A quick rundown of where we are at this point. I've started an Internet service that has taken on a life of its own, growing to tens of thousands of users by this point. I've discovered my first serious competitor, in Makelist/eGroups. And I'm still working a full time job at Sun.
I had started ONElist with $5000 I received from a bonus at work. Server costs were running around $300 a month, but with the service growing, that number too was growing. And all the while my sanity level was decreasing with all the work. I needed to bring in help.
The first person I brought in was Scott Shambarger. I had been working with Scott for the previous couple of years and he was the smartest guy I knew. He also seemed a bit bored with corporate life at Sun. So, I took him out to lunch one day and spilled my guts about my secret nightlife. Because I am afflicted with the condition known as big mouth, I had casually mentioned ONElist to a couple of people at work, but I hadn't really talked about it in depth with anyone.
Luckily for me, Scott was interested in joining my ship of fools. And even luckilier (that can't be a word), he was interested in investing. And even luckiliest (that really can't be a word), Scott was an Oracle database genious.
Database Aside
We'll be obsessing over databases for the next couple of months, so it's probably a good idea to introduce what we're talking about here. A database is a computer program that stores information in a way that makes it easy and fast to look up. ONElist is built around a database, which stores all the information for each list, which lists each user is subscribed to, what their password is, blah blah. Basically, if the database doesn't work, ONElist doesn't work. Got it? Ok. Don't worry, there won't be a quiz.
End of Database Aside
Anyways, one of the major weaknesses of the ONElist system at the time was the database. I had cobbled together something with chewing gum and pieces of cat hair. The database was seriously starting to slow down the system, and it needed to be fixed.
So, ta dum, all my problems solved were solved. At least for the next five minutes, which was about as far ahead as I could think.
With Scott on board, he began working on integrating an Oracle database into the ONElist system. This was not an easy task, and much to my chagrin, couldn't be completed in a weekend. In fact, it took the better part of two months.
In the mean time, ONElist was slooooooooooowing down under the increased pressure of its growth. It was still running on just one little PC. We had to change that. And fast. So, we began an ambitious upgrade program to distribute the functionality of ONElist over several machines. This way, when things slowed down, we could just add more machines.