Managing a web traffic surge

I've been the volunteer webmaster for St. Luke's Parish for about seven years. I run the site on a very low budget site. Up to now, it's hosted at doteasy.com using their "$0 dollar" hosting service. The deal is you pay the domain registration, they provide server space, some basic management tools and a limited traffic quota, which has always been fine for out typical traffic of 50 to 100 hits per day up to now.

Last Tuesday, July 17 there was tragedy in our town, three seventeen year old boys were involved in a boating accident. One boy, who was kneeboarding behind the boat without a life jacket, was lost. His body was located the following day. He was buried Thursday, July 25. The autopsy said he died of blunt force and sharp (propeller) trauma. The police said alcohol was involved. The operator of the boat was charged with reckless operation, death resulting and refusal to submit to a blood alcohol test. More charges are pending. They say he could serve 10 years in prison. My heart goes out to these families, although I can rationalize that they brought it upon themselves, I can't help but think there but for the grace of God, go I. I did my share of stupid things in my youth.

Father Matt Glover, the Associate pastor at St. Luke's was on the waterfront Tuesday night, along with many people, especially youth from town as the search went on. Recently ordained, Fr. Matt is young and very close to the kids in town. In April, he took a group of high school kids to work at the Mustard Seed mission in Jamaica. These kids raised $50,000 through the parish to provide supplies for the care of Jamaican orphans. When they came home, Fr. Matt and his mission team spoke at the Masses giving moving testimony about their experience.

Our town has been plagued by a rash of drug and alcohol related teen tragedies. Two years ago three local boys were involved in a late-night high-speed crash in town. Two were killed. The survivor required nearly a year of rehabilitation to recover. Last week another 21 year old, who graduated high school a few years ago died unexpectedly.

Sunday Fr. Matt gave an emotional sermon about these tragedies. Last spring I started recording homilies from our Masses and posting them on the web as audio podcasts for parishioners. I was at a different Mass Sunday, so I didn't hear Fr. Matt's homily in person, but I was blown away by the emotion of it as I edited, produced and posted the podcast. The homily was 22 minutes. The MP3 file was 10 Mb. You can hear the entire sermon here.

Tuesday morning, I got up a 5:45 and walked out to the driveway to pick up the Providence Journal. As I opened to the front page, I knew immediately that we would have an overload of traffic on the website. The page 1 headline read "Barrington priest decries denial after teen's death." The Rev. S. Matthew Glover tells parishioners to own up to substance abuse problems in town. "Our kids drink because we drink, that's why," he says. At the end of the story it said the full 22 minute homily can be heard at http://www.stlukesparish.com/.

I knew that with any significant numbers, downloads of the MP3 would overwhelm the site's monthly traffic quota. I'll just upgrade the hosting service I thought. I logged in to my ISP's site management page, which informed me that "Upgrading to ultra or unlimited hosting requires moving the site to a different server which will take place within 24 hours of the upgrade request. I didn't want to take a chance on bringing down the site in the middle of what was then expected to be a busy day.

I quickly found an online service, http://www.switchpod.com/, to host the MP3, and I provided a link there from our home page. Switchpod offers unlimited traffic quotas on a free hosting site for a select number of audio clips. I re-hosted the file there and updated our link. Fortunately the print article only listed our home page, not the specific URL for the file. I headed off to the office for an 8:30 meeting. I was able to monitor traffic using the hit counter statistics which showed 900 hits by 9:00 am and 2,000 by mid morning. We exceeded our 1 Gb per month traffic quota early in the day. I was concerned that the ISP would shut down the site. I submitted a support incident, explaining the situation and asking for advice on managing the surge.

Around 11:00 am, despite relocating the podcast, the traffic on the site continued to skyrocket. I looked at http://www.projo.com/ and found the reason. The online version of the newspaper had linked directly to the MP3 file which was still hosted on our server. I phoned the journal newsroom, and explained the situation. They were extremely cooperative and promptly updated their links.

We were over 3,500 hits when I checked around 3:00 pm and on the advice of the hosting service, I put in an order to upgrade our traffic quota on the website from 1 to 5 Gb/mo. At 10Mb per play for the audio file that didn't take long.

So far there were no apparent service interruptions. By this time, Eyewitness News channels 12 & 64 also had links to the podcast. On their web pages. I talked to a couple of friends who told me that talk radio in Providence was buzzing all day with the story and were broadcasting the podcast over the air.

By evening, the hits approached 5,000. The total, when I went to bed around 11:30 pm was over 6,800.

Two days later, the web hits are subsiding, there have been several follow up stories in local papers and television stations. Between the hits on the website, the news stories and talk radio, I'm sure that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people got to hear Fr. Matt's important message, which in the old days, would have been limited to the parish. Although the circumstances are tragic, I feel really blessed to have had an opportunity to help Father Matt get out his message to a wider audience and to make a difference.

I'm here to serve,
Chuck


Links to related news stories: Overall, the news coverage of Father Matt's Homily and the response from both parishioner's and the general public was overwhelmingly positive.

Providence Journal Thursday July 19, 2007 Barrington teen's body recovered
Providence Journal Tuesday July 24, 2007 Barrington Priest Decries Denial
Eyewitness News 12 Tuesday July 24, 2007
Providence Journal Wednesday July 25, 2007 Bob Kerr Reverend says what needs to be said
NBC News Channel 10 Providence Wednesday July 25, 2007
RI Catholic July 26, 2007 (p. 9) Priest asks body of Christ to turn away from denial and toward God after teen’s death
Barrington Times Friday July 27 2007 Rev. S. Matthew Glover responds to tragedies

My morning paddle

The interactive community at Younger Next Year is encouraging me to break out of the same old exercise routine and mix up my workouts. I need something more for the upper body, because my usual exercises focus mainly on the legs and lower body. I'm looking for an aerobic workout while giving my knees and hips a rest.

A friend, Jason, has stored his kayak in my yard for I don't know how many years now, since he moved from Providence to South Carolina. I haven't used it for several years, but this morning I was out before 6:00 am. I launched it at the Barrington Yacht Club and enjoyed a refreshing hour and fifteen minutes of paddling to the mouth of the river and back. The image shows my route. There was a very light breeze, slightly overcast skies, near low tide, so not much current to paddle against. I saw a mother swan with her cygnet, a heron, a lot of small baitfish running before the kayak and a few larger swirls chasing them. I was home before 8:00 ready to start the rest of my day.

I'll try to fit this into my routine. I'll have to get going quite a bit earlier than usual to fit this in on a workday.

I'm unbelievably blessed to live in such a beautiful place where I can enjoy this beautiful shoreline.

I'm here to serve,
Chuck

broccoli chips - don't laugh, they're great!

I recently tried some fresh broccoli slaw, made from stringed stems, and sold in bags in the produce section of the grocery store.

VJ & I ate a lot of broccoli when we were on the South Beach a couple of years ago. We each lost quite a bit of weight, then gained some back.

I discovered broccoli chips then, and figured I would try them again now that I'm trying to get back down to my college weight of 165#. I'm currently using a modified version of the South Beach diet, (a little less strict at the beginning and with more fruit).

You can make chips when you buy a bunch of fresh broccoli, rather than tossing out the stems. Try slicing them as thin as possible. I eat the chips raw. A dip in some light ranch salad dressing may make them more palatable if plain is just a little too rustic for you.

I'm here to serve,

Chuck

My healthy Mexican black bean salad recipe

I previously posted this on the Younger Next Year community blog but am adding it here for easy linking. I made up a big batch this morning. It's high in Protein & fiber, low in fat, easy to make, keeps 5 or 6 days in the fridge and makes a great main dish, salad topper, pocket filler, side course or a quick snack.

Ingredients

2 - 2 lb cans Black Beans
1 - 1 lb can Chick Peas
1 - 1 lb can small red beans
1 - 1 lb can dark red kidney beans
1 large onion
1 tomato
1 large red bell pepper
4 jalapeno peppers
3 tablespoons (heaping) chili powder
Dash of crushed red pepper or other hot stuff. Sometimes I use “Hot Shot”
½ cup balsamic vinegar

¼ cup olive oil

Drain all but ½ cup of liquid from the back beans which is poured over the beans in the bowl as a base for the dressing. Rinse the beans – & combine in a large bowl. Dice the onion, tomato & peppers mix with the beans. Add chili powder, sprinkle crushed red pepper (to taste) go easy unless you like hot stuff. Drizzle balsamic vinegar & oil over the beans & mix well. Adjust hot peppers & chili powder to your taste. Sometimes I throw in chopped up black olives or sprinkle with cilantro for a little flavor twist.

Serve chilled – keeps well in closed containers in the fridge.

Approximate nutrition information: Serving size ½ cup: 90 calories with only 5 calories from fat 7 grams protein & 6 grams of fiber About 460 mg sodium – although rinsing the beans may reduce this a bit. A good source of iron

For more on the benefits of beans see: Dr. Perricone's 10 Superfoods In a large study of almost 10,000 men and women, those who ate beans four or more times a week cut their risk of coronary heart disease by about 20 percent, compared with those who ate beans less than once a week. It appears that this health benefit was independent of other health habits, since adjustments to account for other important cardiovascular disease risk factors produced minimal change in the risk estimates.

Other studies show that within two to three weeks, diets high in either canned or dry beans (3 to 4 ounces per day) reduce blood cholesterol levels by 10 percent or more: an effect that can result in a 20 percent decrease in the risk of coronary heart disease. Beans and lentils have the same potent anti-inflammatory antioxidants—flavonoids and flavonals—found in tea, fruits, grapes, red wine and cocoa beans. In particular, the reddish flavonal pigments in bean and lentil seed coats exert antioxidant activity 50 times greater than vitamin E, protect against oxidative damage to cell membrane lipids, promote healthy collagen and cartilage, and restore the antioxidant powers of vitamins C and E after they’ve battled free radicals.

There is a downside - beans are the "musical fruit" - don't eat too many when you will be sitting for an extended time in a confined space with other people...

Live Long & Prosper,

Chuck

S.M.A.R.T. Goals (improved)

SMART goals are: Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic, and Timed.

I'm working on loosing some weight and I found several nice articles on S.M.A.R.T. Goals, but after thinking about them and working on them for a few days I think I improved on the S.M.A.R.T. acronym by replacing Attainable with Ambitious. Attainability overlaps heavily with Realistic. In order to have a significant impact, its crucial that our goals are Ambitious. We can't water our goals down to the point where success is always guaranteed. We will achieve more by taking a bit of risk and stretching to achieve our full potential.

Specific - A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. To set a specific goal; answer these questions:
What: What specifically do I want to accomplish?
Why: Specific reasons or benefits of accomplishing the goal to aid motivation.
How: What are my strategies and tactics to accomplish the goal
Who: Are others involved? Do I need help? Who can I get to help?
Which: Identify requirements and constraints.
Where: Identify a location if it’s important

Measurable - Establish concrete criteria or milestones for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goal.

To determine if your goal is measurable, ask How much? How many? How will I know when it is accomplished? How many projects have you seen where the status reports said everything was on time, with no problems, until the deadline hit?

Ambitious – If your goal is set so easily as to be a sure thing, will you achieve all that is possible? While we want to set realistic goals that can be achieved, there is not much reward if success is guaranteed. With risk comes reward. The art is in balancing risk and reward. Identify what is achievable, then set a stretch goal that may require just a bit more effort, creativity or persistence. If you don’t reach the stretch goal, the outcome is not necessarily a failure. If you set your sights so low that there is no stretch, will you be satisfied with the outcome? Ambitious goals may be easier to reach because easy goals don’t provide much motivation.

Realistic - To be realistic, you must be both willing and able to work toward it. Do you have the right skills, preparation, tools and resources to reach the goal? If not how can you get them? If you understand the steps and resources needed to accomplish the goal and have the necessary skills it is much more likely to be achieved. If you’ve accomplished something similar in the past then your goal is probably realistic.

Timed - A goal should be grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to the goal there's no sense of urgency and your ability to measure progress is greatly diminished.

I'm here to serve
Chuck

Four ways to Curb Appetite

From Time Magazine June 11 2007 with a few of my own interjections...

1. Eat Fiber: Unrefined foods are high in fiber and stimulate appetite-suppressing hormones making you feel full.

2. Brush Your Teeth: The clean mouth and flavor change help you resist eating more, and good dental hygiene is good for your overall health.

3. Be Consistent: Eating breakfast and regularly scheduled meals keeps hormone levels steady and quashes hunger pangs.

4. Eat Slowly: It takes a while for the brain to realize that the stomach is full. slowing down gives the brain time to catch up with your stomach.

I'm here to serve,

Chuck

See more about health, exercise & nutrition on the Younger Next Year Interactive Community. I started a blog there to support my weight loss goal. 165 lb. by August 1.

You can read much more on the Science of Appetite at the Time Magazine website. I found the article interesting, but from my perspective, the above tidbits are the most useful.

Humor and Leadership

“A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done" Dwight D. Eisenhower*


Studies suggest that humor useful in facilitating communication in difficult situations, relieving stress, and in clarifying mutual understanding of difficult topics in work groups. Humor can be used to convey information, break down behavioral barriers, highlight key points, and identify where tension exists.

Humor facilitates communication in difficult situations, such as when a supervisor needs to provide negative or sanctioning feedback and when broaching taboo topics.

Humor can be used by managers to communicate corrective actions without offending or threatening. Humor can also be used as a non-threatening way for subordinates to push back up the chain of command without overstepping customary lines of authority. Humor allows you to discuss taboo topics, including expression of certain emotions, such as aggression, fear, and sadness. Humor allows you to maintain lines of communication in spite of conflict. Humor's ability to facilitate communication is likely one of its most powerful and potentially useful aspects.

Humor makes it possible to communicate in stressful situations because it simultaneously conveys both the message and information about how to interpret the message. Through smiling, an exaggerated tone of voice, etc. humor tells us that the normal rules of behavior are temporarily suspended. Humor lets both the speaker and listener off the hook should conflict arise on the subject. For example, if you first establish, by smiles and voice tone, that you are joking around, you may be able to communicate ideas that would be considered insulting under other circumstances without jeopardizing the relationship. Humor provides the speaker the opportunity to deny that he meant anything by his comment, and it gives the listener the right to act as if nothing has been conveyed.

Humor usually puts people in a good mood, and people in a good mood tend to be more accepting and cooperative, reducing conflict and enabling deeper communication. Humor draws attention. Advertising executives consider humor an effective way to gain attention. Attention emphasizes the message and emphasizes the importance of related segments of the interaction.

Three important questions should be considered When using humor in difficult situations: Do the nonverbal signals clearly convey that the comment is not to be taken seriously? Will the humor leave listeners in a good mood? Is the humor calling attention to something valuable (e.g., the encouraging desired behavior, rather than emphasizing undesirable behavior)?
Humor can reduce stress or tension. Joking provides an energizing distraction for team members when the activity seems overly taxing.

Humor is an important emotion management tool to relieve tension and stress in interpersonal relationships. Many employers consider stress reduction to be the main benefit of humor in the workplace.

Humor allows group members to come to common understanding of our physical and social environment. It identifies situations as safer and less serious than they initially seem. People with a good sense of humor tend to suffer fewer negative outcomes when exposed to stress. Humor can also induce a positive mood, which alleviates stress-induced resistance, and it can draw attention away from the source of stress.

When using humor to reduce stress, remember that your objective may be to change the listener's appraisal of a situation as well as their emotional reaction to it. Is the content of the humor aimed at defining or redefining the situation as safe? Will the humor generate a positive rather than a negative mood? And will the humor draw attention away from the source of stress rather than toward it?

Humor can alert you to issues that others find stressful or problematic. Because humor gives both the speaker and listener the chance to deny that anything important was conveyed, leaders and listeners, should be aware of cases where humor has allowed a potentially contentious matter into a conversation. Your ability to "take a joke" opens an important back channel of communication through which your peers and subordinates may try to pass valuable feedback.

Because humor is often used to alleviate stress, its presence can serve as an important signal that the topic makes the speaker uncomfortable, or to identify issues related to interpersonal conflict. The presence of stress-related humor and laughter reflected the higher levels of stress and conflict in those interactions might be viewed as a warning flag of latent conflict.

Example: disarming humor:
How are you doing?
I have good days and.... better days!

I'm here to serve,

Chuck

* I picked up this quote from an excellent address given to the students and parents of the Barrington High School [BHS] Class of 2007 by Dan Monaco, a teacher, at the BHS Friendship Service leading up to graduation.