As inconstant as the weather outside
Only when you try to operate your own “server” does the reason behind the high price tags of commercial machines make sense. Something to do with reliability.
OK, it’s a stretch; I have a desktop machine, purchased used at a local recycler. On the surface, a quite ordinary P4 with no obvious issues. My weather station sends its data via an old-fashioned RS-232 link, and then software creates web pages and uploads them to my domain via FTP. There’s also a webcam, with software that uploads a frame to the weather site every few minutes. A server serving another. So typical of the kluged installations that make this world wide web what it is.
But back to the server thing. There’s a degree of inconsistent behaviour. For some reason, the webcam suddenly disappears from memory, or the weather station stops transmitting. I’ve been seeking a pattern, and the more I look, the more I find. The webcam data is open source and orphaned by the developer. And no, I can’t take on the project…
Sometimes, the failure matches the arrival of son #3. He uses this machine to draw, chat, Facebook, prepare homework and other non-essential actions. He has been known to reset the machine and forget to restart the software. Sometimes, the failure matches none of the above. Today, after three days of great performance, the machine stopped… one minute after I left the house to go to work.
If I could find a pattern, I could find a cure. Right now, I’m resigned to restarting the machine on a regular basis, hoping that nobody relies on up to date weather observations from my back yard for something “mission critical”.’
