This site is really struggling to keep up with the demand at the moment. I went to dinner tonight, and came home to find 3000 messages in my email in-box. They were database errors from BlackjackTournaments.com. I wondered "What the?" Then I noticed that all the error messages occurred while visitors were looking at the message thread about Michael Tata's death. I then realized that American Casino aired tonight, and they undoubtably mentioned his death. If you Google for his name, this site is the #3 result. At the peak, we had over 1200 simultaneous visitors here. Someone at my hosting company reset the server, so that's probably lower than it would have been had they not intervened. I guess I'll watch this episode later on Tivo.
A newer version of the MySQL database server and some additional tweaking should enable the site to withstand much higher loads than previously. Hopefully it will be up to the challenge of any future TV-induced traffic spikes. We'll see. My apologies for the occasional downtimes caused by the maintenance.
