reviewing the (pathetic) status of your blog as a vehicle of social influence. You can find out that I have about 0.00000015 penetration of the market, or something like that. Not sure if that is too many zeros, but that is not the point. They will even print up a T Shirt for you, if you like to display your feeble status in public. Imagine walking around with the blogging equivalent of "I am a complete loser" in public. Most people don't even know what blogs are! Interesting and entertaining all the same.