The Joys of Debugging

Over the past month, I’ve had a problem.  Every morning, at around 9am, my server would slow down to a crawl.  I didn’t know what was causing it, but I must admit I was a bit excited.  You see, I could tell that I was going to have a fun time debugging.

Maybe it’s the geek in me, but I LOVE a good debugging session.  It’s like computer detective work.  There’s a problem somewhere and you need to uncover it.  You round up some suspects, test them out, and narrow down the culprit.

Sometimes, your first round of suspects reveals the guilty party, but sometimes you need to dig deeper.  When this happens, you start searching the Internet.  Maybe someone else has had this problem.  Perhaps there is information on how to uncover more clues.  Either way, you are bound to learn something new.

Finally, the root cause is discovered and a fix is devised.  It is put into place and the problem goes away.  Another solution discovered and your skillset is expanded.

At the time of this writing, I’m not sure if I’ve found the problem.  I’ll need to wait at least one more day to find out if the daily slowdowns continue.  If they have, I’ll have found the answer to a very complicated riddle.  If not, I’ll keep at it.  A degree a stubbornness is essential to debugging, but it helps when you enjoy the process.

NOTE: The image above is a combination of Ant by Andy and Cartoon Computer and Desktop by DTRave.  Both images are available from OpenClipArt.org.