Back when I started this site around 2020 it was pretty much just me here. Most of the time the new user applications were from ultra lazy spammers peddling penis pills. I realized that all of you have been writing introductions but you don’t know much about me so here is somewhat of an introduction.

I’m just a regular guy in the Cleveland, Ohio area who works in tech. I have 3 cats. My hobbies are tech stuff, shooting/guns, gardening, lifting, and to a smaller degree talking about leftist politics. I run this instance as well as I can on my own. Sometimes the site will go down or be slow but you can rest assured that I’m most likely aware of it when that happens. I monitor this site pretty closely.

It definitely feels weird (in a good but anxiety inducing way) to see so many people using the server I set up. Before the influx it didn’t matter if the site was down for an hour or two while I worked out a deployment issue but that’s not the case anymore. I would like to bring more sys admins on board eventually so if you’re interested feel free to reach out.

Glad you’re all here!

  • awesomesauce309@midwest.social
    7·
    2 years ago

    The growing pains don’t bother me too much, especially when the alternative is going back and accepting how bad reddit will progressively get as advertisers take over.

    There’re so many fellow tech workers here too lol

  • linuxdaemon@midwest.socialEnglish
    4·
    2 years ago

    I am a Linux sysadmin (Redhat and fedora mostly) at a local university for over 20 years. I would be happy to help in any sysadmin tasks.

    I thought about setting up my own Lemmy instance. I’ve already set up my own matrix server and mastodon (gotosocial) server for only me, and I thought I’d give someone else’s lemmy instance a shot instead of building my own this time.

  • TurtleTourParty@midwest.socialEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    Thanks for running this instance. It makes the switch to Lemmy much easier with all the local communities. I already feel more at hone here than I have for a while on reddit.

    99.9999% uptime is for overrated. We can put on some bug spray and step outside (or a coat for the glorious time of the year mosquitoes don’t try to carry me away) if the server goes down.

    • Menachem@midwest.socialEnglish
      11·
      2 years ago

      Yeah but sometimes you just came inside and want to browse 😉 definitely understand where he’s coming from but it’d be nice to not have to switch to another account all the time

  • miah@midwest.socialEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    Thanks for hosting the server. Scaling while being slammed is tough! I’ve noticed a few times the server is too loaded and try to come back later. With reddit down you’re essentially feeling ‘the slashdot effect’ (is that still a thing? lol). I’ll keep coming back and checking =)

    I’ve done infra/ops for years, and been in your situation more than once. Take your time, you’ll get it all sorted out. John Allspaw wrote a good book about this subject, “The Art of Capacity Planning: Scaling Web Resources”. There is a new edition out that I haven’t read, but all of the lessons learned in that book are still applicable today. The biggest thing that helped me was learning haproxy and figuring out how to spread out the load, minimize response times, as well as queue time.

    • TheDaveAbides@midwest.socialEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      So to a lay person, are the speed/responsiveness issues just because so many people are using all the servers, or is it this instance, or the Lemmy software (or a bit of all 3)? I tried posting a simple link too !nfl@lemmy.world and it just spun the whole time.

      • b0b89@midwest.socialEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        I would guess having not seen any logs or anything that the server might need more resources or is hitting some limit that hasn’t come up before. Like max open files or some sort of ram limit. I haven’t looked into running a lemmy instance yet but usually you can mess with the config and squeeze a little more life out of stuff. But it could be that the server itself needs to be more powerful.

        I’ve had a lot of problems getting posts to load that are on other large instances. The whole ecosystem is probably just slammed right now. Reddit dying made people go “well whats a thing like reddit I could use instead” and we’re all just showing up load testing the small instances people set up for a small group of friends.

        • TheDaveAbides@midwest.socialEnglish
          5·
          2 years ago

          I like to think all of our Midwest internet traffic is meeting at the server and saying “Ope, sorry, after you…No I insist, after you.”

  • MrFrobozz [Iowa]@midwest.socialEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Thank you for hosting this! It’s a great little place and it’s nice that it isn’t a super big site.

    I work IT for a fairly large enterprise. I’m willing to help out however I can. I’ve not run Lemmy, but I have experience with Python, containers, Kubernetes, Java, PHP, and basic database administration with a strong background in systems monitoring as well, so even if you just an extra site monitoring probe, just hit me up.

  • TheWindowWolf@midwest.socialEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    As a newbie here, I don’t expect the server to run perfectly all the time, and growing pains are normal. Take your time! I’m glad to have a little place to hangout in the meanwhile.

  • Spacemanspliff@midwest.socialEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Thank you for creating this place for us. This is my first dive into the fediverse, honestly I’m still only kinda sure what I’m doing and how many of this works.

    As someone who migrated to reddit from digg during the V4 disaster, and then spent entirely to much time on reddit, I’m excited at the prospect of being somewhere so decentralized that stupid corporate games can’t ruin everything.

  • tacos@midwest.socialEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    What sort of skills you looking for? Do you pay in those aforementioned penis pills? …asking for a friend

  • b0b89@midwest.socialEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Hey I work in tech and live in chicago. I’d be happy to help out in any way I can. I keep linux boxen alive for a living.

  • base10@midwest.socialEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Thanks for hosting us!

    I’m a software developer in the Chicago suburbs with an interest in DevOps, and a fair amount of experience with Linux, kubernetes, aws, and terraform. If that’s anything like your stack, I’m happy to help if I can.

    Similar interests too, minus lifting plus fountain pens and woodworking. Ex-cat owner, sadly; both died of old age last year and my wife prefers we don’t get another until the kids are older.

  • fuzzyspudkiss@midwest.socialEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Hi, I’ve really been enjoying my time here so far. I think if people keep posting and interacting this could become my next doom scroll client.

    If you need some help running the instance at any point let me know. I’m a network engineer/sysadmin/VM wrangler in Indiana so hopefully I could be of some help!

  • cptmurphy616@midwest.socialEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Thank you for setting this up and keeping it running. Did you have an “Oh shit” moment when you saw Redditors start suggesting Lemmy as an alternative during the API fiasco?

    I’m just a simple technical writer with no SysAdmin experience, but good look on the search for help.

  • FartSmarter@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Columbus here! Went to school at UC and also work in the tech space. Wish I knew about the Midwest instance before I signed up for lemmy.world.

    Found a Columbus community here on Lemmy world, not sure if there are any others: https://lemmy.world/c/columbus

    Also if anyone has any leads on web dev jobs, reach out! Not quite enjoying my current job.